Timor Gazetteer

[Tobias Blackburn]

Mortavius,

I have no problem with including "rumors of other creatures far below in the unexplored depths" to let DM's slip in whatever other monsters they want to.

When I say that they must reflect the lord, I mean that it also has to take the lord's influence and desires into account. You aren't going to normally find vast numbers of goblyns in Barovia because there is no way Strahd will allow them to get a foothold. You won't find wererats or marikith in the tunnels of Keening because Tristinessa would sweep down on them them fairly quickly. In the same light the Hive Queen isn't going to allow many creatures that would be a threat to her or her brood. The Remnants still exist because they've found a safe placeand they're more concerned with surviving (as well as providing the Queen with a local populace to torment). Plants and Vermin aren't going to be much of a problem since they lack the ability to think. When we get to Drow, Beholders, Wererats and the like then we have to consider why the Queen wouldn't have gone after these creatures.

Jasper,

That's a good list. Still, I would like to have undead fairly rare. After all, you can bump into undead everywhere in Ravenloft. They exist is Timor, but can likely only be found in in the City Ruins.

Finally, I like the idea of having Misty Ways in the very depths of Timor, It allows more connection to other domains, and would also explain why Marikith can be used as a general enemy in underground areas (Hmm... perhaps lone, completely lost Marikith can convert to Queens, but are either still completely subservient or are unable to return to Timor).

[Tobias Blackburn]

I have no doubt that everyone has already thought of this, but I'll just say it in order to make sure we're all working towards it.

The Timor part of the Gazetteer should have more in common with Necropolis and Keening than with Barovia and Darkon. We should be looking at those pieces in order to understand how to approach Timor itself (with minor changes to reflect the differences Timor has with them and include the history). Timor and it's appendix information should also be budgeted for a similar amount of space.

[Undead Cabbage]

I agree with Tobias on this. Timor, like Keening, isn't so much a place were entire months of campaigning could be centered. Instead, Campaigns could be centered in Paridon, where the players have chances to rest/restock/go to other realms, however part way though that would get stuck in Timor, and it may take them a while to get out.

I envision Timor as somewhat like Odiare or Carnival: really cool, and an experience that your players will never forget, but at the same time not something you could spend too long doing.

[Jester of the FoS]

It should be short, but within reason. We're stll expanding on the land and making it more than just I'Cath or Shadowborn Manor or the House of Lament. All neat places but locales to set a single adventure.
I've allotted it *roughly* 30 pages, but that's a very broad guideline that I expect to be eaten into by NPCs, templates, monsters and the like. A little more than Necropolis, but that's to be expected since people can enter and not immedietly die.
Still, 30 pages is less than a third of Souragne and we're not bound by limited pages or reasonable price.

On an unrelated topic, I roughly wrote out the chapters/sections so people can call dibs.

[Undead Cabbage]

Here's a question:

How related are Paridon adventures and Timor adventures going to be?

Is it going to be possible to have campaigns in Paridon without any influence from Timor, or vice versa? How does a Timor adventure differ from a Paridon adventure?

However some of these things might feel like they are just common knowledge, we should still lay things out to get our heads around them.

[William Blackmoor]

I definetly want it to be possible to run Paridon adventures without even thinking about Timor even once.
I believe it is common knowledge, that something is out there, instilling paranoia in the citizens but on the other hand I believe many citizens also cling to "reality" on the surface telling themselves it's all nonsense made up by the newspaper :
"Oh yeah, a few years back it was doppelgangers, then it was Bloody Jack again, now it's shadowhunters and a guy named Flickerflamme...what will those paperguys come up with next? Little green men in flying saucers? Hahaha." (checks if he locked his door for the night)
To me Paridon is a place for murder mysteries, that remind about the Ripper or the cases of Sherlock Holmes. Add a little Timor (and the other urban myths) and you might get the X-files: Something is "down" there.
Even on a Bloody Jack-Event Paridon should function as a normal city as London was when Jack the Ripper was haunting it. Gripped in fear yes, paralized by it no.
If Timor gets to much attention in Paridons all-day life it would turn into a second Timor City which IMO is totally undesireable: "Bloody Jack lives next door? Who cares, maybe he will keep away the marikith? They will get us all ! Ahhhhhh"

[Jester of the FoS]

Paridon should be as separate as the Dungeon Master wants and campaigns should be possible without Timor. The reverse is not true as parties will need to regularly surface for supplies and healing and long-term campaigns will likely not occur entirely within Timor.

Speaking of which I've been meaning to reply/address these:

There is little to burn in Timor and they won't last long without light. Also, fire can be a bad thing in enclosed, dark tunnels.

