Geografie - Neverwinter

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Geografie - Neverwinter

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Neverwinter
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Neverwinter Today

A once-bustling metropolis, the northern city of
Neverwinter lies mostly in ruins after a century of
turmoil that culminated in a great cataclysm nearly
thirty years ago. Fires, earthquakes, and evil portents
destroyed or chased away most of the populace, but
even the waking of an ancient primordial could not kill
the city completely. Some stubborn natives remained,
carrying on in spite of countless hardships. Because of
them-and because of the reconstruction efforts of the
last decade-Neverwinter still stands, despite its tragedies.
Today, the city is a center of trade, warfare both
open and secret, and-above all-adventure.
After so much abuse and neglect, much of the
city's architecture is damaged or lies in rubble.
Recent repair efforts have given Neverwinter a patchwork
appearance; slums are juxtaposed with new
construction, all resting on the shattered remnants of
old buildings. Certain districts are more intact than
others, and former citizens have returned to such
areas, thanks to the efforts of the city's Lord Protector:
Dagult Neverember, Open Lord of Water deep.

RECENT HISTORY
Neverwinter residents look with fond patriotism upon
the life and reign of Nasher Alagondar, a former adventurer
who ascended to rule the city over 150 years ago.
One remarkable story tells that he refused the title of
king for much if not all of his reign; today, natives
of Never winter still debate whether he was
truly a king or merely a shepherd of his
people. Regardless, Alagondar gUided the city with a
fair hand through his faith in Tyr, at that time the god
of justice, and his chosen bodyguards and boon companions,
the legendary Neverwinter Nine.
Many details of Alagondar's life have been forgotten
in the wake of the Spellplague and the cataclysm,
but it is known that he gave rise to a line of kings who
ruled long and well. An ostensibly unbroken line of
succession traces from Alagondar to the last king and
queen of Never winter, who vanished twenty-seven
years ago in the cataclysm that claimed the city.
That catastrophe drastically depleted Neverwinter's
population. A few dozen holdouts remained,
refUSing to leave their ancestral homes. Unfortunately
for them, much of the southeastern quadrant
of the city collapsed into a yawning pit, known as the
Chasm, that continually spawned plaguechanged
horrors. Holdouts of martial bent built a wall to keep
back the monsters, and in time their patrols became
a sacred duty.
Over the past decade, Dagult Neverember has
made progress in restoring the devastated city. Seeing
an opportunity to add to his mercantile empire, Lord
Neverember employed an army of artisans and carpenters
to rebuild, and he hired mercenaries from
Mintarn to keep monsters at bay and maintain order.
Five years ago, Neverember established the Protector's
Enclave from his base in the Hall ofJustice, and
declared that section of the city safe for occupation
once more. Since then, he has worked to tame the
wild streets, rebuild the ruins, and coax the refugees
to return to their homes.
People who did not abandon the city after the cataclysm
are slow to accept the Lord Protector's control
of what some call "New Neverwinter." In particular,
a rebel group called the Sons of Alagondar united to
throw out the man they call the Pretender through
a campaign of public agitation, sabotage, and theft.
Behind the rebels, the steady hand of the northern
Harpers offered gUidance, seeking to prevent another
would-be tyrant's rise in the fragile region. However,
in the wake of their leader's recent murder, the
Sons have struck out on their own; the Harpers now
despair of reclaiming the city for good and freedom.
But Lord Neverember's police state extends only so
far. Beyond the Protector's Enclave, as many monsters
as natives roam the streets, laying claim to whole
quarters of the city. The northeastern portion is ruled
by orcs from the Kingdom of Many-Arrows. In the
northwest, the neighborhood of Black lake roils with
tension from both secret and overt opposition to Lord
Neverember. The southeastern area of the city lies in
ruins surrounding the massive Chasm.
Neverwinter's poorly policed streets and tenuous
political situation make it a likely target for all
manner of villains. Never have heroes been more
needed in the Savage North.
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PROTECTOR'S ENCLAVE

The Lord Protector of Never winter rules the city from
the Hall of Justice, the old temple of Tyr. Farthest
from the source of the great earthquake that struck
Mount Hotenow almost three decades ago, this area
of Never winter suffered the least destruction. This
good fortune also made the district a primary target
for Lord Neverember. He moved an overwhelming
force of mercenaries into the district, secured his
base, and, ever since, has spent half his time here and
half in Waterdeep.
The Protector's Enclave stands mostly intact, and
many former residents of the city have returned to
live here alongside new immigrants. Although this
district is the most stable part of Never winter, it
chafes under the firm hand of Sabine, the general of
Lord Neverember's forces. Spies watch every neighborhood
and notable gathering place, and Mintarn
enforcers march through the streets. When the
townsfolk complain, Neverember shifts the blame
to one or another of his subordinates and is subsequently
hailed as a hero for making an example of the
supposed scoundrel. He assures the citizens that he is
doing his best in a bad situation.
The Enclave boasts the best-stocked
market in the city, thanks to trade from
Waterdeep and other cities along the Sword Coast.
The city taxes all transactions made here at a steep
rate that the natives have grudgingly come to accept.
The taxes pay for the Mintarn soldiers who watch
every newcomer to the district with a sharp eye. In
the enclave, suspicious or unfamiliar characters do
not stay hidden for long.
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Hall of Justice

