The Blades of Gixa: A #dungeon23 Megadungeon by Quadra
Created by Paradiso
Delve deep into the weird underworld to find the fabled Blades of Gixa, legendary tools of the goddess of life and death!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Tables and Treasures and Mushrooms and More
about 1 month ago
– Thu, Jun 25, 2026 at 03:06:10 PM
Alright I was holding off on posting an update until I had more stuff that looks pretty and shows well, but I've been doing a lot of work in different places that are all still partially complete and, well, there's a lot of it and the time has come to let you all know what I've been up to.
So instead of something fancy like a new video, we're doing a classic blog post! Next one will have a video :) Here's the Gixa stuff I've been working on this past month:
Spreads: I've been working on more level spreads, especially the next one, the Jade Kingdom. None are quite ready for a video just yet, but that's coming!
Playtesting: I've been playtesting the megadungeon in earnest with a few groups using Old School Essentials as a kind of "neutral" OSR system. Since OSR games are generally based on B/X D&D, and since OSE is mostly just a restatement of B/X, it seemed like the natural choice for playtesting in a fairly "system-neutral" kinda way. I have, of course, been making rules tweaks, as is my wont.
New Materials: Playtesting has been really helpful for working out what information needs to be where, what parts of the levels I've completed are undercooked, etc. And it's really forced me to push hard on generating background material, especially tables, to use with the dungeon. (Thanks, players!!) To help me run my games, I've made:
2 d20 Fungus Tables for all the fungi PCs can forage in the dungeon.
Gems: quality (3), material (3 x 8), magic effects (20)
Ingots: material (6), magic effects (3)
Jewelry: type (12), material (6x2), magic effects (20)
Scrolls & potions: distribution (3), scroll rules, potion types (d6x6)
Unique magic items (44 entries so far, WIP)
Weapons: type (12), material (6), magic rules for wands & staves, magic effects for other weapons (20)
Faction bios for surface and 1st-level factions
Official Proclamations for players to find posted in Baintoch:
The "Baths Plunder" proclamation, outlining the House of Bain's official policy regarding the territory underneath the town. (Included at the end of this post!)
The "Highfleet Embassy" proclamation, declaring the establishment of an embassy for the rogue Highfleet under protection of the shadowy Admiralty Evidence Bureau.
Character Generation Rules for making new characters in the world of Gixa.
XP Recommendations for giving players additional ways to advance if solely focusing on all those treasures isn't your thing.
Examples
For the big tables, I'm working on these in Obsidian and playtesting before I write them out by hand...
Some things that magical floor coverings (rugs, carpets, mats, furs, etc.) can do!
Just a few of the 130 esoteric books that players can find!
The "Baths Plunder" Proclamation
A PROCLAMATION.
By Lady Ilsten Bain, of the House of Bain, Governess of the Grand Admiralty Isle of Montiri, & Mayoress of the Towne of Baintoch,
For the Rejuvenation of the Governorship And Prosperity of Its People.
WHEREAS the Baths of St. Orvus, once the Pride of Baintoch and Source of Healing and Prosperity for its People, have long lain fallow beneath the Towne, its resident Koboldes Negligent in their Ancestral Promise to Maintain them;
and whereas numerous Smugglers and Bandits now take up Residence in said Baths and invite Lawlessness, Violence, and Criminal Enterprise therein;
and whereas Wealth, Gifts, and other Artefacts gathered across Centuries of Operation of said Baths, rightfully the Property of the House of Bain, remain Interred beneath the Ground,
THEREFORE does the Lady Bain see fit to to issue this Proclamation, calling for Persons of Enterprising and Adventurous Spirit, to Enter the Baths, to Remove Dangerous and Undesirable Elements in order to Make said Baths Safe for Use once again, and to Retrieve the Lost Wealth and Treasures rightly belonging to Lady Bain, returning them to the Towne of Baintoch. As Reward, the Most Generous Lady Bain offers such Persons fully one-half of all Wealth and Treasures so recovered, and Additional Recompense for Evidence of Dangers Corrected.
THEREFORE Towne Guardsmen of Baintoch shall be posted to Each Merchant and Money-Changer on the Isle, in order to Correctly and Equitably Ascertain and Determine the Apportionment of said Wealth upon sale. Furthermore, persons wishing to Present Evidence of Dangers Corrected are instructed to do so at the Hall of Justice. Guardsmen also shall be posted to the Docks in the Hamlet of Harboko in order to Ensure that any such Wealth being Removed from the Isle is Properly Accounted for and so Apportioned. Any Persons purchasing such Recovered Wealth are Required to Set Aside the Portion reserved for the House of Bain, maintaining a Ledger and making Regular Reports and Payments to the House of Coin in Baintoch.
THUS shall the Prosperity of the Governorship of Montiri and its People be Assured henceforth, through Bounties on Criminal Elements and Apportionment of Treasure Recovered.
SO IT IS PROCLAIMED, on this 1st of Arven of our Year of Sorrows 3623, By the Governess Lady Ilsten Bain.
Thank you
Thanks so much for your patience & support as this huge project comes together! I knew it'd be complex and time consuming, but it's been really eye-opening figuring out how much work needs to go into making something this big playable.
🖤🖤🖤 Quadra
🐐 The dualistic ecclesiastical goat-folk urbancrawl setting of your dreams, probably
2 months ago
– Thu, May 21, 2026 at 12:10:11 PM
For this seventh video update to The Blades of Gixa, we venture into the fourth level of the megadungeon, the hallowed Halls of Ibexa, the goat-folk metropolis and see of the Kabmut Pontiff:
So what happened when I was making this level IIRC is I drew that first day (the goat statue in the thumbnail with the reflection of a sheep) more or less on a whim, and then basically extrapolated a whole belief system from that drawing, connecting it to stuff I was reading at the time (about Cathars!) That belief system informed the rest of the level, and led to an entire goat-folk city with strict social stratification headed by an all-powerful ecclesiarch: Ibexa!
Which I think was very in line with the ethos of #dungeon23: the only way to complete that challenge was to just get stuff down on paper consistently and keep going no matter what. We really couldn't worry too much about making sure everything fit together perfectly.
The whole point of this, as I understood it, was to break out of the trap of thinking you need to start with a fully-formed Idea before you can make something. I think it's very easy, especially for young artists & people who don't do much creative work, to believe that making art starts with having a brilliant idea, and the rest is just having the skill to render it. That the goal of the artist is to render their initial idea as accurately as possible, that the whole point is to turn Idea into Product. (There's a whole digression I could make here about how deeply "AI" creation tools and their boosters are enmeshed in this product-brained idea...)
Ultimately so much of making things is discovering what you're making in the process of making it. This project, for example, never would have looked like this or contained so many weird & disparate things had I planned it out in advance. In a weird way, The Blades of Gixa is my diary of 2023, and now that I'm circling back through it, fleshing it out and refining it, I'm getting to reconnect to ideas I had back then, find links between them that I hadn't seen before, and weave them all into a more interesting tapestry for you all to ultimately explore and connect to.
One thing I love about tabletop RPGs is that the process of playing them is in itself creative & collaborative, usually done without any final "product" in mind. Maybe it can be a bit of an antidote to product-brain.
🐸 Level 3 of the Megadungeon
4 months ago
– Thu, Apr 16, 2026 at 11:56:37 AM
The Blades of Gixa is a wet dungeon.
It's a theme I started to notice around the time I was first drawing the third level,the Elvish-Frog Grottoes (& the Luminous Undersea). The first level, the Ancient Baths, has water running through it of course, but I think it was really the Grottoes that cemented water & wetness as major themes I would carry not just throughout the dungeon, but also into the overworld above.
This is, in its own way, a Dying Earth-style setting, a diluvian world drowning under endless rain and rising tides. But even as the water poses a dire threat, it remains essential to all life, even deep underground.
The idea of an underground sea excited me, but I didn't want it to just be pitch-black and terrifying — this is only level 3 of 12, after all, and there's plenty of space to ramp up the tension & horror. So, reminded of camping on PNW beaches & dancing in glowing waves at night, I infused this undersea with bioluminescent plankton, giving much of the level an ethereal blue-green glow. There are still threats here, of course, dangerous creatures and warring factions, but after making the 2nd level (a claustrophobic crypt filled with undead), a more beautiful & open setting seemed called for.
Here's a video all about it, on YouTube and ad-free on Paradiso (available for free members, must be signed in):
🪦 Level 2 of the Megadungeon
5 months ago
– Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 02:19:13 PM
New video update! Here I'm showcasing the second level of the megadungeon, which has lots of weird little guys (mana leeches and their leech-witch caretaker, an undead kobold pigment-alchemist, a giant frog aesthete, an insane chimeric "healer" and his sinister flesh-eating tree, a labyrinth of skulls with a skeletal minotaur, some crypts and puzzles, flooded rooms, a chapel...there's a lot going on in this level):
And I'm happy to report that the next few spreads are also underway — the next Gixa update will be about level 3, the Elvish-Frog Grottoes, featuring a bioluminescent underground sea, a society of giant frogs, and lots of crazed cave elves. After that, it's the Halls of Ibexa, the goatfolk city ruled by the Kabmut Ecclesiarchy...
A new megadungeoneer!
Also, I was excited to come across this video by Nina Nomori — it's lovely to see somebody else doing a daily dungeon in the calendar style! She's doing an amazing job of it too. Check it out and give her a follow:
🛁 Level 1 of the Megadungeon
7 months ago
– Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 10:16:41 AM
Hi everyone, and happy new year! Here's another video update for you:
This delves into the first level of the megadungeon proper, the Ancient Baths, which I've completed, scanned, and am currently cleaning up digitally. I've been making progress on other levels and spreads as well, such as factions and tables. (Those are not shown in the video as they are still very much works in progress.)
All 12 levels of the dungeon are getting this treatment: cleanup, revision, expanded keying, tables, etc., all in service of making the levels playable, legible, and at least somewhat thematically coherent :)
It's been pretty wild to go all the way back to the beginning, which I created with no idea of what this would become, and make these additions. I'm trying to honor the original art and improvised ideas as much as possible while connecting them to the world that developed as the dungeon expanded.
