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Great Fantasy Cities (and what makes them so awesome)
- Thread starter I'm A Banana
- Start date
Fallen Seraph
First Post
I would have to say Sigil and The City are my two favourite fantasy cities.
In fact, I love The City so much its world is a key element of my too be 4e campaign, in terms of its mix of technology and medieval-life. I even have a city being designed along similar visual ideas of The City but made even more extreme.
It has, steel and stone skyscrapers, steam-trains, electrical lights, etc. With winding streets, corruption, various cults and thieving guilds, etc.
I have to say Penance is absolutely kick-ass, I am so very tempted to bring that into my 4e campaign as well, just need to think of where to put it.
In fact, I love The City so much its world is a key element of my too be 4e campaign, in terms of its mix of technology and medieval-life. I even have a city being designed along similar visual ideas of The City but made even more extreme.
It has, steel and stone skyscrapers, steam-trains, electrical lights, etc. With winding streets, corruption, various cults and thieving guilds, etc.
I have to say Penance is absolutely kick-ass, I am so very tempted to bring that into my 4e campaign as well, just need to think of where to put it.
Wik
First Post
Hm. A few more...
The Citadel, from the video game Mass Effect. An ancient city that orbits the stars, built 50,000 years ago by a now extinct forerunner race. It houses millions of souls, and functions as the centre of galactic government. The closer you get to the centre, where the docks are, the lower the gravity gets.
The citadel is great because it is a place where ambassadors and travellers from the entire universe rub shoulders. Back alley deals and financial trades are made here, as are criminal organizations and assassin syndicates. And there's always the Keepers, a strange race of aliens that communicate with no one, and move from location to location, maintaining the machinery that keeps the Citadel in existence.
***
I also like Eberron's Karlakton, which is where my current campaign is set. The city is situated on a river, and on the other side of the river is a veil of necromantic mist that functions as the gateway into the mournland. The entire city was hit hard during the last war, and many revolutionaries and black cults fight against the Karnnathi military (which is itself trying to reorganize after an internal schism with the Blood of Vol). Imagine an industrial city of gothic architecture, falling apart at the seams, with a heavy dose of paranoia and depression.
The Citadel, from the video game Mass Effect. An ancient city that orbits the stars, built 50,000 years ago by a now extinct forerunner race. It houses millions of souls, and functions as the centre of galactic government. The closer you get to the centre, where the docks are, the lower the gravity gets.
The citadel is great because it is a place where ambassadors and travellers from the entire universe rub shoulders. Back alley deals and financial trades are made here, as are criminal organizations and assassin syndicates. And there's always the Keepers, a strange race of aliens that communicate with no one, and move from location to location, maintaining the machinery that keeps the Citadel in existence.
***
I also like Eberron's Karlakton, which is where my current campaign is set. The city is situated on a river, and on the other side of the river is a veil of necromantic mist that functions as the gateway into the mournland. The entire city was hit hard during the last war, and many revolutionaries and black cults fight against the Karnnathi military (which is itself trying to reorganize after an internal schism with the Blood of Vol). Imagine an industrial city of gothic architecture, falling apart at the seams, with a heavy dose of paranoia and depression.
Daniel D. Fox
Explorer
Kahabro, the City of Lights
(homebrewed by ME!)
http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/Kahabro
To call Kahabro a dynamic place with a strange and varied identity is to understate the situation greatly. Only now are explorers truly discovering how ancient the city really is and unearthing details of its varied history. It’s a place where people are as concerned with what lies below the ground as they are with what’s above. This is like no place else in the world.
Kahabro lies in the world of Deismaar within the bounds of a very old theocracy unsure of whether or not it has toppled. Five different Princes claim the throne, and portions of the once great realm cleave off like icy shards from a melting glacier. This decaying society looks upon previous centuries and sees grander, more civilized and certainly better days. Progress seems on the decline—skills and lore that people possessed just a few hundred years ago are lost now.
But this is not a time to lose hope altogether. This civilization, older than our own real-world cultures, is more sophisticated than our own in some ways, but less so in others. A myriad of races and peoples have come and gone, creating an intricate (and sometimes confusing) amalgam. Good struggles against evil, and law against chaos. But the shadows only threaten the light— they do not yet consume it.
As the theocracy of Goth Moran dies, Kahabro (for years an independent settlement on the edge of civilization) is quickly becoming the center of something much larger than itself. No one yet knows exactly what, but something is happening in Kahabro. Something new stirs in the city ... and that something is very, very old.
Welcome to the City
Kahabro is a bustling city of some considerable size; in fact it is the largest city of the known world. It is the main port of call for coasters trading between Aglador and Goth Moran, being built on and around rocky bluffs where the Carnahk River and Stygian Flow meet. Like most large settlements in Goth Moran, Kahabro is built over an older city which had itself been built on the ruins of a yet earlier one. The site has been continuously inhabited for ages, far longer than any known records tell. Kahabro has been around since the advent of the Zentish Empire of the First Age, and throughout the Second Age during the rise of the Southern Empire of Pharazon. The place was established to serve as the port for an important fortress built at the time of Goth Moran’s foundation, a fortification called the Red Citadel. Kahabro lies in a cool, rainy coastal region with harsh winters. It serves as an important port belongs to Goth Moran, although a growing faction in the city feels that Kahabro should declare itself independent...
