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Oddities for an Ancient Ruin

OldRuins.jpg

Hot on the heels of Oddities for a Wizard's Tower and 100 Oddities for a Creepy Old House, the bad brains at d-Infinity present a new ever growing, ever evolving table of oddities for an ancient ruin. GMs can use this table to add flavor, adventure hooks, and encounters to the collapsed castles, lost cities, and fallen civilizations where your adventurers prowl. And feel free to add your own oddities to the table. How long will it take to reach 100?

1. The body of an adventurer, pinned under a collapsed pillar. There is a 30% chance the adventurer is still clinging to life.

2. A hatch leading to an old prison, dungeon, or torture chamber. Faint shuffling and scratching can be heard from the hatch.

3. A plump, happy ghoul tucking into the gathered remains of the ruin's former inhabitants.

4. What remains of a temple wall. Rune engravings on the wall foretell the destruction of the temple and the temples eventual reconstruction by a new prophet and her followers.

5. An old die cutter and stamp press that was once used to mint the coin of the realm.

6. A shallow excavation pit surrounded by the tools of an archeologist. There is a 50% the remains of an archeologist lay face down in the pit, a trowel driven through his back.

7. In what remains of a dining room, an entire family sits around a table, petrified in the act of preparing for a meal.

8. Long, creeping vines grow over the ruins. The vine are part of a carnivorous plant rooted in a defensible spot within a partially collapsed structure. If approached to closely, the vines entangle any living creature and drag them to the plant's hungry maw.

9. The remains of a complex machine. It was either a machine that could have prevented the cataclysm had it been completed in time, or the doomsday device that caused the cataclysm that created the ruins.

10. A brazier from a collapsed altar. With the brazier, an eternal flame still burns.