Dungeonpalooza:Main Page
Dungeonpalooza is a collectively-created world for any version of Dungeons and Dragons, Castles and Crusades, or just about any fantasy system where the GM wants to add a bit of levity -- and dungeons. LOTS AND LOTS OF DUNGEONS.
Dunegeonpalooza is designed to be a "living system" -- constantly in flux, with enough freedom for GMs to throw in just about any creature, location and dungeon their minds can create. The tone is generally humorous, although there are opportunities for drama and even terror. It is safe to say that if you aren't playing the setting at least some for laughs, though, that you are missing the point.
The primary adventure setting of Dungeonpalooza is the dungeon, and there are dozens upon dozens of such locations in any given section of the soon-to-be-created map.
The idea is this: Dungeons, old-school ones, were fun. Yes, they were somewhat silly. No, sometimes they didn't make much sense. But it was this wondrous anarchy that made them memorable and at times wonderful.
All of the background material of Dungeonpalooza is designed to give the Game Master ample reasons to send players packing off to forbidden caves, underground temple complexes and vast citadels of night deep within the earth.
It is largely assumed that bad guys lair in dungeons in Dungeonpalooza. In fact, they all do. Depending on the GM, this may even be considered a point of curious honor for the evil ones:
Ortak the Unclean: "Didja hear about Xyanthra?"
Blazzzor the Lich-Lord: "Yeah. Something about a floating citadel?"
Ortak: "I know, I know. It's horrible. I mean, lairs are hidden underground. That's ... that's just the way it's done."
Blazzzor: "Indeed. Evil exposed to the sun and air? It's just ... just ... unnatural!"
The Dungeonpalooza Theorum is this: The wackier the dungeon, the more fun for the players. The entire setting is designed to promote this sort of play. There is a sort of world background, but its primary function is to provide a backdrop to all the dungeoneering.
Magic mouths spouting riddles, living cystal statues, rotating rooms, checkerboard floors, fountains that change your sex if you drink from them, girdles that change your stature if you wear them ... it's all here and should be. While every dungeon should have some sort of internal consistency in terms of difficulty and theme, weirdness and humor are the watchwords for a Dungeonpalooza quest.
Enjoy what we've created so far, and add your own ideas -- either to the offical thread in the forums, or here.
A List of the Dungeonpalooza Continents Thus Far Created
A Low-Rent, Black and White Map of Dungeonpalooza
Pagurus "Crab Island"
Long ago, this island was the domain of a race of giant hermit crabs. The crabs used the island's savage humanoids (savage versions of the player races) as slave labor. When the world began to heat up, the crabs could no longer survive on land and retreated to cool underwater caves, leaving the savage humanoids to fend for themselves. The crabs left their shells behind, punctuating the skyline with giant, abandoned shells.
The island is now covered with sweltering, deadly jungle spotted by these towering shells, long since converted to treacherous, trapped lairs by the savages. The jungles grow countless fruits, and many of them have bizarre effects; some of the savages' most insidious traps are based on exotic fruits such as the Incindeberry (whose juice, when dried, bursts into flames upon contact with living flesh) and the Bane Melon (which explodes in poisonous spores when it detects rapid motion within 20'). Worst of all is the dreaded Crimson Squash, a giant, spiked, heavy root system that grows ever upward from the point where it was planted, leaving behind only a single red squash; if the squash is in any way disturbed, the magic of the plant is broken and the unnaturally huge root system falls down with the force of a collapsing castle. Sadly, the roots of the Crimson Squash prefer darkness and tend to naturally "hide" indoors, leading to dozens of Squash-related deaths every year.
Civilizing forces have begun to move into Pagurus, and so adventurers are never more than a week from a town. The towns, while civilized, are slightly tribal in feel due to cultural exchange. Trade is conducted with a special kind of leaf native to the island; any attempt to trade with precious metals is considered a deadly insult. Trade is worthwhile, because the savages retain great secrets of craftsmanship. In fact, it is said that they were taught by the superintelligent crabs, and that their greatest works are hidden or even forgotten in the most remote, well-guarded shells.
Pagurus is full of adventure hooks, but admittedly sort of a niche location.
Cretaton
The temperate, sparsely populated land of Cretaton is perhaps the closest thing to a paradise in all of Dungeonpalooza. Nevertheless, there is a reason that populations have remained small in Cretaton. While the fertile plains and hills provide easy living for humanoids, they also permit rare breeds of exotic beasts to thrive. Giants, dire animals and the ancient beasts known as dinosaurs all exist in otherwise unknown numbers in Cretaton, preserved by the amazing bounty of the land. Given that the continent's humanoids are mostly less than 4' tall, it's not surprising that many nations in the region have decided to give expansionism a miss and move straight on to complacency and decadence.
