My players will be venturing into a deep dark underwater city home to an undead necromancer to stop fishing hamlets and town being attacked by coral covered undead and ghosts.
But i really want to give them a great description of what the city looks/ feels like etc. but i am not the best at writing so i thought i would ask here.
Some ideas i have had:
lots of dead people in the city (like died suddenly) so when the party are travelling through it gives the feeling of scary abandonment some undead wandering as well.
they can see the grandeur of what the city was like before it fell into ruin.
It really depends what kind of feel you are going for. If you want eerie, I have a few ideas. Also, how do your players enter the city? Entrances can make a really big impression. Regardless, here are my ideas.
Grown into the coral and kelp, a dome sits on a rocky ocean floor. Inside, towering buildings stretch as if reaching for the surface. As you approach, enormous brass doors loom over you. It seems to abandoned and has fallen out of repair, but stands strong nevertheless. As you make your way through the eerily empty streets, you notice few signs of life. A dead shopkeeper slumps in an empty alley way. Corpses drift through muddy gutters and canals. It seems that the preferred choice of transport was once the canals, but they have long since been clogged with rubble and dead civilians. The buildings extend above the narrow streets and you can imagine it was once a great capital of the sea. But now all that's left is ruins. An undead stumbles towards you, coming from a nearby street. A few more follow behind and from other buildings. You soon find yourselves surrounded by the repulsive creatures. (if the party chooses to surrender and follow them to the necromancers domain, here's a description about that also). As you follow behind the undead, you come upon an uncharacteristically short building, sagging in the roof with hordes of undead around it. It reeks of blood and all things despicable, and as the zombies push you in the odor gets worse. You go through winding corridors, endless flights of stairs, and dark passages, all ending at a large cave. Water drips from the ceiling, and as you look around you notice that nearly all the floor is covered with an inch of water. Water and blood. At the end of the large expanse, sits. . . . . . . (insert description of necromancer)
I hope you find this useful!
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
How deep? Soon they'll start losing all color and everything will be in heavy blue and gray. Eventually everything will be black outside the range of their magical light and things will just loom up out of the dark at them. Even with magical protection, the atmosphere will be literally oppressive as the weight of the water above them crushes down.
If you want to set the mood, a fitting ambient music and sounds can help you really make an impression on your players.
For your setting you could have a look at the soundtrack of the game Aquaria. I just googled "Aquaria Game Soundtrack" and it seems to be fully available on Youtube.
Also: avoid too much details in the description. It just defocuses your players and hinders their fantasy by limiting it.
"Before you are the remnants of a long lost civilization. Huge walls hewn from stone rise to protect once-glamorous palaces and dead streets."
"As you stray past the open brass doors, the eerie silence of an empty market square surrounds you. Abandoned shops, broken wares and merchants that will never sell their goods again are all that is left."
"You enter the abandoned shop. A rustling noise to your right catches your attention as a pile of bones and torn clothes slowly rises."
I always try to deliberately avoid as many details as possible. Are the buildings made of stone? Maybe. Is it white or grey or black? Whatever the player wants. Are there market stalls in the square? If they want them, there are.
With the descriptions above I know one of my players will see a sunken Dwemer City, since he played several hundred hours of Skyrim. A friend of mine will see white and flowing ruins like the elven buildings from LotR, and yet another one will probably imagine something like the mermaid home from Ariel.
And that's fine. If I need a certain vibe, I add in words that invoke a heavy fantasy. "Before you lies a *gothic* cathedral". "The entrance to a * dwarven * city is hewn into the mountainside". "*Elvish* palaces stand tall against eternity down here under the sea".
Please note that english is not my native language, so some descriptions may sound goofy. :D
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Good evening everyone,
My players will be venturing into a deep dark underwater city home to an undead necromancer to stop fishing hamlets and town being attacked by coral covered undead and ghosts.
But i really want to give them a great description of what the city looks/ feels like etc. but i am not the best at writing so i thought i would ask here.
Some ideas i have had:
lots of dead people in the city (like died suddenly) so when the party are travelling through it gives the feeling of scary abandonment some undead wandering as well.
they can see the grandeur of what the city was like before it fell into ruin.
but let you ideas loose
thanks in advance
It really depends what kind of feel you are going for. If you want eerie, I have a few ideas. Also, how do your players enter the city? Entrances can make a really big impression. Regardless, here are my ideas.
Grown into the coral and kelp, a dome sits on a rocky ocean floor. Inside, towering buildings stretch as if reaching for the surface. As you approach, enormous brass doors loom over you. It seems to abandoned and has fallen out of repair, but stands strong nevertheless. As you make your way through the eerily empty streets, you notice few signs of life. A dead shopkeeper slumps in an empty alley way. Corpses drift through muddy gutters and canals. It seems that the preferred choice of transport was once the canals, but they have long since been clogged with rubble and dead civilians. The buildings extend above the narrow streets and you can imagine it was once a great capital of the sea. But now all that's left is ruins. An undead stumbles towards you, coming from a nearby street. A few more follow behind and from other buildings. You soon find yourselves surrounded by the repulsive creatures. (if the party chooses to surrender and follow them to the necromancers domain, here's a description about that also). As you follow behind the undead, you come upon an uncharacteristically short building, sagging in the roof with hordes of undead around it. It reeks of blood and all things despicable, and as the zombies push you in the odor gets worse. You go through winding corridors, endless flights of stairs, and dark passages, all ending at a large cave. Water drips from the ceiling, and as you look around you notice that nearly all the floor is covered with an inch of water. Water and blood. At the end of the large expanse, sits. . . . . . . (insert description of necromancer)
I hope you find this useful!
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
- Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert
How deep? Soon they'll start losing all color and everything will be in heavy blue and gray. Eventually everything will be black outside the range of their magical light and things will just loom up out of the dark at them. Even with magical protection, the atmosphere will be literally oppressive as the weight of the water above them crushes down.
If you want to set the mood, a fitting ambient music and sounds can help you really make an impression on your players.
For your setting you could have a look at the soundtrack of the game Aquaria. I just googled "Aquaria Game Soundtrack" and it seems to be fully available on Youtube.
Also: avoid too much details in the description. It just defocuses your players and hinders their fantasy by limiting it.
"Before you are the remnants of a long lost civilization. Huge walls hewn from stone rise to protect once-glamorous palaces and dead streets."
"As you stray past the open brass doors, the eerie silence of an empty market square surrounds you. Abandoned shops, broken wares and merchants that will never sell their goods again are all that is left."
"You enter the abandoned shop. A rustling noise to your right catches your attention as a pile of bones and torn clothes slowly rises."
I always try to deliberately avoid as many details as possible. Are the buildings made of stone? Maybe. Is it white or grey or black? Whatever the player wants. Are there market stalls in the square? If they want them, there are.
With the descriptions above I know one of my players will see a sunken Dwemer City, since he played several hundred hours of Skyrim. A friend of mine will see white and flowing ruins like the elven buildings from LotR, and yet another one will probably imagine something like the mermaid home from Ariel.
And that's fine. If I need a certain vibe, I add in words that invoke a heavy fantasy. "Before you lies a *gothic* cathedral". "The entrance to a * dwarven * city is hewn into the mountainside". "*Elvish* palaces stand tall against eternity down here under the sea".
Please note that english is not my native language, so some descriptions may sound goofy. :D