30 Minute Dungeon Delve 7: The "Haunted" Manor

Hey, sorry for another lack of posting, I went camping. While camping I wrote down some notes about a B/X dungeon, but for now it will go unposted. I've also changed up my style a little bit for this one, since I find that naming specific treasure values and numbers of opponents can result in some wonky encounters, since I am only making these in 30 minutes. In order to fix this, treasure value is left vague, and the number of enemies in some encounters is left undecided.

Idea: An ancient, crumbling manor, thought to be inhabited by the ghosts of a family of wizards, but in reality is the home of goblins who serve an ogre.

Hook: A local girl investigated the manor out of curiosity and came back with a jeweled brooch, worth enough to feed her family for weeks.



Key:

1. The front door is covered with old rusted chains and locks, almost completely disintegrated by time. A sign saying “KEEP OUT” is nailed to it. (Bear traps and caltrops lie haphazardly behind the front door.)

2. There is a cut out silhouette of a ghostly figure in front of a window, illuminated from behind with a green tinted lantern. (The fire in the lantern seems strange and otherworldly. Anyone with occult or folkloric knowledge can tell it is faerie fire.)

3. This room has the stuffed heads of exotic animals on the walls, including a one eyed humanoid, an enormous insectoid thing, a giant rat, and some reptilian creature. Most of the heads are beginning to show their age, with sand or stuffing leaking out in places. (The reptile head has expensive gems for eyes.)

4. The hallway appears empty, though there are some holes in the walls and all of the wallpaper appears to have been stripped away except in one small area. (Goblins with blowguns hide in the walls. The area with the wallpaper is a secret door.)

5. There is a cupboard in this room, along with some piles of wood that appear to have once been furniture. Some blood stains the wall. (A brownie lives in the cupboard, hoarding shoes. He does not want to be bothered, and rarely leaves the house for anything other than collecting more shoes. He knows about the goblins and the ogre downstairs, but doesn’t care because they don’t take his shoes.)

6. Bookshelves are in this room, covered in dust. There a couple moldy volumes of obscure lore on them, but no recent texts. (A tripwire is hooked up to a pendulum which will swing an axe at anyone who trips it.)

7. A pair of red spectacles rest on a polished wood pedestal. (The spectactles allow the wearer to see heat, and thus detect invisible creatures and see in the dark somewhat.)

8. A black, cast iron cauldron bubbles with a pinkish sludge, though there is no visible heat source. Next to the cauldron is an old sack. (If someone dips part of themselves in, they burn themselves, but a moment later, a 6 inch high version of themselves will emerge from the cauldron, with the mind of a rat but otherwise fully formed. The sack next to the cauldron contains gems.)

9. Some bloodied, rotting corpses float a few inches above the ground, translucent and otherworldly, moaning in some unknown tongue. (Some goblins have stacked themselves on top of each other to look tall, and are wearing bloodied sheets to appear as ghosts. By using a ritual they found in an old spell book, the goblins have cast a glamour to make themselves appear as actual ghosts. The effect wears off immediately if the goblins are hit with any attacks.)

10. An ogre lounges on a small bed of coins in the basement, the corpses of animals dangling on meat hooks. The ogre has 2 goblin servants near him, feeding him scraps of rotting meat. (The ogre cares little for his incompetent goblin servants, which he will send off to fight the party first. The ogre is lazy, and will only actually begin fighting once his two servants are killed.)