The population of of Cretaton is concentrated along the forested hills of the western coast. Here, ancient yet thoroughly modern gnomish civilizations predominate. The gnomish kingdoms are loose, sprawling cooperatives that cling to monarchy in name only. This can be confusing for outsiders, especially because the gnomes have a custom of using royal offices as a kind of charitable position for poor, alcoholic or dimwitted gnomes. Meddlers from other lands can cause huge problems by trying to involve gnomish "charity nobles" in serious issues. Then again, the luxurious, eccentrically-appointed fortresses of the addle-brained charity nobles are tempting enough that foreign treasure-seekers continually seek out gnomish kingdoms despite the risks.
But the gnomes aren't the only humanoids in the hills. There are also isolated communities of dwarves and halflings, many of them idiosyncratic offshoot groups who left their homelands to escape their native cultures. The dwarven and halfling settlements include barbarian tribes, druidic cults, pacifistic theocracies and clans of dragon-blooded sorcerers. None of them are yet strong enough to challenge the gnomish kingdoms, and few care to do so. Most of the dwarves and halflings are content to mine into the hills as their communities expand rather than encroaching on the gnomish forests.
There are elves in the hills too, living under loose gnomish rule, but they're not exactly advertising it. It's embarassing.
The humanoid population thins even more beyond the coast. The hills gradually flatten as one moves inland, and open into wide stretches of warm plains in the south. These more isolated southern hills are the homes of the hill giants, who survive by hunting dinosaurs and dire animals. Every few years, the hill giants must trek across the plains to find new hills to call home, because a series of natural caverns beneath southern Cretaton hosts a huge population of trash-eating monsters. These foul, diseased creatures are drawn to the hill giants' filthy caves and castles. After 100 years of turning a green, idyllic hill into a trash heap, the giants find it easier to find a new hill than to clean up and evict the trash-eaters.
The warm hills of the east form the most storied region of Cretaton. Here, the lush climate can feed and shelter creatures who are long extinct in other parts of the world. Dinosaurs and dire predators are only some of the more well-known creatures that exist in these untamed wildlands. It is said that weird hybrid animals also roam these lands, along with giant plant creatures, primal nightmarish fey and bands of elementals. Ironically, the east is also famous for its most unnatural locale, the Architect Graveyard. An evil priest once banished his thousands of hired dungeon contractors to an uninhabited hill near the eastern coast of Cretaton. The architects and construction workers promptly died in the wilderness, but rose again as a result of their long exposure to Evil Fumes in the poorly ventilated catacombs of the dungeon they had built. The mindless undead are now locked in an endless cycle of building, and have had over a thousand years to construct their sprawling, pointless dungeon. It is rumored that their dungeon may have been inhabited by some greater power sometimes in the past few centuries; no one knows whether that power might serve good or evil, or what it might use the dungeon for.
Other than the settlements in the western hills and the giants in the south, the only civilization on Cretaton is in the form of sparse tribal communities of gnomes, halflings and elves. While adventurers and traders have made some contact with these tribal communities, the only real penetration of mainstream culture into the tribes has been the concept of the tavern. Even the most backward tribes now host taverns, providing travellers a place to feel at home even in the most alien cultures. The tribes are not to be trifled with; those that have survived have learned to protect themselves from dire wolves, dinosaurs, giants and underground filth monsters. Those hoping to intimidate them with Dancing Lights and spooky monologues will be sorely disappointed.
Kas-Turaaal - One of the largest continents
Consisting of:
The Free Kingdoms of Calishar (Smack in the Middle)
Home of noble knighthood (and delicious pound cake), the Free Kingdoms of Calishar shine forth as the greatest citadel of freedom in the heavy-forested continent of Kas-Turaaal.(1)
The magical wood that surrounds the southern part of the city is home to friendly colonies of elves(2), small bastions of other fae folk and vistas of strange wonder. But true evil also lurks within. The wood is dotted with caves -- dozens upon dozens of them, and there are ancient elvish ruins now long-abandoned where neither man or demihuman will willingly tread.
