Living Dungeons and You

By Martin Killmann

If you have played the 13th Age Second Edition introductory adventure, or maybe even Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s legendary Eyes of the Stone Thief campaign, you know that in 13th Age, some (possibly all) of the dungeons live. And for me, as a 13th Age GM, I am in love.

When I send my players into a living dungeon, I enjoy letting things slowly get weird. A bit of ground shaking, a dull sound like a low-frequency sneeze, and mucus dripping from the wall … that is just the start. Maybe a hallway that is bent 30 degrees sideways to make walking hard. A staircase that no longer leads where it led a week ago. There is a sliding scale of organic architectural creepiness that goes all the way to full H. R. Giger-esque.

You don’t have to worry about creating a 100% final and accurate map since the dungeon is a living, changing, evolving organism. The dungeon becomes its own NPC, with a past, with needs, with ambitions.

You don’t have to explain an out-of-place halfling burrow half-overflowing with an underground river. If the dungeon is like the Stone Thief, it hungers, surfaces, and absorbs architecture. Others imitate architecture and warp themselves with magic. Or they just have aeons of history, with their inhabitants shaping them to their liking.

You don’t have to question whether you can place a group of animated suits of armor in front of a gate. The dungeon did that by itself because it really wanted that gate to be guarded. The dungeon can create its own monsters based on what it sees in the world, the creatures it harbored in the past, or the twisted dreams it has while asleep.

You don’t have to be subtle with hints to the party. Like you, the GM, the dungeon itself is watching its intruders, and it wants to communicate. Maybe it wants to scare them away or mislead them. Maybe it treats the party as a cleaning crew sent to get rid of another intruder that has overstayed its welcome. If the party respects the dungeon, follows its lead, and tries to learn its secrets, it might drop hints or open passages that have been closed for centuries. Come in as a bunch of rowdy middle schoolers who scratch graffiti into the walls and break shit for no reason, and the dungeon can and will put a stop to that.

One of my favorite ways to drop lore was to use a dungeon controlled by a wizard, which leaked the wizard’s journal to the party via telepathic messages using a PC as the speaker. I handed a random player a note and had them read it to the rest in a spooky voice.

Most importantly, you don’t need to spend too much time establishing a motivation to go and stop the dungeon because it’s active. It’s sending out monsters that threaten local towns and trade routes, and if the PCs want that undisturbed night out in the tavern, they’d better take care of the problem.

Where to start with your own living dungeon

The first question to ask is the scale. A living dungeon can serve as the setting for a small one-shot or a mini-campaign. A simple flow with an introductory fight, a lead that sends the party to the dungeon, and four or five rooms with two or three warm-up fights and a final boss battle at the heart will do (see the adventure in the 13th Age Gamemaster’s Guide for a concrete example).

Or you can make the living dungeon the center of a whole campaign, with enough levels to explore all the way from adventurer to epic tier, and a host of icons all furthering their own goals and vying for control of the dungeon.

Ask yourself: what is the role of the dungeon in my campaign? A location for a series of set-piece battles? A scary pit to test the group’s ability to perform as a team and overcome challenges? A hiding place for the McGuffin artifact that’s at the center of the plot? A unique and varied ecosystem to explore over the course of a campaign? The villain’s lair for the final battle? The main antagonist itself? All of the above?

Think of a theme. Is the dungeon young, hungry and aggressive? Is it old, slow, and full of swallowed secrets? Is it independent, or controlled by a powerful entity?

What feeling do you want to evoke when they enter? Wonder? Disgust? Fear? Pity? Hatred? Greed? Excitement? Dread?

Is it strongly tied to an icon, often the Three, the Lich King, or the Diabolist, representing major groups of monsters such as dragons, undead, and demons? Did multiple icons leave their mark?

What options do you want to present to the players to deal with it? Explore it? Loot it? Stop it? Kill it? Free it from control? Heal it from corruption?

The Icons

Below is an example of how each icon may see living dungeons in a campaign. Each Dragon Empire is different, and the personality and political stance of each icon will develop over the course of a campaign. Take the examples below as inspiration from my Dragon Empire as I run it, not as canon.

The Archmage treats living dungeons like everything else: a fascinating research subject. His day job of protecting the Empire with magical wards isn’t made easier by their existence, as the dungeons are attracted by the wards like moths to a lamp. Should a dungeon manage to somehow burrow into the flying rocks Horizon is built on, that’s when it gets personal. Not that any of his enemies would dare bring a living dungeon egg there.

To the Crusader, a living dungeon is especially interesting if it contains shrines and temples to the old gods they swear allegiance to. But even if not, just like hellholes, it’s one more place of dark influence to conquer, bring under their control, and harness for power. However, if the Crusader sees no way to control it or the loot isn’t worth the fight, they have no qualms about sending in a few inquisitors to kill the thing and collapse it.

