[PF1e] The Man Who Ate A City; prepping for a planar campaign

[EisenKreutzer]

I’m in the beginning phase of planning for a long term planar campaign.
It all started when I realized I have all these single city setting books lying around that I’ve never done anything with. How cool would it be if I could take all these amazing cities and string them together into a coherent campaign!
So thats what I’m trying to do now.

The premise is this: The player characters are approached by a man claiming to be Urbanus, the god of cities. He asks for their help, explaining that a handful of cities on multiple Prime Material planes are in extreme danger, and that he needs their help preventing disaster in each one.

He provides the characters with the means of reaching these cities, and a series of three challenge to face in each one: They must make each city their home. They must learn one of the cities deepest secrets, its «core truth.» And finally they must aquire a piece of the first stone laid down at the citys founding.
Once they have done these three things in a city, Urbanus promises them that the city is safe and rewards them.

What the characters don’t know during the first part of the campaign is that Urbanus is not a god at all, but rather something else entirely. Urbanus is an Andropolis, an andromorphic city.

The central conceit of this campaign is that every city is more than just a people, bricks and mortar. A city is a living thing, and its culture, buildings, streets and people are constituent parts of a greater metaphysical being called an Andropolis.
Andropoli are not divine beings, but a completely separate kind of entity. The physical city is its physical body, but it exists somewhat independently from its stone and timber construction. It is just as much a spiritual being as a physical one.

Urbanus is a very special kind of Andropolis. He is a parasite, and his ultimate goal is to consume each of the Andropoli the player characters are «saving» in order to become those cities and ascend to actual godhood.
During the second part of the campaign, the characters become aware that the «god» they have been working for is in fact evil. They discover the existence of Andropoli, and begin communicating and cooperating with the Andropoli they have been working in up to this point.
This second part is where the campaign gets weird. As the characters step into the world of anthropomorphic cities, the rules change and they begin to peek behind the curtain at whats really going on in the world.

In the third part, the characters take the fight to Urbanus armed with new knowledge and weapons. Urbanus’ plan involves consuming and becoming a handful of extremely aignificant cities to gain their very particular powers. His ultimate goal is to consume Sigil (in this particular campaign, the Lady of Pain is an Andropolis of particularly epic power) and become the ultimate power of the planes, the Great God of Cities.

The cities I have elected to use thus far are
Salt In Wound
Manifest, from Ghostwalk
The City of 7 Seraphs
Ptolus, City By The Spire
And Sigil, of course, of Planescape fame.

I’m currently reading up on these cities, as well as writing down ideas for the metaphysics of these anthropomorphic cities and just what kind of being Urbanus needs to be, what his methods and motivations really are and the general structure of this campaign.

[Gallowglass]

I’m in the beginning phase of planning for a long term planar campaign.
It all started when I realized I have all these single city setting books lying around that I’ve never done anything with. How cool would it be if I could take all these amazing cities and string them together into a coherent campaign!
So thats what I’m trying to do now.

The premise is this: The player characters are approached by a man claiming to be Urbanus, the god of cities. He asks for their help, explaining that a handful of cities on multiple Prime Material planes are in extreme danger, and that he needs their help preventing disaster in each one.

He provides the characters with the means of reaching these cities, and a series of three challenge to face in each one: They must make each city their home. They must learn one of the cities deepest secrets, its «core truth.» And finally they must aquire a piece of the first stone laid down at the citys founding.
Once they have done these three things in a city, Urbanus promises them that the city is safe and rewards them.

What the characters don’t know during the first part of the campaign is that Urbanus is not a god at all, but rather something else entirely. Urbanus is an Andropolis, an andromorphic city.

The central conceit of this campaign is that every city is more than just a people, bricks and mortar. A city is a living thing, and its culture, buildings, streets and people are constituent parts of a greater metaphysical being called an Andropolis.
Andropoli are not divine beings, but a completely separate kind of entity. The physical city is its physical body, but it exists somewhat independently from its stone and timber construction. It is just as much a spiritual being as a physical one.

