Tags
Actual Play, Dungeons & Dragons, Fantasy, Hydra, Megadungeon, OD&D, OSR, RPG
Back when I first started playing D&D in ’79, there was a tale that went around about never going into level 7 of one DM’s megadungeon.
It seems that a year before I joined, another group had been ambushed by an acid-spitting eight-headed hydra. They were already in rough shape and the wizard was completely dissolved by the acid on the first round. So they ran. To cover their retreat a blade barrier was cast.
That is, of course, when they discovered it was a lernean hydra (while writing this recollection, I looked through the various Monster Manuals and it turns out in 5e all hydras are Lernean hydras!) and the last group to go to level 7 discovered that the hydra had hundreds of heads now and had mutated and twisted to fill most of the dungeon level.
Fortunately for those still questing in those depths, there was a long set of stairs that lead from level 5 to level 8, and an elevator that connected level 4 to level 9, so the hydralevel could be skipped entirely.
Which isn’t to say we didn’t occasionally find other accessways to level 7… they were easy to identify as one well leading to both level 8 and 9 had hydra heads lashing out from it on both levels.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
∞ heads
This is a delightful story. I love the persistent and vibrant, living megadungeon; multiple parties, an ongoing ecology, numerous pathways both known and newly discovered with clues from other understood qualities. What a terrific window into an early megadungeon! It makes me smile; I’d love to know more about the DM and their dungeon.
That is absolutely amazing. What a brilliant and terrifying way to spice up a dungeon level. I mean, not that having an acid-spitting hydra with only a few heads isn’t spicy enough, but this is how gaming legends are made!
Great story and inventive idea by the DM, even if it doesn’t follow the rules as written 🙂 The early rules actually mean that extra heads were to die off after a few days or weeks and the Learnean Hydra would return to a more normal 7 headed Hydra. But mutating it was an interesting concept.
Personally I preferred the idea I’m sure I stole from some book or film, where the Hydra was under the floor level and a huge open grid was the floor. The Hydra would then poke up a few heads and attack the party before retreating underfloor again. But the heads the party cut off would of course regrow at a 2 for 1 rate and unless the party got under the floor to kill it then the Hydra would eventually overwhelm them !
The moment it was an acid-spitting hydra you knew you were outside of the standard rules as written.
But then again, I didn’t see much RAW play in 79 until the DMG was released.
What a fine memory from old gaming. Thanks for sharing this one.