You might notice that my empty speech bubble in my blog’s header is no longer empty. Thanks to Eric Maziade, I now have a little plug-in that lets me write quotes!
This week is session #2 of my new campaign (if we don’t count the awesome prequel session in the Crypt of the Thief-Prince). My players should finish exploring the Font of Sorrows, so later this week I may post about how I’m revising all remaining encounters to avoid a repeat of last week’s grind.
Today I thought I’d share with you some of our Primal/Withing setting notes. Yan and I started a little Wiki and every so often we write snippets of setting background to add some more fluff on our campaign concept. I’ll give you some details about The City Within’s factions, boroughs and one NPC that have appeared in our game.
The Builders
To those uninterested in the City’s politics, The Builders ARE the City.
They are the main faction behind the city’s power.
Originally an industrious group of stone cutting and masonry clans (Referred to as the Erathians), they developed a strict devotion to Erathis, the Goddess of Civilization, following the realization of several divine prophecies. One such prophecy led the original clans to explore and reclaim large parts of the Primal Dungeon, along with the vast riches found within it.
Using their new found resources and influence in the nearby dwarven freeholds and mines, they set upon the task of bringing civilization to the dungeon by building a city within it.
Since then, The Builders have always pushed, politically and literally, the limits of The City Within.
Although originally a Dwarven clan, it has since integrated all kinds of like-minded individual from all of the natural world’s sentient races.
Design Notes:
I think that Yan wanted to have a faction around which most of the activity of the city (and possibly the campaign) revolved. He’ll likely chime in the comments of this post to expand on this or tell me how full of it I am.
I like this faction’s central role because they provides the campaign with a stable, friendly patron that PCs can always rely on for adventure hooks. I’m already having fun trying to poke holes in their sanctified status!
The Erathians
A grouping of various dwarven clans of crafters such as masons, stone cutters, jewel smiths and miners who were followers of the Erathian Prophecies.
Believed to be the true founders of The City Within, the Erathian are widely believed to be the predecessors of what is currently known as The Builders.
Design Notes:
When I was working on the Crypt of the Thief Prince, I started exploring the past history of the Builders and I wanted to have a proto-faction that predated the City. Tying together the concept of a divinely-inspired city, the prophecies of the Goddess Erathis and dipping in good old David Eddings Mythos, I came up with the Erathis.
The Foundation
Not much is known of The Foundation.
The average citizen of the City believes that The Foundation are remnants of the Erathians who didn’t join The Builders when the city was founded. It is said that they went on to become the secret guardians of the City as willed by Erathis.
That’s why several households have little shrines dedicated to what’s called Foundation Angels to preserve them against the inevitable decay caused by the Dungeon’s proximity.
There are recurrent rumors that the Foundation have complete copies of the Erathian Prophecies including chapters that go beyond the time of the city’s foundation.
Design Notes:
While working on Thief-Prince, I started brainstorming with Yan to find a shadowy but beneficial faction that would work behind the scene to protect the City, away from politics and laws. I suggested that his Deva character, Jaiel, be part of that organization.
As he was warming up to the idea, we started musing about the organization’s name. I started shooting many in a row, faster than Yan could comment back on them, until I stopped on “The Foundation”. The sheer number of meaning that ‘foundation’ could be used in the context of a City-based campaign blew us away and we both agreed to keep the name.
As Math mentioned after reading the Crypt-Prince reports, The Foundation may very well be our campaign’s Men in Black.
Builder’s Terrace
The largest Burg of The City Within, Builders Terrace is a multi-tiered section of the city occupying it’s Main Cavern.
Housing the keeps of many crafter’s clans associated with The Builders, the burg contains access to the City’s main Quarrys and Constructions yards.
Material is transported through Teleporting portals whose secret is jealously guarded by The Builders.