The high walls and imposing stonework ofTyr's former
temple mark it as a timeless bastion of duty and honor.
The great temple stands atop a seaside bluff, challenging
all threats from the Sea of Swords or inland Faenln.
When Lord Neverember set his sights on the city,
he chose the Hall ofJustice as his base of operations
for its practical value (the cataclysm left it almost
untouched) and its emotional significance to the
people of Never winter. The city had long served Tyr,
the god of justice, and even after the deity fell nearly
a hundred years ago, the residents refused to convert
the temple to worship of another god.
By restoring the temple to its former status, Neverember
seeks to win over the city's traditionalists
and establish himself as a champion of just rule. He
sponsors priests ofTorm whose rites emulate the
Tyrran tradition, hoping to attract new devotees to
the temple (and to the Lord Protector's cause). For the
most part, the scheme has worked. Some of the locals,
however-particularly the Sons of Alagondar-think
that Neverember's presence defiles the great temple,
which they now call the "Hall of Never· Justice."
The temple itself is a radiant and beautiful structure,
big enough inside for giants to walk comfortably
or for dragons to rest in the great hall, beneath the
high-domed ceiling. The trappings of the building
reflect a bygone age, one dedicated to justice and
temperance in all things.
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The Moonstone Mask

A vertigo-inducing journey along a cliffside trail
takes the adventurous to a new fixture ofthe Neverwinter
skyline. The earthmote now known as the
Moonstone floats beside the western edge of the Protector's
Enclave, high over the docks below. It hangs
a hundred feet above the crashing waves of the Sea
of Swords, bound in place by thick chains strung to
heavy anchors. A bridge that runs between the earthmote
and the docks allows visitors to enter and exit
the Moonstone. The inn for which the mote is named,
the Moonstone Mask, offers guests lavish quarters,
pleasurable company, and a hard-to-beat view.

History
The story of the Moonstone Mask is an object lesson
in turning a bad situation to one's advantage. When
the Spellplague struck Neverwinter nearly a hundred
years ago, the land around the posh inn tore free ofits
surroundings and floated off toward the sky. Quickthinking
guests secured it with tethers, and dozens of
thick ropes were lashed from the inn to nearby buildings,
much as a ship might be tied up in a bay. Thus
secured, the Moonstone Mask reopened for
business within the year, boasting a panoramic
view of the city and the surrounding
countryside. People came from far and wide to stay at
the marvelous floating inn, and it became a fixture of
the city's post-Spellplague economy.
The Moonstone fell again on hard times after the
cataclysm that claimed much of the city. The quake
did not affect the earthmote, but the ropes holding
it in place snapped, and it drifted aimlessly over
the nearby ocean for months. When the occupants
finally managed to steer the inn back, they found a
true disaster-the city was emptying of people. The
innkeeper commissioned a set of heavy chains big
enough to hold a giant in place and fell back on old
ways to attract customers, turning the inn into a festhall
that offered riotous music and dancing, heavy
drinking, and more private entertainments. However,
it was too little, too late. Devoid of business, the
Moonstone Mask shut its doors, ostensibly for good.

