The Depthcrawl - The Cyclopean Organ #3

St Joseph's Church, Le Havre, France -  Reginald Van de Velde

My work on the Organ got set back a week unfortunately, work and social engagements and all that. Luckily, the jam deadline also got extended, so I should be good. I've finished the first pass on the main tables, so my plan right now is to get the secondary tables done by the end of this week and then playtest using Xenio's excellent Cairn Funnel rules until I develop my own funnel procedures down the line.

Though progress has been scattered, I feel like I've really gotten a handle on the Organ in putting together these main tables. I still have work to do tightening up some of the entries, and I'm going to be leaning on the treasure and sheet music results to add more of the transformative character development potential I set out as a goal in the first part of these posts. But I'm happy with what I've come up with, and I'm looking forward to running some of my pals through the grinder and seeing what comes out!

Again, not much of this is going to make sense without reading the first couple of posts, but maybe it'll be fun regardless. YMMV!

------------

The Cyclopean Organ crouches atop a hill a few hours walk from the village of Torond. It's silent at the entrance, though the echo of the monumental contraption's last blast still echoes in the villagers' ears. There are two pipes whose mouths lie at ground level, one partially buried but still easily accessible. If the villagers enter through either of these, their starting depth is 0. There's also a vertical pipe with a flue two bodies wide twenty feet up, a moderately difficult climb. If the villagers make the climb and enter through the flue, their starting depth is 2.

Upon entering the Organ, roll 3d6 and add the villagers' depth to each die's result. The first result is their Location. The second result is a Detail specific to their location. The third result is a Random Event that is occurring in the location when they arrive.

On a sheet of paper or shared image, write the starting location at the top. At the bottom, make 18 checkboxes. Let the players see this sheet as you fill it out, and make notes on the map if they like. Let them know they have three hours until the next blast is expected - 18 ten minute turns.

The players have three options:

• They can Stay, taking time to explore a location or take a rest. Let them, and roll another Random Event when it seems right. 
• They can Go Deeper. Add one to their depth and roll a new situation. Add it below the last location on the map, and connect it with a line. If you get a repeat on one of your rolls and feel like you can't spin it into something new, feel free to shift to the result above or below.
• They can Go Back, returning to a previously visited location along an established path. Usually this will be their previous location, but they may discover shortcuts and linking paths in their explorations. They may also want to follow a pipe to its mouth to get a lay of the land or escape - use your judgement and let them do it if it feels right, but remember that the Organ is bizarre and twisting and illogical. Such an attempt may only (somehow, impossibly) lead them deeper into its depths.

Whichever option they choose, mark off a turn. When their final turn is marked, something terrible will happen. Feel free to remind them often.

The Organ is by turns claustrophobic and cavernous, utterly silent and then echoing with the slightest whisper amplified. It smells like ancient dust and just-polished metal and sharp blood and moldy rot. It is bizarre and illogical and self-contradictory. When you describe a location, flesh it out with whatever descriptors bubble up from your subconscious. Those descriptions are, by your speaking them into being, accurate and true to the Organ's spirit. Believe in their reality, and play off of them to build the Organ into your own labyrinthine monstrosity.

