Believe it or not, I haven't just been fucking around for a month. I started this shit the first week of January. Here's what I've got so far.
The Overworld
The town of Skogsby lies at the edge of civilization, heaped on the last spit of dry land before it gives way to swamp and bayou. Spires of weathered Titan Bone tower over the landscape. Foul Necromancers hide within their lairs, singing praises to their dark gods. And an ancient ziggurat, half devoured by the fetid waters around it, tempts delvers into the depths below.
This'll all fit into a single 6-mile hex (broken up into 1 mile sections, for a 6-by-6 area). I want SKELGAMOG to be easy to just plonk down anywhere in your map. Plus it gives more focus to the dungeon rather than overland travel. Some megadungeons like Gunderholfen and Rappan Athuk have these HUGE fucking wildernesses over them, and I just think that's too much. Not trying to knock them or anything, but goddamn. Chill out.
The Mainline Dungeon
I've got 20 levels mostly planned out for the "main" dungeon. Right now they only exist as notes. I'm working on mapping them, with the Ziggurat nearly done. I tell you what though, I'm definitely not making every area this big. Holy shit.
Anyway, area names and actual stuff used is bound to change. Also, maybe spoilers for the finished thing, if you care about that sort of thing.
Level 1: The Sunken Ziggurat: Infested with the degenerate descendants of the ancient serpent-men empire, crawling with giant bugs and savage wildlife, and packed full of traps, hazards, and danger. Flooded, overgrown, and the lowest level is split by a great chasm.
Level 2: Caves of the Eel-People: Series of flooded caverns where two tribes, the titular Eel-People and the Hagfish-Men, war for territory. Both are kidnapping folks for their own ends (Eels eat them in a cannibal blood orgy, Hagfish turn them into zombies for their young to pilot around).
Level 3: Fungal Grove: Because you gotta have a mushroom forest in your megadungeon somewhere. I'm pretty sure it's the law. There's a myconid village down here, cordyceps-infected giant bugs, a mi-go tower, and a doomed expedition that was trying to get exotic mushrooms to eat.
Level 4: The Mirrored Halls: Some bygone civilization trapped an alien god-thing in an obsidian mirror and a maze of crystals. Now its mirror realm is starting to leak through into reality. Oops.
Level 5: Mind Flayer Outpost: Illithids are fucking cool, but they're copyrighted. That gives me an excuse to make my own squiddly betentacled brain-devouring bastards. Anyway, this zone's an observation/raiding outpost, and the Mind Flayers are doing all sorts of experiments and horrible shit.
Level 6: The Shifting Labyrinth: This is where I get the inevitable dick-DM urge out of my system. The Labyrinth is meant to be just and absolute bitch to get through. The whole place is a maze, kobolds follow the party around and erase their markings, chambers spin around, etc.
Level 7: Vault Sealed by Time: Ancient Egyptian vibe. The gimmick is once the group opens this level up to go inside, they've only got a few hours before the vault closes again and traps them inside.
Level 8: The Great Machine: Constantly built, expanded, and maintained by a former cult-turned-weird-undead. It's possible to shut the thing off, which makes the zone go from intense heat and noise to suffocating silence and cold.
Level 9: The Pits of Pain: A lich is being guided by literal nightmare monsters to imprison and torture people in order to awaken some primordial thing to destroy the world. Standard supervillain stuff.
Level 10: Caves of Corruption: The ooze level! It's a nauseating rainbow of every fluid, slime, and gross gunk imaginable. Yes, you're gonna have to wade waist-deep in it. Jubilex's similar-but-legally-distinct cousin is down here, just chillin'.
Level 11: The Worm God's Throne: One of the absolute raddest books from 3.5 D&D was Elder Evils, and you bet your ass I'm gonna steal shit from it. Kyuss is imprisoned, his spirit split from his body by the legendary Sword of Sundering. A monastic order was supposed to watch over this prison of all time. So of course something went wrong, and now some dipshit is trying to set the Worm God loose.
Level 12: The Deep Caverns: The Underdark before the actual Underdark. A deeper darkness lingers in these depths (which means darkvision and natural light just stop working), and foul, forgotten monsters lurk in the cramped tunnels. Big Veins of the Earth energy.
Level 13: The Mythril Mines: Hey, guess what! The dwarves dug too deep! Now there's a balrog running around, along with goblins and other nasties. It's Moria, and I don't give a shit.
Level 14: The Runic Prison: Ancient demon jail, and probably where the balrog from from 13 came from.
Level 15: The Forgotten Fortress: A subterranean castle taken over by an army of cycloptoids. I'm picturing a high-level party laying siege to the place with their own minions.
Level 16: Vampire Temple: Just a whole bunch of vampires and their creations worshipping the Holy Blood. Kinda Castlevania, kinda Darkest Dungeon's Crimson Court, and kinda Flesheater Courts from Warhammer.
Level 17: City of Dreaming: A dead-but-dreaming leviathan of old whose dreams have been populated. I'm pretty sure I got this from Throne of Salt, and it's a damn good idea so I'm putting it in.
Level 18: The Kraken's Domain: Big squid! Skeletal pirates! An Apparatus of Kwalish! Seriously, aquatic shit doesn't get nearly enough love in my opinion.
Level 19: The Lost Tombs: I got Tome of Beasts a while back, and despite not playing 5e anymore it's become one of my favorite books in my collection. Anyway, there's some stuff about a ghoul society in there that I'm stealing, as well as a liberal sprinkling of 3.5's Libris Mortis.
Level 20: Halls of Twisted Iron: Titan Bone buried deep beneath the earth, warped by unfathomable forces into impossible flowing shapes
What's Next?
I've got about 10 other overworld locations to plan out (which probably won't be nearly as extensive as the main route). After that I've gotta map, key, and stock everything. Then it's on to mapping out the Underdark and everything in it. And after that, I've gotta do all of that AGAIN for the underworld/hell/bottom of the world
When I said that this was the deepest dungeon that ever was, I wasn't fucking around.
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