Blackmoor. One of the few “mega dungeons” in existence.
Rumored to have over thirty floors, but none who have returned have ever made
it past the tenth floor. Or so the story goes. And there I stood, first time
out adventuring. At this notorious dungeon. Just great. Seventy years at the
university paid off, else I would have died. Anyways it’s not like we planned
to be going any further down than the first floor.
This party is comprised entirely of novice adventurers like
myself. We total fourteen. We’ve got quite an odd member though. Members? I
don’t know but four of our members move and speak as one. They refer to
themselves as Toast for whatever reason. Other than that, they seemed like a
pretty average bunch. And so we entered the first floor of Blackmoor, some of
us gung ho, others weary, but none knew at the time how things were going to
end up. After walking around a bit, we got a taste of how maze-like this
dungeon was going to be. We hit a few loops and dead ends before making much
progress. And for whatever reason, those dead ends intrigued our group so much
so that we spent several minutes inspecting each one. That aside, we eventually
came to a small hallway blocked with a large pile of rubble stacking eight feet
high. Luckily for us the ceiling of the area was two feet above it. Just enough
room to squeeze through. Not wanting to crawl to our death, we had our halfling
and dwarf check it out first. You know, because they’re short. Anyways, one of
them had a bit of a slip up and caused a little rubble landslide. The halfling
was quick enough to avoid getting caught, but the dwarf not so much. We had to
dig the dwarf out of the rubble, but at least we benefitted a little. The level
of the rubble lowered a bit giving us a three to four foot gap to go through. Not
much but it’s something. Unfortunately, at this point since nothing of interest
was happening, two of our party members decided to head back outside and return
to town. They’ll never know what they missed. Actually, they’ll probably see us
very soon. After climbing through the rubble and making a left, we arrived at a
large room with what looked like pillars in the distance. Careful not to trip
any traps, we stuck to the left wall and slowly explored the room. To our
relief, it was a completely empty room, save for the several branching
corridors, a few pillars, and a large staircase leading back up outside. We
decided to check out one of the corridors near the staircase and were met with
another, smaller staircase. However this one led down deeper into the dungeon.
Getting a little confident in ourselves, despite not even having fought one
monster yet, we decided to take the staircase down. We were immediately met
with a branching path only to find out that they were connected to each other
just around twenty feet or so down each one. Deciding to follow the path on the
right, we continued and shortly after, we came across a spiral staircase
leading up. This wasn’t any regular staircase though; it glowed and had a
magical presence about it. We all had known of this staircase from the tales
told by other adventurers. It was called the Orcian Way, rumored to lead
directly to the tenth floor of the dungeon. It’s said that all who have entered
this specific staircase never return. It was odd at the time to think the
staircase was connected to the bottom since it went up, but we learned what
that meant the hard way. For whatever reason, the Orcian Way piqued the
interest of the other elf in the party. He decided to climb it on his own, but
before he left we secured a rope around his waist in case he needed to be
pulled back down. And of he went. And after two hundred and fifty feet of rope
had passed, he stopped going up. We assumed he found the end of the staircase,
but he gave us no sort of signal. Then all of a sudden the rope went taut.
Unlike the times when we ran out of rope and had to tie another line to the
end, after going taut the rope didn’t pull at all. We decided to give the rope
a little tug and it immediately went slack. Worried about his safety, we quickly
rolled up the rope and ascended the staircase. In hindsight, we couldn’t have
made a worse decision. As we reached the top, there was no sign of the elf. But
we did find a trap door leading up. Examining the end of the rope that he was
tied to, we saw that it was broken; not cut nor chewed off, but broken. The odd
state of the rope put us on guard as we opened the trap door. We were met with
a view of the sky and small platform. Cautious of traps, we tied the rope
around our halfling and had him peek outside. Noticing nothing wrong with the
area, he climbed through and vanished right before our eyes. No sound, no trace
left behind. The rope attached to him fell to the ground, broken at the point
that didn’t cross through the door. Our dwarf, as brave as he was, wanted to
investigate what happened. So we tied him to one of the poles we were carrying
since it would be easier to control how much of him went through the door.
Weird group right? Yeah I still think so too. We raised the dwarf half way through
the doorway, but nothing happened. Continuing to slowly raise him up, he, like
the others, immediately vanished as soon as his feet cleared the trap door. And
in similar fashion, the pole broke where it hadn’t crossed the door. During
this time, one of our party members somehow convinced one of the conjurers we
saved that the magic ring he was looking for was through the trap door, and off
he went to his presumable death. Deciding to cut our losses, we closed up the
trap door and headed back down the stairs only to find that the doorway that we
previously entered through had disappeared and more stairs leading down had
appeared in its stead. So with no better option we continued down the Orcian
Way. And on it went. We walked down the staircase for what seemed like a few
days. And finally we came to another door that led to an empty room with no
other doors. After a bit of searching around, we found that one of the walls
slid open. We cracked it open just enough to see what was on the other side.
The room on the other side was enormous and filled with hundreds of orcs. We
assumed this was the tenth level of the dungeon because of all the rumors we’ve
heard about the Orcian Way. Either way, we wouldn’t have won if we tried to
fight that many orcs. So instead, the collective mind known as Toast, at least
that’s what we’ll be calling it from now on, had the great idea of convincing
the orcs to join they’re hive mind in an effort to further their ability to
conquer the world. Off Toast went into the orc-filled room to give their speech
about world conquest. And a few minutes later, orcs began to roar, cheering for
Toast. However despite the cheering, only four of the hundreds of orcs were
willing to join Toast. Feeling that the orcs’ bloodlust was dulled a little by
their speech, the rest of us traveled through the door. Unfortunately for me,
the orcs decided to let Toast meet with King Funk if Toast let them eat me.
Because elves taste goods. Sure. And so off we were dragged to meet with King
Funk. Luckily before the feast, Toast was able to convince the king that eating
me would be bad for Toast. So we traded my flesh for the flesh of the two
remaining conjurers that we saved earlier. We didn’t need them anyways.
During the feast, Toast was able to convince King Funk to
join forces with Toast, and so we donned the King with the parasitic butter hat
that caused a being’s mind to be controlled by Toast. Unfortunately for us,
King Funk had an odd reaction; he immediately had a seizure and fell
unconscious. This struck up a lot of doubt in the other orcs, but with some
quick thinking, poles, and rope we were able to use King Funk’s body as a
puppet. After seeing the state the king was in, the shaman of the group came
forward and declared us evil. He began attacking us with magic and nearly
killed one of Toast. But with a little more quick thinking, we all acted like
we were hurt by the attack, including the king. We were able to use this as
leverage to get the orcs to protect us from the shaman. The orcs didn’t want to
hurt the shaman since they believed him to be sacred, but they were willing to
tie him up to prevent him from hurting the king. Afterwards, we distributed
butter hats to all the orcs to get them under the control of Toast. The trolls,
ghouls, wraiths, and roaring demons refused to wear the hats, but agreed to be
a part of our combined army. Eventually King Funk woke up and officially joined
Toast.
So here I sit. On the tenth level of Blackmoor, one of the
most notorious and dangerous dungeons known to exist. Essentially conquered at
this point. Listening to Toast and the orcs talking up a storm about conquering
the world. Did I mention this was my first dungeon?
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