While I am not interested in that style of gaming (I prefer to purposely keep things a bit vaguely unmapped so they can be filled in with maps as needed for specific encounters; also, it helps the area seem much larger/more complex if it's not fully detailed), I wish you well in your endeavour.
I'll include an area description and map for a section of UnderTyr that was the setting for an adventure in my current Dark Sun campaign, in case it might help as you're patching ideas together.
Backdrop: In my world, the dray (dragonborn) are mysterious servants of the Dragon, with a complement assigned to each city-state to serve as diplomats, advisers, and bodyguards to the city-state's sorcerer-king. They also help manage the payment of the levy and use their powers to create rezhattas and watroaches, along with some other magicks too powerful for normal magic to create.
www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-lost...
www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-lost...
My players were present when a hooded figure attempted to assassinate Rikus, using defiler magic; although he escaped, they eventually concluded that the figure was none other than one of the top three diplomatic dray in Tyr They decided they could not trust the Revolutionary Council or King Tithian to bring the dray to justice and decided to kill one of the dray as a reprisal. Unfortunately, Tyr's dray neighborhood (known as Little Draxa: www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-lost... ) was located in the fairly-secure Templars' Quarter and, besides, was full of dray. However, they were able to discover that the basement of the drays' townhouse had a connection to UnderTyr. Though it was safely sealed, they enlisted the Veiled Alliance to (covertly) dispel the seal; they were able to sneak through UnderTyr, fight some grell coming from darker tunnels deep within the earth, creep into the dray basement (which was a lab for one of the dray), kill the resident dray, and flee.
I'll copy-paste my campaign notes without much real editing (so they will be pretty specific to my game) and dig out the map of the area I made. It's located in the CRAWLS area, so not exactly what you request.
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Killing Zalimxan
Every few weeks, it seems, Tyr is shook by a minor street cave-in, an underground shifting, or even a building collapse; it is a legacy of Tyr’s history of being rebuilt on top of older versions of the city. More than a year ago, when a street caved in in the Smiths’ District, the Veiled Alliance calculated that the collapse would have closed off an extremely dangerous part of UnderTyr…leaving adjacent sections ripe for exploration. An Alliance-affiliated smith’s shop has long had a passage into “The Crawls” area of UnderTyr, but it has been sealed for decades or centuries because of the danger. The VA unsealed it and sent a team into UnderTyr to explore, clearing some wandering monsters (a psurlon or two and some cilopses), collecting some ancient treasures (sculptured bits of iron and gold, gemstones, some minor magical treasures), and making a rough map of the area.
On the edge of the area, right under where the wall separates the Golden City from the rest of Tyr, a large crack had opened. The VA team briefly squeezed through and scouted the area, but found several passages leading deeper into UnderTyr, judging them too dangerous to explore further. One passage, however, led towards the surface, where it was sealed from above by a locked door. The VA withdrew and closed the crack by firing a bolt of energy into the base of a nearby stone pillar, toppling it into the crack. For further security, the VA team wove an illusion spell that would conceal the crack’s existence.
After returning to the surface, the VA did some more calculating and realized that the locked passageway to the surface appeared to be located directly under the dray’s diplomatic housing. Nothing has been done up to this point, but the PCs’ desire to assassinate Zalimxan could be a good opportunity to make use of this valuable information.
• “Nobody made use of this information because, shortly after discovering the passage, Kalak was killed and the dray left Tyr. The buildings in Little Draxa were sold off, and the dray townhouse was bought by a noble who lived there until last month, when they returned and Tyr took back all the buildings it had sold off.”
• “You might want to make some plans for a place to lay low—either here in Tyr, or outside the city for awhile—if this happens. The dray are dangerous foes.”
Sadira can take the PCs to the VA smith’s shop, get them into UnderTyr, and accompany them to the crack and undo the illusion magic, but will not go any further so as not to risk the political damage if they’re caught. How to make sure that Zalimxan is caught alone, though? (because surely they’ll die if they meet more than one dray). She suggests further investigations.
Dray Diplomatic HQ
The three-story townhouse in Little Draxa that is used by the dray for diplomatic purposes is isolated and mysterious. Its windows have been sealed with stone, and odd metal devices can be spotted on the roof. There are dray guards outside, but only rarely are dray seen entering and exiting, especially since the order confining the three diplomats to the building.
