3. City Events
The City is never dull. When you stagger back to the surface, you enter a chaotic metropolis with all its intrigues, politics, and spectacle.
Before play, the GM should construct a City Events table, detailing potential events that frame the guild’s visit. During this step, the GM draws a major arcana card, consults this table, and interprets the result.
The results need not happen instantly. For example, if the GM draws a rumor on the City Events table, they might have a contract-giver or shopkeeper deliver the rumor to the guild through the course of playing out the City Phase.
The City Events table should have twenty-one entries and follow this formula:
Curiosities (I–V): Curiosities are moments of serendipity. GMs, use these events to inject color into the game. Curiosities create a sense of realness, and are opportunities to demonstrate what kind of City exists in your game. Are curiosity events dark portents like raving madmen calling for repentance under the blood moon or are they bucolic affairs with Punch and Judy puppet shows?
Happenings (VI–X): Happenings are events that frame the lives of the residents of the City. These are the saturnalia, feasts, and holy days that break up the wheel of years. Happenings should make the City Phase feel different to the players.
Visiting the City during a religious festival is much different than visiting during the normal drudge of days.
Rumors (XI–XV): Rumors hint at the contents of the Underworld: treasures, monsters, traps, hazards, and history. Rumors are opportunities to tell lore and define the “story” of the dungeon.
Travel events (XVI–XX): Travel events are often things that go wrong in a trip to the City, or a chance to confront the players to make a hard choice.
Signs and Portents (XXI): Signs and portents are special events wherein weirdness has spilled out from the Underworld and complicates life in the City. When drawing this result, the GM looks at the top card of the minor arcana discard pile and then consults the Signs and Portents table.
Like the Meatgrinder table, the GM should keep the City Events table tidy and fresh, swapping out used entries with new content (see step 8).
The next page has an example City Events table to serve as a starting point.
Example City Events
| Card | City Event |
|---|---|
| I | [Curiosity] Gross: A bucket of night soil is emptied onto a random adventurer from a high-up window. |
| II | [Curiosity] Doggy: A starving dog trails behind the guild, whining. Its ribs stick out and its pink skin is clearly visible through its mangy fur. It licks your hands with a dry, grey tongue. If you feed it, it may follow you. |
| III | [Curiosity] An Execution: A crowd gathers to watch a hanging. A tonsured Mythric cultist of middling initiation pronounces a sentence of death on a hooded man for the crime of punching a noble and subsequently loosening the noble’s tooth. To loud applause, the man drops and jerks on the gibbet. |
| IV | [Curiosity] Stylite: From his high pillar, a naked stylite pronounces doom down on the adventurer with the highest Wands score. The stylite loudly decries their vices and denounces their escapades as lecherous and murderous. He seems to know a lot about the adventurer, honestly. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so mean and truthful. |
| V | [Curiosity] Lick Lick Lick: An old woman, drunk as a skunk, sits in the gutter singing an old- fashioned tune. She doesn’t seem to notice the bloated rat licking her ankles. |
| VI | [Happening] Famine: A long winter has left the granaries empty. Food is scarce. You can only buy rations if you maintain a luxurious lifestyle during step 5 (Upkeep). |
| VII | [Happening] The Ecstasy of St. Naos: By far the biggest party day of the year: like St. Patrick’s and Mardi Gras had a baby. The City is shut down. The only City Action the adventurers can perform during step 6 (City Actions) is Carousing. |
| VIII | [Happening] The Coronation of Maiden Wisdom: One of the highest holy days in the Mythric calendar, charity is given generously during this time. Rates for upkeep are reduced: impoverished is 15g, common is 25g, and luxurious is 50g. |
| IX | [Happening] The Feast of the Constellations: During the Feast of the Constellations, the pious of the Cult fast. By custom and law, all taverns are closed and the drinking of alcohol is punished by use of a scold’s bridle. Carousing cannot be performed during this phase. |
| X | [Happening] The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: The old ruler is gone (assassinated? death faked? exiled?). The GM must determine who now sits the throne over the City. The players should expect changes from the new regime. |
| XI | [Rumor] The Sporehulk’s Wife: The Sporehulk is the dungeon lord of the Sepulcher. It is said that inside one of the chambers lies the barrow of his wife, around which is arranged four canopic jars containing her brains, her liver, her lungs, and her ovaries. If you eat any part of the Sporehulk’s wife, it’s said you’ll undergo a terrible and awesome transformation. |
| XII | [Rumor] The Star’s Daughter: A fallen star dwells on an island in the Boundless Moat, and his daughter came with him into exile. Both star-beings struggle adorably with human culture. The star wishes for someone to marry his daughter. As a dowry, the star will grant a wish to anybody who marries her. However, the daughter will interpret the wish. It would be wise to keep her happy unless you want the wish to go sour. |
| XIII | [Rumor] Medusa’s Abortion: A gorgon was recently slain in the Underworld, yet somehow its premature fetus survived. The awful, crawling, half-serpentine thing is gnawing its way through the Castle of Crossed Destinies. Even glancing at it turns you into stone. That’s why there are so many more statues in the Castle as of late. |
| XIV | [Rumor] The Strangler’s Palm: Inside a hidden room in the Castle of Crossed Destinies is a tavern—a haven for adventurers in the middle of the Worm’s own realm. If you can find it, 10g will purchase a safe place to encamp and some of the most exotic foods you’ve ever eaten. The password this month is “pickle juice.” |
