Post/Author/DateTime	Post
snikt-snikt 01-25-05, 10:21 PM	I was wonderin gif anybody has any good ideas to describe sharn to PCs whose players have never read anything on Sharn. Sure its the city of towers, but how would you describe it once the PCs are in the city? I have the Sharn sourcebook, but it didn't really give me much to work with. Any suggestions?
outlore 01-25-05, 11:17 PM	Hey there Why describe it with word when 1 picture say more than words? What I did was to make a little video of me playing the pc-game Morrowind elder scroll 3 Running around in the city of vivec, just remember to remind your players that Sharn are about 10 time (if not more) taller, and if you don’t have the game try a Google with the keywords: morrowind vivec Maby some of the pictures can help you get your fantasy rolling it worked for me and my players hope you can use the idée wounder if keith ever played morrowind – I think I did Cheers Outlore ---- p.s. Note to readers: English isn’t my first laug, its Danish, and I’m suffering from “word-blindness” (in lack of a better word)
FuzzCube 01-26-05, 12:51 PM	(For a party that comes from the river) The voyage lasted for 2 weeks. You feel both sea sick, and sick of sea food and dry bread. You stand on deck, and one of the Lyrandar sailors passing by tells you the ship will dock in Sharn within 2 hours. You look past the bow and in the distance high up on the plateau you see what appears to be a castle with many towers. As the ship approaces you can see that the plateau stands at the end of impossibly high cliffs and what you initially thought was a castle is actually a collection of enormous towers stadning so cloase to one another, that their bases musy be touching. Each tower is thousands of feet high. Suddenly a shadow falls on deck. You look up and above you you see a large Lyrandar air ship, approaching one of the towers. As you approach the the cliffs you can see that the bottom of the cliffs are ringed with docks. Huge cranes lift boxes, barrels and people up to the plateau above. The cliffs are riddled with what appear to be houses and porches that seem to come out of the cliff face. The ship docks and you are directed to go forward with the rest of the passengers and climb onto a platform. Suddenly the platform lurches and you feel yourself rising up fast. (I have to go now, but I'll post part 2 tomorrow).
snikt-snikt 01-26-05, 12:57 PM	Great. I look forward to part 2.
ccerose 01-26-05, 08:11 PM	It may not be the most appropriate setting, but there are two anime that illustrate well a city of skyscrapers, with the wealthy living at the higher levels and the impoverished at the lower levels. One is Metropolis and the other is Battle Angel Alita. Metropolis is a city very much like Sharn. The leaders are in the upper most skyscrapers, with commoners living closer to ground level. Further down in the maintenance levels are the homeless and 'enslaved' robots. Their treatment in this movie might give ideas for some very interesting adventures with Warforged characters and npcs. Battle Angel Alita is similar in that there is a city that floats above a wasteland. The people in the floating city life a life of wealth and luxury. The wasteland below is littered with all the trash from the floating city. This wasteland is populated with the lower class impoverished people who aren't allowed into the floating city. Here's a link to the Metropolis site: http://www.sonypictures.com/cthv/metropolis/ Watch the opening flash animation when you enter the site, it gives a nice overview of the city. The trailer has some nice footage that should give you some ideas.
