Oracles in the Megadungeon

A good megadungeon includes people beings to speak with.  Item 5 on the Dungeon Checklist even tells us as much.  While factions and rival adventuring parties are inevitable and useful sources of local and limited information, it is the weird denizens scattered throughout the levels that are most useful, both for information and entertaining play at the table.

Cassandra can tell you, being an accurate soothsayer ain't all cakes and roses.  Sometimes, all you can do is make your predictions and watch them be ignored.  Right, Julius?

So here are four such oracles and an honorable mention.

1. An intelligent mimic in the shape of a statue, located at a busy intersection on level 2.  Observant players/PCs notice that the statue slowly grows and shifts appearance between encounters.  Mostly it lives off of vermin and lone dungeon wanderers.  It will happily trade information for food (it is partial to fresh goblins and has a sweet tooth, but in the end isn't that picky).  While it speaks broken common, it doesn't have much of a vocabulary (but can learn) and communicates more by numbers (1, 2, many), rough size, how many legs things traveled on, and how they taste and smell.  This can help regarding monster taste.

2. There is a high-ceilinged square chamber on the 3rd level that has one entrance.  Suspended from the ceiling in the center of the room is a large cage that ends about 3 feet off the floor.  Seated in a lotus-position within the cage, among pillows, books, and what appears to be a bottle or two, is a being wearing simple robes.  The being within appears as a bald, clean-shaven human male.  He sits facing the entrance, and motions the PCs closer, holding a hand to his ear to suggest he cannot hear them from the doorway (which is a lie, as he can hear them just fine). His name is Asklepios, and he spends much of his immortality projecting astrally through the dungeon, watching and learning.  The cage keeps him alive indefinitely, but it doesn't prevent him from wanting creature comforts, such as good wine, tobacco, lotus, and books - offering any of these in trade can provide better answers than not offering them.   He is fond of telling dungeon delvers 'if you have a question, just Ask lepios!' before laughing at his own joke.

Note that Asklepios is a bit of a dick, partially due to temperament, partially due to boredom, occasionally because he is drunk.  Because of this, Asklepios enjoys baiting entire parties to close with him and then he wills the floor away.  

Beneath the chamber is a long drop to a cold dark pondish-lake on the 5th level (bugbears lair nearby and listen for splashes). PCs that survive his 'little joke' and return get some free answers; those that don't provide Asklepios some entertainment as they vainly try to find a way back in the dark.  The bottom of that lake has a large quantity of empty wine bottles.

Despite all this, Asklepios knows LOTS about the megadungeon; whether or not he shares information with the PCs depends on how much they amuse (or bribe) him.

3.  Elsewhere on the 2nd level is a rectangular room. The side walls feature rainbow-hued tiles spanning all 40' of the walls that slowly move as the PCs watch.  Asking a question aloud nets an answer of sorts as the colored tiles fly off the walls and begin to spin around in the center of the chamber (like the school of moonfish in the movie Finding Nemo), to form shapes that answer the question asked.  The mural is NOT all-knowing, so forming a question mark is possible.  After answering 2d4+3 questions, the tiles fly back to the wall and become dormant, turning grey in color.  They won't wake until next session.  Some adventurers report that the tiles have a voice, but that is unverified.

4.  The face on the floor.  He's hungry, his mouth is large enough to swallow your foot (and he will keep your footwear) or a halfling, but mostly he's lonely.  No magic yet has determined where the things Face consumes go, but once somethin is gone, it tends to stay gone. Regardless, Face is bound to this chamber on the 4th floor, but can move about the floor and tries to position himself near whichever entrance (there are several) has noise coming from it.

Of all these oracles, Face is most likely to lie and spin tales to keep people there and talking to him.  If attacked, Face squinches his eyes shut and holds his breath until he turns blue.  Then he disappears, until the next session, at least.  

(My inspiration comes from the Grimjack comic book, where there is a face on the floor of at Munden's Bar (I'm thinking that Munden's Bar should - at least sometimes - open up to Skara Brae).  But a Google search turned up lots of references to 'the face on the barroom floor' that are far older than Grimjack.)

The honorable mention is the Brazen Head from the Holmes Sample Dungeon (1977), room I on page 43.  I won't lie, this oracle is on the first floor of my megadungeon, and its booming voice can be heard echoing through the halls (attracting wandering monsters) whenever it speaks.  Control of this head (as it is one question per day, not one question per asker per day) may yet turn that area into a siege environment.

So, in closing, provide a means to answer PC/player questions, as secrets aren't much fun if nobody learns them.