| XV | [Rumor] The Tomb of the First Dead: Inside the City of Ruin is a graveyard. The first graveyard, in fact. It is called the Tomb of the First Dead, and it holds a mausoleum for the first human to ever succumb to the doom of old age and death. Inside this tomb is a treasure that will make you immune to the mental control of the three immortal nymphs that live within the Underworld. |
| XVI | [Travel event] A Theft: The adventurer in back of the marching order is bumped into by a louse- ridden orphan. Later, as they round a corner, they see a piece of gear that looks suspiciously like their own at a merchant’s stall. Several interested buyers are already taking notice. |
| XVII | [Travel event] A Challenge: A pair of bravos sitting outside of a wine sink make snide remarks about the clothes of the adventurer with the highest Pentacles score. They’re spoiling for a fight, though they’re more into humiliation than actual harm. |
| XVIII | [Travel event] A Proposition: Several whores call down compliments about the adventurer with the highest Wands score. They claim they’ll give them a discount, if the adventurer is so inclined. |
| XIX | [Travel event] An Inheritance: The adventurer with the lowest Cups score receives a letter from their family. A distant uncle has died and bequeathed them a townhouse by the Grey River, complete with a snooty butler named Aethelred that hates them. Though initially a boon, this townhouse will soon become the center of a web of intrigue that will haunt the guild. |
| XX | [Travel event] A Disaster: Fire! After step 6 (City Actions), the inn the guild is staying at catches fire. This prompts a test of Pentacles to escape quickly. If anybody fails, they leave behind the two items in the very bottom of their pack and begin the next Crawl with the Stressed condition. |
| XXI | [Signs and Portents] Strange Days: The GM notes the top card on the minor arcana discard pile and describes something from the Signs and Portents table (facing page). |
Signs and Portents
| Card | Signs and Portents |
|---|---|
| I | The Mushroom Forest: Yellow mushrooms with pink gills erupt from the flagstones of a random district. They stand as tall as columns, choking off traffic and commerce. That district’s special City Action cannot be used this City Phase. |
| II | The Blood-Red Star: A comet hangs over the City: a menstrual smear across the sky in both night and day. Its sickly red-brown light causes sleeplessness in the City. Everyone you meet is haggard and bleary eyed, barely holding onto sanity. You can’t sleep either. Begin the next Crawl Phase Stressed. |
| III | Mists: Emerald-colored fog rises out of the mouths to the Underworld, blotting out the sun. This phase takes place in an unnatural, unending night. |
| IV | The Ancient Quarter: A district of the City that hasn’t existed in centuries reappears from the mists of the ages. Its residents are antique and deeply confused about where they are and how they got here. Draw an additional district, per the rules in Appendix D: City Creation. This district becomes a part of the present City. |
| V | The Honey Cult: An adventurer brought black honey to the City. All who eat of it profess to see terrible and wonderful visions of a pregnant woman. They rave about the Nascent Horde. Something about their ravings causes a deep anxiety inside of you. |
| VI | Dreams: Dreams begin wandering through the City. A husband begins having the dreams of his wife. A hay merchant suddenly begins having the dreams of his neighbor, a clothier. The archbishop begins having dreams of the inbred princess locked in the Tower of Forbiddance. Each player must tell one secret to another player, which their adventurer dreams about. |
| VII | The Slime Catastrophe: Some thoughtless adventurer brought a baby green slime back into the City. It quickly grew in size, swallowing the food of the inn, the horses, the stables, and entire city blocks. Before it was vanquished with a fire, it ate an entire district. Remove one random district from the City. |
| VIII | Rip Van Winkle: Time moves strangely in the Underworld. You return to the City a full 100 years after you left. Your children are old and your lovers are dead. |
| IX | The Thing in the Water: Fishermen pull forth the corpse of some stupendous white thing from the waters of the Grey. The ocean sings a pitiful song for the next week. The song elicits a feeling of devastating ennui. Several named GM characters walk into the ocean and are never seen again. |
| X | Dog Suicide: All the dogs of the City commit suicide overnight: they throw themselves off of bridges, smash themselves through glass windows, drown themselves in the Grey. |
| XI | The Black Miracle of the Statues: Every graven image in the City begins speaking terrible blasphemies. In a fit of iconoclasm, the Cult begins smashing all representative art. Statues, paintings, idols, mosaics, figureheads, children’s toys, etc., are all fuel for their holy bonfires. Religious fervor is increased in the near term. |
| XII | The Blood Rain: Red clouds, swollen like pustules, begin raining blood. The blood flows in rivulets down the streets, pollutes cisterns, stains everything. It’s gross. |
| XIII | The Child of Silence: A giant infant crawls down the streets. The thing is surrounded with an aura of impenetrable silence: no sound whatsoever carries in its presence. It seems to be hunting the guild. The guild can hide and forestall this doom, though the Child of Silence will doubtless cause some terrible harm if left unchecked. |
| XIV | What Is Dead May Never Die: The dead haunt the City. Until the guild finds the source of the undead in the Underworld and quells it, no City Actions can be performed. If the plague of the dead is allowed to continue, the Underworld will breach onto the surface, devouring the City (as it has devoured so many cities before). |