Muck Mapping

 This is another How To Host A Dungeon map that I recently stumbled upon on my computer.  (Click here for Index of How To Host A Dungeon articles.)

This one was using the "Muck Dwellers" Civilization, which someone had posted to the How To Host A Dungeon Wiki. I remember being super-excited to try that out.  

Despite that excitement, this map/game definitely wasn't finished. Looks like I wandered away from it twice: once for 6 months during the first turn of the Age of Monsters, and then again more permanently after trying to pick the game back up for a few turns. Not sure why I abandoned it, exactly, but it does date to 2015. There was a lot of crazy stuff going on in my life around that time, and quite a few projects got abandoned in the upheaval. (I suppose it's also possible I was just mostly excited about the Muck Dwellers, and lost focus once their part was done... but I suspect this was a casualty of a particularly hard year.) It's a shame I never finished it, because I really liked the "bubble" design I used for the Muck Dwellers constructions in the 2nd and 3rd images (below).

I still have a note file from the game, so I'll post the text from that here with pictures:

Primordial Age

Started with Isle of Death map template. It’s gonna be harsh on the Surface Kingdoms.

Underground River
Mithral deposits
Caves - Gems, Primordial Beasts, Empty with tunnel, Fate
Caves - Gems (2 in 1 cave), Primordial Beasts (3 different caves), Empty, Magma

Planning to use a homebrewed civilization - probably Muck Dwellers. Can put them anywhere on the river, or just at the bottom of either sea section. The latter is very tempting since it’s not normally an option at all.


Age of the Muck Dwellers - Year 1
After founding the great city of Kli’itl-Tilp’diilb’p, the Kuo-Toa mine gems, expand their city to house the new tadpoles, and then decide to send an expedition way down river in search of additional mineral wealth. Traces of Mithral in the rocks along the river shore encourage them to create a new colony with it’s own tadpole pool.

Age of the Muck Dwellers - Year 2
The mining colony of Dwib’ilb’p is coming along swimmingly.

Age of the Muck Dwellers - Year 3
Kli’itl-Tilp’diilb’p builds the Tomb of the First Smolt, to house the named treasure “The Silvery Shoal of Squish’blip’itl.
Dwib’ilb’p expands and mines further.
Bloop’itl, the spa and breeding colony is founded half-way between the city and the first colony. A breeding pond is built over an active geothermal hotspot.

Age of the Muck Dwellers - Year 4
Chambers of Secrets built. I may have forgotten to mine this year.

Age of the Muck Dwellers - Year 5
Kli’itl-Tilp’diilb’p has the population to split, but there’s no water-routes to anywhere it could expand. Luckily, Dwib’ilb’p still has unmined minerals, and that keeps Kli’itl-Tilp’diilb’p from growing stagnant.
Dwib’ilb’p expands and mines further (including making up for forgetting to adjust the mines last year). They dig a new habitat room, and it floods a natural cave.
Bloop’itl builds an exploratory shaft, and a Temple to Mother Hydra. The treasure within the Temple is the Jellyfish Cauldron.

Age of the Muck Dwellers - Year 6
Dwib’ilb’p’s expansion unleashes a horrible Dinosaur in an old cavern. Despite these losses, the civilization continues to grow.
Kli’itl-Tilp’diilb’p builds a temple to Father Dagon. The treasure there is the Stingray Sceptre.
Bloop’itl tries to expand upon the greatness of Temple to Mother Hydra, and they break through to the surface! The great burning orb in the sky is a dire omen, so they abandon their city and its colonies in search of safer depths.

Great Disaster
All we get is new caves (my roll transferred me to the Primordial Events chart). Yet another Primordial Beast (but this one’s a Sea Monster), and a very dangerous Plague 4 cave right near the surface! There’s also some water caves that caused flooding, and a tunnel cave that goes right over (and thus fills with) magma. With this and the Kuo-Toa orphans (tadpoles left behind in the escape) we have a total of 7 wandering monsters on the map before we even get to the Age of Monsters. 

