#RC1 A LEVEL 0 TOURNAMENT ADVENTURE BY JIM WAMPLER, STEPHEN NEWTON, DANIEL J. BISHOP, DAK ULTIMAK, ADAM MUSZKIEWICZ, AND JEFFREY TADLOCK THE HYPERCUBE OF MYT A Level 0 Tournament Adventure By The DCCabal • Cover artist: James V. West • Editors: Jim Wampler & Stephen Newton • Copy editing: Jen Brinkman Layout and Cartography: Jim Wampler Originally run at Gary Con VII • Judges: Roy Snyder, James Smith, Jen Brinkman • Winners: Beth Gorbi (1st place), Tim Wadzinski (2nd place), Tim Murly (3rd place) Concept and Design: Jim Wampler Additional Writing: The Endless Hallway - Daniel J. Bishop • The Altar of Chaos - Dak Ultimak The Vault of Fools - Stephen Newton • The Metamorphic Menagerie - Adam Muszkiewicz The Biblioteca Dementia - Jeffrey Tadlock • The Arcane Arsenal - Jim Wampler Playtesters: JoAnne Newton, William MacDougall, Susanne MacDougall, Chris Meyer, Catherine MacDougall, (The Mutant Murder Hobos) Todd Bunn, Donna L. Davidson, Mark Hatton, Darren Long, Kevin M. McDaniel, James Smith, Robert Supinger, Niki Weber, Dieter Zimmerman. Adventure Copyright © 2015 Goodman Games and respective authors. DCC RPG © 2015 Goodman Games. Dungeon Crawl Classics is a trade- mark of Goodman Games. DCC RPG is published under the Open Game License. Refer to the OGL in this work for additional information. INTRODUCTION buried stones and the vine-covered Hypercube of Myt. The Cube is said by some to be the Mad One’s impregnable trea- he Hypercube of Myt is a DCC RPG Tournament sure vault, and by others still, his tomb. There are two cir- adventure based on the character funnel format. cular doors positioned on opposite sides of the Cube — the TThis adventure is designed for 8 players, with southern portal being an entrance, and the northern portal each player having only 1 level-0 PC. As each PC dies, the apparently an exit. The northern door cannot be opened by controlling player taps out of the game, and a new player any means. The southern door may be opened freely on rotates into the game with a brand new PC. The tourna- only one day of the year — the vernal equinox — at which ment adventure is scored by ranking individual PCs by time it admits any who would enter. largest number of encounters survived. Players eliminated from play may re-enter the game with a new PC when an- Millennia of failed attempts to move, damage, or otherwise other seat opens up at the table. violate the Cube have reduced it to a local curiosity and the customary site of an annual Springtime fair. The peasants The tournament will be played for a pre-designated of the PCs’ village even conduct ale-fueled contests of viril- amount of time. Players are scored in the tournament as ity and strength to determine if any are brave (or witless) follows: For each encounter survived (an encounter being enough to enter the Cube. defined as any time in which initiative is rolled to begin a combat), stamp the player’s character sheet once with the ADVENTURE SUMMARY “I Survived!” stamp. When a PC dies, likewise stamp that player’s character sheet with the “Dead” stamp. Remind he Hypercube of Myt is a six-room tesseract players to hang onto their character sheets for later event (4-dimensional hypercube) that does indeed con- scoring. At the end of the event, the players with character T tain many treasures and mighty artifacts, along sheets that show the most encounters survived stamps will with dozens of other creatures and denizens who have be ranked, and the top three numerical survival totals will been trapped within, never aging, for thousands of years. be awarded 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place respectively. Any ties Thanks to a knowledge of hyper-dimensional engineering will be settled by a d20 dice-off between the tying players. stolen from a world in the Kasterborous Galaxy, Mytus the Mad was able to create spaces inside the Cube that are ADVENTURE BACKGROUND much larger than the exterior dimensions. Even more mad- dening, the interior geometry of the Cube is 4-dimensional, he player characters are peasants living in a medi- meaning that the layout of the six rooms and their connect- um-sized village. Thousands of years in the past, ing portals do not make sense in the normal three dimen- Tthis area was a small portion of a vast empire — sions to which denizens of our universe are accustomed. the Kingdom of Morr. Unknown to all but the most-learned, the PC’s village now occupies land that was once the estate Additionally, time inside the Cube does not pass normally. of Morr’s grand vizier, the chaotic mage Mytus the Mad. Once inside the Cube, living creatures soon recognize that