A Primer on the Abyssal Dungeon

A Primer on the Abyssal Dungeon

The Short Version: This huge dungeon was designed as a prison, with seven locks of increasing difficulty reach its central prison chamber. The party believes that the real king of Zyan is imprisoned there, with a powerful imposter ruling in his place. The party has opened 3 of those locks, and is currently in the area beyond the Hydraulic Portal (the third lock). Each "level" of the dungeon in some way echoes some aspect of Zyan, the flying city of the dreamlands that sits above it. The area the party is in seems to be a set of tunnels for workers with pipes and clockwork puzzle elements. 

 
The Much Longer Version: To really understand the current dungeon you need to a bit of campaign background. It’s a major location in the setting. Here’s everything you need to know—at least given the current state of the party’s knowledge. If you read this, you should be up to speed.

Zyan above, the flying city that rests on the rock from the bottom of which hangs the white jungle, is always ruled by a monarch who bears the Metaphysical Crown. Whenever a new line of monarchs is crowned in Zyan a new metaphysical crown is forged. But owing to an ancient curse, the creation of a new metaphysical crown always casts a crooked shadow, as dark as the Metaphysical Crown is luminous. As the final blows are stuck on the metaphysical crown, its twin, the anti-metaphysical crown, appears somewhere in the city. The one who dons it gains terrible powers as the Hidden King, a secret anti-monarch who rules a Hidden Court bent on the ruin of the Visible King and Zyan.

When the party first began exploring the white jungle, the upside down jungle that hangs from the bottom of the flying island that Zyan sits atop, they looted an ancient Cenotaph in the lightless brambles (level 1). It was the funerary shrine to the Lady Shirishanu, concubine to Lathanon, the last of the Incandescent Kings. In this tomb they discovered a lost work of poetry by the Lady Shirishanu, titled In The Light of Other Moons. I wrote about it here. 

The poem tells of the exploits of the rogue Holaxes who was brought back to life after a single night of wandering in the Hinterlands of the afterlife. Its story is set in motion by his insatiable hunger to see again the strange light of the Necromantic Moon, the singing moon of the dead. Holaxes seeks a dreadful place, a prison called the Abyssal Dungeon, where he has learned that a piece of the Necromantic Moon shines in the world of the living.

The second half of the poem is taken up with a description of the seven locks he must struggle to overcome in order to penetrate the deepest depths of the dungeon. In the poem, the locks are metaphors different aspects of Zyan, and for the puzzles of the human condition. They become more abstract and metaphysical as one penetrates the dungeon. The poem breaks off as Holaxes struggles with the seventh lock, the Cancerous Portal. The party has experienced strange echoes of the poem in reality, and have some reason to believe that the poem may be exerting an effect on reality through the sheer force of Shirishanu’s fancy.

But none of this had practical relevance until many (20?) sessions later when the party discovered (they believe) that the current monarch of Zyan is in fact imprisoned in the heart of the Abyssal Dungeon, and that the Hidden King sits on his throne as an imposter. 

The party has, off and on again for a long time, been penetrating the dungeons. So far they have opened the first lock, the Sordid Latch, beyond which they discovered a sordid and unpleasant terrain, echoing aspects and locations of Zyan Above, and haunted by various shades, and murder puppets, and stalked by the Lost, impoverished zealots of the Hidden King's cause.

They explored it pretty thoroughly, and managed to open the Gleaming Seal, the second of the doors. The area beyond the Gleaming Seal consisted of a dilapidated mansion and family tombs. It was stalked by  living statues and fallen paladin servitors of the Hidden King. After a great deal of exploration they discovered the location of the third lock, and at long last opened it two sessions ago. 

Having opened the third lock, the Hydraulic Portal, the party is now one session into the third level of the dungeon. Here they have discovered a workmanlike underground service area housing strange gears and pipes. The party does not yet know what hazards stalk this are. They hope to push forward to find the fourth door, the Optick Prison.