#gorodzuba

[ttrpgtreacle]

Ysvestia was a street urchin in Gorodzuba. When the corruption of the city pushed many into the so-called undercity (at that point mostly a series of cisterns recently emptied to feed the growing hunger of its rented industry), she found her place within it as a guard for hire, with an old antique musket.

Eventually she left with the party, as she wanted to see more adventure, and didn't see a future for Gorozuba. Ysvestia actually started out as a random token that I drew for practice (see below) before becoming her own full-fledged character.

[ttrpgtreacle]

In the cave systems below Gorodzuba, the mineralized water which seeps from the mountains flows in underground rivers. Recently, the health properties of that water lead to it being actively exploited by a series of pump facilities deep underground. These facilities were often hot, sweaty, and dangerous. When the party came to the facility, it was... degraded. The workers had been attacked and turned into zombies, an attack caused by Koshchey.

As you can tell from the differently colored pipes, there was a pipe puzzle on this map, which is fun! Definitely the sort of thing I should have planned out on paper, because the actual complexity of the puzzle was a little low.

They met with an investiture of Koshchley, the mysterious puzzle maker behind the world's often elaborate and mysteriously durable puzzles. Within the body of a zombie, he was caught unawares, and offered to fight the players later if they promised to tell anyone they came across that they had fought and it had been, like, super tough. In exchange, he would provide them with a level up.

Unfortunately, his ultimate boss battle got cut. Shame!

[ttrpgtreacle]

Stasya is a changeling, who has walked the world since before the sea of the skies. An itinerant to the core, she's drifted between every kind of job under the sun and is now slumming it as a lounge singer in Gorodzuba. Eventually discovered by the Zhuttskulak, she was brought before Prince Yaropalk, and 'coerced' into revealing certain secrets about how the mirror works.

Also, Stasya is the rare example of me doing a first pass and thinking it looked so bad that I had to redo it.

To be fair to me, I drew this first iteration in a train station. So, yeah, I was literally out of my element, which is water. Yup, I draw all of my art like those precogs from the Tom Cruise Eyeball Experience movie, half submerged in my wonderful milk.

[ttrpgtreacle]

A dropped plotline in Zhuttsgraad was the underclass of Ogre that were coaxed from the hills for manual labor. The ogres were banding themselves around a brotherhood based around Everart Claire like ringleader.

The players were originally going to have to deal with them to help get in Gorodzuba. Cut because it wouldn't have been a great use of time.

[ttrpgtreacle]

The Puzzle of Two Degrees Tom. This one was a flop. Total flop. The four quadrants represent separate letter palettes the party would have to select to spell out MAMA, the name of the leader of the Clean Knives gang. The difficulty comes with the fact that there's very little immediate feedback, and it had been so long since they dealt with the Clean Knives gang that they had kind of forgotten about Mama. So it goes.

[ttrpgtreacle]

Many years later, as he bled out alone within the forgotten recesses of the Gorodzuba municipal system, Two Degrees Tom was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Haha, just kidding folks. In reality, Two Degrees Tom was not an especially troubled member of a large family cursed to a cavalcade of magical and sometimes salacious events, broadly reflecting the troubled development of South America. He's actually a crocodile employed/owned by the the Clean Knives gang, feeding off the prisoners they deign to throw his way as a method 'cleaning up the trash.'

The players did kill Two Bit Tom. A truly unique creature in the world, perhaps the like of which will never be seen again. Well, they're Sky Pirates, not Sky Conservationists.

[ttrpgtreacle]

The Lair of Two Degrees Tom is a small enclosed cistern in the undercity of Gorodzuba where the Clean Knives gang keeps one of their waste disposal systems, a large esoterically unique crocodile called Two Degrees Tom. Two Degrees Tom is fed a sporadic diet of miscreants, traitors, and authority figures.

[ttrpgtreacle]

Used in a Valve style steam pipe puzzle on the cliff pump facility.

Art-wise, this works but man is it rough. But, be honest: you can't even tell I haven't discovered brush stabilization yet. Jokes aside, Why I didn't use the circle tool!?