Dungeon Room Index: Lairs

Places where powerful monsters make their home, keep their treasure, or fall back to for safety. Here are the rooms, (but the notes are a little more important than usual for this one):

The Lair of the Beast

This entry is a little different; it's not too hard to talk about "Libraries" and make a bunch of rooms with really thematically consistent elements, but Lairs require a different approach because the only way you can understand how to build a Lair is by understanding what kind of creature's Lair it is.

So, for these rooms, I took a look at the Cairn Bestiary and chose one or two monsters from each category.

From there, my process is pretty easy to replicate: consider what a monster's Lair is for; it's not just a place that this thing sleeps; it's also a place of safety. That means that a monster's Lair should be a place that the creature has chosen--or created--to amplify their strengths, and to mitigate their weaknesses. Functionally, a monster is either found in it's Lair, or retreats to it's Lair if it's under significant threat.

Room Notes

Aranea

Araneas are very intelligent spiders. As such, a cavern or room filled up with spider webs is a good start. The Aranea will have built these webs such that intruders will have a hard time making progress through the cavern, but the Aranea can pass through freely on elevated channels through the webs. The cavern should also include features that break line of sight, allowing the monster to regroup for surprise attacks. Of course, the web is also filled up with creatures and humanoids that the Spider is saving for later...

The Aranea is highly intelligent, and well aware of its own weakness to fire; therefore, the Aranea is careful to build its webs such that they are not all one piece--if a part of the web is set on fire, only a small portion of the total web will be destroyed. (A particularly virtuous party would hold off on burning the web anyways if humanoids are found webbed up in it.)

Finally, the Aranea is a shape-shifter; therefore, if it really gets into trouble it can scurry to another corner of the cavern and disguise itself as a human trapped in the web.

Banshee

A Banshee's greatest asset is its voice; therefore, a Banshee ought to be most secure in a space where its voice can echo and carry long distances, preferably while the Banshee is not in line of sight. This is a simple set of rooms with smooth carved walls, ideal for bouncing the Banshee's voice around and around.

Basilisk

The Basilisk is not terribly intelligent, but it does have good instincts; it's lair is a small room at the end of a long, narrow tunnel. This allows the Basilisk to rest with its face towards the long hall, and any would be attacker will be unable to approach the Basilisk without facing its Gaze.

Boggart

The Boggart can bring objects to life, and create magical disguises. Therefore, this room is full of statues on short pedestals, as well as several empty pedestals. When under threat, this room is the perfect battleground for the Boggart: it can animate statues to protect it, and it can disguise itself as just another statue by jumping onto an empty pedestal.

Bone Construct

The Bone Construct is a guardian, so it doesn't really have a Lair for its own sake. Instead, the Construct is kept in a large casket at the entrance to the dungeon. But here's the fun: the Bone Construct will not reveal itself to prevent players from entering the dungeon; instead, the Bone Construct emerges after the party has passed the threshold into the next room, to drive them further into the dungeon! Other threats are deeper in the tombs, of course, so the party has the pleasure of knowing they won't be coming out the way they came unless they face the Bone Construct head on, lure it away somehow, or find another exit to the dungeon.

(This whole concept feels a bit like cheating; but the idea was too fun to leave out.)

Crypt Guardian

The specialty of the Crypt Guardian is teleporting players away into other rooms. This is a fun stunt to pull in its own right--the primary benefit is in splitting up the party and shaking their confidence. Even so, the neat trick with this Crypt Guardian's Lair is that its room is surrounded by hidden chambers with other threats. Perhaps one player is dropped into a room full of spikes, another into a room to face some other undead creature all alone, and a third is placed in a room filled with noxious gas and no obvious exit. (Each room, if escaped, reveals hidden doors behind the statues in the rooms flanking the main chamber.)

Frost Elf

The Frost Elf is beautiful and long lived, so in my mind they must also be incredibly vain and self important. Therefore, its Lair is an icy throne room completely covered in mirrors (even the pillars are wrapped in mirrors!). This has a second benefit: the Frost Elf can also Teleport at will, so the mirrors ensure that it can see every point in the room while the mirrors are intact.

The Frost Elf's treasures are kept in a personal room behind the throne, but the door is covered over with thick magical ice unless the Elf can be defeated or induced to remove the charm.

Giant Scorpion

The Giant Scorpion is at home in a large, sandy cavern. The Sand is deep and riddled with sink-holes. The Scorpion has no trouble burrowing into the loose sand, and its long legs are adept at stepping carefully over the sink holes, or intentionally burrowing through them to emerge elsewhere in the chamber. Players, on the other hand, will need to be careful not to fall in and find themselves whisked away under the sand. (Perhaps there are young scorpions at the bottom of these sink holes to amp up the danger, with a life-cycle similar to the Antlion!)

