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[shadow_archmagi]

So, a long time ago, I read an article in some nature thing or another. The article suggested that bees build their hives differently based on past events; like a more complicated version of tree rings. "Ah!" said the young bee "I see by the fact that the hive entrances are small and east-facing that we're at war with the neighboring hive! Good to know!" Regardless of how accurate this is in the real world, I connected it to dwarves. What if they had a (literal) hive mind?

Entire mountains given sentience by cavern halls covered in elaborate runes; or maybe just as a result of belief. Maybe something inherent to the labyrinth tunnels of the dwarves. consciousnesses that span millenniums acting as guiding forces for whole civilizations. Dwarven high priests learning to commune directly with The Stone. Maybe the really big, really old ones get to be demigods in their own right. Maybe there's a campaign finale where someone tries to bring the whole mountain to life, so it can scuttle around grazing on entire cities?

But then I had a thought. What would a map of a mountainholm look like? Well, your stereotypical mountainhome is going to have one massive cavern hall, and then maybe lots of little tunnels that branch off from it. Of course, you'd want a 3d map to be most useful. Maybe one you can carry around?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So then. There's some dwarves who are interested in retrieving some stuff from a mountainholm that got lost beneath the sea strange aeons ago. Archeology, pretty straightforward, not terrifying stuff. Maybe they hire the player characters, maybe they just keep cropping up on the sidelines. Then it turns out their plan is a bit more ambitious: They want to raise the whole thing and create a new island. The players don't see a problem with it. Then there's the reveal: The forgotten city probably should've stayed forgotten. Maybe the surface dwellers legitimately thought that they were just going to find priceless relics or happy-go-lucky long lost cousins, or maybe it's a cult trying to end the world. The important thing is that the dwarves that stayed below have adapted to their new environment, and coincidentally gone insane.

Now the race is on to prevent the Great Old One from returning to the world! It's time to go In The Hall of Cthulhu the Mountain-King


So anyway, that's the basic layout of the thing. I'll keep updating this post as I flesh it out a bit more and actually begin to write up primary NPCs and specific objectives and artifacts

[Darvi]

Nice pic you got there,

[shadow_archmagi]

Nice pic you got there,

Fixed!

[PapaNachos]

This got me thinking that whatever pattern they carve their rooms in should have some fundamental function. With that in mind it wouldn't make much sense for them to create an image. Instead the design itself would have to have some inherent meaning or function.
Here are some examples:

1) Runic Fractal Patters
This goes very heavily in the direction of A WIZARD DID IT.
The idea is that you have a magic rune or whatever that creates sentience wherever its written, but happens to function as a fractal and the more complicated the pattern the more powerful it becomes. Basically your dorfs exist to protect and expand the pattern in order to become more powerful. Throw in some goals for your hivemind and you can have a great time.
As far as how the hivemind works: MAGIC

2) Dorf-ish Super Computer
This functions off of the idea that the mountain (or wherever they live ) functions as a giant computer. There are lots of different ways this could be implemented, but I won't go into more unless it seems interesting to you.
In essence it would have a few dorfs coordinating(CPU) the tasks of hundreds or other dorfs that act as drones(Programs). The main idea is that the structure would work as relays that allow the drone dorfs to share information and skills on the fly (Or more likely with a significant delay anywhere between several seconds and a day).
Long story short: Re-programmable dorfs with wi-fi

[Brackev]

The entrance should start out all square and dwarfy, then as they go deeper in it should get chaotic and strange.  By that I mean hallways that have an up-down arc in them and floors that stop being level (but the walls and ceiling being at 90 degree angles to it.)  But they should have some things that try to correct things back to dwarfiness like desks that sit on an uneven floor but the desks have a level surface on top, or an arcing hall but the area with engraving on it is level.

[The Fool]

I like the idea. I would happily play this kind of campaign since it combines Lovecraftian stories with D&D fantasy. It almost reminds me of the Los Plagas of Resident Evil 4, an evil sentient hivemind, which is a good thing because I liked that story.

I would love to see an impossible dungeon design where all you are being held by is magic runes that keep you on the ceiling. That would have to be much further into the mountain to have that chaotic a design. Any chance of that happening?