Part of creating this massive labyrinth has been coming up with a variety of encounters for the characters (and players) exploring the labyrinth. Some of this is basic traps, random monster encounters, and bits of loot spread around the labyrinth in as close to a haphazard manner as I can manage while still making use of the space properly. Other stuff is what I like to think of as “The Big Deals:” things that could have significant impacts on the group or that change locations as time passes (and, usually, could still have significant impacts on the group). So far, the party has run into one Big Deal of each type, but they only just achieved that in our most recent session when they found a trap that had the potential to slowly kill them while also giving them a chance to learn huge, significant, and important details about the world as a whole. It was a difficult trap to avoid once they (literally) stepped into it, but it was one with a bunch of red flags raised around it, there to warn my players about what they were going to find, so they would be in a position to choose whether or not to step in the trap. Like players everywhere, they still chose to step in the trap so I got to share some information about the world around them and they still managed to get out with only a single level of exhaustion rather than their entire life force drained away. All-in-all, I think it was a pretty successful session and an all-but-perfect deployment of the first of many Big Deal traps (though I suppose there is another Big Deal trap out there that they already tripped, but it only became a Big Deal Trap once they chose to interact with what was supposed to be a mixture of set dressing and world lore). Coincidentally, it was also the first Big Deal anything that I made when designing this labyrinth.

The session started out with another brief recap as we talked through what the plan was. Only half of our players were present, but the campaign is built to run with as few as three of the six possible players, so we moved forward once the party picked a direction and, thanks to an overnight roll from two and a half months ago, they got to witness their first examples of the Labyrinth being restored somehow. Up to this point, I’d been dropping hints that something was happening in this exlaborate dungeon that was beyond the ordinary, but I’d yet to reveal the true nature of that other than establishing that this dungeon was a place that the community the player characters are a part of could endlessly collect resources. I didn’t use the word “endlessly” of course, but I did describe that it was heavily explored, still full of loot, and dangerous for them all to explore despite multiple decades of this community attempting to plumb its depths. I don’t know if it’s the length of time since we started this game or if people just weren’t paying attention way back then, but it was treated with a degree of surprise and suspicion that I didn’t expect since even their characters would know that the labyrinth was somehow self-renewing. I’m sure it’ll wear off eventually and it was ultimately of little consequence, but it did make it worth the time I set aside to emphasize how things had changed or reverted to a previous state. Maybe eventually we’ll start digging into the rules behind how this happens, why it happens, and what that means for the players and the labyrinth as a whole, but for now it is enough that they unequivocably know that it does happen.

All of this eventually led them toward an unexplored area that had some stuff going on behind the scenes that the party found out about because of a high perception check. One of the player characters was able to hear a distant noise coming from a side passage and the party decided they wanted to check it out rather than continue to make their way to the place they originally wanted to explore. This took them down a few simple, twisty side passages as they circled around some things that only I could see on the map and stumbled their way into a few incredibly realistic, brain-tricking illustions that they were eventually able to see through. The first was a fakeout, the second looked like a fakeout but hid some treasure, and the last one was the trap itself, hidden inside a room whose only entrance was a hidden door that swung out into the hallway they were in. Using a clever application of some supplies they’d picked up while in the maze (mimic glue and rope), they were able to fashion a handle on this door that made it trivially easy to open. Inside they found a very comfortable study filled with bookshelves (and books, of course), cozy chairs, non-messy finger foods, and plenty to drink. And a person wearing some kind of strange porcelain face-covering that seemed to note their presence but didn’t ever respond to them. The first person inside was able to resist the illusion and charm effects of the trap, but the next person, who was sent in to read the text adding features and “hair” to the otherwise indistinct and smooth porcelain face covering of the figure already in the room, fell under its sway immediately. The other two party members tried to go in to save him–the magic of the trap made it difficult to lasso him from outside the room–and wound up getting pulled into the illusion as well.

As they all settled in to their new space and their new identities as armchair academics of the vaugely historic variety, back when academia was the lackadaisical pursuit of the rich and powerful, I had them all roll a since intelligence-based knowledge check and gave them interesting and potentially useful information based on their result. We learned a little bit about the potentially conflicting nature of ambient magics as they leak in from other plains of existence and how the material world responds to that kind of ambient energy. We also learned quite a bit about the underlying rules of magic and the role that “belief” plays in enforcing them, as indicated by the fact that all magic is, ultimately, an effect procuded by burning ambient magical energy and not some kind of highly-siloed field of study (which is mostly just me setting up cross-class spell lists and explaining away certain kinds of strange manifestations of magic, like Bards being able to learn ANY spell at certain points in their leveling-up (and also for other reasons but those are spoilers)). All through the illusory debate of ideas they found in books they’d picked off the shelves of this cozy room to discuss with their companions over some tasty snacks and well-made drinks.

Unfortunately, we did not learn much of anything about the gods, worship, or the nature of religion due to a poor roll, but now my players know that there is a place in the dungeon they can go to research or learn things so long as they’re willing to accept the risks involved in subjecting themselves to a trap that gave them a single level of exhaustion before the party’s barbarian was able to free herself from its grasp and pull out her still-entranced companions. Both of whom, inerestingly, had strange, thin, almost-featureless porcelain masks on their face rather than the large and weighty face-covering that the other figure in the room had. Who knows what they might find when they go back (if they go back) since they assumed that the other figure was a person who’d been trapped in the room much longer than them. I know what’s up and I kinda hope they decide to spend some time poking at this room and learning it’s rules so they can extract knowledge from it when they need answers. In the mean time, we’ll see how next session goes and if they decide to wait until they can rest their exhaustion away before continuing to explore or carry on despite it since who knows what else might happen while they wait. I’ve got dice to roll, after all. I love letting time pass so I can roll them more.