Locations

• 1 Pirate Flop. A couple of bunks, empty bottles, the cold remains of a fire. The inhabitants seem to have bailed out in a hurry last night when the first blast played. There are 1d4 pieces of mundane gear left behind; rope, torches, spikes, or something else broadly useful from the starting gear table. On a four, roll for Treasure instead.
• 2 Soprano Pipe. The pipe squeezes in, tight enough that the villagers have to shuffle through sideways single-file. A tiny flue opens a ways ahead into daylight. It's barely big enough for a child to fit their head through. There's a short drop from the flue to a much larger flue visibly deeper in the twist of pipes - if the villagers can find a way through, +2 Depth.
• 3 Reed Chamber. A thin strip of metal protrudes from the wall at waist height, nearly reaching the opposite wall. The reed is delicate, the edge sharp, and the whole thing difficult to spot from the side if you're rushing through. It can cut anything a sharp knife could if enough force is applied, and deals d6 damage if blundered into. While the Organ is sounding the reed vibrates, playing a throaty note. While vibrating, the reed slices cleanly through just about anything you could imagine. This will damage the reed beyond repair, and earn anyone involved the animosity of the Reedkeepers.
• 4 Clogged Pipe, the passage choked with a pile of bodies. Reedkeepers mostly, their sadly broken bodies resembling birds and rodents and skeletal fiends all at once. It takes two Turns to clear the pipe, or it can be cleared instantly by striking a key on a console to blow the blockage out. Otherwise, the villagers will have to turn back and seek another path.
• 5  Sheet Music Library. Niches built into the walls hold dozens of sheets of rough, felt-like paper. They're awkwardly large and mostly faded. Staying and searching thoroughly results in 1d3 legible sheets found (Roll on Sheet Music table). The writing forms geometries that make eyes water and heads swim. The pages are illuminated with unsettling images.
• 6 Reedkeeper Roost, an enormous spire of a pipe, pockmarked with niches for the crawling Reedkeepers to nest in. Two spiral staircases provide access to all levels. Glimpses of light are visible at the top of the pipe, glinting at the edges of the cap that shelters the residents here. There are few Reedkeepers left, and many are sickly. Searching the niches for a turn has an equal chance of turning up an emaciated, helpless Reedkeeper or an abandoned Treasure. The Reedkeeper is frightened, but will happily answer questions in exchange for food and kindness.
• 7 A Green Space. The pipe opens out onto the grass, deep in the tangle of the Organ, and several more pipes have their mouths here. The spot is completely enclosed in curving metal and wood, but there's a small gap. The villagers can crawl their way through over a turn, if they need a shortcut to and from the outside world.
• 8 Giant Console. The entire floor of this room is an arrangement of keys in spiraling patterns, with thin walkways between. To attempt an even rudimentary performance requires athletic leaps and carefully watching one's step. Playing any Sheet Music requires a DEX rather than WIL save. Navigating the room without playing notes may require a DEX save as well, if the villager is under pressure, and stepping on keys without intent is sure to result in a Glitch. Any Longfolk here will use the console to their advantage, playing the most useful tune from the Sheet Music table when an opportunity presents itself, slithering their curling limbs across the keys dexterously.
• 9 Music Scriptorium, a low, cavernous room full of long, oversized worktables. They're covered in desiccated parchment and dried-up pigments in dusty jars. There are d6 legible copies of sheet music scattered among the blank and faded parchments. At the center of the room lies a large brass contraption shaped like a bell, with a thick glass porthole on the latched door. It's a sound isolation chamber, and within sits the Minstrel, doused in sweat, their head lolling drunkenly, a golden amulet around their neck shaped like a lower jaw full of broad, flat, grinning teeth - the control key for the Master Console. If the chamber is opened, the faint ghost of chiming tones escapes into the room and beyond, echoing down into the pipes of the Organ in ever louder, cascading clangs. The Minstrel is insensate, shuddering at the slightest noise, and will not leave of their own volition. If a villager enters the chamber to retrieve the