City of the Pyramid

At the junction of the great causeway and the great underway lies a nexus of great power. After the fall of the elves during the Golden age it was here the golden ones came to build pyramid temples to their dark gods. Seven tiers for the Burning One, Five for the Breaker of Hope, a mere two for the Mistress of the still pool, an unimportant goddess worshiped only by females and pondlings. Still her pyramid is required to balance the fearsome dread of the uncounted tiers of the underpyramid of the Drowner in Darkness. The Treader of the Secret Ways required no pyramid, stealing his worship by masquerading as the other gods. Once the pyramids were complete the Sorcerer Kingpriests focused their energy to forge the Great Artifact. During the catastrophe the Great Artifact was split into to the sphere, the cube, and the tetrahedron. As the artifact was split into three so were majority of the golden ones, into the kobolds, lizardmen, and weygn. Their ensuing battles to reunite the Artifact soon destroyed the city, and the inhabitants dispersed into the black swamp which broke the canal walls and swallowed the city whole. Their descendants still squabble, fight, and dream of reuniting the artifact to restore the glory of the Golden age. A mere half days journey from the newcomers Clerics Post on the Great river, the ruined city still lures adventurers to doom and glory. The lizardman "people of the turtle" will lead you there for a few trinkets, but warn that the "people of the shark" who inhabit the ruins proper are not as friendly, and are only fond of strangers as barbecue. Below is the mosaic in the chamber of the map showing the city as it was in the Golden age.

Note: The City of the Pyramids served as my anchor dungeon for my great river campaign of the early '90s. She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed still remembers this campaign with fondness.It was a bit of a breakthrough in style for me as well as I replaced my megadungeons of the past with little 3-5 room mini dungeons which could be completed in a night or two. However most of the mini-dungeons remained connected by the Great Underway a 30' wide straight barrel vaulted corridor leading on for miles leading god knows where (although one was bound to stumble on to a secret door leading to the next mini-dungeon just in time for the next session). Due to its connection to the Great Underway my wandering adventurers found themselves in the City of the Pyramids more often then  they would have liked.

A is atmosphere, F is for flame on, Z for zzzzzz (loud snoring)

Ok I have completed the complete alphabet in a single post, can we move on. Maybe is the fact that its tax day (as usual I did just enough to make sure Uncle Sam owed me money and pushed it off to October), or maybe its the fact that the stats show that a blank piece of note book paper has shot up to my third most popular post (someone on stumble-on though it was cute), but I feel the urge to complain about the mindless A-Z meme that has inflected my Old School Renaissance. Most blogs are luckily if they can get one post out a week, but it is usually from the heart and thought provoking, but the A-Z meme has led them to believe they can up their production to one a day with some meaningless trivia. Most of them are sputtering out about  O, so soon things will be back to normal, and I can stop skipping over posts at greater than the normal rate. I of course did have to look at P is for Prostitute at Appendix N (little imredave wanted to see it, however he was disappointed). Appendix N does point out that "Old School" it should be H is for Harlot. It did bring back memories of a certain adventure in She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed running of the city of Karse. We had turned down an alley way into a small square, and encountered a lizard woman in fish net stockings leaning up against the wall near the entrance to the bar, clearly indicating we were no longer in the high class neighborhood. Since we were in desperate need of a certain substance from a certain alchemist shop across the square we pressed on. We were also not surprised when the 1st level got shanked (We were surprised later to find out it was one of our party members who shanked him). She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed later reviewed her notes to find out a little more about the lizard lady, and discovered that all it actually said was "Rough Bar". Such is the power of imagination. Well its time to go to work, so this rambling flame must end. Next time something of substance.

Multipurpose Wilderness/Dungeon Planner, DM Reference, and Char Sheet

What we used for wilderness and dungeon planning, dungeon master reference notes, and character sheets, and many other purposes
Old School:

My little joke for April 1st, but also true.

Dungeon in the Raw

Here's a dungeon I call "Palace of the Dragon Prince". I sketched it out a couple of weeks ago in hopes of cleaning it up and entering it into the one page dungeon contest. Unfortunately business travel and a nasty computer virus on the computer with the scanner intervened. Everything is back under control, but I ran out of time to improve my entry. I thought about sending it in "as is". However, without clean-up it is unlikely to win, and in order to enter since they want real names I would have to reveal my "secret identity" for all the world to see. She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed says she thinks its "cute" the way it is, so I am posting it on the blog. Be aware that even the way it is, it more than sufficient for me to DM it, because that's the way we do it OLD SCHOOL.