Coldness slinks around your body, clasping your bones. The scent of ozone is in the air, and the trace notes of discordant piping audible. They are warnings. And promises. Corners of reality peel back as you enter the Temple of the Stars. What peers from beyond?
Hello and welcome! This is the fourth instalment in a series using MGS tracks as inspiration for an encounter generator. These [almost instant] encounter generators are for gamemasters (GMs) in a hurry; alternatively, it might also work to inspire original ideas from.
This approach gets much of its influence from Ben Milton’s Knave 2e and Kevin Crawford’s Without Number books. These are all great sources for both worldbuilding and adventure ideas!
How It Works
Grab a d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and a d4. Roll everything at once, check the tables below, and connect the results where it makes sense. The article flows from atmosphere (d4 environment, d6 aspects) to scene details (d10 features, d20 creatures); narrative hooks (d8 complications, d12 secrets) come last.
Of course, GMs are welcome to only use the tables they need, whatever order work best. For more complex encounters, roll or pick multiple times and combine. There’s no need to link every element together. Sometimes results work best as separate stories.
This article’s track features Temple of the Stars. It’s available on the MGS store here. Alternatively, it comes as part of the 50 track album RPG Ambiences Vol. 7 which you can find here.
Temple of the Stars Roll Tables
d4 – The Environment
1. Prismatic refraction – light splits into colours beyond the normal spectrum. Shadows defy light sources. Stare too long and PCs start tasting sounds and hearing textures.
2. Gravity wells – pockets of gravity shift in direction or intensity. Objects orbit invisible points in mid-air. Bodies feel heavy then weightless in rhythmic pulses. The temple breathes and pulls.
3. Pre-emptive echoes – sounds arrive before they’re made. Footsteps predict movement by seconds. Time’s sequence has become only a suggestion.
4. Geometric nausea – angles hurt; looking directly at architecture causes dizziness. Rooms are smaller or larger than they first look. The PCs’ eyes weren’t meant for these shapes.
d6 – Temple of the Stars Aspects
1. Möbius corridors/stairs– these loop or twist back on themselves. Exits and entrances are the same door, just different times.
2. Living frescoes – murals that shift in real-time. They show the past, present, and the future; the figures sometimes turn to look at the PCs.
3. Breathing walls – the temple expands and contracts, as if breathing. Doorways become vices.
4. Doorway multiplicity – one doorway leads to many rooms. Time, fears, and desires change the destination. What is the temple trying to show?
5. Stellar alignment – sections of the temple exist in multiple places at once. A room can be in a cave or beneath the ocean, depending on the stars’ positions. Sometimes it’s not on Earth at all.
6. Memory architecture – changes to match occupants’ memories. Rooms from childhood and dead loved ones’ homes appear. It’s practising how to become familiar.
d10 – Temple of the Stars Features
1. Orrery Chamber – mechanical model of an impossible solar system. Planets orbit in figures-of-eight.
Touching locations transfers consciousness. PCs can visit them.
2. Garden of Stone Flowers – flowers sing when starlight touches them. Soil looks like night sky. Some flowers have faces. The garden remembers everyone that passes. The PCs’ flowers will grow here, too.
3. Cartography Dome – the ceiling is mapped with constellations that don’t match. The floor shows the geography of the world. Settlements grow and disappear as time shifts.
4. Hall of Ascending Thrones – onyx seats carved for unnatural statues. Too many joints, total lack of symmetry, and contorted poses. Two thrones are empty. Sitting in them shows what drove the previous occupants mad.
5. Aperture – circular opening in the ceiling opening to pure void. Stars are always visible. Voices call from the beyond. Sometimes it’s a PC’s answering back.
6. Wet Page Library – books saturated with tears; their texts swim, arranging according to the reader. Their knowledge spreads like an infection. Things cannot be unlearned.
7. Echo Chamber – perfect acoustics capture every sound. Whispers from centuries ago still audible. Dead languages chant prayers. Others murmur commands.
8. Chrysalis Corridor – translucent pillars with figures inside, halfway through transformation. Still alive, still changing, turning into something half-mortal, half-astronomical.
9. Reflecting Pool – a liquid that isn’t water. Gazing shows alternate selves that took different choices. They have been waiting, and they want out.
10. Observatory of the Blind Watchers – telescope aimed at the void between the stars. The watchers removed their own eyes to see better. They still document their observations, terrifying and sublime.
d20 – The Creature(s)
1. Calibrator – adjusting invisible instruments. Decyphering culture. Precise.
2. Pilgrim – phasing in and out of reality. Too much enlightenment. Well-meaning, but fractured.
3. Choir – humming in harmony. The song sustains their lives. Desire more voices. Addicted.
4. Witness Made Flesh– documenting the temple’s desires. Imagined into existence. Innocent, but learning.
5. Engineer – awakening the temple. Tall and grey-skinned. Patient, but relentless.
6. Convert – seeking similar. Body crystalline, emotions are colours. Their diseases have gone. Serene.
7. Servitor – feeding the temple names and memories. Silent, faceless, but knows gestures. Transactional.
8. Astronomer – filling knowledge-gaps in space-time. Eyes bleeding starlight. Tragic.
9. Cartographer – mapping cosmos on their skin. Needs more surface area. Obsessed.
10. Stillborn God – debating between death and apotheosis.Frozen at the threshold. Gravity increases around them. Conflicted.
11. Time Refugee – trying to prevent temple’s collapse. Story keeps changing. Desperate to tell some truth. Contradictory.
12. Echo – searching for a lost idea. Ghostly presence of temple’s architect. Cheerfully unaware.
13. Interpreter – wanting closure. Speaks for the temple, allegedly. Skin covered in moving, alien script. Ambiguous.
14. Void Fisher – casting a rod into the void. Catches things: impossible fish, solid concepts, dead star fragments. Chatty.
