I'm not afraid to admit I may have bitten off a bit more than I can chew.
The indefatigable Louis bade I post more, and we decided to duel: I would create a dungeon around the prompt Frozen Dead Center of the Earth before he leaves the world-wide-web for a month on vacation. What I failed to anticipate was that just a couple hours later the also-indefatigable Phlox would rediscover the old Cloak-and-Sword ruleset and send the whole GLOG server whirling around, me included. I got caught up in writing two whole classes for it, and right before a vacation of my own! What's a girl to do? Well, since Louis has split a dungeon across multiple posts before......
In the northern rocky foothills of the Barony,
where the roads thin and the towns become more sparse, there's a crack in the ground from which frigid air constantly seeps. The ground around it is dead and cracked, and the rain freezes when it hits the soil, forming thousands of tiny ice stalagmites which crunch underfoot and melt away as soon as the sun shows its face again. When the ground shook, when the Old Capital groaned and caved in on itself, it's said that it shook a piece of the sky loose and sent it plummeting down to earth, cold and misty. This is little more than a regional folk legend at this point. What isn't a folk legend is what crawled back out of the pit - a burning amaranthine spectre, maimed and shrouded in fog, which roams by night. Let it take your sheep, break into your cellars and snatch your food, or else it'll grab you with its one terrible arm and fold your ribs around a tree. Many people have taken to leaving it offerings so that it doesn't decide to take all they own.
The Amaranthine Ghost
In truth, the "Amaranthine Ghost" is a fairly recent arrival. Her true name is Nilakshi (though she almost never deigns to tell it to tiny humans), and she is a giant from the far north. Her whole body is criss-crossed with scars, her right arm is severed up to the elbow, she is missing several teeth and a significant chunk of her right foot. Branded onto her back is a White City image which tells how true friendship doesn't really exist.
Many, many years ago she saw the star fall in her third eye, behind the curtain of the mountains. She decided to leave the last fortress, jettison herself from its constant dying, to investigate her vision and why it was given to her. She has been walking for a very long time.
She arrived at the pit a couple years ago, and was filled with ennui and disappointment by what she found was below. But there were far worse things churning beneath the earth, and she slaughtered them by the dozens mere weeks before they boiled up. Now, content to play the local boogeyman for now, she contemplates what to do next. Does she start the long journey back home? Does she cast herself into the earth? Or, with luck, are there a group of competent humans willing to do her bidding by simple dint of being able to fit into where she can't?
The Ghost's Cave
The pit, at its opening, is about 10 meters wide, and filled with cool foggy air near the top where it meets the warmer air of the surface. Nilakshi's home is about 15 meters down in a large hollow along the northwest wall; she keeps a fire, stolen food and alcohol, and a large heap of animal skins to sleep in here. While bereft of worldly riches, she's willing to serve as a patron for adventurers wanting to delve into the pit, trading oracular visions for certain treasures that she herself can't reach. If the party has a friendly relationship with her, she'll oblige to play the occasional reluctant deus ex machina; if not, she'll cast them into the pit to shatter at the bottom.
Down Below
The pit is thousands of meters deep, and freezing cold. The deeper you get the narrower it becomes, and the more inhospitable to life.
Past Nilakshi's cave, the air of the pit hovers around freezing. The walls of the pit are covered with a riot of lichen, host to a whole ecosystem of creatures. 900 meters down the pit tears through ancient palatial ruins, the haunt of strange siliconoid men.
The pit continues, occassionally ripping through more ruinous crystal apartments. By 1500 meters the lichen begins to die off, and by 1800 the walls are bare and slick with ice. The pit narrows, constricted by tectonic instability, and the pockmarked caves are too frigid to sustain any life - except for, of course, the loathsome worm-faces.
The pit is approximately 2600 meters deep. At the bottom, the killing cold emanates from the iron star which fell so long ago, sitting amidst the remains of an extraordinarily unlucky crushed extremophile. Within the dead star, corridors far too narrow for Nilakshi's frame, is what drew her vision so long ago.
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