D&D Dungeon Generator

Dagny Roulet, a salt merchant, built the crypt under her drying floors in 1441 to bury her dead crew with their unpaid wages so the salt guild could not seize them as debts.

Foreman Pell Ostrander, a wight, still keeps the crew working the pans at night and guards the ledger that proves the wages were never paid.

Zones

• Drying Floor — Crusted white stone, dry heat from buried furnaces, and the sound of shovels that stop when you look at them.
• Brine Cellars — Wet, cold, and low, with black water that smells of iron and a pump that never stops.
• Ledger Vault — Dry and quiet, lined with shelves of salt-stained account books that nobody has opened since the guild closed the works.

Key

1. Salt Stair Drying Floor

   A stone stair descends between walls packed with white salt crust that flakes off in handfuls. Three steps near the bottom are undercut. A DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) check spots them. A creature that steps on one without noticing must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or fall into a 10-foot pit of salt and take 1d6 bludgeoning damage.

2. Pan Hall Drying Floor

   Eight shallow brine pans run the length of the room, and four workers in salt-stiff aprons stand waiting with rakes. Four zombies (Monster Manual) work the pans. They attack anyone who enters the pans' rim. The floor between the pans is slick. Treat it as difficult terrain.

   Secret. The third pan from the left has a tally scratched into its lip: 'Wed. Shorn. Not paid.' Ostrander's crew were not paid on the day they died.

3. Scale House Drying Floor

   Three brass balance scales hang from a beam, each with a pan holding a bronze weight stamped with a different number. Puzzle. The scales must balance the weights listed on the wall plaque: 12, 18, and 30 gold-equivalents. Putting an unbalanced weight in a pan releases a dart trap: DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or take 1d4 piercing damage and 1d4 poison damage. A DC 14 Intelligence (Investigation) check reveals that the weights are marked with wage amounts, not weights.

4. Wage Chapel Drying Floor

   A small chapel with a wooden altar where a grey-haired girl sits counting coins into a cup that never fills. Social encounter. The girl is Ines Carrow, age twelve, who was the crew's paymaster's daughter. She wants her father's wages paid to her, nothing else. She does not fight. A DC 12 Charisma (Persuasion) check gets her to say where the ledger key is hidden: in the cup, under the coins.

   Secret. The altar is hollow. A small iron key sits in the hollow.

5. Brine Cistern Brine Cellars

   A waist-deep black pool fills most of the floor, and a pump in the far wall drips steadily into it. The cistern is deep in the middle. Creatures that enter it without a swimming speed must make a DC 12 Strength (Athletics) check each round or be pulled 5 feet toward the center. Two giant eels (Monster Manual) lie beneath the surface and attack creatures in the water.

6. Empty Shrine Brine Cellars

   A bare alcove with a painted wooden door, and the walls are covered in tally marks cut in rows. The tally marks count one row for each worker buried here, and the last row has no mark at all. A DC 14 Intelligence (Investigation) check on the back wall reveals a hairline seam. Pressing the carved salt-stamp beside the seam opens the secret door.

   Secret. The carved stamp is Dagny Roulet's merchant mark, the same as on the ledger spines.

7. Ledger Stacks Ledger Vault

   Shelves of salt-stained account books rise to the ceiling, and a heavy iron chest sits at the end of the aisle. The chest is locked and needs the iron key from room 4 or a DC 15 Dexterity check with thieves' tools. Opening it without the key triggers a gas trap: a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute from a cloud of salt-dust, and take 2d6 poison damage on a failed save.

8. Sluice Gate Ledger Vault

   A massive wooden gate blocks a channel of rising water, and a crank wheel as tall as a person sits on its side. The gate holds back a flood. Cranking it up takes a DC 14 Strength (Athletics) check, and two creatures may combine checks. A failed check lets the water rise 5 feet across the room, and creatures in the water must make DC 12 Strength (Athletics) checks to stay on their feet each round.

9. Foreman's Office Ledger Vault

   A desk sits beneath a shuttered window, and a grey-faced man in a salt-white coat stands behind it, holding a ledger open to a blank page. Boss: Pell Ostrander, a wight (Monster Manual). He drains life with his longsword and calls up two specters from the walls on round 3.

The boss

• Pell Ostrander (Wight (Monster Manual), with a longsword and Life Drain. Add two specters (Monster Manual) that rise from the walls at the start of round 3.) — He stays to keep the unpaid wages from being taken. He is the only person who knows the crew were never paid, and he will not let the guild claim the dead's pay as debt. Would accept instead of a fight: He will stand down if the party reads the wage tally aloud from room 2, pays the full sum of 90 gold to Ines Carrow in room 4, and names each dead worker in the Ledger Stacks. He accepts the money as paid and the names as witnesses.