[Community Build] Adventure: City in a Bottle

[yellowdingo]

Suerler Mashod (a local Wizard) has a bottle in his Lab in which an entire ruined city exists. He hires the party to investigate how things are going. All they need do is put on these rings of flying and poke their little fingers in the bottle opening.

Any thoughts?

[Thomas LeBlanc]

Been done some many times by Matt Groening alone... I did this once before when I first started GMing 15ish years ago. The group didn't like because of poor internal logic.

How did the city get in the bottle?
- wizard imprisoned it
- early druidic ritual to destroy the first city ever erected
- cursed by a god
- built by a gnome to prove it could be done since a ship in a bottle is for children

But how do they get food and water in the bottle?
- fountain that provides water and some kind of magical food replicator. Not Star Trek, but simple gruels.
- cannibalism and bloodletting rituals

Waste disposal?
- bag of devouring (ewwww)
- best recycling program ever

Who lives there?
- shrunken humans
- imprisoned outsiders
- intelligent vermin (who knew?)

No trade, no outside communications, and lots of inbreeding...

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

The bottle is a self-sufficient demi-plane. It is finite in size, the "city" portion of the bottle encompasses about half the bottle, the rest is fungus farms, and create water spells.

In any case what are you looking for here?

Complications?

- Clerics of the God of Cities have dramatically increased the price of create water spells. They want to have more temporal power, and they're willing to hostage the city to do it.

- While the PCs are exploring the city, thieves enter the wizard's laboratory and steal the bottle. The PCs must figure out a way to break out of the bottled city: Legends speak of the bottled world somewhere within the catacombs beneath the bottled city. The PCs must navigate the dangerous dungeon and enter the bottled world to return to their own!

[Goth Guru]

Since it's supposed to be a ruined city,
some expert put it in there so he could bring the ruins home for study.
The Fen (or whatever) have returned as ghosts and such, and the bottle owner has seen them.
Monsters that like ruins have moved in, or were there when it was bottled. Their urban renewal has miffed the bottle owner.
Some big nasty was imprisoned in the bottle. Although unable to leave, it is able to summon minions and/or kidnap thoes lost due to defective spells. There shouls be a door to The Cleaves in the ruins somewhere. For more fun, this is the door the knight is guarding.

[Thomas LeBlanc]

Goth Guru wrote:

There shouls be a door to The Cleaves in the ruins somewhere.

OH MY GAWD! IT'S THE CLEAVES! RUN FOR IT!!!

Thomas runs away without ever looking back.