Part 2 of my investigation into "What if the Desolation of Smaug was a Zone from Roadsic Picnic?"
Maybe I should have called this series "Hobbits have a Roadside Picnic." Hmmm.
Dungeon Zones
Inns are the haunts of burglars--notorious drunks, all. All of a burglar's tall tales are told there.
"I saw the Old Wyrm making new passageways. He was digging like an earthworm, chomping at the stone. The stone was passing through his long body. The changing gasses were coming out the back."
"I heard the Golden One about a level below us. We ran. But when we came back to the Northwest Guard Chamber, there was a fourth door. I told Fatty to follow me, but he went through the wrong portal. I could hear the blinding sound start up - that's the Wyrm's roar - so I dropped to my knees and pulled my hood over my head. My eyes turned out alright, but I never saw Fatty again."
Extra Angles, New Passages
Both the union delvers and burglars agree that the dungeon's layout doesn't remain static. The current understanding is that there are three different configurations the dungeon can be in based on the phase of the moon when the dungeon is entered.
New moon: The new moon dungeon is entirely the product of the dwarf's craftsmanship: the hall of habitation, the guard posts, the armories, the workshops, the forges, the markets.
Waxing or waning: The dungeon's appearance when the moon is between crescent and full is similar to the new moon dungeon, but rooms with corners have expanded to add new angles: triangular rooms become square rooms, square rooms become octagonal, octagonal rooms become dodecagonal rooms, and dodecagonal rooms become icosagonal. Round rooms are unchanged. New passages, seemingly of dwarf make but unremembered by any map from before the coming of the dragon, connect these expanded rooms together.
Full moon: The full moon dungeon is the largest and most complex. The expanded rooms and passages lead to "new" rooms, halls, and chambers. These rooms appear to have dwarven architecture, but the art and symbiology found there is dreamlike and distorted. In burglar folklore, these new rooms have the deadliest concentration of traps but also the most unlooted swag.
Rumor says that special days of the year or special celestial occurrences (Durin's Day, for instance) reveal entirely new layouts.
Elf Time
"In that land, maybe, we were in a time that has elsewhere long gone by. It was not, I think, until Silverlode bore us back to Anduin that we returned to the time that flows through mortal lands to the Great Sea."
A notable feature of dungeon zones is what burglars call "elf time": a distortion of the passing of time inside the dungeon versus outside the dungeon. Burglars will emerge after burning four torches and be told that they were gone for four days, or a single hour, or an entire month.
For good luck, burglars never call a missing burglar "dead" unless they witnessed the death first hand. They will refer to them as "lost in elf time." (You may explain missing players at your table in this way.)
Rule: When exiting a dungeon, one player should roll a d6. On a roll of 1, elf time has occurred. Roll d20 and consult the chart:
1-4. No time has occurred outside. The burglars seemed to enter and then exit the dungeon within the same minute.
5-10. Time outside the dungeon is twice what the burglars have experienced inside the dungeon.
11-15. A number of days outside the dungeon equal to the number of turns inside the dungeon have elapsed.
16-19. Regardless of how long the delve lasted, the burglars return one month later to the hour.
20. Regardless of how long the delve lasted, the burglars return one year and one day later, to the hour.
I was going to cover traps in this post as well but it got too long. I need to split it up.
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