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Catacombs Beneath the Holy City
🕑 Added 2018-10-16 18:19:23 +0000 UTC The Holy City has a slight necropolis issue. For most of the history of the city, old mines and caverns beneath the hills of the city have been used as crypts and tombs. Some areas were expanded by churches specifically to inter the deceased, others just adapted as the small silver mines that helped found the city were worn out.The reason it has become a problem is there can be no proper sewer system built beneath the city as long as the churches and temples regard the catacombs as sacred reliquaries. Further, the thieves that used the massive interconnected structures of tunnels and chambers to get around the city have been known to bury their own (and possibly their victims) down here without proper rites and rituals – leading to a small but steady growth of undead prowling the catacombs. The upside of this is few thieves use the catacombs anymore, but the churches have had to start setting guards to watch over their sacred tombs and crypts to keep prowling ghouls away…
Like the Dark Caverns of Turr that I posted last month, this map is one from my history books. I drew this map in December of 2014 while researching the catacombs under Paris and Rome. I really got into it and crammed all this material onto a single letter-sized page. And then never posted it. I did, however, send a scan of it to Mike Monaco and Paolo Greco for use in Burgs & Bailiffs: Trinity. So here we are, 4 years later, and I finally dug the original out of my old folders while organizing my office and have scanned it for your games and mine.
https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/10/16/catacombs-beneath-the-holy-city/
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Dyson Logos
Awesome!
Story time! I’m a first-time DM running 5ed for a party of first-timers. Several sessions into our home-brew, the party is approaching the capital city, but I don’t know what happens when we get there! Cue: u/dysonlogos awesome “Catacombs beneath the Holy City” post on reddit. I draw up NPCs and elements for a small section of the dungeon in the North East. During the session, I open the map as a layer in GIMP with a mask and erase the mask as the party explores. We end a session in the middle of the planned section. The next time we all get back together 2 members of the party are unable to join at the last minute because of internet issues. I don’t want to continue the current session without them, but we all want to play. Then I remember: “I have a massive map of unexplored dungeon!” A fissure opens in the floor and the three remaining party members fall through to one of the “lower levels”—really just the SW corner of the map they weren’t going to get to for months. For the rest of the session they explored and I made up descriptions of the rooms and artifacts by the seat of my pants. It was awesome! When everyone was ready to quit, they found steps carved into the rock that led up a 200ft shaft and eventually out into the basement of a manor belonging to an old line of nobility. One of the party members was nearly killed by a Gray Ooze, we discovered the ruined summoning room of an ancient cult, entered the charnel house sepulcher of a powerful necromancer (and “noped” out again), came out of the catacombs in an unexpected place—none of which existed 5 minutes ago!— deepened the complexity and history of our world, and had a blast. All because of a killer map from Dyson Logos. Thank you.
