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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8590632" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 97: July 1994part 2/5The Living City 2 & 3: An extra large double helping of establishments by regular writer Nicky Rea fills out the first half of the issue. The Hand of Mercy is a children's hospital & orphanage run by clerics of Ilmater. Like most charities, they always have more clients than they can really afford to take care of, but thanks to the cleric's conjuring powers at least they never run out of food. Among their staff is one of the Realms' growing numbers of heroic drow, teaching sign language to the deaf kids and trying to get over his own trauma from a lifetime of living in an evil female dominated society. If you're only interested in killing things and taking their stuff, you won't find much of interest here, with the only treasure a few healing potions stashed away for particularly urgent crises, but if you prefer not to slaughter whole tribes of humanoid babies along with the adults and think a better future is possible there's plenty of quirky NPC's here for you to interact with and opportunities for you to be heroic in small everyday ways that make their lives better. This is pretty pleasing to see, providing disabled representation and an antiracist message all in one go. You can see why White Wolf would snap her up and give her even freer rein in that area.Marigold's Menagerie, meanwhile, is a small zoo just outside the city proper. Originally set up for circus animals who are getting too old for jumping through flaming hoops and balancing on the tightrope, it's turned into more of a general purpose animal shelter, that once again struggles financially because the owner is just too darn nice and can't say no to a sob story. If you have a druid or ranger in the party, it's a good place to pick up companions who already have a wide range of tricks and are used to humans using magic to communicate with them directly. The quirks and personalities of the various animals currently housed there are given just as much care and attention as the people in the other entry and several of them lead to obvious adventure hooks. Once again, this looks like it could be pretty useful in a more roleplaying heavy campaign where players care about pets and the community rather than just their own raw power.</blockquote>

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