#also could be mausritter if you just make the worm a regular snake

[hglog]

MOTHER WORM

A ZUNGEON BY ROBOT_FACE (ME)

Hey everyone. I wrote this Zungeon (zine dungeon) today. The proper way to read it is by downloading the PDF from my itch page, printing it, and folding it up into a booklet. But if you'd prefer a blog post, just keep reading here.

All art is either by me or modified from public domain imagery by me.

("itinerary" in the image should say "retinue".)

1d6 ENCOUNTERS (only after the party reaches 2: the egg room)

1. A piercing, warbling wail echoes through the dungeon.

2. The necromancer's ghost pokes his head through a wall to spy on you.

3. Ghost stops to chat with you, or throw shit around like a poltergeist depending on how you stand with his mistress.

4. 1d6 stray language-leeches. Hold words of passing conversation and incorrect guesses at the puzzle.

5. 1d6+1 language-leeches, led by one which holds a spell-fragment or divine word.

6. Edgar, a questant worm-slayer who has cold feet now that the time has actually come to do the slaying.

1. THE NECROMANCER AND HER RETINUE

Young and ambitious, this necromancer promises to resurrect the worm's child. Well, she would promise that, but she's stuck at the entrance to the worm's lair - she doesn't have a key to room 3 and can't figure out the puzzle in room 2.

She commands 1 skeleton, 1 zombie, 1 vampire, and 1 ghost. The skeleton fights for her. The zombie carries all her shit. The vampire is dead in room 2 (failed the puzzle). The ghost floats throughout the zungeon, scouting and spying, and reports back to her all the information it finds (including the solution to the puzzle when you figure it out). Each day she can resurrect 3 dead creatures as her servants, she saves this ability for when she's in danger and prefers to use it on her retinue if they are slain.

The necromancer's promise is a lie! She wants to study and dissect the egg for her own nefarious research. If she convinces the worm to relinquish her egg, she will never return with it, and the worm-mother will go on a rampage in 1 month.

2. THE EGG

It sits on a pedestal in the center of the room. The worm-mother will not come through the hallway to 6 - she cannot bear to look at it.

Wormlings hatch after a year, this one has been 2 years. In reality the wormling is NOT dead! It is simply a runt, small and too weak to break the shell. It sits nearly catatonic, feeding off the dwindling yolk, and will starve in 2 months.

Any number of spells could reveal this. A dwarf or other creature with stonesense has a chance to feel the vibrations of its heartbeat. The necromancer will certainly find out upon directly observing the shell but will try to hide it from you.

You must break the shell! When you first attack it this will enrage the worm and she will come out of room 6 to kill you. In this state she cannot be reasoned with. Only when you free the wormling and it starts breathing will she be calmed.

Starting west and going clockwise, this room has: locked door to entrance room 1, hallway to puzzle room 3, opening to treasure room 4, hallway to worm lair 6, hallway to key room 5.

3. SPEECH PUZZLE

As you enter from room 1, the air in this room feels thick. Footsteps are unusually muffled. An engraving in worm-script over the hall to room 2 reads:

ONLY WHEN ITS NAME IS SPOKEN

SHALL MY SEALING SPELL BE BROKEN

Trying to pass through the hall without dispelling the magic leads to the air getting thicker and thicker, eventually crushing you to death before you reach the other end.

ANY word (including those involved in spellcasting) spoken in room 3 or the 3-2 hallway, besides the key word, emerges lurching from your throat as a slippery leech-like creature intent on killing its creator. This language-leech whispers the word that created it over and over. It is the size of a rat and can fly, its bite heals it for half the damage it drains. Language-leeches with magic words have some properties of the spell used to cast them.

Speaking the name of the sealing spell will dispel it for 1 hour.

The name of the spell is "silence".

(It's a pretty easy puzzle, I think? Let me know how it goes if you run it!)

4. TREASURE ROOM

The worm-mother hoards coins of strange denominations. No one coin matches another. They are from distant lands and long-dead empires, alien dimensions and places that do not exist. They are counterfeits, jokes, misprints, oddities. They are made of gold and silver and iron and wood and paper.

Around 600 silver and 400 gold are passable as currency or can at least be melted down. It takes a full day to sort through them, roll 1d6x100 and 1d4x100 if you don't do this.

If you free the wormling its mother will tell you to take what you want, knowing her most prized coins are by nature of little interest to an adventuring party. If you DO try to take her plastic chits and monopoly money and glass cubes and shit from her, she will rescind her offer and will kill you if you try to leave with anything.

If you take it and leave without saving her wormling, she won't stop you (she can't bear to pass through room 2 with the egg in it) but she will come after you when she goes on her rampage.

Also in this room is a potion which turns all of the words of the one who drinks it into language-leeches as described in room 3.

5. KEY TO DOOR 1-2

The key takes the form of a stone statue, a cylindrical spine with 10 teeth branching out and five feet radially around its base.

It is the size of a human, likely too heavy to carry alone. (Though a barbarian or similar can test strength.)

The lock it matches is pickable, though traditional lockpicking tools won't work at all. (The devices within it are meant to be pushed by thick branches of stone.)

If left in the lock, it will animate after an hour, remove itself, and walk back to room 5.

It's basically the only way to get out if you stay more than an hour, as trying to go back through the 2-3 hallway with the spell active puts you right in the most crushing part of it before you get a chance to say the code word. If you are on speaking terms with the worm and have saved her wormling, and you've broken the key somehow, she'll be annoyed but will break open the door for you.

6. THE GRIEVING WORM-MOTHER

She is a colossal green serpent, slimy in texture. Her head is somewhere between that of a snake, a dog, and a lamprey. She has no limbs but can manipulate objects with her tail and tongue. She normally stays coiled up but rooms 6 and 5 are large enough for her to stretch out in. When she passes through the 10-foot-wide hallways of her lair it's impossible to squeeze around her except maybe if you're a gnome or goblin or something.

She's currently freaking the fuck out and is much more likely to react with violence.

In general, she is egotistical, thinking very little of small (that is, human-sized) creatures, and is dismissive of them unless provoked. She will hear you out if you suck up to her, (the necromancer plans to do this,) but will not accept that her wormling is currently alive unless you actually break it out of the egg and show it to her. This initial act of breaking the egg will provoke her.

She collects riddles, languages, and coins.

She keeps potions which will transform her into a human for 1 day. Her appearance is that of an elderly woman with green skin and silver-grey hair. She only has 50 doses remaining and the alchemist who made them is dead so she uses them sparingly.