Green Dragon

This version of the Green Dragon is an enormous snake. It still loves treasure though, so it needs a good place to protect its precious objects; therefore, this Green Dragon has dug a series of mazelike tunnels surrounding it's personal resting chamber. Along with delaying and waylaying any would be thieves, these tunnels also give the Green Dragon its own advantages: the cramped spaces increase the effective range and danger of its Chlorine Breath, with plenty of switchbacks and dead-ends to confuse and isolate intruders.
(I imagine these tunnels to be rooty passages beneath some enormous old tree; for convenience perhaps the Green Dragon has a personal entrance straight up from its resting place, emerging high up in the trees branches.)

Harpy

The Harpy's advantages are it's voice and ability to fly; therefore, this dark, lofty cathedral, with its excellent acoustics and shadowed balconies, is an excellent place for its Lair.

Hydra

A Hydra doesn't exactly have a lot of weaknesses, even so, if you run with the classic idea that its heads grow back unless the neck stumps are cauterized, this is a great Hydra Lair: it's a simple cavern behind a waterfall. The abundant water is a defense against torches, but the deep pool in front of the waterfall is also an excellent battleground for the Hydra: the Hydra's large body and long necks are unimpeded by the water, while a would be attacker might find their mobility strictly limited.

Killer Bee

Killer Bees are... big bees. The only obvious threat that comes to mind with bees is smoke. So I put these bees above a water filled chamber, their hive hugging a large central column. The water is of course an important resource to the bees themselves, but it also means you should have a hard time building a bonfire too close to the hive, either.

Kobold

Kobolds are explicitly suggested to work in service of larger beasts, but their presence in a Lair should have a distinct touch as well: Kobolds have an affinity for traps, and that tells me they're crafty. I also  assume Kobolds are small, so along with riddling passageways with traps, as the stat block suggests, I think they would also criss-cross passageways with tight tunnels that will let them move in and out freely for hit-and-runs while greatly hindering normal-sized intruders.

Lamia

As Lamias can be all manner of hybrids, their Lairs could vary greatly--for this one I imagined a Lamia with a long serpentine body. The room is very tall, with several, closely grouped pillars rising high into the darkness. I picture the Lamia slithering up the pillars to disappear into the darkness, crossing to other pillars, and then sliding back down elsewhere. The height and openness of the chamber also allows the Lamia to hide from direct sight and work their charm and cunning through their voice, postponing a direct conflict as much as possible.

Manticore

The Manticore's advantage is its flight and long-range tail spikes, so its Lair includes plenty of high ledges to bounce around while peppering intruders with ranged attacks, or to swoop and retreat as it pleases. It's resting place (where it keeps its valuables) is on top of the large column, protected from all but the best equipped would-be-thieves.

Mind Lasher

The Mind Lasher's strength is its psionic power. I assume that the Mind Lasher needs line of sight to use this power, and ideally it can do so without incurring close range attacks from its victims; therefore, this room is arranged in a peculiar way: the interior of the room is essentially caged--you have to walk the entire length of the room to enter the cage from the back. This is just one room of the Mind Lasher's Lair (the room where they immerse victims in vats of who knows what), I imagine they would have similar constructions in other parts of their Lair so that if an intruder breaches whatever other security measures are in place, the Mind Lasher will still have plenty of opportunity to disable them before the assailant can ultimately close the distance.

Minotaur

It's a Minotaur in a maze. You understand.

Reptilian

Reptilians are amphibious, so there Lair should leverage that dual nature: this cavern is filled to knee height with water. Underneath the water in various places are deep pits connected to each other, and to hidden chambers around the main chamber, where the Reptilians sleep and keep personal belongings.

You can imagine the Reptilians using the submerged tunnels to move around the room in unexpected ways, and you can imagine intruders falling into these pits by accident, creating openings for the Reptilians to go for the kill.

Shadow

This one feels like a bit of a stretch simply because this room arrangement is pretty implausible, and I don't know how a Shadow would construct it. (My head-canon is that some magical creatures have a tendency to passively warp reality to suit their needs; like, by hanging out in one place for a long time the space begins to alter by simple cause of their extended influence.)

Anyways, this room is a series of narrow, tall corridors, blocked repeatedly by heavy, dark curtains. The Shadow's strength is darkness and shadows, so I wanted something that would give it plenty of space to hide and slink around in. (And a couple of big curtains would be too easy to burn down quickly.)

Vampire

A Vampire might have a nice castle, full of lavish decoration and "the finer things", but when it comes to its place of refuge--its Lair--the defenses can be more thoughtful. At the back of this series of chambers is the Vampire's coffin, where they return to recover from harm. The chambers leading to it are small and, more importantly, the halls connecting them are too narrow to pass through without turning sideways, or removing bulky equipment. The Vampire can turn into a bat at will, so it's no trouble for them to move through them (and some small vents positioned flush with the ceiling make normal coming and going particularly trivial), but for any would be attacker, the passages are sure to leave them vulnerable, giving the Vampire the chance to pick them off at their advantage.

