Caverns
Landel's, Basement
Landel's, 1st Floor
Map KeyNavigation
No
Exit
No
Exit
Lake
of
Death
No
Exit
Entrance
No
Exit
Cavern Description Overview
Entering from the basement, players come upon a white sand beach strewn with bleached skeletons and bones sticking out of the sand. There is a huge cavernous opening, cold, damp, dark, and the sand is nice other than the dead bodies. From the opposite side of the cavern two torches can be seen, which are the only sources of light down there (see the circles by the dock). The dock is manned by a skeletal person sitting in a long black boat holding a long pole or a paddle used to navigate the lake. Like Charon of the Greek myths, he’s the ferryman who will take the characters across to the challenges that await them (Refer to: Cavern Characters for personality and full description). The underground lake is deep, impossibly deep, ice-cold, murky and if a character looks closely they can see the indistinct faces of dead people floating beneath the surface of the waters -- faces contorted in agony or despair. The opposite shore where “Charon” leaves them has grayish black sand. There are matching torches flanking this dock as well. The beach on this shore is littered with fresher dead bodies, some recognizable as Institute monsters, some as dead people rotting away with limbs severed or missing. Rock altars can be found with blood stains or pieces of animals ripped apart on them.
Facing the characters is a massive rock wall that reaches from floor to ceiling. Ritual symbols are carved into the rock face and inset into the wall are four doors evenly spaced out. Each door is bloodied and has a warning carved above them that will change depending on the number of people in the party. If there are 4 people, the message will read “Four must enter, Four must leave” and if there are something like…8, then it would say “Eight must enter, Eight must leave.” (Note: A single character is not allowed to enter the Caverns on their own. There must be at least two characters participating.) Players can enter any door they choose, but once they enter, the door locks behind them unless otherwise noted.
Halls
Door 1: The Hall of Shadow This hall is a massive tunnel carved out of the rock. Stalagmites and stalactites jut out of the floors and ceilings, dripping water and creating small pools among the rocks, making the floor slightly slippery and damp. The air is humid as the cave is still “alive.” There are torches carved into the walls at various intervals, making it marginally better lit than anywhere else. In this hall, one character (picked by randomizer) is plagued by a shadow that appears over them and gradually grows larger as they move down the hall. From the ceilings and surrounding areas characters can hear something moving, skittering over the rocks and drawing closer, but nothing is seen. The shadow will grow larger as the characters linger in the hall until a monster spider - possibly a leftover - appears and drops out off the ceiling at them. They must fight and kill the spider to unlock the door to the Test Chamber.
Door 2: The Hall of Faith This hall is unlike the first in that as soon as the characters enter they will slip down a steep gravel incline. The door locks behind them and there is only one way out: down. The characters must climb and avoid injury to get to the bottom. There is barely any light. The bottom of the incline is nothing more than a rock ledge that looks out over an impossibly deep abyss, one that swallows any light from flashlights if the characters have them. The characters must take a Leap of Faith and all jump into the abyss. They experience a free fall and then drop into an ice cold lake at the bottom. No sound will carry to any characters still at the top, however, so the characters cannot shout back that they are safe. When all the characters hit the bottom, torches will flare and show the doorway to the Test Chamber across the pond. They swim over, open the door and activate their Test.
Door 3: The Hall of Wisdom This hall is actually more of a room, a round cavernous room, smooth and with torches lining the walls. In the middle of the room is a man (or woman) hanging upside down, strung up by his feet, hands tied behind his back. He is just high enough that none of the characters can reach him and although he is strung up, he is smiling. As the characters enter, he will address them and tell them the challenge of the room: “Every victory starts from sacrifice. Those unwilling may leave.” Unlike the other halls, this time the door behind remains open/unlocked. According to a random roll, the characters will be given one of five different challenges - all of which must result in their “death” in order to proceed from the hall. The Hall of Wisdom is a challenge designed on the Hanged Man major arcane tarot card, a card that signifies gaining wisdom and learning from one’s failures and mistakes (e.g. gaining freedom through death). The characters are given a choice to either stay in the room and die, or to run and save themselves, but if they run, they cannot proceed through the hall. The five possibilities for death are: Fire, Drowning, Suffocation, Poison, and being crushed by the room. When a character “dies,” their corpse remains in the room but they are still there in the room watching as if they are a ghost or spirit. This means that they know that they are all right in theory, but they have no way of communicating with their still living teammates, so the deaths would seem very real to the living. If the characters all choose to “die,” they wake up again in the room with the man from the ceiling congratulating them on their fearlessness and newfound wisdom, then the door opens to allow them to their Test Chamber. However, if one or more character escapes, leaving the others to die (or so they think), then they will not be able to proceed through any of the other doors and will have no way of getting back across the lake. Their “dead” friends will have to watch as they try to figure out what to do. If all characters leave without choosing to die, then the challenge is failed and they are thrown back across to Charon.