Minstrel or the key, the Minstrel will spring into action, pulling the intruder into the chamber, after which the door will swing violently closed, a shutter sliding down over the porthole. After a turn, the door will open again, and the Minstrel will be gone, leaving only the villager. The villager can no longer speak, only make beautiful, musical fluting noises. They understand all speech in any language, and can create masterful music with their new voice that can Charm, Deafen, Frenzy, Pacify, or create an Auditory Illusion at will, casting the appropriate spell and taking fatigue as they would using a spellbook. Somewhere, a famed instrument maker begins to seek out the villager and their miraculous vocal cords, the artisan determined to harvest them and use them to create his greatest masterpiece.
• 10 Pipe Terminus - the pipe reaches its end here, near the peak of the Organ's upper reaches. It's a hell of a drop, and the only options are to turn back or try to climb in another pipe's end. If they choose the latter and survive the climb, roll 2d6 to determine the villagers' new, random depth.
• 11 Fleshshaping Studio. The floor and walls of this location are streaked with aged brown bloodstains. Other than this, the place seems like a well-appointed artist's workplace, stuffed with elaborate rugs, fine furniture, and bookshelves full of enormous, beautifully bound tomes full of strange script and detailed diagrams of impossible, horrific anatomies. In the center, with several disturbingly long chaise lounges arranged to face it, is a mass of flesh that must have been human once - humans more likely, given the quantity. It has the air of a pile of discarded garments, no longer needed by whatever emerged from within them. On an easel just beside the pile is an oiled leather satchel full of gleaming, twisted metal tools. They fit ill in human hands, pinching and gouging the flesh of the fingers in their working, removing a point of DEX from the wielder each time they are used. They can be used inexpertly to agonizingly shape the flesh of a living being to better suit a specific task - the sculptor can exchange their subject's STR and DEX points one-for-one, and specify a way they sculpt their body for one specific task (leaping, pulling a heavy load, bending bars and lifting gates, etc.) - they will no longer need to roll a save to succeed at this task, within reason. After an hour or so, these amateurish alterations will fail catastrophically, reducing the subject's STR and DEX scores to 1 and leaving them deprived until they've undertaken prolonged convalescence. The specific modification made will remain in place and the subject will never heal back to their natural shape, unless the sculptor uses the tools once more to make them whole for an hour. After undertaking this grim work repeatedly (say, a dozen times or more) the sculptor will find themselves an expert fleshshaper, able to change their subjects permanently and without the inevitable miscarriage. They will also find themselves obsessively driven to pursue their art, and unable to hide their disdain for the lives of the people around them, their comrades included.
• 12 Master Console, strangely sized for humans but scaled beyond belief with thousands of keyboards, levers, pedals, and pull-cords, all stacked and intertwined with one another. In front of a comfortable seat at the center of this galaxy of controls there is a golden slot in the wooden frame of the console, shaped like an upper jaw full of broad, flat, grinning teeth. This is the slot for the control key that the Minstrel holds in the Music Scriptorium, and inserting the key will return the Master Console to manual control. Until it's re-inserted, the default program will continue to play, and when the final turn is marked the catastrophic dirge will reach its peak, destroying everyone and everything in many miles.
• 13+ Wind Generator, the source of the Organ's breath. It's an enormous construction of glistening flesh and gleaming metal plates, resembling something between a lung and a heart and a boiler. Warm gusts of air huff out of metal grates bolted to the walls of muscle. It belches aerated blood if pierced. It will visibly heal any minor damage done to it in a matter of moments, fibers of muscle and mucus bridging wounds. If damaged, it will groan out wheezing shrieks of agony from unseen vocal chords, summoning a Longfolk to see what the trouble is within the turn. Only serious, traumatic harm will wound it irrevocably and silence the Organ for good.

