Welcome to Mistfall

Mistfall is the only majority-human city on the saurian continent. It's been there for about half of the metropolis' 3000 year history. This coexistence has only been peaceful for the past few centuries, and only then because the two sides proved too evenly matched for either to maintain a consistent advantage. The Mistfall Wars lasted the latter half of one saurian emperor's reign, the entirety of the next, and continued several decades into the reign of a third before he finally ended it. The High Council of Mistfall ceded what territory it still had control of outside the city walls, a foreign quarter was established and walled off, and slavers from Mistfall were forbidden from hunting outside the city walls. Trade routes formed while old grudges simmered.

There are humans who still repeat their great-grandfathers' war stories with xenophobic pride, as they drink and polish antique weapons. Saurians live much longer, and many are alive today who personally fought in the wars. The accounts of these two groups rarely match up.

Much of Mistfall's nature is defined by unique geography. The city was originally established as a mining colony at the point where a great river cascades down an ore-rich cliffside, several hundred feet high. Corkscrew tunnels were dug into the cliffs to lead up to the oldest mines, and the homes of the original miners were located at the base of this cliff, where the constant fog produced by the waterfall gave the city its name.

The three minerals extracted from these mines are galvanium, lodestone, and lumenite crystals.

While the miners stumbled about in the mists below the cliff, the ruling class which owned the mines built their manors above. This designed stratification of class quickly became accepted as Traditional and Just How Things Are as the colony grew from a mining colony to a town to a powerful city-state, and is stronger than ever today. Those lucky enough to live in High Town rarely see fit to brave the squalor and dangers of Low Town, and those who appear to belong in Low Town are routinely harassed and chased off by High Town guards.

Low Town

A combination of poor visibility and abject poverty makes Low Town particularly dangerous. It's not advisable to walk around here alone. Characters without infravision can barely make out objects 20' away. Ancient two story buildings have had third and fourth floors built on top of them in different architectural periods. Many of these structures have collapsed entirely, and a few have been rebuilt. There's an edible but foul-tasting grey moss that grows on everything and rots the teeth and discolors the skin of those who eat it over time.

Slave hunting is legal in this district. To appease abolitionists without banning slavery, the High Council also made it legal for slaves to kill the slaver that caught them (not their eventual owners of course, many of whom have friends and/or seats on the High Council).

Every lower class vice you could imagine being tempted with probably exists in Low Town. There are underground fighting pits, klartesh dens, gambling halls and whorehouses all over the place.

Not surprisingly, the most interesting tavern for your average low-level adventuring party is in this part of town. Ask around for the Mongrel Hole, but be careful not to look like a mark. It's a drug-fueled hub for outsider art and music, as well as the best place to find desperate people who need a job done discreetly.

Foreign Quarter

The only way into the city without flying, as the other districts sealed their ancient gates after the Treaty of 1104 (Post-Shift) was signed. There are two embassy complexes here, one of the Saurian Empire and one of the Oliphant Kingdom. The rest of the quarter is overcrowded tenements full of refugees fleeing saurian oppression and civil war, but forbidden from entering the city proper. This includes a fairly wide variety of sentient life forms from all over the multiverse.

There are two gatehouses in the Foreign Quarter, one that leads out into the wilderness, and one that leads into Low Town. There are barge services that haul goods upriver to the waterfall and load them onto an elevator. There is also a whirligig platform at each embassy, used by the the respective ambassadors and their agents to travel directly to High Town.

Slave hunting is legal here, but not on embassy grounds.

The Mines

The ore veins and crystal deposits have been going strong through 3000 nearly uninterrupted years of mining, which means that many of the dozens of mine clusters have been depleted and abandoned. Some of the abandoned ones have become outlaw hideouts or flying monkey nests, while others have attracted weird outsiders. 

The first automatons were designed to function as tireless slaves for the mines, and some chose to return to the mines years after achieving sentience and emancipation, either to work or simply to live there.

