Assassin's Doom - Worldbuilding for a Campaign

I've been using detailed maps for this campaign and for the last 10 days or so have been trying to create a map for the city of Nace.

Nace is laid out as a typical Roman city, a north-south road, an east-west road, a forum in the center and walls and towers all the way around. All neighborhoods are inside insulas or regular shaped areas on a grid like map.

So what do you get when you fuse a Roman city with a classic D&D campaign?

Strange things.

First, what do I need for the campaign?

A town or city with a hefty population. 15-20,000 people are in Nace.

Who is in charge? An aedile is in charge of the city proper. At this time, this character is unnamed.

Do they have temples and churches? Yes, in the forum. If there isn't place for a given sect, it is in the planning. These people have no problem with negative/evil sects so long as laws aren't broken.

Do they have guilds? Yes, for all character classes except fighters and assassins. These people would be in the military. The Assassin Guild is defunct, all members were killed. There is also a combination religious and magical guild, necessary for the production of the Empire's magical crops. Production of useful material require both magic and religion. The thieves guild is rather small time, very low level members who usually move on to bigger and better things rather than advance as thieves. The city has a problem with brigand raiding, which puts thieving in perspective.

Is there a town guard? Yes. Made up of legionaries. There used to be a secret police unit, but it was wiped out with the Assassin's Guild.

So, what is the Assassin's Doom? It will be the first City Adventure my players will engage in. In the next couple of posts, I will detail what happened to the Assassin's guild and secret police, and explain why they haven't been replaced.

Bird's Eye View of Worldographer Map - City of Nace

I am having a wonderful time with Worldographer, by Inkwell Ideas. I have been kicking out maps for my current campaign using the software. The image below is my campaign map (in progress) for just one city. 

The City of Nace is made up of 64 insula, or blocks. I made a mistake by creating this as a battlemat. My reason was to have square blocks, rather than hexes. By completing a map in this fashion, what I will actually have is 64 individual maps. (Actually, 63 because the forum takes up two insula.) Each insula is 180 yards across, north to south and east to west. By the time I am done, my players will have over a square mile of gaming locations and I will have at least a vague idea of what is happening... everywhere.

I have barely scratched the surface of what Worldographer can do, but I figure this practice will help me master it someday.

Crazy History Facts: The Difference Engine

After the French Revolution, the French figured they needed to adopt the metric system because life wasn't hard enough. The French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet said the metric system was, "for all people for all time". He was correct, and  America is the exception that proves the rule. 

One of the bad things about metric conversion is, someone has to convert whatever it was you were using to the appropriate metric units and values. In a period without computers, the French came up with a very odd solution. The top hair dressers of the time had a noticeable lack of nobility to pamper, so they were enlisted to do these calculations. Hair dressers are notoriously bad at math and there were so many mistakes, Charles Babbage decided to make a machine to do the math.

The Difference Engine was so fabulously complex, it had 25,000 parts and weighed 15 tons. It was started in 1847 and finished in 1991. It took 9 more years to construct a printer for output. Just in time for the year 2000.

3rd Session Preview Part 2 - Tyranny's End.

This week's update can be blamed on a mistimed cold and an unfortunate swimming adventure. School started back up this week on Tuesday which meant I needed to catch a summer cold on Monday, so I would be completely ready for school. By this morning, I was having trouble breathing regularly, so off to the doctors. I am taking a course of steroids plus some other stuff to fend off the pneumonia and help with laryngitis. In retrospect, swimming with my class on Thursday was not a good idea.

My next gaming session has been delayed until I can speak again. 

So, let me tell you more about the city of Nace. In the previous post, I detailed the Forum and the two insula due south of the center of the city. Today's post is about the first section of the city built, the only two insula surrounded by walls. 

The Empire has herbal products which are not only unique to it, but are the basis of their competitive exports. Verbena is a magic herb that will stanch all wounds, restoring 1d4 hit points. Emperor's Valerian is a deep purple flower that will cure blindness and head injuries, including lost eyes. Flaming Yarrow is the third herb produced solely by the Empire. It restores damaged and decayed teeth, reduces fever and if prepared correctly, can induce sleep. 

These magical plants require a magical ecology to grow. When the town moved from the port to this location, the first insula to be constructed were the magical gardens. Each garden area is protected by a low, 4 foot wall and four arches as entry points. Since these are the only insula in the town with walls of any kind, they are called Palisade North and Palisade South. Collectively, they are called Tyranny's End.  