Designer Notes:
We don’t have a map of the city, and we’re not sure we’ll ever need one (except if I publish this thing) yet as I create adventures for the PCs, I get the need to define an area of the city where they meet NPCs. Builder’s terrace occupies, in my mind’s eye, the best real-estate of the City Within. A mix of marble manors, artisan studios and gigantic quarries and construction yards, Builder’s terrace is the City Within’s downtown.
Riceburg
Also known as Delve # 7, Riceburg is a an ancient mine shaft connected to various natural and dug out galleries lit into perpetual daylight by permanent magical globes suspended everywhere. The floor of these caves have been leveled, filled with earth and flooded to grow a various crops, including large quantities of a rice-analog grain which is easier to digest and tastes a lot better than the various fungi found in the underdark.
Riceburg is the wheat basket of the City Within, as Burgomaster Dawnchaser will remind anyone he talks to. The Sector also produces the usual fungi, ferns and fruits that makes up the vegetarian portion of the city’s Diet. A large part of the lower city’s water supply also enters the city in Riceburg and is stored in humongous Cisterns dug under the sector.
Designer Notes: One of the design assumption of our City Within was that the city needed to be believably self-sufficient. When I created the adventure hooks for the Font of Sorrows, I made up this burg to be the one suffering from the tainted water coming out of the Elemental water temple. I’m not sure if it will ever feature again, but I’m going to use the NPC that represents it again…
Kelian Dawnchaser
Human Burgomaster of Delve no.7 (AKA as Riceburg). In charge of overseeing food production and proper water supply for the fields of rice analog crops grown in the irrigated caves surrounding Delve #7. Gruff and always blowing things out of proportion, he never wastes an occasion to remind people how important the ‘Bread Basket of the City’ is to its overall survival.
Fluff quotes
- I tell you If we don’t something about (insert problem of the day), food prices will soar and the city will collapse upon itself!
- Mark my words, the city works only because we keep its belly full!
- I have cousins in the Builders I’ll have you know!
Designer Notes:
Ever since D&D 4e stopped caring about combat stats for non-belligerent NPCs, I’ve rediscovered the joy of creating NPCs. This one came out naturally as I envisioned a typical country mayor, clamoring for more attention and always bemoaning how no one cares about what his burg does for the City. I’m going to reuse this one for sure! I also like how fun it is to make little quotes to help me roleplay them.
There you have it, our first batch of setting material to back our current adventure. I plan use/create some more for our future adventures!
I hope you enjoy these little behind the scene tours of our current D&D campaign!
I’m definitely loving what you and Yan have produce for the Primal/Within! I’ve spoken with my characters about the basic idea, and now they’re always hounding me for more information (hopefully of the “When can *we* play it?” variety). You’ve come up with a good idea!
Thanks Mike, we sure enjoy creating it and this is only a fraction of what we have done. Well, the most polished part of it since Phil integrated this stuff in our session.
Concerning The Builders, my first idea was of a faction that only cared for the city’s growth and would not dabble that much in the city’s politic unless it affected their holy work. It was implied that their only moral compass was their work.
As Phil said it provided an obvious patron to put forward the core of the Primal/Within concept without being the goody goody faction that takes care of everything.
Most of the faction I’ve created started as a placeholder name with a one liner description for a while, to which I came back later and elaborated the basic idea. Phil read it afterward. At this points it is usually pretty active as we exchange idea over Gtalk (I think my Gtalk history takes 1Gig just of conversation with him lol!) until we are both satisfied. Then Phil takes over for the polishing touch as he is by far a better writer then I.
@Mike: Thanks for then kind kudos. I’m happy to see that you like the ideas and that you’ve got players wanting to play it!
I think that Yan and I have hit a good method for building the world from the inside out. Like he says, he throws a name and one liner, thinks about it for some time and returns to flesh out the concept. After that I edit and we agree on a final name, possibly replacing the place-holder he had.
On my side, I peruse the Wiki for plot ideas, chose some of the material already there and build upon it to flesh it out further to be used in our adventures.
Works really well.