To the north of the city lies vast expanses of fertile farmland, fed by the Mighty Zorenplatz River which runs through the fertile valleys and snakes through Calishar itself before pooling into mighty Lake Woebetide about 20 miles southeast of the city. But there is neither peace nor succor even in this idyllic spot, for the Blackthew orcs hav been driven south by expansion of gnomish barbarian raiders, themselves driven out of their northern climes by bitter cold and hunger. Crazed and bloodthirsty, both the Blackthew Orcs, led by their fearsome leader Bonecrack the Incredulous, and the gnomish barbarian horde, led by Gwinglezort the Massive, will eventually push south into the northernmost reaches of the Calisharian kingdoms, bringing death, destruction and Adventure Hooks (tm) to all.
But for now, the human city of Calishar stands proudly between these vistas of light and shade, its gray stone towers and brilliant pennants seeming to scrape the skies. Home to the Knights of Calishar, preservers of freedom and possessors of really nifty uniforms, the kingdom is choc-a-bloc full of adventure. Legend says the city was built upon the ruins of a previous kingdom, blasted to bits by some unknown god.
Legend further says that hidden perils, untold riches and (most probably) a few cubic tons of liches, demons and other Vile Things (Vile Thing Union No. 558, to be exact) may still be found there.
Legend, a 10th level halfling thief, will be happy to sell you a map to the entrance of said supposed underground for a small consideration of only 100 gold pieces. He also likes licorice. It's the only way you'll ever get him to shut up.
The kingdom itself is peaceful, ruled with wisdom and a steady hand by the Archmagus Zorinthrax and a High Council made up of twelve representatives of the surrounding community. Xuanthril, a representative of the largest elvish colony to the south of the city, has recently joined as a 13th, non-voting observer. A forgotten prophecy, long ago written by the trembling hand of the famous sage Irankor of Arath'kar (in the Great Desert, a separate entry to be detailed later), states that when Calishar's council of 12 officially becomes a council of 13, strange and wondrous things will befall the city. This is true, but whether it will be a good or a bad thing is unknown. Most people except a select few have forgotten about the prophecy.
The Knights of Calishar are the city's elite fighting force, although not only armor-plated mercenaries make up its ranks. The permanent members of the KoC are mostly warriors, but the group freely hires on magicians, thieves, assassins, tradespeople and other folks. Regularly, hazardous work is contracted out to adventuring parties who agree to pay the 5 gold piece per member, per month free to be part of the Calisharian Special Forces, for which they get a magically-laminated membership card and regularly sent to certain death.
(1) Because fantasy names of all stripes must in include apostrophes, an inordinate number of vowels, etc. (2) Well okay, they're actually pretty much jerks, but then again, aren't all elves?
To the North:
The Plains of Interminable Gloom
Northern Kas-Turaaal is dominated by the gray, icy Plains of Interminable Gloom. While the Plains themselves are flat, featureless and stupidly cold, those who venture within will find either legendary treasure or horrid, freezing death. Probably horrid freezing death.
Until relatively recently, the Plains were ruled by Gwinglezort the Massive's gnomish barbarian nation. Not long ago, a band of adventurers travelling through the Plains introduced the barbarians to the mysteries of magic. In the process of practicing teleportation, the barbarians discovered such alien concepts as "summer", "comfort", and "not being eaten by mammoths". Since then, they have pressed southward in search of more temperate climes, and are now too embroiled with orcish and human conflict to return to their homeland even if they wanted to. Some few isolated pockets of gnomish barbarians still remain, but travelers are now more likely to meet Saber-toothed Mammoths, Yeti and Wood Monsters (who eat only wood, and are thus starving slowly since there are few trees near the Plains). The most exotic threats of the Plains are the Kremesicles, cousins of the puddings who live in milder climates. Kremesicles may be found in black, yellow, red and rainbow varieties.
Legend says that deep beneath the Plains sits the Diamond Fortress, and underground keep of shining, faceted ice. The Diamond Fortress is supposedly a deadly and terrifying dungeon built by the dragon wizard Urbozniak to hold his treasure. In fact, some claim that the Plains and the Diamond Fortress were both created by Urbozniak in an elaborate scheme to hide 10,000 lbs. of diamonds, which now sit in plain view somewhere in the Plains, indistinguishable from the surrounding ice.
Whether the Diamond Fortress exists or not, what is sure is that hundreds of expeditions have dug for it over the centuries, creating massive caverns beneath the ice. This means two things for the ambitious adventurer: 1) ancient treasure buried in forgotten tunnels and 2) frequent fatal cave-ins as miles of thoroughly-undermined ice suddenly collapse.
