Lets Build an Adventure – Necropolis pt3
Lets storm into part 2 of our series Lets Build an Adventure, creating a 5th Edition D&D adventure we’re tentatively calling Necropolis.
And in todays post, we’ll begin continue our world building and adventure building.
If you haven’t read the series so far, here’s two links for you:
Part Two
Part One
The topics to cover today are less ambitious than the previous post for sure.
Now we’re in the Necropolis itself, so what we’re going to discuss is 3 major-locations, and 2 factions.
Locations:
The Ruined Streets
The ruined streets is a sizeable location covering most of the necropolis.
Locations of note specifically, those closest to the wall of Outer City are stripped of any wealth, and are just hollow buildings now with a few variations, some have been converted to safe houses for Graverobber use. This is the area filled with the freshest of the dead.
Moving deeper in to the city, you’ll find buildings ransacked but not fully empty, for missions requiring the party find something, or maybe someone, this would be the best location.
Deeper in, the party will find a chasm, buildings fallen to the ground causing the road to give way to the sewers underneath. These chasms vary from small to Street encompassing, and can be found littered across the necropolis. The one thing of note, once the players investigate a chasm will be that they’ve been filled with the dead, and any smart character would see that the dead are more fresh than the hole as if they’ve been put in there.
The Sewers
A labyrinth of tunnels, and one of the ways Graverobber’s make their way through the cities, the sewers are teeming with undead gone feral, they attack rats and feast upon any sentient beings foolish enough to get caught.
The sewers are of course, unmaintained and as such, many locations will require a con save or the party will end up sick from the noxious fumes, for every hour the party spend in the sewers have them roll their Con Save with an increasingly harder DC, start with 8 and increase slowly.
Within the sewers we will have to include some smugglers tunnels, some Cult temples, and maybe a store room or two for ease of offering some manner of reward.
But the real crown jewel is the Undercity, an ancient and lost city built in a cavern underneath the Necropolis, which will be the feature of it’s own post going forward.
The Lost Castle
The Castle, sat in the very middle of the Necropolis, all but out of reach of the Graverobbers, is in part a citadel, in part resident of some long lost God-king.
Within, the jewels and gold remain relatively intact as any who attempt to breach the walls and take their weight in treasure are going to find themselves going up against a veritable wall of undead.
That isn’t to say the Castle is unassailable, but that any who choose to make their way within had best be prepared to lose at least one or two lives in the attempt.
In time the dead are drawn to the Castle, much the same way a thief is drawn to the treasures within.
Deep within the Castle, lies another entrance to the Undercity.
Factions:
The Graverobbers
So you might think it odd that we’ve the Graverobbers listed twice, but no it isn’t a mistake, we are going to need some guides for interacting with the Graverobbers while you are in the Necropolis.
You may even find a group of Graverobbers having made their own permanent base within the Necropolis, with the distinct intention of plying their wares and making themselves a fortune.
Graverobbers can play either friend, or foe, depending on how the party want to explore the city.
The Dead
This is where you start getting the twist, as players explore the Necropolis, they will find that there are two distinct ranges in the dead,both acting differently.
Those who look recent, modern, act as if they are little more than zombies.
The more ancient dead, the ones who look as if they had been dead for centuries, act with more intelligence, they fight back with skill and flee when outmatched.
In fact, the truly ancient dead have begun organising.
Smart enough to keep out of sight, or perhaps they keep themselves disguised when in view of the wall, they will be inclined to keep close to a group of their mindless cousins when needing to carry out tasks in the City, if a party stumbles upon a group of zombies with an Ancient Undead within them, the Ancient one will avoid combat, using the rest of the undead as a cover to escape.
And that is the end to the third part of our Necropolis series, not the most detailed but once again, we will come back and fill in details as we discover them.
The fourth part of our series shall be a focus on the Undercity, a fantastical location.
After that we will see about adding some plot, maybe a few NPC’s and then we can look over what else could be of use in such a setting.