Go to Part 1

MAZE 7A-B — THE HUNTING GROUNDS

POISONED SPIKES: Vicious, poison-soaked, blood-encrusted spikes line the walls throughout this maze.

d20      Poison
1-3       Purple worm poison (Fort DC 24; Initial 1d6 Str; Secondary 2d6 Str)
4-6       Large scorpion venom (Fort DC 18; Initial 1d6 Str, Secondary 1d6 Str)
7-9       Naga venom (Fort DC 18; Initial 1d8 Con; Secondary 1d8 Con)
10-12   Demon’s blood (Fort DC 18; Initial 2d6 Con; Secondary 2d6 Con)
13-15   Deathblade ( Fort DC 20; Initial 1d6 Con; Secondary 2d6 Con)
16-17   Ghostspider venom (Fort DC 18; Initial 1d8 Dex; Secondary 2d8 Dex)
18        Madness Lotus (Fort DC 18; Initial 1d6 Wis ; Secondary confusion)
19        Thornvine poison (Fort DC 15; Initial Blindness 1d4 hours; Secondary 0)
20        Nitharit ( Fort DC 13; Initial 0; Secondary 3d6 Con)

MINOTAUR TACTICS: The phase minotaurs love to phase in, grab a character, and then thrust them onto a spike. Then they simply phase away again… only to come back later and do it again, slowly killing their victims in a torturous gauntlet.

Go to Maze 7A-C

My creation of specific mazes for use on Level 6 of Rappan Athuk proved to be very popular. My campaign preparations for the dungeon inevitably led me to the six mazes on Level 7A. These mazes are left completely undescribed in the module. They will be detailed over the next several days:

Maze 7A-A — The maze closest to area 7A-1
Maze 7A-B — The maze between maze 7A-A and area 7A-3
Maze 7A-C — The maze between areas 7A-3 and 7A-4
Maze 7A-D — The maze between areas 7A-4 and 7A-7
Maze 7A-E — The maze just to the east of area 7A-3
Maze 7A-F — The maze closest to area 7A-8

GENERAL FEATURES: The halls in each maze are 10 feet wide, unless noted otherwise. The halls are finished stone with level floors which offer good footing. See the standard features for this level of the dungeon.

TELEPORT BLOCKS: The mazes on this level are shielded with teleport block spells. Characters cannot teleport into or out of the mazes. (These teleport blocks obviously do not affect the teleportals in Maze 7A-A.)

ALARMS: There is an alarm spell keyed to Kazleth’s crown at the entrance an exit of all the mazes on this level. If the alarm is triggered, Kazleth will dispatch a party of phase minotaur hunters.

DESIGN NOTES: These mazes use the style of my personal campaign notes, rather than any official style guide. In particular, you’ll note the short descriptions of creature abilities designed to jog my memory at the gaming table. My goal with these mazes was to find elements which would give each maze a unique gameplay above and beyond the simple mechanics of “find your way through”.

MAZE 7A-A — THE VAULT

TROPHY HEADS: The walls of these galleries are lined with incorporeal trophy heads. Species of every sort and variety are present: Humans, elves, goblins, and dwarves are prominent. Umber hulks, basilisks, a beholder, three dragons, a bulette, wererats, adrak, a mind flayer, and unicorn among others. A wide variety of common animals.

Although incorporeal, these trophy heads are solid upon the Ethereal Plane. If brought back to the Material Plane, they would have a collective worth of 5,000 gp (and a weight of 10,000 lbs.).

TELEPORTALS: With the exception of the entrances to the Vault, the other passages between the galleries are teleportals. Passing through a teleportal will pass the characters into another teleportal with the same letter (determine randomly). For example, if the characters pass through A2 they will emerge from A1, A2, A3, or A4 (roll 1d4 to determine which) heading in the same direction.

Any given teleportal will keep its “encoding” for 1 minute after someone passes through it. So if more than a minute passes between characters passing through a passage, they may end up in different places.

Go to Maze 7A-B

I am pleased to finally be able to present:

RAPPAN ATHUK – LEVEL 5A: THE CAVERNS OF MIST

RTF Download
Map of Banth’s Laboratory
Map of the Cavern of Mists

(more…)

The month of May was lost to World of Warcraft. I’m playing the warrior Merallen on the Emerald Dream realm. I’m also thoroughly addicted in precisely the way I promised myself I wouldn’t become thoroughly addicted.

Ah well.

In other news, I have a working scanner. I don’t think I mentioned it at the time, but when my computer died last fall it did something horrible to my scanner as well. This rather severely curtailed my ability to do a lot of stuff I would have liked to have been doing. For example, scanning in and backing up the maps I draw for my roleplaying campaigns.

Those of you who have been following the site for awhile may remember that I once promised to present a new sub-level for the legendary dungeon of Rappan Athuk, one of the best dungeon crawls ever published. Necromancer Games is going to be publishing an updated and revised, single-volume edition of Rappan Athuk this August, and you should definitely check it out.

The good news is that, with my new scanner set-up and ready to go, I can present not just one but TWO new sub-levels for Rappan Athuk. These will be appearing over the next couple of days.