Tomb of the Immortal Grolk

 Tomb of the Immortal Grolk

Tomb of the Immortal Grolk is a one page dungeon I've made for this year's

One Page Dungeon contest. You can download it for free HERE.

I'm reasonably happy with it although I haven't had a chance to play test it yet - I've had plenty of time to sit and draw lately but not much opportunity to get my players together.

I've had the idea of a giant rolling head that fills passages and turns the dungeon into some sort of reverse Pac-Man game for a while. The theme of this contest being 'Never split the party' was a good prompt to flesh it out. 

Hopefully GMs can piece together a flow for the dungeon from what's on the page (that's the point of one pagers right?) but I'm going to be indulgent and lay out a few thoughts on what I'm going for in this blog post. 

Lore: 

I imagine Grolk as an endlessly regenerating, destructive and creative force much like mythological giants such as Ymir or Pangu. I think even Grolk's destructive acts are generative in ways that mirror natural events e.g. volcanic eruptions creating fertile farmland, supernovas generating more complex elements etc.  

The image I have in my head is Grolk splitting the moon with his axe and a dark ocean of nightmares pouring down over 'earth'. 

Such violent, creative events are pretty inconvenient if you're already alive and trying to build a society. I imagine the forces of order or balance did their best to decommission the non-stop novelty machine that was Grolk. 

This sort of epic backstory suggests an enormous scale for Grolk that isn't quite matched by what looks like a 10ft diameter head and a... 9ft? axe - but maybe Grolk's physiology is fairly elastic. Maybe the axe changes size like Sun Wukong's staff. 

Factions: 

Like a dutiful osr/nsr accolyte I want there to be a counterbalance of forces and motivations existing in this dungeon before the party are dropped in it. 

 I see three potential factions here:

1. Grolk -  Dismembered both physically and psychologically and and striving to be whole. Endless apetite, maximum chaos. 

2. The Tomb Builders The Spiders - Since the spiders are activiely subduing Grolk with venom and webs it follows that this is a mission they are dedicated to. All I say on the sheet is that they're telepathic but I actually think they'd be something like a monastic order - dutifullly guarding this ancient threat in an almost ritualised way. They may even hold ceremonies down there. I don't know how you get from the statues in the corridors above to spider monks but it's fun to think about. So they're faction number two - dedicated to keeping Grolk subdued. But they're also spiders - giant hungry spiders that would love some diversity in their diet. 

3. The Fachans - A Fachan is a one eyed, armed and legged scottish monster. In this dungeon they're little and made out of adventurers that've been bisected by Grolk's axe. If I got split into two, wretched, little weirdos I'd want to get back to normal. I don't think that's an option for most fachan's here. Perhaps their other half was eaten by a spider, or has been further split into worms, that were then eaten by other fachans. It'd be a pretty rough situation. They could jump into Grolk's mouth with any another fachan and be reborn as some 'new' person but that might not be the easiest choice to make. So they're here, surviving, burrowed into the walls to stay out of the way of the head and the axe and the spiders. I think their role could be as merchants of a sort. Their tunnels emerge near a 'town' and they've probably horded any equipement dropped in the dungeon. They could barter with the PC's to supply things like rope or light sources. I particularly like the Oubliette for this. Instead of just being trapped a PC could bargain with some fachans, through the hole in the wall, to get something that might help them. I'm not entirely sure if they'd eat a helpless adventurer... 

Why is the party here? 

1. They've been pushed down the hole by townspeople as punishment for crimes they may or may not be guilty of. 
2. They heard their was loot down here (there is). 
3. Grolk's heart's blood can cure curses or diseases.
4. They saw this hole and wanted to check it out. 

Extending this dungeon: 

I have a few ideas for how Grolk's tomb could be expanded. 

1. A Spider Monastery.  Have the elevator open onto a small complex of rooms that establish these wierd spiders and their whole deal: some cucoons, a chapel, some statues or murals showing the transition from human acolytes to spiders. Perhaps they kept little spider hives like regular monks keep bees? 

2. Some catacombs for the heroes depicted in the statues on the top level. Magic weapons, more lore, perhaps some restless/undead heroes. This should maybe be the top level, or perhaps the secrect passage, between the two statues, also heads towards a secret tomb. 

detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Heironymus Bosch

3. A pit of combo-mutants. Give the botomless pit a bottom and have some interesting monstrous folk living on the shores of a blood lake. You can have two headed humans but also spider centaurs or half spiders or spiders with a fachan merged in there so they have a human eye, arm and leg somewhere. This can be a real Bosch-fest. What if a local church pays them to run a, 'hell themed', theme park? Just a thought. 

Ok that's all - If you play this let me know if it hangs together. As soon as I get to play it I'll update this blog with some thoughts.