FuzzCube 01-27-05, 03:47 AM	... The ship docks and you are directed to go forward with the rest of the passengers and climb onto a platform. Suddenly the platform lurches and you feel yourself rising up fast. You panic for a second since it seems that nothing is holding the platofrm, but then you see what looks like an almost transparent chains that hold the platform on all sides. The chains rise up to a large crane that comes out of one of the huge towers in the plateau above you. A small child standing with his mother next to you tries to go to the edge of the platform, but his mother catches him. The platform nears the base of the tower, and then continues up. A man wearing clothes simliar to an Orien lightining rail conductor passes between the passengers and collects a few copper from each. The platform starts to slow down, and then stops level with a large porch that comes out of the tower. You step off the platform an into the gloom of the tower. This level of the interior of the tower is ringed with houses, and lighted with everburning lanterns. The noise and bustle of city engulf you on all sides. You slowly cross the interior of the tower to what appears to be another huge porch directly opposite the one you just came through. As you slowly walk towards it you see it is actually a huge bridge connected to an even larger tower. As you walk onto the bridge an amazing sight greets your eyes. All around you there are towers as large as the tower you came out of or even larger and higher. The top of the towers can barely be seen, as you look down you become dizzy for a second because you can't see the bottom. The towers seem to go down into the depths of Khyber, their base can't lost in smoke and darkness. Bridges cross the gaps between the towers at all levels and in all directions. The bridges are packed with people and stalls selling every kind of merchadise you can dream of. Suddenly you hear a cry above you, a man is falling down onto the bridge you're standing on. A watchman standing near you pulls out a wand points at the man, and utters a command word, and suddenly the man slows down and starts to fall like a feather. As his legs touch the bridge, a large flying gondola stops near the bridge and the driver walks out and starts shouting at the falliing man, who shouts back at him. You blink and events catch up to you - A flying gondola? Suddenly you seem to notice that the air between the towers is filled with flying gondolas ,skiffs. Every once in a while one of the flying boats stops at an entrance to a tower, or near a bridge, dropping or picking passengers. You feel a tug on your arm [choose the charismatic PC - who looks like a leader]. "Hey mister, mister, you need a guide?". the small dirty boy looks up at you smiling. "I know all the best places in the city, only 1 silver a day." [end of part 2]. Have fun in Sharn city of towers ;)
FuzzCube 01-27-05, 04:27 AM	I would also make the description a bit more personal. For example, if the party has a warforged, he could get shouts to go the cogs where he belongs. I don't have the Sharn book here, but if the party comes from the docks (like in the description I gave), they will land somewhere in middle Dura. Take a look in the description in the book, and add some motifs from Duran to the description. I always picture Sharn as a dark gloomy city. Sunlight is a rare thing. Smog, smoke and clouds are the usual. So even in daylight the city is in gloom. The interior of the towers is usually dark, and in some cases it seems like a cave, with only patches of light near the lanterns and torches. The attitude of the people in Sharn fits this gloom, and most will be pessimistic, and cynical.
Doctor X 01-28-05, 01:35 AM	Ask if they've played Knights of the Old Republic. If they have, tell them Sharn is like Taris, but replace all the sci-fi architecture with renaissance-esque stone structures... Also, it doesn't cover the entire world... but other than that, they're fairly similar.
snikt-snikt 01-28-05, 11:45 AM	FuzzCube, thanks for the description thats what I was looking for. Anyone else have any similar kinds of ideas?
Dravot 01-28-05, 12:06 PM	Wanna know what Sharn looks like? Watch Blade Runner.
Bubba333 01-28-05, 02:54 PM	A magical Coruscant. But you all have better descriptions. :D
Vanir 01-28-05, 03:59 PM	Sort of related... How big is Sharn? I've not found a map to scale that would give any idea as to the size of the city, it's districts and wards, etc. Closest I've come is finding a statement to the effect that a tower could be 800 -2600 feet across at the base. I find this lacking.
Beleriphon 01-28-05, 10:32 PM	Sort of related... How big is Sharn? I've not found a map to scale that would give any idea as to the size of the city, it's districts and wards, etc. Closest I've come is finding a statement to the effect that a tower could be 800 -2600 feet across at the base. I find this lacking. Sharn itself is between 8 and 10 miles across its narrowest border, and 10 to 12 along its longest border. So all told its pretty big, think FF9 Lindblum, only way bigger.
Vanir 01-29-05, 05:20 PM	Out of curiosity, where'd those numbers (for distances) come from? Where you able to extrapolate from other maps or something in the text of the ECS or Sharn: City of Towers books? Best I've been able to do is zoom in about 3200% on the one continent level map with a scale shown (the web enhancement) of Khorvaire, and count pixels.