Details

• 1 Broken Console, the keys thoroughly smashed, obviously intentionally. Attempting to play anything on this can only result in a Glitch. 
• 2 Decorative Inscriptions in the metal of the pipe wall. They depict the hills surrounding the Organ, and the monumental tunnels and cities beneath. Longfolk are depicted slumbering here and there. In a chamber many fathoms deeper than the rest rests an enormous creature that seems to be made up of twisted, tangled Longfolk limbs. A single, huge face with grinning teeth and half-opened eyes lies at its center.
• 3 Pirate Stash, wrapped in oilcloth. It's a cache of supplies, food, rations, a few pieces of gear as suitable for dungeoneering as for sailing. There's also some quality loot. Roll for Treasure twice, adding +2 to the second result. The second result is contained in a lockbox that's rigged to detonate a bundle of dynamite tucked directly beneath it if it's opened or disturbed. The next time Pirates are encountered, they recognize any visible loot taken as theirs and are instantly hostile.
• 4 Fungal Growth across the walls, casting a pale violet luminescence down the pipe. It's caustic to the touch, dealing d4 damage per round if touched. It can be stowed safely in a glass jar and used as a lantern, but scraping it free from the pipe creates a puff of spores that cause torpor and mild auditory hallucinations - inhalation causes d8 WIL damage.
• 5 Human-sized Console, functional and well maintained. Ivory keys, gleaming metal, dark polished wood pedals and stops. A dusty, comfortable bench sits in front of it. There's a 3-in-6 chance that a piece of Sheet Music is already laid out above the keyboard, waiting to be played.
• 6 Pipe Flue, a chiseled opening to release air and sound a note. Roll a d4 to see where it leads - 1: Out of the Organ safely, onto flat, solid ground. 2: Into a wall of soil, buried beneath the earth. If the villagers want to waste enough time excavating, eventually it opens out into one of the cavern-cities of the Longfolk, hundreds of them hibernating within. 3: Directly into another pipe - they return to a location two levels back. 4: High and clear, into the open air hundreds of feet above the ground. Some serious, dangerous climbing may lead them to another entrance on a neighboring pipe. Add +3 to depth if they make it.
• 7 Exposed Action, the levers and pulleys that activate the appropriate pipes based on the keys pressed on consoles throughout the Organ. They jut from the walls, and occasionally jerk into and out of position without warning. Anything or anyone that's in the way of the action when it activates is crushed. This will happen eventually if the villagers wait for a turn, can be timed with the press of the appropriate key on any given console, or has a 1-in-6 chance of happening by freak happenstance in the split second anything is placed in the way of the action.
• 8 Broken Joint, a three-way join of pipes with a wide crack right across the villagers' path and the center of this location, revealing a precipitous drop to the ground below (if the Location rolled seems suitably altitudinous). Trying to leap across means a DEX save. The two other exits are on the opposite side of the crack. One leads deeper, the other leads back 1d4 levels to a previous location they've visited.
• 9 Drawbars, three long metal poles of varying thickness running along the floor and disappearing into a wooden panel on the wall. Each has a polished bone handle at the end. They correspond to the volume of a group of notes - the thinnest to the Treble register, the thickest to the Bass register, and the Alto in between. If a drawbar is pushed all the way into the wall, its corresponding blast (as detailed in the Random Events table) will no longer occur, muted by the control. If one is pulled all the way out, its corresponding blast sounds immediately. If all three are left fully pushed or pulled, the next time the villagers return to this location a Longfolk will be there readjusting the Organ's levels.
• 10 Pool of Clear Slime, wide and deep with a spiral pattern visible on the bottom. Roll for Treasure (add +2 to the result) - it's also visible, at the center of the spiral. A villager that immerses themselves in the pool must succeed on a STR save to power their way through the viscous liquid. Survivors will find over the next few turns the bones in their limbs begin to soften and elongate, leaving them with very stretchy, bendy arms and legs. For the rest of their lives they will dream of the dark, echoing halls of the Longfolk beneath the grasslands, and feel uncomfortable under open sunlight.
• 11 Reedkeeper Altar, a sorry thing made of metal scrapings and long splinters of wood pulled from the body of the Organ, forming a graceful, skeletal humanoid figure that's somehow unmistakably maternal. She instills a feeling of calm and comfort in the villagers if they come near. Her fingers are made of long severed index claws from many Reedkeepers - she has dozens on each hand. There's a slot missing on her left hand. If a villager's index finger is removed from their hand and placed in this slot, their other index finger will grow into a long, deadly-sharp claw (d8, ignores armor). Any Reedkeepers befriended by the villagers will eagerly share this secret with them in vague terms, and urge them to seek the Mother of Claws' blessing through sacrifice.
• 12 Failed Fleshshaping, an individual sculpted and then abandoned by Longfolk hands. They're viscerally distorted, barely alive, and will pass shortly unless the villagers intervene with magical healing or Longfolk fleshshaping. Roll d6 to determine who the individual is. 1-3: Pirate snatched by Longfolk from among their comrades as they fled. They can give directions to a Pirate Stash on the condition a portion is returned to their family in Torond, but the villagers will have to backtrack d4 levels and go deeper from there to find it. 4-5: Reedkeeper, experimented on cruelly for no good reason. Though they are afraid, they have clarity in their final moments. They beg the villagers to destroy the Organ. They give thorough directions from this location to the Music Scriptorium, Master Console, and Wind Generator. They know that the Minstrel is in the Scriptorium and has the key to stop the Master Console's default program. 6: A Longfolk, hedonistically reveling in its new shape even as it breathes its last. One of its arms lurks in the shadows, still functioning normally - it will try to grab a villager in its last moment and belch up the black ichor of its life force onto the unfortunate victim. This villager will change over the next few hours into a Longfolk themselves, maintaining their personality but having all of their stats replaced with the Longfolk standard.
• 13+ Longfolk Burrow, a low tunnel with slick, slimy walls, leading deep into the earth, and eventually to a slumbering Longfolk city and near-certain death. A gilded cabinet a dozen feet down the tunnel holds a Treasure (add +2 to the result) - whether a Longfolk lurks in the curve just beyond the cabinet, waiting for the villagers to take the bait, is for the Warden to decide.

