Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Slush Pile 3

Dungeon idea heavy one:

Fungal growths like azure hands raised in supplication fruiting from the back of the kneeled penitent

Microbiomes in the dungeon, a dozen species of centipede that exist only on this dungeon level and nowhere else in the world, oops you just squashed one

Guy with a lidless eye on a magic item, has to lick the eye regularly to keep it moist

Minidungeon - a tower figurine which appears full-size in dreams

Narco-syndicalists

Skeleton monster that gets knocked apart when damaged, bone-sections have to be individually destroyed or it pulls itself together

Las plagas monsters (kill/injure one and another pops out of/puppeteers its body)

THE HOWITZAR (Kaiser of kabooms)

Dungeon in the private collection of a brilliant artist and alchemist famed for new pigments with strange properties - the paintings are rooms

Skyline littered with charred effigies, new ones being built up by workcrews like ants in the tangle

Dungeon in bank of memory-clouding mist, rooms are clear patches, walls are permeable but fucky

Clock of the Long Now/Last Redoubt/Metropolitan Sepulchre-hybrid structure, built to hold an entire civilization in stasis through the predicted death & rebirth of the world

Demigod nursery dungeon

Dungeon that’s a wizard tower that tipped over, spilling all the potions and familiars and grimoires and whatnot together into an awful melange

Flatworld dungeon woven into a tapestry, can enter into any room but only exit off the edges, tapestry is cursed but clearing some objective in the dungeon turns it into normal enchantment for the home in which it’s hung

Valuable treasure that’s also a trap in the wrong circumstances (e.g. catalyst pellets, explode on contact with water, warning is heat up if touched with sweaty hands)

Dungeon where all things killed rise as undead hivemind

Minecraft silverfish-like monster gimmick, e.g. a few skeletons in dungeon, many in containers, skeletons can hiss to awaken others in same room

Solar deity defecating black oil
-god and oil and dust and sun become indistinguishable on the plane of indifference
-digging beneath the sand is digging beneath your own skin
-canopic jar that steals one of your organs when you open it

Dungeon that’s a giant’s game board full of magic game pieces

Grimoire so big it’s a city, inhabited by living spells, left by the first wizard

The library - supposed to be perfect - is incomplete. Its most cryptic knowledge is whispered to the librarians from cracks in the deep. The conditions of their patronage are that nothing of which they speak is recorded, and that they are amply fed.

Trench warfare as dungeon, can poke out to dive between rooms but risk getting shot/blown up

Caste of priest-shepherds tasked with herding the skeletons of sacrificed animals to the den of their god in a distant land

Universally mounted culture, believe if you set foot on the ground you are or immediately become a slave

Part of dungeon with membranous doors that only permit organic matter to pass

Magic shovel that digs to liberation

GLOG familiar class

Alien light, earthly matter is transparent to it/transmuted by it

Demons pressed like flowers into the pages of a wizard’s tome

“We appreciate the flowers when they bloom and devour their fruit when they ripen”

“The soul has no straight lines except the knife's edge”

Dungeon with floating river flowing through it

Polyreality(?) - wrote this drunk can't remember what it means - dungeon where gimmick is shifting through time/eras of dungeon/base dungeon and mirror world dungeon/etc.

Fern-based dryadish prehistoric remnant from time before trees existed

The Feudal dungeon with rooms that are micro-fiefs

Speculative evolution dungeon, slice of alien world superimposed by dimensional rift, figure out alien ecosystem & biology to navigate

Dungeon with all intangible monsters - possess, poltergeists, impassable lines of salt

"Where, then, the voice of the unheard melody?” -Wolmarus

Flightless birds are devolved remnants of advanced civilization

Save vs. morale for paranoia / fear responses: fight/flight/freeze - disgust/horror/terror

Dungeon of warren of rabbits descended from bioweapon test subjects - or magic test subjects - + rabbit predators mutated by eating them

Dungeon in and outside giant saguaro cactus - woodpecker dens - desert Odin-wannabe impaled on needles - peyote-ish bulbs ruptured by fungal infection spill hallucinatons into the air

Delta Green/Esoteric Enterpriseish hook: miraculous success with cryogenic revival, works because bodies are actually possessed by demons aided by rich people sins

River of ruins, dungeons passing by in eddies and whorls, get in and get out before it flows out to sea; alt: dungeon based on Glorantha River of Cradles

Dungeon that's a ship returned from Avalon/Land of the Ever Young - crew were gone hundreds of years, past their appointed times, forgotten by Death they rue & rot - ship overgrown by silver branch taken from the furthest shore

Lady of the Lake-ish monster, bestows magical gifts with curses/heavy drawbacks as cruel tests, corrupted by decline of chivalry

2 comments:

  1. Slush piles like this are like hidden gold mines. So many interesting or intriguing ideas just sitting there.

    Also, I find in my own, and I think in yours as well, there's a certain way that these notes are written, things left unexplained or written as fragments, that gives it a certain energy. Often the rambling lunatic blurbs in the slush notes end up being better than anything I could write intentionally.

    And because they are just these little fragments, there are just some ideas that are too Weird or high concept or whatever to really fit into anything else, like you'd have to really singularly dedicate yourself to make them something substantive, so they never get made and never get seen, even though sometimes those are the best or most interesting or inspiring ideas.

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