The Sewers

Deep, complex, and surprisingly clean tunnels beneath the streets, occasionally forming junctions with abandoned mine clusters. Dwarven engineers were brought into the city to construct this maze centuries ago, and built their own undercity directly into it. Their great-great-grandchildren still live down there, where they wheelieboard around like anthropomorphic tortoises and put on shows of literally underground music that echo up through the sewer grates to the delight of topside children and the horror of their parents.

High Town

This is really the collective name for three adjacent districts (Old Town, Mistfall Academy, and the Diamond Quarter), but it feels like a totally different city from Low Town, and people tend to refer to it as such. Slave hunting is illegal here and you're much less likely to get mugged, for example.

Old Town

Primarily inhabited by the city's middle-class professionals, this is also where the guilds are headquartered. The most prominent guild is unquestionably the Engineers’ Guild. This is also where the only officially sanctioned arena is located, where teams of gladiators are arranged to battle each other, or sometimes captured dinosaurs, in a desperate attempt to one day earn their freedom.

While slavers aren't allowed to hunt here, the more successful ones have set up rookeries where kenku are bred, incubated, hatched, and prepared for sale.

Mistfall Academy

This ancient university teaches a narrow, traditionalist interpretation of magic, philosophy, and the arts, but excels in the mechanical and architectural sciences, due to sustained investment and cooperation from the Engineers' Guild. Its buildings are fancifully designed, with basic shapes exaggerated and arranged in apparently meaningless configurations.

Diamond Quarter

The least densely populated region of the city and the highest concentration of wealth. Near-constant guard patrols make this district extremely safe, but only for those who can pass as residents. Gated gardens surround elaborate towers which hold entire families of decadent and incestuous nobility that you can assume keep truly horrifying secrets. Some of these families have become so inbred that they only resemble humans on a superficial level at this point.

The Council Tower at the center of the Diamond Quarter dwarfs the rest of the district. It also houses Mistfall Bank's central vault and the majority of the city's garrison.

JOESKY TAX:

Flying Monkeys are thieving little bastards with white fur and wings that help them blend in with the Low Town mists (advantage to stealth in fog or mist), and behave with the approximate intelligence of neglected human four year olds. They’re also alcoholics that can smell any booze you have straight through the bottle and your pack. Many of them collect stolen hats.

Hit Dice: 1

Number Appearing: 1d4 + 2

Armor: none, but 18 DEX

Damage: 1d4 bite + monkey fever 

Move: as human + flight

Morale: 5

*1/6 chance each flying monkey is a carrier. PCs get a daily resistance save to avoid permanent DEX drain (1 DEX/day), fever lasts 1d3 days.

A Tale of Potential Poop

In Sunday night's Black Hack game, the party (Allison the 12 year old 21st century alice, Kalasso the wandering saurian priest, and Chevalier d'Eon the mage) made their way to one of the saurian towns in the Hojo Mori rainforest. I didn't have any specific NPCs or events in mind, so it was pretty much all driven by the players and the dice.

The guards stopped them on the way in, and Kalasso almost immediately asked if anyone inside needed healing. It turned out that there was something wrong with the local lord's heir. Before approaching the castle though, they wanted to go find a beastmaster and see about incubating this rotjaw egg they'd acquired previously. After a brief discussion, they elected to have a sort of coffin-cart made, in which they'd simulate a rotjaw nest by filling it with dung and mulch, and bury the egg in that. Then they got distracted by a crazy-eyed fortune teller.

Once some gems were sold off and a deal had been struck with a local carpenter, they went up to the castle. Inside, they learned that the hatchling had been in a coma for a week now, and the court healer was stumped. Kalasso examined the patient but failed to make a concrete diagnosis, even with the comprehensive book on jungle diseases that Allison suddenly realized she had stashed at the bottom of her backpack.* Then Chevalier thought to cast detect magic, and discovered that this was actually a curse designed to look like a disease. The party went to ask the crazy fortune teller what to do, and she told them to talk to the spirits in the caves at the other end of the map.

