My Daughter

City of Bones is on hold, indefinitely. Why? This is why: My daughter, 3 weeks old today, still in intensive care, still stable but not stable enough for her surgery yet. She has a  diaphragmatic hernia , which basically means her liver in up in her chest, her lungs are squashed and her heart needs to do extra work to pump her blood around. Even if she has her surgery in the next couple of weeks (which is doubtful) she'll still be recovering come Christmas; which means that this year, we shall be spending Christmas in the hospital. That's going to be weird. So, until she has recovered and is home, the fortnightly Sunday game of the City of Bones campaign is in stasis; in case anyone was wondering.

Dear Jack, You'll never guess where I'm writing to you from! No really, try and guess. Wrong! Try again. Still Wrong! Give up? Ha! Ok then I'll tell you. We're in a giant metal coffin travelling down an underwater river! See? I told you you couldn't guess! Also, Mr. Black is dead. Let me try and describe what's going on. Well, we fought off the zombies and camped outside instead. This morning we finally got rid of all that purple fog. It was tough but I convinced the others to come with me into the room it all seemed to be coming from. We couldn't see anything so we were expecting to get attacked at any moment, but feeling along the walls we found a dwarf that looked like he was sitting in meditation next to a fire pit. Three weird seeds were burning to make all the smoke. I guess the dwarf was a zombie as well but Mr. Black cut off his head before he could do anything. Ishy carefully took the seeds outside and put them out. We all took a break while we wai...

...and with the game temporarily on hold (holidays and the like), what to do? One thing I haven't done yet is sketched out the area surrounding the city. All we do know is that there are mountains to the north and south, the land all around is a wasteland, and that's pretty much it; there are ruins in both mountain ranges, a pass north that leads through to the northern kingdoms (and where I dropped hooks about the Stonehell Dungeon , in case the players feel like heading that way. Then I remembered an old map, and I thought, well, why not use that and add it to it later. So, here is the old map, before I do anything to it:

Within the city itself, couriers known as SPRINTERS carry messages from one Quarter to another, for a small fee. They are members of the TORCH BEARERS' GUILD, chosen for their speed and agility; many of them are children. Other guilds use their own members to deliver messages or packages, but generally only for guild business. The BEGGARS' GUILD, for example, uses its street urchins, who can move about more easily and quickly than even the SPRINTERS, knowing the streets as well as they do. For outside communication, the council rely on homing-pigeons to deliver messages between settlements, or armed couriers who travel with the caravans; or, if the message is urgent, ride off on horses that they exchange for fresh mounts at way-stations along the main roads. Occasionally, they turn to the magi of the ACADEMY for magical communications.

There are few clocks in the city; the few that exist are owned by rich nobles, the magi, and certain faiths. Most people rely on the ringing of bells from the City Hall  of GREEN HILL. The Hall's bell-tower has twelve bells, each a different size and tone. They are rung in the same sequence every day, each tone and bell signalling a different hour. During the day, each bell is rang twice upon the hour; at night, the bells are rang but once. Each hour is accurately timed thanks to an elaborate orrey, a gift from the priests of YELANA. This massive, intricately designed clockwork masterpiece stands within the council's bell-tower, and tracks the movement of the sun, moon and stars, measuring time at all levels. It not only displays the hour, but also the date (Southern reckoning)– day, week, month and year– as well as the seasons. A calendar is marked along the radius of the orrey, but follows the Southern months; thankfully, scholars have translated and tr...

For the most part the architecture of the city is a mixture of Southern and Northern design, heavily influenced by dwarf craftsmanship, as that stout race are responsible for building most of the city's structures, including the walls, towers and gatehouses that protect it. The materials used are often an indication of wealth, with the wattle & daub and stone at the lowest levels, followed by timber and brick, to marble and other precious and fine stonework. Most of the buildings in the MERCHANT QUARTER are stone; while wood, coloured bricks, and expensive stone are proudly displayed in the NOBLE QUARTER and upon GREEN HILL. Stone also dominates the RESIDENTS QUARTER, with the poorer dwellings little more than wattle & daub huts crammed together to form blocks. A few houses are built with red or sandy bricks or, rarer still, imported timbers. Most buildings are sharp-edged, flat-roofed and straight-lined; a mixture of Southern and dwarven architecture. The interi...

Despite being part of the larger kingdom, the CITY OF BONES largely operates as an independent state. It sends a nominal sum to the King's coffers, to cover basic taxes, but is left alone to govern its own affairs. Due to its location, within the desolate region where the Great Battle took place, little vegetation is able to grow and the sandy, gritty land is sterile for miles around. The city does, however, have dozens of small outlying farms that struggle to produce the necessary food to sustain the city. Wood is also scarce, with the nearest forest several days journey distant, and home to forest elves who call it home; they sell timber to the city, protecting their forest as they do so, coming down hard on anyone trying to fell trees by themselves. The resources that the city does have in abundance are minerals and metal ores, mined by the dwarves from the surrounding hills and nearby mountains, even from within the WEEPING CHASM. The raw materials and the goods produ...