Draft:Rampart Hedge Maze

Omega 0.90.4

The Rampart Hedge Maze is the enclosed maze south of the Botanical Gardens. It contains both the Oracle and the stairs to the sewers. Its warning sign says it is closed for trifid extermination, but you can still enter.

Layout and discoveries

Each new city selects one of four layouts. The northern entrance stays in the same place, while the internal paths, Oracle and sewer stairs vary. Unlike the surrounding city, the maze starts unexplored. Its corridors include closed doors and random sites that can contain traps, monsters, a generated item or empty floor.

The maze is made of hedges rather than solid walls. Crossing a hedge can shorten a route, but the plants themselves are dangerous. Each hedge tile inside the maze has a 10% chance to be a trifid when the layout is made. This is its identity for that maze, not a fresh 10% roll whenever you step there.

Ordinary hedges

An ordinary maze hedge may cause thorn damage, poison, temporary immobilization or the loss of a worn cloak. Sometimes you pass unharmed. A follower of the Druids moves freely through these ordinary hedges; unmounted levitation also avoids their contact effects.

That does not make every visible hedge in Rampart equivalent. The decorative hedges outside the maze are placed without these maze contact hazards.

Trifids

A trifid grabs you in an encounter that continues until you escape or die. Levitation does not prevent the grab. Druid worship also does not automatically prevent it. Shadowform bypasses the encounter.

Carrying a bucket of salt water is the reliable answer. The character automatically throws one bucket on the plant before its first damage, destroying the trifid, turning its tile into floor and gaining 1,000 experience. The bucket is consumed; you do not need to select a use command after being grabbed.

Without salt water, each round inflicts unavoidable damage before your choice. In Rampart the damage rises from 1 to 2, 3 and so on. The two useful choices are:

• Break free: chance equal to Strength out of 200 on each attempt.
• Pray: only works for a Druid follower, with a chance equal to priesthood rank out of 5, reaching certainty at rank 5.

Hanging limp, bargaining, clicking your heels or other responses do not free you. There is no return to the ordinary command menu between these attempts. Breaking free or receiving divine assistance leaves the trifid in place, so stepping back onto it repeats the danger.

Strategy

Follow the paths when poorly prepared. A low-Strength character cutting through hedges risks escalating damage with poor odds of escape, even if floating safely over ordinary thorns. Salt water can turn that specific danger into an experience reward, but each bucket covers only one trifid.

Locate the Oracle and read her sign so future visits can use city travel. The sewer staircase is a separate destination for dungeon exploration; entering the maze does not commit you to going underground.

Trivia

The name and carnivorous-plant encounter point to John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, whose walking, stinging plants are described by its publisher. Omega spells the creature trifid, with one f. The salt-water solution also resembles the film adaptation, which ends with that discovery; see the film's plot. The shared name and details support the connection, without establishing an author-confirmed explanation of every joke in the encounter.