Idle Cartulary again has me blogging, this time after her post about how to make a zungeon. She’s basically got an almost meditative procedure for creating a cool little dungeon-y location for people to explore. You can use this to write a location in… well it took me about 80 minutes.
I’ve got enough going on that I’m not interested in polishing this thing up and putting it on itch, but I did think it’d be fun to share, if nothing else as an example of what this process outputs. Imagine this is a zine with a second cover on the back, and all the mirror world stuff is printed in reverse so you have to hold it up to a mirror to read it.
Anyway, enjoy a mirror zungeon!
Silvernstern’s Cottage
Silverstern was a glassworker. Rose was a wizard. Together they built a home, a place they could start a family. Instead, lead to one of their deaths.
But which one?
In our world, Rose was torn apart by a hundred blades of shattered glass. In the world of our reflection, Silverstern met such a fate. The surviving couple found they were trapped in their home, each unable to leave the presence of their reflection’s corpse. But they still had each other, even if they couldn’t speak. And they worked together to try and reunite...
Today the house is known to be haunted by the ghosts of two lovers. When the young widower Gavin reached the end of his grief and a second bottle of wine, he plunged into the house, hoping to find a way to see his wife again. He hasn’t come back out.
[1] Entrance hall; glass guardian’s pit
A large hall carpeted in broken glass and mangled metal, like a chandelier crashed from the ceiling. In the floor’s reflection, that chandelier still hangs.
A glass guardian protects this place, rising from the shards. Created to protect this world from its reflection, and vice versa, it wishes you to leave. Dropping the chandelier’s reflection on it would surely destroy it.
Hanging on the walls, beautiful oil paintings. A happy couple, a sunny vista, a roaring fire. Each is torn in places from the crashed chandelier, but a talented restorer could make 150 coins off each.
A wooden door to the west, unlocked, to [2]
A secret door behind a bookcase to the east to [6]. Marks on the floor, beneath the glass, where once it swung open regularly. Pulling a candlestick still opens it.
A giant mirror to the north, a small passage behind it to [4].
[2] Silverstern’s Workshop
A glassblower’s workshop: worktables, furnace, a life-size glass skeleton - each bone its own work of art. Mirrors line the walls, and runes drawn in chaulk.
Gavin cowers here, hiding from the glass guardian in [1]. Normally a carefree fool, he is terrified, relieved to have company, and thirsty.
The far half of the workshop was converted into living quarters: a cot, rat-butchering table, and overgrown mushroom growing racks.
In the many reflections of this room, the place is different. Less glass, more paperwork and journals. The runes are in different handwriting.
Studying the journals reveals pieces of a transportation ritual involving glass.
A wooden door to the east, unlocked, to [1].
A wooden door to the west, unlocked, to [3].
A wooden door to the northeast, barred shut, to [4]
[3] Rose’s Tomb
A woman’s corpse in red robes, laid here lovingly on a bed. It’s been forty years. A baby crib, never used, disassembled and stored under the bed.
In any reflection, Rose’s corpse appears as Rose, a whip-smart 65 year old wizard, still very much alive. With a convoluted series of mirrors long since removed, Silverstern put Rose here so she’d be safe if his spell went wrong. I guess it worked.
In the decades since, Rose created the glass guardian to protect others from her and Silverstern’s fates (there is only one - anything done to it in one world affects it the same in the other). She regrets this now - if someone had come, maybe she’d have been able to use them to escape her accidental prison.
She cannot travel anywhere without staying in sight of her reflected corpse.
[4] Airlock
An empty room, small and cramped, coated in a thin brown crust. Beneath the crust, those same runes from [2] in a circle.
The crust is what remains of Gavin; he was never the wizard his wife was. At least it worked, even if he did explode.
A perfectly square passageway carved out of the wall to the east, glowing faintly.
[5] The Connector
Perfect, smooth, mirrored walls, reflecting out in all directions, glowing faintly from an unknown source.
As you walk in, so does your reflection. Here you can meet. Talk it out. Kill and be killed - their world has not gone as well as yours, and they’re jealous of something you have.
Gavin’s reflection is a dick. He’ll stop at nothing to take Gavin’s place in your world. Your reflections might do the same.
It won’t work. Just ask Rose.
A hallway to the east, identical to the one you came in from, which leads to the identical but reflected house where Rose still lives.
(ALT: your universe sucks, every PC is somehow emotionally or physically scarred, your Gavin is a scheming bastard, and your reflections seem to have everything you wish you could have.)
[6] Hideaway
An empty chest. But in the mirror world, a chest full of 400 coins.
Question left to the reader
What was the original magical accident that lead to Rose and Silverstern’s deaths?
What’s the state of Gavin’s wife in the mirror world?
If the glass guardian is destroyed, who might use this place for terrible ends?