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Dungeon 23 Week 4 - The Glistermarsh

 Welcome back to my Dungeon23 challenge, where I'm making a megadungeon for the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, one five-room dungeon at a time. Last week, we introduced where the water that sustains this part of the dungeon comes from, so this week, we're pivoting to what happens when that water meets the underground and alien environments of the Old Priory dungeon halls: a big, bioluminescent marsh!


As I think I've alluded to in the past, when I'm designing this dungeon, I have a sort of "main story" in mind for each section. In this part of the dungeon, it's the conflict between the Lost (the inhabitants of Nowhere Market, detailed in Week 2) and Fune's Basalt Tower (which will come up in weeks 10-13). This wetlands section (the Mistfall last week, and the next few weeks centered around different things that happen when a bunch of water gets dumped in a dungeon) is more "side quest" or verisimilitude in intent, but that doesn't mean I can't slip a few main story things into it:

The first of these, of course, is the Basalt Amalgam at the end of the adventure. This gives a bit of a foreshadowing that Fune can reach pretty close to home for the Lost and summon chaos, so the party probably shouldn't sleep on dealing with them. Plus, fighting a crumbling basalt elemental in a glowing cattail marsh can give a pretty memorable encounter to cap of this bit of exploration.

The second is what might happen right after dealing with the Amalgam - the discovery of Myrmakrii at the bottom of a small pond. As I'm fleshing out my list of secrets, I'm making sure to put the notion that the Basalt creatures are drawn to magic, and a few other clues that there might be a magic weapon somewhere in the marsh, so that the party has a reason to hunt around for something good. Aside from a powerful demon-slaying sword, Myrmakrii is a hint at the second "main story" thread running through this place: following in the footsteps of a long-lost "Tonal Expedition." What this is will be fleshed out in the deeper parts of the dungeon (or, you know, from half paying attention to Elder Scrolls lore...), but I wanted to start hinting at it now so that it comes out as a logical discovery rather than a weird intrusion later on.

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