Monsieur Zénopuce's Holiday

Built by Zénopuce to store his magical items (now part of the company's legendary depot in level 23). The empty shelves have been gathering dust for centuries. The staff forgot about this room long ago.

▶ Special effect. None. Clients weren't expected to find this room.

→ Empty shelves. Not quite: A large crystal ball sticks out from the wall behind.
→ Crystal ball. Encased in a rosewood frame sculpted with naked nymphs, it comes to life when touched. See sidebar.

Allô, Allô?

The crystal ball shows the blurred silhouette of an old, bespectacled man and the connection is often entirely cut off. Every hour, the hosts can speak d4 sentences, but Zénopuce's answers are somehow shifted to the next question or sentence. Use one of the sentences below to answer the first one. The goal is to make the conversation frustrating for everyone, but to let clever players glean some information. If you choose to add a risk of the archmage returning during the mission (see sidebar, p. 39), roll the risk die for each hourly chat.

• "Hello? It's me… What in the Nine Hells are you lazy gits doing?"
• "I'm running to make my connection but I'll be home soon. The place better be spotless!"
• "I should have avoided the thoroughfare. Wait… tunnel."
• "Yes but go check the pentagram again. I don't want another incident."
• "I hope you didn't try to feed Bastiel again?"

Walls covered with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. A comfy chair with a small table and an articulated lamp.

▶ Special effect: Books shake individually, their pages whispering as if having a secret conversation.

→ Bookshelves. Along with some items, filled with books of very little interest (about half of them are theatre props Dungeon, Inc. bought from the orcs who massacred Master Myles traveling troupe).
→ Lamp. Uses a gem (easily removed) enchanted to cast magic light when touched.
→ Items. Here to entice clients:

• Wand of animate dead (Δ6). Use must concentrate to animate a dead body gesture by gesture, like a puppet. For undead creatures, roll a d6 under their number of hit dice to resist.
• Returning silver dagger. When more than 1 meter from its sheath, it rolls towards it, making considerable noise.
• Oil philter (Δ6). Makes the drinker slippery (movement doubled, disadvantage to grapple) but flammable (fire damage doubled).
• Silver ingots worth 500 gp but heavy.

A long room built to house a large table where Zénopuce could work on all his experiments at the same time. Marketing only added skulls and symbols on the walls, a broken caiman-folk skeleton, and a small shrine to Orsuk, demon-goddess of the undead. Next to the northern door (to D) hangs a black iron cage. The southwest corner is filled with rubble.

▶ Special effect: Test tubes emit purple smoke that gathers into a grinning demonic skull (a harmless illusion).

→ Large table. Covered with alchemical equipment (cauldrons, retorts, test tubes, mortars, etc.) An athanor (an alchemist's furnace) is still burning hot. Inside is a piece of elemental coal forever white-hot. A trained character could make various substances here, such as a rat repellent.
→ Cage. Contains Bastiel, Zénopuce's guardian familiar. Cherub with black feathery wings and large puppy eyes. Says and does anything to be freed (flies off to the kitchen – E) or fed (turns into a gluttony demon called Bestial, bursting out of his cage).

BASTIEL, hungry and deceptive imp. HD 1 (2 hp), ARM –, ATT 2 x claws d3, SP flight, immune to magic, turns into Bestial d4 turns after eating even a crumb, ML Δ6.
Wants: to eat, to be free, and to get back at the servants who kept him hungry for centuries.

Bestial, blubbery gluttony demon. HD 6 (39 hp), ARM blubber Δ8, ATT 2 x claws, SP invisibility, turns into Bastiel d4 turns after eating his fill, ML Δ8.

→ Southwest corner. Under the rubble is a giant rat tunnel leading to J. Just big enough for a human to crawl into.

Octogonal room that was once furnished with exquisite taste. A body lies on a blood-soaked fainting couch next to a tray of moldy triangle sandwiches.

▶ Special effect: Scattered piles of bones form rabbit, cat, squirrel skeletons and dance in a row around the furniture for a few minutes before falling apart again.

→ Once furnished. Comfy seats, foot stools, gueridons, moth-eaten like the hangings. As well as the ubiquitous skulls, Marketing added spooky paintings of witches' sabbats and dancing skeletons.
→ Body. Sister Odilia, dead a few days from slashing wounds. The staff have politely arranged this polite guest on the couch and offered her tea, then forgotten about her. Odilia's equipment: Half-plate armor Δ8, beautiful silver shield engraved with the smiling face of goddess Amaltha, heavy crossbow d8 (Δ6 bolts), blessed flanged mace d8 (plus Δ8 damage vs undead), cure wounds potion Δ8

The dream kitchen of any foodie. Southern half: top-of-the-line ovens and hobs, wooden countertops, knives, pots and pans of the best quality hanging from hooks. Northern half: a large pantry pillaged long ago, but there are some items on the shelves. A row of large barrels.

