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Secrets of the Nethercity
Cyfaraun is a city of ancient lineage. Evidence of elven construction is still visible in the city’s oldest district. Many city residents know that Old Cyfaraun was founded atop an earlier settlement—Ancient Cyfaraun, buried by cataclysmic ashes over 500 years ago. Only the most illustrious sages are aware that the Ancient City was itself built over an even deeper ruin, a Forgotten Cyfaraun, a city brought low by an earthquake almost 2,000 years ago. Forgotten Cyfaraun was reduced to rubble but its lasting legacy is a hidden Nethercity, a treacherous place of twisting tunnels, dusty catacombs, and black, volcanic caves that waits, forgotten and unplumbed—until now…
AX2: Secrets of the Nethercity is a ready-to-play adventure scenario designed to carry characters from the 3rd to 8th levels of experience, for use with the Adventurer Conqueror King System and other d20-based fantasy role-playing games. Explore the impossibly complex warrens of the Nethercity and discover the horrific truth of the ancient empire that ruled the realm.
AX2: Secrets of the Nethercity is a ready-to-play adventure scenario designed to carry characters from the 3rd to 8th levels of experience, for use with the Adventurer Conqueror King System and other d20-based fantasy role-playing games. Explore the impossibly complex warrens of the Nethercity and discover the horrific truth of the ancient empire that ruled the realm.
183 pages, Paperback
Published December 19, 2019
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 16, 2020
Whatever big city in whatever setting your player characters are currently hanging out in, I highly recommend cracking it open and sticking this antediluvian, Lovecraftian elven ruin into its forgotten depths. Just give your player characters some pretense at exploring the local sewers, then stumble into the entrance to this hellhole. Explore a highly imaginitive and legitimately fantastic old-school dungeon crawl, a well-balanced yet challenging realm, freeform and open-ended, dark and atmospheric, filled to the brim with treasure and wonder and dark knowledge. And undead. So many undead.
It's not quite perfect, though: it's a bit wordy, the read-alouds are long and formulaic and focus rather a lot on making absolutely sure the players get the map right, this khepri "great teacher" looks pretty cheesy and is hard to take seriously, and, to be honest, the mummies get really repetitive after a while - open a tomb, half the party gets frozen in fear, etc. Even then it has any mainstream D&D adventure - some generic old Undermountain - beat with one hand behind its back.
It's not quite perfect, though: it's a bit wordy, the read-alouds are long and formulaic and focus rather a lot on making absolutely sure the players get the map right, this khepri "great teacher" looks pretty cheesy and is hard to take seriously, and, to be honest, the mummies get really repetitive after a while - open a tomb, half the party gets frozen in fear, etc. Even then it has any mainstream D&D adventure - some generic old Undermountain - beat with one hand behind its back.
March 13, 2020
I almost supported this Kickstarter on the strength of the name alone.
This one is a literal sludge-slog through an ancient undercity… literal because in this case the undercity has long been used as a sewer system. Sewer system + ancient evil = very weird, as any Steve Gerber can tell you.
The artwork ranges from very good to incredible, although I’m not always sure what locations the artwork refers to.
The major flaw is that the flavor text doesn’t always capture the amazing nature of the dungeon; it tends, old-school-style, to start with the dimensions.
Appropriate for an old-school adventure, I learned a new word, or in this case a phrase. Many of the chambers and features are carved, hewn, or sculpted from “the living rock”. The first time I read this I wondered what kind of weird creature this was, but apparently it just means unquarried rock, that is, it has been carved out of the volcanic rock that makes up the area.
There are layers upon layers of history in this dungeon for the characters to hack through. I had several flashbacks to the Caverns of Thracia based on the factions underneath the stone and the general layout.
The layout is much more modern than the previous Autarch book I have, Dwimmermount. This means that each two-page spread contains less content even though some of the text is smaller. The tradeoff, though, is that the artwork is a lot more evocative.
There are a bunch of new magic items, spells, and creatures. Some of the magic items especially are very old-school fantasy/sf in feel, such as from Leiber or Clark Ashton Smith. The sarcophogal worm, an undead transformation of a mummy’s intestines, is one such weird creature worth using everywhere. New spells have names like “bloody flux” and “fangs of the earth”; they are also available, according to the intro, in Autarch’s Heroic Fantasy Handbook.
