Ravenloft Archive Part 5: Shargobar

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Shargobar

By Jack the Reaper

Website: Alanik Ray's Library

The Land:
Shargobar is a drown city, in the cold and dark deeps of the Sea of Sorrows. The city was once marvelous, as can be seen from the remains of the architecture, statuary, and monuments. The style is Greece-like, with marble pillars and delicate statues the like of which can be found on the island of Demise. No doubt that this sprawling metropolis was once the jewel of the cities. But its beauty has been forgotten along with its former name: Algae cover the crumbling stones, ship-wrecks rot in the parks, and skeletons adorn the roofs and the streets. And now the only denizens to be found there are not the proud and happy humans who must have lived there in the past; Now the only residents are the horrors of the deep, the shark people, the sailor's bane - the sahuagins.


Status:
The domain is considered a core domain, like the other islands in the Sea of Sorrows, though it is under the surface of it.


Cultural Level:
The architecture is classical, but the sahuagins' level is about stone age.


The Folk:
About 300 sahuagins live in this ruined city, with their sharks, sea zombies and some other horrors. They are like the sahuagins of other worlds (see the Monstrous Compendium), in both appearance and behavior: they kill for pleasure, sink ships, and raid on coastal villages. They have special air-pockets in Shargobar, in which they keep air-breathing prisoners to be tortured, eaten, or sacrificed.

Strangely enough, the sahuagins of Shargobar do not worship the shark-devil which is being worshiped by sahuagins in other worlds. While they still hold sharks in great respect, and use them for mounts and guards, they now seem to worship a man-like god, whose statue looms in the center of the town. This statue looks like a muscular, bearded man, who holds a golden trident in his hand. They call this god Nimrod, and how did they come to worship him, is unknown.


The Law:
The sahuagins of Shargobar have no king; Instead, the high priestess of Nimrod is the ruler of the city. The sahuagins believe that she is the voice of Nimrod, and obey her every whim. The other pristesses enforce her rules, and she has a group of wereshark-sahuagins as her entourage and body-guards. She lives in a temple-palace, near the great statue in the city's square.


Personalities of Note:
There are no personalities of note in Shargobar, except for the high priestess. "Visitors" to the domain will probably not like to meet her, however.


Native PCs:
As only sahuagins infest shargobar, no player characters can originate in this domain.


Encounters:
Besides the sahuagins, visitors are most likely to encounter other kinds of sea monsters too; Sharks, giant squids and octopi, sea zombies, lacedons, scrugs, and other beasts.


Nimrod

(Darklord of Shargobar)

Armor Class: -3 Str 25
Movement: Nil / 8 (see below) Dex 10
Level/Hit Dice: 12 Con 25
Hit Points: 100 Int 12
THAC0: 8 Wis 15
No. of Attacks: 1 Cha 10
Damage/Attack: 3d6+5
Special Attacks: Spells
Special Defenses: See bellow
Magic Resistance: Special


Background:
Many decades ago, there was a beautiful city, built on an island in the ocean of an unknown world. The city, whose name is long forgotten, was said to be blessed by the gods themselves. Its buildings of marble and temples of gold, its all kinds of art, and its high cultural level were famous all over the world, and visitors from all the lands came to view its glory. The kings of the city-island were good and just people, and also acted as priests of the gods. They ruled their realm with a benevolent hand, and the people thrived under the bless of the gods bestowed by them.

But from the long line of the kings finally came a black ship. Nimrod Ar-Zahav, who aspired for more than just authority, had proven to be the downfall of the beautifull city.

At first, Nimrod was a fair king like his predecessors. But in his middle years, when gray had started to spread in his beard and each morning seemed to be colder, Nimrod found himself terribly afraid from the possibility of dying. The greatest healers of the realm could do nothing to stop the hand of time. The greatest wizards couldn't save him from the scythe of Death. In despair, Nimrod finally came to this sollution: Gods were immortal. If he could become a god, he will be immortal too. He believed that, if he will be worshiped like a god, he would really become one.

With the help of his advisors, Nimrod first installed minor changes in the prayers and rituals carried by the folks, slowly insinuating that the king is a divine being, the equal of the gods. Then the king-worshipping gradually became more pronounced, while the other gods were pushed aside.

Not too many years passed before the king declared himself as the most superior god, claiming that all the other gods were nothing but his servants. But yet Nimrod was not a god, even though he came to believe it himself, in his madness. A different form of rituals had to be performed, then. And the stench of burnt human sacrifices started to fill the temples, the victims slaughtered by the fanatic priests of the "god-king". The denizens were divided into two groups: The heretics and the believers, with the former becoming an outlawed minority, hunted and being sacrificed by the priests.

The once proud city became a corrupted place of blasphemous horror. The gods weren't going to ignore this situation, and sent dire omens to the city. A huge eagle-like cloud covered the sky, hiding the sun, the sea roared ominously, and smoke started to rise from the top of the island's highest mountain, the sacred Melentar. Yet Nimrod ignored the omens, now whole-heartedly believing that he was indeed the highest god. And his worshipping took fouler and fouler forms.

And then, the gods reacted. Flames and burning stones bursted from Melentar, tremors shook the island to its foundations, and the sea rised with gigantic waves, to cover the blaspheming land. The city which was once beloved of the gods, sank in the sea, never to be seen again.

