Nessus: City of Decay
Lands in Shadow for Shadow of the Demon Lord
City of Decay details the tragedy that befell Nessus, the First City, revealing the wonders and wealth the city held before its catastrophic collapse. In these pages, you’ll find details on the city as it stands now, covering the various locations of import, along with notable peoples, adventure ideas, and more to make this strange and haunted place the perfect backdrop for your adventures and campaigns. Although many believe Nessus to be beyond hope or in its death throes, the First City has not yet surrendered to the long night.
This entry into the Lands in Shadow series offers everything you need to present the city in your Shadow of the Demon Lord games, as well as presenting several new characters, foes, and tools for building the ruins and infesting them with terrors to vex your groups. As well, City of Decay reveals details on the Order of Light, the religion from which the Cult of the New God sprang!
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You hear the roar of the crowd before you can see any but the tallest towers. Closer, you see the city’s new outer walls, still half-built and swarming with workers sweating in the swampy humidity. Humans, dwarfs, orcs, and others besides, slaves and free, clamber over scaffolding as the black stone walls rise. Another cacophonous roar splits the air as you pass through the gate, its basalt exterior decorated with reliefs and statues of men and women, gladiators, spilling each other’s blood. The city is near deserted, its buildings of gloomy basalt and brilliantly painted wood and plaster facades empty except for patrolling guards and nervous would-be thieves. Everyone else, human and nonhuman, men, women, and children, are gone, gathered at the giant arena of the Crucible for the grand carnival of violence.
All gold flows from Kem, thus giving it the name “City of Gold.” No other city—no province or even kingdom, for that matter—can claim a level of wealth comparable to that possessed by Kem, and the infamous financial power known as the Vault based there. Kem’s influence reaches everywhere, from the Crusader States bounding the Desolation in the north to the holdfasts of Blötland in the far south. The City of Gold has lifted many nations up to the heights of power, and cast down into ruins any who crossed them. And so Kem moves on the world stage with unchecked might, an economic force without rival, whose financial influence translates easily into political and even military power.
Along the southernmost reach of the Crescent Bay, a jumbled city covers a narrow, jagged peninsula, like a scab that just won’t heal right. The city of Pruul was once a shining jewel with great wealth, power, and influence that equaled or even exceeded the other cities of the Confederacy of the Nine, of which it is a member. But the city’s relentless greed and avarice caused it to tear itself apart, as a tiny minority of rich got richer, and the massive majority of the poor got poorer. In the aftermath of bloody riots that brought down the city’s ruling elite, criminals and other unsavory elements filled the power vacuum as the only form of stability and order. Although a hollow shell of its former glory, Pruul, now known as the City of Thieves, serves as a hub for rogues, pirates, brigands, escaped slaves, debtors fleeing their debts, and a variety of other misfits and miscreants.