These maps were an early experiment using Copic markers. When I found the file today, the date on the file was 25 July 2020, five years before I posted this.
Here’s a 2-point perspective drawing to explain the architecture of the place. I made a bunch of mistakes on this drawing, and it’s pushing the bounds of what a 2-point drawing can do. I fixed some of the mistakes and added some shading in Photoshop to make it clearer. Birds eye floor plans are below.
Once a temple for fungus people, the place has seen better days. The ceiling is unstable and has collapsed in several places, making navigation treacherous. Further rockfalls could occur with the slightest provocation.
The air is damp and musty in this whole dungeon. The middle and upper levels are quite dark.
Middle Level
The entrance is in the middle of the south end and opens onto a large hall, which is the middle level of this dungeon. To the east of the entrance, a passage leads to a stairway that goes up to the upper level, but a rockfall has blocked this passage.
The walls of the main hall on the middle level are rendered with a lime-based plaster on which is painted a mural. Despite the long-lasting properties of the plaster, rising damp and mould have damaged much of it. It’s hard to make out what the mural depicts due to the damage, but if you look very hard, you can see that the gist of it shows the ascent and corrination of some kind of fungus person.
Water falls from the upper level onto the floor here, where it drains away quickly through small cracks in the floor.
Upper Level
Two bridges cross over the main hall from the upper level, and it is this upper level that must be accessed before descending to the lowest level. (I think I was playing a lot of Skyrim when I drew this map. It’s a common feature of dungeons in that game).
A crack in the wall of the upper level has allowed a small spring through the wall, and water runs down a short hall before cascading down to the middle level, where it soaks through cracks in the floor to the lower level.
At the top of the stairs that lead to the bottom-most level, coloured lights can be seen at the bottom of the stairs, and the faint sound of laughter can be heard.
Lower Level
Five humanoid forms, about 7 feet tall, are lounging around against the walls and piles of rockfall. Light emanates from their caps. The lights keep colour shifting, making the room a kaleidoscope of colour. These mushroom people are giggling and ejecting little clouds of spores in the shapes of animals, furniture, or just patterns. If one of the mushroom people makes a particularly good shape, they all burst out laughing and send forth little clouds of some other sparkly spores.
There is a mixture of euphoric and hallucinogenic spores in this room, which makes it tricky to navigate the room without falling into the same condition as the mushroom people and giggling and laughing at everything. Also, it’s best not to upset the mushroom people. They wouldn’t appreciate having their fun interrupted.
Water leaks down here from above and pools on the ground, forming a little stream that runs down a flight of stairs into an adjacent ceremonial hall to the south.
In the large ceremonial hall, water has pooled to about knee deep. Toadstools grow in the alcoves of this room, radiating a dim light. These toadstools can “switch off and on”, either radiating dim light or going dark at the first hint of trouble. If they detect movement, they will eject a dense miasma of spores that creates a supernatural zone of darkness around them.
A small mound sits slightly above the water level in the centre of the flooded hall. Numerous tiny toadstools grow peacefully on the mound, but as soon as it detects the slightest vibrations in the water, the “mound” rises to its full 2-meter height and reveals itself to be an ancient Mycelium Host. The Host’s roots, or Hypha, are spread throughout all the floors on the lower level of this dungeon. The Host can disappear into the hypha network and reappear almost instantly anywhere in the rooms that the hypha reaches. The Host can also command the hypha to entangle a target by growing up around it. If this encounter progresses to combat, the Host can summon the Fungus People from the previous room, assuming they haven’t already been killed.
On the altar at the far end of the ceremonial hall is a sandstone tablet that describes a ritual to imbue a creature with the spores required to grant them the powers of the Mycelium Host.
The sandstone tablet looks like it was old when this temple was built, making it particularly ancient. It has been damaged by the passage of time, but a suitably skilled and patient person might be able to decipher it. Just be careful how you handle it. It’s likely to break if not handled carefully.
A Mycelium Host begins without any outward signs of change. It’s only after years of being infected with the spores that the host begins to show physical signs of the infection. Early stage Hosts gain few powers apart from being seen as friendly to fungus-based entities, who will typically ignore the host. In time, this develops into the ability to fully communicate with fungas beings. The Host also develops other fungus-related powers over time.
Map of the Upper and Middle levels of the dungeon.
Map of the lower level of the dungeon.
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