I'm trying to throw together a mini-setting for an adventure arc of one-shots that'll give the group a break from wilderness dungeons and do some dark fantasy S&S urban adventuring.My pitch: Noctburg, the place where people "go missing." It's always raining, it's built on itself, so it has ancient sewers and an abandoned undercity. The alchemical industry keeps it barely running; there's no civic ordinances about pollution (there's barely any civic to pass ordinances, much less enforce them), so the alchemists can mass-produce goods and employ the remaining wretched masses that aren't strung out on some chymic drug or other. The fish in the river are mutated, the pox is demonic, the food is processed, and that cute girl is definitely an anglerfish's glowy thingy.The setting doesn't have to be super-grounded; we play DCC and everything is a bit gonzo, I'm just looking to add a different flavor of gonzo for a few sessions and add to the collective setting.Anyone have any ideas for urban monsters and silent hill-causing events? Demon cults? I'm just trying to amass hooks and ideas for urban horror Swords-and-Sorcery adventures.
Urban Monsters - Many monsters live in the nooks and crannies of human civilization. Some do it because it's easy, or they're forced to by their original habitat being destroyed. Others do it simply to be close to their food source; they eat humanoids, and Noctburg offers a large, atomized herd. Giant cockroaches just smart enough to stand upright and wear a trenchcoat. a clan of Ettercap ninjas who's snaretraps yank you away to a spidery fate, vampires that invite you to underground blood raves. Only the desperate or foolish walk alone at night, only the brave go out at all.Silent Hill Shit - The ambient despair has gotten so bad that whenever something particularly horrible happens, reality buckles and forms a mini-Silent Hill. A basement, a building, or a whole block becomes untethered from reality and horrific deformed creatures start to creep out of it, spreading further misery by their very presence. Someone has to venture in to the pocket hell and untangle whatever caused the break. Ambient monsters formed from the human psyche lurk here and there; depression blobs and addiction gremlins.The Weeping God - A foreign cult that's typically suppressed elsewhere has gained converts in the city; the Lamenters wear black with white highlights and worship an eldritch entity of altruism, mercy, and charity that's very very guilty about...something. It's depicted as constantly weeping black tears, and it's faithful wear facepaint that emulates this weeping. They're said to gather in spooky underground chapels to pour their blood into a thing and convert it into the black tears (or black blood) of their god and drink the blood...or something. Details are unclear, but most traditional faiths and people view them as weird fanatics. They're basically a good-aligned eldritch cult that's a riff on early christianity as-depicted-by-anime.
>>94406062Not sure how much transferable to DCC, but I would suggest Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft and concept of dread domains could be useful tool for designing additional content for your dark city.>urban monstersDepends, whether you want to go "crawling horror, the city", or "tainted fairy tale, the city", or both. You can do a cheeky spin to it and employ all the horrors as enforcers or somehow connected to alchemical industry, from shoggoths leaking from pipes, to undead giants that are walking through the streets, with small wooden platform on their back with company men enforcing curfew and order between plant workers. You could have whole underdark mycelial ecologies boosted by refuse from alchemical plants, exploding in random parts of city from underground, requiring containment teams of drug boosted guards and spellcasters sealing the holes. Undead/fiendish middle management taking care that plants have always enough workers through various charms, hypnosis, or drugs in food and waters, forcing players to loose levels, if they drink/eat something in the city.>silent hill-causing eventsAforementioned carnivorous mushroom explosions ala Xen infestation from Half-Life Alyx that can contaminate streets, maybe whole districts. If you have river, or lake, you could have flooden district, that is source of malevolent will attempting to overtake city, while being countered by alchemical industry agents.>demon cultsUnless you go all out with extravaganza, I would leave cults out from this. Just my personal tastes, that demon cults are better utilized as central points, not just something added on top. But if you want to have something cultish, why not having NPC bard as center figure of local union, or workers rights movement, that is double agent working for the company all along and he is just to kept masses motivated, that tomorrow it will be better?But I will steal The Weeping God from >>94406085 because I like the idea.
>>94406062Come up with a list of superstitions and legends that the people there believe in. Some of which are bullshit, and others of which are very much based on reality. Anyone who lives is a place like what you describe is going to paranoid and superstitious, because people who DON'T jump at shadows get eaten by whats in them. Stuff like:> Mirrors should always be covered up when not in use, or evil spirits might come out of them when you are not looking.> The streets of the Vale are haunted by an old spirit known as the Grinning Man. He hides in dark places, and if he finds you alone outside at night he will steal you away. But he can be distracted by throwing him a bit of unworked iron, as he loves to collect it.> The aquaduct is the home of a giant spider that eats bad children.> If you go into the Dolmenwoods at night, you can't take a light with you or the Dolmenwoods Monster will find you and eat you.You'll notice that not only do all of these describe a danger, but also how to avoid it. That is the important part. It could be that these dangers are real, or that they are stories, or that they were ONCE real a hundred years ago and now the story has outlived the events that inspired it. This can be an excellent way to foreshadow a threat before it happens. Everyone knows you don't take a lantern with you into the Dolemwoods at night, and people comment on it all the time. And then you can have a later adventure where some enemy they are fighting flees into the woods holding a torch, and the fight against the players gets interrupted when a big weird monster storms in, grabs the guy holding the torch in it's teeth, and runs off with him. If your players don't immediately put out any lights their characters are holding and back away slowly, they have not engaged in the spirit of the game.
