dailyadventureprompts:Dungeon: The Sapphire Caverns“ Before you lays the fortune of the earth,
dailyadventureprompts:Dungeon: The Sapphire Caverns“ Before you lays the fortune of the earth, the cold light of the winter sun outside refracting off facets in every conceivable shade of blue” Setup: A place of tremendous beauty, the sapphire caverns are hidden for most of the year high in the mountains behind a waterfall of glacial melt , meaning that anyone who wished to explore them would need to risk drowning, a crushing cascade, and an inevitable case of hypothermia. Ironically that makes the best time to visit the caverns during the deepest winter, when the waterfall has become a jagged portcullis and the usually surging floor of the cavern has hardened enough to walk upon. Unique minerals within the water and the cave itself causes the ice that forms within it to take on a multitude of brilliant azure hues, giving the cave its name and concealing the location’s true treasures among innumerable chilly counterfeits. While most prospectors should be able to tell the difference between precious stones and simple ice crystals, some strange jinx on the cave causes the frozen formations to both look just like precious stones, and retain their hardness while they remain inside it, requiring a would be fortune hunter to do all the work of quarrying out their prize then cart it outside the cave to watch as their glittering prize reverts back to simple ice. Adventure Hooks: After discovering a map to the caverns and braving dangerous mountain passes, the party is faced with the challenge of exploring these frigid icy depths without succumbing to exposure. It’s miserable work with little hope of any actual rest, as the winter taxes their supplies and any camp they make outside of the caverns is vulnerable to both storm and mountainbound animal. Perhaps their map points them towards a particular wing of the caverns where a more reliable vein of crystals can be found. Over the generations, numerous desperate souls have attempted to carve a fortune out of the sapphire caverns, and a number of them have stuck around to spite those who would try where they failed. A surfeit of undead haunt the tunnels, ranging from warmth darning specters who died of exposure to avaricious, pickaxe wielding weights to were double-crossed just as they found their prize. The party will likely need the services of an exorcist just as much as they’ll need a geologist, lets just hope the holy water doesn’t freeze stiff. Some clever individual realized that the best way to hide treasure was to stick it in a place where everyone was looking for a DIFFERENT kind of treasure. After stashing a weighted chest over one of the frozen pools, they merely had to wait for the caverns to thaw at which point their chest sunk to the bottom of a pool of deathly cold water, inaccessible by just about anyone. Said clever individual happens to be a lich, and the treasure is their phylactery. Should the party end up discovering this hidden cache and realize what they have, they’ll be in the unique position of being able to attempt blackmail against a powerful, immortal arcanist capable of destroying them with a thought. If they don’t realize they’ll be wholly unprepared when the lich comes to collect. -- source link