ideas doc dump: arda megadungeon

sixteen, a prompt that pushed me to the limits of my ability, and in doing so it made me better. 

the arda megadungeon was my first foray into this style of play, and during the campaign i created a place where i could set down my ideas. sometimes the writing of them was enough, pruned hedges to encourage particular growth. others grew into bigger, stranger things. 

over the past week i have been going through my old ideas docs, and have been picking my favorites. the ideas chosen are in varying state of completeness, some are simply names, others carry more. i have enjoyed harvesting my gardens.

i hope the fruits of my labor nourishes someone.

Roll 1d60 for an idea

1. The Super fungus uses the body plans of those that it infects to extend its reach and ability, with the ultimate goal of assimilating all biomass and reaching singularity

2. The Super Fungus exists in the past, present and future and can sense all of it, assimilation of biomass is to prevent its future destruction, which for it, is happening concurrently with the present

3. The last uninfected queen of the ant supercolonies is being sheltered by the mothmen, hidden from the Great fungus by the mothmens silver cocoons.

4. Parasitic ant queens attack and replace human royalty

5. A wizard is hunting the Cypher Beast. Whalers in a Sea of dreams, the wizard is a burly badass in the dream world. The wizard is also hard at work on various stimulants to help offset sleep deprivation, all have proven fatal thus far. Wizard Speed.

6. Saigotron Von Calitrex: Highland Warlord, brigand, rules over the ranchers in the highlands. Is an android, uses cattle to create methane fuel cells, has a rocket horse (nightmare).

7. Gem Eyed men: evil spirits, wander the roads looking to cure the greedy and eat the wretched

8. Nomadic Library: carried by a giant owl, flies around throughout the year, chased by sages and scholars.  Made up of the bird, the box and the voice between. Tended to by psychic librarians shaped like giant bacteriophages with human hands at the ends of their legs.

9. Nethguma stores his psychonaughts in the minds of the peasants that live around the tower. Nethguma is mapping The Dream, looking for access to Thought. The map is inscrutable and looks like a fractal murderboard made up of threads of thousands of colors.

10. The Hellmoth doesn't breathe fire, its wings act as portals for fire demons.

11. The waxed betrayer: hulking, covered in iron armor, decorated with designs like dancing flames, wick protrudes from head bearing purple flame, areas of exposed skin wrapped in fine blue cloth, except hands which are long, narrow fingers end in sharp nails, looks burned to charcoal, speaks by possessing nearby corpses using spirits in the flame, raspy, stilted, like a ghostly computer just learning to talk. struggles to talk, has to push out the words

12. The Great Fungus is in the midst of an internal war, waged on a cellular level, with fungoid minds spawned from assimilating sentient beings. The Great Fungus is currently winning, keeping The Many at bay and held deep within itself. The Many have begun reaching into The Dream for aid.

13. Magic Item: object that becomes a forest when buried, fills one hex. magic, evergreen, lush

14. When Constance the Slayer landed the deathblow on the Moonflow Serpent, it caused the Serpent to disgorge heaven, and all the souls within it.

15. Crocodile infused her bile with the tongue of the demon Hunger, and let it wander the land to feed her while she baskd in the light of the Sun Beast. Other crocodiles, less capable with magic, tried this as well and were consumed by their creations or could not control them and so died of hunger

16. Chimera called The Three Kings: Three human heads, lions body, serpent tail, live in an old castle ruin, bitter, angry, self pitying, bickering

17. Princess Maximus intends to assassinate King Maximus using a bomb made to look like her decapitated head

18. Worshipers of the Sun Beast tend to spontaneously combust

19. Emirathrax is a gas giant, planet sized beholder, the planet that looks back, it sometimes sends it's angels to observers. it is held prisoner by the sun beast

20. Emirathrax is the source of the dwarves visions of heaven, their ultimate aim is a millenia long plan to get the dwarves to build the magical equivalent of a dyson sphere to tame the Sun Beast, and free Emirathrax

21. Father Leopard traded his left eye to the Briarlock in exchange for safe passage through brambles and thickets, and for the Briarlock to grow 6 poisonous vines on his back

22. Larva in witches' lair: Starfish shaped with plump, segmented skin like a maggot or mealworm, hands and feet are mouths, a sinewy stalk rises from the top point and possesses a human face

23. Wanted: Ghostbuster. No coin, bounty to be paid in acting

24. Nycessian Ditch Weed: aka Witch Weed, aka Kings Leaf:  red leaves, orange when dried, stimulant with minor hallucinogenic properties, smoked from ornate and twisted pipes, smoke is purple when exhaled. Aids in the learning of magic, large doses expand the mind, allowing an extra spell slot, but also causes intense hallucinations.

25. God Stool, aka God Shite: Hallucinogenic mushroom, known to cause epiphany in mammals, traded and used in large quantities on God Street. White Cap the size of a dinner plate, black stem the size of a baby's arm, chromatic gills. 

26. Wendulian Slug Paste: Powerful Stimulant, causes excessive mucus production, effective bird poison.

27. Requiem Leblanque is a Dream Eater.

28. House cats can move freely throughout The Dream: They are everywhere within it. They hunt the pests and vermin that tend to congregate in dreams

29. Bitterbark: Mean old treant, dry pine with no needles, covered in axe wounds weeping sap, home to a colony of thumb sized fire ants.