Trade through the Plains of Interminable Gloom is rare, but there is one avenue. At the northern tip of the plains is the port city of Akam-Ha. Here, rugged dwarven workers from the far-off land of Schlackengravva (to be detailed later, hopefully by someone else) unload and store shipments from around the world to be resold by the sled caravan that makes one trip over the Plains each year. In the past, the caravan has maintained high profits despite the rough terrain it covers by selling to both the gnomish barbarians and the human villages north of Calishar, carrying goods that would be too tempting to bandits if transported through civilization, and by maintaining very loose shipping laws in Akam-Ha. Since the gnomish barbarian exodus, the caravan has done poorly, and word is that the dwarves of Akam-Ha are questing for magic sleds to make the caravan faster.
NOTE: While yeti are extremely vicious and deadly, adventurers are not encouraged to slay them on sight. Some of them are actually half-yeti, a separate breed of highly intelligent and sensitive individuals of mixed yeti and human blood. Half-yeti (or "demi-yeti") are available as a player race.
And to the South:
Arath'kar, City of Wonders
Let me now speak, oh faithful, of Arath'kar, where all hopes may be made manifest and one's fondest desires may be purchased -- for a price. The usual, of course. Come now, you're not using that soul anyway, are you?
Far, far to the south of Calishar's towers and the cold wastes of the forbidding north, in an empire of sand, lies Arak'thar, jewel of the Great Desert, city of dreams, wonders and nightmare.
Yes, nightmare. For darkness dwells there, and unearthly hungers ripped forth from night's veil wander aimlessly through the city's glories and huddle against the daylight in cramped corridors never touched by the sun.
As one might imagine, Zayrthrax's Magick Sunscreen sells by the boatload in Arath'kar, for reasons only known to select merchants.
Since times long past, the city has been a place of marvels and prodigies, its roads paved with the riches of merchants and laden with the treasures of pilgrims who came to visit its many shrines to strange and alien gods. Its towering spires gleaming snow-white beneath an eternal ice-blue sky, are capped by canopies and finials of purest gold.
Vendors from all over the known world -- and some unknown worlds -- make their way to Arath'kar to sell their wares. Every imaginable treasure, every terrible poison, every bejewelled gnome-worrier, even delectable poundcakes from distant Calishar, eventually appears for sale on Arath'kar's teeming streets.
To see Arath'kar's marketplace is to be in a constant state of wonder. In fact, so overwhelming is the sight that newcomers suffer a 1d6 intelligence drain (save for half) until their third visit to or third day in the city. Natives are immune to this effect, having grown used to flying carpets, talking apes, djinni, efreeti, graffiti (magical, or course), magic rings, magic lamps, magic coffee-makers, magic pen and pencil sets, big-screen crystal balls and hideous idols brought back from the depths of the desert by gibbering madmen.
Prices are unreasonable. So are the vendors, who will chase down potential patrons, sometimes with vicious desert creatures if need be, to try to interest them in their latest acquisition. Most have purchased charms to make their sales pitches irresistible, although sometimes the items do backfire to humorous (and in a few cases, deadly) effect.
The magickal background noise of the various devices, creatures and other components of the city's day-to-day life causes regular surges of wild magic that provide much unexpected amusement for the Glittering Guard of Sultan Arkra ha Talib, a crack order of scimitar-wielding ruffians about two steps removed from the less-sanctioned ruffians they tend to combat.
Sometimes, strange creatures gate in because of the surges:
Guthar ha Azra: “Look! An incursion of giant-sized octopi.”
Urza ibn Lothkra: “What's an octopi?”
Guthar ha Azra: “Multi-armed things. Live in the ocean, so I'm told.”
Urza ibn Lothkra: “Oh. Well, since I grew up in a desert, what would I know? You're the one who traveled the seas on daddy's money. Before it ran out, of course.”
Guthar ha Azra: “I'll have you know ... Hmm. Should we stop them from eating that merchant?”
Urza ibn Lothkra: “Perhaps. Is it common for these .... octopi ... to fly?”
While there is much wonder to be had in Arath'kar, the real deals are not done in the marketplace. They are done in the shadows, and the shadows in Arath'kar are long indeed.
Though he appears daily before the faithful and appears to command immense power, Akra ha Talib is not the true ruler of Arath'kar. Its true lord and master has long secreted himself beneath the city in caverns ancient, deep and terrible.
The story of his coming coincides with the founding of Arath'kar itself.
Long before the city was built, while the land that it occupies was yet only desert, a young man wandered through the wastes prepared to die. Falling to the ground, he beat the merciless sands repeatedly and wailed long into the cold, dark night, finally falling into a fitful sleep.
And then, a strange thing happened.