The North Palisades

The North Palisades contains 3 manor houses or villas for the families who cultivate herb crops in the two gardens, in addition to a small grove of trees to support the growth of mistletoe. The gardens have tiny non-functional houses or follies, to represent a small farm. They are maintained as if they were real as this is a part of the magic of this place.

The South Palisades 

The South Palisades is much the same, except there are 3 houses and one shrine. The Shrine is a memorial to the Defender of the Port Gardens, the druid responsible for maintaining the weather inside the original gardens. Her entire line perished protecting the gardens when they were located in The Fortezza Port di Nace. Without their sacrifice, the largest gardens for these sacred planets would have been destroyed. The new Druid lives in a stone structure at the southeast corner of the South Palisades. 

This druid and her kin employ magics beyond what spellcasters can imagine. To support the gardens, everything except the weather must free within the boundaries of the Palisades. This is the origin of the name "Tyranny's End". 

The walls are not a defense for the gardens, but a warning. The weather is always controlled to the needs of the plants. This would be danger enough inside the confines of the town, but the druid's authority over the weather requires a sacrifice of all other worldly control within the walls. Any agreement wrought by man can be ended here. Emperors have come to the garden to abdicate. Any slave that enters the walls are immediately freed. If horses or other beasts enter, they are no longer the property of anyone. Arranged marriages can be nullified here, but never marriages of the heart or conscience. 

There are interesting cases where animals enter and then return to owners of their own free will. Some of the most epic tales of the Empire revolve around couples attempting to end an arranged marriage here only to find one, the other, or both really loves their partner. If these couples stay together, blessed by the gardens with fame and fortune. 

There is a legal issue for slave owners entering the walls. The magic will instantly set all of their slaves free. Sometimes the owner and slave will receive the same blessing as the couples mentioned above. Technically, it is illegal for a slave owner to set all of his slaves free all at once, but if he or she receives no apparent benefit to it, a blind eye is turned. However, many Usurpers has attempted to reroll fate by setting vast numbers of slaves free. If that becomes apparent, the punishment is always death. 

For slaves entering the gardens, the circumstances are different. If they were ordered to do it by their master, that slave becomes a free client of the former master, a nearly familial relationship where favors are traded back and forth. If the slave enters the garden to escape a cruel master, the authorities will view all that that former slave's statements as absolute fact and WILL legally pursue the master, usually to the most extreme limits of the law. This fact causes the slaveholders of Nace to act on their best behavior. 

There are very few cases where a slave would accidentally enters the gardens. In those rare instances, if the former slave asks forgiveness and it is accepted, they become an adopted family member to the master and both receive a title and small stipend from the Emperor. If the master does not accept the apology then the former slave may, at his or her choice, enter the household of the Emperor as a paid servant or enter the military. This is where the Empire gains many of their trusted messengers. The alternative choice of military service grants a low officer rank. If the slave refuses to ask for forgiveness, he or she is still free but exiled from Nace. The masters of the gardens may provision this person as they see fit, but they cannot accept anything from anyone else in the city. 

The six houses that care for these lands are made up of both hereditary post holders and those who have enter the gardens in an effort to end some sort of loss. Many a widow, orphan and widower have entered the gardens seeking to end the heartache of loss and find salvation in service to these houses. 

3rd Session Preview - A History of a Town

Welcome back for a preview of my campaign's third session. We are using pre-generated characters for this campaign and the assumption is that they have been up and down the coast, so none of this is secret DM information. 

The Fortezza Port di Nace started off as a town, but one hurricane too many sent the townspeople fleeing northward to a more protected location. Their intention was to rebuild the whole town of Nace. That did and did not happen. The town of Nace is set somewhat back from the sea, and as a consequence is not a port town. 

The Fortezza Port di Nace was supported by the Empire, even through massive population shifts and has grown even bigger than the town that once supported it. The Fortress has become a more industrialized site while Nace proper has become a fiera or Fair town boasting traders from all over the empire. This homely setting is more conducive to civilian life than the militarized fortress port. 

I have begun sketching out the main area of the town, starting with the Forum.

Directly to the south of the Forum is the Thermae, or public baths. The Thermae's insula also has one very expensive villa house. Being the oldest part of the city, the remaining apartments, houses and shops are are merely the first in the area, not the best.

Scattered through out Insula 2 are various stationaries. A stationary is a shop with a fixed location, specializing in books, scrolls and parchments. The close proximity to the forum allows these shopowners access to priests, mages and other who can work magic, which is necessary for creating spellbooks. Many artists and illuminators reside in this insula. There is no other place like this in the city.

Much of this post draws upon the excellent book City by David Macaulay and is fused with Kevin Stroud's History of English Podcast, episode 106.