>>94406062>"Schwarzgarten Prison Academy has been consumed by madness ever since that beacon of strange light burst out from the Ivory tower. Magicians losing their mind, wrecking the halls with endless howling and screaming. You cannot find any answers you want in there anymore."https://x.com/skellyjacks1/status/1855954463070269843
>>94406062WFRP 2e has a city like this, Praag. Ironically it has the most humane, and possibly the most effective, lunatic asylum in the entire Old World.
>>94406189Good call on the Xen fungus; I've been wanting to do a thing with vegepygmies for a while, maybe the fungus comes from the Other Side; I like the idea of spooky spirit land still having its own flora and fauna evolved to live on psychic detritus.The undead giants roving around was a bit more high-fantasy than I was picturing, but yes, there should be some practical/mundane use of monsters/fantasy stuff. Definitely going for crawling horror over fairytale, could have a smattering of minor folklore domovoi scratching out a living, give player something that will help them if they can answer thee these questions three or share some bread and milk.There have to be rich people somewhere, them having made a deal with fiends to keep the lower classes wretched and exploited would probably appeal to some political ideology or other.
>>94406258Love it. Stealing it. Especially the Dolmenwoods part.
>>94406554>vegepygmiesNever heard of them before and I completely hate them, so they sound like nice addition. About the ecology seeping from Other Side, you could build nice dungeon around it in the sewers and abandoned undercity, where various locations acts as portals between our realm and the Other Side and players can unknowingly pass through them. You can couple it with some sort of stagnant sleeping god that is source of the Dark Presence. That could nicely pair with the superstitions and various rituals locals (as described by >>94406258) keep doing as protection and warding against various monsters, that are in fact just manifestation of the seeping Other Side.
>>94406062The homeless have been gathering in the undercity (as they always do) in search of shelter and a dry place to stay (as they always are). The strange thing is, they haven’t been gathering anywhere new. It seems that they’ve all been going to one place, recently, yet they aren’t overflowing it. Hell, they’re barely even begging. Upon investigation, a portion of the undercity seems untouched by the passage of time. Relatively clean, intact buildings tucked neatly into nooks and crannies, with mostly-comfortable furniture and locks that almost always work. Stranger still — there’s runny oil in the lanterns, abstract paintings on the walls, and queer-tasting food in the cupboards. This could be left unanswered if you want it to. My answer is:>An alchemist created a philosopher’s stone, of sorts, capable of intelligently adapting its surroundings to the needs of those nearby. However, the stone can’t create something from nothing, and only adapts to the most pressing need of the nearest person. Those buildings are made from ancient undercity wrecks, that furniture from the clothes off your back, and the food — well, there’s a reason there aren’t many people living here. A small group of the desperate realize what’s going on, and take turns in constant meditation to try and direct the stone’s behavior, luring other vagrants and miscreants to feed the stone, but a suitably strong-willed individual could bend the stone to its will. A giant alligator. Alternatively, a cabal of uncommonly intelligent alligators. The latter is more interesting. Pollution has had a strange effect on them, and they realize the fish in the river are killing them. They’ve turned their attention towards the streets, preying mostly on clean foreigners and lost aristocrats. Probably not capable of speech, but can construct elaborate ambushes and simple traps. May be capable of rudimentary communication and bartering.
>>94406085>a good-aligned eldritch cultClever idea!
>>94408187Thanks, I've been looking for a place to put them for a while.I imagine the religion as being the one of every tedious stupid-good moralfag, with any practicalities being completely secondary. They might look like they just do good community works, but they'll turn into militant insurgents at the drop of a hat.
>gonzo>alchemistsWhat could go wrong? Some fucker sold potions to make cats (or humans) better at catching rats, they ended up with feral werecats. Then someone, maybe the same guy, maybe someone else, decided to try and fix this with a potion for dealing with the cats.>the pox is demonicSo is the cure. The effects just slowly build up with use.
>>94406062OH!I actually stumbled across some good material related to this concept.Audiodrama format.Give it a listen in the background if you have time OP.https://rustyquill.com/show/i-am-in-eskew/