Nimrod saw all of it. Mad beyond hope, he laughed as the sea covered his kingdom, and cursed the gods until his lungs were filled with water, claiming that they are powerless to destroy him. Then he disappeared along with his realm under the waves of the ocean.

No trace of the drowned city has ever been found in the following centuries by the brave explorers of this world, and the tale is often considered nothing more than a legend. But the city still exist, now hidden by the currents of Ravenloft's Sea of Sorrows. Even more terrifying, Nimrod himself is still alive, and now he is the darklord of the domain, which is called Shargobar by its sahuagin denizens.


Appearance:
Nimrod looks like a powerfull and muscular man, with flowing beard and hair. His face are always contorted in a mask of inhumane rage and hatred. He dons a golden crowd on his head and holds a gold trident in his right hand. He is about 6 meters tall.

The Dark Powers granted Nimrod his desire: He is no longer aging, and he would never die. He has now tremendous power and a whole city of faithful sahuagins to worship him. However, Nimrod is not at all satisfied from his current condition, which is quite understandable: The Dark Powers transformed Nimrod into a marble statue.

Trapped in a body of stone, Nimrod can't move even his little finger, doomed to stand motionless and to lament inside this shell for all eternity.

His white marble body is now covered with green moss and algae, but is still an impressive and awesome sight. He stands in the city square, and rituals are frequently being carried for him by the sahuagins. Nimrod greatest desire now is to be released from the statue shape, or at least to be able to move again.


Combat:
Though he can't move, Nimrod can cast all the spells from the following spheres at will, by thought only: Animals, Elemental Water and Air, Summoning, Weather, Sun (reversed only), and Divination. All of them function as if casted by a 20th level priest.

Nimrod can speak telepatically to the high priestess sahuagin. It is unknown if he can communicate also with other sahuagins; so far he didn't, but perhaps he just don't want to. He is able to communicate with humans too, but this kind of contact requires them to make a madness check with -4 penalty.

Nimrod's stone body is invulnerable to any kind of attack, and even spells such as stone shape or transmute stone into mud won't affect him. He has 100% magic resistance.

Nimrod might be able to move for short periods of time: all that has to be done is to remove the gold crown from his head. If that happens, Nimrod will still be a statue, but he would be able to move normally. When mobile, he can attack with his trident, inflicting 3d6+5 points of damage, but has only 50% magic resistance and can be harmed by stone-affecting spells.

However, a part of Nimrod's curse is that he will always try to prevent the crown from being removed, attacking with spells and summoning his servants to protect it. Even if the crown has been removed, Nimrod will do all in his force to get it back and put it again on his head. That will re-petrify him and he knows that, but he has no other choice.

In fact, if his crown is removed, he's able to walk again, BUT he's destined to be corroded by the water pressure and currents if he doesn't don his crown again (and wearing it obviously means returning immobile). So, for each minute he spends without his crown he loses 1 HP and if he reaches 0 HP.. he turns into a human, retaining his former old body! And this means he begins aging again and above all he can die (he's underwater without the ability to breathe water!). Nimrod doesn't know this: he only knows (because he experienced it once) that without the crown he can move but will eventually dissolve.

Also, Nimrod probably walks the sea once in a while: he simply orders the priestess to take off his crown and goes about his kingdom to observe what it has become now, a sunken ruin full of monsters (another bad curse for his ego!). Once he dons the crown again his wounds heals at the rate of 1 HP/minute.


Closing the Borders:
When Nimrod wants to seal the borders, the city is surrounded by a gigantic whirlpool. Anyone who tries to get through it will suffer damage and finally will be thrown into Shargobar again, dead or alive.


Current Sketch:
Nimrod tries to find a way to get permanently freed from his stone body. Now he believes that if he's worshipped enough, he will be able to become mobile. The sahuagins carry bloody rituals for him, raiding coastal villages and attacking ships by his name, but so far it didn't help.

Many legends has it that one day, when the stars will be right, the whole city of Shargobar will re-surface from the depths of the sea. This ascension is considered a bad omen, heralding a time of evil and darkness.


Using Shargobar:
Obviously the PCs will have to go underwater in order to interact with the sahuagins and discover Nimrod's curse or explore Shargobar. The main problem here will be providing the party with means of surviving underwater. The most effective and simple is to give the PCs some Potions of Water Breathing, but the DM should come up with a good explanation (maybe they are on a ship transporting a load of this kind of potions to some wizard in Darkon or another island of terror). Another way is to have the party wizard know this same spell and cast it on the other members of the party before it's too late. The problem with this scenario is that the mage won't probably have enough Water Breathing spells for all the party…

A third solution is to have some of the ruins of Shargobar holding air bubbles big enough to support the party while they hide there.

The final way of letting the PCs interact with Shargobar is to bend the rules a bit. Simply, imagine that the Sahuagins know how to prepare a certain Breathe Water potion extracted from special fishes they give to their prisoners. The potion lasts only some hours (which is good for the shauagin since they will usually sacrifice the prisoners alive in a matter of hours), so the PCs are forced to find their way out of the prison and after that out of the shauagins' realm BEFORE they run out of air (alternatively they could try to "persuade" some sauaghin to give them another potion...).