Mothers of Fear (d12 Wells)

The love of Summer burns me sore

The love of Summer runs with haste

A dame I met, deranged for war

A man I met, bold and unchaste

The dazed armies march my land through

What land do these knights march into?

A well! A well! A well! A well!

by Vaishali Raul

Satisfying deux ex parabola's prompt for GLAUGust, "Selection of interesting wells, wishing or non-wishing"

d12 Wells

1. Leads down into level 2 of the dungeon
2. Wishing well, fountain de la bella. Fishmaid hides deep in the well, hears your wish, and may decide to fulfill it. She is of the same elden brood as Santa Claus, and can move unseen, squeeze through tight spaces, and craft fine things.
3. Heavy chain running down into a well fathoms deep. Takes two hours of painstaking work to pull the chain up to the point that it snaps a trigger at the bottom that starts tearing the chain back down (save to get caught and dragged with it if you didn't stack the slack chain neatly), like a gigantic drawstring in the back of a doll. This mechanism causes a volcano to erupt, or sends the titans into a week of frenzy, or otherwise brings disaster.
4. Blessed by Holy Benjamin. If poison touches the well, it just rolls around on the surface like droplets on hydrophobic fabric. The well itself cries out in accusation, and the townsfolk come out to throw you in chains. Therefore, no one imagines that the local deacon has found a way to thwart the well's blessing, hiding Freakout Drugs in holy wafers and throwing them in by night...
5. The Well of Rime. In a leaf-laden courtyard, it stands radiating defiant frost. Faded words around its rim: "PLUMB ME NOT LOVERS OF EASE NOR THOSE FOR GOLD GREEDY" but the words are spaced to leave no sign of where to start or end so the DM should begin in the middle and wrap around. Within, 30 feet down, a snow-grey void can be seen. Halfway down, gravity reverses. If you make it to the other end, the void turns out to be a foreign sky, this end of the well in a courtyard, an avernal twin to the one you descended from. The whole world sprawls out in frigid alternate to the world you know, a colder world where gold brings life-giving warmth but gradually reforms you, like a bear to her young, into a creature very like a dragon-- with instincts animal, appetites venal, and passions criminal.
6. Dungeon well, with glittering coins in brownish water. If you pull on one of these fakes, a trapdoor in the ceiling above the well drops a dire wolf onto your head, and it will probably kill you in its frantic attempt to get out of the well.
7. Well of Lady Summer. Each sunset, the ghosts of many shattered legions march into the well. Drinking of the ghostwater gives you 1d6 extra HP that abandons you the next time someone crits or rolls max damage against you.
8. Junked up well, full of the trash of orcos who passed through. In order of top to bottom: broken tools, bags of shit, three dead orcos with pocket change, an animate and pissed skeleton warrior, sundry sundered tapestries and art pieces, a +1 flail that burns you if you're not noble, seventeen yeomen militiamen (deceased), ash and various coins, an owlbear pellet containing an adventurer's skeleton and a potion of comprehend languages and a jar of owlbear urine, the remains of an owlbear juvenile, rotting grain, a sack of old onions, stinky water, copper coins.
9. Grants one wish, but doesn't understand much beyond what it can see and hear
10. Full of magma. Magically strengthened bucket and rope. Enchanted to turn the magma into lava as it raises up
11. Mosaic bottom concealed by mud. If cleared, shows that it depicts a rosy-cheeked gnome with a key and the magical password needed to bypass a gate elsewhere in the dungeon: KALATONA
12. Under the rippling water, you see a waterlogged, emaciated elf struggling as though banging his fists against the surface. If a rope is lowered in, he can grab it and be pulled out. Spooky-looking but grateful, Rayathiel can explain that he was trapped by the enchanted waters of the well. As a companion, he is enthusiastic and gives frequent advice based on decades-outdated rumors.

Flux: the Peach and the Deep Blue Sea

 After rereading Nick LS Whelan's outline for exploring "flux spaces" and resolving to dig into Glaugust, I thought I would combine the two and make a flux space for the prompt "Create Something Inspired By Kingdom Hearts Without Looking Up Anything About Kingdom Hearts". As it happens, I played Kingdom Hearts II, so I know the way to design a Kingdom Hearts-ass world, taking a Disney movie situation and adding demons. We imagine that the player characters arrive to the peach on some kind of gelatin spaceship and find themselves more or less stuck, out of duty or necessity, as crew on the peach.

