Ummm . . .

(On things there are that I thought fit here to forewarn the Reader, part whereof may be necessary even for those who are in other things very well instructed)

Quietly, I parted the blinds — light eking in like a pottle of strawberries wherein you see the mold on the one, but in extracting it to toss away you realize the whole of them are gone bad (so too the light shortly distended and woke up the children). I began to type.

With an optimism composed of 3/4 alpine tranquility and 1/4 the modular arithmetic of January 1 emergent from December, I marked that I had, "returned from the driven well with fieldnotes" concerning mine own abandoned Dungeon 23, pledging to fill in any gaps remaining and continue the project to completion in this year of our Lord MMXXVI. 

Ha! Some field notes.

The jays were yelling at each other - so too soon were the kids.

Vern Wright

The ensuing months passed and although I dutifully wrangled each morning's unfinished entry (3 years later to the day,), the clues encountered were nearer sketches than schematics: "Hostile as hell" or "A fishbowl for the funerary set," interspersed with cut-and-pasted Marvel fanart from reddit r/PetRocks. Not super helpful, although perhaps it remains a good practice for a diarist to boil things to a thick gravy.

Ergo: 

Up betimes and to my office, where first I ruled with red ink my English “Mare Clausum,” which, with the new orthodox title, makes it now very handsome. So to business, and then home to dinner, and after dinner to sit at the office in the afternoon, and thence to my study late, and so home to supper to play a game at cards with my wife, and so to bed. Ashwell plays well at cards, and will teach us to play; I wish it do not lose too much of my time, and put my wife too much upon it. - Samuel Pepys, April 21, 1663

Wait til' she learns about old school d&d, Sammy!

(and as for embellishing the substitute frontmatter, printed dedications to "the Supreme Autoritie of the Nation — The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England" already reverted to the original "Most Serene and Mighty Prince Charles," I can only suggest to trust in God and an open Internet).

Francois de Laporte

I tried my utmost, but that the hook for the first catalogued ship of my multitudinous 12 mis-taxonomied "megadungeons" would be that it was upside down was indicative of problems to come with intelligibility. In a vacuum, an inverted ship is a semi-functional conceit, but it's a flawed opening gambit. Why was the ship upside down? Umm . . . a meteor? A magnet? A magentic meteor? A magentic meteor? It's a shard of an extra-planetary catastrophe lodged in the bulbous bow, pulling skyward? Skyward? Up and up and up?

Van-El — Father, can we go and meet Mother and Orna? I'm cold.

Kal-El — Van, it's . . . it's this feeling. I . . . oh dear Rao, am I going mad? I keep thinking that . . . Van, please, I know this won't make sense, but . . . you're my son. I was there at your birth and I'll always love you. Always. But . . . but Van, I . . . I don't think you're real. 

Darius Gilmont

Anyway, after 3 months of furiously refining daily entries and never hitting publish on anything, it was time to skip out again. Although I cherish the image of an entry a day, on the day, James Maliszewskian, I must bow before the reality of that J.M. I am not. I'm not even J.M. DeMatteis.

Let the January rooms come out on their own schedule, the February rooms on theirs, the March rooms. Let the April rooms . . . well . . . I quit the relaunch on April 1 already. Leave the April rooms for 2027. April, April, der macht was er will (and that shall be the whole of the law).

The boat isn't upside down at all, you see. It's out of sequence. The inhabitants are of different biological ages. Imagine high school, but the Senior class is from 1986, the juniors from 1956, the sophomores from this year of our Lord 2026. Also, the marching band is riding the teachers around like horses.

It's a generation ship — everybody sleeping for the rough bits where the waters lap the docks of the city states — Iscyra, Cyraxius, Saeculium. Run quiet and run still and that. But the robots keep waking up their charges on accident. You've seen this movie.

Stanko Tadić

JANUARY BOAT (revised) - CLUSIVIUS

The machinery tries to put the restive riders back in suspended animation, but it's stupid machinery and so they form little communities and hide away. All the factions are thus descendants of all the factions, and each turns the servitors to their own purposes. 

It was all going OK until the raiders started showing up.

The boat is inhabited by:

HOWLERS (Prophets)

# Enc 1d10, AC 7, HD 2+2, Att 1 (bite), Dmg 1d6, ML 7

ANOINTMENTED: 1 leader per troupe will use longsword instead of teeth. It is coated in a salve and is a +1 weapon whilst so coated.

The OGs who were first awakened. They are masked, superstitious, and violent. For reference, see the K'u J-meentajóob from Labyrinth of the Lamia Cerulean. Is this the afterlife? Certainly seems like it. They have turned their captured servitors into GODS (5% chance per # encountered they are also accompanies by a "god" - spindly little things, (HD 2, AC 9, Att 0). The howlers' ML goes to 11 if a God is present. They repair the servitors even as those thus fixed attempt to apprehend them and put them back in suspended animation.