There are bound to be cracks and chimney-like tunnels to the surface (or higher levels) where smoke can be funnelled. Plus Dwarves have been living in similar conditions for years in D&D and they don't have problems.

There is little to eat and drink unless you know a lot about survival.

So obviously, anyone living down there would know a lot about survival. Just as the population of Verbrek knows a lot about surviving in woods the people of Timor would know the sewers and tunnels and food sources.
Plus there's an entire city above where one can steal food from.

Most (if not all) humans who enter Timor to get away from the law/society/cheeseheads are from Paridon, and I have difficulty seeing a criminal knowing enough about spelunking and edible vs poisonous fungus to survive.

The average criminal would die, but there might be a few who survive long enough to learn or meet up with someone who can teach them. This also goes for the extremely poor or anyone desperately trying to escape Sodo (who realizes doppelgangers avoid the sewers and the closed border doesn't cover their either).

Timor has a steep learning curve so you learn fast or die (or worse).

Agreed. So most die. Maybe even as high as 80 or 90%. But what about the 10% that make it?

Settlements are difficult to put together unless you all came down at once or actively look for others. I don't see 10 to 20 citizens of Paridon all rushing into the sewers at once, deciding to start a new life, especially when they can literally walk down the streets into the Mists and come out where they know there is a civilization they can deal with.

Assuming they believe the stories of other lands and walk blindly into the Mists that swallowed the countryside and everyone therein. And I'm sure there are enough stories (both true and tall) of lands where the people don't speak Zherisian, dislike outsiders and monsters roam unchecked to keep people spooked about walking into the Mists.
There has to be some reason the entire population doesn't evacuate otherwise everyone would flee for lands with plentiful resources. Sodo might be controlling the propaganda, telling people that the Mists are dangerous unless a magical/spiritual token is used or one is prepared for the forces therein.

[Jester of the FoS]

Settlements are difficult to put together unless you all came down at once or actively look for others. I don't see 10 to 20 citizens of Paridon all rushing into the sewers at once, deciding to start a new life, especially when they can literally walk down the streets into the Mists and come out where they know there is a civilization they can deal with.

Assuming they believe the stories of other lands and walk blindly into the Mists that swallowed the countryside and everyone therein. And I'm sure there are enough stories (both true and tall) of lands where the people don't speak Zherisian, dislike outsiders and monsters roam unchecked to keep people spooked about walking into the Mists.
There has to be some reason the entire population doesn't evacuate otherwise everyone would flee for lands with plentiful resources. Sodo might be controlling the propaganda, telling people that the Mists are dangerous unless a magical/spiritual token is used or one is prepared for the forces therein.

Actually, let's math this is up.

It's currently 761 on the BC and Zhestria was clustered back in 744. That's 17 years.
Now let's just toss out a figure: say one person every week ventures into the sewers. That's 884 people total. If only one in ten survive (10%) that's 88! Much, much more than the suggested thorp of 20-30. If one person every month enters we get a total of 204 so with the same survival rate we have 20 people. Perfect. This is assuming a birth rate that keeps pace with disease and predatation, which is unlikely. But any child that was raised in Timor could be as old as 17 and available as a guide or even PC.

And that's just from Paridon and not counting anyone from the original Timor who would know all the dangers, how to survive and likely be looking for/abducting more people to replace the dead, as there would always be a high mortality rate in Timor.

[Tobias Blackburn]

I agree with most of your ideas, expcet for the following.

There are bound to be cracks and chimney-like tunnels to the surface (or higher levels) where smoke can be funnelled. Plus Dwarves have been living in similar conditions for years in D&D and they don't have problems.

The surface is entirely paved, and generally rather foggy. I don't see that many areas that reach beyond the sewers that have more than a sliver of light. Besides, dwarves have darkvision, humans don't.

Assuming they believe the stories of other lands and walk blindly into the Mists that swallowed the countryside and everyone therein. And I'm sure there are enough stories (both true and tall) of lands where the people don't speak Zherisian, dislike outsiders and monsters roam unchecked to keep people spooked about walking into the Mists.
There has to be some reason the entire population doesn't evacuate otherwise everyone would flee for lands with plentiful resources. Sodo might be controlling the propaganda, telling people that the Mists are dangerous unless a magical/spiritual token is used or one is prepared for the forces therein.

I agree that they likely don't evacuate because they are scared of the Mists and distrustful of outsiders, but they know that there are lands beyond because of both trade and visitors. They don't all leave for the same reason that the people of Verbrek don't all rush to Mordent, or the Gundarkites don't immigrate to Karatakass.

From what I've seen, this project is assuming that Paridon does have immigrants from other domains and trades with other realms for food. That alone should be enough to convince people in a bad way that there is something beyond the Mists other than monsters and darkness. And most people are going to choose an unknown place that might be like their own far away from those that are harming them to a lightless world below without obvious resources and that is directly below (and thus within reach) of the very things they are trying to escape from.

