The Blades of Gixa: A #dungeon23 Megadungeon by Quadra

📜 Documents, Revisions, and...Estonia (+ Downloads!)
15 days ago – Thu, Oct 22, 2026 at 08:45:52 AM

Tere! (Hello!)

🇪🇪 Eesti

So, last month was a bit of a doozy for me. Long story short, I just moved 10 time zones away, from the Pacific Northwest of the US to the lovely Baltic state of Estonia!

The way the logistics of the move shook out, everything kind of came down to the wire in September, and packing and getting rid of stuff became my more-than-full-time job for several weeks. So the move delayed work on The Blades of Gixa for a bit, and I was frankly too overwhelmed to give you an update last month. My apologies for that. 

But now I'm set up here in Estonia well enough to get back to it, and I have a new video update for you!

📜 The Update

In this update:

Revisions to some of the early pages, the Greater World page and the Town of Baintoch spread. My playtesting (many, MANY thanks to my amazing friends and playtesters!!!) showed me that the way I'd distributed information on the town spread wasn't really working for me. The original spread tried to cover both the town itself and, in an inset, the entire island it's on. As a result, both locations suffered for it: the town lacked space for the encounters and more fleshed-out descriptions of services that would make it more runnable, and the island map was just too tiny and its keying too minimal to be useful. So where the previous update saw me break out the island into its own page, this one has me updating the town spread to be much more useful. 

Another, smaller revision came in the form of updating some of the text on the Greater World page. The Montiri section unhelpfully duplicated some information now on the Montiri page, plus a few other bits of text had become outdated by other revisions. Everything is connected!

A new Documents section features two in-world documents that can be used as player handouts, the "Baths Plunder" and "Highfleet Embassy" Proclamations, with commentary for the DM on each. These florid documents can be used as-is, or you can just summarize and describe their effects for your players. 

The Baths Plunder Proclamation is basically the fundamental OSRish adventure hook for the dungeon: the noble that rules Montiri puts out a call for adventurers to come delve under the island, clear out "dangers," and recover treasure for her, and offers big rewards for both. In fact, adventurers get to keep half the loot they recover! (Players will of course see this as a 50% tax on their treasure hauls, and they will plot and scheme endlessly to get around it.) 

The Highfleet Embassy Proclamation establishes an embassy on the island for the Highfleet, the society of ship-bound elves that sail the Eastern Seas in defiance of the Admiralty. Is this a good-faith normalization of relations between rival powers? Of course not! Both sides bring various ulterior motives to the agreement, which your players can get deeply embroiled in. Some of these secrets can lead inquisitive players deeper into the dungeon and towards some profound revelations about the nature of this world! Or maybe it's background fluff and their greed will do the work.

Plus I gab a little more about the move.

📁 Downloads

The pages covered in this update (Greater World page, Town of Baintoch spread, Documents spread) are all available for you to download now on BackerKit! You should get an email about that shortly. As in the last update, these are unedited scans which will likely get some more minor updates before publication. Plus of course I will be cleaning them up, adding color, etc.

💳 BackerKit Charges

For BackerKit pre-orderers and folks who've added stuff to their order on BackerKit and haven't had their cards charged yet, I will be sending out a finalize order email soon and will be charging cards a day after that. As mentioned previously, shipping (for everyone) will be charged separately closer to the actual ship date. 

🪎 Montiri Map & Treasure Tables (+ Downloads!)
2 months ago – Fri, Aug 28, 2026 at 05:36:34 PM

The latest Blades of Gixa video update is out now! You can watch it on YouTube or on Paradiso (ad-free, requires login). This is all about a new island overview page, why I split it off from the town spread, and a 4-page treasure table to use for the entire megadungeon! Plus you Kickstarter backers now have access to all of the pages reviewed in the video as a PDF, downloadable through BackerKit (should be in your email)!

This covers five new pages: a page all about the Isle of Montiri, the island that sits atop the megadungeon, and four pages of treasure tables for generating a near-endless variety of loot (mundane and magical) that scales in value as you descend deeper.

The Map

The isle was previously featured as an inset on the town page, but in my experience actually running this, I found that it was information that I didn't really need when characters were in town, and conversely when characters were exploring the island, I didn't need all the town info. Plus each ate into the real estate of the other, so I was very limited in the information I could provide about each.

So the isle is now its own page, with a lot more relevant information for overland exploration, and the town spread now has more space for town encounters and information about vendors and factions and the like.

The Treasure

The treasure table stemmed from my desire to have a wide variety of loot all across the dungeon for player characters to find. Some very special, unique treasures are certainly listed in various spots on dungeon levels, but there isn't enough room for every possible treasure to be individually enumerated.

So in the grand tradition of taking inspiration from the OSR blogosphere, I looked to goblin.zone and Courtney Campbell (specifically the Treasure doc) to create a 2-spread treasure table/generator to cover treasure needs for the entire megadungeon. It can generate tons and tons of unique treasures, all of which either scales or is gated by the level of the dungeon it is found on. The video goes into detail about how it all works.

And while the tables do have a bunch of stuff that is specifically tied to the setting of The Blades of Gixa, they should be pretty easy to swap out if you want to use this to generate stuff for your own home game! So I figured it'd be nice to get the current version of these pages out to all the backers and preorderers for you all to play around with ;)

Til next time,

🖤 Quadra

🪎 Tables and Treasures and Mushrooms and More
4 months 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.
• A treasure discovery system inspired by Courtney Campbell's Treasure, Dolmenwood, and goblin.zone's Treasure Generator for Knave, along with lots of tables:
  • Treasure Type (12 entries)
  • Armor: type (4), material (6), magic effects (20)
  • Artworks: types and various attributes (6x6), valuation (6), magic effects (8)
  • Books: types (3), diary types (4), spellbook rules, esoteric subjects (130)
  • Clothing: types (12), magic effects (20)
  • Coins: types (6), magic effects (3), optional denominations (6)
  • Furnishings: types (12), materials (5), magic effects for:
    • Storage/containers/ceramic (6)
    • Seats/lounging/sleeping (6)
    • Light fixtures (6)
    • Tables/ceremonial (6)
    • Floor covering (6)
    • Washing (6)
    • Utility (2)
  • 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...

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
6 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
7 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):

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