This is an exquisite corpse ping-pong dungeon between Scrap and I in order to publicise our KICKSTARTER (only SEVEN DAYS LEFT, WILL WE GET TO MAKE THE HEIST PLANS???)
Click the Gammon of Fate to find out;
And here is,
The Hexahedron of the Monks of Flame
And now, room #1 The Canticles of Time
South – standard door, unlocked.
East – small door, not specifically hidden but hard to see until you get close.
Here the Monks of Combustion sang the canticles of Time,
yet they sand too loudly and too long, and summoned the time-leviathan in room
#5, which shattered causality in the Hexahedron and looped the singing monks
and their choirmaster into an unending song.
Ranks of singing monks on each side standing in choirs.
But but time is frozen in the room, the monks are splintered into moments like
cubist paintings, all messed up, some fragments seem horribly aged, others as
if no time has passed, some half aware of what is happening like the turning
eye of a man frozen in ice which tracks you across the room.
All the music paper in the room has been torn as if be a
great wind or flock of birds and hurled about the place, it hangs in space like
frozen snowfall, each inscribed with fragments of the canticles of Time.
At the far north stands the Choir Master of
the monks, flickering like a brain spasm between selves burning and ash.
Around his neck – a great KEY, set with bezoars and
garnets, flashing silver. The AUTUMN KEY. (See room #4).
He is at the centre of the time-storm. Getting to him
is like pushing through a heavy head wind, or climbing through glue. The air
sticks and presses at you, the edges of your clothes unravel and decay
tips of your hair turn grey, the leather souls of boots rot and blades gain a patina of rust.
The room begins in a random state and changes once per
minute. As PCs get closer to the Choir Master it increases to once every 30
second and then once every 15 seconds.
The place throbs red, beads of sweat stand out and blaze
like gold, its like labouring indoors on a hot summer day.
The song itself has (though infinite time looping, which
doesn't wipe out its selfhood as information cannot be transported through time,
evolved into a self-aware meta-organism composed entirely of continually-present
magical sound.
It writes in the air like a serpent or a spiralling drake
of blue-grey corposant.
Its life is infinite yet utterly bounded. Immortal, it fears
death and dissolution yet rages in frustration at its inherently bounded existence.
Though wrathful and frustrated it can be engaged in conversation, at least
initially.
If a PC can covert it to any faith or philosophy that
would teach it not to fear death, convince it that its existence is harming
those who created it without due cause, or do both, then the song will voluntarily
extinguish itself.
It can also be fought in more prosaic fashion. (Stats as
a big flying snake).
If it dies and the Ash state of the room is still active
then that will take over continually
In the ash state the room has the shadowy cool of autumn
where frost edges every paving slab and the shadows turn to blocks of night, breath
plumes in the air, freezes and is then disrupted and scattered by the shadowy
and formless movements of the echoes.
The unconscious time-trapped souls of the singing monks.
The soul exists without time yet there is no time in which the monks may think
or die and so the souls have gone mad.
The room is full of echoes, human shadows flocking like birds,
whirling and wheeling. They grab and pinch at the PCs, trying to stop any
movement in the room, especially towards the north.
The Echoes pinching can only do 1hp damage on each attack
but there are 3d6 of them (changes each round) as the PCs crawl deeper into the
north of the room the Echoes get first two actions to the PCs one, then three
to one, (the time dilation doesn't accept them the same way).
Other than pinching, all the Echoes can do is repeat
actions the PCs use against them.
Any specific action the PCs take to deal with the Ash
room can be repeated against them 3d6 times (spread between PCs), so if the PC
attack then the echo of that attack might kill them.
To get past the echoes of the monks doomed souls the PCs
must either suffer through their attentions, elude or distract them somehow, or
perform some specific action which nullifies them (all they can do is echo).
East – small door, not specifically hidden but hard to see until you get close.
The Time-Storm
tips of your hair turn grey, the leather souls of boots rot and blades gain a patina of rust.
The Song of Time is decidedly off-putting as a confused hyper-hazardous sentient cosmic knot. Who knew music can be so dangerous?
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