So there might be a single thorp down there, barely eeking out an existance, but that still assumes that these people all meet up with one another somehow.

[Jester of the FoS]

I never suggested more than a single small thorp; one teetering on the edge of death and desperate for some heroes to save them.

And I suggest that the nobles and elite know of the safety of the Mists and discourage the lower classes from entering with propaganda.

[Tobias Blackburn]

I never suggested more than a single small thorp; one teetering on the edge of death and desperate for some heroes to save them.

And I suggest that the nobles and elite know of the safety of the Mists and discourage the lower classes from entering with propaganda.

Merchants would have to know that there is something out there. After all, food merchants, even those that serve the lower classes, are going to hear things about where their produce is coming from. They're going to whisper rumors of a better life.

All in all, even with propaganda, THe Mists would likely come out at least even, if not ahead of the lightless dark below.

[Jester of the FoS]

But would said food merchants want to lose their monopoly? And food merchants would likely make alot of money and become nobles themselves, if not in name than in influence.

This might be an interesting change in the domain as the old nobles drop in status as the merchant class increases in power.

[Undead Cabbage]

This might be an interesting change in the domain as the old nobles drop in status as the merchant class increases in power.

I know that when I picture the population of Shadewell, I picture a community of VERY wealthy and powerful businessmen just waiting for the 'older powers' to slip up. The nobility should seem archaic and out dated to the middle class. Once again, we have symbolism of Sodo's paranoia of the younger Dopplegangers.

On the note of Chimneys, I can't say I picture them either. Dwarves would typically live underneath mountains and such were cracks are likely and no one will notice the smoke coming up. Paridon is a densely built city that uses all of its space for either the leisure of the higher classes, or to cull the lower ones.

Of course, there might be a chance of some Chimneys in the Southshore district, which is overtop of the Caliban enclave. It is, after all, a ghetto for demi-humans, so the extra smoke coming out might go unnoticed. Plus, this could be part of the Half-Vistani/Caliban relations in the area.

For propaganda and leaving the city, another factor to take into account is Zherisian pride. The people of Paridon may look down upon the people of other countries, seeing them as barbaric.

Not to mention, the lower classes would need the money to evacuate Blackchapel. The Paridon authorities aren't going to let just anyone crowd Riverside and the Docks, especially with so little space. I always pictured the lower classes being forced into Blackchapel 'For the safety of the City'.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I wouldn't get too worked up about smoke, etc, building up underground. It could well be that some areas would be uninhabitable due to toxic gases (man-made or natural) and lack of ventilation, but the Cluster is so small that any major tunnels could vent themselves directly into the Mists, both in the sewers and in Timor. Like rivers that flow in on one side of an Island and out on the other, thoroughfare tunnels both above and below the Paridon/Timor border can have constant air-currents blowing through them ... damp and stinking currents, most likely, but enough to keep the place habitable. The DPs wouldn't let anything so mundane as ventilation-problems spoil a domain's design; marikith need to breathe too, y'know.

As for the issue of why people didn't evacuate into the Mists, ages ago, I would think that the Queen has nearly as much cause to keep the people (= food) from leaving as the dopplers do. Perhaps she's instructed those hunters who snatch up humans from the surface to specifically search for victims near the Misty Border? This would keep the aboveground populace even more fearful of the Mists, and would have made it seem (at least to the humans) as if the rumored monsters that began preying on the city, in the Upheaval's wake, originally came out of the Mists, rather than up from below. Paridon's poor probably don't trust a single thing the upper classes tell them -- why would they? they've been lied to non-stop and exploited shamelessly for generations -- but rumors that horrific creatures lurk along the border, devouring the unwary, could easily be believed, especially if the common folk had already told stories of Mists-creatures' sporadic depredations, before the Upheaval.

[Mortavius]

When the Ripper murders occurred, did people flee London en mass? Nope. Because the human mind has an amazing capacity for self-delusion. "It won't happen to me." That sums it up.

As David suggested, just because the wealthy know there are others out there, doesn't mean they want to leave. If they do, they may very well not be wealthy outside the domain. Remember, it's said in the books that although there are wealthy people in Paridon, they don't approach the wealthy people in the rest of the Core, they're actually a lot closer to Middle Class.

And finally, many people, when faced with the unknown, will retreat back to the safety of what they know, if it's not immediately threatening. And that's what Paridon is, it's dangerous, but not immediately threatening. People know of the dangers of the Shadow Killers and the Dopps, but it's not like they live in constant fear of being killed by one. It's the lurking dread and paranoia, that one *could* be out there.

But this is getting off-topic from Timor, so I'll stop now.