*If you aren't familiar with the Alice class from A Red & Pleasant Land, they have this "exasperation" ability where if they get really stuck, the situation changes in their benefit in some randomly determined dream-logic kind of way.

So the plan at this point was to stay the night at the inn, then go pick up the completed incubation wagon from the carpenter's shop, find some farmers to fill it with fertilizer, and start a three day journey to the spirit caves. This plan was derailed when I rolled for that morning's weather and got "flash flood." When the PCs got to the carpenter's shop, he and his family were bugging out in high quality canoes. The PCs found a boat in the attic that was big enough for them and the (still empty) wagon and got out alive, but headed in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go.

So now I have a group of players with "gather a big pile of shit and rotting plant matter" as an explicit short-term goal.

D20 "HEY I'M NEW IN TOWN WHAT'S THE WORD" TABLE

1 The local lord's hatchling has been in a mysterious coma for 3d4 days. The healers in town are all completely stumped because it's actually a magical curse. The hatchling will have a 1 in 8 chance of dying every day after day 14.

2 The town is about to begin its week long Festival of Ancestors. The sequence is: opening procession, drug fueled partying, ceremonial defeat of death & peak partying, final night devoted to somber reflection.

3 A famous acting troupe is in town. Their play recounts the events of one of Hojo Mori's legendary exploits and takes advantage of illusion magic. The conquest of the goliaths and the binding of the cave spirits are popular subjects.

4 The town is currently besieged by whichever of the other local lords likes this one the least. The two sides are evenly matched and waiting for each other to make a move when the PCs show up.

5 The town is celebrating the hatching of the lord's healthy new heir. The egg has been secretly been exchanged with the offspring of a sorceress and a powerful demon.

6 Slave revolt! These towns usually keep a variety of species as slaves. If the lord of this town doesn't believe in slavery, the saurian citizens are rioting.

7 The majority of a hunting party has been slain by a jungle tyrant. Their funeral is today. The ceremony is a sky burial on the roof of the castle's tallest tower, with the whole town watching the sky lizards in mournful silence.

8 The local lord is hosting a Tournament of Champions tomorrow. The prize is an amulet that gives its wearer a +2 bonus to all saving throws. It also has the secret, nearly undetectable power to act as both eyes and ears for the lord.

9 An ambassador is here, with servant and bodyguards, representing one of the other lords in the region. There is a 1 in 3 chance that the ambassador is a spy and/or an assassin.

10 Grisly murder scenes are the work of an unsuspecting saurian were-raptor.

11 The town is currently rebuilding in the wake of a flash flood. Expect all goods to be sold at 1d4 times their regular prices. 1 in 3 specialty items simply aren't available right now.

12 The eggs of four peasant families have gone missing over the past three weeks. The party may enter but no one may leave until the culprit has been found.

13 The whole town is convinced that a local hatchling is some kind of messianic figure, loudly agreeing that obviously mundane, routine occurrences are miraculous portents.

14 The local lord's financial advisor has been assassinated. His three potential successors are the only current suspects; each has a 1 in 4 chance of being guilty (leaving open the possibility of a conspiracy or another killer with a different motive).

15 The PCs arrive in the middle of an execution. The condemned tradesman's wife is convinced that he was set up. She's right, but no one wants to hear it. The man is being executed for possession of heretical documents that were planted in his desk.

16 One of the local tradesmen is trying to unite the rest of them into a guild. The various business owners in town have agreed to hold a vote one week from today. The local lord is opposed to this, but must allow the vote or risk an uprising.

17 A goliath enslaved as a pit fighter has become so successful that he's almost ready to buy his freedom. His master would see him die before allowing that to happen, but would risk a riot if this charismatic fan favorite was openly murdered.

18 Slaves and citizens alike have been falling prey to a brain-eating plague. Every day in town, each PC has 1/12 chance of contracting the disease via mosquito bite. INCUBATION 24 hrs, DURATION 7 days, INCREMENT 6 hrs, EFFECT 1d2 permanent INT damage.

