KILLSWITCH

a post-mecha dungeon by Batts

 W
You stumble across an endgame bomb, leftover from the annihilation war. It’s as
big as a football field and you don’t have long to defuse it before it takes you and
the surrounding region into an infinite blackness.
Good luck,
Don’t die.
THE BOMB a reference

W
Organic Matter
The Detonation
Assimilation
Brain Station
Barrier

Fluid Randomly
Green
Rotation Accessed
House
Station Memories

Referential
Power
Time H.I.V.V.E.
Supply
Containment
OMAB Organic Matter Assimilation Barrier

Shimmering lake of energy, mushed solid. Nothing intelligent can pass through this barrier.
If you’re playing a game with stats, anything with less than 7 intelligence can pass through.
Otherwise I don’t have an answer to this. Listen to your party. If they
can prove that they aren’t intelligent, let them pass.
You present the problems,
they present the solutions.

HIVVE Hide. Investigate. Vilify. Vilify. Eat.

Pulsing mass of fleshy mounds, rounded off with bubble-gum sacs filled with
syrup gestating and supplying the Bomb with intelligence-eating homunculi.

2d6 homunculi pop free whenever this room is entered.

Destroying the HIVVE They have 1hp and an AC 10.
removes the A.I.’s ability Attack for +0, 1 damage.
to create Homunculi. Homunculus (true form) When hit, they burst
HP: 3d6 AC: 10 + d4 into the form of their attacker
Attack: +d6
They attack with whatever attack hit them.

FRS Fluid Rotation Station

Meter-thick tubes gushing with deep purples and sea-foam. Clots scatter about,
obscured. Connector stations hang from robotic arms that crawl the roof looking
for hosts.

When connected to a host, the stations drain blood (hp) at an exponential rate of
d6 a round. All HP goes to the A.I.
This station OVERLOADS if 100hp is drained, cutting the A.I.’s HP total in half.

RTC Referential Time Containment

All times are contained here in a hollow circle that stands straight up. If you pass
an object through one side, it ages to its final state. If you pass an object through
the other side, it ages to its first state.
POWER SUPPLY
Weakened glass jar with screw top (requires 100 combined strength to twist open) holds a bolt of lightning aged
into sentience.
Releasing the lightning gets rid of the A.I.’s Energy Barrier
It must be convinced to leave and it kinda doesn’t want to.
It’s got a nice home and its purpose is almost complete so it can retire
What can you offer it?

GREEN Red blinking lights bake alien plants into Artificial Hearts.
If consumed it will repleace your heart and turn you into a
garden. You can plant another living thing in your skin and
grow a duplicate. This takes like a day.

HOUSE
If the Greenhouse is destroyed,
the A.I. cannot regenerate.

RAM Randomly Accessed Memories

Gargantuan brain made of ghostly limbs tethered around a super-mother-board.

Different memories help the A.I. process things in future-time.
Like a cosmic nightmare.
Plug yourself in to trade memories with the machine.
There are 5 in total. Each gives you a goal you must accomplish.
If 3 are traded, the RAM fries and the
A.I.’s AC lowers by 25

1. Dragonflies swarm a field of corpses in a bog as you rise to the height of two skyscrapers. The dim sun tries to
burn you with its short reach through space.
(You must swallow a source of fire)
2. City slips into a open maw. You see the face of each person and can identify them by name.
(Write down 10 names of people from the campaign so far)
3. It’s an empty sky.
(Get someone to say something really nice about you)
4. What a cold day for a baby. Put your jacket on and walk into the dark woods. Why are they so dark, and who
are all these people?
(Change your Flaw to “I panic when the lights go out”)
5. Musical notes bouncing between two walls at such high velocities that the music they make is almost visible.
(You gotta play a song for everyone with any instrument present)
DETONATION
STATION
This is where the bomb is activated. And this is where it’s defused. It’s a black and infinite
room with a keyboard for a floor. It takes a person’s full weight to press down a key.
Words float above you, projected onto fog, that say--
“People eat me.
If you remove the first letter I become a form of energy.
Remove the first two and I’m needed to live.
answer:
Scramble the last 3 and you can drink me.
What am I?” Wheat, heat, eat, tea

It’s “Hangman”. Every wrong letter typed equals a body part put up.
The energy of that body part is stolen from the person who typed
the letter and given to the A.I., giving them full control over it.

Head Torso Right Arm

Left Arm Right Leg Left Leg
THE BRAIN
Null gravity blackness at the center of the bomb. The A.I. is a spiraling tower of a computer
that flashes when it talks. There is nowhere to land on the computer. It does not like visitors.

Astral Intelligence (A.I.)

HP: 200 AC: 40
Energy Barrier stops all spells from touching it.
Each Round on their turn they create a set of homunculi from the
HIVVE and
Shift the Environment

The A.I. has full control of the space inside this chamber, creating and destroying entire environments at will.
Null Gravity - base environment, black void with A.I. in the center
Under Water - Mecha wreckage hundreds of feet below the water.
Homunculi have tentacles instead of limbs
Free Fall - Two burning airships crash and fall around you. Try to avoid falling debris.
Homunculi have rocket boots.
Windows XP Screen - single rolling green hill with clear sky. Dial up noise fills the air.
Homunculi are warped and distorted code fragments here.

BOMB STUFF
Disarming the bomb and defeating the A.I. means you win or whatever. Failing to do one or
both of those things means it blows up.
Track time with a countdown dice (d20) The force from this explosion is comparable
Every time the party stops to discuss things, to a grown human stomping on an apple, if the
moves from one room to another, apple is your planet and the bomb is the foot.
or finishes an encounter, tick the dice down. please save u
If it reaches 0 then it’s time for the BOOM. s...

A lot of things are purposely not over-described or explained because your players are gonna
come up with stuff way more wicked and devious than I could. The problems are tough and
open. Let them come up with solutions and if they sound plausible, let those solutions work.
There are no dead ends. Even if things get confusing and the players aren’t sure what to do and
hate you SO much for running this adventure, have the A.I. narrate some stuff and get super
META about it. That’d be fun too. But yeah, use this as a framework to run an adventure unique
to your party.
Good luck,
Don’t Die.
- Batts
FIN

Words and Layout

by
Batts