Dwarves: Clan Steelbeard

Some time back, I wrote a post about the Source of Dungeons.  Among other things, it posited one or more clans of Dwarves that specialized in digging dungeons for wizards that lacked the ability to magic one up themselves.

Here is one such clan.

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History

Clan Steelbeard dug its first dungeon for a human wizard several centuries ago, in exchange for services rendered.  Enjoying the challenge of the construction, as well as the wizard slaying a dragon for them, the Dwarves' leaders began hiring themselves out to other wizards wanting dungeons dug.

Within a century, Clan Steelbeard became the go-to diggers, generating much of their wealth and fame through these projects.  As might be expected, they also developed a series of best practices, as well as standardized offerings for complexes.  Between dungeons, the Clan contracts out to dig small tomb complexes for nobles and temples.

While Dwarves never turn down gold, mithral, or mead as payment, they know that most people - even Wizards - do not have enough to pay them in full.  This being the case, the Dwarves accept (and perhaps prefer) services in exchange.  These services being completed either before or during or after the contract, depending on negotiations.

Early on, and maybe once a century since then, some Wizards have attempted to renege or otherwise cheat the Dwarves.  In those situations, the Clan has collapsed the entrance(s) of a dungeon until payment is made in full.  Clearing the blockage is an extra fee.  If the offending Wizard still doesn't pay up, the Dwarves send someone to collect.

Dwarven Demolition Team by Kev Brockschmidt

Being Dwarves, the Steelbeards keep records of all the dungeons and tombs they have designed in a hidden, secure, guarded vault.   After all, integrity is something that Dwarves in the business of working with Wizards need.   Attempts to steal or purchase this information has so far failed.

So far.  

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Contracts

Contracts are drawn up by teams of skilled negotiators and barristers, and address all aspects of dungeon building: planning, siting, digging, procuring supplies (such as dressed stone or iron-bound oaken doors), provisioning the diggers, protecting the diggers, stocking the dungeon (with either caught wild beasts or the semi-tame dungeon beasts that the Dwarves raise for this purpose, like mimics and carrion crawlers and a wide array of fungi, molds, and slimes), found mineral rights, etc.

For planning purposes, the Steelbeards start with a decade per level of a complex, adding time in yearly increments from there. As might be imagined, Clan Steelbeard never has more than three or four projects going at one time.  The wait list is long and rumors suggest that for the right price, construction might move up (or down) the priority list.

When it comes to any discovered veins of ores or gems, a new contract is drawn up to dig them out.  The same goes for any ruins or caverns discovered.  Standard Clan Steelbeard practice is to block those areas off and continue around them until a mining or exploring contract is drawn up.  

Understandably, the more the Dwarves do, the more it costs the wizard.  

Given the nature and length of time to complete these dungeon-building contracts, the Clan often negotiates payment - in full or at least partially - in services, such as monster slaying, retrieving a specific item from elsewhere, item creation, or collecting debts from wizards that reneged on their contract.

Truth be told, the Dwarves especially enjoy the latter service, as it provides an unsubtle hint to the negotiating wizard about what happens to those that renege.  Incidentally, the negotiating wizards don't mind collecting these debts for the Dwarves, as they often score some potent arcane treasure for themselves in the process.

Having built these dungeons for centuries, Steelbeard Dwarves have an excellent idea of what some wizards are capable of, and as such, suggest to them that using certain specific spells may reduce costs and time of construction.  Veteran Steelbeard negotiators keep a list of known helpful Wizard spells and will suggest them in the course of negotiations.

Note that the Steelbeards will subcontract certain parts of its negotiated tasks to other Dwarf Clans and adventuring companies once the contract start date is reached.

All things considered, negotiating a contract can take months, but once it is locked in, it is locked in. 

The contract complete, the Dwarves celebrate with ale and song, as Dwarves do.

Dwarven Song by Dan Frazier

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Call to Adventure

PCs might be engaged to clear a discovered cavern, protect Clan builders and property, run or guard supply caravans, acquire plans to a different dungeon or tomb, dig out a closed dungeon, capture monsters for use in a dungeon, relocate or create undead for a dungeon, spread rumors about a new dungeon, convincing Clan leaders to move a specific dungeon up or down on the priority list, acquire prizes to bait a dungeon with, to test parts of a dungeon, or to clear a dungeon entirely. 