Senator Freydlav
A wise idea might be to speak to Senator Freydlav, the noble who owned the building for several months last year. After the dray fled the city and Kalak was slain, the buildings of Little Draxa were claimed by King Tithian and, over several months, were sold off to various nobles, merchants, and templars who wanted space in the gradually-opening Golden City. Freydlav purchased the townhouse to use as his pied-a-terre in the city, as his family’s estates are not conveniently close by.
However, when the dray returned last month, part of the deal struck with them involved the reclamation of their former estates. The new inhabitants were expelled and the dray moved back in. Although a series of bills and edicts returned their payments, many felt that Tyr ought to have paid them significantly more to move out—because of the trouble, because “property values have gone up”, or because “the Dragon can afford it,” and harbor some resentment against King and Council.
Freydlav inhabited the townhouse for about six months, and can therefore answer a lot of questions about its layout and the status of the locked portal to UnderTyr. The PCs will have to think of some reason to talk to him about the house. If they use Sadira or otherwise show some connection to the Revolutionary Council, Freydlav might make some sarcastic remarks about “kicking a man out of his home and throwing some bits in the street after him,” but quickly recognizes that a Council member could help him get “his” purchase back, and is eager to help. They might also pose as templar bureaucrats attempting to assess the property.
Freydlav can be found at Tyr’s gladiatorial arena on combat days—ten days of each month and during festivals. A heavy gambler and bloodsports fanatic, Freydlav pays to sit in the good seats (the “sun seats” up above cost a sun or less; the “good seats” cost anywhere from 2 dragons to 10 dragons, depending on their location) and spends the matches screaming his support at the top of his lungs, clutching fistfuls of marked betting slips.
In the new, for-profit, privatized gladiatorial games of Tyr, the fans and the games have taken on a very different quality than the bloodsport games of yesteryear. Since it is now in the economic interests of the various gladiatorial stables to keep their fighters alive and build their brands (because “to the death” matches were largely outlawed, of course), branding culture has exploded in a way not seen in any other city-state. There are a hundred separate ways to gamble on warriors—first blow, first blood, of course, but also, as statistics-crunching has become popular, far more arcane bets such as blow patterns (leg-arm-leg). Merchandise booths have sprung up, and many fans wear hats trailing banners depicting their favorite warriors, or wave flags or figurines, or wear large colored tunics. (Rikus merch is very popular even though he does not fight in the arena any longer). Large banners are unfurled in the crowd with the names of stables and individuals, and supporters of one stable might even get into murderous fights with supporters of another. Everything has been monetized, as merchants pay popular gladiators to endorse their products. This is a far more complex culture than the simplistic kill-em-all bloodthirst elsewhere, but is it better?
Approaching Freydlav (a sweaty man with an extraordinarily low hairline), the PCs find him willing to talk (though their conversation is periodically interrupted with shouts of “WOOOO! ACHERON! WOOO! GO ‘UTS!” and the like.
Freydlav can tell them:
• Seems like the dray had divided the house up into three private areas. The basement seemed to be where dark magics were practiced. The top floor and roof were the quarters of the female, who used scopes to look at the stars (NOTE: Zuri’s Draconic skills tell him that Oliquluushagi’s name is female). The second floor was nondescript but clearly the quarters of the third dray. The first floor seemed to be a common area.
• The basement was full of equipment that looked valuable (even some books, though it seemed like the best ones had been picked out and taken with them when the dray left), and Freydlav intended to sort through it and sell it off. However, he hadn’t gotten around to doing a proper accounting when the rug was pulled out from under him.
• All floors were connected by a single large staircase except for the basement, which connected to the kitchen by a much smaller staircase.
• Yes, the door to the basement was pretty sturdy and could be barred from the inside (keeping people out of the basement).
• Freydlav did see the locked portal and assumed it sealed off UnderTyr, so he didn’t touch it. The lock had no key—he surmised that the dray took it with them or lost it. The sturdy lock did appear to have some metal parts, so Freydlav had some vague plans to have it chipped out of the door and sold and just seal the door up with stone, but he never got around to it.
• Freydlav can draw a map of the basement (if properly convinced—he may require some rolls, or promises to recover his property).
The Crawls
Accompanied by Sadira, the PCs venture into the Smiths’ District. Once a bustling neighborhood that rang with the sound of hammered metal, the Smiths’ District has become more of a general place of business for artisans or craftsmen. Several genuine smiths do remain, working the iron that flows from Tyr’s mines with great skill; the PCs are not heading to one of them. Instead, they find themselves in the shop of a wheelwright.