MZNTRP

PINHEADS (Nomads)

# Enc. 1d6, AC 5, HD 3, Att 1, Net (dmg 0), Stomp (dmg 2d4), ML 8 

ENTANGLE with net/lasso to immobilize (1d4 rounds to escape)

SERVITOR STOMP - Once entangled, automatic hit for 2d4 damage.

Cowboys. They have turned their captured servitors into bovine "DOGIES" and eight-legged "HORSIES" moving through the ship looking for good grazing (electronic detritus).

Sometimes recaptured Howlers are awakened a second time and become part of a Pinhead posse. They regard the mounts with some degree of awe — like you saw a dog with the face of Baal Hammon all of a sudden. These SCREWBALLS refuse to ride such mounts — just as well, as they are generally kept lassoed due to their ecstatic and electric freakouts. For a comp think a 40k Weirdboy.

# Enc 0-4 (1d10-6), AC 7, HD 2+2, Att 1 (bite), Dmg 1d6, ML 7

SPLITFINGER - Magic Missile as level 3 MU once per day.

DORMAMMUS (Heroes)

Candlemen. # Enc. 1d3, AC 3, HD 5, Ml 7, Att 2 (soul knives), Dmg 1d6, ML 10. They have turned their captured servitors into pilot lights ("Moses baskets") wherein a dormammu can be re-lit after exhausting the fire. It is CRITICALLY important to keep to a dormammu he keep his basket hidden. They love to go around and demolish "all the eggs with their short-swords" like green Martians on a rampage.

SPELLCASTERS

Dormammus can work a variety of magics, but to do so diminishes their fire, exposing them to snuffing or to revealing the hiding spots of their machinery. They can cast 2 spells before recharge, the first as a level 4 magic user, the 2nd as level 2 - note, some of these spells are 3rd level, and can still be cast, but at half power). Further - after casting, their flame fixes at a color until it replenished. This is FIDDLY as various factions of dormammus have territories, and the woe be to him with the incorrect color flame: 

(as Ice T put it, See over there red don't go. Some places red's all they know)

1. RED - Mutagenic Scalding - Save vs. Poison or gain random mutation. Writhe around for 1d10 turns while the change takes place.

2. ORANGE - Charm Person - Watch the pretty fire baubles

3. YELLOW - Meteor Swarm

4. GREEN - Enervate - Draw your heat. Gain hp.

5. BLUE - Mental Prison

6. PURPLE - Vitriolic Sphere - It's a personal fireball only for you. Ouch.

Redundancy in such an environment is the critical, and a Dormammu is attended by (1d10-4) conflogracoyltes, # Enc. 0-6 (1d10-4), AC 3, HD 5, Ml 7, Att 1 (headbut), Dmg 1d4, ML 7, pinheads whose necks are extended to wicks — into which they can disperse consciousness in a crisis. Anybody who knows anything about fire will realize soon you'll have 1d6 identical twins and none of them will suffer the existence others — so this really is a LAST resort.

More rarely, howlers accompany the candlemen, significantly degraded by being awakened and put to sleep repeatedly. These slavering things are kept chained to each other and used for tracking, be it sniffing out cradles, sniffing out dopple-firers, or as warning systems for the machinery that will put their masters back to sleep (see CL-1: Dermacur Pack). The sound of their growls tells you more about their handlers than it indicates any recoverable nobility.

# Enc. 0-2 (1d8-6), AC 7, HD 2d4+2, Ml 7, Att 4 (bite), Dmg 1d4*, ML 10

PACK ATTACK: The pack can be thought of as one creature - chained together as they are, lose 1 attack each 1/4 of hp lost.

OVERWHELM: Each successful attack over the course of a turn does the next higher die of damage: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10.

Redwater Vectors

GEMBUGS (Artists)

They aren't insects at all. They are the servitor bots whose vats are empty - either through earlier release, through initial vacancy, or through some sort of failure of the life-support systems.

No. Enc 1d6, HD 3, AC 2, Att 1, Dmg 1d8*, ML 11

STONE SETTING - On a roll of 8 for damage, the victim is frozen in alkalite and the Gembugs' goals change to removing said subject back to the vats to be preserved for the ships ultimate arrival. Save vs Petrification at -2 or be turned to stone as by a medusa. A remove curse will fix it, as will properly playing with the controls, but it's a bummer for sure.

There are no vestigial travelers with the Gembugs. All their attempts to resuscitate the vat-habitants were unsuccessful.

It's like the entire apparatus is broken, and instead of attempting to mechanically fix it, the servitor is going after the problem with paper and pen. Reality as a diary detailing reality. They would like you to sit for a still life.

They carry preposterous facsimiles of living things that they lean against the wall and pretend to speak to. They quietly hum the tunes of follow-up bombs to more enduring popular works. It's Lolotte Pov'piti Lolotte's cousin, Skip to my Lou, as interpreted by a youtube cartoon marsupial. It's Oasis, Be Here Now. Magic Pie, baby!

Scott Mackay