Read more at http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/Kahabro
(homebrewed by ME!)
http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/Kahabro
To call Kahabro a dynamic place with a strange and varied identity is to understate the situation greatly. Only now are explorers truly discovering how ancient the city really is and unearthing details of its varied history. It’s a place where people are as concerned with what lies below the ground as they are with what’s above. This is like no place else in the world.
Kahabro lies in the world of Deismaar within the bounds of a very old theocracy unsure of whether or not it has toppled. Five different Princes claim the throne, and portions of the once great realm cleave off like icy shards from a melting glacier. This decaying society looks upon previous centuries and sees grander, more civilized and certainly better days. Progress seems on the decline—skills and lore that people possessed just a few hundred years ago are lost now.
But this is not a time to lose hope altogether. This civilization, older than our own real-world cultures, is more sophisticated than our own in some ways, but less so in others. A myriad of races and peoples have come and gone, creating an intricate (and sometimes confusing) amalgam. Good struggles against evil, and law against chaos. But the shadows only threaten the light— they do not yet consume it.
As the theocracy of Goth Moran dies, Kahabro (for years an independent settlement on the edge of civilization) is quickly becoming the center of something much larger than itself. No one yet knows exactly what, but something is happening in Kahabro. Something new stirs in the city ... and that something is very, very old.
Welcome to the City
Kahabro is a bustling city of some considerable size; in fact it is the largest city of the known world. It is the main port of call for coasters trading between Aglador and Goth Moran, being built on and around rocky bluffs where the Carnahk River and Stygian Flow meet. Like most large settlements in Goth Moran, Kahabro is built over an older city which had itself been built on the ruins of a yet earlier one. The site has been continuously inhabited for ages, far longer than any known records tell. Kahabro has been around since the advent of the Zentish Empire of the First Age, and throughout the Second Age during the rise of the Southern Empire of Pharazon. The place was established to serve as the port for an important fortress built at the time of Goth Moran’s foundation, a fortification called the Red Citadel. Kahabro lies in a cool, rainy coastal region with harsh winters. It serves as an important port belongs to Goth Moran, although a growing faction in the city feels that Kahabro should declare itself independent...
Read more at http://deismaar.pbwiki.com/Kahabro
BadMojo
First Post
Fallen Seraph said:
What's Penance?
Anyway, my vote for "originality" goes to China Mieville's floating city, Armada. As for adventuring hooks and use in game, I'd have to go with Freeport. It's Cthulhu AND pirates. It also has enough material of different tone to do a swashbuckling campaign, Mythos game, gritty street level game or any mix of those.
Fallen Seraph
First Post
Penance, The Bottomless City. From the Oathbound setting by Bastion Press. It's a seedier city than many, whose streets and dark allies are not safe to walk down, and a place where you can get lost and never find your way home again. Immense, but situated in a definite plain, Penance has no ground. The residents use walkways built above the remains of old buildings. You could go straight down for miles and not see one spec of natural dirt. This gives the city it's own "dungeon," right below everything, always ready to collapse at a moment's notice, inhabited by creatures drawn from all across reality.
The Reason It's Great? An endless Challenge. Penance is ruled by violent warlords and presided over by a caged goddess of sorts. Penance reflects the "testing" nature of the Oathbound setting by being more of a challenge than a city -- simply living there and getting food and work and living day-to-day life is frequently a matter of life and death.
Kamikaze Midget posted about it on the first-page, first-post. It sounds like a truly interesting and neat setting, which is why I want to bring it to my 4e game.
The Reason It's Great? An endless Challenge. Penance is ruled by violent warlords and presided over by a caged goddess of sorts. Penance reflects the "testing" nature of the Oathbound setting by being more of a challenge than a city -- simply living there and getting food and work and living day-to-day life is frequently a matter of life and death.
Kamikaze Midget posted about it on the first-page, first-post. It sounds like a truly interesting and neat setting, which is why I want to bring it to my 4e game.
Wik
First Post
Grymar said:
It's in the Eberron Sourcebook - it mentions how the city is on the border of the mournland, how it has a huge number of doomsday cults, and how it was once the home of weapon-making industries. The part about Karrnath trying to get a hold of it's military is also in the book... sort of. I played things up a bit in my own campaign, really adding stuff for personal use.
I made all of the dragonmarked houses interested in Karlakton, simply because it's a city on the verge of breaking. The military had declared martial law on the city, and the former maintainers of the city (the house Deneith) are fighting to maintain order and keep their contract, despite having severe manpower shortages. Undead vestiges keep drifting over from the mournland, and many different power groups are trying to take over the city: a group of unemployed industrial workers who are basically communists, zealots of the silver flame who have taken to lynching anyone who even looks suspiciouos, and the blood of Vol (who actually almost seem sympathetic, since their real goal in the city is merely to reclaim what was stolen from them by the government when they were ousted a few years back).
It's a neat setting, and so far, the PCs have only left the city once, and that was to intercept a necromancer on his way to Karlakton. They're really enjoying the confines of being in a tight city.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Nice! As a bonus, in an RPG setting, you get to run sweet battles over all of this territory.
So, keep the chain going. Some of you who know about some of the mentioned cities, elaborate a little bit. Tell me what's cool about them, not just that they are cool!
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