Wheels of all shapes and sizes fill the shop, from wooden pushcart-wheels to half-giant-sized argosy wheels bound in strips of iron. Sadira leads the way past workers, who barely give her a second glance; one grizzled man making crude tally marks with chalk on the wall gives her a longer look, but turns away as she passes her hand over her mouth.
The PCs find themselves in one of the several back rooms of the shop. Bundles of bone dowels are scattered about, and at the back of the room is a fantastic and ancient statue of a rearing cilops. The PCs realize that some of the stone walls in this back area are incredibly old and worn down, with newer stone and wooden dividers having been added on over the years to form hallways and the front room.
Sadira presses on the cilops’ single eye, and a grinding noise comes from within the stone walls as counterweights shift in their columns. Then, Sadira pushes on the statue, and it swings back on a top hinge; underneath the statue is a dark passage into the earth, with a rolled-up rope-and-bone ladder hooked at the top. She undoes the hook and the ladder tumbles into the darkness.
“I’ll come with you as far as the crack, to dispel the illusion concealing it,” she says. “No further. I’ll wait there for you to come back, so I can restore the illusion.” They climb down.
Down, down, through strata of Tyr; the PCs see, like the rings in a tree, the layers of different types of construction, black charred portions that might represent a great catastrophe, and also compressed layers of earth and ash. Finally they reach the bottom and look around. The ceiling is quite low—no more than 7 feet tall here—and they stand on a patch of crushed-up stone that gives way to stone plates further out.
Sadira recaps. “This is a portion of the area known as the Crawls. Last year, it was sealed off from the rest of the area—the more dangerous part—by a street collapse over there.” She gestures vaguely into the darkness. “A Veiled Alliance team cleared it, killing several monsters and retrieving some valuable treasures and ultimately sealing off a crack into a much more dangerous and unknown area, underneath Little Draxa. That way.” She points west.
They make their way through UnderTyr. Here and there, the ceiling soars up a dozen feet or more; their light illuminates the inside of an ancient marble dome. Occasionally they have to drop to their bellies and crawl, as massive blocks of stone have sunk over the years and almost closed off the passage. Sometimes they find themselves climbing up, and sometimes down.
• At one point, walking carefully on a slanted surface, they realize that it is plated with terra-cotta shingles—a roof! That’s the point where it really hits them that above them are layers of buildings, but also below them.
• An old mural on a stone wall depicts a conquering hero wearing steel mail and wielding a steel longsword. His face is familiar—a younger, more handsome version of King Kalak. One of Kalak’s hands holds up a gruesome trophy—two severed heads with long topknots, one of them thin-featured and gaunt, the other bloated and with moist lips. (If asked, Sadira shrugs. “Maybe the leaders of the tribes who lived here when Kalak founded Tyr, scattering and destroying the native peoples?”)
• At another point, they come upon some burn marks and the desiccated shells of a pair of cilopses. The corpses and marks are several months old—the evidence of a battle fought by the VA team.
Overall, they see evidence of many monster prints over time—clawed and pincered things, pawed and footed things—but not much recently (within the past year) besides the VA team. There is no evidence of dray tracks.
At the sealed wall
Finally, they reach a great solid wall, made of unmortared but tightly fitted-together stones, seeming impenetrable and seemingly stretching far upward and downward past where the PCs can see; it appears to be even thicker down here than it is on the surface. The broken base of a pillar, marked with burns, is right by it, though no pillar is evident. “Are you ready?” asks Sadira. “Once I pull back the illusion, it will be costly to replace. And once the physical barrier is removed, this area will be open to horrors from the unexplored areas beyond the wall.”
If they accede, she holds her cane aloft. “Nok,” she whispers. “Unveiling.” As she casts the spell, a dim red glow blossoms inside the obsidian sphere. As it does, a queasiness suddenly runs through all of the PCs as something reaches deep within their bellies; they briefly feel weak. They’ve felt this before: when the Dragon’s defiling struck them (though this is far milder, and does not cause damage). As she finishes the spell, she sweeps her arm across the wall, and the illusion drops. The PCs are staring at a great crack rent in the stone, almost entirely blocked by a large broken-off pillar, burned at the base, where the VA blasted it off and knocked it into position.
If the PCs express alarm about her spellcasting, Sadira can explain. “Dragon magic. While most arcane magic users draws their energy from plants, some can draw their energy from animal life. That is known as dragon magic.”