19 A power-hungry mage has recently failed to take the stronghold, causing lots of collateral damage. Expect all goods to be sold at 1d4 times their regular prices. Everyone is suspicious and resentful of all visiting spellcasters right now.

20 The local lord has recently had a mystical experience that caused them to add a core belief to their personal philosophy, possibly calling one of their previous beliefs into question. Conversations in town are dominated by this paradigm shift and its implications, which are still trickling down, slowly, to the general populace.

More Yoon-Suin

EDIT: Okay so there were some problems with the cover of the print edition but the pdf is on sale now for £6.00 (which google assures me is $9.25).

I have it on reasonably good authority that Yoon-Suin should be released on Monday if nothing stupid happens. It's an OSR style setting with a vague and gloriously misappropriated Tibetan flair. As long as you don't go into it expecting any more historical or cultural accuracy than Forgotten Realms would give you, you're good. It's going to consist (last I heard anyway) of a very evocative Marco Polo stand-in's journal, and all the system-neutral random tables you could possibly need to run a campaign in the setting. Like hundreds of them. Enough that I'm pretty sure any GM who was looking could find something they'd want to use in their own game and setting.

In my last post, I told you that I did the map for it, but didn't mention that it went through a few versions on the way to what you saw in the trailer.

I also never mentioned that I hadn't really done this kind of map before, at least not in public. The image above is from my first stab at it. I kind of liked the weird, abstract mountains (where the yak people live), but it lost all the detail and ended up way too dark when I shrunk it down to the size I needed.

Tea? Semen? Who even knows these days.

I ended up not using these landmark icons because there wouldn't have been
anything to match them visually in the top third of the map.Which kinda sucks
cause I like them but oh well whatcha gonna do.

As you can see, that one was basically just me fucking around with different sorts of mountains. Compare those to the one I eventually ended up going with (sans labels):

The text David gave me to work from went into some detail about what adventurers could expect to find in the northern valleys, so I made a serious effort to emphasize the valleys and ridgelines in that one.

This map of the Yellow City didn't make it into the book, but I think it's pretty cool. The fancier buildings are where the upper crust lives (slug people because fuck you why doesn't your campaign have politically powerful slug people), as you might imagine, and the text really describes a shitload of potential adventures to be had in the ruined areas as well as the dozens of tiny islands to the south (where the crab people live). Oh hey it looks like I scanned that one when it was an early pencil sketch too. Look how big those islands almost were:

Okay that's all I got right now bye.

Oppenheim Rumors

I felt like screwing around with the Kellerlabyrinth some more. These are some rumors you may hear in the city above it.

1 Not everyone is willing to put up with Catholic rule. There’s a group that meets deep in the kellerlabyrinth, each week, on the eve of the sabbath.

2  There’s been an outbreak of the plague. We must seek out the witch and cut this evil off at its source, before she spreads it further!

3 You know, some of the older cellars don’t even belong to anyone anymore; just locked up loot, and no one’s got the key. 

4 Keep away from the Den of the Dragon, if you value your eternal souls! That wicked old easterner Zheng’s been leading our children into temptation too long.

5 My niece went down into the kellerlabyrinth, and never came out. Last week, someone said he saw a giant spider wearing her dress!

6 I met a man who fought the Swedes up north in Breitenfeld (September 1631). He said they will never be stopped.

7 The kellerlabyrinth is a hive of sin and heresy, crawling with witches and hideous abominations. Stay in the Lord’s sunlight, where the dangers are at least familiar. 

8 I hear the inquisitors are offering a reward of 30 pieces of silver for information leading to the capture of a practitioner of witchcraft.

9 I saw a rat the size of a pony down in the tunnels the other day! You won’t catch me down there again.

10 I hear that a group of women has dared to usurp control of a town near Wurzburg. It’s not right, I tell you. Someone needs to remind them of a woman’s place. (referring to Better Than Any Man, the most elaborate Free RPG Day release I’ve ever seen. Download the pdf version here.)

