When people give me a recommendation for a book, a show, whatever, I always say "I'll add it to the list!" And I'm not kidding: I have a list. It sits at the bottom of my To Do Google Doc, where I track my daily tasks. The list is organized by medium (book, show, whatever), but is just a comma separated list in the order the text was recommended to me. Some of the lists are hundreds of entries long.
This is all to say, people have been telling me "Roadside Picnic is really good OSR inspiration" for many years and I've said "Yeah, yeah, it's on the list."
Well, I'm reading it right now. And let me tell you something.
Roadside Picnic is really good OSR inspiration.
If you have not yet read it (and I recommend that you do!), the essential premise is that several years ago there was "The Visit," where aliens landed at six sites on Earth (called "Zones"). They left behind changed physical laws in those Zones (weird gravity wells, mutagenic slime) and advanced technological artifacts. A class of smugglers called "stalkers" sneak past the government barricades into the Zones, braving the traps of the weird environment to recover these artifacts.
One of the people who had been hooting about this excellent book was Anne, who posted about it on her blog. In her post, her conversation partner had the temerity to say:
It also makes me think how it might be interesting to think about a version of The Hobbit where the desolation of Smaug was a Zone!
That is what this post is about.
The Desolation of the Dragon
"There was little grass, and before long there was neither bush nor tree, and only broken and blackened stumps to speak of ones long vanished. They were come to the Desolation of
the Dragon, and they were come at the waning of the year."
To say that dragons "create" dungeons is not entirely correct, in the same way that it's not accurate to say that the ground "creates" gravity. When a dragon settles in an area, it warps the area in the same way that a planet warps spacetime. The result is a dungeon. Newtonian physics no longer accurately describes the behavior of objects in a dragon's domain. We must switch to dungeon physics.
For most people, dungeon physics mean two things:
First, the existence of traps. This isn't to say pressure plates or poisoned needles. Traps, in this instance, mean hazardous environments that arise spontaneously in the dungeon: forcefields, walls of fire, poisonous molds, hell slimes.
Second, the existence of magic treasure. In the presence of a dragon, once-normal mundane objects or areas may suddenly behave as enchanted: sewing pins that emit a deafening shriek, bracelets will spin forever when balanced on their edge, barrels that are invisible.
For dungeon philosophers (wizards), both are the same category of transmutation. Except you can categorize transformed objects that are hazardous to human health as traps and transformed objects that have neutral or beneficial properties as treasure. And, like medicines, sometimes the difference is in the dose.
And when you slay the dragon? That's just the start of your troubles.
The Lonely Mountain and the Union of Five Armies
“I remember the Mountain well enough and the lands about it. And I know where Mirkwood is, and the Withered Heath where the great dragons bred."
One-hundred and seventy-one years ago, the dragon Smaug came to the Lonely Mountain and drove out the dwarves and men who lived there. A dungeon zone took root.
Today, the land around the Lonely Mountain is controlled by the Five Armies, each of whom is from a kingdom that lays some claim on the lands of the dungeon (the Dwarves, the Men of Dale) or the roads used to travel towards the dungeon (the Elves of Mirkwood, the Goblins of the Misty Mountains, and the Wolves of the Wild). This Union sends forth sanctioned delves of equal numbers to recover treasures from the dungeon and further their understanding of draconic incursions.
Burglars
"INTERVIEWER: You probably mean stalkers?
DR. PILLMAN: I’m not familiar with the term.
INTERVIEWER: That’s what the residents of Harmont call the desperate young men who, despite the grave risks, sneak into the Zone and smuggle out whatever they find. It’s quite the new career."
Lake-town was founded after the coming of the dragon by the refugees of the kingdom of Esgaroth. A simple democracy, it provides something like a neutral space for the Union of the Five Armies. The residents have never seen the wealth extracted from the dungeon trickle down - the rivers have never flowed with gold, as they were promised.
Some of these residents take on the profession of burglar. A burglar avoids the guards of the union to make an unsanctioned delve in the dungeon. When they survive, they sell the swag to the highest bidder: foreign kingdoms, rich autarchs from beyond Rhun, or even clandestine representatives from member-kingdoms of the union (who each resent their rivals and think their sharing agreements unequally penalize themselves).
But burglars do not have long lives. The traps in the dungeon are many, and only the upper levels have been partially mapped. Worse, those that handle the treasures rarely see their later years: the dragon sickness is a slow but irresistible foe.
And the less said about the sicknesses of their children, the better.
More coming in part 2.
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