Dwarf up. Pick from the menus to make your dwarves more dwarfy:
Origins:
- Dwarves are akin to golems, made long ago by an earth deity to protect the riches of the deep from avaricious intruders from the surface world. They are immortal unless slain in battle or take other grievous harm.
- New dwarves aren't born, they're mined out of the earth as inert statues and brought to life by the touch of gold.
- Dwarves are all male -- when the ancient fey races had a falling out, the feminine beings became elves, and the males, dwarves.
- Dwarves are servants of the creator, responsible for shaping the nonliving parts of the world, as the elves are shapers of living things.
- Dwarves are the distant kin of giants, driven underground by encroaching human cultures, and dwindled to their present size over centuries of life in the deep.
Quirks:
- A dwarf can escape a debt of honor by lopping off one of his fingers in the presence of the person he is indebted to.
- Dwarves' beards are like totem poles, braided in symbolic patterns that tell of the wearer's lineage.
- Dwarves can't see in the dark -- they require lanterns or other light sources, just as humans do. They can, however, hear extremely well, and sense vibrations through the ground.
- Dwarves fear direct sunlight because they believe their ancestors commune through the medium of darkness, and to isolate one's own shadow is to be without spiritual guidance.
- Dwarves cry diamonds, but weep only at the loss of a comrade with whom they have shared great peril and trials of courage.
Fate:
- Upon death, dwarves turn to stone.
- Dwarves will survive a future fiery holocaust that destroys the surface world.
- Dwarves will be called upon by the creator to unmake the world at the end of time.
1. You're on the run from the law, and you figure the town watch isn't going to follow you into a dungeon just to arrest you for shoplifting.
2. You're desperate to strike it rich to save your family from financial ruin and prove you're not the ne'er-do-well they say you are.
3. Your beloved aunt or uncle disappeared into a nearby dungeon and you want to find him or her.
4. You helped a crazy old galoot across the street and he gave you a treasure map to this place in return.
5. You believe you're the rightful heir to a fortune said to be hidden in the dungeon and you have an heirloom to prove it.
6. You believe a fugitive responsible for the death of a family member is hiding in the dungeon.
7. You're working for a wizard who is paying you to recover a lost artifact.
8. Buy me a drink and I'll follow you anywhere.
9. Your best friend here [pick another motive from this list] and if that's what he wants to do, that's good enough for me, too. We're a team.
10. See this scar? I'm going to get the villain who gave that to me when I was a lad.
11. Exterminate the brutes. Every last one of them.
12. If I bring back the trinket for them, they'll let my family go free.
As I'm developing my blue box, I'm thinking about what resources I'd include for worldbuilding. When you work within a framework of generic high fantasy, you can bet there will be elves, for example. But whose elves? Use this handy menu to elf your elfin' elves to your heart's content. Pick one or more options from each section:
Origins: Elves are:
- An elder race, superior to humans in many ways, but less ambitious and impulsive.
- Very minor deities entrusted with protecting and sustaining the natural world.
- Refugees from a divine realm adjacent to our own that has since fallen into evil.
- Transhumans who represent a physical and spiritual evolution beyond humankind.
- Descendants of the neutral angels who sided neither with god nor the devil.
Relations with Humans: Elves find humans:
- A loutish, inferior brood worthy of contempt.
- Fascinatingly unpredictable.
- Well-meaning but ultimately destructive, wasteful, and foolish.
- The enemy.
- Pitiable for their brief lives and lack of mindfulness.
Banes: Elves can't abide:
- Iron.
- Fire.
- Sunlight.
- Domesticated animals, especially dogs and cats.
Temptations: Elves can't resist:
- Music.
- The urge to complete a rhyme.
- Silver.
- The sight of the sea.
Future: Elves believe they are destined to:
- Dwindle and fade as the younger races flourish.
- Perish in a final conflict with humans.
- Gradually interbreed with humans until they are absorbed.
- Return to a promised land across the sea/in the sky/beneath the earth.
- Forever serve their current role in the world with little change.
Today's flavor menu is a quick little crib you can use to justify the existence of an underground complex in your campaign. When I'm writing an adventure, I often start with one of these to focus my dungeon design -- once you have the motive, it becomes much easier to plan the dungeon.
- Catacomb: The dungeon was built to house the remains of the followers of an ancient cult. The tunnels are haphazardly planned, because they were added to at need, rather than according to a grand design. Levels are often connected by narrow shafts or pits, because they were not built for frequent use. The ruins may contain chapels and other chambers where the Mysteries of the cult were performed to initiate new members.
- Refuge: The dungeon was built as a retreat for an entire village or community during times of war, or because the locals were the target of frequent raids from neighboring cultures or monsters. Because life has to go on, the dungeon is designed as an underground city-in-miniature, with residences, markets, storage areas, wells, bakeries, armories, and other specialized structures, both private and shared. Gaining entrance is often difficult, via a disguised or well-hidden portal, but once inside, navigation through the public areas is relatively easy. Some areas may resemble courtyards, open to the sky. The city of Petra in Jordan and the hidden city of Cappadocia in Turkey are classical examples.
- Mine: The dungeon was excavated to extract a valuable resource, either metal ore, a valuable gem, or the buried treasures of an older civilization. Each level may contain many galleries, that either follow a vein of ore in twisted fashion, or else are dug in a regular pattern, like a grid. Each level will most likely be connected by vertical shafts that are (or were) served by elevators or large baskets on a winch system. As lower levels are reached, water features and flooded areas become more common, and throughout is the possibility that the mine will breach natural features like limestone caves. The mine entrance will usually be easy to discover, because of the mounds of slag and other rubble stacked nearby.
- VIP tomb: The dungeon was built to house the body of an important person: a monarch, high priest, wizard, or hero. Repeated attempts by tomb robbers may have led to the more accessible parts being looted, but other areas remain intact, hidden by secret doors and the like. Monsters may be of the immortal guardian sort, like golems, along with strays that have moved in since. Lots of traps and false passages too.
- Prison: Like a VIP tomb, except designed to keep whatever's inside from getting out. Extremely difficult to enter, exit, or navigate, but time's heavy hand may have caused some of the defenses to crumble, making it easier to access. Whatever's in there was worth building a complex prison for that would last for centuries -- so tread lightly. Any monsters are either cell mates of the prisoner, or guardians set to prevent anyone from getting in or out.
- Sunken City: An entire city that has since been buried underground, either by subsequent layers of occupation, or by a mudslide, sandstorm, or volcanic eruption. The old city may have been entirely cased in mud or ash, and subsequently hollowed out again by deliberate mining, occasional flooding, or the mindless burrowing of underground creatures. All is preserved as it was the moment the city was entombed, including its many treasures, which await those with enough patience or courage to recover them. Think Pompei or Herculaneum, or the Seattle Underground.
