The Forbidden Palace of the Golden Emperor

It is said that since the Dawn of Man, a Golden Emperor has dwelled in the Forbidden Palace.   While obviously an exaggeration, it is true that parts of the palace complex date back to the first emperor to unify Cathay - perhaps even earlier.  Even through countless rebellions and the creation of a myriad of dynasties, for if anything true of Cathay it is that it seeks to break apart when it is whole and seeks to be whole when it is apart, an emperor has always lived there.  Even when the capital was moved during the previous dynasty, they took apart the empire palace and moved it plank by plan, stone by stone, golden throne by golden throne, to its new home in Winding Three Rivers.  

It is also said that each emperor that has lived their has gone mad, though some have been more mad than others.  His Celestial Majesty, the Golden Emperor of the World, Ruler of the Moon and the Sky, is madder than most.  Originally a rebel and a general, he grew aloof from politics after making himself emperor in the Red Blade Rebellion.  It is said that he murmured to himself while walking through halls at strange ours of the morning and began wearing a mask and gloves in order to avoid contact with contagions that he was sure surrounded him.

About ten years ago, he banished his entire court, including his concubines, wives, and children - indeed, everyone but his little lap dogs - from the palace.  Since then he has lived his life in a single room of the tallest tower of the outer wall.  His courtiers gather around the palace's moat each day carrying scrolls relating the issues facing the Kingdom That is the World.  He gazes at these with the aid of a spy glass and lowers his instructions down in a small basket.

The reason for the emperor's madness is the subject of much debate in the teashops and brothels of the capital.  Tradition holds that the ghosts of each emperor stay within the palace in order to advise their successors, though being mad themselves this advice is always poisonous to the mind. Others say that the various secret societies which truly run the empire have corrupted the emperor either with strange alchemy or foul magic.

In the years that have past since he banished his courtiers, the majority of the palace complex has gone into ruin almost preternaturally fast.  Knowing that even the guards have been banished, many rogues, thugs, and lowlifes have stolen into the ruins to abscond with the goods the treasures said to lie within.  Few have returned, and those that have have spoken of horrible creatures, rooms and corridors with unnatural dimensions, and fiendish traps that no previous record concerning the palace mentions.  

-----

The Forbidden Palace is meant to be the "campaign dungeon" of Cathay if I ever run it.  Quite a bit of the dungeon will be the upper works, but the complex stretches a good way below ground as well.  

What Noppin is Like

Precis: Hammer Horror Japan. 

Conspectus: An imbecilic half-catfish demon emperor who spends his days being entertained by sycophantic courtiers; the Forest of Suicides; monks of the Law attempting to turn themselves into living mummies and crawl into little boxes; ruined castles haunted by cannibalistic ghost-women; spider witches; despotic warlords with no regard for human life; horrible mountain goblins with long noses; hunchbacked, mad swordsmiths; ancient tombs that seem to predate the empire; horrible tetsubo wielding ogres with misshapen, horned heads

Taste; Sound; Image: Barbecued Eel; the music of Throne of Blood; Mitsukuni Defying the Skeleton Spectre

What Cathay is Like

Precis: Grotty China.  "ChinaHammer" meets A Chinese Ghost Story

Conspectus: His Celestial Majesty, Lord of the Stars and Moon and Golden Emperor of the Land of 1,283 Idols; hungry ghosts; wandering, bloodthirsty outlaws with a misplaced sense of nobility; mogwai; haunted temples on misty, worn mountain tops; sinister cults masquerading as criminal gangs and vice versa; an impersonal, uncaring bureaucracy that would make even Zenopolis seem efficient;  the Great Dragon's Kingdom Under the Sea - the Home of the Drowned Dead; Sagacious tutors and mad hermits attempting to teach rulers the ways of law; yetis!; thick bamboo forests stalked by natural and supernatural predators; alchemists making pacts with demons to ensure eternal life; tribes of horrid monkey-people and pig-men; martial arts schools that actually train men to be thieves and brigands; "The Voyage of Parco Molo"; A lot of hells

Taste; Sound; Image:  Chinese takeout; Tan Dun's "Through the Bamboo Forest," Li Cheng's Buddhist Temple in Mountain

What the Desert Lands are Like

Precis: A desert realm of Sword & Sorcery with a satanic twist.  Doom metal Stygia.

