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The Deep Mines

Room

OSE HMS · p.22

Open source p.22

Fossilized city (stuffed with a more elegant age’s detritus). Mine works (modern, drilled through ancient garbage). Living maze (biomechanical, slowly shifting).

  • Explore mine works: Glowing spelunker glyphs and Needle Gnome shrapnel.
  • Examine glyphs: Recent. Faintly magical. Signed Vic Torbin.
  • Follow trail of glyphs: Mark path to bypass region. mining company mercenaries (as 2HD veterans) wait at end.
  • Navigate maze: INT check each watch. • Success: find another path out of the region (see Paths to…). • Failure: party lost. After two consecutive failures, the party discovers the Iron Brain.
  • Search city detritus: Each turn, roll : (1–3) coin-sized ancient widget worth gp, (4) golden widget worth x 20gp, (5) small treasure (page 7), (6) vial of living metal (200gp). 20% chance of attracting a widget golem swarm (see Regional Challenges). Shafts, trolleys, ancient tunnels, dead widgets. Antediluvian pipes, broken pumps, dripstone. Rough veins and arteries, garbage, dead machines.

Paths to…

Because of the shifting tunnels, the region can never be fully explored. Whenever PCs enter, only the path they used is immediately accessible.

Initial Exploration

Dumpster Strata

More mazes (dead, rusted). Plastic cathedral (compacted, vast).

  • Dig around: See search city detritus above.
  • Enter plastic cathedral: Compacted plastinated Purification Era corpses. Stripped of treasures.

Further Exploration

Iron Brain

Glazed tower (glassy, festooned in cables and pipes). Portico (blasted). Shattered stairwell (inside tower, pools of Needle Gnome blood, golem shards).

  • Stairs down to gate room: Bakelite teleporter gate inscribed with alien glyphs. Inactive, operation requires a golem heart. Currently set to Ziggurat of the Stairs (page 34).
  • Stairs up to brain room: Fragments of scattered giant metal brain. Hundreds of platinum logic switches (3 turns to gather, as x 100pp). Jury-rigged repair work (searching reveals hidden backup brain room).
  • Backup brain room (hidden): Chest-sized platinum-and-coral brain (3,000gp) linked to stained glass sarcophagus.
  • Sarcophagus: Cryo-sleeping ancient human named Amanita. Her dreams power the brain. Disrupting backup brain shuts down the living maze, making it possible to explore the region normally. Amanita fled the oppressive, suffocating care of her servant golem in the Purification Bunkers (page 30) many aeons ago.

Regional Challenges

6. Widget golem swarm: Motionless, carpeting the walls and ceilings (as insect swarm, but immune to mundane damage, gas, charm, hold, and sleep). 7. Labyrinth realignment: Region and adjacent paths are again unexplored. 8. Reconnaissance in force: Needle Gnomes (page 11) sweeping area. 9. Revolutionary golems: rebellious servant golems (as wood golem, can be harmed by mundane attacks, but damage is halved).

Collapse

1. Living maze shifts with terrible velocity. Walls spring into existence like guillotines, splitting the party in two (a random number of PCs are split off into a separate party). Explosives, or turns to reunite (one PC may attempt an INT check to halve the time). + to collapse checks. 2. Floor collapses. All PCs fall 20’ (DEX check to avoid injury). Any walls separating PCs break. + to collapse checks. 3. Iron Brain suffers terminal seizure. Thrashing collapses the living maze. All PCs crushed.