Age of Monsters: Set-Up
Auglire Keep is Built

Lithonids (Delvers, Lawful, 50% to create treasure when they die.)  5x11 = Chambers of Secrets
Crabmen (Breeders, Chaotic, No Special Rules)  3x5 = flooded tunnel-cave in lower left
Giant Octopus (Alpha, Hungry, Aquatic) 10x3 = Just above the wandering Sea Monster. It will eat it, and then start raiding the castle pretty soon.

NOTE: At this point (half way into year 1 of the Age of Monsters), I took over 6 months (of real-life time) off from the game, and a lot of crazy stuff went on in my life to thoroughly distract me. So I’ve probably forgotten a few details of what transpired and how it all works. We’ll test whether or not my notes are enough to finish this map/game.

Placing the Lithonids (delvers created by a contributor to the HTHAD wiki), I decide (since the wiki description vaguely implies they are rock monsters with gem-covered hides) that I will use the rainbow “Gems” treasure tokens I’d created back on the Primordial Age to be the Lithonids’ treasures (including the ones they sometimes turn into when they die). That lead me to rainbow population tokens, and a translucent rainbow underlay to mark their areas of the map.

Crabmen dig grottos in one of the old deep water fissures, expanding it out into a very organic shape.

Giant Octopus is named Eight-Death by the locals of Auglire. In his own tongue, he is named Chlughpligth.


AoM Year 2:
The new arrival is wandering Ankhengs, and I give them fairly long wormy tunnel lairs, following the path of structures from deeper strata. There are a LOT of wandering monsters on the map right now, but I imagine they’ll clear each other out fairly soon.

Humans build a little terrace farm.

Primordial Beasts (and Sea Monster) do nothing, because I roll a “3” four times in a row.

Kuo-Toan Orphans wander a bit. Some engage in Mutual Assured Destruction with an Ankheng. Others merely explore the breeding ponds of their ancestors.

Lithonids engage in tunneling. They don’t quite have the range to get to any treasure this turn, so they convert an old cave system into a staging area for next year’s mining efforts after either gems or mithral. In retrospect, they probably could have reached the Tomb of the First Smolt this turn instead, but I didn’t think to do so until after I’d drawn in and colorized their new area.

Crabmen numbers bolster, and they spread out. Since there’s only one path available to them, they dig a little. Eventually they run into Primordial Beasts, and the number of Crabmen drops back down to sustainable levels.

Eight-Death strangles and devours the nameless primordial sea monster.

Surviving Ankhengs stay in their lairs.

AoM Year 3:
New Arrivals = Party of 2 Adventurers

One Primordial Beast wants to wander, but can’t because there are no exits from his cave. Had the other one wandered it would have opened up old tunnels and probably died to plague.

Kuo-Toans sit tight. Perhaps they really liked the breeding pool. While they don’t have a Zone of Control, it’s still work drawing back in some of the areas near where they’ve wandered.

Surface Kingdoms continue to build their numbers in the castle, and establish a small fishing village (mechanically identical to a farm) in the bay below Fort Auglire. They have enough population, but not yet enough infrastructure, to launch an expedition.

The Lithonids extend a tunnel to the primordial gem deposit, which is sacred to their kind.

Crabmen numbers expand uneventfully.

Eight-Death sends an exploratory tentacle into the fishing village, and comes back with a tasty morsel.

Ankheng in the old Temple of Mother Hydra becomes agitated and digs to the surface. It raids Fort Auglire itself, and is put down after causing much carnage.

Two human adventurers arrive on the island to brave the tunnel from which the Ankheng had emerged. They wander about in the twisting tunnels of the beast’s lair and the ruins of the old Temple of Mother Hydra for some time. They find the Jellyfish Cauldron of the ancient temple and haul it out a seaside cave, only to be set upon by Eight-Death. Both adventurers die, and all the treasure sinks to the bottom of the bay. (When you end up with really convoluted tunnels, the random navigation of adventurers and monster groups can get a little tricky. Adding the water/island situation to the map made that even more complex, but I’m pleased with the result.)


T1 = The Silvery Shoal of Squish’blip’itl  (Kuo-Toa)
T2 = Jellyfish Cauldron (Kuo-Toa)
T3 = Stingray Sceptre

And that's all I wrote. After that, I wandered like a monster off the edge of the map. I've still got the master map file so it's a little tempting to take a third stab at it.