Edited by Jonathan Jacobs
Introductions and Building a City in Miniature
Hello O’Readers of Nevermet Press! The name’s Steven Schutt, and I have a few things up on the site already, two villains, a pseudo good undead cult leader and other things you may or may not have enjoyed. Regardless, I’m here to stay, and I hope that as my writing evolves so will your enjoyment of my work, and even more the work of the other great authors here at Nevermet. This first blog deals with my own ideas about building a city of adventure, not adventurers. As part of the Shayakand campaign setting spearheaded by John Payne, the City of Spires is the ruined city reclaimed by the vilest beings known to the Shayakand universe, all seeking a singular object of unimaginable power. Below are my musings and general design decisions that accompany the creation of this city in miniature.
Compression
The first thing I had to remember when I went about designing a city is that it isn’t a place I had the time, space or ability to expand it into a fully described and living place. I had to take all the ideas in my head about this city, teaming with hundreds of horrid monsters from across the mulitverse and spread them around in what was once the greatest city of an empire. Further, I could not describe every district in detail, or at least the detail that I myself want. Each of them has to have its own allotted space, but when I get down to the four main areas of interest, each has to have a relatively equal weight with the other three. Therefore, there is quite a bit that I had to cut. For example, when I talk about the aboleth lair, for aboleths are probably my favorite evil masterminds, I can’t describe the vast swathes of enslaved servitors used as fuel to maintain the sphere of water the aboleths use as a home. I can certainly mention them, as I did here, and I can give five or ten words about how they got there, but the complexes in which they are held remain outside of my ability to describe.
Instead, when I have to compress what could easily be 30,000-50,000 words into roughly 4,000-5,000, I will describe in general the locations and what they look like. It is the actions of those living in the various districts (or beneath them), their plots and their manipulations that interest me more. More than this, I want to focus on key individuals in each locale of influence. To that end, each main area has a few controlling leaders that maintain relative order in those under them. The actions of these few are effectively the actions of the many in the city.
Uniqueness with Unity
One of the things I want to create with the City of Spires is a sense of unity while still allowing each part of the city to be unique in its own way. The aboleth caves should, in some way, relate to the other, less alien yet equally evil palace district, and thence to the noble’s quarter and the spice (magic) district. Each should somehow connect to the other, perhaps in the form of similar spying techniques, double crosses, deals made, assassins dealt with, information traded and collected in like fashion.
To maintain a sense of uniqueness, though, each major controlled district has something strange that gives its rulers a leg up on their competition. For the aboleth, it is their mastery of the mind and incomparable knowledge of the cave systems beneath the city. For another group it is a strange connection to the psychic remnants of the dead and fled of the old empire.
Of course, there must be some sort of counterbalance for any advantage, but for the City of Spires, I thought that instead of having several different disadvantages, there should be one universal agent that acts against all the groups. That leads to:
Wild Cards
While there is only one well-known, if not well understood, wild card in the City of Spires, there may be more. I think that inter-faction conflict is a great way to keep any one group from reaching the ultimate goal; it should never be the only one. For this project, I thought that, since the city is filled with evil, something not evil should be the universal thorn in the side. This something is not good either, because that is cliché. This something, which you’ll discover when the City of Spires hits the Nevermet Press site, is almost without definition and unique in it own way. It accomplishes the unity, adding its own special touch to the entire setting.
Driving Goal
Of course, four different groups from across space and planes would not converge on a single city without a very good reason. To that end, I decided something nigh-world breaking was in order. The only problem with those kind of things is that they tend to grate on the nerves of some, because as soon as anyone gains the power to change the world in a big way, things get hairy real quick. To keep things simple, at least for a long time coming, I made this end goal something out of reach of everyone of any importance within the city walls. Further, the wild card has its own reasons for keeping this giant power source out of the hands of those controlling the city.
Bringing in the Party
At the end of the piece, there is a fairly sizable chunk of information on how GMs can bring in their own parties adventuring in Shayakand, from low to high level and on both sides of the morality coin. While the city certainly caters easily to the high levels in a world-shattering campaign end exploration, there are still parts of the place virtually untouched by its current occupants for the sheer sake of lack of interest of nothing of “any real value towards the cause.” What this entails will ultimately be up to the GM and his party’s wishes, but several prominent areas make their presence known.
And that, as they say, is that.
Steven Schutt, Nevermet Press Content Developer
