the left stage: first steps to infiltrate the kiss factory

some rooms from the dungeon i'm running. this a repost but I've organized things so that all the connected rooms are in one post and I've added 3 new rooms and technically this could stand on its own as a microdungeon now.  if u just want the new rooms they are 6, 7, and 11.

if you've done your homework you shouldn't need to ask where this is from. >:((( how loyal are you?????

CLICK ME FOR A MAP U CAN DOWNLOAD <3

 

there's a factory where kisses are made and true love comes from. their manufacture is a trade secret and your boss wants it. they're also getting divorced and can't stop crying. they press cash and tickets to some sort of an arthouse production into your hands and the tickets are damp with their sweat and their tears to the point of falling apart but even wet cash spends so here you are. trying to figure it out. 

0. the only people in a dusty theater

this is seriously so awesome idk just check it out

     huge warehouse space. air thick with dust, sneezes echo. door was loosely padlocked, easy enough to slip in. a plywood stage with 3 different performances, already begun. metal folding chairs, nobody else in the audience.  
    the plays are an experimental sort of something. you actually about them before, from someone annoying. in a bar or whatever. they seemed confused, repeated anything you told them as if learning what it was for the first time. wore heavy jacket, sunglasses, gloves. 
    if you go up on any of the stages, there's a soft ragdoll thud as your imitation is dropped into a chair from somewhere in the rafters. long coats and gloves and hats and scarves and sunglasses conceal wire-mother bodies and paper mache features. they're confused, stupid, and answer to some bastardized version of your name. they want to leave the theater as soon as possible to fumble their way through taking over your life but need you to give them permission to leave the theater. 
    If you encounter your imitation and it survives, the next time you encounter it it is more lifelike,
constructed from finer stuff. If you've encountered it three separate times, the fourth time you encounter it it will be utterly indistinguishable from yourself, and whenever you take action in its presence, flip a coin: on tails, the imitation takes that action instead.
     if your imitation leaves the theater before you do, when you go to follow it you're in the Yellow City instead. Your imitation is there too, but better than you, more convincing. Your joints hurt and your insides are full of cotton. If you kill them, or if they kiss you, you get to return to the normal world.

1: gambling puppets

oh... to hold and behold...

   the left stage. fake grass, paper mache gate. four marionettes, toddler size, in little guard uniforms. strings up to the rafters. up there, four puppeteers, hidden in the shadows, but identical in face and size to the puppets. 
    the puppets are drinking a jug of wine, actually sand but it's rude to refuse. they're gambling for their hearts desires, displayed on four pedestals.

 a tiny puppet wife, murdered over and over in bad taste slapstick. this puppet hates his wife with an uncomfortable venom 

tiny puppet cock and balls, swelling into a massive erection. this puppet thinks he's a lot funnier than he is.

a human skull, chattering its teeth. her name was Cyra Nelms and this puppet is deeply, annoyingly, in love with her. 

the Abyss Bloom, Sister of the Violet. meaty, purple-black orchid. makes your eyes itch to look at. If you smelled her, she'd rot you and herself into nothing in a joyful instant. this puppet is suicidal and poetic. 

     they invite you up on stage to join the game. rhapsodize about your hearts desire and, if it's true, a pedestal will be winched up from under the floorboards displaying the desire in effigy. if you lie, nothing happens. the puppets know the truth, but don't want to embarrass you. 

    a cupid statue stands with an arrow ready. lose the game and it shoots your hearts desire and you will never ever in your life ever get it ever. if you win, you get everyone else's hearts desire. not yours though. everybody else gets that one.