The man awoke, clasping a lovely glass bottle in his hands. He opened it, and a djinni woman, her greenish-gold skin sparkling in the moonlight, her diaphanous clothing revealing much of her unearthly charms, emerged.
“So, like, I'm the djinni of the bottle,” she said. “Like, whatcha want?”
“Oh, great djinni, surely you are meant to be my salvation!” he said. “Surely the prophets have watched over me! Tell me, then, what powers you may bestow and boons grant.”
“Pretty much all I can do is make you a nice pudding,” she said.
“That's all?” the man said, incredulous. He paused to think.
“Well, I guess I am hungry,” he said at last. “Make me a nice pudding.”
The djinni sighed. “They never understand how this joke ends,” she said, shaking her head before turning the man into a mound of gelatinous goo.
Later, a much smarter person found the bottle, divined its contents, and then summoned up Grath'aalh, a Demon Lord of the Abyssal Reaches, trading the trapped djinni for a single wish of power and glory.
That man was Frith'kallah the Deathless, the first sultan of Arath'kar – and its only true sultan, ever.
“I wish to eternally rule over the greatest city in all the desert, built here on this very spot!” Frith'kallah told the Daemon Sultan. And so, he did. Arath'kar magically appeared from out of the trackless wastes, and soon great trains of people marched into the city's gleaming gates from all over the Great Desert. Their descendants have rarely left, and most return to the city once an almost irresistible longing for the home they once knew starts to gnaw at their very souls.
For years, Frith'kallah reigned in power and glory, but when his body aged and should have at long last died, Frith'kallah did not die. He only began slowly, slowly to change.
Now an ancient lich of terrific power, Frith'kallah the Deathless still rules through an endless stream of puppet sultans. He dispatches them when they displease him – and they often do. Thus, Arath'kar has had many, many sultans in its long life, some for only about a day. Frith'kallah particularly dislikes slackers.
While his puppets pull strings for him, he searches in vain for a way to restore himself to full humanity, absentmindedly forgetting that 1,000-year-old men don't tend to live all that long once restored to their correct chronological age(1). For the foreseeable future, though, he rules an underground kingdom of undead, served by mummified horrors, shambling zombies and a variety of trembling accountants spirited away beneath the earth to keep him appraised of his kingdom's financial strengths.
Frith'kallah only answers to his Demon Lord, who demands unholy sacrifices and lots of cold, hard cash from him quite regularly for his own evil devices. Frankly, Frith'kallah is getting kind of tired of the whole evil thing, but like most executives he doesn't want to give up the prestige
The subtle influence of Grath'aalh's bargain with the deathless sultan creates and air of corruption that falls upon all of those who live in Arath'kar. Greedy people become greedier. Gluttonous people glut themselves more often. Vain people become even more insufferable. It's kind of like Hollywood, but with better sets.
Some examples of the typical evil found within:
It is said that there once dwelled in city a young woman who sold curious trinkets, necklaces crafted from the crushed light of stars and rings carved from the bones of ancient gods. No two were alike, and each was of such exquisite beauty that those who gazed upon her works could think of little else until such magnificence was theirs. The few who paid the dazzling sum for her baubles often awoke the next day to find a wreath of dried leaves about their neck or a ring of dull iron encircling the finger a god's remains once adorned. Each night they would dream fitfully of the rapturous splendor that once lay cold and gleaming against their skin.
Later, she went into advertising. It was a natural progression.
Another tale is told of a pair of brothers, princes from lands to the north, each willing to pay a fortune in gold to be granted life without end. Through a mixture of curious and unwholesome elixirs distilled drop by drop by drop by an ancient sage who spoke only in riddles (long, annoying ones) and whose eyes were black as pitch, their dreams were at length fulfilled.
But such a blasphemy was their metamorphosis that the earth itself swallowed them once they crossed the barrier between life and eternity, sealing them in a chamber far beneath the city's smooth streets and shining domes.
It is whispered that they dwell beneath the ruins of the city still, never sleeping, awaiting the day when their gray and yellowed flesh and blazing eyes might once again cast upon the remains of the kingdoms they lost long ago, principalities now crumbled to ruin.
Not long from now, mayhap a few weeks hence, a certain merchant will break ground for his new shop to sell lovely fruits from far-distant lands. He has scrimped and saved all of his life, and Arath'kar's vile influence has only made him slightly more ambitious and driven to power than he very mildly was originally.
The spade of his workers' shovels will turn the earth one too many times, breaking an ancient seal of power. A shaft of sunlight shall penetrate the brothers' tomb for the first time in untold years.
All proving that the merchant really should have joined the traveling circus, as his dear dead mother suggested.
