The City of Nibiru
The city of Nibiru was originally called “A Capital Playground”. It was intended, not to be a mainstay and scenery for a grand adventure, but as a casual setting for some mild one-shots in between main sessions. The original campaign, titled, “A Western Wedding” had almost 20 pages of design notes and about 15 drawn up maps.
Because we had some scheduling issues, the capital city was born. The idea was to have a place where players could goof around and try out new characters, as well as have mini adventures and one-shots on days when one or two people couldn’t make it to the table.
When our fifth member dropped out, it became a place to stay for a while and build backstory. Then, as the players didn’t really have a direction, i decided to push them into the first major mission “The Law Underground”. The world has slowly built up from there. Sometimes players need a thing to exist, so i throw it in and build it up later. Sometimes, players run into earlier ideas i had in my notes. And, sometimes ideas just come to me as I am typing up these summaries or creating these maps. Either way, the city has really begun to come to life, and now it is a full scene for a glorious campaign to take place.
The name “Nibiru” is taken from the mythical tenth planet in our solar system. The reason is simple. While listening to a lecture on astronomical physics, i learned that astronomers often have subsets of numbers that fall outside of the established parameters, but are proven to be correct. They often label these with “Nibiru” from Babylonian myth as a placeholder until more exact information can be found.
So i named this temporary playground city “Nibiru” as a placeholder until we had something more concrete, but the world solidified, and the name stuck.
Lore:
Original to Printing to Current
Areas (still being made)
The Founding
COMING SOON
City Layout
COMING SOON
Royalty Lore
COMING SOON
Maps
Below are all the maps of the city from conception to current play (excluding areas that have spoilers for players). Click on the images to see or download the full image.
Below are all the maps Buildings and areas in the city. Some are still in early phases so please keep that in
In-Game Passages
Bellow are the collected passages about the city from in game and summary sessions.
[IRONTON] There are 4 standing shops in the front of the Ironton district. The main hall is always full of the latest show-y work, this is also where artisans apply to join the guild, and guild business is administered. The most decorative and expensive items are always on display here but seldom bought. The outside shops are The Armor Stand, The Weapon Rack, and The Tool Shed, not creative names, but you know exactly where to find what you need. All the stores and manufacturers work on a simple commission system. A rotation of craftspeople run the shifts at the storefront, and all the craftspeople work in their own shops when not “working the front”. The items sold get marks with who made them, or what team made them, and the sales money is distributed to those makers, keeping a small percent for operations. If a workshop, maker, or team wants, they can rent one of the three front stalls for a high fee to sell directly and only sell their own work for that day.
[BATHHOUSE] In front of the “Berry Bush'' bathhouse, we all stand in front of a fountain statue of a beautiful androgynous Gnome. Eight 8 feet tall, they hold a pitcher over themselves, and the water flows down around luscious curves. Unlike most fountains the water here steams gently, almost creating a glow in the orange dusk light. A winged snake curls its tail around the pitcher handle. Its body rising in the steam, it seems to help lift the jug over the bathing Gnome. Marble-carved soap bubbles obscure the view of anything too revealing, and the water eventually falls in a series of large drops through a grate on the ground. On top of a grate sits a carving of a wooden ringlet. It is a crown made from branches of a berry bush, little gems dot the crown in place of berries. Androgyny, the Berry Crown, and flying serpents are all signs of the first rulers of the land.
[TENTON] . . . an area known as Tenton. It is a gathering of travelers camping out in the eastern field outside the city of Nibiru. Tenton is like a small village, made entirely of cloth. Caravans come and go while wagons of wood or livestock, farmers bring horses laden down with seed to bring to the market, and wanders bring their heavy backpacks looking to meet someone interesting. As soon as one family takes their tent down and heads away from the camp, a party of adventurers takes their spot setting up their own tents and cooking over the same firepit. In this way, the travelers' tents are always changing, but it never really stops. The air is light with a casual ease as people wander from place to place with the vague easy look of those with nowhere important to be just yet. The smell of pleasantly half-burned campfire food lingers in the air. Bards practice songs, and squires scribble out the stories of their last adventure. In short, it is the kind of free and open music-festival-y vibe that would have Bostra gritting his teeth until he burns it to the ground as soon as some hippie asked if he wanted to trade his rations for a tie dye shirt.
