Friday, 12 February 2021

A Peer Beyond the Alchemical Aleph Null - a Poem-Dungeon


A dungeon (or dungeons) for False Machine's poem-dungeon challenge

I certainly found the challenge interesting, the poetic style is reminiscent of how I make dungeons for my own use; terse, personally evocative (unusable by others). Making a dungeon this way, especially for an audience is a very different experience. I found the limited space and a keen adherence to terseness, limited the text's utility and overall, holistic descriptiveness. At the same time the 'poetic language', while fun, used up that same space I lacked. I consider my effort an interesting failure (a critique I have of most things on my blog). 

With this is mind, the dungeon had to become binitarian; two dungeons constituting one whole. A LIGHT (more utilitarian, 'clearer' and 'useful') dungeon and a DARK (evocative and murky) dungeon. They should be used at the same time in concert with one another. Work will have to be done on the part of a DM running the dungeon to flesh it out but I hope the ideas within kindle imaginations.        

The Dungeon: Alchemists push their art beyond God's limits discovering unknowable elements. Disaster ensues. I tried to include standard D&D'isms, traps, treasures, magic swords and boss battles but it's all just a little odd and creepy.  

Aleph Null or  0  is the mathematical term for the smallest infinite number.







1 comment:

  1. This is great. The DARK version is truly poetic, really well done. The LIGHT version is almost like a side-by-side translation like a double-column version of Beowulf with the Olde English and adjacent modern translation. Made the vision of the Alchemist becoming obelisk that much more horrifying.

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