A prison larger than any city
Built on the first prison ever built
Build to restrain the god that wants to eat the world
Built with seven seals (no fewer would do)
Each seal built to forget how to break
The prison abandoned, except for its first charge
Full of traps and hateful remains
And magic things now precious
You enter through a window that seems untrespassed
And find
Sitting on a pile of blood-slick coins
The pieces of the second-last seal
Built on the first prison ever built
Build to restrain the god that wants to eat the world
Built with seven seals (no fewer would do)
Each seal built to forget how to break
The prison abandoned, except for its first charge
Full of traps and hateful remains
And magic things now precious
You enter through a window that seems untrespassed
And find
Sitting on a pile of blood-slick coins
The pieces of the second-last seal
(I am not precommitting to publishing this in detail. If I ever run Poza Hive, I want to use the sort of shorthand that doesn't work for a blogpost.)
Poza, the hive to trap the devil, was once the greatest project in all the world. Before Yarfu Empire ever rose, its garrisons boasted 5,000 fountains for drinking water, 450 public ovens, a great hospital that accommodated 8,000 patients and which cured all diseases, anguishes, and even old age; 800 lawyers, 100 eidetic historians, 10,000 savadur of all columns, and 100 armorers manufacturing the famous Pozan armors.
Goodwill is the first well to run dry. By the time Yarfu fell, the garrison had fallen to fewer than a hundred wardens, and it was said each was assigned to discouraging an entire company of outlaws, or two tribes of giant hounds, or four squadrons of squatters. Meanwhile, its coffers swelled perversely, for reasons widely believed to be the Lone Prisoner's own connivances. For unknown and counterfeit reasons, the gibbering plants that infest most of the continent flee the prison's surroundings, making Poza the safest and richest death-trap that stories tell of.
The god is so inimical, he is not even worshipped by the perverse or insane. Thus, as interlopers get further down, increasing levels of Revulsion (the opposite of a mythic underworld that hates you, a Morally Responsible underworld that wants to keep the god imprisoned.) For each point of Revulsion, a +1-in-6 chance of a door being stuck, a door closing behind you, a trap re-arming after a day; a +1-in-12 chance of a random encounter per turn; a -1 Morale for non-retainer hirelings and mercenaries.
Each stratum of the hive has a revulsion score and a level, to guide how dangerous and how much treasure can be found, in standard dungeon tradition.
Levels of the Hive
Goodwill is the first well to run dry. By the time Yarfu fell, the garrison had fallen to fewer than a hundred wardens, and it was said each was assigned to discouraging an entire company of outlaws, or two tribes of giant hounds, or four squadrons of squatters. Meanwhile, its coffers swelled perversely, for reasons widely believed to be the Lone Prisoner's own connivances. For unknown and counterfeit reasons, the gibbering plants that infest most of the continent flee the prison's surroundings, making Poza the safest and richest death-trap that stories tell of.
The god is so inimical, he is not even worshipped by the perverse or insane. Thus, as interlopers get further down, increasing levels of Revulsion (the opposite of a mythic underworld that hates you, a Morally Responsible underworld that wants to keep the god imprisoned.) For each point of Revulsion, a +1-in-6 chance of a door being stuck, a door closing behind you, a trap re-arming after a day; a +1-in-12 chance of a random encounter per turn; a -1 Morale for non-retainer hirelings and mercenaries.
Each stratum of the hive has a revulsion score and a level, to guide how dangerous and how much treasure can be found, in standard dungeon tradition.
Levels of the Hive
- Towers of Poza (Revulsion 0, level 3) Includes the roof in general, and any courtyards open to the air. Stalked by Archer-Shades, souls dedicated to the devil in life and claimed as his soldiery. Unable to free him, they loiter about the dungeon, waiting for their general to lead them to work ruin. Many narrow walkways and potential parkours, and many cruel sightlines with an untiring archer waiting at the other end. The skeletons of bygone adventurers carry loot to foreshadow what exists below. A small chapterhouse of the few remaining wardens exists under constant siege in the klochdi, and if befriended they will teach the signals of the bells to a party of adventurers. A pod of mourning fey haunt the mastabas, their speaker Painstaking Song commemorating one of the broken seals on the devil's prison, now broken in three pieces.
- Dock (Revulsion 0, level 1) Picked-over trade sector, with graffiti drawings that hint to the existence of traps. "Mastered" by Purposeful Morvan, an iron-monger who wears a metal skull and seeks to capture fighters for the arena in a deeper section. His complex conceals a hidden well leading deeper.
- Upper Hive (Revulsion 1, level 1) Three or so interweaving floors. Home to the Giant Hounds, wild outlaws whose doctrine states that the sun god Saver Heol is already dead, as well as scarabs and the occasional great cat. Every surface is painted with many colors, and the air is heavy with apprehension. One of the devil's seals lies here, forgotten and unguarded.
