Worm Jam, pt 2 - Crime of Passion
15 September 2024
Note: this is part of a series on writing for the His Majesty the Worm Game Jam. Check out the intro post here!
Contents
Intro
Following on my last post, I'm going to start keying my dungeon using advice from the free underworld creation document. I took a break from writing to navigate a pretty busy month, so I haven't thought about this as intentionally as I'd hoped. Still, coming back and re-reading my first post, I remain happy with what the cards gave me, so the keying process shouldn't be so bad. Let's get into it.
Keying the Dungeon
I'm gonna focus on baseline ideas for right now and fiddle with tying in mechanics later!
Recap
Here's our seed from last time:
Sight:
Soft white hills. An icy river between two moons: one above, one reflected. Small lumps line the footpath - frozen messengers with cracked blue lips. Each holds a letter bearing the seal of a forgotten crown. Unseen counsel. They will not be buried.
Sounds:
Torn, ragged voices singing hymns with little talent - this is a soldier's chorus. Water trickling, drinks clinking. Solemn camaraderie muted by snow.
Smell and Taste:
From the north: ash, overcooked meat, burnt hair. From the south: astringent taste, like vinegar or spoilt wine. In the center: cider and spices, stone soup, warm breath.
Lighting:
To the south a translucent lighthouse stands proud. Dark blue fuel pumps through to keep the flame bright. Its counterpart up north: six soot-black pinewood towers dotted with cinders. The stubborn glows inside refuse to die. Cold stars blink up high, uncaring.
Structures:
Arrows coated in eternal flame stick from the snow. At their edges, thin wafers of ice continually melt and reform. The soldiers use these to build wobbling crystalline shacks. Fragile, but keeps the cold out.
Common Monsters:
Soldiers of Moon and Dove, bitter love phantasms, vengeful messengers, burned-out husks, endless flame wisps, fragile glass constructs, lighthouse tenders
Dungeon Lord(s):
The Weeping Moon & The Punctured Dove
Core Thoughts
So, we've got two (ex-)lovers stewing on their thrones from opposite ends of a battlefield. How do we deal with them? My lazy idea: each lover has some precious object that must be returned to them to end their hatred, BUT both objects ideally have to be given at the same time. Otherwise one will overpower the other and lead to a Bad End.
Character outlines:
- The Moon is an alchemist with a focus on glass, strange lifeblood, and warped creations
- The Dove is a witch with a focus on wood, fire, and anger.
A reason to explore
The straightforward first thought here is that there's some kind of great treasure or boon that can only be retrieved once the lovers are reunited. I'm going to refer back to our sight seed - I'm drawn to the idea of a moon in our underground space. Obviously this'll be written as, like, a prophecy that's communicated to anyone who enters the area.
- A haggard, scratched archway stands with unearned pride over a snowy path. Symbols of rejected violence litter the ground - swords, medals, torn standards. A moon is clearly visible through the arch, full almost to bursting.
- Carved script lines the arch: ...but until true love finds the throne, I cannot bear to face you.
- (translation: when two lovers sit in the throne of each keep, the moon will descend and grant access to its treasure)
- The scratches are actually tally marks. They cover the available space. Clearing the snow reveals they've been etched into the stone underneath, up to a quarter-mile out.
A reason to flee
The underworld creation document is very thorough here.
OK, I guess I'll put a dragon in my dungeon.
- Prince Rupert's Drake: a freakish creation of coiled glass the size of a school bus. It's bulbous at the front, tapering down to a thin, quivering tail at the back. The beast's skin is translucent; its alchemic lifeblood glows within, blue nerves branching like frozen lightning.
- Its head and body are completely impervious to all attacks.
- A good strike to the tail will shatter the entire beast, killing it instantly. It knows this, and hides its weak point behind layers and layers of its spiraling body.
- Two main attacks:
- Slamming its bulky teardrop head on the ground.
- Refracting moonlight through its prismatic heart, channeling it into a devastating rainbow laser beam.
A reason to talk
By my reckoning, we've got three main factions in this dungeon: The Moon, the Dove, and the pacifist soldiers in between. The book suggests listing what they want and don't want. Seems easy enough!
- The Weeping Moon, ritual alchemist and so-called descendent of the moon above. Their body was shed long ago. Only glass remains.
- Wants: to love the Dove; to kill the Dove; to understand every atom of their own self.
- Does not want: to view uncovered flesh; to be ignored; to be forgotten.
- Pacified by: TBD
The Punctured Dove, witch of the earth, burning eternal on her pinewood pyre.
- Wants: to love the Moon; to kill the Moon; to spread her consciousness among the soil and be a part of all things.
- Does not want: the fires to go out; her rage to be tempered; to sow new life until the infection has been cut away.
- Pacified by: TBD
The Mending Division, former soldiers of Moon and Dove who rejected their eternal battle. They promised their lives to the moon above, and cannot die until she's back again.
- Wants: to bring the Moon and Dove together again; true peace; death at last.
- Does not want: to pacify one ruler but not the other, lest the kingdom be overrun.
Is it annoying that there's a character named The Moon and, separately, a setting-relevant moon? Yeah, a little, but I don't really care. I like the idea of players talking to the soldiers and having to double check which moon is being discussed. I'll use moon above to refer to the actual physical object.
A reason to fight
Just regular degular baddies. I'll use my common monsters seed from last post for this one.