Water Elemental

This isn't terribly novel, but it's inclusion was equally trivial: the Water Elemental's Lair is a body of water. It needs only to be large enough and deep enough that the Elemental has no worry of it drying up, and anyone stupid enough to face them here unprepared will find themselves completely outclassed. I imagine the Elemental smashing boats from beneath, and then dragging anyone plunged into the water to the bottom to invisibly do what they please with them. (The deeper they can drag them the better; deep enough and they can let the pressure or the limits of human lungs do the rest.)

Wood Troll

The Wood Troll's greatest fear is fire, and since this is an especially planty creature, its obvious why it would have an affinity for water. Therefore, this Lair is simply a very, very wet (and rooty) cavern. Starting a fire isn't easy down here, and dousing one is pretty easy as well.

Wyvern

The Wyvern's greatest advantage is its power of flight. This tower is an ideal Lair: it gives the Wyvern plenty of forewarning about intruders, and the relatively limited standing space around the tower gives the Wyvern plenty of room for swooping in and out of range. I imagine the Wyvern could even augment its defense by picking up boulders and dropping them on intruders from a safe height.

(How is their a tower inside a dungeon?? Well, first of all, it doesn't have to be, and second, there could totally be a tower in a sufficiently large cave for some reason, and third, we could certainly imagine some other big, spacious, kind-of-like-this-tower-setup inside of a big dungeon, and fourth, it was fun to draw, so leave me alone about it!)

Why are we in this Lair again?

Obviously much of what I have considered with these rooms is relevant to combat encounters. That's not exactly ideal but, while we're on the subject, let's consider why a group of players would ever find themselves in these horribly uneven battle-fields; after all, if these spaces are so obviously rigged in favor of the monsters, surely it would be better to fight these things just about anywhere else, right?

Yes of course. So, if we want to (*ahem* lightly) pressure players to do so anyways, how do we do it? It's helpful to summarize some ideas I shared in my blog on Monsters and Encounters.

Monsters present as obstacles by:  

• Standing in the way of something you need.  Some of the rooms above make this clearer than others--the Bone Construct for example is blocking your escape. Less obviously, the Crypt Guardians chamber could be presumed to be positioned between the entrance and something else you're after. The Killer Bees are perhaps just an enormous nuisance in the dungeon, and it would be great if you could cut them off at the source. The Harpy chapel might be the only passage to reach a deeper portion of the dungeon, etc, etc.
• Having something you need. The Boggart is perhaps in possession of important information and negotiations have failed. Most of these monsters might simply be in possession of some generic treasure you particularly want, but they could just as easily have some very specific McGuffin that's narratively or logistically important, or maybe the Mind Lasher kidnapped someone you care enough to rescue.
• The monster is the problem you're trying to solve. E.g. the townsfolk don't really like living by a Vampire, or a Wyvern, or a Hydra for one reason or another. You are here to "slay the beast", or solve the problem some other way, but confrontation of some form is strictly necessary. (Fun variation on this and the previous idea: the the thing-you-need is some part of the monster itself, like it's magical spleen that can cure your grandma's cancer.)

With that framing, if your monster doesn't meet any of those criteria, then your players shouldn't enter their Lair for any reason. (That's just a death wish.) If, however, your monster does then there are a few ways your players and your monsters might end up so unfortunately (and delightfully) in the Lair together:

• The Lair is between them and the thing.
• The Monster has the thing, and keeps it in their Lair.
• The Monster has the thing, and the players gave it a good scare, so it escaped back to its Lair--taking the thing with it.
• The Monster is the thing, and it doesn't like to leave its Lair.
• The Monster is the thing, and the players gave it a good scare, so it escaped back to its Lair.

In all of these cases, once the expediency of confronting the monster has been accepted, the players may still elect to try something else to lure the monster out of its Lair, or avoid a violent conflict, or whatever, but that's between you and them and the presumed intelligence of the monster and persuasiveness of the appeal. Have fun with that!

Not everything should have a "Lair"

As just a brief note, plenty of monsters shouldn't be expected to have a proper "Lair". At least, not one that's especially interesting or "personal". Zombies are kind of mindless--I don't expect them to build special zombie-killing-fields, or fallback to just-the-best-zombie-hideout-ever. An Owlbear really can just sleep in a cave--they can have a lair if not a real Lair.

Set dressing

I have mostly only discussed the Lairs above in terms of their tactical/strategic considerations, but maybe it goes without saying that Lairs ought to have thoughtful aesthetic touches. 

For especially intelligent beings, this might mean "what would this creature decorate with based on its temperament?" (maybe that Vampire just can't resist some self portraits, even in those cramped rooms), or it could be as simple as "what evidence does this place contain of whose Lair it is?" (e.g. the Green Dragons tunnels smell like Chlorine Gas, or the leadup to the Wyverns den is strewn with the bones of failed adventurers, and so on). This is especially relevant for those monsters that don't warrant a Lair: the Owlbear can't be expected to set up sandbags for a tactical retreat, but it sure as heck leaves giant owl pellets nearby for you to step in.

Don't neglect the ambiance!