“When we plotted the downfall of Kalak, we were assisted on our quest by Nok, a halfling chief in the Forest Ridge, west of the Ringing Mountains. He gave us two great artifacts: the Heartwood Spear, which would protect Rikus from Kalak’s psionics and was powerful enough to pierce his physical defences, and this cane, which would allow me to use dragon magic. With dragon magic I was capable of bringing down Kalak’s magical defences before Rikus threw the spear.”
Sadira won’t volunteer the information, but if they ask the location of the Spear, she will say, “Rikus returned it to Nok when Kalak was dead.” If pushed, she may even admit, “I kept the cane. I didn’t think our work was over and I need it.”
It will require a feat of strength to move the pillar (DC23). Handled like a team skill roll, the PCs should first explain how they hope to move it, who the “leader” is, and how anyone else might assist. If they simply plan to push and pull it, a maximum of 3 (leader and two more) people can contribute. Clever ideas such as the use of levers, ropes, etc. can add to this.
Unlike a normal group skill roll, the assist roll is against a fixed “average” difficulty (DC16), and failures do not count against the “leader”. Successes add +2 to the leader’s roll. If the leader failed the roll, he can re-try; if he fails by 5 or more (rolling a total of 18 or less) the pillar shifts, dealing him 1d8+4 damage.
With a successful roll, the pillar grinds aside, revealing a narrow crack in the wall, too thin to walk through without squeezing, and perhaps 7 or 8 feet high.
As the PCs make their way through the crack (marching order!), they will need to bring some illumination—it is pitch dark ahead. Any lights they carry illuminate a medium-sized, low-ceilinged room of worked stone ahead, with several passages branching off of it. The floor is scuffed and dusty and seems to have tracks of various sorts on it (most of them heading out of the SW passage).
If Zuri sends his jankx ahead, the grell will have a nice snack.
Emerging from the crack, the PCs might receive a nasty surprise: the first to come to the edge of the room will suffer an attack from a grell (hiding with a Stealth result of 34), which silently glided into position next to the crack on the other side! A diagonal attack is at -2 for partial cover, but it is in an advantageous position. The grell uses double attack to grab and rake the unlucky first entrant, and follows up with venomous bite in an attempt to immobilize/stun the PC at the crack’s exit.
Examining the tracks reveals that there are tracks of various sorts (humanoids, insectoids, monstrous things) everywhere of various ages, but a DC16 Perception roll can pick out that the recent tracks (from the past month or so) are: humanoid tracks all over the main room (the Veiled Alliance scouts) that do not continue down any of the little corridors, but also even more humanoid tracks going back and forth from the townhouse door to the second little “room” (the dray calling to the grell). Grell do not leave tracks, as they hover.
In the second little “room” are also signs of an arcane ritual, some kind of calling or summoning, that occurred within the past few weeks/month. Faint tracings of arcane powders and inks are visible on the ground, but nothing else can be gleaned besides the fact that it’s a calling/summoning ritual.
The tunnels away
Reaching down into the earth are half a dozen tunnels (marked with skulls-n-crossbones on the VA map). These crevices are unexplored and considered extraordinarily dangerous; the VA will not go down them. If the PCs choose to, they may not return.
Tunnel 1: Tiny centipedes become more and more evident as they move down the tunnel; rapidly, there are thousands, beginning to swarm all over them. Any who remain in the centipede area take 10 poison damage each round.
Tunnel 2: Where grell dwell. Moving down this tunnel will result in an encounter with a grell.
Tunnel 3: Slopes steeply downward, and is rough-hewn cave stone, not a built passage. Far ahead, the sounds of something enormous and horrible roaring.
Tunnel 4: This ancient street slopes downward until it plunges into a pool of black water—flooding has blocked the tunnel.
Tunnel 5: Becomes a small maze, requiring an Insight check DC16 to escape (each check costing a half hour of time). However, within the maze is an ancient iron ring bolted casually to the wall—four pounds of iron, it’s worth almost 2000gp.
Tunnel 6: Where grell dwell as well. Encounter with a grell.
Reaching the goal
One of the tunnels (which look like it began life as a crack through several sandwiched layers of ancient buildings that was given a level floor, and which bears plenty of dray tracks—none especially recent, but perhaps from the past month) slopes and cuves upward before leveling out in a small 10x10 stone landing. Here, the walls are made of tightly-fitted stone blocks; in one wall is a recessed stone door with an iron lockplate. No hinges are visible (they are on the other side). This is the passage into the dray townhouse.
The door is locked (DC23 to pick). In addition, a glyph of warding protects it from invaders from below.