All for the sake of Wizards wanting to farm magic items and monster parts.

While the Steelbeard Clan (or one of its negotiating teams) might be a solid patron to PCs, the paying Wizard or a rival Wizard might also hire PCs on for any number of tasks.  

Of course, a rival Wizard will be hiring to disrupt the construction, so planting monsters, sowing dissension among workers, reducing or poisoning supplies, or outright attacking the Dwarves might be on the table.  Crossing an entire Clan of Dwarves that have several allied Wizards as business partners may not be the smartest thing PCs do, but PCs aren't known for exercising high wisdom scores outside of spell bonuses for specific rulesets.

The Source of Dungeons

I have far too many RPG-related PDFs, and sometimes, I just start reading one to see what's in it.  Today's reading was this:

So I am reading about establishing dominions in ye olde Companion rules (book 1) and find this bit about magic-users (what earlier editions called wizards) on page 19. 

After the magic-user moves into the tower, a dungeon may be built beneath or near it.  The dungeon is most often constructed by hiring specialists in mining, but can be created magically if the proper spells are known and used.  When one or more levels of the dungeon are completed and thereafter left open, monsters will start to arrive and build lairs.  Shortly thereafter, low-level adventurers may start arriving to seek their fortunes.

First a magic-user builds (or captures) a tower, then they build a dungeon. Creating dungeons is the expectation of land-owning wizards.  The quote speaks of specialists in mining, but if digging dungeons is as commonplace as the above quote suggests, there are likely specialists in dungeon design, architecture, engineering, and building.  

It's likely these specialists are often Dwarves, which in turn helps explain why Dwarves are often so wealthy - wizards pay well for their skills, and the Dwarves deliver.  It is also implied that magic-users choose sites for towers based partially on the ease of building a dungeon - which means specialist surveyors, who again, are likely Dwarves.

If there are specialists in siting and building dungeons, there must be specialists in attracting the right kinds of monsters to lair therein.  Even if many monsters are migratory, various critters have expectations of living.  For example, if a magic-user is hoping for giants, the dungeon halls had best be 20' high and probably as wide.  Maslow teaches us that all creatures need food and shelter, so ready food sources had best be found within or near the dungeon, as well.  

Food sources like rat-on-a-stick franchises, maybe. 

The quote also states that dungeons can be created magically if the proper spells are known and used.  I'd think Wall of Stone, Stone Shape, Disintegrate, Dig, and summoned Earth Elementals would be baseline requirements, but no doubt others would help, as well.

All of this sounds like a hassle and makes me wonder why the magic-user wants such dangerous neighbors (tenants?) so close to home.  

The book tells us why, providing this motivation for magic-users to build dungeons:

Most magic-users with dungeons visit them once each month (or more), gathering any magical treasures that remain.  If too much treasure is taken from the monsters, they will probably move out.  Occasionally, if done quietly and secretly, the magic-user may capture some of the monsters for use in magical research and potion making.  This must be done carefully, lest the remaining monsters be scared away.

It appears that magic-users create dungeons expressly to farm magical items and to have a ready source of experiment-fodder and potion components.  This implies dungeon-digging landed magic-users have a side-hustle brewing potions, making different formulae trade secrets that are no doubt worth killing and dying for.  

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All this makes landed magic-users almost ideal patrons, both to the low-level adventurers who plumb their depths, and also mid-level adventurers to help stock their dungeons.   These adventurers may also be the same ones bringing new magic items into the dungeons, as well as a regular customer of the magic-user's potions.

This also suggests that Dwarves may well have a monopoly on dungeons dug by hand, with various clans specializing in different aspects of dungeons.  It also means that veteran adventurers can take advantage of knowing how different clans build things: "this looks like Stonehammer work - which means we need to watch for sliding walls and floor chute traps."

A world built around new dungeons appearing on a semiregular basis allows for an ideal game world - at least for me and my sporadic gaming.  

In light of this, I have some campaign world revising to do.

