Scenario Sketch - Jarraka's Temple pt. 1

One thing I would to do is to provide resources for other GMs to use. I recently ran a successful session that I  thought I would share. The setting is a temple dedicated to Jarraka, the goddess of chaos and destruction in my campaign. This could obviously be adapted to fit your world.

The PC's first clue that the temple was nearby was stumbling upon a large gem as they crossed a stream (Inspired by Alfred's story from the Dark Knight). They eventually got drawn deeper into the jungle and happened upon the temple.

Jungle - greg_mks

I decided that I wanted to start creeping the players out even before they got into the temple so I came up with a couple of conditions that could be fulfilled before the door to the temple would open (There are two other ways into the temple so I wasn't road blocking the PCs). Jarraka is vain and relishes pain and suffering and thus the doors would open if any of the following occured: Someone worshiped her, someone screamed in terror or blood/vomit were spilled on the ground in front of the temple. 

The other two potential entrances were a hole in the roof of the temple and a drain at the base that flowed into a stream [SPOILER] the gem/s were carried to the stream from the drain.

Once inside the temple the PCs would soon realize that things were not as they'd seemed, as it was a temple devoted to chaos that had been abandoned for centuries the layout of the temple changed randomly. Inside there were 12 rooms, on the bottom two floors there were four rooms, on the third floor there were three and on the top floor there was one room.

The PCs entered into room one and shortly thereafter found that the doors in the temple opened to a random room in the temple. Hatches in the ceiling always opened to the room above them and hatches in the floor opened to a random room that they hadn't been to. These rules were simple and pretty effective, although I'm sure there's a better way to do this.

Over the next two posts I'll go over the twelve rooms in detail and share some stories from my players' adventure. As a wrap up tonight I decided that if the players decided to rest whilst in the temple that something weird should definitely take place so I came up with six potential creepy happenings: 

1d6	Creepy happenings
1	An army of crazy ants march through the room biting anything that moves.
2	The walls and ceilings have blood dripping from them, it's starting to pool.
3	A piece of your equipment is gone. You find it three rooms away rusted.
4	You dream that you are a hyena arriving at a fresh kill.
5	A patch of your skin has turned as black as coal and is now fully hairless.
6	You can't speak common, only Draconic or Antiquant*

 *Antiquant is a ancient, lost language in my game.