Thieves and assassins also make the city their home, led by Alahazam, the Slighty Spry Elderly Man of the Foothills. Making his lair in the sandy hills outside of the city, he regularly drugs promising candidates (usually with the help of a lovely hori or two) and brings them to his walled compound deep in the deser . Wakening from their slumber, the candidate is given all the women, drugs and Calisharian poundcake (2) they can eat. Believing themselves to be in the Promised Paradise of the Prophet Zarthan ibn Ali Ababwa, they pledge their lives to the service of the Elder's assassins. They know no fear. They do not even know how to spell it, once the brainwashing drugs thoroughly suffuse their systems – the true secret of their loyalty.
The land surrounding the city is also filled with strange monsters, oases haunted by unseen spirits, ancient tombs, crafty bands of robbers, and everything the game master might wish to place there.
(1) Thus implying that a good way to defeat the lich-lord would be to help him.
(2) Which is actually not that good without the Melville's Super-Goodness (MSG) spell first cast upon it. Then it's delicious!
S'yar Wan
The rainy, overcrowded continent of S'yar Wan is the ancestral home of humanity, but it has become the most cosmopolitan of the continents.
In its coastal regions, S'yar Wan is a mix of rural expanses and clusters of squalid villages. The villages and farms of coastal S'yar Wan are slow to advance partly because of the tenacious vermin population that breeds in the woods. Life on the coast is a constant struggle to fend off rats, spiders, dire rats, bats, wererats, cannibal locusts, and two-headed rats. It isn't unusual for travellers to return to a recently-visited town only to find that the entire population has moved out following a truly epic mouse infestation. Local mayors and town guards often hire beginning adventurers to take the fight to vermin in their foul nests. An embarassing number of these adventurers don't return.
Northern S'yar Wan is cut off from the rest of the continent by the Saishona Mountains, which make travel extremely difficult. As a result, the mountains are home to various secluded and independent communities, including a nunnery populated by beautiful female monks, a prudently-sequestered school for novice summoners, and a penal colony for orcs taken prisoner by Paladins sworn not to slay helpless prisoners. Every five years, one representative from each community in the mountains goes to the peak of the highest mountain (Mt. Ungar) to settle any disputes. This is about as productive as one would expect.
The warm southern region of S'yar Wan is mostly humid swampland, home to humans and lizardmen. As populations grow, the lizardmen have begun building expansive bridge systems over otherwise uninhabitable swampland. Mass combat is impossible on these bridge networks, and so small, opportunistic groups of warriors can loot and pillage the communities there without fear of facing mass resistance. Almost the entire current generation of lizardman children have been shipped to fighter colleges in Schlackengravva to combat this danger. So hurry up.
The heart of S'yar Wan is a sprawling redwood forest. The forest is best known for the handful of great cities at its center, including the great market city of Kain Lim, the magic-oozing city-state of Libram, and the thriving kelptocracy of Coldcock (where the local Rogue's Guild has wisely turned its skill at skullduggery to election fraud and managed to become the ruling party). These cities would be impossible without the valiant efforts of the Red Woodsmen, a band of rangers who defend the outer rim of the redwood forest with a solid perimeter of fortified tree forts punctuated by larger stone fortresses. The Red Woodsmen mainly fight back the vermin infestation so common on the coast, but they also do their best to hold back other threats. The Red Woodsmen, for all their courage, are not especially potent, and don't fare as well against competent warriors as they do against wandering rodents. As a result, their fortresses change hands often, perpetually being taken over by enemies and then reclaimed by the Woodsmen (sometimes with the help of hired adventurers).
S'yar Wan is criss-crossed with trade routes and its merchants love to engage in intercontinental trade. However, after accidentally exporting pestilent devil rats to several continents, the traders of S'yar Wan now take care of their shipping from floating offshore docking stations and transport goods to and from the mainland with swimming couriers or rafts. The floating station system breeds corruption, and so many of them are little more than creaky, sea-sickness inducing vice dens or well-guarded repositories for ill-gotten treasure.
Within S'yar Wan's borders lie two great cities:
Kain Lim
The Marketplace
Once a small city-state, Kain Lim gradually fell to its own capitalist doctrines. The whole of the country is now a vast marketplace, where anything and everything can be bought or sold.
The whole of the marketplace is ruled by a noble house. Their shop is the largest, and sits squarely in the center of the marketplace.
Justice is swift and brutal in Kain Lim, as the inhabitants do not want outsiders to fear soming into the Marketplace. There are constant armed patrols who will not hesitate to use deadly force when someone breaks the laws of the land.