[DARK MARKET] The roof is about half collapsed, but stable. We can make out boards hammered together and iron bands holding beams sturdily in place. Where the roof DID collapse, now it is a solid floor. The floor is hidden from sight, not only from below, but the last remaining bits or roof leave it hard to see from any of the other roof tops around. tucked in the shade of these bits of broken rooftop are small venders. Aarakocra and some dragon born vendors stand in these shadows, glancing over at Ari over they’re wares. There is a dragonborn man with cut neck-frills standing behind a row of jars. The jars are full of mysterious liquids, some swirling around, some with skulls or body parts in them, and one with either a monkey’s tail, or a furry snake floating in it. Another man leans back in a chair, his hat over his face and his boots on his table. From the boots, a dark swirling mist covers everything on the table, the vague shapes poking out are unrecognizable. And there is a fat buzzard aarakocra looming over a stack of boxes covered by blankets. . . . a building that clearly is a church, and it does look super ominous, but it’s further south that they expected, and is doesn’t that the cast iron symbol on top they were expecting. In front of them is the old Church of - huh well actually we can’t really tell. It’s very very run down, it looks like half the roof as collapsed in. There are a few people milling around though, someone shifty-looking in a cloak and hood. They look around and crawl in a side window. Ari thinks she sees someone with a wheel barrow walk through the front doors. The she does a double take. The front doors are sealed. There is even a large wooden beam laid across them with the words “Condemned By The City of Nibiru” stamped into it. But then how did the wheel barrow guy… Ari walks up to the front door. She puts her hand out and it passes through the wooden beam. She steps back looking at it and mumbles “some sort of illusion magic.” Then she take another look at the fake beam holding the fake doors closed. From this close up she is able to see some signs of Thieves Cant cleverly working into the illusion. She glances around, then takes a second to read them. “The Dark Market”
[UNIVERSITY] We walk with Sorin past the triumphant gates and onto the familiar brick yard of the “University of Magic and High Understanding or The Natural Order of the Universe”. We walk through the courtyard and glance up at the skeleton sitting on a plinth holding a brass globe. Not for the first time, Sorin wonders why a school would be so against teaching necromancy, when they keep the bones of the founder in the front lawn. We go through the first year’s hall and walk through the quiet corridors. It’s disorienting at first with how quiet it is until Sorin remembers it’s the 30th. Most of the students will be enjoying these two days off, spending time with family, or partying and traditionally peeing off the roof tops. We poke into a few empty lecture chambers, labs, and offices, glancing over the familiar taxidermy birds, stone pyramids, and overhead projectors (using thaumaturgy to make a light, and pains of glass to write on). The commissary is divided into three separate stores. On the left is a general student supply and book store; inks, quills, robes, etc. In the middle is the spell component store with some supplies out in the open like bottles of ashes, and some supplies behind a locked glass cabinet like green diamonds, and powdered horn of elder gods. The shop on the right is more gear-oriented; hoods of endless vision, wands of magic missile, training armor, and other more action based items. into the student Labs. The main floor is an open ring design with a center ring of un-spoiled earth in the middle, there are rocks and grass and dirt, and a few spots of uncleaned blood. In a ring around it are several work benches; hard wood tops with small anvils and rivet forges next to them, one or two even have sewing machines and dress maker’s mannequins. Behind his ring, up against the walls are several lab stations. Each has a hard black marble countertop, some faucets, an array of beakers and each has a shower with a pull cord on it.
