Dungeon Crawling: Vol. IV

Roll for Knowledge (Fantasy Synthesizer Music). 

Lo! I have emerged from my hibernaculum. My sleep was fitful. My dreams: filled with portents ominous and dire. Much peril has befallen the realms in my absence, and we’ve little time to tarry. Let it be noted in the annals that my mighty ally and fellow acolyte Reliquary Tower assisted in the recovery and interpretation of these most precious arcana. Well met, Reliquary Tower!

Quick, roll a d10 to claim thy quest and face what dangers Fate has ordained for thee!

1 – Ghoëst  – In Eternal Sleep

Dark Dungeon Doom Productions | January 20, 2024

The whole of the Citadel lies still, as if lost in some dread slumber. Snow falls like ash from the sky, coating the crowded and crooked metal towers that dominate the skyline. You seek something, but can not remember what, or who, your quarry is. A rusted and weathered sign still clings to the ruins of a temple wall: “No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… Nothing valued is here.” Funereal thrums and distant echoes guide your weary march through the begrimed husk of this once gleaming and magical city. A memory crystallizes, a voice old and quiet: “Heed well the loitering specters that haunt those once bustling streets, lest ye meet their same doom…The one that lingers in the air and taints the barren earth ‘neath your feet.”

2 -Forsaken Keep – Kurald Galain

Independent/Fiadh Productions (tapes) | March 8, 2024

Esteemable and inimitable warrior-poet Froth, hailing from the verdant rainforests of the Coast Salish territories, formally requests your aid in charting a perilous course through a distant realm rife with perils and wonder. Should you accept their contract you will travel to the “Breath of Chaos” itself, Kurald Galain, to seek Wise Kharkanas. As a newly hired shareholder of the Trygalle Trade Guild, you understand the great risk and certitude of bodily harm (or worse) inherent to traversing the Elder Warrens, much less the Elder Warren of Night and Darkeness. However you also stand to make a handsome profit if the venture is successful, not to mention should you fall in the line of duty your family will receive twice your promised share. So what say you? Do you accept the terms of this contract?

3 – Règne – The Wizard’s Gathering

Independent | May 8, 2024

“Bright moons, noble traveler. I am Wenmora, Fey Queen of these lakes. I am most grateful that thou hast heeded the summons of my messenger. A number of the knights of my Court have been taken captive. Their captors, a band of marauding goblins, dwell within the Severed Peaks. I know not what fate has or may befall them, but please, brave adventurer, bring them home. Remain vigilant on thy journey through the world’s frontiers, as whispers reach mine ears that wizards now congregate among the cairns and barrows of the mountains. To what foul end their gathering portends even I can not divine. But fear not! I see that thine heart is a brave one, friend. May the stars be your guide.”

4 – Moonglow– Moonglow

Independent | March 16, 2024

As the umbral mists part the warlock’s tower comes into view before you, but a league further across the barrens. Your long trek across the desert finally at an end you clutch the hilt of Stormcaller at your hip, yet you can not feel the dull pull toward that obsidian spire. Does the blade no longer heed the summons of its creator? Or does that treacherous sorcerer lie in wait, weaving yet another miasmic enchantment? The nights’ chill settles over you as you spur your faithful horse forward. You listen to the rhythmic crunching of the hardpan under their hooves, the tower looming over the desert like some dread Teratornis from its perch.

5 – Jim Kirkwood – King of the Goldenhall [Remaster]

Out of Season | January 5, 2024

You find yourself in the Third Age of Middle Earth, in the lands of the Riddermark astride your wild and proud Mearas steed. Gondor lies idle, the Rohirrim bitterly nursing the wounds of its apathy. The elves are fading, leaving these shores for fair Valinor, though even now the echoes of their smiths’ hammers ring across these lands. Darkness grows in the East. The hordes of Mordor and Isengard grow, and will soon be loosed upon the kingdoms of Men. The Ringbearer is lost, the Fellowship broken. Atop Barad-dûr, the Great Eye watches and waits.

