Seriously, I mean it, stay out. Please?
OKAY! So I am resurrecting a campaign from the death known only as 'oh crap school started again', in which my PCs have just arrived in a town situated on the confluence of two rivers - making it a prime river port.
Some notes on my world, before we reach the meat of my question: The world is divided up into an unknown number of islands floating in the sky, orbiting a ball of molten rock some thousand miles below. About a hundred and some years ago, the Elves (think nasty Fae/Pratchett Elves, not DnD/Tolkien elves) put together an artifact capable of slaying a god, and used it to kill the Sun-God and raise their leader to the god's station. The rest of the world wasn't too keen on this, and a brave team of heroical types managed to wrest control of the artifact from the elves' mortal pawns long enough to fire it off again, killing the elf-turned-God. Two massive expenditures of magic in such short succession - something like a week between the two, albeit an essentially sunless week being assaulted by shadowy fae-creatures and the undead - shattered the world's delicate magical balance.
Or, in other words, the planet said 'well screw you guys, I'm going home' and exploded.
The other deities, perhaps feeling a bit abashed at the complete and utter failure to protect their followers in their time of need, intervened and stabilized the situation, as much as possible, leading to the 'islands orbiting moltenland' thing.
The other effect of this magical cataclysm is that every magic user not involved in the second use of the artifact died messily as the world's magical field went haywire. In the ensuing chaos, nobody was on hand to shut down those magic-users' projects, experiments, and the like...
Now, the city has walled off that entire section of town, and no longer speaks of it - or even, really, thinks of it. Nobody has been there for more than a century (officially), and only those in the highest positions of power have any idea of what's behind those walls and gates.
Sadly, neither do I. The influences of the place are basically Half-Life 2's Ravenholm ("That? That's Mageholm. We don't go there anymore.") and Silent Hill. What I'm looking for are good non-combat encounters - psychological horror stuff - as well as some combat encounters, for a group of three to five level 5 PCs - Wizard, Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, ??? (don't know what one of the players is playing yet). Any and all help will be appreciated.
OKAY! So I am resurrecting a campaign from the death known only as 'oh crap school started again', in which my PCs have just arrived in a town situated on the confluence of two rivers - making it a prime river port.
Some notes on my world, before we reach the meat of my question: The world is divided up into an unknown number of islands floating in the sky, orbiting a ball of molten rock some thousand miles below. About a hundred and some years ago, the Elves (think nasty Fae/Pratchett Elves, not DnD/Tolkien elves) put together an artifact capable of slaying a god, and used it to kill the Sun-God and raise their leader to the god's station. The rest of the world wasn't too keen on this, and a brave team of heroical types managed to wrest control of the artifact from the elves' mortal pawns long enough to fire it off again, killing the elf-turned-God. Two massive expenditures of magic in such short succession - something like a week between the two, albeit an essentially sunless week being assaulted by shadowy fae-creatures and the undead - shattered the world's delicate magical balance.
Or, in other words, the planet said 'well screw you guys, I'm going home' and exploded.
The other deities, perhaps feeling a bit abashed at the complete and utter failure to protect their followers in their time of need, intervened and stabilized the situation, as much as possible, leading to the 'islands orbiting moltenland' thing.
The other effect of this magical cataclysm is that every magic user not involved in the second use of the artifact died messily as the world's magical field went haywire. In the ensuing chaos, nobody was on hand to shut down those magic-users' projects, experiments, and the like...
Now, the city has walled off that entire section of town, and no longer speaks of it - or even, really, thinks of it. Nobody has been there for more than a century (officially), and only those in the highest positions of power have any idea of what's behind those walls and gates.
Sadly, neither do I. The influences of the place are basically Half-Life 2's Ravenholm ("That? That's Mageholm. We don't go there anymore.") and Silent Hill. What I'm looking for are good non-combat encounters - psychological horror stuff - as well as some combat encounters, for a group of three to five level 5 PCs - Wizard, Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, ??? (don't know what one of the players is playing yet). Any and all help will be appreciated.