More things from Down There 16 - 36

16. A warren of aerial clay, inter-penetrating traceries of soft glistening crystal shining mud, flung in arches and embrasures. Work of a Deep Dragon who sings stone to mud with every breath. It’s hoard hangs openly in hands of clay collapse into a landslide with the slightest graze.

17. A bowl of flensed men who mutter to each other and tap at the glass that makes their prison homes. Rags of torn flesh like broken clothes inside the briny bowls. Will trade great wealth for beautiful amphibian courtesans (strong stomach required). Vengeful if mocked or betrayed. 

18. A race of slaves. Competes across a savagely designed course set with beasts and magical traps, under the eyes of observing contemptuous Lords.

19. The herald of a Cosmic God hiding from his lord. His chambers of silver and glass are an uncertain refuge for any who have betrayed or abandoned their rightful authority. The godlet protects these treasonous fragments but allows only one individual of each kind. Only a greater traitor may supplant another of the same race.

20. Blessed by one of the boring gods. This huge spiralling cave is pitted with small caverns of every kind. If any item is left within a single cave, only the owner of that thing may ever enter again. Any other will die. When the depositor dies, the magic invisibly dispels. (Twenty gangs of bandits roam the halls.)

21. The Library of Hives. A colony of several different kinds of swarming beast. Books are incarnated in the shifting patterns of moving text, forming and re-forming words as the eye shifts down the line. Nothing can  be re-read.

22. The Limb Factory. In a hidden pool, a ‘lens’ of  saline water supports an upper layer of hydrochloric acid. Trapped beneath the acid is a gigantic and intelligent Asteroidea. This creature can, and will, grow and attach new limbs for those it meets. Access is controlled by different tribes at different times as they war constantly for the cave.

23. A nest of traders tangled up, refusing to un-knot their slaves and centipedal mounts over a matter of privilege. Nearby, multiple gangs of bandits, equally confused and mixed.

24. Duegar cellular city, abandoned black cubes with twisted realities, opening and closing like shadows behind the eyes.

25. A blundering lizardman mummy stuffed full of books and old scrolls. Seeking a forgotten labyrinth he accidentally wandered out of and cannot re-find.

26. An apparently normal child. Alone. Un-harmed. Waiting for someone they cannot name.

27. A speleo-druid meditating in a garden of helictites. Only partially transformed into negative-image void being. Infra-black flitterings oozing from his cuffs like flags.

28. A team of criminal smuggling dwarves manoeuvring a gigantic trunk of a hardwood tree deep to a forbidden city. There, it will sell for one million lumes and be carved into a temples central support. 

29. A town where the only currencies are hard drugs and seconds of survival. Minute-town, where everyone is free and no-one is ever safe.

30. Palnaquin-waggon of terribly decedent elves. Carried smiling golems uilt like bells around echoing chimes. Six feet wide and ¼ mile long. Elves have been high of Sipopa* for three weeks, now running out, coming down getting dangerous to be around. No idea where the fuck they are.

31. Remnants of a Halfling expedition climbing upwards. Bloodies, starving, seconds away from self-destruction. Carrying an enormous (6ft wide), golden, stasis-locked and incorruptible pork pie. On a double they are about to meet the dwarves from 28.

32. Corkscrewed moleship nose burst through the roof. Fucking steampunk gnome inside will try to hide the fact that they cannibalised their crew on the descent.

33. Lone captain hurriedly trying to repair her shattered craft. Cargo of strawberries. Crew drowned. Strawberries go off in 3 days. City of the spider queen is 2.5 days away if the fastest and most dangerous rapids are taken and the deepest falls risked. Fresh strawberries worth double their weight in Lumes. Stale or rotten ones worth nothing. Drow palates V delicate.

34. Master-criminal wizard transported back to the Knotsmen city of ‘Forclose’. Each finger individually knitted to its partner behind his back. Spike driven through his tongue. All guards but one killed by freak fall.. Wizard will reveal a single section of his plan for every finger freed. (Really secret anarchist, wants to burn the Knotsmen debt records.)

35. A city has burned in the surface. Desperate prospectors swarm the storm tunnels to pan the flows for flesh, metal, gems, slaves and wood.

36. The Hoarding Dark. A liquid absence that steals, and conceals treasures of those who pass through. Those who enter blindly, owning and holding nothing, may emerge wealthy or not at all.

*Why not enjoy the Swordfish Isles, a location book for D&D by Jacob Hurst, coming to a store near you soon!