Shrouded in perpetual darkness, the City in Darkness floats impossibly within a void of absolute nothingness. The flickering glow of thousands of lanterns and torches casts an eerie light upon a colossal rock, suspended in the vast expanse of space. Perched atop this rock are tightly clustered buildings, reaching ever skyward toward an empty, starless sky.
This blog endeavors to chronicle the mysteries of this enigmatic city and hopefully, in the process, improve my writing skills.
I have only recently discovered Blades in the Dark, it was recommended to me as right up my alley. After beginning a Blades campaign recently, I couldn’t agree more.
Of course, my new campaign is set in The City in Darkness and so requires a few tweaks. In the last campaign I set in the City, the PCs unwittingly set free three vampires imprisoned beneath the city. The vampires quickly siezed control of the city, ruling with an iron fist. In an epic showdown at the finale of the campaign, it was almost a TPK and the vampires emerged victorious.
Here’s an overview of my Blades hack. I’ll post more details over the coming weeks.
Introduction
Twenty years ago, rule in the City was usurped by The Three, a trio of vampires unwittingly freed from their prison deep within the rock. Thriving in the permanent darkness they quickly solidified their hold and ushered in an industrial revolution in the city merging their blood magic with the engineering brilliance of the Goblins.
Today, the city is transformed by snaking iron and glass pipes transporting blood derived Hemaline to machines of endless variety.
Sample Heritages
- Nocte, or the City in Darkness locals are a mostly downtrodden working class, oppressed by their vampiric overlords. Most have never been through a portal to see the sky, but on the bright side, you have to be really unlucky to be selected for blood harvesting.
- Orlick Goblins originate from a sprawling subterranean realm of canals and engineering marvels. After toppling their malevolent god-emperor and purging their own inner demons, they now channel their energies into grand engineering projects and intricate tea societies to subdue their primal instincts.
- If you want to play a more happy-go-lucky type, the halflings who live in the agrarian rolling hills of Towling through one of the portals. At home they live in communal village-houses, sleep in big piles, and have tried to develop the same vibe in the city.
- The Swamps of Kohlness are home to all kinds of weird creatures from Kobolds to Lizardfolk. They tend to be looked down upon as uncivilised by people of the city, somehow access to fresh air and food doesn’t count for much in the eyes of locals.
Sample Districts
- A hovel deep within the Pits, vertical shafts that descend into the rock itself, with winding passages holding the cities most wretched folk. These pits flood whenever it rains. On the plus side, crime in the pits is rare, as nobody has anything to steal.
- A Dangle hangs below the rock itself on chains or ropes. Occasionally one falls off, but that hasn’t dented their popularity as spaces with fewer neighbours than usual.
- A Chainhold clings to the vast chains that hold many towers of the city upright, anchored to a secure spike of rock that crowns the city. Although secure due to the chains, space can be cramped and the smoke of the city drifts up to choke everything.
Sample Factions
| Name | Type | Tier | Hold | Description |
|---|
| Phlebotomists Guild | Institution | iv | Strong | Carry out the important duty of taxing the denizens of their blood |
| The Vampires | Institution | v | Strong | The trio who rule. Distant figures who dwell in the Night Palace |
| Water Guild | Institution | ii | Strong | Maintain the aqueducts and related infrastructure |
| Tallow Chandlers | Institution | iv | Weak | Part of the old government and now much reduced, but still hold significant mercantile power |
As you can see, there’s a lot more work to do, but this combined with a bunch of original Blades factions, has got me off to a good start. I plan to flesh out the setting to the point it’s usable by other people. I plan to flesh out the setting to the point it’s usable by others. Any feedback or encouragement would be greatly appreciated!
More Reading
These are my most recent posts:
- Necrotic Shroud
Here’s another entry in my easy encounters series, for an explanation of why this is so trivial to succeed at, see Short Encounters to make players excel.
Ravenous Beetles Target Ability: Aasimar’s Necrotic Shroud racial ability, or anything that produces fear
Ability Summary: Eyes and Flightless wings transform you into a fear provoking terror. Non-ally creatures must succeed on a Cha saving throw (DC 8 + Cha mod and Prof bonus) or be Frightened
- Fey Ancestry
Here’s another quick and easy encounter, designed to make a player feel good because an oft-forgotten ability got them out of a scrape. I introduced this idea more fully in the last post, but in short, I plan to make a bunch of these. They haven’t been playtested yet, so if you use one, let me know how it goes!
The willow dryad’s demand Target Ability: The Elf Fey Ancestry racial ability.
- Short Encounters to Make Players Excel
I plan to publish a series of small, simple encounters for Dungeons & Dragons (5.5e). Encounters that take just a few minutes to solve, and are designed to make PCs feel special because they’re an easy win if you’ve got a particular ability.
Not every encounter needs to be complex, resource draining, or a near death experience to make the players feel like they’ve accomplished something. It is a good idea to throw in small, quick encounters between big ones to break up the pace while still adding depth and interest to a campaign.
- New Blog, New tools
Just a quick one to say that I’ve updated the blog to a brand new look, powered by hugo and magick.css.
Part of this involves getting rid of comments, if you’d like to chat about any of the content on here, or about the gaming tools on the City in Darkness in general, then jump into the City in Darkness Discord.
What’s next? I really should get some more writing done, but I’m also working on a Vampire: The Masquerade(V5) character sheet and accompianing dice roller and Storyteller screen.
- Introducing my new skirmish game Campaign Managment Tool
In my last post, I mentioned that I’d be spending some time on building gaming tools. I achieved a bunch of things on my roadmap but in this post I want to tell you about a particular itch I had, and how I’ve built a new thing to scratch it.
I play skirmish wargames like Necromunda and Mordheim. In these games, there’s quite a bit of admin to do outside the actual playing of the game.
- Plans
I’d like to start writing again. It isn’t quite ten years since I started this blog, and the city of darkness is nearing the 20 year mark, but prolonged absences mean I feel like I have more to say on the topic. Lately, I have also been spending more time on the tools I build for myself to aid in wargaming and roleplaying. I might as well write about those here too.
- Random UK Ireland placename generator
I combined a list of random placename roots in the UK and Ireland to create a generic placename generator
It is extremely simple, there’s no way to clear the list and I can’t bothered capitalizing words other than the first one. I got the base words from Wikipedia and used the frankly awesome Last Gasp Grimoire choose your own generator tool to base it off.
Generate Generic UK / Irish Placename
- New Year, New Summary
My short break from the blog turned into a little longer than expected, but it’s a new year, so I’m going to start trying to post regularly again. I have a bunch of topics on the backburner in various stages of completion. I’m running a group through the Anabella Girando adventure right now, so I’ll wait and see how this new group handles it before publishing. My town history generator is done, but it needs some tweaking and I’ll probably remove the mechanics associated with town growth, since they don’t add much value.
- Dark Albion Review Part 1
I am in two minds about Dark Albion and I can’t quite figure out why. I think I will do my usual steal random bits for Nocte thing, but before that I want to do a more traditional review.
Dark Albion is a pseudo-historical setting based on England during the War of the Roses. Notable pieces of pseudo-ness include replacing the Catholic Church with The Church of the Unconquered Sun(TCotUS) and replacing the French with actual frogmen.
- Elves
Elves do not exist, a myth, a fairytale. But why then, are there so many stories of their glory, but also their wrath? There are worse things in this world; the undead, dragons, and all manner of savage creatures. There are more beautiful creatures in this world too, unicorns, nymphs and the like. Why then, do the stories tell of the great and powerful elves?
The great empires of forgotten ages, elves.