Urbanus is a very special kind of Andropolis. He is a parasite, and his ultimate goal is to consume each of the Andropoli the player characters are «saving» in order to become those cities and ascend to actual godhood.
During the second part of the campaign, the characters become aware that the «god» they have been working for is in fact evil. They discover the existence of Andropoli, and begin communicating and cooperating with the Andropoli they have been working in up to this point.
This second part is where the campaign gets weird. As the characters step into the world of anthropomorphic cities, the rules change and they begin to peek behind the curtain at whats really going on in the world.

In the third part, the characters take the fight to Urbanus armed with new knowledge and weapons. Urbanus’ plan involves consuming and becoming a handful of extremely aignificant cities to gain their very particular powers. His ultimate goal is to consume Sigil (in this particular campaign, the Lady of Pain is an Andropolis of particularly epic power) and become the ultimate power of the planes, the Great God of Cities.

The cities I have elected to use thus far are
Salt In Wound
Manifest, from Ghostwalk
The City of 7 Seraphs
Ptolus, City By The Spire
And Sigil, of course, of Planescape fame.

I’m currently reading up on these cities, as well as writing down ideas for the metaphysics of these anthropomorphic cities and just what kind of being Urbanus needs to be, what his methods and motivations really are and the general structure of this campaign.


Man, I love this idea. I wish I could play in a this campaign!

I'm not sure if I have a lot of ideas to help though.

Check out the character Jack Hawksmoor from the comic book Authority. His entire shtick is he was modified by aliens to have powers that tie him into the "lifesphere" of cities. Meaning he is bound to the city he is in and has powers that reflect that. Sometimes that's well done, sometimes its terrible. He has powers like... hmm... if he goes to the china town section of san fransisco, he can tune into the similaries between there and, say, Canton China and be walking around the corner in San Francisco and instantly be in Canton. He can manifest the ideals of a city, he can manipulate the city pride of the crowd, etc. etc.

Perhaps your parasite Andropolis is the Andropolis of a dead city, a city that was once a marvel but is now an abandoned ruin. Perhaps the players end up having to go there to do the same three things in order to bind him to stop him. Only they find it filled with terrible homeless creatures (wanderers like the Githyanki perhaps) who have been brought there to stop them.

In addition to the big cities like Seraph and Sigil and Ptolus, you should start them with some small ones. Instead of Waterdeep, for example, use one of the ten towns of icewind dale or some other small town/village to show that there are small Andropolises as well. Those could be quick, one shot games instead of lengthy arcs.

There is a city made up of a flotilla of pirate ships in one of the campaign sets.

[EisenKreutzer]

Man, I love this idea. I wish I could play in a this campaign!

I'm not sure if I have a lot of ideas to help though.

Check out the character Jack Hawksmoor from the comic book Authority. His entire shtick is he was modified by aliens to have powers that tie him into the "lifesphere" of cities. Meaning he is bound to the city he is in and has powers that reflect that. Sometimes that's well done, sometimes its terrible. He has powers like... hmm... if he goes to the china town section of san fransisco, he can tune into the similaries between there and, say, Canton China and be walking around the corner in San Francisco and instantly be in Canton. He can manifest the ideals of a city, he can manipulate the city pride of the crowd, etc. etc.

Perhaps your parasite Andropolis is the Andropolis of a dead city, a city that was once a marvel but is now an abandoned ruin. Perhaps the players end up having to go there to do the same three things in order to bind him to stop him. Only they find it filled with terrible homeless creatures (wanderers like the Githyanki perhaps) who have been brought there to stop them.

In addition to the big cities like Seraph and Sigil and Ptolus, you should start them with some small ones. Instead of Waterdeep, for example, use one of the ten towns of icewind dale or some other small town/village to show that there are small Andropolises as well. Those could be quick, one shot games instead of lengthy arcs.

There is a city made up of a flotilla of pirate ships in one of the campaign sets.
Jack Hawksmoor did come to mind when I started thinking about this idea. I’m not sure what to do with it, but I do like that character and I think The Authority is part of the reason I even thought of this in the first place.

