Discovering Dungeon Moon: Base Camp

The surface of Dungeon Moon is divided into six mile hexes. This is a literally true thing in the world of the game. Characters can travel to the little 3 foot walls which divide each hex from its neighbor. Unlike a natural planetary body with a gradually curved surface, Dungeon Moon is visibly “hinged” at the boarders to each hex.

By default the surface of each is a blank desert of grey flagstone, but six out of every seven hexes were zoned for development. Any of the moon’s many resident wizards could apply to The Neverborn for permission to alter these, and The Neverborn rarely refused. It would not be uncommon to have a lush rainforest on one side of a 3′ wall, and an arid desert on the other.

(In its original iteration, Dungeon Moon was constructed by “The Motherless Warlock,” for reasons which no longer seem quite as clever to me as they did in 2012. I’m taking this opportunity to rename them “The Neverborn.”)

The center, seventh, hex of each group (together referred to as a “hectare”) was set aside as a place where the moon’s many human workers could make their homes. A handful of these grew to the size of cities before The Neverborn abandoned his sphere. The vast majority, though, are little more than hamlets, housing about 100 families each. Regardless of size, each of these worker settlements shared a few features.

Decor: Dungeon Moon is the low-magic aftermath of a high-magic apocalypse. At its height, when The Neverborn still resided on the sphere, it was garishly opulent. Every town was adorned with marble statues. Every building had frescoed walls. Even the folks who emptied chamber pots dined beneath golden chandeliers.

Three generations of absence have led to a lot of decay. Pillows, carpets, fine clothes, shoes, candles; anything consumable has been worn away to nothing. The fine works of metal and stone mostly remain, though some have been smashed in anger, or reforged into more useful tools.

Dining Table: The centerpiece of each community is a stone dish which once produced grand and varied feasts three times each day. Without maintenance these have mostly deteriorated. Now they merely produce a flavorless gray paste. It has a sticky texture, and a yeasty smell, but imbues a body with all the nutrients it needs to survive.

Most folks haven’t eaten anything other than this degraded slop for a generation or more.

Circle of Protection: The moon is a safe haven for boundless magical experimentation. As such, even when The Neverborn was present, the moon’s surface teemed with dangerous creatures. To protect their workers from attacks (and to control any expansion or migration of peoples), The Neverborn laid in a glowing circle of runes around the boarder of each town.

Only residents of the town are able to cross these barriers freely. No trickery or magic has yet found a way to circumvent this abjuration. Teleporting doesn’t work. Burrowing or flying doesn’t work. Throwing something across the barrier doesn’t work. Attempts to damage the runes from the outside don’t work. Which isn’t to say that every Circle of Protection remains intact, merely that those which have been destroyed were destroyed as a result of the residents making a mistake.

Residency in a town was originally handled by The Neverborn’s bureaucracy. Since this has ceased to function, immigration to a new settlement is now completely impossible. Thankfully, anyone born within a given settlement is automatically made a resident of that settlement.

Each town does have a type of “draw bridge,” which can temporarily interrupt a section of the runes to allow a non-resident to cross the barrier. The danger in doing so is limited, since visitors can no more attack the runes from the inside than they can the outside–though they could operate the drawbridge.

Descent: Each settlement has a passage down to the interior of the moon. These may take the form of staircases or elevators, and generally lead down between 4 and 12 levels. Access to these passages is sealed with a force similar to that of the runic circles.

I’ve got quite a bit more to say about how base camps work, but this post is starting to run a bit long and my time is definitely running a bit short.

The essential purpose of the towns is to give the players a safe place to return to at the end of each adventure, and a place which they can improve over time. I’ll talk a little bit more about how that works in the next post.