2: cereal the counterfeiter

i hate being in ur house why is your shit set up this way

    backstage, behind 1: gambling puppets. dingy corridor with scaffolding up to the rafters and pulleys to raise and lower the curtains and adjust the lights. absolutely stuffed full of props.  anything you can think of: wedding cakes, birds, flowers, guns, fruit. there's a whole prop ford f-150. almost everything is very obviously false and shoddy, but there's some real stuff here too. 2:6 chance for anything the PCs examine being actually real.
     the realistic stuff is the work of Cereal the Counterfeiter. he's the less successful twin brother of Cyril the Craftsman and horribly jealous. he's crawling around on the floor poking and prodding things to ascertain their reality. bemoans the loss of his goods: facsimile objects, stones, birds, coins, even people. All the real stuff is his work. he'll believe he made anything real though. he made your imitations, but it was a rush job. if you mention how crummy they are he'll try immediately try to kill himself in front of you. he was in such a rush that he forgot what stuff he made and what he didn't.

    If you help locate his goods or convince him you have found them he will kiss your feet and offer to fashion replicas of you: A source of new characters!
    he's got a little work station, under which you can see a trap door. he won't let you go down there though, it's where he keeps his works in progress.

3: the lobe

tickletaste

    On stage. the boards are covered in silk and perfumed, dribbling candles. more curtains to the left and right. Ahead, different seats in a different theater. This one cobwebbed. molding foam under cracked pleather seats.
    If you leave through any other theater but the one you first entered by, you're in the Yellow City instead. Your imitation is there too. As usual. If you kill them, or if they kiss you, you get to return to the normal world.
    Bulging up from the cracks, a human-size lobe of skin and flesh, surrounded by devoted worshipers in loincloths and sopping with baby oil, which they rub on the lobe. 
    As they pray to it, it takes on the shape of the most devout. When it does, the impious roll around in the silk and cry about invisible devils and lakes of fire. they expect you to do this as well. If you don't, they will, with much grumbling and irritation, assemble themselves in slippery oily cheerleader formations to create a hellish landscape and monstrous tormentors and then torment you monstrously. arms made of wet wet guys gripping each other and a third guy who's pretending to be a pitchfork. that sort of thing. 
    if you successfully make the lobe take on your image, for as long as it remains that way, you will be exalted. two of their number will grab you by one shoulder each and hoist themselves into the air to become your wings. this doesn't let you fly but it does mean that whenever you explain something to someone, it will be as if you personally invented that concept and are delivering divine revelation.

4: squirmy worship

get comfy :))

On stage, perfumed and silken as in the Lobe (3). the theater is in a high school; you can hear the bells and the murmer of reluctant students in the halls outside the comfortably cold space. nude worshipers squirming on the ground like snakes, following your every move. they mutter prayers, adoring you under their breath. none of these prayers are accurate to who you are, and always paint you as having some quality you don’t possess or doing some great kindness to the squirming worshiper

kiss my feet...
forgive me, I killed my sister...
give me everything in your wallet...
tend my boils... 
let me walk again...
make me beautiful...

the longer they follow you, the more you start to resemble the figure in their ode, and you feel yourself compelled to take the actions they beseech you for.
    if more than one follows you, you are torn between multiple conflicting visions of yourself. if not halted, eventually you will be reduced to an amorphous lobe of flesh like the one in 3, constantly changing shape in response to whichever worshiper prays the hardest

5: cyril the craftsman

type shit

    Cyril the Craftsman (Hated and successful brother of Cereal the Counterfeiter in 2) carefully etching flowering script into a ball of violet glass. An enormous hissing wicker basket with a closed lid sits next to him. He's got his own stage and everything; small, black box theater style. the seats are metal folding chairs, close and intimate. a single exit sign glows behind them. to leave through it would be to enter the Yellow City, of course.  
    Cyril is modeling his etchings on the contortions of Donnovan Joy, a nude model, painfully bent into shapes that stretch the possibilities of anatomy. Donnovan has a thick iron collar, connected by a chain to the floor; he can move about, but not leave. 
    Donnovan was a corporate agent for Hershey Chocolate, who want to put real kisses in their kisses. He's deeply deeply evil and painfully neoliberal. He's trying really hard to believe that the market wants him here for some reason. 
    If Donnovan falters, resists, or talks back, Cyril opens the basket, pulls out a viper (one of 40) and places it on him to keep him still. He's got no tolerance for distraction.
    The etchings sings the praises of the Violet and her Humbling of the Bishop-Whales (22). Cyril wishes to exchange the ball for the freedom of his lover Anymelis from the Violet’s court (6). She's a water spirit who wants to use the Sovereign Scent to return the ocean after Violet stole it and placed it in Fake Beach Real Water (13).

