101 Things To Find in a Sewer

[TheAuldGrump]

35. Pockets of methane (fire damp) - when your torch flames turn blue then get out of there!
36. Pockets of sulfur dioxide (stink damp) - when you smell rotten eggs then get out of there!

37. Tunnels that pass though old sections of the city that have been built over.
38. Including an ancient catacombs, the dead most bothered by their final rest being filled with effluent.

39. A wererat city, hidden from human eyes.
40. A small clear lake of pure water, somehow untouched by the filth that flows past so very near.
41. A small mill wheel, powered by the flowing effluent.

42. Dwarfs gathering niter from the walls.
43. A large brass archimedean screw that carries waste up an incline.
44. A huge bronze archimedean screw that breaks up the larger bits of detritus into smaller pieces. (Think 'meat grinder'.)

45. Mudlarks sorting through the filth, looking for coins and other salvageable bits.
46. A goblin market, selling bits of plunder from the world above.
47. A leper, his body covered in sores, makes his home here, his checked shirt and clanking bells proclaming his disease.

The Auld Grump

 

[Tonguez]

Insectoid Goblins
Oozes and Slimes
Awakened Turtle Ninjas
Entrances to the basements of various buildings
A dragon
Water Traps (Flush and Blast types)
A gigantic pipe organ
Pipes leading to strange places
Loose bricks
Bulbasaur
A Ghoul
An entrance to the realm of faery
Goblin ganstas
The Blood Crucible
A lavish ebony barge with red sating lining and gold trim
64LARPers

 

[thedungeondelver]

Oooh, can I play?

-Failed potion, tossed out bottle and all by alchemist. Roll a 1d6:
On a 1 or 2, the potion causes instant, painful and irreversible by neutralize poison death.
On a 3 or 4, instant nausea with a 5% chance of inflicting a non-fatal disease of the digestive tract.
On a 6, a minor effect not wholly munificient or deleterious. Some suggestions, the character's fingertips glow blue, illuminating a 5' radius for one turn. The character can identify individual creatures by smell for two turns. The character is reinvigorated and can carry an extra 100 coins of weight/encumbrance for the rest of the day (note, no combat bonuses accompany this burst of strength). Those are some examples, be creative!

 

[phindar]

47. Toy boat
48. Message in a bottle ("Help me I'm being held captive in the Royal Privvy!" or whatever.)
49. Lepers, perhaps a whole family of them that have been forced away from the sight of the "civilized" people and who have turned a section of the sewers into a bizarre mockery of an aristocrat's home, with stolen patchwork furniture, elaborate costumes of sewn rags, and everyone speaking with an exaggerated formality. Welcome to the chamber of the magnificient Lord Superfluous Magna Superior, illustrious potentate of all he surveys...
50. The Rat King.
51. A section of the city that had been ruined and built over. (See the History Channel series Cities of the Underworld for tons of ideas for this one.)
52. Part of a body.
53. A section of natural caves.
54. A shrine to an evil god, with an offering bowl of recently severed fingers and eyes.
55. A book of ribald limericks and drawings.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

56. Skeletal pipe organ (play the bones to open a section of pipes that are not normally accessible)
57. Graffitti (painted into a skull and bones)
58. can of dry paint
59. paint brush
60. empty wooden chest

61. a pair of moldy shoes
62. shattered ceramic doll
63. empty oil barrel
64. scroll with weather patterns accurately predicted for the next seven days
65. torn page from a spellbook

 

[Angel Tarragon]

66. paper torn to bits and scattered all over passageway
67. hilt of a sword
68. sword blade shattered into thirds
69. fresh trail of blood
70. bloody handprints on a wall

71. lots of broken wood
72. area of undispellable deeper darkness
73. a room that is an exact duplicate of a room in the local castle/palace
74. ife size replica (maanequin) of one of the PCs
75. a dead body perfectly intact except for its skin, which is missing

 

[hong]

76. Jimmy Hoffa's head

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

77) A sewer grate leading down.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

What can be found within the sewers?

1. Uh, normal sewer stuff. I think we ALL know what that includes.

You’d be surprised!

I’ll try to use inoffensive language, as I don’t want a ban, but bear with me, we are talking a lot of SH-one-T here.

Here’s a few real life suggestions. I know, I was there.

Laundry discharge.
You’re underground, the tunnels (sewerage) and the material in them (sewage) are cool, not cold.
You’re minding your own business when the local laundry discharges a few vats of hot soapy water. It hits the main flow and whoosh, instant sauna. The tunnel is filled with a white, sudsy steam. The smell is a cross between soapsuds and excrement, an interesting combination! More worrying is the fact that you can feel particles of something on your skin. You hope that it’s from the laundry; and that it hasn’t been picked up from the main flow. Breathing is uncomfortable, and suddenly you’re sweaty and sticky.

Where’d it go?
Its peak time, flows are heavy and fast. Drop something into the flow and it’s gone. Why?
1) You do NOT want to pick it up,
2) If the flow is fast enough, it’s gone anyway.
I lost a 3lb hammer, swept away at a speed where I was NOT going to give chase.

Yeurgh!
Late night. The pubs and clubs (ok, so in game it’s the inns and taverns) have recently closed. Everyone has made their way home, it’s bedtime. So what do the masses do? You guessed! All of those narrow little side pipes, the ones that are too small to walk through are suddenly working to capacity. Some of them are at floor level, but others are at waist or ‘shudder’ head height.

Location, Location, Location
It may be unpleasant, but for all the yeurgh factor, as a wise man once told me: ‘excrement is just excrement, get washed and you’ll be alright’ (I’m paraphrasing wildly here! Imagine much coarser language). However, remember where you are. You probably don’t want to be underneath the alchemists guild when they get rid of a certain substances. There are locations in the real world where ‘that stuff could rot yer boots off.’ In a fantasy city, it could dissolve your armour, or turn you into a frog, or…

 

[Ry]

Ladder to a bricked-up former exit. Possibly bash-through-able.