- Mementos: twisted reflections of each ruler born dripping from their foreheads as they stew in hatred. The Moon conjures Mementos of the Dove and vice versa. These pathetic children never quite resemble their parents - their features are blurry, their voices distant, and those outfits haven't been worn in decades. The only things they get right, every single time, are the hands.
- Openly hostile to any comers, whom they dismiss as unwanted suitors.
- On seeing a Memento of the opposite ruler, they laugh (or cry?) and immediately attack. The resulting clash is ravenous and bloody as they are overcome with emotion unable to be expressed beyond violence. Without outside intervention, both will inevitably die from the ensuing wounds.
A reason to breathe easy
Seems simple enough to bring in our pacifist soldiers here.
- Fragile glass pillars sprout at uneven intervals inside the Mending Division's base camp. At its center, a massive stone cauldron simmers over lovingly tended flame. Scent profile: vegetal, earthy, warm.
- Visible from above: an oblong, inedible piece of stone at the bottom of the pot.
- The soldiers pour servings freely to travelers. Each member carries a personal spice packet to flavor their meals - sharing this is a sign of great intimacy.
A reason to experiment
My first thought turns to something in the Weeping Moon's alchemic keep. I was uhhh mostly just bullshitting when I wrote that bit earlier about wanting to understand every atom of their own self, but it's an interesting thing to pull from. I'll try this, pulling from our lighting seed:
- The top of the lighthouse. A set of telescopic lenses hang beneath the flame above a shockingly small chair. Nearby, on a glass podium: a notebook with most of the pages ripped out, a set of brutish levers, seven needles.
- Fiddling with the levers rearranges the lenses such that they reflect the flame's light towards the chair, bathing it in an eerie silver-blue glow.
- Sitting in this glow casts an X-Ray effect over the character's body. Their inner world - thoughts, wants, goals, needs - appears to those standing behind the podium in a great big jumble.
- The needles allow one to surgically alter this inner world, although the process is tedious and exhausting. (Test Wands here?)
- If a player sits here, hand their character sheet to the player behind the podium. The controlling player may (with consent) modify one word under Quest, Motifs, or Bonds.
A reason to be surprised
The seed I created was great for aesthetic details, but it's harder to rip from it directly for writing secrets, I think. But since we're apparently focusing on the Moon's keep right now, I'll just draw from that.
- A translucent statue of a bulky man, beautifully made, arms outstretched. A much more amateurish glass crown sits on his head. Dark veins carve through his body, but no liquid flow through them. His mouth is wide and inviting. Barely visible through his torso: a thin wooden door.
- Pouring the blue liquid powering the keep's other mechanisms into his mouth activates him. He sweeps you into a big bear hug and opens the door, welcoming you to the Weeping Moon's treasure vault.
- The powered statue politely waits for you to finish your business inside, then resumes his position and vomits out the blue liquid, powering himself down.
A reason to return
A reminder that this place exists as part of an interconnected megadungeon. I think this is a good point to flesh out the objects that will pacify our lovers. In this post, I'll work on the Weeping Moon.
- The Moon hungers for the Dove, but they worry only for this: the last piece of their old flesh, a lung, given to the Dove on a whim when they were as one. In their superstitious fretting they fear an enemy could use it to bring them ruin. Worse, they fear the Dove callously threw the lung away, and now it's God-knows-where. In their (infrequent) dreams they cradle it, softly, like a newborn.
- In all their paranoia, they got this right: The Dove threw the lung into the river years ago, before the snow, and it floated down to an adjacent dungeon level.
...I've been reading Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova recently so I guess lung children are on the mind. Probably in the final document I'll add a suggestion for placing the lung inside this space in case you don't want to deal with putting it in an entirely separate dungeon.
Interesting Rooms
The document just says to come up with ideas and write them down, so I'll do that! I'm gonna spitball a few images here based on what we've fleshed out (the Moon's keep) and what we haven't (the Dove's), as well as a few bits from the seed that we haven't used yet.
- A banquet hall decked in polished glass. Coiled tubes descend from the ceiling, bearing nutritious paste from above; former nobles suckle at their ends. The mirrored walls reflect all.
- Arrow-like thorns plucked from sharp vines on the Dove's burning towers, to be fired at intruders. The vines regrow fast, hungry to hurt.
- Frozen messengers lining a pathway, huddling their unread messages against unbeating hearts.
- A gazebo, encased in ice, once used for weddings. No longer.
- The Dove's throne room, forever burning. She sees no visitor who cannot withstand the flame.
- A library, empty save for old history books. Mementos who stumble here learn, to their great sorrow, that they were born illiterate.
- Wooden husks, animate yet empty, dancing around an unexpected flower. Their pinky fingers twist and bind each other like a rat king's tails.
- Vats filled with eye-watering acid. Stooped attendants pour the ritual ingredients: salt, sugar, blood. Their incantations decant the contents into tiny vials of burning blue reagant.
What's Next?
There's a few key blanks to fill in:
- What treasure is on the moon above that's worth finding?
- What will pacify the Punctured Dove? Where is it?
- What's on this dungeon's Meatgrinder Table?
I think for the next post I'll do another pass of this keying process to bring life to the opposite keep, use all that new information to flesh out the Meatgrinder, maybe add a few more points of interest, and call it a day. My end goal is somewhere between 16-20 rooms for the dungeon level. After that I've got to force myself to sit down and lay everything out, which I'm not looking forward to. Luckily that's a problem for future me. Present me can look forward to the fun part of writing out the rest of the dungeon. See you soon!