6: Violet's Court

the url for this one is so nutty i want to let u see it bc i am at a loss: https://gethelphomework.laravel.cloud/question/an-operating-system-uses-available-storage-space-on-a-startup-drive-fo-wd8ehalh

A stage in a grand opera house, golden pillars and angels and a indigo night sky above red velvet seats. On stage, mirrors cover the floor and surround a gigantic violet. She blooms from a throne with a seat of potting soil. Her petals vibrate rapidly when she speaks, and the flipbook motion transforms her into the most beautiful woman you've ever seen, with no choice in the matter. Worn around her stamen throat is a bottle of her Sovereign Scent; those who smell it on you are compelled to imitate your every move.
     Her purple majesty is surrounded by people posed like flowers. On a closer look some are quivering with exertion, others, the most graceful, are paralyzed, frozen in place
    Impress her with your imitation and her image will detach from her, rise, walk to you, and freeze you in place with a kiss that tickles terribly. Fail or decline (she will not ask) and she will have you removed and sent to the waiting room (7). If you’re ugly, even if your imitation is perfect, you will fail automatically. 

7: waiting room

borges a goated name when making incredible art is the vibe

    waiting room for a casting call.  the theater is blackbox and chic. cocktails served with the show. the stage has a double row of seats full of hideously ugly people, clutching magazines, glossy pages replete with their former beauty. 
Plywood backdrops show a view of the ocean and painted-on movie posters with blank silhouettes where the stars should be. A red door waits at the end of the room.

    the uglies eye you with crusty bugeyes for 1d6 minutes. Then they grab you, rip off your features and affix them to their own, slowly taking on your appearance through Frankenstein force.

buck teeth piercing thru lower lip
nostrils caked with a half inch of booger
mulholland drive levels of filth
face a dense armor of ingrown hair
skin visibly vibrating with the pressure of the puss contained beneath
swollen, cracked, bloody lips, dry skin endless sloughing off

    If anyone with all of a player’s features makes it through the door to where a suited mannequin sits behind a desk, they’ll get the part and immediately become famous. (if the door is circumvented by simply going around it on stage, nothing happens). 
    Anyone famous forces everyone they speak with to save vs treating them deferentially. The blank movie star silhouettes will be filled in with their figures, as will the mannequin, which will attempt to replace them as per the imitation rules. If there is more than one famous person, the mannequin hits a button under the desk that drops the corresponding imitations down from the ceiling. if they can bludgeon their imitations into submission, the famous are lead from here, through a set of double doors with 13 locks (keys contained in the 13 drawers of the desk) to the Kiss Factory.

8: crawlspace

try being less ugly 4 a change

    A dark, hideously dusty crawlspace. The trapdoor to it is under Cereal’s work station in 2. Pink fiberglass insulation bulges out of the walls and gets in your eyes and nose.  
    If the players helped Ceareal and he has started to fashion replicas of them, this crawlspace is packed full of malformed, half finished copies of the characters, grabbing them, slumping mouths slurring praises of their perfection. They want you to teach them to be better. They really really really want to be better.
    A locked door leads to the closet where Cerril hangs the finished replicas; the unfinished desperately want to go in there. 
    Another closet door leads to wyrm wound (9). It's unlocked and the unfinished aren't interested in that one. They say something ruined and ugly is in there. if they get to the finished replicas, each one will begin to...

worship them
become suicidal
try to eat them
try to fuck them

the crawlspace stretches on towards the Iconoclastic Wasp (10), getting lower and more cramped.