A living dungeon corrupted by the Diabolist is easily one of the most dangerous. A gateway to the Abyss fuels the dungeon’s power and fills it with demons, which soon break free and ravage the landscape. Ultimately the demonic corruption will consume the dungeon and it will rupture and die, so sheer survival instinct might force the dungeon to fight back. Either way it can easily ravage a kingdom or two in the process.

The Dwarf King and his dwarven clans hate living dungeons with a passion because their subterranean infrastructure is highly vulnerable to living dungeon attacks, and many dwarven strongholds have fallen to them throughout the ages. But it’s possible that, in a past age, a mad Dwarf King attempted to capture a living dungeon, clad it in stone and iron plates, and turn it into a war machine: an insane hybrid of a tunnel-boring machine and EVA-01.

The Elf Queen, despite her civilized demeanor, is not one to shy away from genocide if the end justifies the means. She wants to see all living dungeons eradicated.

Among the different elven kin, some silver elf renegade factions may disagree. A subterranean environment where the walls have ears and everything is trying to kill you? That’s just like home. Control one and you have the perfect weapon against the real ancestral enemy: the dwarves.

For the Emperor, living dungeons, like everything else, are an administrative problem. Catalogue it, quarantine it, and send in the imperial legions if there is no alternative, but it’s a balance between the loss of manpower and the loss of tax income. There are some rumors about past emperors harnessing living dungeons. The sewers under Axis might be one. After all, how else do you dig tunnels into a volcano? Of course, maybe in your Dragon Empire you want the Emperor to ride a giant worm-like dungeon creature into battle because you saw a recently revived franchise in the cinema. I am not here to tell you NO.

For the Great Gold Wyrm, the biggest fear related to any living dungeon is its potential corruption by the Diabolist, which could rip yet another hole in the already torn fabric between the mortal realm and the Abyss. The faster you can kill it, the better. This is non-negotiable.

For the High Druid, a living dungeon is like a bear that has tasted human flesh. It’s a living creature, but corrupted by something it should not have consumed: architecture and civilization. For most living dungeons, it will be too late to return them to their pure, natural form, and the only cure is to kill the tumor with the patient and let nature reclaim the tunnels and caverns. Let the spirit that inhabited it cleanse itself in the cycle of rebirth.

The Lich King loves corrupting living dungeons, turning them into sickly, plague-ridden infestations that poison the landscape. Even if the dungeon dies in the process, that never stopped a necromancer. To no one’s surprise, these dungeons are teeming with the undead, from lowly zombies and skeletons to some of his most powerful servants, be they liches, necromancers, vampires, or death knights, many of whom aspire to control a living dungeon one day. They are known for attacking graveyards, mass burial sites, and abandoned battlefields to collect corpses and fill their ranks. These dungeons are very welcoming to adventurers … one more body to feed on.

There is a theory that the Priestess is building small shrines and sanctuaries on purpose in remote places where they can be gobbled up by living dungeons. It’s a bit like spiking a lump of meat with medicine to feed it to a wild animal. Inside the dungeon, these places provide rest and respite to adventurers brave enough to fight these monstrosities.

Who knows what the Prince of Shadows is up to, but a dangerous place of lost treasures and ancient secrets is right up their alley. They’re always willing to finance and support an expedition into a living dungeon (likely anonymously through middlemen) for a cut.

To the Three, any living dungeon that is not yet a dragon lair is basically free real estate. It’s a symbiotic relationship. The dragon is the apex predator of the dungeon ecosystem and keeps pests like kobolds and goblins in check (by feeding on the surplus). It lives rent-free in a place with built-in security that can flexibly adapt to its needs. The dungeon gains a wide-ranging scout, treasure collector, and fire-breathing defender. Young dragons might even seek out nascent dungeons to inhabit. Wait … is this why it’s called Dungeons & Dragons?!

Of course, you may want to adjust or twist these, depending on each icon’s personality in your campaign. What if the Priestess was dead set on cleansing a dungeon of all evil and converting it into a force of good? What about a dungeon that is attacking dragon lairs and the Three want it wiped out?