11 All the dog owners I know have had their hounds go missing in the past couple weeks.

12 The booze must be starting to get to me. I swear I saw an eyeball crawling around in here on little pink legs earlier. I’ll definitely quit drinking tomorrow. ::belch::

13 The Hapsburgs have commandeered at least a half dozen cellars to store their munitions. Good thing it’s too damp down there for a fire to start accidentally.
14 I was robbed on the road, my friend — by the devil himself, I tell you! He wore a green suit and a blood-red cloak.

15 My cousin said she saw a Roman officer in the tunnels. Apparently he made as if to remove his helmet with both hands, but the whole head came off with it. She swears it winked at her before fading away.

16 See that guy with a hook for a hand over there? He claims to have explored more of the kellerlabyrinth than anyone alive.

17 The old beggar, Whiskey Pyotr, swears up and down that he seen a wolf, big as a horse, running through the streets of Oppenheim. My pa says it was the whiskey what seen it. 

18 I have a friend who works for the Spanish, and he says that a prominent servant of the Hapsburgs is secretly working with protestant dissidents.

19 Eduardo Hapsburg has just arrived in town. Word is he’s looking for someone specific.

20 I saw two men in grey robes pay a couple of thugs, the identity of whom may or may not be known to me, for three tightly wrapped bundles. Why yes, I would say the bundles were about corpse sized. How much gold did you say you have on you?

Wandering around and partying in Mistfall

What is it about a city that truly defines it? It's not the landmarks or the shops or history of the town. It isn't court intrigue or some epic quest. It's what happens when you walk around aimlessly and get shitfaced with complete strangers.

I usually roll on this table a few times in a game day whenever the PCs are just sort of wandering around. If they're actually trying to stay focused and get something done, I treat it like a wandering monster check (1/6 chance of an encounter).

URBAN ENCOUNTERS

1 A pair of angry guards with tiny penises harassing some foreigner.
2 A group of five rats, each carrying a different item of jewelry, runs into the sewer.

3 Pregnant cultist fleeing priests of the Eternal Child asks you to help her hide.

4 A drunken veteran wants to tell you a story. It has a 50% chance of being true.

5 Simeon the singer. Wants someone to write epic songs about, will leave if he gets bored.

6 The raven familiar of Zographa, the lady of Sunrise Tower, has taken an interest in you.

7 A bald, bespectacled, dwarf arguing with his young human friend who thinks these pills he's been taking are making him smarter. They want you to settle their argument for some reason.

8 A masked woman, wearing a flowing grey cloak, running across the rooftops.

9 Oh shit there’s a dragon! Why isn’t it attacking? Look, it’s landing in Central Square. Someone should probably go see what it wants.

10 A mime that refuses to leave you alone. More mimes start following you every few turns. They're starting to compete for attention.

11 Street hustler selling tobacco without a license. A couple of guards appear to be taking an interest.

12 A knight in red armor casually kills a peasant for making a rude gesture. No one blinks.

13 Random PC’s hat is stolen by a flying monkey. Save with disadvantage to avoid.

14 Save or get your coin purse stolen by a 1.street urchin 2.handsome/beautiful redhead and accomplice 3.sextagenarian 4.dandy. 

