A few weeks ago I woke up from three interconnected dreams, and I quickly scribbled them down. I think they will make fantastic inspiration for a dungeon location.
The Bay of Eden, and the Steel House over Dolphin City
Partially submerged in a wide and very shallow bay teeming with life, there lay the stone ruins of a basalt fort and settlement, and a strange rusted spire piercing through it's belly. Some older residents of beach-side Craydown and Ementon remember when the area was a resort destination. Their neighbors would wade out to the walls at low tide, and come back with pockets full of glittering coins and brightly colored crustaceans. They spoke of beautiful mer-people that sang and told stories, and of the laughing dolphins that showed them old treasures in the depths of the crystal clear waters between stone and shimmering sea stars. Some folks even claim to remember the first toxic anemone blooms--back then people dried them into exotic bouquets to hang from their stilted porches over the beach.
Times have changed. Only someone foolhardy or desperate would trek out to the dolphin city these days, though it still looks as beautiful as ever. The sandy floor of the bay is infested with neon anemones with venomous bristles, and the only songs you can hear from the ruins are the cries of pleasure and pain from entranced dolphins and mer-people in a never-ending bacchanal. When the tide comes in, monstrous cousins of dolphins diffuse past the ruins, to the stilted homes where regular folk live. There they mock and cajole innocent people. All of these changes started sixty years ago, when a metal boat appeared at the mouth of the bay one morning, and its passengers began construction.
A few dozen men feverishly fused lengths of steel together for a week without stopping. Any boaters that came close were scared off by waved guns and knives; even the mer-people couldn't get a close look. Then, overnight all activity ceased, and the men disappeared. They left behind a strange structure, and an even stranger pair of people.
On a clear morning, way out at Plum Bluff you can see the metal spire they built, now rusted. It reaches out from a dark and choppy pool in the deepest part of the ruins, extending over a hundred feet high. And at its peak, there is a small steel house with many chimneys, multicolored windows, and a drain that leaks into the water below, staining it russet. Only one man ever leaves the house, though we know the Prince also lives there.
The Prince's man Jymor is tall and stooped, with bristling sideburns. On clear mornings from Plum Bluff you can watch him make the long and slow descent down the spire, fighting off vicious gulls with a cane. At the water he takes hold of a monstrous dolphin that pulls him to shore. In Craydown he shops for food and strange shaped glass bottles before wading back to his steed, who brings him to Ementon for a drink at the Far Harbor Taproom.
Those who know Jymor say he's polite and tight-lipped whilst sober, and impossibly sad while drunk. He won’t stand to hear a bad word said about his master, but won't say a good word about him either. The Prince allows him to have a guest anytime, but to date Jymor has brought only two people to visit: Francine the glassblower was seen falling to her death nearly a decade ago; and Edgar No-Nose, the simple fisherman has taken up Jymor's offer more than a few times.
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