At its outskirts, Kain Lim is ringed with hundreds of temples and shrines.
Within the boundries of Kain Lim, one is never more than a few stalls away from a place to eat, drink or rest.
The City-State of Libram
The art of magic requires vast amounts of study and practice to become even remotley skilled with. In order to help with this process, long ago a cabal of wizards and sages founded a magical college, named Libram. At first, the school was fairly small, and students were allowed in by invite only. But as time went on, more and more students were accepted into the school, and the campus grew. After a while, small towns began to appear around Libram, offering the nessessary support to the school.
As time went on, the campus grew, absorbing the surrounding towns into itself. As space started to become an issue, the university began to build up, and then out, towering over the surrounging area like an enourmous oak tree. Now, Libram is a sprawling city-state, teeming with magic; it's said that even the lowliest beggar knows a spell or two, and it's common knowledge that anything magical, be it enchanted weapon, magical item, or unique spell, can be obatined here. For a price.
As wizards graduated, they found that they still had use of the many services Libram could provide. Most wizards chose to remain living in Libram, while other constructed towers and keeps outside the city limits. Now, the continent surrounding Libram is dotted with these towers, and wars between wizards are not uncommon.
Schlackengravva
Schlackengravva is the harshest land in Dungeonpalooza. Jagged mountains, cutting winds, volcanoes and boulders that randomly fall from the sky conspire to make Schlackengravva the rocky resting place of many unprepared adventurers. The die-hard inhabitants of Schackengravva are mostly sturdy giants and borderline-masochistic dwarves, but unnatural creatures of pure evil have recently begun to ascend from the dwarves' mountain tunnels. Whether they will choose to stay in Schackengravva once they spread to the surface and find out about the randomly falling boulders remains to be seen.
Travellers are most likely to visit northern Schlackengraava, the seat of the Dwarven Empire, but the northmost tip of Schlackengravva is an exception. A portion of the continent's northern coast is inaccessible due to a weird formation of pointed stone spires protruding from the face of the sea. Even at their tips, the spires are no more than 8' apart. No sea vessel larger than a raft can navigate the monoliths, making any kind of serious trade military action impossible. This same area of the coast is blocked from the rest of Schlackengravva by a dense mountain range that is almost as deleterious to overland travel as the spires are to sea travel. These mountains, a long stretch of the coast, and, it is rumored, the spires themselves are home to self-sufficient tribes of goblinoids. The goblinoids have never gotten along with the Dwarven Empire, but because their interaction is limited and large-scale warfare is impossible, the two powers continue to coexist, and the rival races prosecute their cold war primarily by roughing up members of the other race who walk into the wrong tavern.
Beyond the stretch of far northern territory protected by the spires, all the land in Schlackengravva north of Axebeard Bay belongs to the Dwarven Empire. The Empire, one of the oldest societies in Dungeonpalooza, is a strict and mighty world power that has honed its all-encompassing legal system to a marvel of efficiency devoid of bias, corruption, recklessness, reactionism, mercy and any sense of humor. While the Dwarven Empire and its powerful military controls its land absolutely, many of the other creatures who inhabit Schlackengravva live in mountain caves just as do the dwarves, and so the dwarves are continually finding rebellious or even undiscovered populations within their borders. The Dwarves handle the neverending task of establishing control over newly discovered caverns with a bounty system. Those who lead Imperial warriors to safe (read: violently spelunked) new cavern systems get a special commission based on the size of the caverns and the strength of its old inhabitants (if any). Bitter humanoid mountain dwellers such as orcs and ogres are known to stock nearby empty caves with traps and guard animals to discourage dwarves and their hirelings from seeking out their communities. Like most plans formed in orcish committee, this scheme has backfired horribly, and the dwarves now have a very good idea of where to find hidden orcish and ogre communities (somebody has to have set those traps, right?)
Until recently, the Dwarven Empire was also firmly in control of the mountains that run alongside the massive Axebeard Bay, the hub of trade for the continent. Within the past 50 years, though, weird creatures have begun to rise from deep tunnels that reach up through the continent's crust and into the dwarven mountain-cities. Demons, pale abberations and monstrous human-looking fiends have all begun to appear in numbers, and a near-epidemic of undeath has spread through the mountains like a wildfire in a forest full of Charcoal Golems. As a result, most dwarven communities have either retreated to the north, to the south, or up into the higher reaches of their mountain-cities, where they have set up fortifications against the invaders from below. Some have suggested that the tunnels lead to submerged temples of ancient gods, to alien planes, or even to the afterlife. In any case, the mountains surrounding Axebeard Bay are increasingly dangerous, and trade has dropped off sharply. Fortunately for locals, enrollment in their legendary fighter colleges is still very high, and the colleges are rapidly becoming the new center of the economy. The most famous of the colleges is The Urferberf Academy for Axemanship, where Master Urferberf Drek teaches apiring fighters from all over Dungeonpalooza the art of the axe. Urferberf and his assistants teach many combat styles, and each class awards its own distinctive sash to its graduates. Students of the school typically feel both a strong kinship and an interclass rivalry between students of different styles.
