2. Robin Zinc writes very well in his own blood:
"a dungeon outline for the old, sealed-off temple of a forgotten Dwarf
god. Monsters, traps, whatever, dungeon stuff. Back story unimportant
unless amazing and necessary. My tastes lean towards the weird".
Dwarves knew there was a hell because they found it. They kept digging and boom, there it is, right next to the salt vein and the drow opera house. Dwarved knew there must be a heaven, but they never found it. It wasn't on the surface, that they knew from maps and exploration, and it wasn't in the sea, which they knew mostly thanks to the drow and their underlurking gods. It had to be in the sky, then? But you'd see it if it was. Logic dictated that it was beyond the sky, behind it, which is also why dwarven prayers were never answered: that's a lot of rock to get through, and the sky must block all prayers which make it. It should be noted here that these so-called "quicksilver dwarves" lived in a mining community centered around the Dripping Castle and...well you can guess how level headed they all were.
The dwarves set out to kill the sky, erecting a temple up through the ground, opening into the surface world, and they fired their greatest warriors at it. These trajectories inevitable ended up inneighboring kingdoms and their pissed off armies crawled down the cannon and wiped out the quicksilver dwarves.
Their charges was an explosive untested by man, and any alchemist, conqueror, academic, or historian would pay a fortune for it. Any dwarf lord would pay that much to keep it a secret.
In this temple you will find rivals or allies in (roll), who are trying to find the secrets of the bullet dwarves, but hampered by the temple's new permanent residents, (roll).
1. Elves that look like Iron Maiden Ed.
2. A race of short, bald humans who speak like Bizarro.
3. Cannonball modrons who finally found a religion which makes sense to them; they have no limbs, they manipulate things where their hands would be, like the Powerpuff Girls.
4. Frost-encrusted apes.
5. A hippie commune of mercury-mad bards, who have the god-beyond-the-sky in their eyes, man.
6. Big psychic ants.
The temple will have 4d6 rooms +4. The four rooms it absolutely has are the cannon mouth/main temple, the powder room (hidden behind a secret door in a room adjacent to the main temple), the heirophant's chambers (2 cleric scrolls here), and the Quarrantine Zone (a series of caved in dead-end tunnels with warnings in multiple languages about mercury poisoning; there are some abandoned homes here, and some corpses that lay where they fell a century ago).
For every room roll a d6. On a 1-2 it's emptry, on a 3 it's occupied by one or more dwarf corpses 80% mercury contamination on they and all their goods, on a 4 it's occupied by (first party rolled above) and on 5-6 it's occupied by (second party rolled above).
For every 3 rooms a door is LOCKED.
For every 4 rooms a door is TRAPPED.
For every 6 rooms there is an underground MONSTER.
For every nine rooms there is TREASURE, 25% mercury contaminated.
For every 14 rooms there is a MAGICAL ARTIFACT, 5% contaminated.
Traps are either poisonous needle (mercury, roll d4, lose 1 con and 1 wis a day until you've lost an amount of each equal to your result, unless Healed) or massive explosions (nonmagical, but as fireball). All traps are obvious.
Monsters include:
1. Poisoned and confused rust monster, half HP and -2 to hit but if it hits you have to save vs poison or react as the needle trap above, because its jaws are filled with mercury.
2. Order of Iron Drow in hermetic suit set here forever to ensure this kingdom never rises again and produces so much damn noise.
3. galeb duhr with robot brains, most half dead
4. Bats made of silver, AC as plate, fruit eaters.
The heirophant is a mad mummy swimming in mercury and with the power of magnetism. It can use these magnetic gifts to sling mercury at you, or to manipulate the corpses of long-dead dwarves covered in the stuff. He can also attract your weapons and armor, save or he'll pull you 10' for every point you failed by. You're allowed a new roll each round to see how far he can pull you.
