Shadows Below prologue

General Summary

In the middle of all lies the city of Wittering. A place of business for many, opportunity for others, but called home by countless thousands. All know it as the Capital. Its history is old; older than the noble families that rule in the Noble's Square, older than the Northern or Southern Sword, older even than the sea and its eternal banks of fog following the Obscuring. Its history is contiguous; the city behind its high walls has never fallen since its founding. This is the hub of many races who make up the spanning castes. This is a city of spectrums; great wealth and oppressive poverty; festivals and fairs and crime and corruption; adventure and intrigue and pampering and imbibing. A dichotomous city. Nobles of the Bluff who parade through the streets and throw elegant balls to flaunt their wealth just beyond the walls that divide them from the Hightide homes that hold a thousand hungry mouths, some of them old beggars, others children made orphans by a parent's vice or war or both.
Each of its six boroughs houses humans, tieflings, dwarves, half-orcs, elves, dragonborne and half another world of creatures. Merchants can be heard calling out the contents of their stalls in the Seaside Market; smells of freshly caught fish, ripe fruits and spices brought in by traders who travel over the Obscured Seas.
The streets of Noble's Court are pristine, patrolled by guards who don colorful and exquisite armor. Statues that act as street signs, pointing towards the courthouse, a local theater, or the city's ancient castle. Far below in the shadows of the Noble's Court bluff, is the Old Town, home of a dozen religions with gaudy temples, some built of stone, others carved straight into ancient ruins that dot the landscape and run far below the city. These ruins have been around for so long that houses have begun to appear near, around and on them. At one time, their names might've been known, and their stories told. But the city is old, and with time the people have lost these legends.
The Guildheart is filled with the sounds of productivity, from metalsmith to woodworker. The city's extensive and numerous guilds mostly find their home here, and all manners of wares and services are offered. If the guilds cannot offer you what you need, the Wall's Shade Market can. The largest market in the city, even beyond the size of the Dockside Market, knows no beginning and no end and fully takes up the massive square just outside the Market Gate. Cross the market lies the Hillclimb, with many of its racial enclaves. High above on the hills stand the grand trees of Illithar, the Knife-ear Summit, and carved into the eastern side the twin castle of the Dragonborne clans. In the middle towards the cities lies the Kettlewhistle, a chaotic fair that has long since grown out of control.
In the Hightide, amidst the sea foam and the smell of salt water, raucous laughter, or murderous shouting (sometimes it's hard to tell the difference) can be heard from behind brightly lit tavern windows. Salty dogs partake in bouts of violence. For brawls go hand-in-hand with hard liquor, and the liquor flows like water there. The dark alleys that pepper this ward are the hunting grounds for cutthroats; the busy harbor a playing field for a thief with sticky fingers. Nobles avoid this place, as much for the general smell as the inherent danger; like a lamb wandering into a pack of wolves.
The great graveyard, called the City of the Dead, sits in the northern portion. It houses countless dead, from seven and seven and seven generations past. Walls have been erected around it, guards patrol it, in case any upstart necromancer is looking for flesh for his dark magics. No dead wander about generally, but it is a large graveyard, and that doesn't stop the children from telling ghost stories, or daring one another to sneak in and stay the night. Childish things, the adults will say. But even a grown man is superstitious enough that he wouldn't partake in any dare of that sort. Beyond the graveyard, along a worn road along the river, lies the Melting Pot, home to the most destitute and poor of Wittering. But even amidst these dregs beauty can be found in the stranger cultures and communities that can be found here.
And on the south-eastern side of the city ever looms the Bluff, a natural landmark that sweetens an already beautiful city. In the autumn pre-winter chill, it catches the morning sun first and glows like a beacon. It once housed the original denizens, those that long lived here before the city was refounded as Wittering. Tunnels and mines run through its core, but it's been long since deemed abandoned. To say abandoned isn't the truth, however. There's been rumblings in the dark, sounds from the old mines, a patrol disappearing here or there. Some say it's a troll, or perhaps Underdark creatures striking in the night. Others rumored that a mage took residence there. He experimented on things better left untouched. There are even those that say that they saw Vidjek himself in these halls, wandering the ancient city. Some say, on those cold, still nights, you can hear his cries echoing off the cliffside.
But that is a story for another time. This story has more humble beginnings. We start our adventure in the warmth of the famous Yawning Portal inn, where rumors are abuzz talking off the recent violence in the streets. Five unlikely companions find themselves, as they say, in the right place, at the wrong time.
You sit around a sturdy wooden table, lit by a brightly burning candle and littered with plates of cleared food and half-drained tankards. The sounds of gamblers yelling and drunken adventurers singing bawdy songs nearly drown out the off-key strumming of a young bard playing a three-stringed lute three tables over...

Report Date

15 Aug 2019