Hey, so I know it’s kinda late in the game, but I’m doing an overhaul of my snowflake dungeon.

It’s not because any of it was wrong – it’s because I was presented with a pretty cool opportunity that I’m not gonna talk about yet.

(Sorry to be that guy.)

A lot of it already matched the upcoming project, but there’s some definite changes that need to take place.

For one, our beloved goblin Lugpopple is going to be a Gullygug (what one might think of as a Bullywug in D&D, renamed for reasons…)

The revised story is as follows…

Centuries ago, an ancient wizard summoned a demon prince of disease and plague, but the foolish mortal was not powerful enough to control her. Plagues and decay ravished the land of Chambra.

A group of Paladins, devoted to St. Vaciscous, fought her, sustaining heavy losses, but were able to capture her within a magical stone – the Plague Rock. They hid it away in a series of caves and built a temple atop it to protect it so that she may never be released.

They formed a priesthood to protect the stone. Over the centuries, however, the stone became just a rumor – and eventually forgotten. The priests still worshipped St. Vaciscous, but their original purpose was lost to time.

Around a century ago, two of the priests (Brethren Camitalli and Sister Milensis) fell in love. Their religion forbid such things, but one night, when all the other priests slumbered, they consummated their relationship. Sister Milensis became pregnant, which caused an uproar when it could no longer be hidden.

Brethren Camitalli admitted to his role in this, and they were ostracized. The priests held long discussions as to what should be done, but no resolution was reached by the time the child was born. She was a small, grey thing, obviously cursed. She would only eat the flesh of the dead.

Many of the priests decided that the temple was now a cursed place and that it should be abandoned. Others could not think of leaving and stood by the couple. The priests who left established the Monastery of St. Vaciscous a few hexes away from the old temple.

The child, Francissi, aged regularly until the age of twelve and then stopped all together. It was then that the knowledge of turning came to her. If she ate the heart of a person, killing them, and then placed a fragment of her own heart in the cavity, they would rise as a ghoul. A few of the priests left behind welcomed this gift, though she could not bring herself to do it to her parents. Francissi could not stomach the idea of killing them.

Brethren Camitalli and Sister Milensis were heartbroken. They continued to age and they wanted nothing more than to cure their child. Their search for knowledge repeatedly came up empty. Then, one day, Camitalli started hearing whispers in his mind. They came from somewhere beneath the temple…

The voices promised a cure for his daughter, and eternal life for them. He found the entrance to the caves and led his followers (his lover and the other priests who had not yet become ghouls) under the earth. They came upon a locked chamber, which the whispers bade them to open. They worked for days to break open the door and finally succeeded. Inside is where they found the Plague Rock.

Now this is where I run into a little problem. The being in the Plague Rock wanted them to release her and promised she could cure the ghouls when that happened. What was needed to do that? Was it just knowledge of the ritual? In which case, where did they eventually find it? Maybe it’s the holy symbol of St. Vaciscous. If so, what was their main hurdle to gain it?

Anyway, whatever the case, they spent their time trying to get the resources/ figure out how to release her. They became plague cultists, and Camitalli became Father Rot, the Plagued One. They were granted a form of immortality by the being in the stone.

Fast forward like fifty years or so. Father Rot lost the stone somewhere in the below, right after gaining the resources to release the demon. A lone Gullygug, Lugpopple, had lost her clan. She wandered into the below by way of an underground stream, hoping to find safety from the scary outside world. She fell down a stone shaft and landed upon the Plauge Rock. It embedded in her head.

She found that, by biting others, she could turn them into leper like plague mutants that obeyed her. There were some scary ass things in this place, so she had them abduct monks from the monastery so that she could mutate them and protect herself.

So now we have Lugpopple and her mutants, Father Rot and the plague cultists (plus the devourer of shadow, a major demon who used to be his wife), Francissi and her ghouls, and the monks. A dungeon of factions, demons, and mushrooms.

Whew… that was quite the recap/ rewrite. It needs much revision, but this might be my first draft of the intro for the DM to give them all the backstory.

As always, if you got thoughts, I wanna hear ‘em. Comment below!