- Hospital of Universal Recovery (Revulsion 2, level 2) Once an emporium of wonders. Now patrolled by the Masked Procession, reduced to a cursed half-life and lead by cruel and contagious akhs that were unleashed from a storeroom of exorcized evils. Kept concealed in the Ti Amun, a stash of miracle cures still remain. The Solarium bottoms out on this level, and the Masked Ones never enter it for fear of the sunlight. In a grand gallery stands the idol of Panacea, who promises the fulfilment of wishes in exchange for pieces of the seals on the devil's cage.
- The Knotted Ostaleries (Revulsion 2, level 3) An internecine nest of tunnels adjoining the hospital where many stalls and shops once stood. At the far end, a visitor's quarter is now a nest to Vil of the Darkened Soul, an Ahohedaxuox Dragon who drags herself through the many tunnels seeking food for her three kits. An intact seal lies in this nest, and pieces of another are strewn through the tunnels.
- Echoing Shafts (Revulsion 3, level 3) Mines and high halls, for the depths around the devil are always impregnated with gold. Patrolled by Abyssals, the remnants of those guards whose long vigil changed them. They are warriors so empty that you can literally fall into them like a pit. Cloqmarin, a demigod spirit from distant lands, cajoles and mocks them from his great arena, the only place free from bad air and firedamp on the level. Those who win three battles in his blasted pit win their freedom, but those who win five are granted a hasty marriage. Stories of the vampire Cloqmarin's beauty and sexual facility never die in Yarfu, but the fate of his many lovers is never explored. For a pillow, he rests his head on a broken seal.
- Quiet Underworld (Revulsion 4, level 4) Flooded with black water, hot to the touch, fog rising languidly. Skeletons lie waterlogged and forgotten, ready to wake and claw some life from interlopers. This level is the enjoyment of the Feasters of Tenvalijenn, glutton-demons, carrion-eaters— filthy with a profusion of waste. The war temple still stands on this sunken level, heat emanating from it. Within, stored in a reliquary no demon can open, is the Disc of Gwen, which sings in the presence of a piece of the prison seals. Elsewhere on the level, past a totally flooded annex, a ritual bed leads into the Dream of War.
- The Dream of War (Revulsion 1, level 5) Green dust and embers blow down from the sky. It is a memory of the days before the devil imprisoned, a siege of the infant Saver Heol's leaden citadel. Demigods and vanr abound, and nameless things. If the infant sun dies, the whole dream darkens, chills, and fills with screams. In a work space beneath the palace, the heroine Gwen forges the first seal. Visitors of the dream, if they would fall, wake before hitting the ground. Besides the battlements, there are some very very deep drops. Awakening shows that you lose what you've lost and gained what you've found, and death in the dream is death in waking— a silver scarab tears at your head and heart, and rather than generating a new PC normally you may start as a level 1d4+1 Journeyman with a horrifically debilitating Akh.
- Fires of Fire (Revulsion 3, level 4) Patrolled by Visceral Bearers, who grow in wide rings around the furnaces, waiting eternally for the fires to die down. Standard fire level, with lava and gouts of flame and such. Hidden behind a lead door that must be melted by seven different levers which heat it seven different ways, a glass forge can remake seals from their constituent pieces, and render them pliable enough to re-apply up to an hour after heating them.
- The Prison (Revulsion 6, level 5) A small complex. Thinly attended by Rebel Khepri, emanations of Saver Heol that now burn with the light of darkness— ultraviolet, infrared, and other colors beyond sight. Soft-spoken, dignified, quick-thinking. Invisibly burning blades and chariots brutally sharpened. Graffiti drawings by those few who made it to the depths. The devil leans against a cell, its walls invisible and unbreakable. Those who feel carefully find the wall cuts off not only the cell, but a tall portal that leads on to the final level of the hive. Only a final seal hangs on the wall's seams, glassy and undarkened. The devil watches visitors with impassive confidence, and will not speak unless spoken to. He will not lie. If asked what he wants, he says he wants to leave the prison. If asked for inducements, he will promise anything to the person who removes the final seal, and he will follow through on his promise, not twisting its intention but not desisting from his own eventual goal of devouring the sun. If asked about the portal, he says it leads to the promise, and points out that it cannot be accessed without freeing him. If the last seal is removed, he performs any promised actions, then flies out of Poza Hive to do as he wilt. Only approaching with seals readied by the glass forge will make him desperate to deal.
- The Promise (Revulsion 0, level 6) Not to be publicly revealed. “It is a well-known tendency in tales that are popular and long re-told for them to be enlarged, until they become ‘cycles’, taking up or being linked to other stories with which they at first has slender connexions, or none at all. One of the methods used in this process is to provide the original hero with a son, either a newly invented one, or a character in another story. In either case the son will tend to have similar adventures, with variation, to those of the father.” Tolkien, commentary on Beowulf translation, line 734