[NORT GATE INN] When we walk in from the little courtyard out front, we see that the Nort Gate Inn is essentially divided in two parts. From the doors to the desk in front us is a dividing line. A wide runner-rug with V shapes either shows the separation, or brings the room together depending on how you look at it. To our right, the hotel is a luxurious affair clearly built for the upper crust to feel very crusty in. The theme is definitely white marble with gold trim. There is delicate stone carved fret work, and a stair banister made of white porcelain so thin you can see shadows through it. To the left though, the inn looks, well normal, maybe even a bit worn. The simple wooden beams and broken in wood floor would be at home in and public house, in any some farming village, in any rural countryside. In front of us at the end of the carpet divider is a grey stonework desk with three sections, an average human-height counter, a tall troll-height counter, and a small counter a few feet off the ground. he room is a long rectangle divided roughly into three parts. Is front of us is a small lounge area with table and chairs, the table has a few dents and cuts in it as if it was recently used in a fight. the chairs are laid out in no particular order and one is much larger that the others. Cypress releases that if he sits in it he would look like Neil Patrick Harris singing “Brand New Day” in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blob. Across from the door, next to the open window is an iron stove with a simple clay kettle on it. The room is divided on either side by hanging nordic-style curtains. They are made of a grid of leather straps and have some hooks hanging from them to hang up cloaks, bags, or longship oars. Each of these wings has three beds arranged in it. there is a medium (human-sized) bed, a bed about the right size for a large child, and a large bed that could easily and in fact comfortably host a dwarf orgy of 14 more.
[CHURCH OF SHADOWS] SYMBOLS: square cut diagonally, half black, half white. In the center is a face. Over the white half is the top of a gentle Buddha-like, smiling, kind face drawn in black lines. Over the black half is a skull drawing in white. Then the simple diagonal cut black and white square can be the easy symbol (like a cross) and the full face one can be a detailed more significant thing (like a crucifix). The symbol can even be above the church as an iron square with the top left have cut away and the bottom right have still there The church leaders (priests, ministry whatever) can be noted because they paint the bottom right half of their face black with a white skull, like a priest collar. They paint it on daily as a ritual / prayer. It stains over time so someone who has been in the church for a long time looks tattooed but still paints it on daily as a sign of devotion. People who die in the church are buried with a iron face mask cut diagonally in half so that as they decay they become half face half skull.
There is something in the sewers, the city of Nibiru added something to the water and it turned the firggin’ frogs gay!
[MONTHS] Its nearly the end of the week and at the 29th day, we are almost the end of the month of Mirtul (The Melting). No doubt some older folks in the city above are searching the attics to find they’re dusty old Trolltide masks. Meanwhile, the young folks are getting ready to paint rainbows and find the best ways onto roof tops to celebrate the start Kythorn (The Time of Flowers) in a couple days.
[UNDEAD] As for the undead, in the city of Nibiru, they are considered a pest problem. Basically, when you have a lot of dead bodies crowded together in a place of high magic, like a church, eventually you will have some issues with the dead resisting, well, being dead. This is very similar to how if you have an area of food storage kept in the open, you are are likely to get mice and bugs. So the city has an attitude of “Hey Decan, Mrs. Flouchter said she saw a zombie.” “Ok, I’ll call the Dodgrem brothers, I think they should be free since the full moon isn’t for another 3 days. In the mean time, lay out the traps and make sure the blessing on the stairs are still good.” So while they are a danger, like diseased raccoons, they aren’t cause for concern
[SEWERS] The Sewer of Nibiru are a magical place, literally they use magic to work. The sewers collect grey water (don’t think about it) from all over the city and bring it to water treatment hubs. The water treatment works partly with mechanical function, and partly with magics. Think Steampunk meets old world Alchemy. In order to power all this magic, the people who built the sewers tapped into areas of naturally occurring magical phenomena like. Things like Violet mushrooms, special rocks, etc. The system harvests that magic as a sort of collection of batteries to power the whole thing.
[GEOGRAPHY] The capital Nibiru is home to all types, but you mostly see above-ground folks (elves, humans, hill dwarves, aarakocra, tortles, etc.) The City of Nibru’s boarder (and thus the Constabulary’s jurisdiction) ends at the wall surrounding the city, but it also ends about 10 feel underground. There is a city deep beneath Nibiru. This city is also the capital of it’s own country, and is mostly populated by unground dwellers (Molepeople, Dark Elves, deep dwarves, trolls, bullywogs, etc.) The sewers are a space between. Just like how there are fields and county sides and forest in the horizontal space between villages and towns, These sewers are part of the vertical space between the two cities. So you guys are technically on the boarder between the two counties (just vertically) in a kind of no-man’s land that both countries use, but for the constabulary to go down here might be seen as an act of war.
