Major Ruins are significant dungeons or other ruins that have the potential to have a wide impact on the world around them. They might not be the biggest or baddest dungeon in the region, but something inside them can do a lot more than eat adventurers.
Major Ruins have an Origin, which is who and when it was built. Inside them is a Menace, whatever evil power could threaten the world if it got out. There's a Status, which speaks to what the Menace is doing right now. There's the Purpose, which is the original, well, purpose of this Ruin. And there's the Reason for Ruination. I feel like that one's self-explanatory.
PART TWO: MAJOR RUINS
There are d10 ruins per GIGAHEX. For each one, roll on the tables below to figure out what it is and what's going on. If you've got favourite megadungeons, you could use those instead.MAJOR RUIN ORIGIN (d6)
- Pre-Apocalyptic Human. Like buried malls, and fallout shelters, and missile silos, and megachurches.
- Ancient. d4: 1-2 Neolithic Human. 3 - Cyclopean. 4 - Fairy.
- Outsider. d4: 1 - Weird Magitech. 2 - Gonzo Underworld. 3 - Demonic. 4 - Alien.
- Druidic humans.
- Imperial humans.
- Recent human.
MENACE (d6)
- Plague. d6: 1 - Natural. 2 - Techno-Engineered. 3 - Alien. 4 - Eldritch. 5 - Mutagen. 6 - Intelligence.
- Lair. d6: 1 - Dragon. 2 - Monstrosity. 3 - Intelligence. 4 - Undead. 5 - Demon. 6 - Fairy.
- Weapon. d4: 1 - Construct. 2 - Destroyer. 3 - Wielded. 4 - Materiel.
- Sleeper. d6: 1 - Elder Thing. 2 - Undead. 3 - Intelligence. 4 - Outsider. 5 - Cryo. 6 - Alien.
- Army. d6: 1 - Swarm. 2 - Horde. 3 - Praetorians. 4 - Cursed. 5 - Outsider. 6 - Revival.
- Portal. d6: 1 - Hell. 2 - Space. 3 - Dimension X. 4 - Far Past. 5 - Fast Travel. 6 - Roll twice.
STATUS (d8)
Plague Lair Weapon Sleeper Army Portal
Contained 1-6 1 1-3 1-4 1-5 1-4
Passive - 2-4 4-6 5-6 6-7 5-6
Threatening 7-8 5-6 7 - 8 7-8
Scheming. - 7-8 8 7-8 - -
PURPOSE (d10)
Pre-Apoc Ancient Outsider Druidic Imperial Recent
Fortress 1-3 1-3 1-2 1-3 1 1-2
Outpost 4-5 - 3-5 4 2-3 3-5
Settlement 6-7 4 - - 4 6
Temple 8-9 5-7 5-8 5-7 5-7 7-9
Tomb 10 8-10 9-10 8-10 8-10 10
REASON FOR RUINATION (d8)
- Internal Conflict
- Disappearances/Abductions
- Famine
- Magic
- Attack
- Natural Disaster
- Plague
- Abandoned
Ruin Origins
The buried remains of human civilization before the bombs fell, the comet hit, the Elder Things awoke, or whatever poorly defined and incomprehensible calamity befell. Loot from modern location maps, video games, or whatever. The contents of these places should be recognizable to the players, but not the PCs.
Ancient
Pre-historic remnants.
- Neolithic are human. The ruins are likely to be little more than empty rock walls and simple construction.
- Cyclopean are built by giants, huge block construction and oversized buildings.
- Fairy is, well, stuff built by faeries when they were still common and slightly less asshole-ish.
Outsider
This is stuff constructed by minds beyond the understand of PCs and maybe players as well.
- Weird Magitech is left behind by forgotten, advanced civilizations. Deep Carbon Observatory, for example.
- Gonzo Underworld. The weird and wacky that lives under the world. Giant talking centipedes and ray-gun wielding cockroaches and frothing cultists sacrificing to albino fish-gods.
- Demonic. Temples dedicated to the powers of great evil, hellish incursions into our realm, junk like that.
- Alien. This might be fantasy alien, like tentacle-faced brain eaters that travel space in nautiloid ships, or, like alien aliens with saucers and probing. Or, uh. those other aliens with the bursting of chests.