▶ Special effect: A smell like a dead cat marinated into a chamber pot for a week before being set on fire comes from the oven. Dissipates when it is investigated.

→ Dream kitchen. Not as disused as the rest of the living areas. The pirates from F sometimes make crêpes here.
→ Some items. The pirates use the shelves for some of their stuff: coils of rope, neatly rolled fishing nets, folded sails.
→ Barrels. Behind them is the trapped passageway to the beach (F), used for deliveries in Zénopuce's time.
→ Trapped. A tripwire triggers a rain of empty boxes and earthenware. d4 damage, and the pirates in F are alerted; d6+1 gnoll skeletons come to investigate a few minutes later.

A miles-wide cave home to the smallest of the Great Chthonian Lakes. A beach of coarse gray sand with a pier on the south end and a passageway to the kitchen (E) on the north wall. Two rowboats pulled onto the beach and beyond the pier, a dozen silhouettes around a small campfire.

→ Rowboats. Hidden under a tarp in one of them, the pirates' latest loot: a sack with 450 gp, a strongbox with 500 gp worth of crimson pearls.
→ Campfire. The pirates came here to bury the treasure but had to hide it when the Pious Questors came from the kitchen, wounded after their fight against the gnolls who killed Sister Odilia.
→ Pious Questors. Still wounded, working hard to convince the "sailors" to join their quest for vengeance.
→ Pirates: 12 plus captain Rudd (see sidebar). Patching up the adventurers, hoping to send them back to the aerie so they can bury their loot in H. Remaining polite for fear of their treasure being discovered.

Rubb's aging pirates

Rubb the Infrared has raided the Great Chthonian Lakes for decades. A former partner with Dungeon, Inc., he and his aging crew have been hiding the fruit of their plunder by the aerie (it is buried in H). They plan to retire on a sunny Bright Outside beach. Surprised on their way to bury their latest loot, they have been camping with the Pious Questors in F and politely eluding the topic of helping with their holy mission.

RUBB THE INFRARED, welcoming, aging pirate. HD 5 (20 hp), ARM magical studded leather Δ8 (repairs itself by one step before a fight), ATT two-handed cutlass d8* or flintlock pistols 2 x Δ8 (he has 4 loaded pistols), SP sweary rally (reroll a MOR die), Abysmal Whistle (see below), ML Δ8.

PIRATES (12). HD 2 (9 hp), ARM leather and jewelry Δ8, ATT cutlass or axe d8 or blunderbuss Δ6 (area), SP acrobatic, ML Δ6. Names: Pointy Lana, Ruppert, Nalango, Looty Mary, Coco, The Engineer, Breakbone Bill, Warts, Admiral Amy, Elf Joe, Seven-Toes, Trumpet Face, Jenn the Climb, Dwarf Joe.

A strong underground torrent ends here in the lake. The tentacrab, a crustacean abomination the size of a frigate, was placed in the lake by Mr. Noir himself to discourage underworld denizens from approaching the dungeon via the lakes. It stays here to catch whoever and whatever is delivered from K by the torrent.

→ Lake. 2-in-6 chance of being attacked by the tentacrab every minute spent in the water.

TENTACRAB. HD 14 (90 hp), ARM shell Δ12, ATT 3 x pincers d10, 3 x tentacles (grapples then 2d6 each turn), SP reach, amphibious, camouflaged against the lakebed, calmed by the Abysmal Whistle (see sidebar), ML Δ10

The Abysmal Whistle

A golden instrument that calms down the tentacrab (see G) but only if five notes are played on it. The crew think the melody is sufficient, but the truth is that it must be played with the whistle to be effective. Formerly owned by Mr. Noir, entrusted to Captain Rudd, who lied about losing it when his contract with Dungeon, Inc. ended. Recovering it is worth a favor, while keeping it may attract the Overseer's direct wrath.

On the other side of the torrent's mouth, barely visible in the darkness. Large green mushrooms everywhere. A treasure cache containing the result of decades of hard piracy labor, under a trapdoor hidden under the sand.

→ Mushrooms. Used for Zénopuce's potions. Breath the spores: CON check or fall in a nightmare filled sleep for d4 hours.
→ Cache. A natural cavity contains a god-king's ransom (250,000 gp in ingots, jewelry, and coins) and a spooky altar. Would need five oxcarts to carry.
→ Altar. Made of fused humanoid bones and dedicated to the Black Flag Saint, a minor god of pirates. Protects the treasure from thieves: a non-pirate taking but a silver piece gets a black mark in the shape of a skull on the back of their left hand (or corresponding appendage). Any rogue, thief, or privateer is duty bound to make such a traitor pay.