South of Axebeard Bay, the mountains and harsh, cold winds of central Schlackengravva give way to the volcanoes and harsh, scalding winds of southern Schlackengravva (the randomly falling boulders remain constant, though they are known to be mossier in the north). The Dwarven Empire does not officially hold any land in the south, though it does support colonies there. In contrast to the homogeneous north, the south is a patchwork of dwarf, giant, orc, goblin, human, and magma elf settlements. Each community is small, warlike and fiercely independent, because southern Schlackengravva has nothing to offer to more peaceful communities. The only reason to venture there is to mine rare magical minerals like mithral, to hunt for the red dragon lairs that dot the south, or to do battle in the notorious gladiatorial arenas of the extreme south. Also, it is said that somewhere in the southeast there are naturally occuring firestorms whose aftermaths include rains of molten gold. However, anyone too stupid to think of a better way to make money should probably not be living so close to volcanoes in the first place. All water in the dry south comes from springs of boiling water that are known to become clogged from time to time. Unclogging these springs is known to be the worst job in Dungeonpalooza (aside from employment in the dreaded grimlock brothels of Lice Valley).
ON CLIMATE: No one knows quite why the weather in Schlackengravva is so unnaturally punishing, and the source of the heavy boulders that occasionally fall from the sky is even more mysterious. The leading theory is that some spell or divine act intentionally made Schlackengravva as uninhabitable as possible; this would also explain the sharp spires along the northern coast. Skeptics point out that no god or powerful wizard would be stupid enough to try to run off dwarves with mere falling boulders, and that nothing has been found in Schlaackengravva that would warrant attention from such a powerful being... not yet, anyway.
Gods and the Afterworld (thus far)
The Shining One
The Shining One is the sun-god of the setting, a tireless crusader against evil. He is, as gods go, fairly meddlesome in the world of mortals, reaching down to smite darkness when it rises on the land. His priests are often trained to be expert dungeoneers and spelunkers, being the Shining One's agents where the sun itself does not reach.
(Domains include Good, Sun, Fire, and maybe Glory from complete Divine. I see him as rather focused at what he does, but if others wanted to include War or Wrath or the like, that wouldn't be entirely inappropriate.)
Granted Power: Clerics of the Shining One who are underground can glow with light equivalent to the brightness of a single torch at will. This way, parties can delve into the deepest dungeons while still forgetting to bring that torch they bought during character creation.
Sometimes, the Shining One gets a bit too zealous and mistakes simple selfishness for world-spanning evil. Not often -- just often enough so that the PCs might accidentally become a focus for him for a time.
The Lurker Beneath
The Lurker Beneath is not a nice god. Its domains include Chaos, Evil, Death, and Earth, and those with access to the book of vile darkness can add Corruption, Darkness, and Pain to the list, and the Complete Divine suggests Madness and Pestilence. In Mythic Times, the Lurker Beneath was known as the Darkness Manifest, but it was struck down by the other gods, the high church splintering into thousands of warring cults, and it was entombed deep, deep, deep within the earth. The Lurker Beneath's cults, who all worship it under different names and aspects, seek to unearth their dark god, the labyrinth designs of their tunnels a foul geomantic ritual to summon aberrations and others of that ilk to defend them against those heros who would try to stop them.
The Lurker Beneath does have a name, one known only to his cultists. It is so horrible and alien that devastating acidic balefire consumes all who hear it. The cultists of the Lurker are known to sow discord by scrawling the name in restrooms, passing notes containing the name to adventurers and then running away, and by training parrots to say it before releasing them into heavily populated areas.
But it is said that there is a greater name -- a truer name. Finding the Lost Name is the obsession of all of the cultists, for it is said that those who know and comprehend the lurker's True Name will usher in his final return, a holocaust of death, freedom and ecstasy (but mostly, truth be told, death) that will consume Dungeonworld/verse/whatever as a purifying flame.
Tickets available now. Book early, 'cause it's gonna be one hell of a show.
