2015 One page Dungeon

The Walking Mountain

The One Page Dungeon Contest is upon us all again, and I've been thinking of some possibilities.  Below are the five ideas I've been toying with.  So far I'm leaning towards No. 1, but it might be far too big a concept for a single page...

1. The Crawling Mountain - A doom of cities out of strange Vheissu comes.  Encrusted with the Dolmen and temples of dead cities it the thunderous cracking and crash of it's coming drives civilization before it.  Can it be stopped? Can it be turned from it's path of destruction? Can the riches and secrets of the cities and towns it has crushed, scattered across the Mountain's snowy flanks be plundered?

2. The Fallen Throne - One of the celestial thrones has fallen, and lays cracked and tumbled in the meadow lands.  The edifice is cracked but sound and the celestials within a hive of furious wrath.  Winged babies and alabaster hounds roam the countryside defacing or stealing anything beautiful they discover, for the Angelic Thrones are jealous and declare that all grace, and all refinement are theirs alone.  Singers are made voiceless, the winsome faceless and the graceful lumpen. The Throne must crumble and the host within be banished or destroyed.

3. Collector of Ships - The Azure Ladon has always been a threat to shipping, but recently the petulant sea serpent has committed the most notorious outrage by crushing the funeral barge of the Basileus within his spined blue coils and dragging the dead ruler's body and treasures back to his floating palace of broken and lost ships. 

4. Down and Out in the Capitol - Within the Favelas of the lower city there are all manner of desperate goings on, depraved violence and nefarious ignominies for the proper people to ignore.  It's not you job to ignore them though, it's your job to go into the infamous maze of Panhass Alley and take part in the dirty deeds there.  Powerful forces are willing to pay for theft, rescue, assassination, arson within the crumbled tenements that cover the alley, but the local Vigilant Ant Set criminal organization is numerous, territorial and fond of brutal violence 

5.You get the Shaft - Crime you didn't commit? Crime you did commit?  It doesn't matter, the public loves to see strangers forced into "The Shaft" and hear their cries as they beg for forgiveness and succor. Stripped naked and loaded into the buckets of the ancient works, each turn of the capstan drops the condemned lower and lower, while the villagers above get drunker and drunker in the spring sunshine. While it's law that those who go down the shaft do so with nothing, tradition holds that there's nothing wrong with tossing useful items in after convicts who debase themselves for the crowd in amusing ways.  Can you survive the Shaft, find the tools you'll need in the darkness and foul miasmas and make your way back to the surface?