15. Teacher – searching for students. Trapped in a crystalline pillar. Telepathic. Regrets end of their civilisation. Melodramatic.
16. Swarm – trying to repair the temple. Hundreds of tiny constructs working in harmony. Uncanny.
17. Replacement – studying the party. Identical to one PC. The temple is making duplicates. Excited like a fan meeting their idol.
18. Monk – levitating in meditation. Seeks to overthrow the tyranny of gravity. Idealistic.
19. Desired – smiling. Appears as a dead NPC known to the party. Almost perfect mimicry. Doesn’t understand accuracy is horrifying. Kind.
20. Priest – preaching emptiness is holy. Their congregation is removing identity, memory, self, reaching for the void. Charismatic.
d8 – Complications for Temple of the Stars
1. Crystalline conversion. Flesh turning to gemstone. Hands becoming translucent. Beautiful, pure, inviting.
2. Temporal fragments. Aging accelerates or reverses. Some events loop. Others refuse to ever play out.
3. Linguistic disease. It infects the mind, starting with alien words and concept, feeding on the common language. The temple wants to talk.
4. Astronomical awareness. Overwhelmed by a wave of cosmic knowledge. Mind like a flare, something turns and sees.
5. Pilgrimage. Feel the desire to find the centre of the temple. Feels like their name is being called. Feels like coming home.
6. Reflective invasion. Reflections show other things, then other people. They start trying to escape; then they succeed.
7. Memory wells. Pockets of space start appearing. Entering them imprints the final seconds before death of previous visitors.
8. Stellar song. Harmonic piping pulls the gaze skywards. Minds can rise above body, atmosphere, void. Astral perspective. Most return. Some don’t. Others cannot find their way.
d12 – The Secrets
1. In the hand of the fallen, a star-studded compass. Points to the nearest cosmic intelligence. It’s closing.
2. On a pedestal, a singing bowl of dark matter. Touch produces sounds that unravel physics. Light bends; thoughts become briefly telepathic.
3. Mounted on the wall, a mask of former faces. A stone mask, former owners make telepathic suggestions; some are helpful; most are not; all are insistent.
4. In a discarded pouch, a lens of spectra. Reveals colours that convey emotion, age, corruption. Normal colours become meaningless; the world greys.
5. In a tiny pit in the floor, meteorite prayer beads. Each bead grants visions, one more disturbing than the last.
6. Resting against a statue, a crystallised scream. Sound of terror frozen in gemstone form. Shattering releases it. It wants freedom and will be grateful.
7. In a scroll case, a rolled up map of when, not where. Shows duration of things until their death. PCs can see their own deaths; the map finds this amusing.
8. Pinned to a wall, void-silk robes. Fabric woven from darkness; perfect insulation. The wearer becomes hard to perceive. Extended use slowly erases them from reality.
9. On a silver platter, a harmonic tuning fork. Vibrates at the frequency of creation.
10. On a purple velvet cushion, an orb of preserved starlight. Light from a dead star. Releasing it reveals illusions, lies become visible; it also shows things watching from the corners of reality.
11. Sitting on an empty throne, a Crown of Stars. A circlet granting navigation to any place. Imprints cosmic perspective. The wearer’s identity becomes fluid; eventually, entirely optional.
12. On a bookshelf, a binding of sympathetic pages. A book that copies the text from anything near it. Contains truths and forbidden knowledge that some minds won’t be ready for.
Example Encounter for Temple of the Stars
Roll Results:
d4: 3 – Pre-emptive echoes
d6: 4 – Doorway multiplicity
d10: 2 – Garden of Stone Flowers
d20: 13 – Interpreter
d8: 7 – Memory wells
d12: 10 – Orb of preserved starlight
My Idea for the Encounter:
Coldness slinks around your body, clasping your bones. The scent of ozone is in the air, and the trace notes of discordant piping audible. Warnings. And promises. Corners of reality peel back as you enter the temple. What peers from beyond?
The figure sits cross-legged staring at the stone flowers in front of them. The flowers are all around, swaying in a breeze only the party’s warlock can feel. The figure looks at their forearm, script forming on the skin before everyone’s eyes.
The figure grimaces before smiling, “We have a problem that the temple would like you to solve. I cannot be everywhere at once and,” they indicate the only other door in the room, “that is a complication I cannot handle alone. If we solve the problem, I can offer something that will strip away any lie before you.”
As they rise you notice the flower they were staring at. Its features are a mirror of your own.
The door opens to three locations, activated by someone feeling fear, hope, and calmness, respectively. Each of these are puzzle/combat rooms that need solving simultaneously to add a fourth destination to the door: the very centre of the temple.
Tick Tock
Time is against the party. Memory wells will appear around the dungeon, growing in size every round. The wells will steal precious time from a character, and risk driving them insane. The more final moments they witness, the harder holding onto sanity will be.
If the party help the figure—the Interpreter—they will give the orb of preserved starlight in return; they will warn the party they may not like what they see, if they choose to use it.
Tips for Using These Tables
I wrote some tips on using roll tables here. However, some important things to highlight:
– Don’t automatically discard awkward results. Try combining before re-rolling. Sometimes unusual combinations make the best stories because of the surprising links.
– Make the tables your own. Change details; add to them; mix them up. GMs will know what will work best for their own group!
Lastly, a quick note that there are two more variants of Temple of the Stars; one that is just synths, and one without gear noises. These aren’t available on an album; they are a benefit for MGS’s Patreon subscribers, Opus users, or anyone that buys them directly from the online shop.
And for anyone that’s curious and missed the previous encounter generators, here is a list with links (most recent top):
Ship in Blizzard
Snowing
Forest River
Have a lovely day!