Flux: The Atlantic Ocean

Theme: due to improbable circumstance, a young boy, James, is fleeing his abusive aunts on a house-sized peach floating across the ocean, accompanied by five human-sized bugs and Olph, a neotenous swordsman from another world, with shocking white hair and a gunsword. These strange guardians protect James as they attempt to plumb the unseen currents of the ocean, pass through strange hazards, and find their way to New York City on an ocean that does not want them to make it.

As they have no food, when a "Deplete" is rolled on the event die, more of the peach is eaten, depleting its Flesh score by 1. Its score starts at 6, and at 0 it is no longer seaworthy. If everyone on the peach is able to have some other victual, they preserve its Flesh score.

Most foes will not attack James directly, as he is a harmless child. But he has a Heart score of 10. Whenever a friend dies, he loses 1 Heart. The Rhinoceros and his horrible Aunts' attacks, intimidations, or beratements deal [dice] damage to his Heart score rather than his HP. He loses 1 Heart for each flux turn spent captured by Nobodies. If he reaches 0 Heart, he becomes a Heartless. 

Encounters (2d4)

• 2: The Rhinoceros That Killed James's Parents (stats as lightning-breathing dragon)
• 3: Pirate Wreck (full of 2d4 skeleton pirates and nautical gear that would give a positive event die for 1d3 turns. On negative reaction roll, will attempt a surprise capture of the peach and then make PCs walk the plank.)
• 4: Heartless Mechanical Shark (stats as shark with 10 Morale)
• 5: Flock of Heartless Stormcrows. Seek to eat the peach. (stats as flying insect swarm. If captured, can be used to lift the peace into the air, giving a positive event die to all movement for as long as they can be kept)
• 6: Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge in their flattened car, somehow (stats as bugbears, but very scary to children)
• 7: Rival Adventuring Party in a mollusk-shaped submarine
• 8: The Nobodies; Senvrax, Rexhult, Xertvinav, Xogo, Vaxulinav, and Muregexis. Robed malefactors who crashed in a gummy ship of their own. Wish to steal James's Nobody as a sacrifice to get their engines running again, which requires making him into a Heartless. (Stats as ogres)

Local Effects

• Listless Winds and Melancholy. James despairs, losing 1 Heart. If cheered with good company, song, exc. he may save to resist this. 
• Wormhole. The peach dips and spins slightly in the water, causing water to begin spilling in from a hole. If PCs can't figure out a way to spin the axis of the peach or plug the hole, the bug crew will have to keep bailing water until this local effect occurs again, giving a negative encounter die.

Points of Interest

Shallow Zones (d6)

• 1: Vanishing Isle. Marble dungeon complex on the back of a giant turtle. Holds the Hand of Midas, a potent artifact that turns all it touches to gold, but the turtle will dive again after only an hour of emerging from the foam.
• 2: Island of the Cicadas. Coquettish cicada-people sing on the bone-studded shores. The bug crew must save or be driven to crash the peach on the rocks in their love-crazed desire to get closer to the song. If not arrested, the peach will lose 1d2 Flesh, everyone on the surface of the peach must save or be thrown to their deaths in the breakers, and everyone within must save or take 1d6 damage as they are tossed around.
• 3: Ocean log. Seems like a massive leafless tree improbably floated out to the middle of the ocean. Actually a giant crocodile. If slain, its tongue can be eaten to be permanently magically enlarged, as everyone knows.
• 4: Treasure Island. Home to 30-50 feral muppet hogs currently rebuffing an incursions by Long John Silver and his muppet pirate crew for their 70,000 doubloon treasure.
• 5: Cruise Ship. May grant food and aid, but bougie.
• 6: Iceberg ship. Crew of talking mammals led by the charismatic gigantopithecus Captain Gutt. Offers rescue and friendship, but plans to impress the useful-looking members of the party and eat the weaker ones. Wields a +1 sawfish skull sword.

Deep Zones

• 1: North Pole. Freezing waters and cold air give a negative event die for four turns.
• 2: New York City. Shining city of opportunity, where the firemen are respected, Lady Liberty lifts her lamp beside the golden door, and if you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. If the rhinoceros is still alive, it appears in a vast stormfront to make one last attempt on James's life.