9: wyrm-wound

need u to tell me what all my bits r called

    in an unlocked closet off of the crawlspace (8), a nude woman sits slumped against the wall, bleeding out from a wound in her gut. she’s entirely tattooed in blue ink script, lines so close together that her paper-white skin can hardly be seen. 
    this is Klara Waldrep, friend of King Kazuch or something. she can't really remember and she doesn't really care about stuff like that. She needs to get to a hospital and she needs to call out of work. She is definitely dying. the script that covers her details her battle with a terrible dragon, which left her wounded and sure to die, if not for your brave sacrifice, which will let her go on and strike out anew. 
    once you have read these words she is now bound to you. she mimics your every action. the longer she does so, the more her ink fades from her skin and seeps onto yours. it blossoms from inside you, winding tighter and tighter towards your heart. you feel a stabbing pain in your gut, a tight tight twisting.  when the transfer is complete, your gut ruptures, unzips as hers heals over
    she now possesses all your knowledge and personality; she does not look like you, but acts and thinks as though she was. you possess all of hers: a checkout clerk at Walgreens, a history of parking lot fights (7 wins 2 loses), easily talked into community theater.

10: the iconoclastic wasp

they like it in there they really do

    a man-sized wasp nest blocks the crawlspace. There's a small opening on the side closest to you and the side opposite, large enough to worm your way in. Inside, an empty rocking chair made of the same gluey paste as the nest, and paintings of Cape Cod on the walls. 
    A little man in horn rimmed glasses dangles from the ceiling of the nest on strings. he's dressed in a black half-zip, pastel yellow chinos and boat shoes and has long sharp teeth and nails. he can't speak, but he'll try to bite the hands of anyone who looks Jewish. He devours prayers, odes, and praise, spoken or written. Anything he eats is forgotten forever, and its cultural impact is attributed to John Cheever. 
    For him to eat spoken words you must speak them directly into his mouth as though you were kissing him. His tongue is completely dry.
    He is potentially a deadly weapon against the wyrm, and afraid of the mimicry club (you'll just have to wait and see)    

11. Goldhead

what if u were the incorrupt jaw and tongue of saint anthony and we kissed

    the crawlspace would have ended but instead a hole has been hacked into the cheap wood of the wall and a cavern, barely high enough to stand in, has been carved out of the insulation. 7 nude, gilded, chanting cultists sing the praises of gold. their gilding is not enough to prevent the fiberglass rashes from the insulation. 

sweeter than butter...
path of lightning...
earth's marrow...
glitter bling king...
honeystone...
federal foundation...

    their eyes are pierced shut with little gold rings. their teeth are gold, and their arms, legs, spine and stomach are pierced with golden hoops. from each of those hoops run thin gold chains, spiderweb binding a naked, gagged and grunting sacrifice. the cultists aim to create the Goldhead by heating a bunch of gold in a crucible with propane torches and pouring it over the sacrifices head and then sawing the head off with their chains. They are all former aspirants to Violet's court who got cold feet and want something new to worship.
    two of the cultists hold the crucible with tongs while three more heat it with the torches, and the final two strain to manage the sacrifice. the cave swelters and drips itchy with the heat of the effort. 

    a few moments after the players have a chance to figure out what's going on, the figure bursts their chains, spills the gold, and then starts to try to get the blind cultists to believe that one of the players is the escaped sacrifice. 
    the sacrifice is the wheezing, lisping ventriloquist Simon Simmons. He's got two cauliflower ears and a mouth full of broken teeth and he was trying to go to the Waiting Room (7) to be a big star. 
    the cultists need a new sacrifice and they need more gold to melt down. if they get a sacrifice, they'll bind themselves to them and set out as a chain-ganged squad to collect more gold (about a football-sized mass is needed). They'll leave the theater if they have to. 
    if the players deliver a sacrifice and sufficient gold to them, they’ll entrust them with Goldhead. Anyone who holds the Goldhead can imbue any item with 1 USD worth of value by touching it. This value exists to anyone who has seen the Goldhead or an image of the Goldhead in the past 24 hours. Anyone who kisses the Goldhead will view and treat the holder as their stern but loving father.