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COWBOYS & VIKINGSCompendium of the Wild Wastes

Game Master / Underground Sites / Cave

Cave

What the chamber is (d20)

d20Cave
1Cave mouth, daylight still reaching in
2Scree slope under a low roof
3Dry gallery with old campfire rings
4Bat roost, floor thick with guano
5Narrow rift, walls a shoulder apart
6Chamber of dripstone curtains
7Shelf above a cold draught
8Crawlway opening into a round cell
9Flowstone terraces, slick underfoot
10Chamber of broken stalagmites
11Gallery with scratches along one wall
12Forked junction with a dead side-pocket
13Pool chamber, water black and still
14Boulder choke with gaps between the blocks
15Chimney going up into the dark
16Bone-littered den
17Echoing hall where sound carries wrong
18Sump: the passage dips under water
19Crystal-lined pocket that catches the light
20The deep chamber, where the air does not move

What is in it (d12)

d12Contents
1Nothing but stone and silence
2An old bedroll and a cold firepit
3Claw marks at head height
4A cache of dried meat hung out of reach
5Spent brass and a broken lantern
6A nest of rags and fur
7Painted handprints on the wall
8A dead prospector with a full pack
9Fresh tracks in the mud
10A rope left hanging from above
11Bones cracked for marrow
12A carved marker pointing deeper

Who uses it (d8)

d8OccupantBuild the encounter from
1Empty: nothing lives here—
2Empty, but something passes through—
3A predator's denAnimal
4A pack that hunts from hereAnimal, Magical Beast
5Swarming verminVermin
6Outlaws lying lowHumanoid
7Something that oozed up from belowOoze
8A beast that should not existMagical Beast, Aberration

The heart of the site (d6)

d6What is there
1The lair of what rules this cave
2A hidden cache someone meant to come back for
3A way through to somewhere else
4The remains of the one people came looking for
5A spring, a vein or a seam worth claiming
6Something old, sealed in before the cave had a name