Random Events

• 1 A Crack Opens underneath the feet of the lead villager with a shudder, leading to a deeper pipe. Save to avoid a fatal fall. If the villagers explore the deeper pipe, add +3 Depth.
• 2 A Pianissimo Note sounds, more a gust of air than anything. Exposed flames are extinguished.
• 3 The Organ lets loose a Treble Blast. Fragile items that aren't stowed in a soft place shatter. Ears ring until the end of the next turn, making soft noises all but impossible to hear.
• 4 1d4 Pirates, collecting a stash before they flee for their ship. They're not looking for a fight, but are impatient and scared, and may turn to violence if their time is wasted. One of them is particularly clammy and sweaty, surreptitiously keeping one of their arms hidden - they've been exposed to the Longfolk's flesh-altering slime, and they're afraid they'll be put to the blade if the villagers or their comrades notice.
• 5 An Alto Blast echoes through the Organ. The pipes ring with the vibration, and 1d4 fragments of metal and wood drop from the darkness above without warning spread out over the next turn (DEX save or be crushed to death).
• 6 A single Reedkeeper, startled and disoriented by the revival of the Organ. They're more likely to flee than anything, and it will take an especially gentle approach on the part of the villagers' to keep them there long enough to exchange words.
• 7 Signs of Longfolk passage - walls and ceiling dripping with slime, a long dragging scuffmark across the floor, perhaps half of a Reedkeeper, bisected by what must have been large blunt teeth.
• 8 d4 Reedkeepers, dutifully scraping and reshaping a brass reed protruding from the floor. Someone has trod on it recently, and they're extremely suspicious of the villagers.
• 9 A single Pirate, a wrapped Treasure tucked under their arm. They're hopelessly lost and frantic to get out. They'll offer anything but the treasure they hold, and turn on the villagers if it looks advantageous.
• 10 A Bass Blast shakes the foundation of the Organ after a few moments of shuddering by way of warning. Exposed flames are extinguished. Everyone is knocked to the ground and takes d6 damage unless they brace or find shelter. Critical damage leaves a villager's inner ear damaged, lowering their DEX to 1. Fatal damage results in cranial explosions.
• 11  A Longfolk, more curious than aggressive. It stays in the dark, stalking the villagers until it can slip an arm overhead and pluck one of them away from the fringes of the group unseen.
• 12 A Pirate Captain, feral with fear. They sit atop a cache of explosives - d6 kegs, all well-maintained, dry and reliable. If they don't make it out of the Organ and back to their ship, someone is bound to come looking for whoever put an end to their villainy in the months to come.
• 13+ A pair of Longfolk, out to annihilate the villagers down to the last of their number. The dirge must not be interrupted.

So there it is, a first pass - I feel like I may need to rewrite/reorder several of these entries after playtesting to make things flow a little better, but for now I'm pleased with what I've got.

With any luck, I'll be back before the end of the week with the secondary tables - see you then!