Using the Numenera Ruin Mapping Engine with the Sun Below
In Jade Colossus: Ruins of the Prior Worlds, Monte Cook Games has come up with a ruin mapping system that allows you to flesh out parts of the Ninth World that you don’t have details for. Most of the book is about the Jade Colossus, but like many Numenera ruins, it’s enormous and there is no point in detailing hundreds of rooms and corridors that players will never see. The ruin mapping engine lets you roll a few dice and create weird Numenera environs on the fly.
Let’s roll some dice!
Example One: A 5m x 10m rectangular chamber with a machine that grinds small objects into drit. It has one exit sealed with a force field, and two additional exits.
Example Two: A sealed vault (seals are level 7 with level 7 defenses that do 7 points of energy damage). The interior is made of self-repairing level 8 synth. The vault is 15m x 30m and contains a vortex of energy that swirls above a raised circular platform surrounded by complex (level 8) machinery. The vortex is painfully bright and hot, and induces a sense of awe in observers. The vortex is a wormhole that leads directly to the sun.
The Sun Below
Using the ruin mapping engine to flesh out when players go “off the path” in any Sun Below adventure is perfect. You can roll dice, or use the tables for inspiration.
Then use the background of the adventures as window dressing for your on-the-fly creations. In example two above, that vortex obviously leads not to some lame sun at the center of the solar system but directly to the Sun Below!
The Sun Below: City on the Edge
Like the Jade Colossus, Urbamorr, the city on the edge, is enormous. Unlike the Jade Colossus, it’s mostly inhabited. Use the ruin mapping engine, and 50% of the time decorate the places with praithian statues, burial chambers, and enormous artwork. Above ground sections will have dh’lann features (like dream-vapor bowls), while below ground areas will feature slithik items (like floating tubes of blood).
Since the city is inhabited, 50% of the time use a creature as the main feature, the rest of the time roll as normal. If you do have a creature, 50% of the time use dh’lanns, floaters, praithians, praithian war snakes, pyronic sentries, or slithiks.
The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady
Liluna is also massive, and, like the Jade Colossus, mostly uninhabited. 50% of the time you should decorate the areas you roll up with displays that show lido automatons, Liluna in flight, gibbering murken, Lebby with her red bouncy ball, or an aspect of Storm. Depending on what's going on in the stricken moon, you could show the forces of Liluna or of Golthnor doing well or doing poorly.
If you roll up a creature, 50% of the time use a child of Golthnor, cultists of Golthnor, data demons, gibbering murken, lido automatons, Lebby, skratts, Storm, or synites. Look at the Orb Encounters section of the adventure for ideas.
