The Tower of Visions #1 - The Room of the Eyeless Ogre

A long time ago I promised a friend I would write a dungeon crawl for him based on the themes of mirrors, visions, age and self-image... (Sorry Luciano, it has been 2 years already?)

I’m terrible with promises as you can see. I’m not sure if this is still useful but I’m gonna try to post this dungeon crawl in small encounters. I’m calling it the Tower of Visions so far. Although I intended this to be used with DCC RPG I’ll try to be as generic as possible with rules terms (hopefully you can adapt it to your favorite d20 Fantasy). After posting a few of them I’ll try to organize the entire thing and any feedback until there would be appreciated. The idea is that this is an adventure for PCs of levels 2-3.

Here is one of the encounters: The Room of the Eyeless Ogre.

The door opens to magical darkness (not even darkvision works) in what seems to be a large circular room of stone, the ceiling the height of two men. After all the party gets in (and only after that), the door disappears and everything is covered by the hungry darkness. A mere moment later a sphere of light, slightly bigger than a human head, starts shining in the middle of the room atop a stone pedestal, half the height of a man (there was nothing there when the party got in). The walls of the room, the floor and the top are now covered in crystal clear mirror-like surfaces.

There are two things of importance in the now bright room. The first is a door made of what appears to be ice. The second is an apish creature made of stone, eyeless, squatting between the party and the door. It takes a moment to realize that both the door and its guardian are actually just reflexes in the mirror wall. There is nothing in the room itself. The guardians promptly stare at the party and charge.

That is the basic premise of the room. A few things to consider:

• Give the monster the stats of an Ogre, but double the damage, give it the AC of a stone golem and maximize its hit points. The idea is to make the monster scary and make the party flee. Give it two attacks per round or, better, a Grapple/Slam sequence. The creature usually grapples a character then throws her at another character. If damaged it react with a slam against the poor victim.
• The monster is not invisible. It is just not there. It “exists” solely in the magical mirror wall. However it can affect the party’s reflections. If it hits a character’s reflection, it can hurt him/her. Defending is hard because there is nothing there in the real room and the character must react based on their reflections (give the monster Advantage to attack rolls). 
• Attacking the wall to hit the creature is a terrible idea: each hit against the wall (AC 10) cracks it and a lot of crystals shards explode from it, dealing automatic 1d6 damage to all characters in a 5 feet range (no save, although if someone is really careful and is maybe using a shield give them a Refl/Dex/Luck/whatever chance to suffer half damage… maybe a better idea is using a reach weapon). Remember, hitting the wall is not enough, to “hurt” the creature you must hit its reflection and overcome its AC (i.e. a stone golem’s AC).
• At any time, any character can cover the source of light in the middle of the room. This covers the place in darkness, effectively “stops” the guardians, giving the characters a chance to rest, talk and plan. Unfortunately, it also “resets” the guardian’s hit points. The encounter literally starts again.
• There is (the reflection of) an ice-like door behind the monster. It can be opened by the character’s reflection. This is really weird, because the reflections can affect the door but the real characters don’t feel a thing. In game terms, to open the door the party must rol 3 successful Dexterity/Agility or Intelligence checks (standard difficulty). Two characters can cooperate to get it faster. Yes, the guardian will try to stop them. After the door is opened, any character can “cross it” if they close their eyes and jump through in the mirror wall.
• Breaking the mirror wall where the door is could be another option. Give that section of the wall a total of 20 hit points and let the party smash hit (remember that each hit deals 1d6 damage to all characters in a 5 feet burst).
• One crazy idea to defeat the eyeless ogre (if the Judge want of course) is if the party is carrying any small mirror with them. If they catch the ogre's reflection in the mirror (an Agility/Dex check?) and them smash that item, let them the ogre fall in the ground in pain for 1 full round, filled with cracks, and remove  1/2 or 1/4 of its total hit points.
• [OPTIONAL] There is some loot in the ground. Place a jewel or gem. Also one weapon of your choice. The catch? They’re just reflections. To get the items the character must succeed at a Agility/Dexterity check (maybe with Disadvantage). Using the weapon in the room always has Disadvantage (remember, there is nothing in the character’s real hands). If you’re feeling lucky maybe the weapon is magical and can hurt the eyeless ogre. If the party manages to leave the room they can take the loot with them. What does the weapon do? Well, maybe it is a +1 magical weapon that is in fact invisible and can only be seen in reflections (out of the room, with a little bit of training, the character can wield the weapon without Disadvantage).
• [OPTIONAL] Remember the source of light? It is a (very heavy) stone orb that shines. It can be lifted with a hard Strength check and carried out (the PC is probably with half Speed and without his Dex bonus to AC due to the weight). If carried outside the orb becomes a crystal ball (use your favorite crystal ball, if in doubt, just let a wizardly PC use it once per day to see, but not hear, someplace that he was before… with all the normal divination limitations of your campaign).