Hadestown

The Isle of the Dead

Out on the lake furthest from civilisation, there is a perpetual fog, and squatting in the centre of it is the Isle of the Dead. They say that the spirits of the departed haunt the fog and they are only partially wrong. Many of the dead transition to the underworld here, but they all must pass the Gatesman.

The approach is quiet like thunder isn't.

He lurks at the mouth of the tunnel, passed the trees, passed the other side doors down. Like a statue, draped in stone cloths, he stands in constant vigil, shepherding the souls of the dead down the tunnel. The living however, he stops, and tells that; "THE PRICE OF ENTRY, IS TWO OBOLS." If questioned about this, all he will elaborate on is that "THE LIVING ARE NOT PERMITTED TO TRULY SEE THE CITY OF THE DEAD".

If the price is paid, the Gatesman will place the coins on the eyes of the entrants, and they will affix there, the eyes on the coin opening, and they will be permitted to pass. From this point on, the entrant can see as if through a thick, misty rain; all desaturated, grainy, and colourless. When they leave, the Obols will melt into mist from their eyes, and their sight shall be restored.

If they ever remove the Obols while they remain within the threshold of the Gatesman's door, their own eyes will melt from their head, as the Obol's eyes burst into sepia flame and scream.

And how do you get Obols you may ask?
In the dungeon of course.

The Dungeon

Long ago, the King of the Dead built his town and took his queen, who took umbrage at her imprisonment over a few pomegranate seeds. She sent beast after beast to take their life of her husband, but Kerberos, the Hound of Many Heads, denied her many times. Each beast was taken above, and then below again to be left in the Dungeons under the Isle of the Dead.

Dungeon Levels

There are nine levels of the dungeon. They begin civilised enough, covered in frescoes and ornate architecture. As you get deeper the carvings become rougher, the artwork daubed by hand, and older things crawl up from the darkness.

Each level is the prison of one specific demon-beast that sort to slay the Lord of Hadestown, though various other creatures and beings have crawled into its darkness or have been imprisoned down there with them.

Its a good thing they never made another one of these.
But also this is what the dungeon looks like. Like this movie.

1 - The Labyrinth 

Form: Twisting and Writhing Halls, they never seem to stay the same for long. Prisoner: Minos, the Man-Bull

2 - The Cathedral of Bones

Form: A great holy city under one great vaulted roof. All the walls are covered and ornamented by bones. Prisoner: Tiresias, the Necromancer-Oracle

3 - The Forest of Roots

Form: A classic dungeon, only roots grow through many of the walls and choke many of the tunnels. Prisoner: The Hekatonkhieres  

4 - Scrambletown

Form: A simple, mud-brick town, but the floor is covered in shattered stone statues. Prisoner: The Gorgon. 

5 - Pandaemonium

Form: A great, many-ringed city with many gates of horn and ivory. Many things that are not real wander here. Prisoner: The Oneiroi, the Demons of Dream.

6 - The Pit

Form: A Shaft, dropping far, far away into the darkness. Worm-tunnels riddle its sides. Prisoner: Artemis, cursed to fall down the shaft over and over forever and ever.

7 - The Helix Fortress

Form: A curling, ribbed tunnel, twining deeper and deeper. Prisoner: Nautilus, the Murderer-Mariner.

8 - The Bleakling Sea

Form: A vast calcite cavern, dominated by a huge and eternally still under-sea. Prisoner: Typhon, father of Serpents. [Kerberos' loyalty extends even deeper than family it seems.]

9 - The Darkest Prison

Form: Only a black and lightless hole in the world. Prisoner: the Treacherous Queen of Hadestown. [Even the patience of the Lord of the Dead is not infinite.]

On each level, a few scant Obols can be covered, enough for your party I'm sure. Each time they return, they must venture deeper.

The Descent

Once you have paid your price and covered your eyes with the currency of the dead, you can begin your journey down into the darkness. Follow the tunnel for 3 days, eat nothing, drink nothing, ignore the scratches at your belly, they are only your body unsure about where it is. Grope through the shadows until finally you emerge in the great cavern beneath. Step onto the boat, pay as little attention to the boatman as you can, and wait for the journey to be over. Look up, step up onto the dock, and gaze upon Hadestown.

Hadestown

It is built upon a great sphere of stone, supposedly a mile in diameter, though only a thousand feet or so poke above the water, a cold dome upon which a mad jigsaw, mish-mash, building-block city constructed upon the dome.
Soft candle-light illuminates parts of the town gently, like a soft luminous mist. The buildings grow both in luxury and repair as you rise up the dome. A cancerous mass of ruined building clings ungratefully to the edge of the dome, partially eaten by the deep black sea. It is all topped with a palace, measured well with spleandour and melancholy.