Druidic
The original inhabitants of this land. A druidic, clannish Bronze Age people with heroes and gods and sweet tattoos. They built stone circles and hill forts and raided cattle.
Imperial
Some bunch of jerks followed a bigger jerk and conquered the known world into one big empire. The head jerk died, but the empire stuck around for several centuries and did a decent job of making everyone talk and worship like them. Until they couldn't any more, and collapsed into chaos.
Recent Human
The last hundred years or so. Imperials who stuck around after the empire collapsed and have been creating a new identity. Outsiders who came to settle and took up the empire's god for their own. The remaining druidic people, though they've mostly taken up the imperial god, too. Newer invaders, the ones who come from a land of ice and snow and hotsprings and are quite happy with their own gods, thanks.
Menaces
These are the big scary things lurking in the ruins, waiting for dumbass adventurers to come and let them loose.
Plague
A virus or other pandemic-level infectious threat.
- Natural. Just a regular ol' plague. It might have magical interactions, but it's natural in nature. There may be a known cure for it, or at least a way of containing it.
- Techno-Engineered. Either a relic of pre-apocalyptic technology, or magitech. This might be a bio-weapon, a retrovirus that converts the infected into rage zombies, or something else. Point is, it was created by someone to do something specific and that creator likely had some form of controlling it.
- Alien. This plague is extra-terrestrial in origin. It might render the infected down to their composite goo, convert them into the alien lifeform, or mind-control them into constructing a portal. The protomolecule from The Expanse, or the weird sperm stuff from Prometheus.
- Eldritch. A plague of madness and cosmic horror. Annihilation or Color Out of Space. Yes I know both of those are technically alien but they've got the Eldritch vibe.
- Mutagen. Mutates the infected into something else. This might be intended as a beneficial change, like turning them into 10-foot-tall super-muscled green dudes - or it might just be a zombie virus. The FEV virus from Fallout, or the T-virus from Resident Evil.
- Intelligence. This virus is alive, and it thinks. It might be an artificial intelligence, like a computer virus that's gained sentience and learned to infect more than just silicon, or a living spell, or an alien lifeform. Unlike the others, it has wants and can reason.
Lair
This ruin is something's home, and that something may have plans of its own.
- Dragon. It's a dragon. You know the drill.
- Monstrosity. This is some horrible, gribbly monster. It might not be as intelligent or scheming as a dragon, but it can and will wreak terrible destruction if provoked and/or freed.
- Intelligence. Some form of disembodied intelligence. An artificial intelligence that has survived the long millennia since it was first programmed, an alien life-form, a living spell, etc.
- Undead. Lich, vampire, mummy lord, wight king, etc.
- Demon. A thing from hell, manifest in our world. It might have been trapped or imprisoned here, summoned as guardian, caught by wards, or trying to kick-start a wider demonic incursion.
- Fairy. A power sidhe resident in the mortal realms. Maybe a prisoner, maybe an exile, or a recluse. Maybe an infiltrator. Or maybe all of the above. Hard to tell with fairies.
Weapon
Something that can cause havoc, but not on its own.
- Construct. A war machine with some level of autonomous function. A war-golem. A battlemech. A magic hybrid-beast. An unthinking entity that may or may not respond to new masters.
- Destroyer. This weapon can cause destruction on an unheard of level. An unexploded atom bomb. A world-cracking spell. A captured black hole.
- Wielded. This weapon must be picked up and used. Excalibur, the One Ring, a really really big gun. May or may not be intelligent.
- Materiel. This is not a single weapon, but all the gear needed to equip an army. A pre-apocalyptic army depot, the collected arms and armour of a thousand conquered armies, twelves cases of rayguns.
Sleeper
A powerful entity of uncertain motives that is currently asleep, in stasis, or otherwise not-dead-but-dreaming.
- Elder Thing. Great Cthulhu. The Kraken. An immensely powerful, ancient, and probably deeply hostile life-form that has spent eons in slumber.
- Undead. Much like the Undead listed in Lair, but asleep. The mummy lord is still in his sarcophagus. The lich has been astral projected for twelve centuries. Somebody dusted the vampire queen, and her ashes are just waiting for that single drop of blood.
