Previous posts in this series on my Dungeon23 project, the Great Cuttle: Introductory Post | Week 1

I finished up the cargo deck of The Nautilus Dove, a wrecked astral galleon resting at the heart of the Wake Fields, a mess of surface flotsam and jetsam resting above the Great Cuttle itself. Here’s the ridiculously small scale I am working with:

The cargo deck is where the surface wreck meets the megadungeon itself, an area called the Midden that I will start to flesh out in March. Although I haven’t labeled it such (calling it the Wake Fields instead), I have been conceptualizing this surface area and the immediate levels beneath it as the Upper Midden, a transitory area acting as a lure for pirates and treasure hunters who think they’ll find wealth or glory if they explore it, but really, all they’ll find is death and their ship becoming just more debris in a giant cuttlefish’s mouth.

So that you don’t need to try and read my tiny, ass writing, here’s the room transcriptions below, loosely keyed for use with Into the Odd. I’m simply transcribing what I wrote in the journal, not fleshing out, expanding upon, or reorganizing in anyway. As always, I’m aiming to keep this a short and simple task. There’s plenty of time to revise later.

I’ll probably go back and update the first two posts with transcriptions as well, so keep an eye out for that.

The Nautilus Dove – Cargo Deck

General Details

• In the Unseen, vague & amorphous figures linger in every room, spectral haunts that are unsettling but harmless. wrapped in spectral chains and seaweed, flailing and jerking as if drowning

Bestiary

• Star Mouth
  • Purple and black space starfish w/ mouth full of tentacles & teeth on top
  • STR 14, DEX 8, WIL 6, HP 12
  • Driven to feed
  • Lashes out with tentacles tongues for d6, anyone taking Critical Damage is pulled into its mouth for d12 damage
  • Can stick to any surface, but can detach & scuttle around if necessary

N-CD-1: Crew Quarters

• ↓ Door to 2, blocked by crystal growth
• Pile of corpses along far wall opposite door, partially consumed/overgrown w/ sharp crystals
• Crystals resonate oddly, causing headaches (If PCs ignore warning, take d4 WIL damage)
• Buried in pile, a star metal saber (worth 1G)

N-CD-2: Aft Cargo

• ↓ Stairs up to MD-2
• ↑ Door to 1, blocked by crystal growth
• Smashed casks and boxes strewn about, a search finds only 20s
• ←→ Doors to 3, barnacle covered and locked

N-CD-3a & 3b: Officer Quarters and Galley

• 3a – Officer Quarters, trashed and covered in luminous slime
  • On ceiling, a Star Mouth, starving and desperate
  • Under broken bed, a jade helmet worth 1G, 15s
• 3b – Galley
  • Overgrown w/ strange crystalline mushrooms
  • Large mushroom in center has a skull top, eyes & teeth
  • Profound sense of unease

N-CD-4: The Brig

• Door sealed w/ hardened cuttle secretions
• inside a bound and starving Fin Folk named Dolon Houlage is chained to floor by his neck
• Chain contains a bound spirit tasked w/ keeping Dolon from shapechanging out of the chain
• From a Fin Folk town in The Maw called BrokeShell
• Dolon is being punished for “abominations” & will barter for their life

N-CD-5: Forward Cargo

• ↑ Partial flooding in front of massive coral growth blocking access to rest of 5. Can hack or cut through but grows back quickly & hacking through draws attention
• ↓ Door to 6, stuck…
• Smashed and looted cargo here, search reveals nothing of value

N-CD-6: Quartermaster Stores

• Looted & wrecked, tattered hammock hanging from ceiling to →
• ↓ Hull smashed open, but beyond is waterlogged tunnel heading down
  • Tunnel walls made up of flotsam & jetsam stuck together w/ some sort of secretion or seepage, water drips constantly

N-CD-7: The Flue

• Water in tunnels is ankle or shin deep
• Floor is piled up debris also sealed & hardened by secretions or slime
• Stench of rotting fish, air tastes coppery, from the flue
  • Shaft in room goes down (farther than 60ft), leads to ______
  • Flue walls slippery, requiring equipment to climb down

While working on this, I decided not to add a steerage deck, so next up, I’ll tackle either of the nearby zones I noted on the map above, The Wrap or The Sunken Maze. I’m only vaguely sure I know what those are, but I’ll start to figure it out tomorrow.