The Lost Temple of the Ancients

• Entrance**:** A fissure in a massive boulder emits a fetid breeze.
• Rooms (exits) by level: 9 (4), 12 (2), 8 (2).
• Themes (budget): Eyes (4), Fungus (5), Forgotten (3).
• Monsters: harpies guard the entrance. A living statue stalks the first level. The second level is a colony of giant ants. Some have been mutated and have a single all-too-human eye in their foreheads. A specter inhabits the false tomb. Carnivorous gnats (stirges) infest the fungus garden. A massive catfish lives in the lake. Foot-long scorpions hide in cracks and under detritus. A black jelly makes its nest in the ants’ pit. A massive albino cobra lives in the third level, hunting giant hissing cockroaches.
• 4 Features: a winged statue in the temple at the center of level 1 triggers/directs the stalker. Copious red fungus on level 2 smells delicious and tastes even better; too bad it makes your sweat attract stirges. A confusion spell on level 3 makes interlopers forget why they came and how to get out. A “theater” on level 3 that can be made to display the knowledge of the ancients.
• 3 Wondrous Items: a hooked scepter of snake commanding is in the false tomb. A magic mirror/portal rests in a cave beneath the surface of the lake. Red memory gems are hoarded by the ants.

The Dungeon Map

The image below is my in-progress dungeon map. I decided to leave some blanks in level 3 to react to things characters do in earlier sessions. (That’s what I told myself after not getting all my tasks for the week finished.) The following are rough notes for each level. They should give you an idea of the general layout and feel of the dungeon. Asterisks indicate when theme budgets are being spent, i.e. “mushroom garden*” means I spent 1 point on the Fungus theme.

• Level 1. This hypostyle hall is carved from living rock. A crack in the northwest corner leads up to the surface. A secret, one-way door in the east wall opens onto a narrow stair leading down to level 3. Giant ants have tunneled up from level 2 near the west room. In the center of the hall is an open-sided temple. Around the top of the hall is a second story overlook with rooms at the cardinal points: south is a false tomb, north is a guard station, and the east/ west rooms were used for storage. The east one has been taken over by the giant ants from level 2 and is being used to store food, primarily. The empty windows of these upper rooms make characters feel watched.* The hall stalker, a statue of a blindfolded* giant with an elephant head, will lumber toward interlopers so long as the smaller many-eyed* statue at the center of the temple can “see” them. The stalker is deadly and nearly impossible to kill, but very slow. When not in motion it is deadly quiet; characters coming out of buildings may get a surprise. Occasionally a one-eyed* mutant ant comes up from below and staggers around drunkenly.
• Level 2. The many rough-hewn chambers of this level serve as a home to the colony of giant ants. They are busy 24/7, working in shifts in the endless twilight created by ubiquitous glowing red fungus.* The fungus smells tasty, but the ants seem to ignore it. Unusual sights on this level include a beautiful garden of mushrooms*, an underground lake of black water, a small cave filled with red gems the size of figs, and a seemingly bottomless pit. The black jelly that lives in the pit seems to relish the red mold, chewing large swaths through it and leaving behind exposed trails of slightly slimy rock. (These streaks should become more evident to characters as they approach the pit.) The quiet surface of the lake belies the presence of the giant catfish below. It is always hungry and will react quickly to any disturbance, hoping a big ant has fallen in. One in every dozen or two ants is a mutant. They have been exposed to the red gems too long and are being “awakened.” The gems (in actuality shriveled brains of a bizarre, long-dead race) were brought up from level 3 and hoarded by the ants. The long hall near the bottom of the map is where the mutant ants hang out. They are individualistic, lazy, and pretty-much stoned most of the time. Ants generally experience through smell, but these ants are painting on the wall with smeared fungus,* making odd clicking “music,” and generally having a good time. They can be dangerously clumsy in their goofy state however, and violence occasionally erupts between them and the colony’s disgruntled warriors who don’t want to lose any more citizens to this unexpected madness. A tunnel 20’ below the surface of the pit leads to level 3.
• Level 3. This level is more than a tomb, it is an archive of knowledge. Each “door” has no handle, is sealed with a waxy substance, and must be forced open. The first, rather large room is a hall of murals that depicts the life of an ancient race of serpentine humanoids. They must have lived along a fertile river. The murals oddly affect the characters’ senses, seeming to emit the subtle whirring noises of insects, a puff of warm breeze, or even the smell of brackish river water. Each character experiences something different. The effect is a form of soporific confusion.* Off of the main gallery are several rooms filled with artifacts from the daily life of the snake folk. The walls of these rooms have been tunneled through in places, seemingly sometime after they were sealed. The tunnels are rough and about 3’ in diameter. If a character were to crawl into them they would find immense cast off snake skins and/ or encounter a giant, albino cobra. In the cobra’s rough nest at the end of the tunnels lies a clutch of forgotten* eggs that have gone cold and will seemingly never hatch.

The final room is the Theater of Minds. Its arched walls are riddled with countless niches, each holding a strange skull. Each skull, if examined, will prove to have a unique pattern of strange whirls on its inner surface that calls to mind the odd rugose patterns on the red gems. Indeed with a bit of testing and through the process of elimination, characters may be able to find a match or two. (If not, characters might discover a few of the red gems still inside their skulls in the highest niches.) A pedestal in the middle of the room will activate the theater if a gem (inside its matching skull) is placed on it. The pedestal will cause the gem to project scenes (through the skull’s eyes) taken from the creature’s memories. The visions relate the snake folk’s long-forgotten* way of life. The visions may include hazy and fleeting glimpses of ancient mysteries, fabulous treasures, important historical events, and/or strange inventions the world has lost. Trapped halls lead to the final resting place of three very important sister-queens. Their intact skulls/gems will certainly prove illuminating, if the characters can safely bring them out. The hall traps are large blocks of stone that will fall and probably crush anyone breaking the seal of these sacred resting places. The albino cobra belonged to one of the queens; it was her familiar. She granted it long life through sorcery and if her ancient mind is awakened, she will call it to her. First, she will direct it to attack the tomb robbers. Then, she will try to transfer her consciousness into her beautiful pet.