Dire Panda
2013-04-07, 05:19 PM
Some of the best adventures or entire campaigns are built around a memorable place: a mysterious dungeon, a city full of intrigue, or simply the same room which appears in every inn the heroes visit. What are the most interesting locations you've created or visited?
Here's one I used in my group's most recent adventure:
The Tower of Chains
"Adventurers, you have long plumbed this world's ruins, and know all too well how centuries of evil can... change a place. This prison is much the same, save for the fact that it was never abandoned..."
The most feared prison on the continent, this solitary spire stands alone amidst miles of desert, its weathered surface hinting at at truly ancient origins. In fact, none can say exactly when it was constructed, but records from the Second Empire reveal that it is at least a thousand years old. Local superstition holds that it simply rose from the desert, a beacon of evil that compelled mankind to hoard its worst members in one place so that their combined wickedness could attain a life of its own. One thing is for certain: if the prison wasn't tainted originally, it is now.
The first thing a canny prisoner notices upon entering is that the guards are no more in control than he is. Entire cellblocks - and more recently, entire floors - are sealed off with barricades and spells because they are simply too dangerous to enter. The guards draw straws to determine who has to stand watch adjacent to tainted zones, because anyone who survives their first week knows all too well how suddenly the prison can turn on them.
At least the guards can run. When the prison comes to life, the best an inmate can hope is that it will sate its bloodlust before it reaches his cell. Prisoners have been found strangled by their own bedsheets, choked on water that froze while they drank it, or simply turned inside-out overnight. Sometimes, when nobody is watching him, a prisoner will be replaced by a skeleton. Sometimes prisoners are absorbed into the walls or floor. Sometimes a cell block will catch fire, but nothing besides bodies is even slightly burned. Occasionally, extradimensional passages will spontaneously appear between cells, accompanied by an outbreak of cannibal madness that inevitably depopulates a cellblock.
The prison doesn't always kill its inhabitants - more subtle forces can manifest themselves. Shivs have been known to continuously weep blood and inmates often hear voices, but the most notorious is the screaming bread - loaves that shriek when cut or bitten, but which always regenerate themselves so long as a scrap is left. Nobody knows where it comes from; loaves simply appear in cells. Obviously this is a highly desired item, considering the poor rations, and prisoners have been known to wrap bedsheets around it before cutting it to make sure the guards can't hear and confiscate it. The small cadre of mages employed by the prison would love more samples to study, given how tightly tied to the prison's taint it is. The bread always mimics the scream of the last prisoner who died nearby, and occasionally an inmate will spit out a bone or tooth that grew back with the bread. Older loaves are almost completely ossified and inedible.
One might wonder how the prison can keep attracting guards. The young and the desperate take the job because it is a shortcut - albeit a risky one - to avoid compulsory military service: two months as a guard instead of two years defending the frontier. As much as they despise the prisoners, guards invariably come to loathe the warden and his mages more. The warden's name is unknown - some speculate that he may not even be human, since he has never been seen without his armor - but he has the attention of the highest circles of the empire, and standing orders to treat guards as "acceptable losses." The prison's mages report directly to the warden, and most guards believe that they aren't even trying to hold back the spread of taint: instead, they are trying to harness its power.
The wildest rumors surrounding the Tower of Chains claim that it is the larval form of an evil deity, bloated on the suffering of centuries of prisoners and ready to awaken in the near future. Certainly the taint is spreading more rapidly than ever before, yet the empire steadfastly refuses to abandon the ancient prison. According to the rumor-mongers, the warden is a representative of the lower planes, with whom the empire has struck an infernal bargain: in exchange for feeding the dark one generations of its sons and daughters, the empire will be become her chosen people when she finally awakens...
Here's one I used in my group's most recent adventure:
The Tower of Chains
"Adventurers, you have long plumbed this world's ruins, and know all too well how centuries of evil can... change a place. This prison is much the same, save for the fact that it was never abandoned..."
The most feared prison on the continent, this solitary spire stands alone amidst miles of desert, its weathered surface hinting at at truly ancient origins. In fact, none can say exactly when it was constructed, but records from the Second Empire reveal that it is at least a thousand years old. Local superstition holds that it simply rose from the desert, a beacon of evil that compelled mankind to hoard its worst members in one place so that their combined wickedness could attain a life of its own. One thing is for certain: if the prison wasn't tainted originally, it is now.
The first thing a canny prisoner notices upon entering is that the guards are no more in control than he is. Entire cellblocks - and more recently, entire floors - are sealed off with barricades and spells because they are simply too dangerous to enter. The guards draw straws to determine who has to stand watch adjacent to tainted zones, because anyone who survives their first week knows all too well how suddenly the prison can turn on them.
At least the guards can run. When the prison comes to life, the best an inmate can hope is that it will sate its bloodlust before it reaches his cell. Prisoners have been found strangled by their own bedsheets, choked on water that froze while they drank it, or simply turned inside-out overnight. Sometimes, when nobody is watching him, a prisoner will be replaced by a skeleton. Sometimes prisoners are absorbed into the walls or floor. Sometimes a cell block will catch fire, but nothing besides bodies is even slightly burned. Occasionally, extradimensional passages will spontaneously appear between cells, accompanied by an outbreak of cannibal madness that inevitably depopulates a cellblock.
The prison doesn't always kill its inhabitants - more subtle forces can manifest themselves. Shivs have been known to continuously weep blood and inmates often hear voices, but the most notorious is the screaming bread - loaves that shriek when cut or bitten, but which always regenerate themselves so long as a scrap is left. Nobody knows where it comes from; loaves simply appear in cells. Obviously this is a highly desired item, considering the poor rations, and prisoners have been known to wrap bedsheets around it before cutting it to make sure the guards can't hear and confiscate it. The small cadre of mages employed by the prison would love more samples to study, given how tightly tied to the prison's taint it is. The bread always mimics the scream of the last prisoner who died nearby, and occasionally an inmate will spit out a bone or tooth that grew back with the bread. Older loaves are almost completely ossified and inedible.
One might wonder how the prison can keep attracting guards. The young and the desperate take the job because it is a shortcut - albeit a risky one - to avoid compulsory military service: two months as a guard instead of two years defending the frontier. As much as they despise the prisoners, guards invariably come to loathe the warden and his mages more. The warden's name is unknown - some speculate that he may not even be human, since he has never been seen without his armor - but he has the attention of the highest circles of the empire, and standing orders to treat guards as "acceptable losses." The prison's mages report directly to the warden, and most guards believe that they aren't even trying to hold back the spread of taint: instead, they are trying to harness its power.
The wildest rumors surrounding the Tower of Chains claim that it is the larval form of an evil deity, bloated on the suffering of centuries of prisoners and ready to awaken in the near future. Certainly the taint is spreading more rapidly than ever before, yet the empire steadfastly refuses to abandon the ancient prison. According to the rumor-mongers, the warden is a representative of the lower planes, with whom the empire has struck an infernal bargain: in exchange for feeding the dark one generations of its sons and daughters, the empire will be become her chosen people when she finally awakens...