What do you find in a city of aberrations?

[shilsen]

Firstly, my players stay out! Yes, Rackhir, Michael Tree and AviLazar - that means YOU!
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I don't use the creative minds of ENWorld enough, so I thought I'd ask for some ideas for a situation in my Eberron game (in my sig).

The group of five PCs and an NPC wizard (all 9th lvl) have just reached Yarkuun Draal, an ancient hobgoblin city that was overrun by an army of aberrations nearly 9,000 yrs ago during an extraplanar invasion. Though the invasion was driven back, the city was never recovered.

The city is very large, being set into both walls of a huge gorge, with an inlet of the nearby ocean at the bottom forming a natural harbor. Hence, much of it also lies beneath the immediate surface, consisting of building, chambers and caverns that extend into the walls of the gorge on either side. I'm visualizing it as not so much occupied as a whole but as having a large number of aberrations dwelling therein in scattered groups, with some powerful aberrations exercising nominal rule over the area.

An added factor in the city is the presence of a dimensional seal. For non-Eberronphiles, that's a magical seal which blocks off access to the dimension the aberations first came from. One of the daelkyr (double plus ungood powerful outsider that creates aberrations) is kept sealed beneath the city due to the dimensional seal, but it (and its minions) continually create strange monstrosities to populate the city, hoping to attract adventurers who might end up destroying the seal (the daelkyr and the aberrations are unable to affect it).

The PCs are primarily there to explore, learn more about aberrations and the lore of the daelkyr (the NPC and one PC are both alienists), and, of course, kill things and take their stuff. The NPC suspects - and has mentioned - the possibility of a dimensional seal being present, but none of them know of a daelkyr in the area.

So, with all of that preamble, what I'm looking for are suggestions for:

(1) interesting treasure for the PCs (both magical and mundane)
(2) descriptions of scenes, architecture, items, and anything else that appropriate conveys the alien nature of what they are encountering
(3) ideas for strange enemies to encounter (more description than mechanics, since I like using existing creatures with variant flavor)

And anything else that comes to mind. Extra points for anything that makes my players throw up and/or go "Damn - that's just wrong!"

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

 

[jaerdaph]

The words "cyclopean" and "non-Euclidean" geometry come to mind.

 

[CharginCrusader]

and lots and lots of tentacles and eye stalks............

 

[Cam Banks]

Long hallways that turn you inside out as you walk down them, yet don't actually harm you.

Chains attached to monstrous beasts by hooks hanging overhead, rusted and nasty.

A pool of fluids that congeals at points and forms hideous facial expressions, with sigils around the pool's edge that when deciphered reveal that this is what remains of a small daelkyr-worshiping cult

Etc

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Arkhandus]

Large portions of the city have likely been transmuted or the like by the aberrations to more resemble their homeplane, or simply to be repulsive and infuriating to primes (er, Eberronites, Eberroni, Eberronians?). Especially if they want to incite adventurers to come and wreak righteous/greedmongering destruction upon the place and destroy the Dimensional Seal.

The Seal itself has probably been surrounded in something made to look like the living heart of the city, or like some kind of soulcage containing all those who died in the city, or like some kind of mondo aberration with really tough hide. Anything to incite the adventurers to level their best destructive abilities towards it, and inadvertently break or disrupt the Seal within. It might just be an illusion, but powerful adventurers would probably just see through that. The aberrations might even have shaped the unnatural beast around the Seal to look like it's slowly consuming/dissolving/dissecting captive humanoids, most of whom probably already look dead. This could incite more-impulsive destructive actions on the part of adventurers.

Sections of the city probably look like living structures, living floors, and living pillars or whatnot, grotesqueries of alien flesh, bone, sinew, and guts, pulsing and oozing and bleeding and making for unusual, unexpected traps ("What the?! The floor just spit poison at me?!" or "AGH!! Did that pillar just stab me with a TONGUE?!"). Portions of the ground may occasionally throb, beat, roil, or churn. Various areas may be slimy, and have concealed pits filled with digestive acids or the like. Grotesque vestibules might occasionally spew forth a Stinking Cloud. Strange, gigantic organs may generate stifling but not harmful amounts of heat across large swaths of the place, maintaining a comfortable environment for some of the other organic structures and aberrations.

Pieces of obscene and stomach-churning 'artwork' or decoration may adorn some walls, open fields, streets, or the like, made from animal and humanoid body parts preserved through magic, some still seeming alive, perhaps magically warded to keep other aberrations from feeding on them. Resident structures and decorations from the original inhabitants have probably been twisted into mockeries. Some pieces of architecture may be arranged such that only flying or climbing creatures could reach certain rooms or the like.

Resident hobgoblin or bugbear children may have been turned into ghouls with most of their skin and muscle torn off, and gaps in their bones, revealing rotten, throbbing organs, oozing brains, squirming intestines bloated with worms, and such. Goblins in the area may have been twisted and mutilated into chokers, their arms and legs unnaturally lengthened, their heads somewhat squished, covered in sores and pustules and vestigial limbs and scabs. Chuuls may lurk in pools of blood and filth, and resemble pallid ogres with crudely-grafted crustacean parts, jellyfishes fused to their necks and giant ant mandibles joined to their jaws, extra pairs of human legs grafted to their lower torso, and all covered in slime. Cloakers may look like they were made from torn-off human flesh, with human eyes, mouths, and such grafted to the bloody front, with bone claws that resemble human finger bones, with a tail of muscley sinew grafted to the bottom and lined with a misplaced esophagus.

Hives of misshapen insects probably lie around somewhere, with the insects having humanoid or animal faces or limbs growing on their backs, legs, or tails. They may be psuedonatural, with random tentacles and eyeballs and toothy maws lining their thoraxes and legs and abdomens. There might be a swarm of psuedonatural rats or dire rats. A cluster of psuedonatural bats that look like eyeballs with teeth and feathery tendrils may lurk under some structures' ceilings. Caves, or buildings, may seem to breathe rasping breaths. Psuedonatural cats may be fighting over a halfling's severed head. The local well (or wells) may contain a living, oily ooze, an amoeboid creature of some sort, that absorbed all the water down there long ago. Trees or buildings may quietly moan for help in Common or Goblin or other languages, drawing curious or noble adventurers into traps or ambushes. Some of the trees may be ropers, or psuedonatural ropers.

Mindflayers (dolgaunts or whatever, is that what they're called in Eberron?) may be around the Seal to use mind-influencing abilities on anyone who approaches, to make them think the Seal is something else, something that needs to be destroyed. Or maybe a goblin alienist, or a psionic blue.

 

[Nyaricus]

Eberroni

lol, this caught my attention

"Don't play Eberroni, it's balogna"

new catch-phrase

 

[Matafuego]

There was a Beholder city in a 2e module (which I don't remember the name right know it was in a beholder trilogy).
It had great ideas, like building that could only be entered by flying through a tube and doors made of some magical material that could not be opened but that vanished when the middle eye was active on them...

¿Maybe some Beholder ghetto in the city?

 

[domino]

Weird Gravity. You know that M. C. Escher drawing with all the staircases, or the scene from the Labyrinth. Something like that.

 

[The Hound]

This cries out for a Shoggoth or two (See if you can find a copy of the story "At the Mountains of Madness" by Lovecraft. Skip to near the end).

 

[VoidAdept]

and lots and lots of tentacles and eye stalks............

and nubile anime girls...

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what?