The Moonstone Today
In no small part, the Moonstone Mask owes its
rebirth and current existence to Lord Neverember
and New Neverwinter. It repays the favor by housing
many of the city's Mintarn enforcers, including their
commander, General Sabine. As such, mercenaries
dominate the once-genial atmosphere of the hedonistic
inn, and Neverember's sellswords are known to
argue or fight with other patrons.
The half-elfLiset Cheldar runs the Moonstone
Mask with a wink and a smile. She genuinely likes
most of the people she meets, and she flirts with
anyone who seems receptive. A recently returned
native of the city who inherited the inn, Liset was
pleased to find the place still in one piece (and still
floating). The legitimacy of her claim to the Moonstone
was unclear, but, plying her natural charm, she
successfully lobbied Neverember for funds to reopen
the inn, and she maintains a bright smile thanks to
his patronage.
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The Wall
A great hodgepodge of wood and scavenged stone, the
Wall separates civilized Neverwinter from the Chasm
and the horrors it spawns. The Wall lets guards strike
at targets from positions of relative safety, and it provides
regular outposts for watchers. The thick mess of
bloodstained refuse at the eastern base- not to mention the
occasional rotting corpse of a more recent kill-
speaks to the Wall's success as a defensive fortification.
The Wall was built shortly after the cataclysm, when
the city's few remaining residents realized they needed
a defense against the twisted monsters that spilled from
the Chasm. They cobbled together a barricade from
whatever they could find: collapsed buildings, broken
carts, wrecked ships, and the like. The ruined Jewel of
the North provided no shortage of raw materials.
In its early days, the Wall held off the monsters by
shunting them toward parts of the city that had already
been destroyed. When Neverember arrived, he made
it a priority to reinforce what he saw as an effective
defensive fortification with his own engineers and soldiers.
At first, the Wall blocked only a few streets where
attacks were common, but since the reconstruction
started, it has expanded to stretch from the Neverdeath
graveyard to the old House of Knowledge.
In combination with the Neverwinter River, the
Wall continues to provide effective containment,
although people have spotted plaguechanged monstrosities
in the northern River District and, more
recently, near sewer holes around the city. The situation
grows dire, and petitions for Wall expansion
come before Mayor Galt every day.

Physical Construction and Patrols
The Wall soars above the streets, rivaling the towers
of the city wall in height. It varies in width, narrowing
in spots to as little as five feet and widening to
as much as twenty feet in places where abandoned
buildings make up part of the barrier. These structures
might seem like holes in the barricade, but the
defenders have filled them with rubble or with loud,
deadly traps that alert the guards if monsters attempt
to break through.
Guardhouses stand along the Wall's length, repurposed
from the remains of noble keeps and the old
Neverwinter Guard barracks. At least ten soldiers
occupy each station day and night, and the guards are
outfitted with warning horns to summon more aid as
. a battle necessitates. When darkness falls, Mintarn
enforcers uncover everburning torches at the corners
of the guardhouses to provide light for nighttime
operations.
The Wall was originally a civilian project, but
now Neverember has taken over its management.
Today, the patrols are about three-quarters Mintarn
sellswords and one-quarter hardened Neverwinter
natives who refuse to give up their self-imposed stewardship.
The natives who built the Wall view this
takeover with suspicion, particularly now that they
have to take orders from Neverember's harsh mercenary
leader, Sabine, or from her Captain of the Wall,
Durham Shaw. Many people dislike Sabine because
of her personality, but Captain Shaw is resented by
many people for a different reason- he has been
allowed to stay in the city and work on the Wall even
though he suffers from the effects of the Spellplague.
Some say Shaw receives this special treatment
because he is a personal friend or distant relation of
Lord Neverember.
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House of Knowledge

At the far northeastern end of the Wall stands what
was, in happier times, a flourishing temple to Oghma,
god of knowledge and wisdom. Before the quake,
the House of Knowledge served as a repository of
chronicled learning, including maps, history, and
hundreds of poems and chapbooks produced over the
centuries. Today, it looks less like a library and more
like a refugee camp, holding the area where the Wall
approaches the N everwinter River.
After the cataclysm, leadership of the reduced
flock at the House of Knowledge fell to Brother
Anthus, an elderly human interested in studying the
Chasm and the Spellplague-touched creatures that
came from it. His research led to the temple's use as a
haven for Spellplague sufferers, which did not please
the Lord Protector. After Anthus's death under mysterious
circumstances, a young woman in residence
known as the Prophet relocated the makeshift hospital
and the remaining clerics of Oghma to Helm's
Hold, claiming a prophesied disaster would befall the
city if she did not.
Only one priest remained after the Prophet's
departure- Loremaster Atlavast, a middle-aged
human who became the custodian of the library after
the cataclysm. Fearing the worst as the cataclysm
occurred, the loremasters of the temple sealed the
inner sanctum, leaVing the young Atlavast sealed
within. As the ground shuddered and shook, Atlavast's
mind grew unstable. Now grown into an eccentric
recluse, Atlavast keeps to the lower vaults, continually
catalogUing and reorganizing. He is rarely glimpsed
these days, and the main evidence of his existence
is the occasional flickering light that filters up from
cracks in the cobblestones in the dead of night. As a
rule, no one ventures closer to investigate.
After the Prophet departed, the badly damaged
temple stood empty and abandoned until recently,
when a handful of squatters moved back into the
House. These refugees from the River District earn
their keep by ringing the temple's bells when they
Sight a new wave of monstrosities spilling from the
Chasm toward the Wall. Lord Neverember is said to
be quite pleased with their resourcefulness, and the
Mintarn mercenaries that guard the Wall are known
to stop by with small gifts of food and drink to show
their appreciation.
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Neverdeath

A cracked stone wall, patched in places with thick
wood, surrounds the graveyard called Neverdeath.
Consisting of two wide, roughly square areas of the
city, Neverdeath is filled with rows of headstones
interspersed with mausoleums and crumbling stat-
ues, often overgrown with withered grasses. Time, the
Spellplague, and the cataclysm all took their toll on
the graveyard, thrusting some sections higher than
others, collapsing buildings, and revealing graves.
Coffins now jut from small cliffs, and tumbled bones a
litter the ground.