15 You notice a fat man with a mustache and an apron beating a dog with a stick in a side alley.

16 You notice a fat man with a mustache and an apron beating a woman with a stick in the street.

17 A well-dressed man hands you a fancy invitation, winks, and disappears down a side street.

18 A flying monkey goes for one of your equipped weapons. Save or watch it fly away.

19 A wide trail of fresh blood leads into a nearby alley.

20 A group of six well-armed guards mistakes one of you for a wanted murderer.

21 Man gives you a blood-stained coded message addressed to Lady Annecke Bartolomeus and says “please” as he dies.

22 Prostitutes; gain 3xp for every 1sp spent, but save or catch a fucked up disease.

23 A flying monkey steals a passing lady's powdered wig, and she starts swearing creatively at it.

24 Freak storm out of nowhere. Lightning keeps striking the statues in Ambassador’s Square.

25 Man getting away from pursuing guards runs right past you, 45% chance he’s innocent.

26 Children with slingshots are trying and failing to get their ball back from a flying monkey.

27 Young man tries to feel out your politics, gives you a pamphlet if you’re on his side. 

28 Town crier yelling about something the PCs did recently (if at all applicable).

29 Lost child needs to find his way to one of the inns but doesn’t know the name of the place.

30 Street hustler selling potions from a many pocketed cloak.

You know what a carousing table is right? The fastest way to level up is to find a shitload of cash and then blow it all partying. You get 2xp for every silver piece you spend frivolously, but you also need to save vs. becoming blackout drunk. If you fail the save, you have to roll on the carousing table.

CAROUSING

1 You wake up in bed with someone of a gender you don’t usually have any interest in. +500xp.

2 Save or vomit with volume and force once every hour today. There’s blood in it.

3 You wake up naked on the roof of the stables. Your friends might remember the stranger you were chatting up, hopefully you can find them before you’re arrested.

4 You wake up in the richly furnished room of a noble, who is snoring loudly beside you.

5 Save or suffer from PTSD hallucinations once every hour today.

6 You lost a finger. Permanent -1 penalty to tinkering checks.

7 You find a contract, which you have signed in blood, with a being who’s signature is an unintelligible glyph. You now have an at-will touch ability that heals you while draining your opponent’s HP. In exchange, you agreed to complete an unspecified task at a later date.

8 People you don’t recognize keep yelling “Hey! Pigfucker!” and cheering when they see you.

9 You befriend a well-informed local, who can usually be found at the Mended Lantern.

10 You wake up in an alley surrounded by the mangled corpses of flying monkeys. +10xp.

11 You’ve gambled away all your cash. 1xp for each 5sp lost (instead of the usual 2xp to 1sp ratio for partying).

12 You went along with some cultist’s ritual thinking it was a weird sex thing. Now there’s some fucked up egg sack in your stomach. Save once per day; after four failures, they hatch into 3d4 cannibal brain stems, bursting out of your stomach and doing 1d12 damage each.

13 You wake up with a hook in place of your hand and 1d20x100gp more than you had. 

14 You wake up in jail. Bail is set at 1d20x10sp.

15 You wake handcuffed to a fat sweaty man in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse.

16 Someone was offended by a joke you made and smashed a bottle over your head, knocking you out. You begin the day with only 75% of your normal max hp.

17 One of your magic items is missing. It was probably that local you thought you were making friends with last night. You may not have his real name, but he has a distinctive neck tattoo.

18 Gambling binge actually went well. Regain all the money you just spent and gain 50xp.

19 The last thing you remember was everyone buying you shots after you saved a little boy from choking. It seems half the neighborhood was related to him.

20 You wake up with a demon tattoo on your back. It whispers things to you in your sleep.

21 You have been sold as cattle to a coven of vampires.

22 There’s a parrot in the room. It keeps saying things like “hide the loot” and “dead man’s hill”.

23 You wake up in the middle of being buried alive.

24 You have been challenged to and accepted a duel with an arrogant nobleman (who is also an experienced fighter), set to go down at noon in Founder’s Square.

25 There’s a dead hooker in your bed. She was definitely alive when you passed out.

26 Guess what? You’re a werewolf now. No, you can’t control it. The moon will be full for the next two nights (unless the dm already keeps track of that).

27 You pass out smoking a pipe and wake up with the room on fire.

28 You tried to start a brawl but kept swinging and missing. No one else got involved but you caused a lot of property damage on your own. You owe 1d12x20sp.

29 Congratulations, you are now married. To a donkey.

30 You wake up in a trash heap. It was warm and cozy but the smell will not come off. Disadvantage to pretty much any interactions all day and check for wandering monsters twice as often.

If you don't have a d30 there's plenty of javascript dice rollers and free phone apps that do. You probably know that though, right?