30. The Swine Prince and his Pig Faced Marauders

31. Giant round leaved sundew that uses illusions to hide its sticky tendrils

32. Weird Quest: “There is an old hermit that lives on a nearby mountain, he is a gold dragon, he will deny it if asked, but I know it's true. Go to the secret dragon, and paint its scales red”

33. Magic Portrait: Depicts a large, lemon headed man, bushy mustache, blue hair, mauve jacket, silver buttons, one button missing: save vs spell when passing or be compelled to whisper a secret to it. Keeping a shirt button in one's pocket exempts one from the magic, and allows the recovery of whispered secrets and the names of the whisperers

34. Most  undead are made by infusing dead bodies with hunger demons, spells that create undead summon these and place them under the control of the caster, but anybody with a hunger demon can create undead by pouring the demon into its mouth

35. An acting troupe performs plays named after and detailing old d&d modules. if the players get involved, run the module. The plays are smutty, violent, romance novel versions of the modules: the Isle of Love and Dread, Romance at the Keep on the Borderlands, the Lost City of Passions etc.

36. An adventurer barricades themself in a room at the inn, sees the game, violent lives ending violently

37. There is a golden toad statue the size of a dog, it has opal eyes and causes powerful hallucinations if touched with bare skin, Nethguma wants it desperately

38. Harpy cattle raiders from the crawling mountains, a half dozen with harpoons can make off with a full grown cow

39. Island home to a prehistoric fossil druid, volcano lair in center, beaches, jungles, lava fields, alchemically enhanced dinosaurs, air around volcano choked with ash and smoke billowing from caldera, airspace protected by paraelemental of ash and lightning. Druid not connected to wyrd, pulls power from deep time natural history of the planet. Red dragon in magma lair eats air elementals to keep body temp up, can melt stone when juiced, was always juiced in previous ages when oxygen was more plentiful in atmosphere

40. The Yang Wen found a massive vein of living uranium

41. Air elemental in a room full of glass dust

42. Ways to breathe underwater: Marry a bog sprite, Eat a leech pulled from the lungs of a drowned man, coat yourself head to toe in bubble slime (warning: salt quickly dissolves the slime), Trade your lungs and face for the gills of a barter fish, hex a sponge with hydrophobia and keep it in your mouth (untested), Wear a bag woven from the hair of a dead man over your head, 

43. Adventure Idea: goblins raiding town to pay a troll, troll extorting goblins to pay troll king, troll king lair reached by walking north until you can see your breath, and west until the sun sets, all faerie shit. Green dragon in the area has an arrow that can slay the troll king, the dragon is as big as a dog and serpentine, its words are as poisonous as its breath and it can cast charm person on anyone who has ever broken bread with it, it is constantly on the lookout for fine food and drink

44. The Dreaming is traversed most easily through the use of a Morphean Drive and Helm, which can be affixed to nearly anything to create a Dreamskimmer. Morphean drive powered by sleeping individuals locked into Morphean Drive Cores, which are then loaded into the drives

45. Zombies with blink on them

46. Reptiloids dealing with an amphibian cult, cultists start to produce slime and do well in water, cult popularity a response to rising oceans

47. Foldout teleportation circle, mobile, does not work when folded up, can't take it with you

48. Setting/Area Idea: Elves in charge, feudalism, arthuriana, questing knights. Cosmic horror disguised as romantic fantasy, idyllic fantasy kingdom built over horrific alien ruins, thought police, and forbidden lore. Aesthetic, image and perception more important than reality

49. Necromancers that animate the moltings of giant tarantulas.

50. The Needlemen in the great cavern gather around the great bur bush, these needlemen have large, palm leaves and can vomit beams of sunlight when threatened

51. Fire Cult venerates The Voice in the Flame, which is actually a dragon's ghost that taught them fire magic, 5 leaders are actual pyromancers, each has 10 acolytes that huck fire pots.

52. The Good Lady Moira, Mistress of the Seven Paths, Dirgemother, Moon Maiden, Battle Sister of the Bear Queen, 

53. Pink Spiders: Tarantula the size of a volkswagen beetle, with wrinkled pink skin of a naked mole rat, the round, tooth filled mouth of a lamprey below its fangs, and a sticky chameleon like tongue

54. Pink spider cave contains a perpetually rotting corpse, which spawn large, demon faced maggots, the head of the corpse is pinned with a demon faced greatsword

55. Fiery Corpse Anaconda: a 60ft long snake made up of burning corpses, connected by grabbing the ankles of the corpse ahead of it, front corpse is holding a massive obsidian snake skull, the rear corpses legs have been fashioned with a pair of Jet stingers: Lurks in the Magma Fields

56. Vampire Sage: Staked through the heart in a cave on top of a hill, wanders the planes of thought while comatose, when needed, those who know of them travel to the cave with a young sacrifice, unstake the Sage and feed them, they then consult the sage for knowledge and advice, before staking the sage so that they can continue their journey. The Sage has agreed to the arrangement and is staked willingly. An offering is always required, and the feeding always lethal

57. The Twinkling Pleasure Pits of the Gnome King: subterranean spa for fickle earth spirits, with baths of liquid gemstones, and mists of gaseous metals. Harmful to breathe/ingest as your body rationalizes and solidifies the substances. can cause petrification, the substances are not molten

58. A massive air elemental resides in the winding hell to taunt the Garuda, because the air has sworn to never again carry it. The elemental provides benefits to those it likes, but it can be capricious

59. I learned the ancient song of the sun, music that make molecules dance violently

60. roll twice and combine