Forbidden Lands: The Dwarven Tomb & Bonus Artifact!
So as you may know from my earlier posts I am currently playing in two campaigns: one, I'm running, one I'm playing and both are Forbidden Lands. They both have incredibly different vibes and indeed, take place in different realities/universes/worlds, but that's not what this post is about.
The Forbidden Lands game that I'm running is so far, stock from the book. The party has spent most of their time in The Hollows, a small village in the Game Master's Guide, but now that the first chapter has wrapped up, they decided to leave town for a little while and explore the titular Forbidden Lands.
A lot of my free time is spent preparing and engaging with games and rules systems. The other night, I had nothing to do, and so I decided to try out the random Adventure Site generator in the Forbidden Lands Game Master Guide. I love charts and tables in TTRPGs, and Forbidden Lands is full of them. These kinds of things are what give a lot of "OSR" titles that iconic vibe. The dungeon may not make sense, it may not have anything to do with the plot—but it's a dungeon (or castle, or village), and there's gold and experience to be earned, so it must be explored!
Everything about this dungeon was randomly generated. I have not altered or manipulated the rolls in any way, and it's that kind of engagement that makes doing this kind of thing so fun and interesting to me. It's refreshing to have something randomly generated to assist me in prepping for my game. These kinds of tools help me not only prepare awesome content for my friends, but they also surprise me and keep me interested.
One of the great things about Forbidden Lands is that it has this great sense of history and time, and the Adventure Site Generators make sure they preserve that by telling you how old these places are, who built them and why, and even a major event that happens within them. For towns and castles, they also go into who rules over them, who lives there now, problems they may have, and all sorts of fun and engaging information! Again, stuff like this is priceless for me because it not only helps me make my game awesome, but also keeps me entertained—and is a great way to interact with a TTRPG even when you're hangin' out by yourself.
Anyway, here's the Dwarven Tomb.
TYPE: Dungeon
AGE: 3 years old (really new, which makes this less archaeology and more grave robbing, right? Ethics!)
SIZE: Small, only four rooms.
ORINGINAL PURPOSE: Tomb. Built for "vengeance" (we'll explore this below).
CREATOR: Dwarves.
HISTORY: Builders were destroyed by a strange artifact.
Room 1: Entrance, heavy iron bars that trap adventurers, and a staircase.
Room 2: A sarcophagus with 8 silver coins and a locked door.
Room 3: An arrow trap and a door that is unlocked, but blocked by something heavy.
Room 4: A sorcerer (encounter!), and a chest containing a bronze altar and a mask worth a combined 29 silver (which is a lot!). The sorcerer also has some random loot on them: a grimoire with the spell Befoul written in it, and a silver ring worth 11 silver.
Again, all of the above information was rolled randomly
Side note: This glorious map was built making Dungeon Maker, which you can get a demo for free and see how amazing it is for yourself!
So now we have a bit of work to do. Mainly figuring out a few small details (if we want to) about the history. How do we portray that the tomb was built out of vengeance? What exactly was this mysterious artifact that destroyed the builders? Who is this sorcerer in the depths of this tomb and what the h*ck are they doin' down there??
This is a newly built dungeon, only 3 years old, So what's the bigger history here? Perhaps the sorcerer and the dwarves had some disagreement involving this powerful artifact, which resulted in the killing of a great dwarven leader. In an act of vengeance, the dwarves built this tomb and sealed the artifact away. Our randomly generated history says that the builders were then killed by this artifact, so it must be dangerous! Now the sorcerer knows of its location; perhaps newly discovered just in time to be foiled by meddling adventurers!
So what is this artifact? It was powerful enough to kill the builders of the tomb, and the sorcerer wants it. What does it do? This, for me, is an incredibly difficult question to answer. Whatever this artifact is, the players are about to come into contact with it. They should be cautious of it, but will likely try to use it. Artifacts in Forbidden Lands generally come with a "drawback" involved as well, which I definitely want to maintain. I also want this artifact to further tie into the world of Forbidden Lands and reflect some aspect of the lore, so let's see what we can do.
There are two factions here at work in this dungeon: the sorcerer, and the dwarves. Since this tomb is dwarven, let's focus on them. Looking through the Game Master's Guide I can see the dwarves worship H U G E, the God of the Forge, who reincarnates the dwarves so they can continue to build out the world in order to reach the sun, which they believe is their god's forge. Although dwarves believe in reincarnation, they also believe their god can reshape them as he sees fit. Perhaps the dwarves believe this artifact gives them some control over their reincarnation—after all, who wants to be reborn as some dirty goblin?
But as with most things, the legend of this artifact may not be entirely true. In my mind, this device is much more like a Palantir from Middle Earth. A scrying device which may show the past, present, or future, but is almost never clear on which. A powerful will and mind are necessary to gain any use out of this artifact, which is why a sorcerer may wish to steal it away. Perhaps its powers of showing these events throughout time gave the dwarves the sense of many lives, but their willpower was lacking, and it drove them mad.
I think that sounds cool, so we'll go with that. So now, let's write up some rules!
The Seeing-Stone or The Prophet's Eye
Legend: Thousands of years ago, among the earliest dwarven clans, a Prophet walked amongst them. The Prophet told tales of their many reincarnations and how they remembered every life they lived, and their re-forging by the god Huge. It is said that the Prophet eventually left the Forbidden Lands, ascending to the Great Forge in the sky, but left behind a mysterious stone which showed neither blemish nor flaw. Legend has it that whoever stares into the stone may gain insight into the past, present, or future, though a great will and mind are needed to make sense of the visions. Those who are found wanting are driven mad, sometimes dying of fright or shock from the visions they witness.
Appearance: A black stone, perfectly smooth and perfectly spherical, with a slight translucency revealing a cloudy, pearlescent core. The stone is perched upon a beautiful stone column marked with intricate, geometric patterns and icons of the dwarven god Huge.
Effects: The Seeing-Stone reveals a random event from either the past, present, or future, as decided by the Game Master. Only one character using the Seeing-Stone sees the event, and only one character can use the Seeing-Stone at a time. Furthermore, the Seeing-Stone never repeats the same vision twice. The character using the Seeing-Stone may spend any amount of Willpower to gain insight into their vision. For each point of Willpower spent in this way, the player may ask the Game Master a question, which the Game Master must answer. The answer can be more or less vague, but should provide some clue or context that will be useful to the players.
Drawback: The player using the Seeing-Stone risks shattering their mind by peering into it's pearlescent core. For each point of Willpower spent by the player, that player rolls a dice. On a BANE (1), the player suffers 1 damage to their Empathy or Wits, whichever score is lower.
I think that makes for a pretty awesome dungeon and a great artifact! Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or liking this post. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!
