Editing Tower of Roses

[[Category: D20 Fantasy]]

The Princess’s Tower makes a good moody location for a low level (3rd ish) dungeon crawl. PCs could have gone their for any number of reasons, from being sent by descendants of the Princess’s House to get her signet ring, to being driven in by the rain, to simply doing the old “hack and treasure loot” bit. In the latter case the DM should probably arrange for their to be a suitable treasure to be found. (A Phylactery of Faithfulness beside the Princess’s bed, for example, or a ring of feather fall upon her finger.) If in your party there is a thief or perhaps a bard amongst you. Options for more treasure may be revealed. In the form of Jewels embedded around the gas fireplace. 

The tower itself is a simple shell tower, about 50 feet around. It had no doors originally, but time may have opened up some small and unstable entrances near the ground level. At that level the interior of the tower has a kitchen with a vast hearth, a small dining room, and stairs winding up to the top of the tower. There is a floor with a library and a sewing room in the middle, and then the princess’s rooms on top. The tower can also be reached through the balconies, which are about 70 feet off the ground. They open into the princess’s sitting quarters, and her room makes the final level above them. In the sitting quarters the first princes corpse of petrified rotten flesh rises splits itself in half and somehow balancing himself using his entrails like tentacles. A critical hit delivered by this fiend results in a two turn counter to instant death.  

The Princess’s golems, of which there are about a dozen still in repair, are not immediately hostile. However, if anyone tries to take anything or enter the princess’s private rooms at the top floor they will move to defend. They’re small clockwork constructs with the following basic stats: Hit Dice 1 (5 hit points), Initiative +1 (Dex), Speed 30 ft, AC 14 (+1 size, +1 Dex, +2 natural), Attacks: Slam +1 melee, Damage 1d6, Special: DR 4, Saves: Fort +0, Ref +1, Will -1, Str 10, Dex 12, Con -, Int 10, Wis 8, Chr -. They are constructs and thus immune to critical hits, mind control effects, poison etc, etc.

The roses around the Princess’s body are an [http://www.geocities.com/sovelior/srd/monstersA.html#assassin-vine Assassin Vine] that lives in symbiosis with the golems. They, still thinking they feed the princess, really feed it. To really mess with things make the roses vampiric Assassin Vines, giving them the Blood and Energy Drain abilities of [http://www.geocities.com/sovelior/srd/monstersTtoZ.html#vampire Vampire].

The Princess herself is the most potent threat in the tower. Her soul is trapped there still, having no place to go and no reason to leave the roses that loved her so. Any sufficiently loud noise in the tower will wake her and cause her to panic, lashing out blindly to try and stop the dreadful din. In her own bed-chamber even soft noises may wake her. She’s a [http://www.geocities.com/sovelior/srd/monstersG.html#ghost Ghost] based on a [http://www.geocities.com/sovelior/srd/npcClasses.html 2nd level human aristocrat], but in addition to all the normal ways of defeating such a creature she can be calmed with silence that lasts for several rounds, or perhaps with a gift of flowers. A bard using bardic knowledge could find this out with a DC 20 check, or someone could use Knowledge: History or Knowledge: Nobility with a DC 25 check. These penalties should, of course, be reduced if the PCs know the story of the tower.