Locations

In a small farming community, the only way to cross a river is to basically pole vault across. A small section of river has a small raft on a string to pull items across but for a person to cross they must use one of the many provided poles. Might be interesting seeing what the players do when they come across it. Villagers do it all the time so are skilled and can do it with ease.

What a narrow street! The bowed windows of the upper floors encroach on the view of the bowed windows opposite, making it all very dark and shady down here in your carriage. You feel it slow down and stop, and there are raised voices outside. Craning your neck out of the door you see a smug cartsman ahead, whose cart is blocking just enough of the narrow street to make your passage impossible. He appears to be waiting for you to move, but your driver is hurling abuse at him and your horses are getting restless...

'...the city was built on many levels, linked by stone bridges. But with the improvements in diet and corresponding increase in stature and strength of the populace, these bridges became too low, and the people would hit their heads. The bridges were eventually done away with in 1764, but the scars on the walls where they once jutted out remain, and in Low Bridge Street there is still one extant bridge, measuring about 6' high.' - Chronicler Rasill, Mondopedia, Vol II (The Lands of Hyellia)

'...the Ilthian mountains. A craggie masse of rock rysing from the Ilth'n plaines. The waters whych springe from it are ful of godeness and fortyfie those who drynk them [+1 STR]. Alas the vyle beasts resydent in these hills also bathe in these waters, and in the doing gain great strength. Foes mortallie wounded have bene known to flee, onlie to return, revytalised houres later...' - Chronicler Eamusil, Mondopedia, Vol XV (The Lands of Sylmen)

The extra-planar citadel of Ansern is named after its mage-founder. Ansern discovered the means to traverse the planar gulfs and created the citadel as a haven for his disciples in the art of planar-exploration. The disciples of Ansern continue his work and explore the countless worlds opened up to them by the work of the mage. They are cataloguing everything they discover in preparation for the greatest volume ever written: the Mondopedia, a book detailing many of the worlds. But the countlessness of the planes means that their book will never be finished.

I know basilisks are immune to the gaze of other basilisks, but imagine if they weren't. Like the panda they would become ecologically unviable and endangered...



There are two large stones on the thinly wooded hillside above Tiringan. It is said that two basilisks surprised each other many years ago and fell in love at first sight. They also turned to stone at first sight. A local legend of star-crossed lizards: very moving.

There is a land far to the east that is a great, desolate, near-empty wasteland home only to barbarians, ghosts and monsters. Many nations launche expeditions to this land, seeking to find the rumored-at treasures and riches beyond it's outer fringe.

The World is actually a number of continents surrounded by oceans, which are in turn surrounded by mountains. The oceans rush off the edge of the plateau on which the World sits into the Outside...

You come upon a ruined building in the back section of a city park (or other out of the way area of the city). The ruins are fairly overgrown. All that is really standing is a doorway and its frame. If you pass through the opened door, you travel to a different world. If the door closes, there may not be a doorway back to get you back.

Every now and again, the region encounters a dense blue fog. Every now and again, things disappear into the fog never to be seen again and things appear out of it from other places or world. It seems the fog is the material form of some minor diety charged with moving things around the universe to balance cosmic forces.

The city was cursed many years ago. Since then it has not stopped raining. The gutters are inhabited by eels and the doors are on the first floor, coated with pitch. On a bad day, you can see the water level rise above the ground floor windows. Carts have both wheels and bladders filled with air to keep them afloat. And yet everyone is surprisingly dry.

The two cathedrals in the Citadel stubbornly ring their bells two minutes apart, since each believes the other to be too early or too late respectively. This has been done for over two hundred years.

The Worlds Shadow. A world in which all is dark and is a shadow of all things in the real world. And a shadow of it's former self.

An Atlantis-like island that rises from the bottom of the sea and brings magical technology with it.

Legends abound in some places about ancient landforms (Islands, Peninsulas, Mountains) that dissapeared long ago in towers of glowing energy. (See Any Unnatainable Glory entries for more info)

A low lying area will flood after rains causing many people to be stranded and many roads are covered with water and unuseable.

Religious city. Hundreds of vendors selling small statues which sole value is as a donation to one of the many gods that are worshipped.

Thieve's House or thier main front: All the floors are designed to squeak when stepped upon or to sag or bend sending a small shake along the beam, somewhat like a spiders web, to alert those inside.

The city of Nausopol is built on stilts. Lots of very sturdy stilts and butresses, of course, because it rises about five hundred feet from the ocean. Even the most terrific of storms is only heard in the city as a distant cacophony of blasts as waves strike the solid stonework fathoms below. It has never been attacked because of its isolation and impregnability.



It's not a place for the faint-hearted: vertigo and sea-sickness are not desirable traits. But when you are standing in the middle of the city there is no way you could tell that you were standing above an ocean, separated only by a gulf of air and a few stones.



A thousand steps lead down from Nausopol to the floating docks. These docks are pitch-coated wooden and can be raised by winches during squalls. Trade with other cities and countries is good: Nausopol is built over a sunken atoll whose minerals are still mined by divers, and it was from this that it originally derived its wealth.



But the principal method of getting to and from the city is by riding the giant sea-eagles which have been captured and bred for that very reason.

The village sits on the edge of the deep fjord, often engulfed in mist or rain. Its people are fishermen, who work even through the sea-ravaging winter. And they pray to the gods of the deep.



At the beginning of every winter they hold a summoning ceremony. Three boats are taken out into the fjord, a hornsman on each. The mournful horns are blown in the language of the whales, the gods of the deep. The whales sometimes appear in answer to these calls, and it is taken as a good omen when they do.



To a party of PCs wandering the misty hills and valleys nearby however, the doleful whalesong of the horns can be disturbing and misinterpreted...