Soulshrieker

Undead are popular monsters for a reason: they're scary and there is no reason to feel bad for putting them down, since they are animated corpses.  Gamemasters don't even need to create some bizarre biome or food web for them in an attempt at Gygaxian Naturalism.

Just place them in a tomb, catacomb, or other abandoned place, and have at it.

Soulshriek by John Bolton

The Soulshrieker is a rare form of undead that is primarily the result of mortals that died in mourning and abject sorrow.  That tangible sorrow wells up and is projected from the Soulshrieker's oversized mouth, as a wail of piteous defeat that leaves targets stunned with their own sorrow and depression.  

Mechanically, the soulshriek is a beam-shaped breath weapon, appearing as coruscating purple and green light (how I picture a particle beam to look, which likely doesn't help).  It inflicts sonic, necrotic, and cold damage while also having a chance to stun its target.  Once stunned, the targets are then ripped apart with the Soulshrieker's claws.  

Mostly encountered alone, a group Soulshriekers (probably a family before death and undeath took them) is best fled from.  That said, jamming wax in your ears provides a substantial bonus to the save vs stun.  

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Enterprising necromancers have not only discovered how to create Soulshriekers, but have also found a way to mimic the Soulshrieker's ability, through a spell fittingly called Soulshriek.

This Necromantic spell lets the caster unhinge their jaw and turn their very soul into a weapon that deals sonic, necrotic AND cold damage to the unfortunates caught up in its cone; the spell emanates as a cone from the unhinged mouth, the interior of the mouth glowing white hot as the necromancer's very essence powers it.  This shriek is devastating to opponents within earshot, leaving them damaged, stunned, and if too close to the point of origin, deafened.

While one casting of Spellshriek can be devastating to its targets, it proves problematic for the caster, as part of their soul is now forever gone.  

Mechanically, this means that math is required.  Because base ten is simple, the caster gets ten castings of Soulshriek before they are forever gone. As the soul dwindles with repeated castings, the caster's body begins showing signs of spiritual decay.  

Ten Visual Signs of Spiritual Decay (effects are cumulative)

1. Skin pales, hair turns grey, loses interest in all sexual activity.
2. -1 strength.  
3. -1 constitution
4. -1 strength. Hair begins falling out.  
5. -1 constitution. Physically appears the same, but long rests are interrupted with nightmares. Wake in a cold sweat geased to scribe Soulshriek onto a half-dozen scrolls and leave them where they're likely to be found and copied.  Once the scrolls are written, the nightmares end (or the caster is used to them - either way, long rests are no longer affected by them).  Note that the scrolls never reveal the downsides of the spell.
6. -1 strength
7. -1 constitution. Lose interest in cleanliness.
8. -1 strength. Weight loss continues.
9. -1 constitution. A walking husk with eyes that glow with an inner, disturbing light. Easily mistaken for undead.
10. The lights in the eyes go out as the body collapses in a heap, open for possession or to become a true undead.  Cannot be raised or resurrected or even the target of speak with dead.

With the tenth casting, the soul is forever gone.  Without a soul, the caster's body withers entirely, and if not possessed by some random fiend or spirit, they rise up as a Soulshrieker in 24 hours.  

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While the more competent necromancers can avoid the worst effects of Soulshriek, lesser casters learn to their chagrin that Soulshriek is a living spell, a spell that demands to be cast, and will be cast.  

Once Soulshriek has been first cast, there is forever an emptiness in the soul, a cancerous emptiness that desires to grow.  As such, whenever the necromancer casts a spell, there is a chance that Soulshriek replaces the desired spell, even if Soulshriek isn't memorized - because it now resides within the caster.  

First, the spell cast has to be level 3 or higher.  Second, a save is required - just a flat DC 12 save.  With time, as Spellshriek is cast again and again, that DC increases by 1 with each casting.  So that after nine castings, it is a DC 20 save to not Soulshriek one final, glorious time.

It is whispered that Grandfather Favarro has discovered a means to purge Soulshriek from a caster, but given that its Grandfather Favarro, the cure is likely to be as bad as the disease.  It assuredly involves more than just high level remove curse, dispel magic, and greater restoration spells.