Geography of the City of Werms

The city, as mentioned, is built on top of stone pillars rising up out of a seemingly bottomless hole in the ground known as Cambio's Delve.

The pillars appear to be natural formations, due to the irregular nature of their shapes and heights.  These extend up, in differing heights, above the surface of the edge of the delve by heights ranging from approximatedly 20', up to the tallest pillar (that is the current home of Globe Keep) which sticks up approximately 100' above the edge of the Delve.

The structures of the city, as described previously, consists of stone buildings, layers and layers of stone buildings.  The oldes layers of the city, built when it was first constructed, are now burried under as many (in some spots) as 10 layers of more modern growth and development above the original layers.  One of the few exceptions is the royal area around Globe Keep, which has not been replaced or buried over since founding, but has grown by building up (so that original layers are still buried under ground, but successive layers were not replacements, but augmentations, so that six layers down from the current structure of Globe Keep, there exists much earlier construction that is (at least partially) still in use.

As can be seen in the picture, there are 18 different pillars that rise up out of the Delve.  Three of these ('E', 'F', and 'R') all have stone bridges over to the surrounding land.  Those bridges allow travelers to enter and leave the city, along trade roads.  The roads pass through great curtain wall surrounded gates, consisting of multiple portcullises, and sandwiched between narrow, but tall, towers.  Large towers, hugging the edge of the Delve, provide for the end points of the curtain wall - it does not extend all the way around the delve.  The Delve itself is about four miles from north to south, and about three and a half, from east to west.

The tallest pillar, and the oldest established, is 'G', which rises about 100' above the surrounding country side.  The lowest pillar, and one that was not settled for a long, long time, is pillar 'P', which extends only about 20' above the surrounding country side.  It was, long after settlement and construction began on the others, used as a quarry, and there were great amounts of stone removed from the top - with the refuse dumped into the Delve, and the useful stone cut into the shapes and sizes needed.

Three of the pillars ('S', 'T', and 'U') are not connected to others, nor to the main country side.  They are in isolation, from ground traffic, from every else.  All of the other pillars are connected to one or more neighbors, and some ('E', 'F', and 'R') to the country around them.  There are multiple stone bridges at just about every point where a pillar is close enough to a neighbor to afford a crossing.  Many of these, between adjacent pillars, are at differing levels - some connecting the tops of the pillars to each other (arching stone bridges, reaching up or down, as height differences dictate), and some connecting either the building layers built on top of the pillars, or the dug out dungeon levels burrowed down into the pillars.

Due to a curious tax law, no city sales tax is exacted from sales transactions that don't take place on a pillar.  Because of this, twice a week there are very large sprawling market days that take place - all on the broadest of bridges between pillars.  They started out as impromptu affairs, but grew to daily nuisances, and finally the city had to regulate how frequently they occur, and how much throughway they have to leave on the bridges.  It can get quite clogged on the main bridges between pillars on a market day.

New Content Theme - Three for Three

In finishing up the Darkearth Plains, there are a couple of things left to do.  These fall into two categories, write ups on cities, and write ups on regional monster populations.

Consider the already mentioned regional monster populations.  There are the Horned Ones, the Marsh Trolls, the Furlingga Gnolls, the Shagmen, the Great Herd, the Destriel Dwarves, and others.  All of these deserve, at least, some stats and encounter charts. Perhaps later, however.

There are also the cities of the Darkearth Plains, which would certainly be a focal point of any Westroner character from the region, and which feature as the home for several important features (schools of magic; major structures of the Church; military order facilities, etc).

In Darkearth, proper, there are the cities of Khomaes, Werms and Huygen.  This next round of content will focus on sandbox level maps of those cities, and their immediate surrounding areas, as well as Three other postings for each city.  So that will make a total of 12 postings.  I will try to do this within the next two weeks, or before the end of June.

Khomaes, city of mists

 In order to keep things interesting for me, and for any potential readers, I will try to mix up the extra postings.  It could be sideline adventures, religious orders, schools of magic, spell write ups, encounter stats, legendary items, additional maps, etc.

Should be interesting.  At the end, I think I will end up with three cities, each with a very different feel, some level of mapping to suggest ideas for play, and additional crunchy information (with stats, more maps, encounters - whatever) to make these cities interesting for a campaign or convention game.

Werms, Northern city of clouds

Along the way, I might cheat and do some of the other interesting filler to back up my previous "Adventure Locations" content postings, but I will label each type (and cross index, and label, as usual).

Huygen, city of lights

To get started, I read the following series of Articles on designing Fantasy Cities.  I have been designing Fantasy cities for RPGs ever since I did the sprawling ruined city of Kadesh Barnea, back in 1982, in 11th grade (that one was inspired by, and drew heavily from, the old Dragon Magazine article - "Ruins: Rotted and Risky but Worth It" or something, I am quoting the title from memory...), but this article at Stuffer Shack is quite interesting. 

http://stuffershack.com/designing-fantasy-cities-purpose/


Note: I have not gotten any further on the Wiki idea.  I think it is a good idea, but I am having too much fun right now just cranking out content.  I will organize further, later on.