Door 4: The Hall of Voices This hall is the most occult of them all, a long narrow, winding hallway with no lights. When the door locks behind them, a voice will whisper to all the characters, “Don’t look back” and the challenge will begin. The walls and surfaces are rough stone that scrape the skin if people brush against them. They also have occult symbols carved into them or drawn upon them in blood, bloody handprints and pentagrams, angel/demon writing everywhere, that sort of thing. As the characters move through the hall, they will begin to hear voices in languages that cannot be recognized by any character, demon tongues and fervent whispers. These voices will get louder the further the characters get into the hallway until they are recognizable as people speaking about the characters’ loved ones - those they lost here at the Institute or back home. The voices will talk of rituals performed on them, of the horrors those people faced because the characters were at the Institute, away from home, or unable to get out in time to save those who had been ‘brainwashed’ into believing the Institute lies. They will speak of how the rituals failed, how unfortunate it was that the subject had to die, had to be pulled apart bit by bit, organ harvested while still alive for the purpose of rituals, etc. Then the voices will begin to speak about how lucky they are that they get a second chance with this new group. They’ll call for the people to keep going, to keep coming, to get closer until they reach the door at the end. The door requires a sacrifice of blood from each party member, a significant amount - enough to fill a vial for each person which must be put into a slot in the door. If all characters sacrifice blood to the door, then they can pass through to the Test Chamber. But if at any time, the characters look back over their shoulders or try to turn back, like Orpheus of the myths, they will fail and will get bounced back to Charon.
Door 5: ... It's a secret!
Once the characters get through one of these halls (1-4), they move into a Test Chamber. Every Test Chamber is randomized for a challenge and there are at least ten options to choose from. The group must pass four challenges in order to move on to the final challenge (Door 5). Any time the characters complete a Test Chamber properly and successfully (meaning they succeed at the challenge and ALL characters “survive”), they will be sent to the Gray shore along with the artifact from that Test Chamber and the Hall they just completed will be sealed to them. If they fail, they will be sent to the White shore and must deal with Charon. After completing all four doors and gathering all four artifacts, the characters will appear at the Gray shore and Charon will be waiting for them. He will take them across to the final door, but will not ask for a toll this time. However, there is a possibility of Charon trolling the characters again (Refer to: Cavern characters for more information).
Cavern Characters
“Charon”: The ferryman who leads people across the lake. He’s been assigned to the lake for an unknown number of years, but seeing as he’s nearly a skeleton, it’s obvious the guy’s been there awhile. Sarcastic, rude, blunt and lacking most social charms due to being alone for so long, “Charon” is essentially a troll character.
As the only way across the lake, he expects a toll which must be paid - since characters don’t have money, he strikes the deal that he’ll just take something essential from one of them instead. The players can decide which character will pay the toll and what the toll will be from one of five things:
1. Loss of Sight for the NS duration
2. Loss of Hearing for the NS duration
3. Loss of Touch for the NS duration (characters would not feel pain, cold, heat, anything, making them more susceptible to dying since they can’t feel when they are injured or dying of hypothermia or something)
4. Loss of Voice for the NS duration
5. Loss of Smell for the NS duration (a slight freebie for the first time any group goes across the lake because it’s extremely likely they will fail challenges and get thrown back to Charon at some point; only able to be used once per group)
Charon will only take each toll once and it must be from a different person every time. In the event of characters being bounced back to him multiple times, the toll cannot be paid by the same person twice in a row, but it can be a person who has paid a toll sometime prior. If the characters manage to come back more than five times in one NS, Charon will take a toll at random from someone while mocking them gratuitously for being such spectacular failures. If it seems that characters are spamming the toll thing, then it’s possible to collect the tolls for longer than just an NS duration and extend it into the DS as a penalty. ICly, Charon would just get angry at them and keep it to spite them.
The other thing Charon can do is actually troll people as he is taking them across the lake. The first encounter he decides to be nice and won’t do anything, but any encounter after that, the characters have a 1 in 3 randomized chance of being trolled. When trolled, Charon will use his pole/paddle and knock one of the characters out of the boat. The character can be chosen by the players or, if one cannot be decided upon, the Charon mod can randomize and pitch someone out. However, the person thrown out of the boat CANNOT be the same as the one who most recently paid the toll. If they are thrown out of the boat, there is another randomization roll that gives one of six consequences for the rest of the NS run:
1. Real life event (Character is pulled out of the water and suddenly believes they are their real life counterpart)
2. Gradual hypothermia (Character is pulled out of the water and throughout the NS experiences increasingly severe signs of hypothermia)
3. Hallucinations (Character is pulled out of the water and experiences various hallucinations throughout the night with varying severity; what kind is up to player choice)
4. Safe (Character is pulled out of the water with no ill effects other than being cold and severely pissed off at Charon for being a dick. Charon, on the other hand, would be amused at the character’s luck)
5. Safe (Again, second safe option)
6. KRAKKEN (Character falling into the water has awoken the Krakken. Charon gets the hell out of dodge and dumps them all into the water to save himself. The characters must swim to the opposite shore and get away from the water as quickly as possible before the Krakken eats them.)
Charon will be NPCed by Kaze, with others chosen later on to pinch hit for her if need be.
The Hanged Man: The man or woman who hangs from the ceiling of the Hall of Wisdom and dishes out the lowdown on what’s going on in the room. When the challenge starts, s/he disappears. When the challenge finishes, s/he reappears. Clothing is always simple and surprisingly clean: a plain white dress or a white shirt over tan pants. Hair is short regardless of gender. S/He always has a serene expression on her/his face. Speaks cryptically and in very dreamy tone. The Hanged Man can be played by any NPC mod.
"Hall of Shadow" Monster: The body of a spider combined with the upper torso of a human. The arms are long like a praying mantis and sharp like knives. The human head is smooth, devoid of human features and replaced instead with two huge, black, almond shaped eyes that take up a good portion of the head. On the torso’s stomach is a mouth full of jagged teeth, ready to devour any who get close. The spider body can produce web, which can be used to block passageways and ensnare people.
The details of the test chambers, on the other hand, are something that will only be available to the NPC mods for the time being, to keep things a surprise. They may become common knowledge in the future, but for now they will be shrouded in mystery.