TARTARUS INCURSION THREATS or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make Random Tables

If there is one thing that can be said about me it is this: I never do new work when I could just recycle old work.

The Nightmares Underneath provides a number of tables for designing Nightmare Incursions (that game’s equivalent of dungeons). Many of those tables can work for The Long Bright Dark with a little bit of creativity and some judicious reskinning, but I wanted to add a few extra tables for inspiration.

Fortunately for me, I had pretty much already done the hard work when I wrote up a set of threats for creating investigations and arcs in my PbtA game Malleus (with a significant debt owed to Monster of the Week). A little bit of re-jigging, and some re-formatting, later and I had several random tables for inspiring Tartarus Incursions in The Long Bright Dark—how good!

I think that these tables should work reasonably well for any dungeon, particularly ones with some horror theming. Anyways, I have reproduced the table below.

THE CROWN

The Crown, as in The Nightmares Underneath, is the spawn of Tartarus that represents the main risk or threat in an Incursion. If you are creating a nightmare from scratch, using the nightmare creation rules in TNU, you can roll a d10 on the table below to determine the nature of the Crown:

Roll	Nature	Motivation
1	Brood	to breed, spread and overrun
2	Carnifex	to torment, murder and butcher
3	Deceiver	to sow doubt and create instability
4	Frenzy	to run rampant and destroy
5	Glutton	to eat, devour and consume
6	Imperator	to dominate, possess and control
7	Leech	to infect, exploit and drain
8	Mutilator	to hurt, torture and disfigure
9	Seducer	to sway and tempt to damnation
10	Witch	to usurp the power of Tartarus

THRALLS

Thralls are lesser nightmares that inhabit an Incursion. In many cases they are beholden or subservient to the Crown; however, some Thralls have their own motivations and may be opposed to the Crown. They may also serve a Location or Tartarus directly in certain circumstances. The following table provides inspiration for creating Thralls:

Roll	Nature	Motivation
1	Hunter	to kill with skill and cunning
2	Swarm	to infest and infect
3	Stalker	to track, observe and report
4	Thief	to steal and sabotage
5	Charlatan	to trick, confuse and betray
6	Slave	to do the Crown’s bidding
7	Guardian	to protect a person, place or thing
8	Beast	to terrorise and attack

LOCATIONS

Locations represent important physical, or meta-physical places, within the incursion. Not every single room or location the PCs might encounter need to be treated as a ‘capital-L’ Location—just the ones where the location will form a notable obstacle or serve as a backdrop for a major conflict. For certain kinds of incursion, a Location might even stand in for the Crown and have its own Thralls if its influence is strong enough. The following table can be used to provide inspiration for Locations:

Roll	Type	Purpose
1	Haven	to provide sanctuary to Tartarus and its children
2	Confluence	to be at the centre of things, to bring things together
3	Breeding Ground	to provide fertile ground for, and birth the seeds of Tartarus
4	Labyrinth	to trap and confuse
5	Temple	to draw worshippers
6	Charnel House	to bring death and destruction to those within
7	Ossuary	to harbour the dead and restless souls
8	Monument	to form a place of power
9	Ruin	to hide the ancient and the unknown
10	Mirage	to inveigle, entrance, and tempt to Tartarus

TARTARUS

Tartarus itself, separate from the Crown, may have its own wants and desires that affect the Incursion. Tartarus can be used as a thematic overlay on an incursion, a uniting principle that can operate anywhere in the incursion. There are seven aspects of Tartarus—I think you can guess why! You can pick one, roll a d7 or figure out some other way to make a random choice:

Roll	Aspect	Theme
1	Lust	intense longing and desire for a person or living thing
2	Gluttony	overindulgence and overconsumption, selfishness
3	Avarice	desire and greed for the accumulation of power and possessions
4	Apathy	indifference to duties and obligations, avoidance of exertion
5	Wrath	uncontrolled anger, rage and hatred
6	Envy	insatiable jealousy and covetousness
7	Pride	hubris, narcissism, corrupt selfishness and the perversion of dignity

NPCs

NPCs represent other people or beings that may be present in or near an incursion. In general, they are not antagonists and some of them may not even really be an obstacle in and of themselves. NPCs such as the Meddler or the Storyteller may get in the way of the PCs and require them to change tack. Allies, Investigators, Victim and Witnesses might be able to aid but are also likely to be endangered by the incursion—the threat they represent is that the PCs might not be able to save them or may end up making them collateral damage:

Roll	Archetype	Motivation
1	Ally	to provide aid and assistance to the PCs
2	Witness	to provide information
3	Investigator	to looks for answers or ancient knowledge
4	Meddler	to interfere and pursue their own ends
5	Storyteller	to pass on rumours and hearsay
6	Victim	to put themselves in the clutches of Tartarus