Time for faction #3. I’ve been creating factions for my Snowflake dungeon. What is a snowflake dungeon? That’s best described in my post, The Snowflake Dungeon Part 1. I came up with the process for making Factions in my post titled Tweaking the Method.

So far I have profiled The Monks of St Saciscous, Lugpopple the Goblin, and The Ghouls. 

Today, I’m going to work on the final faction – The Ones Below.

• Name: The Ones Below
• One Sentence Threat: Worshippers of ancient evil stalk the ruined temple in search of what was “stolen” from them, killing all they come across.
• Motivation: To gain power and safety through the worship of Thazalag the Dark.
• Goal: To regain the forever stone (vessel for Thazalag) and kill the monks who they believe stole it.*
• Conflict: They’re not sure where the Forever Stone is. Mutant monks roam their halls*. The Ghouls are always a minor pain in the ass. To top if all off, now there’s friggin adventurers. 
• One Paragraph Threat: All of the Ones Below are imbued with special powers, granted to them by Thazalag the Dark. They know all the passages below the ruined temple, as they dug them. The lower tunnels are infested by strange monsters. While not in control of them, the monsters will not harm them. They have finally figured out how to release Thazalag from his stone prison. 
• One Sentence Backstory: Once priests of St. Saciscous, the Ones Below broke from their congregation and dug tunnels underneath their temple where they found the Thazalag the Dark locked away in the Forever Stone.
• Resources: Knowledge of the tunnels below. The Devourer of Shadow (some sort of demon given to them by Thazalag). A ritual to destroy the Forever Stone (and release Thazalag, but no one needs to know that). The riches of the ruined temple above from back in the day.

*While writing this, I decided that a lot of the mutants created by Lugpopple are still wearing their monk robes. The Ones Below think they’re acting on behalf of the descendents of their former enemies – the current Monks of St. Saciscous. This gives the poor monks just one more thing to worry about.

So this is it! The last faction! I never mentioned a ruler of The Ones Below – how about Father Bone? That sounds like a character to explore…

The next step is supposed to be “expanding the plot”. It’ll be fun to see how I hack this.

Talk soon,

-James