Dungeon Dressing: Ceilings
A ceiling affects a room’s mood and style. A ceiling’s style can vary between simple and plain to expansive and elaborate with ornate painted frescos (or somewhere in between).
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A ceiling affects a room’s mood and style. A ceiling’s style can vary between simple and plain to expansive and elaborate with ornate painted frescos (or somewhere in between).
Major Features
The domed and multi‐faceted ceiling is seemingly comprised of some kind of hard, slightly ribbed organic substance.
An expansive and vivid fresco featuring several examples of powerful figures is expertly painted onto the plaster ceiling.
The bleached white bones of a large creature support the curved stone ceiling.
The ceiling is conical with a tiny aperture allowing a beam of light to be focused onto a low stone dais in the centre of the room.
The smooth, unadorned ceiling has a domed aperture in the centre, from which hangs a large, ornate iron pentagram‐shaped candelabrum.
With a black background punctuated with shimmering crystals, the ceiling has been decorated to mirror a constellation of stars.
The wooden ceiling—the remains of a ship’s hull—comprises tarred boards and tightly ribbed timber trusses and rafters.
Painted knotwork motifs frame an intricate design of concentric fleur‐de‐lis medallions on the ceiling.
The ceiling is quartered with intricate plastered mouldings; each section bears a lavish fresco in tribute to one of the four seasons.
A guilt and enamelled relief of a lion rampant with two heads dominate the white plastered ceiling.
Intricate and highly detailed, the ceiling and walls are painted with a fresco portraying a multitude of angels locked in combat with a horde of Hell’s denizens.
Made from thousands of tiny ivory panels carved with runes and sigils, the ceiling is embellished with a large mosaic depicting a bird rising from flames.
The panels in the coffered ceiling are shield‐shaped and brightly painted with heraldic and religious sigils.
A mixture of exquisite sculpture and bas-relief covers the ceiling in a beautiful and artistic map of the surrounding kingdoms.
The ceiling is in the shape of an inverted dome and is abstractly painted to resemble the world with its continents, seas and kingdoms.
A helix of tightly wound staircases mirrors one another as they spiral towards the centre of the room’s cone-shaped ceiling.
The highly polished ceiling mirrors the area below.
A large stone medallion of an eight‐pointed star embellishes the groin‐vaulted ceiling.
The ceiling is not solid but is instead an ironwork grille made from many diagonal bars.
Water cascades from a diamond‐shaped aperture in the ceiling, creating a waterfall which empties into a sinkhole piercing the floor.
Minor Features & Dressing
Dark green moss and lichen cover the moist, pockmarked stone ceiling.
A bucking and swaying sack hangs from the ceiling. Inside is an irritated and angry half-starved cat.
A rope hangs from the ceiling above a chasm which has swallowed a large section of the floor.
The skeletons of unlucky individuals are impaled on spikes protruding from the ceiling.
The boards which make up the ceiling have become swollen, leaving several unsightly bulges.
The impaled body of a humanoid lies on the floor, grasping a splintered stalactite which has broken off from the ceiling.
Thick roots have grown through the ceiling forcing several blocks of stone to fall to the floor.
A russet-coloured mould is growing in thick clumps across the ceiling and walls.
Bloodied and lifeless, a body lies next to scrawled words written in blood “Look above…we are all lost.”
A lit lantern sits on the floor. A trail of gore and ichor splatters the floor, one wall and the ceiling.
A beautiful dream catcher hangs from the ceiling.
An inexpertly hidden grey net hangs from the ceiling.
Dark green algae cover the trusses of the ceiling as if the chamber had been submerged in water.
A dark black tar-like substance drips from the ceiling. It sizzles when it hits the floor.
Deep gouging claw marks are visible in the ceiling.
An owl hoots and tilts his head to watch the party from its perch among the rafters.
A huge humanoid-shaped dent has been made in the metal ceiling.
Two chains attached to iron rings in the ceiling swing gently. Broken manacles lie on the floor.
Several large logs brace the sagging ceiling.
A thick caustic smell fills the chamber as white vapours emerge from the chamber’s ceiling and pillars.
Credit
This is a short system-neutral extract from GM’s Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing. The book is available in 5e, System Neutral and Pathfinder 1 editions. The OSR edition will be available in early 2023.
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