I'll make an analogy to the NES game Zelda II (The Adventure of Link). It had its ups and downs, but one of its great successes was that it successfully communicated a larger, scarier world because you didn't need to explore every inch of it, so there were always pathways left untouched. The Death Mountain dungeon is a great example; unless you spent boring hours levelling up beyond where you should be at that point, it's a pretty difficult dungeon and you should not be slowly marching through killing each thing and going into each corner; you find yourself rushing blindly to try to get to the end, leaping over axe-throwing gator-men rather than fighting each one, etc. By the time you emerge you really feel like you barely escaped, and there were tons of weird passageways you never went down that could evoke a larger sense of the world. A lot of games--ESPECIALLY over the past ten years--can't do that, and you can explore every corner of every room and easily save/restart if things go wrong, or look up maps on the Internet...so you end up with a sense that the world is much smaller and less complicated, even if the zones are technically way larger.
But still, I am flabbergasted that the Sorrows at least was never mapped, since there has to be countless Dark Sun adventuring parties that had to venture down there to be confirmed by the Crimson Knights, because they wanted to get into the Veiled Alliance. Green Test is what it is called right? If you delve into 2nd edition material, you find that the place has gith, agony beetles, crimson knights, id fiends, yuan-ti, t'chowb, bats, horaxes, baazrags, sandlings, thraxes, crystal spiders, dwarven banshees... among others. I was planning on also making 4e statistics for those creatures that are not otherwise included in a Monster Manual or the Dark Sun Creature Catalog. I already have the agony beetle and the crimson knight done, and I've started work on meorty and agony beetle swarm. Previously, for adventures in the city itself, I made stats for Tyrian Guardsmen, citizens of Tyr, elf filches, thugs, and burglars, because I wanted to be ready for my players to pick fights with everyday sort of folks... which they have, on several occasions. I've made 4e versions of the Tarek (credits to Robert Adducci), Maenad, and Gnoll, specifically for use in Dark Sun. Some work has been done on Belgoi, Pterran, Ssuran, Silt Runner... I'm looking to make of the setting-specific intelligent humanoids playable as PCs. It is exhaustive but fun work and I wouldn't mind sharing my labor with other Dark Sun DMs!
I wouldn't mind sharing my labor with other Dark Sun DMs!
Please do!
- Tarek (©Robert Adduci, with modifications), Maenad, Gnoll
- 2 pages of feats (Crafting is back!)
- 10 mantras (©Robert Adduci, although I changed the component cost to a tiny amount of xp)
- 5 rituals (Necromancy and homonculi)
- 28 NPC roleplaying cards (15 are stock Dark Sun NPCs)
- 14 NPC combat cards (11 are stock Dark Sun NPCs)
- 8 faction cards
- MSWord forms for combat encounters and skill challenges
- Skill challenge (Trials of House Shahram, a fun masquerade party in the Blacksun Villa)
- 18 codex cards (documents, ritual books, treasure maps)
Forms www.dropbox.com/sh/sctnakf4gexvso8/VNnYK...
Maps www.dropbox.com/sh/zxdklr8kwrc7vbx/gXMvZUO31y
Mechanics www.dropbox.com/sh/t0psflv3gwn08vj/qLk3p_7gau
Races www.dropbox.com/sh/12yylmgoary6jkq/PXjAC6ZKv_
i.imgur.com/9EVeMUA.jpg
Maps www.dropbox.com/sh/zxdklr8kwrc7vbx/gXMvZUO31y
Cards are updated with 3 new NPCs (including Jebea Shom and Etheros) and cards for rituals and martial practices. Also some character feature cards to make running ultra complicated NPCs (Like Timor) a little bit easier. Oh and I included all the monsters I customized for my game, including lower rank templars, street urchins, thugs, burglars, common citizens, and Tyrian guardsmen. The Crimson Knights and Agony Beetles help me fill Under Tyr with nastiness. Planning on making a swarm version of the Agony Beetle as well.
Maps now includes the Screaming Cellar, which I made with the pyromancers.com program.
One of my players is making full-size versions of the Arena of Tyr, the Elven Market, and the Drunken Giant. They look pretty stupendous so far and I will post them when they are completed. Then we will embark on our first cooperative mega project, mapping the entire Iron Square of Tyr. Should fit snugly onto a Chessex megamat.
looks like an Austin Dark Sun group has been making their own version of the world:
sites.google.com/site/darksunaustin/regi...