The Dark Grave: A Mörk Borg Puzzle Dungeon

This is a little puzzle dungeon I ran for a Mörk Borg one shot in 2022. I found it again the other day in the notebook I’m using for Dungeon23. It’s nothing too special, as I just made it from prompts from DNGNGEN, but it was a lot of fun to run a group through, and I wanted to share it.

The Dark Grave

The dungeon is located in the Valley of the Unfortunate Dead. Players enter through a door inside a large dead tree. There is a slick slide that leads quickly downward into Room 1 which is impossible to travel back up to exit the dungeon.

There are 7 rooms with rooms 1-6 rotating around the central room.

The interior of each room is lined with intricately carved dark wood. Some lines in the carvings provide a faint light, but the rooms are mostly dark.

Random Encounters

Roll 1d4 each time players enter a new room:

1. Nothing happens
2. 1d6 Belze (p. 62) appear and attack
3. A tentacle bursts through a wall and attacks (use stats for Eulotha p. 69)
4. There is complete silence, all sounds are muted

Rotating Rooms

Roll 1d2 when moving between rooms or if players linger too long in a single room. On a 1, the rooms rotate one position clockwise. On a 2, the rooms stay in place.

It is important to track the relative position of Rooms 1–6 and the walls of Room 7 as they are numbered on the map. Walls 3 and 6 are windows into Room 7. Wall 4 is a door into Room 7.

Room 1

This is a dark room filled with smoke. There is a statue hanging by its feet from the ceiling.

Room 2

The walls are lined with shelves filled with obscure prophetic texts. There is a chest marked with explosive runes (DR14 Presence | 1d4 Damage). Inside the chest are a medicine box, a torch, and a bag of salt.

Room 3

This room is filled with a pile of corpses. Black crypt fungus grows on the walls. Eating the fungus heals all HP and increases all abilities by +1 for one hour.

There is a window on the wall adjacent to Room 7. If Room 3 is aligned with Wall 3 or 6 of Room 7, it provides a view into Room 7. Otherwise, there is only darkness visible.

Room 4

The carvings in the walls of this room are filled with descriptions and images of horrible rituals (DR12 Presence or feel compulsion to flee room).

There is a door on the wall adjacent to Room 7. It is locked and trapped (DR 12 Presence | Black Poison: DR14 Toughness or take 1d6 damage and go blind for 1 hour). If Room 4 is aligned with Wall 4 of room 7, the door leads into Room 7. Otherwise, it opens onto a dark wood wall.

There is a lever on the wall that rotates the rooms one position clockwise with each pull.

Room 5

There are thousands of tally marks scratched on all surfaces of the room and a smashed game board in the middle of the floor.

Room 6

There is a set of manacles on the floor. Scrolls used in this room have the effect of a different scroll chosen at random.

There is a window on the wall adjacent to Room 7. If Room 6 is aligned with Wall 3 or 6 of Room 7, it provides a view into Room 7. Otherwise, there is only darkness visible.

Room 7

This room is open to the outside through a hole in its roof, which provides a dim light. The floor is the writing mass of a large, dark creature with its mouth full of sharp teeth in the center of the room. There are no tentacles present in this room, but players can see them going under the floors of the rooms surrounding this one. All attacks against the creature succeed automatically, and it cannot attack except by bouncing people toward its mouth. The creature has 30 HP. A DR16 Agility check is required each turn to avoid being bounced into the creature’s mouth and eaten. There is a rope hanging from the center of the hole over the creature’s mouth.