The graveyard takes its name from a common blessing
given over the dead. As long as the city remained
in summer, it was said, the dead would never truly
leave. Many think that winter is coming soon for the
city's dead, however, brought by malevolent forces from
Thay. Neverember's mercenaries fear the graveyard,
preferring to burn the dead outside the walls of the
burial ground. If they are not burned, corpses left lying
nearby sometimes rise of their own accord.
Visitors who breach the walls of Never death come
under attack from undead creatures that emerge
from the ground. The cruel mistress of the graveyard,
Thayan sorceress Valindra Shadowmantle, expects
these first lines of defense to falter and relies on them
only to warn her of intruders. For Valindra, the graveyard's
abundant, interconnected mausoleums are a
complex and tactically useful lair, one that the locals
already fear. Better still, she can take her pick of the
moldering corpses and yellowed bones buried here
and disturbed by the cataclysm.
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The Waterclock Crypts

Beneath a large, unassuming mausoleum lie the catacombs
of the Waterclock Guild, an organization of
artisans famous for bUilding beautiful and intricate
timepieces.
More than a hundred years before the Spellplague.
an elf wizard at the Hosttower of the Arcane in
Luskan discovered tendrils of magic below the tower,
similar to a tree's root system. These tendrils ran
toward the sea in one direction and into the earth to
the south in another. They seemed to pull elemental
power from the sea and channel it through the roots
to the south. Obsessed with artifice, conjuration, and
abjuring magic, the elf sought to study the tendrils_
Subtle questioning led him to believe that none of his
fellow wizards knew anything about his discovery, so
he left to see where the mystery would take him.
The elf's travels brought him to Neverwinter,
where he built a new life under the name Lucan
Greenharrow. He met a builder of remarkable waterclocks
named Saborn Rende!, and together they
founded the Waterclock Guild, secretly using Lucan's
magic to craft astoundingly accurate and beautiful
timepieces. As the years passed, Lucan studied the
lore he had stolen from the Hosttower, and what he
learned stoked his desire to delve into the earth. He
funded and oversaw the construction of the guild's
crypts, setting aside space within for secret chambers
where he could refine his magical studies.
The construction of the catacombs utilized the
guild's most advanced techniques, including some
of the secret rituals of binding water elementals.
The sprawling dungeon is a complex of gears, water·
falls, and traps, powered by water elementals bound
to maintain the machines there. Seawater travels
through translucent veins in the walls and spills out
through solid stone toward Luskan in the north and
Gauntlgrym somewhere east. Lucan's secret laboratories
and summoning chambers remain, holding
ancient notes about the ritual originally used to bind
Gauntlgrym's primordial, as well as instructions for
repairing broken elements of the primordial's prison.
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Neverwinter Docks

Much of Neverwinter's original wealth and influence
came from its position as one of the few deep ports
on the Sword Coast. The Neverwinter docks were the
commercial heart of the city, though in some ways
that heart was infected with darkness and corruption.
The Spellplague went some way toward purging that
corruption- chunks ofland broke away and rose into
the sky, forming earthmotes that hovered overhead.
The surviving residents of the city adapted, connecting
the low-floating motes to the shore with ropes, chains,
and bridges. However, the cataclysm later destroyed the
foundations of these bridges, and the changed currents
swamped whole areas of the port with tidal waves. Neverwinter's
already diminished trade dried up entirely,
leaving the docks a rotting ghost town. Only a few fishers
and the occasional pirate ship made port here.
Lord Neverember made rebuilding this center of
trade a top priority. As part of his first initiatives, he
sent engineers and loggers to the Upland Rise, a forested
hill outside the city that once served as a park for
the city's residents. The crews stripped the hill of all salvageable
timber, leaving the Upland Rise a sparse echo
ofits former beauty, and used it to rebuild the docks.
For all his flaws as a political leader, Neverember is a
brilliant merchant prince, and his efforts have restored
rrade to the city. Today, supplies and coin flow into
Neverwinter through the docks, along with repatriated
refugees. The Lord Protector takes a keen interest in
anyone entering the city in this manner, and charges
steep tariffs on deals consummated at the docks.
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