- Intelligence. Push that big red button and Skynet turns back on. Tap the crystal and the unknowable frequency entity will wake.
- Outsider. An entity from another plane is held here. An angel, a demon, an incomprehensible thing of pure chaos. Good luck telling the difference before you wake it up.
- Cryo. Someone's been frozen. Survivors of global war, waiting out the nuclear winter. Psychic dinosaurs caught in sudden ice age. A shape-shifting alien crashed into a glacier.
- Alien. Ten wrong-looking mummies on ten crystal thrones. A leathery egg in a bricked-up chamber. An impossible saucer buried under mud and time.
Army
A large group of individuals that can fuck shit up and probably will if they have their way.
- Swarm. A vast number of unthinking, violent creatures. Zombies, demonic wolves, killer drones, terracotta soldiers, giant ants.
- Horde. A large number of thinking, violent creatures. Omnicidal robots, army of wights and ghouls, a regiment of British redcoats thrown through time, the degenerate and mutated descendants of the ruin's builders.
- Praetorians. A small group of elite, disciplined fighters. Typically the dedicated guard of a place or person. An order of knights or warrior-monks, the retinue of an emperor, that kind of thing.
- Cursed. An army under a curse. Maybe they stole treasure and become skeletons if they leave the ruin. Ghosts trapped in eternal battle. Soldiers infected with a techno-virus that constantly rebuilds their bodies even as their minds fracture.
- Outsider. A choir of angels, a manifold of weird robots from a plane of pure law, a clutch of minor demons.
- Revival. These are the descendants of a now-fallen culture and they're planning to bring it back with great fire and furious force. They're probably assholes, too. Or maybe they think they're benevolent, but they'll still need to bulldoze your house to build their paradise.
Portal
A gateway between worlds, or times. Might not be dangerous on its own, but who knows what could come through if you open it, or where you might end up.
- Hell. A gate straight to the hot place.
- Space. Might go to the moon, or another planet if you're lucky. Deep dark space if you're unlucky. The place between the stars where the twelve crystallized gods of chaos sleep if you're really unlucky.
- Dimension X. A portal to another layer of reality. Might be a fantasy plane, an alternate reality or timeline, or someplace where the laws of reality are different entirely.
- Far Past. A gateway to before the apocalypse, the time of dinosaurs, when the druids roam, primeval earth, or something else.
- Fast Travel. Connects to somewhere else in this time and this reality.
- Roll twice. Maybe it connects to two different places, or the destination has features of two things, or whatever else you can think of.
Status
The current, er, status of the menace. What it's up to, and what adventurers will find when they poke their noses in.
Contained
Whatever the menace is, it's trapped within the ruin. Either by accident, or because the ruin was designed or altered to become a containment facility, a prison, or a trap. The menace may not be aware of the world outside the ruins, or it may chafe at its bars.
Passive
The menace is not confined to the ruin, but remains there of its own volition. It may simply be inwardly-focused, uninterested in the wider world, or it maybe be unaware that there is a wider world to be interested in.
Threatening
The menace poses a threat to the world outside the ruin. An army might be raiding nearby settlements, or a plague might be infecting passers-by.
Scheming
The menace has plans, and those plans do not bode well for people leaving in the region. Its plots and actions may not be noticeable yet, but that does not make it less dangerous. Alien dopplegangers infiltrate society, the dreams of an elder-thing draw cultists who prepare sacrifices, scouts of an awakened army plot sabotage.
Purpose
This is the original reason the ruins were built, or possibly what they were converted into before they became ruins.
Fortress
This ruin was a fortification, intended to protect and defend and generally be military. Generally these types of ruins are hidden, isolated, or otherwise unusable as defensible locations and strong walls just keep getting used and built on top of. Imperial fortresses in particular are prime candidates for continuing use.
Outpost
This ruin was a small, self-contained location in a (then) outlying area. Border forts, remote steadings, isolated vaults. Because of their smaller size, these ruins tend to be either more recent, very well-hidden, or very well-constructed.
Settlement
This was once a place where people lived. Like fortresses, places conducive to settlement tend to see continual occupation unless they are truly remote or become dangerous or otherwise undesirable.
