The spell was cast, and just in time. You and your friends were in dreadful need of respite, and you gratefully climbed up the rope and through the unseen portal.

Now you’re huddled in a small, featureless room of stone that has been conjured into some proto-dimensional pocket by your party’s sorcerer. A single small window looks out into the material plane.

And then, in the middle of the night, you hear something…

…tap. tap. tap.

A tapping on the wall.

…tap. tap. tap.

From the far side of the wall.

…

After a few minutes it stops.

Maybe you panic and drop out of the rope trick. Maybe you stick it out until morning. But that’s it.

For now.

But the next time you crawl up into a rope trick (or maybe it’s the time after that)…

…tap. tap. tap.

…tap. tap. tap.

When the tapping stops, maybe you listen at the walls. Is that whispering you hear?

And then, whether it’s after hours or days, the tapping comes again. And it goes on longer this time. It lasts for several minutes, and then — BAM!

Something on the far side slams into the walls of the rope trick hard enough to make the whole thing shake. Maybe the window back to the real world cracks.

There’s no question now. Something out there is hunting you. And what, exactly, is beyond these inert little gray walls of seeming sanctuary?

Maybe you decide to dig out. Maybe something digs in. Maybe the next time you come up into the rope trick you find a neat little hole burrowed into the wall.

If you’re looking for inspiration on what might lie beyond the rope trick, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves seems like it might be a good place to start.

Ptolus: Running the Campaign – Improvising Floorplans Running the Hexcrawl – Example of Play: Thracian Hexcrawl The Mrathrach Agenda – Part 2A: Aggah-Shan’s Lair (Maps)