Living Dungeons of the Dragon Empire

When I first started playing 13th Age, the living dungeon concept didn’t really click with me. Having spent over two decades in the world’s most popular tabletop roleplaying game, I was used to dungeons as static, trap-filled architecture: dead places built by someone, looted by someone else, and left behind. Dungeons that live, move, and change felt too “anime” for my taste, and a lot of recent anime leans into that trope and tends to do it badly.

But over time, especially after reading Eyes of the Stone Thief and getting more experience with the game, the concept started to grow on me. I began to see the potential for creativity, worldbuilding, and thematic depth. Eventually, I started coming up with my own living dungeons. Maybe one day I’ll turn these into full maps with Inkarnate or something similar.

The Parasite

Somewhere along the wandering trails of a koru behemoth, something terrible took root. A living dungeon burrowed into the creature’s flesh, embedding itself like a tick in the hide of the ancient colossus. The dungeon grows fat on the behemoth’s life force, and in its agony, the beast has strayed from the Koru Path. Now it rampages across the Empire, flattening forests, villages, and even fortresses.

Heroes must track the behemoth, climb its mountainous flanks, and find a way to pierce the layers of flesh and stone that shield the dungeon. They must face the warped inhabitants of the parasite, creatures fused with the behemoth’s flesh or mutated by the dungeon’s magic, and cut the dungeon free before the koru behemoth dies or lays waste to the land.

Icon connections:
The High Druid seeks to save the koru and preserve the natural balance.
The Archmage wants to study the dungeon-behemoth fusion for dangerous arcane secrets.
The Emperor demands action to protect his subjects

Flipping Big Pyramid

A living dungeon shaped like a pyramid has appeared on the plains. This is no silent tomb. The structure balances on one of its points, then without warning flips, slams down on another point, and changes its internal configuration. Each point corresponds to one of several known dungeon states, each with unique layouts, monsters, and challenges. No map is reliable for long.

The pyramid’s bizarre movements have already crushed a few unlucky settlements and may soon wander into more populous regions. Worse, the pyramid’s flips seem to resonate with magical forces, causing nearby portals and ley lines to behave erratically.

Icon connections:
The Archmage is alarmed by its distortion of magical energies and wants it stopped or studied.
The Prince of Shadows wants it to roll near Horizon so it will disrupt the Archmage’s wards on the city’s treasure vault.
The Three suspect the pyramid may be tied to ancient draconic secrets of the Black’s temples.
The Dwarf King fears it may soon flatten his cities by the seismic activity it produces when flipping.

Towerlegs

Picture a towering structure lurching across the countryside on spindly, spidery legs. That is Daddy Long Legs, a living dungeon that formed a symbiotic bond with lesser living dungeons which became its limbs. Its monstrous bulk is supported by these dungeon-legs as it strides over hills and rivers. Monsters spill from its innards, overrunning villages and farms in its path.

To stop it, heroes must bring down its legs, one by one, and find a way into the dungeon’s body to confront whatever intelligence guides it. Each leg is itself a mini-dungeon filled with traps, guardians, and corruptive magic.

Icon connections:
The Crusader sees it as a demonic construct to be shattered in his holy wars.
The High Druid believes it is a blight on the land that must be cleansed.
The Dwarf King is furious that it has trampled ancient tunnels and wants it destroyed.

Angry Man Up the Sky

From the realms above the clouds descended a terror, a living dungeon shaped like a vast, angry human face. It floats ominously over the land, inspiring dread wherever it goes. Animals die of fright beneath its gaze. Children are born stillborn in villages over which it lingers. Prophets rave about doom.

No one knows what the dungeon wants. Is it an omen, a punishment, or a messenger? Heroes must find a way to banish it back to the skies or destroy it before despair unravels entire provinces.

Icon connections:
The Priestess believes it is a manifestation of divine wrath and seeks to understand or appease it.
The Archmage suspects it is a relic of an ancient sky-faring civilization.
The Great Gold Wyrm views its fear-spreading nature as a tool of the Abyss.
The Lich King hopes to find a way to enslave or mimic its terror.

The Infernal Admirer

Sometimes even living dungeons have unwanted suitors. A hellhole containing a flamboyant demonic soul has become obsessed with a nearby living dungeon, pursuing it across the landscape and leaving destruction and fire-laced gifts in its wake. The living dungeon, sentient and proud, finds the attention loathsome and has begun luring the hellhole near important cities in hopes of provoking a response.

The dungeon’s gambit has worked, but it has caused more trouble than it solved. Its denizens, weary of the chaos and fearing for their lives, have begun hiring heroes to intervene. Their home is in constant motion, their lives disrupted. The task is to find a way to separate the two, either by banishing the demon soul or redirecting its attention elsewhere. Success might also provide a unique chance to explore a dungeon from within while its focus is entirely on escape.

Icon connections:
The Crusader wants the demon soul bound or destroyed.
The Diabolist finds the situation hilarious but might secretly aid the heroes for her own amusement.
The Prince of Shadows sees profit in meddling with both hellhole and dungeon.

Crusading Dungeon

This living dungeon marches across the Empire on what may have once been a divine mission. Believed to be a creation or emissary of the Gods of Dark, it now follows its own warped logic, judging heresy and corruption wherever it wanders. When it strikes, it unleashes legions of constructs, fanatics, and magical horrors. Each victory adds to its mass, its walls studded with relics and bones of the fallen. Losses, if any, leave it undeterred.

Heroes may be asked to sabotage it from within, trap it with false doctrine, or turn one faction of its zealots against another. Some may try to trick it into assaulting an unbreakable stronghold and destroying itself through attrition. Others might be sent on suicide missions to breach its core and find out what drives its crusade.

Icon connections:
The Crusader dreams of claiming the dungeon and turning this unstoppable fortress to his own ends.
The Priestess, weary of being blamed for its zealotry, seeks to see it ended.
The Emperor fears it might eventually decide that his own cities are impure.
The Great Gold Wyrm sees its endless war as a threat to the world’s balance..

After writing them, I actually ended up sketching a few of these dungeons. I wasn’t planning to, but the ideas stuck with me. Curious what others think. Feel free to let me know which ones land, or what you’d change.