Tables because this is how we roll

What I have also found very useful in my own design of a living dungeon is defining its past. You don’t need to add a full 13 Ages of history, but a few will allow you to drop hints and add more flavor to the rooms and inhabitants. You can roll on the table below to get some ideas of what a dungeon did in different past ages.

d20

1	The dungeon died and was reborn / reincarnated, with shards of its broken memory infused in the new manifestation.
2	The dungeon lay dormant, regenerating, dreaming, plotting its return.
3	An ancient dragon used the dungeon as their lair.
4	(1d6: 1 gnolls, 2 hobgoblins, 3 kobolds, 4 lizardmen, 5 snake people, 6 ogres) built an advanced civilization in the dungeon.
5	In a period where a lot of the surface was ravaged by war, the dungeon was used by entire towns as a safe haven and retreat.
6	Demonic infestation. A portal to the Abyss opened and turned the dungeon into a massive nested hellhole.
7	Renegade silver elves took over the dungeon and plotted against the Elf Queen.
8	The dungeon was looted clean, but it remembers every piece that was stolen and it can feel its location. It wants everything back.
9	A world-shattering artifact was hidden in the dungeon to contain it.
10	The dungeon filled with (1d4: 1 seawater, 2 lava, 3 toxic fumes, 4 molten gold), and parts of it still look like that.
11	Despite strong hints that the dungeon grew and added many new features and areas during this age, all passages and rooms resembling the design of that era have collapsed, the doors are barred, magical wards prevent anyone from getting near, and all records have been erased.
12	A wizard turned the dungeon into their research station, communicating with it, studying its nature, and teaching it magic … until they went mad.
13	A cabal of necromancers took control of the dungeon, killing most of its inhabitants and turning them into undead minions.
14	In a period of returning to its natural state, the dungeon shed many of its artificial features and brimmed with flora, fauna, and the forces of nature. There were dinosaurs.
15	The dungeon attacked a major imperial city. Both the dungeon and city sustained major damage, and it was almost destroyed.
16	The dungeon returned to its place of birth to lay eggs (whatever that looks like).
17	The dungeon split itself through a mitosis-like process. Its twin is still out there.
18	A legendary (1d6: 1 human, 2 dwarven, 3 elven, 4 warforged, 5 orcish, 6 halfling) hero ventured into the dungeon and never returned. Maybe they still roam there. Maybe they left items. Maybe the dungeon absorbed their soul and changed.
19	The dungeon grew way past its subterranean origin and built a tower that pierced the sky.
20	The dungeon was cleansed of all evil and turned into a place of healing and worship.

And finally, a random room generator … because even if you have your dungeon laid out, PCs tend to step into areas you didn’t plan for …

1	An identical clone of the dungeon’s heart. Destroying it accomplishes nothing.
2	A cavern filled with glowing mushrooms. Eating one opens your mind to the dungeon, allowing you to communicate with it erratically.
3	A wizard’s (1d6: 1 living quarters, 2 library, 3 laboratory, 4 collection of petrified enemies, 5 menagerie, 6 flower garden).
4	An incubation chamber where the dungeon creates monsters.
5	A guard post filled with appropriate (or maybe inappropriate) monsters.
6	A (1d6: 1 moving wall, 2 spike pit, 3 poisoned food, 4 swinging blade, 5 berserk gas, 6 lightning orb) trap room designed to kill intruders.
7	A room of portals leading to other parts of the dungeon and possibly locations outside.
8	A natural cavern. Well, mostly natural (unless you pull a Gygax and everything is a monster that can kill you, including the ceiling).
9	A heavily fortified vault, likely of dwarven origin.
10	Parts of a silver elven underground mansion.
11	A warehouse filled with oddities. Someone is collecting.
12	A kitchen or tavern that serves the various denizens of the dungeon.
13	An alien-looking forest of (1d6: 1 bioluminescent, 2 flesh-eating, 3 hallucinogenic, 4 eternally burning, 5 frozen, 6 edible) plants.
14	An underground lake or river. Nothing fishy here, besides the (1d6: 1 glowing jellyfish, 2 axolotl people, 3 giant whale, 4 sharks with laser eyes, 5 piranhas, 6 abandoned rowboat).
15	A large and heavily decorated (1d6: 1 feast hall, 2 throne room, 3 portrait hall, 4 statue hall, 5 burial chamber, 6 torture room).
16	A bizarrely warped place that does not seem to belong in this reality.
17	A hall of glowing orbs that show memories of the dungeon if you touch them.
18	A farming patch. Someone is growing food here.
19	A treasure hoard guarded by (1d6: 1 a group of kobolds, 2 a mimic, 3 a dragon, 4 a gelatinous cube, 5 coin zombies, 6 a golem).
20	A sanctuary to a forgotten god, with a (1d6: 1 sacrificial altar, 2 speaking statue, 3 healing fountain, 4 holy book that recites itself, 5 ghostly vicar, 6 disturbing message written in blood).

To find more on living dungeons, have a look at the following publications and adventures:

• 13th Age Second Edition, Gamemaster’s Guide
• Eyes of the Stone Thief
• The Stone Thief prequels At Land’s Edge + Make Your Own Luck
• The Archmage’s Orrery
• Into the Underworld
• Dungeon Moon

Happy GMing!

Many thanks to LegoFed3, Gitrid, Casino, Isail, and the 13th Age Discord community for their valuable feedback and inspiration!