Where once the Keep of Myt stood on a small rocky penin- they no longer need to breathe or eat nor do they age. Any sula jutting out into the sea, the now-nameless inland sea who enter the Cube are effectively granted a type of im- has retreated to such a degree that the ruins are positioned mortality, though they can still be killed by other mundane inland in a grassy field just north of the village. means. Thus, The Hypercube of Myt is also an extra-di- mensional home and eternal prison to the remnants of any All that remains of the keep are a few scattered and half- who have entered it over the passing millennia, including Page 1 the very strongest, the truly cunning, and in some cases, the first of you slams down your wooden mug and declares lustily, most egregiously insane. “I’m going in!” Not to be shamed by one so obviously dimwitted and undeserving, you too stand and prepare to enter the Cube. Moving Between Rooms in the Hypercube: The Hyper- Soon, there is a unruly drunken mob of you ready to leave your cube of Myt contains six separate “rooms” which are folded dull and dreary lives as dirt farmers and hemp weavers in ex- into each other across four dimensions. Each room-space is change for a chance at immortality and glory. The first eight of shaped and sized differently. For purposes of running the you rush to the vine-tangled entrance of the Hypercube of Myt tournament adventure, use the map to ascertain movement and enter, with more sure to follow behind you. between “rooms.” The Cube has two one-way doors on opposite sides: an entrance Hypercube Doors: Although the interior doors of the Cube that becomes unlocked once each year, and the other which is be- may differ in size, shape, and nature, all are (in effect) di- lieved to be an exit, though no one in living memory has ever mensional portals. Parties of characters entering the Cube exited the cube. Above the entrance, for those who can read the become quantum entangled with each other. Thus, when- spiraling script of the ancient Kingdom of Morr, is an inscription ever a single PC crosses a door threshold, all PCs present that reads, “Whosever may be worthy, can become me.” Riches in the room will be transported to the other side. The doors and power beyond measure are said to lie inside for the taking, are further enchanted so that they will not open at all until if one can but enter, traverse to the other side, and exit the Cube a specific set of conditions have been met inside any giv- of Myt. en room. This makes it impossible for the PCs to split the party, and nearly impossible for players to “drag” PCs out The growth of ivy vines that cover the entrance to The Hy- of danger by opening and entering another door inside a percube of Myt are easily pulled away from the circular room. door by the PCs. Minimal exploration of the door’s surface (DC 8 Agility check) reveals a rounded depression that, Open Cube doorways appear as a swirling miasma of rotat- when pressed on this one day of the year, triggers a mecha- ing 4-dimensional geometry, and reveal nothing about the nism that causes the doorway to open like an iris. Only an next room that can be perceived by 3-dimensional beings. impenetrable darkness lies beyond. For game purposes, consider open doorways effectively opaque to the senses and potentially sickening if stared into When the first PC steps through into the darkness, the for too long a time. entire party of 8 villagers is drawn through the one-way portal to Area 1-1: The Endless Hallway. Any subsequent Entering the Cube while the tournament is in progress: ingress will take additional PCs to whichever room is cur- Because the interior of the Hypercube rotates in four di- rently occupied by the party. mensions, the one-way entrance portal shifts from room to room once every 10 minutes. For purposes of the tourna- THE ENDLEss HALLWAY ment adventure, this simply means that new PCs who en- ter the Cube (as characters die off) will always show up in Area 1-1 — The Endless Hallway: You find yourself in the room that the remaining PCs currently occupy. a long tunnel, 20’ high and 20’ across. The walls, ceiling, and floor have a somewhat yielding surface, and are translucent. Be- STTAR ING THE ADVENTURE yond these walls, you can dimly see distant galaxies, stars, and glowing nebulae of light. Colorful mists provide a soft light but The keep of the legendary wizard Mytus the Mad was razed, reduce vision to about 60 feet. Filaments buried in the walls, like looted, and ransacked generations before your oldest ancestor was nerves or veins, are lit occasionally by swiftly traveling impulses born.