- Gigantic creature made entirely of volcanic glass, eternally frozen in the act of birthing an even more massive offspring.
- Sprawling city made of the corpses of dead gods, still twitching and moaning in their eternal damnation.
- A cathedral that is also a living creature, its stone walls writhing and its gargoyles howling.
- A city within a city, each building a smaller replica of the one it surrounds, until the very centre where a single miniature building resides.
- A school of thought manifested as a physical structure, where great minds can be found debating with one another in the halls and classrooms.
- A floating palace made of cloud and rainbows, where the sun and moon converge in the sky to form a third light.
- A building that is also a mirror, reflecting back whatever is placed before it, no matter the size or nature.
- Flailing mass of tentacles, bony plates and vestigial mouths, seemingly carved from the stone of an ancient city buried beneath the earth.
- City block sized creature, composed entirely of eyes, wailing eternally in tongues unknown.
- A single tree, bearing fruit of an unknown kind, hanging in the middle of an infinite black void.
- Great chain-beacon, a fiery mountain-top citadel surrounded by a constantly smoking sea of lava.
- A city in the clouds, accessed by towers of crystal and metal rainbows.
- A palace made of inverted glass pyramids, their points planted in the earth.
- A colossal tree with a city in its canopy, its trunk a spiraling stair leading to the heavens.
- A school forcity in which all the lessons and academic buildings are suspended by a single massive ballast stone.
- A seemingly abandoned city, with every door and window boarded up. But if one looks close enough, they can see thousands of pairs of eyes staring back at them from the cracks.
- A colossal tree, with a city living in its branches, its roots tearing through the ground below like grasping fingers.
- A transparent fortress, made entirely of diamond, in which everything and everyone can be seen as if under a microscope.
- A city in the shape of a cage, with great spires reaching up to the sky, meant to keep something in, or keep something out.
- A living mountain, whose every step shakes the ground, and whose breath is a storm.
- Great redwood palace, riddled with tiny holes, like a honeycomb, through which an eerie green light shines.
- Mountain top arena, where two teams of magi face off in a grand game of capture the flag, using summoned creatures as their pawns.
- A city within a city, an entire metropolis contained within a single building, each district separated by walls, bridges, and streets.
- Floating fortress composed of a patchwork of salvaged ships, lashed together with chains and sails billowing in an otherworldly wind.
- A building that is alight with a raging inferno, but does not burn.
- A giant sundial, where the hours are told not by the sun's progress, but by the whim of the winds, which can speed up or reverse time at their leisure.
- A palace made entirely of crystal, where every voice echoes a thousand-fold, and every footstep shatters a thousand shards.
- A city in the clouds, where the buildings are held aloft by massive balloons, and the only way to travel between them is by flapping great wings of feathers and wax.
- Great birdcage of living metal, wires sparking with electricity, holding aloft a single white feather.
- Drum-shaped keep, every surface a different musical instrument, eternally playing a discordant melody.
- Castle in the form of a many-eyed, many-mouthed woman, screaming in silent terror.
- Transparent fortress of unbreakable glass, full of identical clones of a single inhabitant.
- A house of cards the size of a city, constantly rebuilding and collapsing in on itself.
- A cathedral in which the pews and rafters are carved with the howls and agonies of the damned, while the floor is a single great stained glass mural of the final judgment.
- A manor house with a great sundial in the front yard, with each hour represented by a different season, and each season by a different climate.
- A city of fortress-sized blacksmith's forges, with billowing smoke day and night, and the incessant sound of a thousand anvils being hammered.
- A floating palace of opalescent crystal, illuminated from within by a thousand candles, each representing a different star.
- A temple whose ceilings and walls are alive with constellations, and whose floor is a great map of the cosmos.
- A mix of every material known to exist all thrown together to create a single jumbled mess of a temple.
- A city sized mill with mountains for grinding stones, valleys for chutes, and a stream of lava for a flowing river.
- A school where everyone is both student and teacher, and the only lessons are those learned in dreams.
- A single tower that extends up and down through all planes of existence, with an infinite number of rooms, each containing something different.
- Dormant volcano sporting a great cathedral grafted to its side, belching lava-encrusted bells.
- Great obsidian ziggurat, gears and cogs turning eternally to some unknown purpose.
- Vast city made completely of gold, all evidence of industry or habitation hidden behind opulent facades.
- A palace made completely of wax, slowly melting in the heat of twin suns.
- Sprawling fortress partially submerged in a murky green swamp, its towers and parapets adorned with weeping gargoyles.
- Enormous beehive made of petrified wood and obsidian, swarming with crystalline bees the size of mammoths.
- Gigantic geodesic dome over a great city, the interior a pristine crystalline environment, completely sealed from the outside world.
- A city on the back of a living, moving creature the size of a mountain, its countless spires and bridges draped in cascading vines.
Thursday, June 2, 2022
50 Cities, Citadels & Other Weird Structures
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Keosz
Keosz is a humble trading post, populated by pilgrims who left populous cities to establish a communitarian utopian movement, without hierarchy, traditions, religion, or laws. Visitors are welcomed, and those passing through will be able to purchase basic supplies. Many of the pilgrims are artisans and also offer unique items.
What about the pilgrims?
- They throw their dead into a nearby well.
- They are fanatics. The colony has collapsed into severe dysfunction.
- Many of them are twins.