Temple
A place of worship and/or contemplation. This might be a literal temple, or it might have an adjacent function, like a library or an observatory or an arena. These ruins can persist even quite near to inhabited places if they are regarded with sufficient fear or reverance.
Tomb
A place where the dead are laid to rest, or a figurative tomb where things were hidden away from sight and memory - such as a vault, depot, or laboratory.
Reason for Ruination
Why the ruin became a ruin in the first place. The Menace can sometimes suggest this, or the Menace may be unrelated to the ruination entirely.
Internal Conflict
Civil war, rebellion, oppression, factions and internecine fighting. The inhabitants of this ruin killed each other and any survivors fled. There may be significant damage from the fighting, if it was violent enough, and a great deal left behind (assuming looters haven't gotten to it since then).
Disappearances and Abductions
The inhabitants just... disappeared. This might have been all at once, or by ones and twos until the survivors fled. The ruins may have suffered little to no damage by the ruination itself, and it's possible that almost everything was left behind.
Famine
The food and/or water and/or air ran out. This may have been rapid, and may have devolved into violence and cannibalism. Or it may have been slow and predicted enough that the inhabitants were able to pack up and leave - and take most of their stuff with them.
Magic
A wizard did it. A magic calamity beset this place. Maybe it killed everyone, or caused rock to melt like butter, or turned everyone into green-goo-oozing blob people. Shit got weird.
Attack
An external hostile force attacked the ruin, and ruined it. Whether the defends won or lost, there will have been extensive damage, and likely looting and/or scavenging. Or maybe both sides were wiped out to the last fighter.
Natural Disaster
Flood, fire, earthquake, hurricane. The elements conspired to ruin this place, to burn away the inhabitants or sink it beneath the waves or drop it into the veins of the earth.
Plague
Everybody got sick. Maybe they all died, or maybe some were able to flee.
Abandoned
Everybody packed up and left. This may have been to avoid a coming disaster, because a retreat was ordered, or because the location was simply no longer habitable.
Example
I rolled up Major Ruins for the same region I was working on last time. I got:
A Druidic outpost ruined by natural disaster. Inside is a contained portal to space.
A Druidic tomb ruined by disappearances. A plague is contained within.
An Alien tomb, ruined by magic. A techno-engineered plague is contained within.
A pre-apocalyptic outpost, ruined by military attack. Lair of a scheming undead.
An Ancient temple, abandoned. A mutagenic virus is contained within.
A Recent outpost, ruined by plague. Now the lair of a passive Fairy.
A Recent outpost, ruined by famine. A revivalist army is contained within.
A Recent Tomb, ruined by famine. A revivalist army is contained within.
That's a lot of plagues. So connecting all these ruins can suggest some details of the major historical events of the region.
The Pre-Apocalyptic Ruin is an old seed vault that was supposed to help survivors of the apocalypse, but it cracked and everything inside was scoured out. A lich moved in a few centuries ago. It has schemes but I don't really need to worry what they are just yet.
The Druidic outpost with the portal was originally a major stellar observatory, complete with complex stone circles and barrows. The portal brought through aliens, before an earthquake buried the whole complex.
The Alien Tomb is the last refuge of the aliens who came through the portal. They attempted to use bioweapons on the locals, but the Druids banded together and destroyed them. The techno-plague the aliens were using is still in the tomb.
The Druidic tomb is where the Druids buried those who died fighting the aliens. Originally a sacred site, it was abandoned when the techno-virus started messing with the buried dead.
The Ancient temple also contains a plague, but a metagenic one. I'll say it's a very old Fairy construction, and they left it behind when they returned to Fairy. Inside is a plague that warps the bodies of mortals, Annihilation-style.
The three Recent ruins are all from the post-Imperial period when things started to turn anarchic. A mundane plague wiped out one outpost, which is now avoided because of the Fae Lord that's taken up residence there. The other two were reoccupied by the last knights loyal to the last Imperial general who tried to unite this land. Their descendants have elevated the general to a religious figure, convinced she'll resurrect and lead them on a glorious crusade of reconquest. The two branches hate each other, though.
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