The first dungeon!

Dungeon23’s been a great motivator for generating content, and when I make a room, I start to consider how it fits into the setting of Invisible Light (my current working name for the magic alien art party).

January 1st, I made my first room. The original inspiration was a Burning Man installation, A Temple of Masks.

A Temple of Masks, by Jason Gronlund

In his statement, the artist calls the work “a multi-dimensional portal that has recorded the different disguises used by beings throughout the multiverse.” In a fantasy setting, we can live up to the hype.

I made the first room a throne on a raised dais in a chamber covered in masks. Sitting on the throne lets you experience the life in those masks. That was all I had, and I built around that.

What kind of art experience is this? Within the setting, It feels like an installation, not a camp. This place exists to show off a collection of lives, to let others experience being someone else. So I built some supporting facilities, rooms below where people could wait their turn, process what they had seen, and look at particularly important masks. Digging into the original prompt, I decided this is a place where you can experience what others chose to forget, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Not past lives, just chapters of lives.

But something had to go wrong here. So I filled a few rooms with monsters — the masked. If a mask is placed on a person between life and death (negative hp), the mask takes them over, obliterating the original personality. They are not undead, but can feign death to set ambushes. And since they want to make more of themselves, they are expert grapplers that deal nonlethal damage. Bait someone close, choke them out, put on a mask. Originally I thought corpses, but the undead are a known quantity. I like the idea of shamed lives looking for new rides, and that means fresh meat.

How’d this get started, though? I needed a moment before. Perhaps the ship had some time to realize it was off course and going to crash. And in that interval, all hell broke loose. It was the end of days for thousands of people with enough drugs, debauchery, and passion to fell an empire. The camps were “safe”, but the installations could all be taken over, perverted, or corrupted.

For this location, some mad max style punks massacred the caretakers, and in a macabre display, put one of the near-dead on the throne with a mask. This newly minted monster turned those attackers into cunning but ultimately unintelligent monsters.

Calling it The Mausoleum of Past Persons, let’s run through the checklist by goblin punch, as I did, Reader.

Something to steal — I made one of the rooms a secret room with the highly valuable mask making supplies. There’s a simple puzzle to open the door with rotating pedastles.

Something to kill — the masked!

Something to kill you — also the masked! But I wanted something more. An article on nesting HP for monsters gave me an idea to do this with the first masked that was made here. Three masks in one body — a rogue, fighter, and mage — all taking turns with who’s in control. I’ll put him in the 2nd level where the throne is.

Different paths — multiple doors lead into the temple, and the rooms inside can be opened in any order. Additionally, I placed some viewing rooms adjacent to the main chamber on the second floor, so the party could conceivably climb up past the first floor.

Someone to talk to — the Triple Mask. To exist, three people had to give up their adventuring careers, all that trauma and moral compromise. I love the idea that three adventurers got rich and used this to cash out mentally, enjoying their winnings without any of the scars. And now these embodied memories are pissed about it. The mage was brought back initially, and he went to find the rogue and fighter. Together forever. One flesh, one end. I gave him lists of desires and fears for motivation.

Something to experiment with — the masks and the throne! Who will you experience?

Something the players probably won’t find — I thought a secret room would be enough. Dear reader, I was sorely mistaken. But that’s what playtesting is for. Which I did last weekend, and will recount in the next post!