- They worship a majestic stone egg and pray it will hatch and transform the world.
- They can smell heartbreak on someone’s breath at 6 ft distance.
What do the pilgrims sell? (d12)
- Forked stick. Points towards areas with water. Also points to hungry beasts.
- Tobacco. Blows monstrous shapes, taking a life of their own.
- Fine azure powder. After snorting, user can identify potions by smell.
- White ball. Turns a myriad of colors when touched, before settling on a deep green glow.
- Pair of glasses. They show grief.
- Miniature planet inside a glass jar.
- Bottle of ink. Never goes dry or runs out.
- A crystal. Creates a flame when rubbed, doesn't burn.
- Vial of droplets. When added to a pile of excrement, it turn back into what it was before.
- Silk gloves. Can find secret doors at +2.
- Ear plug. Can read one thought within 10 ft for one minute, once per day.
- Cup. Makes an liquid poured into it evaporate instantly.
Resident complications (roll d8 on each of the 4 tables below and combine)
- Ex hero
- Ex alchemist
- Ex witch doctor
- Ex glassblower
- Ex pickpocket
- Ex prisoner
- Ex playwright
- Ex psychic
- Love at first sight with one of the PCs
- Awakened from the dead
- Has a magical bloodline
- Witnessed unspeakable atrocities
- Certain they are an advanced being
- Can recite spell-books, backwards
- Was raised by magical beasts
- Spends lavishly on donations to cults
- ... trusts only ...
- ... schemes with ...
- ... is a clone of ...
- ... owes a favor to ...
- ... worried about ...
- ... secretly loves ...
- ... secretly serves ...
- ... parent of ...
- Ex zealot
- Ex academic
- Ex hedonist
- Ex gravedigger
- Ex torturer
- Ex brewer
- Ex musician
- Ex cartographer
Thursday, April 14, 2022
The City of Sphäre
With a populace of just over a million, the majority living in slums, Sphäre is a notorious hub for Aquilus' most sophisticated marketplaces for predictions. Patrons can stroll streets and side alleys, finding fortune-tellers who desperately pitch information and visions of a potential future.
Prophets and seers are not born with gifts however. They are addicted to stardust, each speck containing a part of the collective memory and potential of the universe. This allows the addict to enter cosmic consciousness, experiencing everything as a whole, rather than a chain of separate events. The raw dust is transformed into an ingestible narcotic in Sphäre's underworld by the nefarious elite, a dark and twisted experiment in how the future can be defined by those who stand to profit from it.
There is no cure for stardust addiction, which causes irreparable mental and physical trauma, loss of purpose and meaning, and eventual descent into self-destruction.
Roll on each table below and combine results:
Discoveries
You come across... (d12)
- A city quarter where bio-mechanical humanoids reside, shunned by the populace. Some are former prophets. They spend their days churning complex clockwork machinery for no known purpose.
- A building where dead, celebrated prophets can be visited. They are entombed in clear, solid black glass. They appear to sometimes move inside if closely inspected.
- Shops that sell crystal balls and divination cards. Some offer unusual items, such as luminescent superconducting ceramics and liquid crystal gel.
- A desolate necropolis where dead prophets are buried. It is decorate by enormous stone carvings resembling children's toys. Sphäre's children have carved these.
- Walled section of the city covered with obscene murals. There are hundreds of intricately carves marbled staircase that lead to nowhere.
- Garden overgrown with weird fungi and lichen. Here stand statues depicting Sphäre's greatest prophets. Each day their poses magically change.
- An ancient golden barge which can fly, ready to take travelers to exotic destinations. It's very expensive.
- A building adorned with millions of valuable gemstones. Nobody seems to ever try to steal them. It is illuminated within by oil lamps which are rumored to burn for eternity.
- An park where statues of false idols stand. They have all been decapitated. Plants rarely grow here.
- A river of pure milk that that glows by night. Mothers come in the mornings with buckets, to collect sustenance for their children.
- A quarter on the outskirts of Sphäre, where a project has been continuing for hundreds of years to dig an endless hole to reach to the other side of the world.
- Huge monoliths believed to have been designed by an ancient species. Some say they are inhabited by souls of Sphäre's original prophets.
Encounters
- 2d4 children of prophets
- A suspicious hypnotist
- A fanatical cartographer
- A scared writer of riddles
- 1d3 feared elites
- A traveling show of mutants
- An enigmatic wealthy outsider
- 1d3 merry priests
- Sphäre's oldest sage
- 1d4 disaffected plague victims
- 1d4 decadent court jesters
- A bio-mechanical human
- ...standing in front of a young oracle and being entertained by amusing cantrips.
- ...bickering they paid too many gold coins for a prophetic reading.
- ...demanding the players make a payment to the city.
- ...holding a basket of fresh, bloodied, human ears and eyes. These belong to prophets.
- ...attempting to crack open some very large unhatched eggs.
- ....kneeling in tribute to what they claim to be a demon summoned from another plane. There is nothing there.
- ...mercilessly beating a beggar, whilst laughing the entire time.
- ...bizarrely-deformed, running out of a palm reader's shop and screaming.
- ...picked up suddenly by a dark-winged shape that swooped from the sky.
- ...attempting to trade potions for armaments with the PCs.
- ...fending off a swarm of biological horrors.
- ...loudly predicting doom.