I do love the idea of Urbanus being a dead, or even undead city. That could be an incredibly cool origin atory for him, and might even tie in to how he can ultimately be defeated. Since a large part of what the characters do in the first act is discovering the «core truth» of the cities they visit, having them work to discover Urbanus’ core truth is a nice idea!

One thing that came to mind is an NPC from Planescape: Torment who stands around in Sigil mourning the death of his city that nobody else even remembers. I had thought of including something like this as a form of foreshadowing, before the characters even know cities are alive. Could be a cool and potentially significant detail leading up to their discovery of what Urbanus actually is.

My initial idea was to use only these huge, weird cities that are published in their own books and are a setting in themselves.
The reason for this is that I don’t want these cities to be just any old city, but rather a city of powerful significance. That way, it makes sense that Urbanus needs to consume and become these particular Andropoli. I haven’t wuite worked out the details of why or how this leads to power for Urbanus, but I have some half formed ideas.

You’ve given me some nice ideas! Thanks!

[JerichoPenumbra]

If you're still taking ideas/leading questions about the campaign I have a few. One is answering how are Andropoli born? How long does it take for one to form? What about when a city is based on the designs of another? Do they consider each other family/siblings/parent & child, or are they always wholly independent beings?

An Andropolis as you've said is more than the architecture of a city but also its people, culture, and by extension it's history. How do they deal/react with changes to themselves from these factors? Such as a sudden influx of refugees from a different culture or having the infrastructure of their water utilities collapse or be poisoned. Besides how they react to the idea's and feelings of the people living in them, how are they affected by the thoughts and feelings from people of other cities?

The idea of Urbanus potentially being a dead/undead city kinda reminded me of Atropus The-World-Born-Dead from Elder Evils. What if Urbanus was a city that was made and built in such a short time frame and then immediately had a plague or some other tragedy happened that killed the population so fast that its spiritual body had yet to fully form/be born. Or some big cataclysm happened to a large enough metropolis that it refused to die, even when not a trace of it remained.

Another potential is going a slightly different route than a dead city; a city that never was. Could be the dream (or nightmare) of a city that people collectively had. Maybe the idea of the perfect city that kings wanted to rule (or conquerors wanted to sack). When I say dream of a city I mean just that, as opposed to a city inside the plane of dreams (depending on your cosmology). Maybe Urbanus was the pet project of a guild of city-designers that could never get the funding or land for a settlement and sat in the office as other people kept adding to it for fun. Building off of that last idea, maybe it was the city no one wanted to be, and was made piecemeal by all rejected aspects of other city-projects that all happened to be tossed into the same waste-bin or something like that.

Hopefully this has given you food for thought.

[Eldan]

There is only one city that can be an undead city, in my mind. Moil (http://silvesti.wiki/wiki/Moil). The city that worshipped Orcus.

They angered Orcus (duh?) and he put the entire city in magic sleep until the next sunrise. Then he put the entire city under a magic, unbreakable shadow and moved it to the ethereal plane, so the sun would never rise on it again. Orcus of course then died himself and became an undead god of undeath, while over the years, all the inhabitants of hte city slowly died in their sleep and became a unique form of undead.

This can be easily twisted around. Moil is a sleeping city, locked in a dreamscape. Without living inhabitants, it can not change. That would also affect the city's Andropolis, who becomes a kind of vestige, a half-remembered dream of a city, that yearns to return to life. Perhaps it thinks that by eating other cities, it can bring itself back to life, like a kind of city vampire.

[Yanagi]

Okay so I'm just dropping in to enthuse about how cool this idea is.

Way back in the day there was this side character in Hellblazer (the John Constantine Vertigo book)--Map--who was the wizard of London. Like, his power was basically shamanish such that he could merge with the city: see, become stuff. Eventually he literally becomes London.

I love cities and how they each have their own insane logic of growth and function that's a collision of geography, age, culture, and resources. They really are alive, in the same weird way that houses are alive.

So good luck.

[EisenKreutzer]

Wow, both of these posts really inspired me!
Thank you so much, I’ve got a lot to work with now and feel like I have a firmer grasp on the direction I want to take this campaign!

[Eldan]

Okay so I'm just dropping in to enthuse about how cool this idea is.

