The Place of Suffering
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Cartography: The room is 80 feet from east to west and 40 feet north to south. The corners are cut at 45-degree angles. There is a door on the north wall, 10 feet from the northwestern bevel, and another door on the south wall, 10 feet from the southeastern bevel. |
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Room Details: The ceiling in this room is 15 feet high. The air quality is nominal. The volume of the room is approximately 6,750 cubic feet. The elevation of the room is -100 feet. This room is included in Dungeon Zone 1. |
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Landmarks: Four 15-foot tall columns, one stationed in each corner, and a detailed tilework fresco upon the central floor. |
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The atmosphere feels still, with an almost palpable silence. Dark marble walls stretch out, their angles sharp and brutal with corners cut at precise angles that merge into tall pillars adorning each corner of the room. An elaborate tile fresco sprawls across the entire floor, its intricate design unfolding in a continuous tale. The tilework depicts villagers suffering under the weight of a terrible plague, their faces twisted in agony as the tale winds its way around the chamber. Each scene is rendered with painstaking detail, the grief and fear of the villagers captured like an anguished moment trapped in the fresco, a haunting reminder of a forgotten past. |
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The tiny tiles of the floor fresco slowly shift in hue and saturation, with each tile taking minutes to change. Over time, this creates a continuously moving scene of suffering villagers, their anguish captured in subtle, animated progression. |
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Twelve soulbound villagers (NPC 0) manifest from the fresco when any living creature treads upon the tilework. All are human—an equal division of male and female, with one child of each gender. Their bodies are covered in pus-weeping sores, and their anguished moans and cries reflect the final, painful moments of their lives during a mysterious plague. Destroying a soulbound villager causes its image in the fresco to fade; once all are destroyed, the fresco depicts only the empty ruins of the village. |
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Any creature stepping on the tilework experiences accelerated aging at the rate of one week per minute. The effect is subtle, noticeable in rapid hair and nail growth, torches burning out quickly, and perishable items spoiling. As long as creatures remain standing upon the tiles, they must make a DC 14 Constitution saving throw at the start of each round to resist the effect. The effect remains active until all twelve soulbound villagers haunting the room are destroyed. |
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