Conspectus: Doomed Zenopolis with it's glittering domes and ruined temples; its sprawling catacombs and hidden undercity; leprous mutants on sky-boats dragged through the firmament by byakhee, war-shantaks, and other chained demons; the Black Ziggurat; ghost cities squatting in the dessicated remnants of riverbeds; the Temple-Tomb of Moloch of the Fuel-Less Fire; the undead army of the Black Pharoah crawling across the dunes; sand worms!; sand storms and accompanying sand demons; the Meeting Place of the Demons; Sinbad-style islands ruled by Zothique-style necromancers; desert shrines served only by masked ghoul-priests; hideous ghorii; the mummies of ancient kings who died before the Law came to the World; the Blood-Red Sea; ruined castles of the Sword Brothers

Taste, Sound, Image: Lamb kabob; Zoraster's the Old World, Diablo II Act II

A Grand Tour of the First City of Men: Houses of Ill Repute

Many of the neighborhoods in the Lower City and the Docks contain small alehouses meant to service slaves and freemen in the employ of the various noble houses.  These are typically stocked by the house that has the most power in that respective neighborhood, and since this is the case they usually have only beer or mead and other cheap intoxicants that are easily made in the farmland around Uz.  They are typically open-air affairs that are adjacent to a small building which stores the beer.  Carousing rolls made at one of these establishments are made on a d4.

The Wine House of Barahm-Sin is a famous haunt of drunkards and adventurers.  It is where each session of the game is assumed to start unless I am told otherwise.  It is owned by a Getherite who believes himself to be a living god and is one of the only places where men can debauch that is not owned by one of the noble houses.  Barahm-Sin typically serves the strange turquoise wine of Ilion but can provide other, more exotic intoxicants should the need arise.  Carousing rolls made here are made on a d6.

The Temple of She of the Silken Thighs possesses perhaps the most infamous brothel in all of Uz.  It is a temple celebrating an obscure aspect of Li-Lit of the Night, though some argue that it might actually be a cohort of that goddess or possibly even a deified priestess of the goddess from a long forgotten age.  Like all brothels, the Temple of She of the Silken Thighs also trades in a number of intoxicants not available elsewhere - including, it is said - strange rays that provide the user with infinite pleasure.  Carousing rolls made here are on a d8.

Some of the newer noble houses that build their squat palaces on the Acropolis posses marble bathhouses and pleasure domes designed to display the wealth of the owners as well as provide them with a place to engage in their deranged fantasies. They can provide the carouser with all manner of foreign and otherworldly pleasures.  Access to these is restricted to the nobility, and thus any adventurers wishing to join in the debauchery must either be very close associates with one of the houses - preferably the one whose pleasure dome they wish to access - or become nobility themselves through deeds performed in the underworld or abroad.  Carousing rolls made at one of these establishments are made on a d10.

The Pleasure Palace of Mari-Adab outshines all others in opulence and the turpitudes available to its clients are utterly unmentionable.  Carousing rolls made here are made on a d12.

Right now, each of these use the standard mishaps chart, but once I've done more work on the adventure sites I hope to be able to give each one its own particular set of perils.

In the next part of the tour, I'll discuss notable homes whose owners the PCs might wish to befriend or rob, including the manses of some notable sorcerers.

Uz Session 3 Highlight Reel

Another Uz game happened...