One interestingly useful feature in the final pages of the book is a guide to “adapting the Nethercity to your own campaign”. It provides an example of adapting it for their own Kanahu, but also a list of events and deities with a blank spot to replace them with your own. This is pretty much exactly how I reskinned Thracia to my own campaign several years ago.
The Nethercity was built alongside the upper city book (sold separately), Capital of the Borderlands. While this, also, does not have an index or a table of contents, it’s somewhat easier to find things because the running heads across the top change with each level of the dungeon. The adventure does not in any way require the use of the city book, although they will work well together. (Update, January 13 2020: the PDF version of Secrets of the Nethercity now has a table of contents for PDF readers.)
It will take several sessions to play through this adventure completely if the DM and the players are so inclined; according to the back of the book, it is “designed to carry characters from 3rd to 8th level of experience”. Combined with adventures in the upper city, I can believe it. There is a lot here. The maps are big, and will definitely benefit from having electronic copies to zoom in on.
The adventure is written for Autarch’s Adventurer, Conqueror, King game, but should be trivial to run in AD&D. There is a lot of fun here for any D&D group; it can be a running battle toward the boss end, it can be an archaeological investigation into the secrets of the past, and it can be a search for strange creatures and magic to bring back to the surface.
This one is a literal sludge-slog through an ancient undercity… literal because in this case the undercity has long been used as a sewer system. Sewer system + ancient evil = very weird, as any Steve Gerber can tell you.
The artwork ranges from very good to incredible, although I’m not always sure what locations the artwork refers to.
The major flaw is that the flavor text doesn’t always capture the amazing nature of the dungeon; it tends, old-school-style, to start with the dimensions.
This 10' wide north-south tunnel runs for 40'. At its northern terminus, a cave mouth opens up on the west wall while a 10' tunnel exits to the northeast. At its southern terminus, it curves west for 10', then collapses into a 5' wide pit that drops downward 10'.
Appropriate for an old-school adventure, I learned a new word, or in this case a phrase. Many of the chambers and features are carved, hewn, or sculpted from “the living rock”. The first time I read this I wondered what kind of weird creature this was, but apparently it just means unquarried rock, that is, it has been carved out of the volcanic rock that makes up the area.
There are layers upon layers of history in this dungeon for the characters to hack through. I had several flashbacks to the Caverns of Thracia based on the factions underneath the stone and the general layout.
The layout is much more modern than the previous Autarch book I have, Dwimmermount. This means that each two-page spread contains less content even though some of the text is smaller. The tradeoff, though, is that the artwork is a lot more evocative.
There are a bunch of new magic items, spells, and creatures. Some of the magic items especially are very old-school fantasy/sf in feel, such as from Leiber or Clark Ashton Smith. The sarcophogal worm, an undead transformation of a mummy’s intestines, is one such weird creature worth using everywhere. New spells have names like “bloody flux” and “fangs of the earth”; they are also available, according to the intro, in Autarch’s Heroic Fantasy Handbook.
One interestingly useful feature in the final pages of the book is a guide to “adapting the Nethercity to your own campaign”. It provides an example of adapting it for their own Kanahu, but also a list of events and deities with a blank spot to replace them with your own. This is pretty much exactly how I reskinned Thracia to my own campaign several years ago.
The Nethercity was built alongside the upper city book (sold separately), Capital of the Borderlands. While this, also, does not have an index or a table of contents, it’s somewhat easier to find things because the running heads across the top change with each level of the dungeon. The adventure does not in any way require the use of the city book, although they will work well together. (Update, January 13 2020: the PDF version of Secrets of the Nethercity now has a table of contents for PDF readers.)
It will take several sessions to play through this adventure completely if the DM and the players are so inclined; according to the back of the book, it is “designed to carry characters from 3rd to 8th level of experience”. Combined with adventures in the upper city, I can believe it. There is a lot here. The maps are big, and will definitely benefit from having electronic copies to zoom in on.
The adventure is written for Autarch’s Adventurer, Conqueror, King game, but should be trivial to run in AD&D. There is a lot of fun here for any D&D group; it can be a running battle toward the boss end, it can be an archaeological investigation into the secrets of the past, and it can be a search for strange creatures and magic to bring back to the surface.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews