Roguelike Megadungeon with Cairn, Solo Journal 1

I've decided to journal a solo campaign using my setting generator, Roguelike Megadungeon. I'll be using Cairn 2E as the system. It'll be my first time playing Cairn, so I am excited to try it out, although it is not my first time playing a Mark of the Odd game. RLMD is a setting generator, but it has a heavily implied setting and cosmology, so I am also excited to explore and showcase its procedurally generated adventures. 

I started by generating a few maps at a few different scales. Normally I like to show the procedures when talking about RLMD, but for now I'm just going to jump right to the maps. 

The first one is the region, which I named Disharmonia. It has some different terrains, a scrub plateau to the northwest, primordial snowy peaks to the northeast, wizard wracked wastes in the center (where soporific roots grow), a jungle to the southeast containing a religious site, and a keep built from fallen pieces of a sky fortress in the southwest. The wastes contain an entrance to the megadungeon. There is also a lesser-known ice dungeon in the snowy peaks. 

It looks like the keep is the adventurer's hub, so I generate a map for that too, calling it Hollandale Keep. It contains a black market run by goblinoid agents, so I am deciding the upper levels of the megadungeon are a goblin warren. The keep also contains two religious devouts giving out blessings publicly, a wizard's tower, a wizard's failed experiment, a famous restaurant and a refugee camp with an abandoned wagon containing some type of potential adventurers' loot. I decide the religious devouts are here from the religious site in the jungle. The wizard's tower is the seat of power and the home of the leader of the keep. 

I decide to drill down once more, deciding the famous restaurant can be a tavern that the party meets at and plans their adventures at. I generate Skykeep Grub, the communal watering hole. It contains a historical memorial, and a combination specialty vendor and restricted area, which I just decide is the bar. It also contains three NPCs, two of which are nobles, who I decide are looking to make names for themselves adventuring in the goblin warrens. They are interested in hiring mercenaries and adventurers for their risky delves. There is also a community leader, who I decide is an assistant to the wizard, looking to buy soporific roots from the wastes, a slightly less dangerous mission than the megadungeon itself. 

Now I need a party of adventurers. I generate four Cairn PCs: Lansford the Barber-Surgeon, Lichen the Greenwise, Madrigal the Fungal Forager, and Sable the Prowler with her pet wolf. They are sitting inside Skykeep Grub, discussing their plans. Madrigal has a letter detailing proof of his Fey noble lineage with a request for a meeting deep in the woods in 7 days. This will be the first thing the party tries to do since it is time sensitive. Sable has a mischievous spirit haunting her, always telling her to take to the woods, so it is not hard to convince the party to go on Madrigal's mission. The meeting location is also close to the religious site in the jungle, so they decide to go there, perhaps finding some easier work.

Travel begins using the Cairn wilderness procedure. The weather is a bit rough on us to begin with, and when we recover, we come across a friction breathing wyvern. I roll a die of fate to decide if they are intelligent enough to be bargained with, and I roll well, so the party has a change at a diplomatic resolution. I decide that Lansford's offer of three rations is enough to buy them passage. 

The next day they enter the jungle and have an encounter with a triceratops beetle. The party climbs a tree and waits it out. The beetle gets bored and wanders off. The party continues on their way but comes across an unpassable rift in the jungle floor. Sable ties Lichens iron pot to Madrigals 25 ft rope, and tosses it across the gap, finding purchase but destroying most of the iron pot as it goes bouncing down the crevasse. They leave the rope tied across for when they return. 

That night while they camp, another triceratops beetle attacks. This time they cannot run up a tree and engage in a brutal battle. Lansford is brought down getting gored by a horn before the party kills it. He is "walloped" and gains 5 max HP for surviving! They decide to rest the next day and forage for rations for a little while. 

While foraging, Sable discovers a Dwarven minecart passage. I decide this will be another small dungeon and generate one. The main features are a death lizard with a broken blood crown, a gem encrusted skeleton and a magic obelisk. I have flavor tables in RLMD to help flesh out relationships. Here we have an inquisitive obelisk, a secretive gem encrusted skeleton and an elemental death lizard. I decide that the skeleton is a fallen king, whose people took his crown and sealed him in the tomb, leaving the broken crown above as a marker shrine. The king hates the lizard as it makes its lair on his shrine, he wants his crown back and its magic would help him break the curse and escape the tomb. The obelisk gives information about the king to any visitors but asks for a secret in exchange for information. Finally, I make up an encounter table based on the two poles of the undead skeleton king and the reptilian death lizard. 

1. Big Death Lizard 

2. Small lizards 

3. Kobolds 

4. Spirits 

5. Skeletons 

6. Crystal Constructs

The party heals up and decides to check out the dungeon. They enter carefully, interacting with the obelisk. Madrigal tells the obelisk his secret about his Fey noble lineage, and the obelisk tells them about the traitor king and how his people punished him and cursed him to live here in eternal unlife. After fighting off some small death lizards, the group proceeds to the tomb and meets the traitor king. I roll the best possible reaction roll for him, so he is helpful! I decide that he is lonely for conversation after a thousand years of being locked up. He tells the party that he hates the lizard, and tells them about a secret passage they can take to bypass the other rooms to get to the shrine. They go through the passage and then decide to ambush the lizard when they see it there. Lansford slings a rock at the opposite side of the clearing to distract the lizard, and they all rush in. They botch the opening ambush and Sable is seriously hurt, but the partly comes out on top. Lichen hides the broken blood crown in his backpack while the party rests, and they are able to fast talk the traitor king and get the crown out of the dungeon without a conflict!

Next time, the party will continue to forage and then push onward to make Madrigal's appointment with his Fey patron. We'll find out if the story of Fey lineage is true or some kind of ruse.