Way back in the day there was this side character in Hellblazer (the John Constantine Vertigo book)--Map--who was the wizard of London. Like, his power was basically shamanish such that he could merge with the city: see, become stuff. Eventually he literally becomes London.

I love cities and how they each have their own insane logic of growth and function that's a collision of geography, age, culture, and resources. They really are alive, in the same weird way that houses are alive.

So good luck.

In a similar vein, there were several city magic characters in various China Miéville novels. There was an Egyptian guardian spirit who could possess any statue or other vaguely person- or animal-shaped ornament. There are the Londonmancers, who use their magic by drawing street maps of London and then altering them, which also alters the streets. And there was one character, an archmage, who disguised himself as a homeless man who kept scribbling grafiti on various walls, where it turns out that he was actually inscribing a city-wide magic circle ritual with the goal to sacrifice the entire population. Took him weeks.

Oh, and The City Born Great (link to a review/discussion) (https://www.tor.com/2019/03/20/cthulhu-versus-the-long-island-expressway-n-k-jemisins-the-city-born-great/), which is a very interesting take on city magic.

[SodaQueen]

This is an awesome idea!

I know it's Pathfinder but you should check 3.5's Cityscape book. The Zeitgeist in particular seems almost tailor made for this campaign.

https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/block/Zeitgeist

[Yanagi]

In a similar vein, there were several city magic characters in various China Miéville novels. There was an Egyptian guardian spirit who could possess any statue or other vaguely person- or animal-shaped ornament. There are the Londonmancers, who use their magic by drawing street maps of London and then altering them, which also alters the streets. And there was one character, an archmage, who disguised himself as a homeless man who kept scribbling grafiti on various walls, where it turns out that he was actually inscribing a city-wide magic circle ritual with the goal to sacrifice the entire population. Took him weeks.

Oh, and The City Born Great (link to a review/discussion) (https://www.tor.com/2019/03/20/cthulhu-versus-the-long-island-expressway-n-k-jemisins-the-city-born-great/), which is a very interesting take on city magic.

Kraken and The City And The City are some of my favorite SFF books.

Mieville does love cities and communicates it well.

Though I did Bas-Lag on audiobook and I feel he owes me medical compensation for the way that the phrases "Perdido Street Station" and "Khepri spit" are permanently lodged in my brain.

[Eldan]

The City and the City just didn't click with me, I must admit. I didn't like it. Kraken was pretty silly, but entertaining. For me, the best City Fantasy in general is Perdido Street Station, which is just brutal and beautifully written. I could quote every single line of it.


“The river twists and turns to face the city. It looms suddenly, massive, stamped on the landscape. Its light wells up around the surrounds, the rock hills, like bruise-blood. Its dirty towers glow. I am debased. I am compelled to worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the conjunction of two rivers. It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding. Fat chimneys retch dirt into the sky even now in the deep night. It is not the current which pulls us but the city itself, its weight sucks us in. Faint shouts, here and there the calls of beasts, the obscene clash and pounding from the factories as huge machines rut. Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins. Red brick and dark walls, squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes in the old town, culs-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres, a new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten volumes, old hospitals, towerblocks, ships and metal claws that lift cargoes from the water. How could we not see this approaching? What trick of topography is this, that lets the sprawling monster hide behind corners to leap out at the traveller? It is too late to flee.”

[Yanagi]

The City and the City just didn't click with me, I must admit. I didn't like it. Kraken was pretty silly, but entertaining. For me, the best City Fantasy in general is Perdido Street Station, which is just brutal and beautifully written. I could quote every single line of it.

I like "The City and The City" because the nonsense topology is such a great way of capturing the feel of old Warsaw Pact cites and their contradictory bits. I find myself imagining it in terms of immiscible blue and orange bits.

I know there's been a very square adaptation, but if every there was story to animate in an expressionist style....

Anyway, I was just in Tblisi recently and ended up in the area with Brezhenevskaya that are still standing and occupied, so I was thinking of that book.

[Eldan]

It probably is a lot more interesting if you can see it. What kind of adaptation? Comic? Fan movie?