Dungeon 2023 Week 2

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Week 1

It occurred to me this week that the ruined city of Lacrimada, obsessed with its magic water as it was, should have a bathhouse.

While the region Lacrimada's in is loosely based on the Tarim Basin, I couldn't find much in the way of resources online about historical bathing facilities there. Where info was scarce, I defaulted to basing it off Roman bathhouses, which were elaborate and decadent.

The bathhouse has become the lair of an oversized carrion crawler and its young (rot grubs), which is worshiped as a deity by the newtants (see previous post) and given live sacrifices - which has not only enabled its growth, but generally keeps it lurking around this location instead of going out hunting.

The sacrifices have also led to significant treasure accumulating in the bathhouse. However, taking the carrion crawler head-on is meant to be a suicide mission. At the same time, rushing too fast to outrun the beast risks exposing yourself to rot grubs. In the sweet spot between is learning the layout and operations of the bathhouse and turning them against the carrion crawler - for example, getting the stokery running again to scald it with steam in the caldarium.

The Pool

(I've got a vague memory of being on holiday as a kid and visiting this old health spa turned into a museum. The outdoor pool, with nearby pictures of smiling people splashing around in goofy old-timey swimsuits, was the ugliest shade of green, and stank immensely.)

An olympic-size pool, choked with algae, surrounded by an arcade stocked with mold-warped benches. Near its east end stands something between a shrine and a shark cage. At the bottom of the pool is piles of bones and various treasures (amounts to be determined), infested with rot grubs. The newtants make regular sacrifices here to the immense carrion crawler that's taken the bathhouse as its lair, which keeps it from going out to hunt too much, and harvest its rot grub spawn to put in pot-grenades.

Frigidarium

Rimed with frost, a circular pool with a thin crust of cracked ice lies in the middle of it.

This room is kept cool by a waterfall-driven mechanism behind the north wall. With the help of a screwfoil (see week 1) or risk & ingenuity, this waterfall can be used as a shortcut to a sealed-up yakchal on the surface.

Exposure to the frigidarium's chilly water makes the carrion crawler and rot grubs sluggish, slowing down the former and paralyzing the latter.

Frozen to the north floor is the magnetic butterfly - this is a key to several secret passages around Lacrimada, by using its magnetism to manipulate mechanisms behind murals based on butterfly behaviour/symbolism, like placing it on a flower or moving it from egg to caterpillar to cocoon - grounding the mechanism in magnetism rather than magic means that the party could open these passages just as well by smashing the murals and working the mechanism by hand.

Hypocaust

A sort of keyed hallway, in the style of friend of the blog Phlox's Halls of the Cursed Queens. Cramped for people, but totally impenetrable for the great carrion crawler of the bathhouse. You'll need to infer its existence and tear up floor tiles in the warmer rooms to get into it, or enter it through the opening in the stokery (see below).

Stokery

Stocked with a furnace, coal, and shovels. Holds a passage into the hypocaust, and to the hydraulic elevator.

Tepidarium

Central hub of the bathhouse, nest of the carrion crawler. Lit by sickly glowing jellyfish in the murky pools left in a smashed aquarium in the vaulted ceiling.

Caldarium

The steam room. Crusty baths embedded in the floor, jars of rancid oil in shelves along the walls - rusty strigils stained with blood hung on hooks.

Main draw of this room is filling it up with steam hot enough to burn once the furnace in the stokery's been stoked.

Hidden Passage to the Secret Baths

Opened by using the magnetic butterfly on a mural at the end of a hallway.

(Lacrimada didn't lose its collective mind over the heavenly waters overnight. There was a vanguard, a secret, elite society that pushed the waters' limits in concealed chambers and meeting places. The secret baths are one such place.)

Looks like an alchemist's laboratory with all the glass apparatuses around. Contains three great bronze tubs, each a (bulky, hard to move) treasure in its own right, molded with scenes of demons flaying and re-skinning people.

The tubs contain dregs of mixtures the secret society once used, and the party should be able to figure out how to make more with notes strewn around, samples of the heavenly water, and fuel to work the stills and suchlike.

Mixtures include:
-Mutagen used to make the newtants
-Healing potion that risks turning you into a regenerating troll-like monster
-Potion to make you grow heavy bone armour