A large room divided into cells by rusty bars. Scattered bones here and there. The stink of refuse wafts over from a pile of detritus in the southernmost cell.

▶ Special effect: Barely audible moans from ghostly prisoners.

→ Bones. Regularly cannibalized for spare parts by the staff and mercenaries.
→ Detritus. Hides a passage to the rat tunnels as well as 2d6 hungry rodents.

GIANT RATS (2d6). HD 1 (3 hp), ARM –, ATT bite d4, SP shaky plague (CON check after the fight or lose d10 DEX points at the rate of 1 per day until magically cured), ML Δ4

A way to get from the gaols (I) to the kitchen (C) if one is willing to crawl, meeting 1d4-2 giant rats at each intersection. Nimelah's flute (from the gym – M) would be handy here.

A grand room with marble columns, three pools linked by sculpted fountains representing masked demons. A strong stream of water bursts through the west wall, ruining the atmosphere and turning the room into a ford crossing. On the other side is a dark archway. If she hasn't been encountered before, Aglia the skeleton cook (p. 35) comes through the archway to gather water, then obliviously walks back out while most of the water drips through her rusted-through cauldron.

▶ Special effect: Hypnotic patterns in the light from fluorescent fungi growing on the walls (harmless, but you can ask for a WIS check anyway).

→ Masked demons. Actually shapely fauns and naiads; grinning, horned wooden masks added by Marketing.
→ West wall. Pressure from the water broke the stonework years ago.
→ Crossing. Jumping from a bath to a broken column to a (purposely) fallen statue require a DEX check. Falling into the water without a rope means being carried away to G and possibly eaten by the tentacrab.

For a man several centuries old, Zénopuce takes great care of his physical shape. His massage and exercise room is well appointed (dumbbells and other weights, bars, pommel horse, etc.). The redesign added torture implements, black wall hangings, sinister candelabra, and non-figurative humanoid bone statuary. The overall effect is oddly threatening when coming up the stairs.

▶ Special effect: A programmed poltergeist animates loose objects into a dangerous whirlwind (DEX check or 1d6 damage).

→ Torture implements. Some make great weapons. Among them, a magical copper tin whistle (Nilemah's Flute: repels all vermin, giant rats included, 20m away while it is played – Δ6 charges).
→ Stairs. Stone. Down to M and up to N.

Down a flight of stone stairs are the wizard's wine cellars, redecorated as run-of-the-mill haunted crypts, complete with black coffins and embalmed giant bats hanging from the cobweb-covered ceilings. The skeletons sat against the walls have canine skulls. Feral Firouz (p. 35) is here as well if she hasn't been encountered before.

▶ Special effect: The prop coffins lined against the wall shake as if their occupants are about to burst out of them.

→ Stairs. In a niche under the staircase is a forgotten crate of Château Mordor, a rare bloodwine (six bottles each worth 250 gp).
→ Canine skulls. 2d6 gnoll skeletons in rest mode. Slowly animate as soon as someone walks in.

Zénopuce's luxury yet sparse bedroom (large round bed with ceiling mirror, sober desk, a couple chairs) didn't survive Marketing's decorators. Crimson wall hangings aplenty, lamps in the shape of interlaced incubi and succubi, and a striking series of portraits of the necromancer's fake ancestors. The place has been thoroughly ransacked by the Pious Questors on their way down the stairs. If he hasn't been encountered before, Nerbert the skeleton majordomo (p. 35) is absently dusting here.

▶ Special effect: The temperature goes down enough for frost to gather on surfaces.

→ Stairs. Down to L and up to O.
→ Desk. A secret drawer on the right side contains three magically sealed envelopes.

• Magically sealed. d10 damage from caustic runes.
• Contents. The employment contracts for Aglia, Firouz and her gnolls, and Nerbert. Destroying the documents turns the skeletons to dust and frees their souls.

The stairs climb to a stone room whose walls, floor, and ceiling are covered with runic circles and pentagrams of all sizes and shapes. For once, marketing decided that "less is more" and left the room as it was. They even left the various pamphlets for planar holidays pinned to the double doors in the north wall. Apart from disarming the trap on the doors, the clients have wisely avoided to touch anything.

▶ Special effect: None.

→ Stairs. Going down to M.
→ Pentagrams. Used for protection, summonings, and divination. The largest is a teleportation circle. This is how Zénopuce will come back.
→ Doors. The client entrance. They lead to a winding stairwell that leads to the Bright Outside.
→ Trap. A wire-triggered alchemist's grenade (fiery explosion for 3d6 damage, area).