6 – Arcanist – Averoígne

Yuggoth Records | May 3, 2024 

“Their crosses of hornbeam were no match for the unholy necromancies and sorceries of that evil stronghold.”, said the priest, sadly regarding the two badly bruised and sullen monks before you. Word had traveled far and wide across Averoigne that thrice-infamous Nathaire, alchemist, astrologer and necromancer, with his ten devil-given pupils, had departed very suddenly and under circumstances of strict secrecy from the town of Vyones to the long-deserted ruins of Ylourgne. These once hardy and lusty monks, Stefane and Bernard, braved the horrors and grotesqueries therein to avenge the unnatural abduction of Brother Theophile’s corpse, but all for naught. Horrors from the very Pit itself now lurk in Ylourgne’s Tartarean gloom. If you act with decisiveness and haste you may yet be able to extinguish Nathair’s devilish furnaces and terrible alchemies… before they are unleashed over all of Averoigne!

7 – Hedge Wizard — Neighborwoods

Independent | February 27, 2024

Ride now to the distant realm of “Ohio” to uncover the mysteries and magics that purvey the mundane. In the Neighborwoods danger lives two doors down in the shape of a seemingly sweet, elderly dowager–and licensed necromancer–who’s backyard witching hour rituals and rapidly progressing hex-based dementia have her neighbors “just asking questions” on the community bulletin board. And it looks like those roguish teens are at it again, dealing in illicit tomes and habit-forming reliquaries too close to the youth sports complex. Heed well the Curfew as you investigate these goings-on, for who knows what sort of mischief the ill-intentioned street spirits, nocturnal mammals, and bin goblins have planned come nightfall…or what manners of financial and physical punishment the HOA will issue to those who would so flippantly breach The Contract.

8 – Sourcerior — Woodlands’ Entity

Independent | April 21, 2024

The crone beckons you down the rugged goat track toward the Stargate, wheezing and laughing as she hobbles through the heavy brush into the glade. You push your way through the undergrowth into a clearing and are greeted by the yawning and glimmering Gate but a stone’s throw from the forest’s edge. The summer’s humidity evaporates as you step further into the glade. The crisp, charged air seems to hold no moisture, despite a spring burbling through the exposed dolomite. Ancient beeches tower overhead, verdant sunlight seeping through their thick canopy to tint the stone-hewn gateway of the portal. The crone is nowhere to be found, but her words echo in your mind as you step toward the threshold:
“Beware the beguiling Fey and heed not the songs of the First Men who dwell beyond the Stargate. Chaos is the trade they ply. Reveal not your True Name, lest you fall prey to the uncanny sourceries of the Old Ones. And above all: do not veer from the goat track.”

9 – Vukkeg — Crossing the Rubicon

Independent | March 28, 2024

You awake cold and wet after another night of broken sleep. The sound of your armor scraping against the floor as you shift your weight echoes off the indifferent stone walls of this dungeon. The rust upon the breastplate of your once shining armor is all that has kept record of your time here. Hope dwindles with each passing moment. Your only chance at freedom is for the gods to finally show mercy towards the ever-dwindling armies of Vosilnia. But for now it seems that the prayers of the widows and children go as unanswered as your own. As you wearily roll over and prop yourself onto your aching limbs you feel the stone under your right arm shift ever so slightly to your labored movements. You dig your fingers into the edges between the flagstones and pry up. A tunnel! There’s no way to be certain where it leads, but surely anywhere is better than here. With what little strength you have you lower yourself into the narrow hole. Clutching the Vosilnian sigil around your neck, you steel your resolve to whatever might lie ahead in the darkness below.

10 – Aventyr — Dragonheart

Independent | May 25, 2024

“Afternoon, traveler. I’m Anders, keeper of this tavern. I apologize for the cold welcome from the regulars. Our township hasn’t always been so unwelcoming, but ye need to tone down all this talk of dragons and magic stones! Things around here have been on edge of late. There’s been a string of disappearances over the past two months. All in the dead of night. And despite our watchmen being as dutiful as ever, no one has been seen going in or out of the houses. The elders are frightened and saying the hag coven must’ve returned to their hovel down in Odegaard Bog, but I never believed in such talk meself. Thought it was all fairy stories parents would tell their little ones to keep ‘em away from strangers and from running off into the woods. But lately the peat cutters been talkin’ of happenins over bog way. Talk of ghost lights in the night and songs whisperin’ through the tamaracks, and…well, let’s just say I’m givin’ a bit more heed to the stories me old nan told these days. Now I can tell by yer uh… unorthodox garb and that prodigious axe yer totin’ that yer no greenhorn. Keeping bar as I do I hear talk of folks like ye who poke around the arcane and unsavory and the like. Go speak with Evander, the head of our local garrison. See if he’ll let ya take a look around. We’ll all feel more at ease once we’ve got some answers. Now what’ll ye take to drink?”

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