Factions of Druidun: The Ulu & Rog cannibals

The Ulu and Rog cannibal tribes

Two tribes of devolved, human cannibals. They are the descendants of the prisoners and guards of the long abandoned panopticons, and have become extremely ferocious in order to survive. 

Both groups are albino, have Blindsight, are vulnerable to radiant damage, and suffer disadvantage in bright light. They also tend to go berserk. 

The north tribe (the Ulu) is allied with the Bandit King, the wererats, and the gnolls. 

The south tribe (Rog) is more powerful, and was on verge of wiping out the Ulu, until they gained new allies. The north tribe makes an ululating war cry, while the south tribe barks out a chant of ‘Rog!’, hence their names. 

Ulu cover themselves with raised circular welt tattoos, the Ulu with raised zig-zag line welts. 

They both conduct ritual sacrifices to Atul, their demigod, a bastardized version of Saint Aethelwulf. They use poison darts and poison blades in battle (the poison is bought from the Myconids, and is fungus based). Cooking the flesh of those so slain neutralizes the poison for consumption. Otherwise, the flesh is also poisonous.

Both tribes have shamans who can cast darkness.

They charge into battle with no fear and swarm over enemies. Both men and women fight. Even their kids, at age 10, join in. 

Feral pigs are kept in their panopticons, fed with fungus, dung and fresh dirt bought from Myconids, in exchange for extra corpses and spells. 

The Ulu and Rog hate magic-users, for the Eldritch Veil experimented on them. When they smell the magic-ether on spell casters, they will kill them immediately.

Each tribe is led by a Great Waldun (warden), who holds the Sacred Keys of the Sun, and when they die they are absorbed into The Light Above. Those who come from the surface are seen as fallen angels, demons, that must be vanquished and eaten. 

Exceptions to the rule are made for the bandits (because the Ulu needed their help to avoid being wiped out), who are regarded as Holy Messengers of the Sun. 

Populating the megadungeon part four: Pillage your ancestors!

The Winged Adventure

I have been intrigued by the Castle Greyhawk dungeon since I was a kid. It lives on in my memory as a legendary, ideal dungeon. I never played it, but people talked about it in hushed words. 

But I don’t think it ever existed.

Not as a fully fleshed out, annotated place. 

The longer I work at the mega-dungeon, and the longer my campaign goes on, the more I believe Gygax created a lot of the dungeon on the fly, from barely annotated maps, rough scribbled notes, and on the spot inspiration based on interaction with the players. 

I don’t think the process of a published adventure is the same as the one for a mega-dungeon. My gut tells me that the mega-dungeon is far more fungible, more adaptive, and more ad hoc. It’s in the moment. It’s a living thing, a morphing meme that changes every time you look at it. 

If Gygax had tape recorded the sessions, we might have a solid record of what the player’s experienced. 

But my gut tells me that the Greyhawk Dungeon lived in those sessions. Even Gygax probably can’t remember everything that happened, and I doubt he wrote down everything after. 

There have been some adaptions of the dungeon, including a joke one that doesn’t sound at all like what I’d heard the dungeon was really like. 

Later in life, Gygax (as I understand it), revisited the mega-dungeon, but I’ve not purchased or seen any of these products, which he had to do under another game license. 

Pilfer the Ancestors

Gygax inevitably leads to plundering the idealized ancestors.

It’s also very much in keeping with the tomb raider aspect of D&D: plunder the work of those who came before!

There’s 50 years worth of amazing, imaginative, incredible dungeon design already out there! Ideas for monsters, treasures, traps, adventures, threats, rewards, the works. I read it and think, damn, why couldn’t I think of that? Or worse, I thought I thought of that, but actually someone thought of that decades before I did! This is ever the hazard of fantasy fiction.

It will happen to you, sooner or later. Don’t be too hard on yourself when it does. Millions of people have played the game over the decades, this is a well trodden space, and overlap is inevitable. Think of it more as great minds think alike. 

Initially, when I started my dungeon, I didn’t want to use any online material. I wanted it to be purely my imagination… although my imagination was heavily influenced by what I had experienced as a kid, and I took from that, consciously or otherwise. That’s inevitable. We are the sum of our experiences and what we extrapolate from them.

Fantasy is a great big mish mash of tropes, more so than sci-fi is. Dragons, dungeons, elves, orcs and so on inhabit an awful lot of fantasy stories.

The up side? There’s a lot of material you can shoe horn into your fantasy world without any revision. Most of the time, orcs are orcs, dragons are dragons and dwarves are ornery, drunken workaholics. 

The more rooms I did, the harder it got. I’d say after the first 100 rooms I was really running dry and I started looking for inspiration. I’ve now reached level three of the mega dungeon and… even pilfering, reskinning and repurposing, I’ve run out of steam. 

My original intention was to have an entirely unique, original megadungeon. Easy, breezy, I thought. I’ve written graphic novels and 100,000+ word prose novels. I could do this! How hard could it be? 

Turns out: plenty hard!!!

I went too big. Now, I am contemplating incorporating elements from other dungeons wholesale. 

Fortunately, I have a big buffer built and we aren’t playing that often anymore. Hell, we may never get through what I’ve built so far (such is the power of my OCD autism). 

So… I will wait until my creative tanks refill before tackling level four. 

One thing this project has done is increase the respect I have for anyone who actually has completed a true mega-dungeon. 

I will continue to post missives from my subterranean creative journey as they occur.

Next: Good question. Formatting your masterpiece, perhaps?