[CHURCH OF GLORIOUS GODS] here are 4 Major religions in the City of Nibiru, so, the Temple of Glorious Gods is a large church dedicated to those gods not seen in those religions. The main floor contains several small altars to various gods from all over the world. These surround a central theater-like floor with pews bolted to the ground. This floor can be rotated to face any altar for whatever service happens to be in place. I’m sure there will be more information later.
[CHURCH OF SHADOWS] The name may sound ominous, but the practitioners are harmless. They simply believe in the divinity of literal shadows cast by light. They view shadows and misfortunes as a necessary part of the world in order to balance everything. After all, you need light to see, and then light casts a shadow; so it only stands to reason that every time a new kettle is made, a jar somewhere in the world must break. They believe the shadows are divine angles that see to this balance. It may seem a little bit backwards, saying a prayer of thanks every time you stub your toe, but on the whole they’ve never been known to hurt anyone. So what is going on here??
Original DM Notes
Bellow is a section of ongoing DM notes for the city, in no particular order. Please be aware that many things have changed from these early notes.
Plots
0 Enter city
Guards & Paperwork
Register weapons and state intent
Circus
Seeking performers
Nobels
The Royal Sam
Ruler of the state
Unknown gender (they/Them/NB as political power, gender neutral trend in nobility as fashion)
The Duke
Locked in tower (“The Tower of the Duke” Quest)
Meat Market
Dwarfs working in pairs (brothers) selling Meat on a stick (rat)
Eventually leads to wererats
Enemies of the Mole-men
Crime
Thieves on street
DICE for pickpocket attempts
DICE for attempts more crowded places
Thugs in alleys Dice based on part of city
1 Thugs in alley when enter
2 Thugs in alley at exit
3 Thugs enter alley when there
Cultists
Run the Dark Square
Adventurer's Guild
Sad Joke (kids with wooden swords)
Guild of Hopeless Wanders
Old cynical adventures
Beggars
Mostly around churchs
connected to Mole men?
The School
Magic lessons
Hour long lecture for a buff
Not big on religion (challenge clerics)
Farms
Windmill
The Wizard Tower
Clocktower
Sewers
Plot points
Well leads to locked grate (master shut) grate to UnderGround Level
Down Hall 2 locked doors (north possible, east master) and one broken door
Broken door - winding hall (door to pipes) (door to small room with something) (other well broken ladder climable-difficult)
Pipies to S2
S2 Lake (need key in halls behind
S2 Pipes to S1
S1 Tool rooms, thug sleeping?, grates
Grates to gutters (cause a fuss on main roads)
Animals
Four Factions
Thugs
Wererats
Beggars
Workers
Levels
Sewer 1 (pipes and tunnels)
Sewer 2 (lakes and streams)
Well water
Underground
Glowing lake with talking fish/ghost ()
Bathhouses
+1 to next CHA
Trade
Items stole at ½ in stalls, at cost in Markets, double in related shops/districts
Stores
Specific, best prices and finds
Main Square
Random
Lesser Square
Random
Dark Square
Dark items,
Risk Law
Satlls
Old “finding method” Dice determin Cost
Calendar
Roll dice
Some City Wide, Some in burgs
David “D.” Walter
Tool bonuses
Weapons RARE
Town feature
Something a townsperson is encouraging on or talks about
See map
Factions
Guards
Love Nobles
Beggars
Allied with Molemen
Thieves
Allied with Wererats
Molemen
Allied with Molemen
Recycling trash
Hate Wererats
Wererats
Allied with Thieves
Manipulate Cultist
Hate Molemen
Nobles
Artisans
Sellers
Scholars
Not big on religion (chalenge clerics)
Churches
Cultists
Worship Wererats unknowingly
Hate Nobles