• No slaves were taken this time.
• Much of the session included trying to trick Ubara the Man-god's new hirelings into doing things for the party.
• The party spent most of the time exploring a set of doors that lead off a massive hallway leading to tomb of Uz of Uz. They eventually figured out that these were his concubines and wives.  The key difference seemed to be the garb and grave goods accompanying the different women, as well as the fate of their children - which was depicted on the walls of their tomb.  His "wives" seemed to produce strange beings resembling martians while the concubines' children were cast into the Fuel-Less Fire.
• The party constructed "the Fire Lance of the Ancient Hyperzepherians," which was just two spears tied together with a torch at the end.  They used this to kill a number of corpse worms they had previously found in this part of the dungeon.
• In the room beyond they found a necklace that depicted some "beetle-men" as one of the players called them, as well as a number of artifacts that seemed to be designed by someone who had seen technological items but didn't exactly know how they work.  All the sarcophagi they've found so far in this dungeon - with the notable exception of the one belonging to Uz of Uz - seem to be modeled on "Hypersleep Pods."
• Messing around with one of the sarcophagi belonging to the concubines caused a strange beam to scan over the party - putting the priest Waw and one of the hirelings to sleep.  It then started an alarm which summoned a whole bunch of monsters - presumably dessicated corpses covered in strange, glowing runes the party had previously encountered.  Luckily, Waw had cast hold portal on the entrance to the hall before falling asleep, and they were able to break the alarm before the creatures were able to break in.
• The tombs contained depictions of Uz involved in various sexual acts with his wives and concubines.  The party made rubbings of these in hopes of selling them later to some perverse collector.
• No one in the party - including the hirelings - died.  Good for them.

Next week I'll be running A Very Nightwick Christmas instead of Uz, and I'm not sure if we'll pick back up with Uz after that or go back to Nightwick Abbey.  Only time will tell.

How Many Notes Do You Need?

The answer to the question posed in the title is, obviously, "however many works for you;" however, a recent post by Ian Burns on G+ has me wonder how many notes I need.  Ian posted a "confession" that he had spent three days making the entirety of his infamous Vats of Mazarin dungeon.  In total, he spent about 12 hours on the thing - which is more than I've spent on the first level of Nightwick Abbey at any one time, but the fact that he has multiple levels with roughly the same number of rooms has me wishing to improve my stocking efficiency.

When I first started running Nightwick Abbey  I used a hyper-minimalist map key.  I had even sparser notes than James used for his Dwimmermount game.  I typically only marked rooms that had monsters, traps or specials, and all the others didn't even have numbers placed on them.  I might write a sentence or two to explain a "special," but monsters and traps rarely got more than the number there were, the amount of HP they had, and how much damage they dealt.  I winged most of the other details on the fly, which usually worked out but eventually I would start to contradict myself.  In fact, part of the reason Nightwick Abbey might be sentient is that I wanted to explain why shit I had previously described was different.

I ended up changing my note-taking method when I started to run my version of Castle Greyhawk.  Since there were about 150 rooms on the first level, I needed to try harder to make them seem different from one another.  I also needed to be reminded more often of what those differences are, and so my keys started to get much longer and every room got its own entry.

When I started running Nightwick Abbey on G+, I adopted the same method I had used to note rooms in Castle Greyhawk.  I keep the key on a google doc and update the room descriptions every time the party changes something - assuming I remember to do so.  I also used this method when I stocked my Uz dungeons.  Here is an example of what it looks like:

A.2 Shrine of Manugal of the Setting Sun

1. Antechamber: This room is made of plain mud brick in the typical Uzite style and is not decorated in any way.  Along the north and south walls are several cages that once held human sacrifices.
Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

2. Outer Hall: The walls and columns of this chamber depict scenes of everyday life.  The city depicted, while Uzite, is actually Old Jerah.  The southernmost column depicts people being born while the northernmost depicts people being slaughtered.
Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

3. Inner Hall: Unlike the last chambers, this one is painted completely black, and it strangely appears to even dim light sources brought inside.  The columns and walls are completely smooth.  The only carved decoration is the massive statue of Manugal, made from a polished black stone of unknown origin.
Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

4. Sacrificial Chamber: Like area 3, this room is painted with a strange, black paint that seems to dim light.  Pillars are lined with strange, pale green stones.  If anyone is slain in this chamber the stones will light up.  Bones and dessicated corpses litter the floor.
Monster: 5 Vortlups (HP 7, 6, 8, 8, 10)
Treasure: 40gp, 4 pale-green gems (200gp each)

---

The problem with this method is that it takes me way too long to stock something. This is why I've become interested in Ian's Mazarin key. It seems to be a good middle ground between the two extremes that I've tried. It has just enough to allow me to remember what's supposed to be in there without having to design so much in advance that it takes me a month to work on a level.