Cadero 1: The Entrance Hall

Entrance to The Cadero

As per yesterday's post, this is my first #Dungeon23 entry.

001: Entrance to The Cadero

• Up a short flight of steps are two huge revolving doors; the left one is jammed and the right one is moving very slowly. There is a long queue of SHOPPERS waiting to get in. It takes 3d6 minutes to reach the front of the queue. 
• Above the revolving doors is a large TCT monogram. The same design is repeated on the glass of the doors and elsewhere inside the mall.
• Once inside, the huge vaulted glass-and-bakelite hall is around 30 feet wide, some 100 feet long, and very high. The sides are frosted glass and from behind them are projected moving silhouettes of shoppers striding up and down with their shopping bags. The results are disorientating, especially given the large number of actual SHOPPERS walking through the hall.
• Just inside the revolving doors are vents blasting warm scented air from above and below. The air smells of:

1	Barely detectable	Lemon
2	Rather pleasant	Rose
3	Smoky	Vetiver
4	Cloying	Patchouli
5	Sneeze-inducing	Tea tree
6	Slightly poisonous (d2 damage)	Sewage

• Around a third of the way into the hall, subtly cut into the walls on either side, are two frosted glass doors, 10 feet square. Each is locked, and has a numeric keypad. The northern one opens using the code 1234. The southern one opens with the code 4223. Neatly painted on the southern door is “CODE: 4223”. When unlocked, the doors can swing both ways.
• About halfway along the entrance hall, a few inches from the outer walls, are a pair of short glass barriers, six feet high, each crackling with internal electricity. These are intended to catch shoplifters: when any stolen goods pass between the barriers, an electric force-field is thrown up across the hallway, preventing exit. They are currently:

1-2	Working as intended
2-3	Not working at all
5-6	Faulty, and cause d3 damage to anyone passing nearby

Exits: 

← Revolving door to the street

→ Arch into the mall itself

↑  Looked glass door to northern service corridor

↓  Locked glass door to southern service corridor

SHOPPER
STR 10, DEX 10, WIL 10, 2HP, d4 handbag attack
Encountered throughout the mall. Use the table here to determine why they are here. You can conjure each shopper from your own imagination, or use the following table:

1	Irritated	Upstanding citizen
2	Confused	Disaffected teen
3	Determined	Sneaky type
4	Weary	Socialite
5	Head-in-the-clouds	Old person
6	Angry	Mockery

Some thoughts

As this is my first location for #Dungeon23, there was a bit of a learning curve. Firstly, I had to decide on how to format the entry. I took some tips from noisms' The Correct Way to Write Dungeon Room Descriptions, but mostly I went with something similar to that used in Chris McDowall's Iron Coral. Features of the location appear as bullet points, with bold used for the bits most immediately obvious, and all potential encounters IN UPPERCASE. Next, exits are listed in the format below, and finally encounter details are fleshed out.
↑ North
↓ South
← East
→ West
⇈ Up
⇊ Down

Mapping was also painful. As the 3D aspect of this location is quite important, rather than going with a straight floorplan I drew an isometric image similar to the one at the top of this post. It was rubbish. So I wasted ages trying out various dungeon-drawing software (all rubbish) and then wasted even more time trying out various architectural software (all either rubbish or expensive). I'm not sure what the maps will look like going forward, I may have to get in touch with my old employer Autodesk and see if I can use their Revit software. Total overkill, but kinda fun, and I could make some lovely 3D models of the entire mall once the year's over.