This is Hadestown.

There are few views to the sky in the streets of Hadestown.
They have forgotten the Stars.

The streets are claustrophobic and layered like string, few places are open to the sky, save the forums where the diviners search endlessly and desperately for stars. Fires provide a soft light, though it is muted by the Obol-Eyes you must wear.

The water laps softly against the edges of the island, and the few edges that aren't built up are blistered with fisherman dangling fruitless lines into the black waters.

The Town is split into three districts, built one atop the others, dependant on their altitude. Some try to bring themselves into higher districts by building their houses taller and taller to breach into more prestigious heights and construct bridges to connect them to their new neighbours. Rarely are these towers not torn down.

The Three Districts are Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium.

Tartarus

The lowest of the Districts and the closest to the water. Here are the dead who arrived with their two Obols and little else. Sometimes inhuman things uncoil from the waters are pluck them from the wharfs and streets and pull them soundlessly under the surface. No-one cares, not even Tartarans. 

The streets are slow and dark, they reek of damp and dust. They say the cobbles were cut from the bones of titans. 

Very little of interest happens in Tartarus, which is exactly why the few illicit activities that do happen in Hadestown happen here. There are a few gangs of itinerant souls once led by five particularly sinister Souls, who now languish in the Phlegethon.

The other point of note in Tartarus is Cocytus, the purgatory slum.

Phlegethon

Of the four great houses of Hadestown, Phlegethon is the most dreaded by its people. Consisting of a wide and flat main body, much of its structure lies below the surface of the dome (more so than most buildings in Hadestown. These under-levels eventually constrict and separate into 5 anti-spires, delving deeper and deeper before terminating in the 5 prisons of the Conspirators, who led the people of Tartarus against the Lord of the Dead in the Traitor Queen's name. They are suspended by the neck in vats of boiling, burning blood. 

Their names have been forgotten, but this much is remembered:

The Prisoners

One had an eye that could see the past, and one that could see the future. [They have been plucked out and are kept pointed back at themselves, all they can see is the eternal suffering they will experience, past and future.]

One had a voice whose commands had to be obeyed. [They are gagged, but in truth, any command given must be given, no matter how it is relayed. This face has been hidden well.] 

One had hands that could not be resisted or restrained. [This one stumped the Judges of Hadestown for some time, until they created a pool whose edges could not be gripped and threw them in, so that they could never pull themselves free of the pool.]

One had feet who could carry them quicker than the wind. [They were hung by the hands in a wide pool whose edges could not be reached from the centre, but they needn't have worried. The power lies in their sandals, which are hidden in their old home on the waterfront.]

And one had much knowledge of the three Great Arts. [It is said that they have been left in their pool to suffer; but the Judges of Hadestown cut a deal with them. They can live secretly in peace in Elysium with the Judges if they copy all their knowledge into three great tomes. They accepted without hesitation.]

The Jailor of the Phlegethon is a fractal being forged from many, many overlapping souls of great commanders and expert archers, forced into one multi-faceted thing. It stalks through the hallways, thundering steps echoing from its single pair of feet, many ears listening through its single set. When intruders are discovered (which only happens rarely) many arms draw back many bowstrings, though only one arrow is loosed.

But with that many experts aiming and firing it, it never misses.
And with as many minds formulating and concocting strategies, it is all but impossible to outsmart it to.

It can out act you in almost every way, but there is only one of it.

And it still dies like a man does.

Cocytus

A festering scab of hovels and fire-pits clinging desperately onto the dome, here lurk the few that Charon didn't take across the waters. Once it was a great house of the dome, but it slid, slowly and achingly into the water, and its ancient hallways still make up the foundation of this water-logged despond. It is partially submerged into the black sea, like its inhabitants, for they are not permitted to walk upon the dome. They did not pay their price.

Everything is wet, and cold, and miserable. No-one wanted to be here, many did not deserve to, but they had no obols. If you could give them a pair, they could pay the ferryman and step upon the dry ground again.

But who of any actual worth would end up here?

In fact, a few important people do end up in Cocytus for various reasons, especially adventurers and warriors. It takes a good deal of effort to find any of them. Shades in Hadestown generally keep to themselves, or their social circles if they ever form them. They also look a lot alike, especially when you're wearing your obols, but they really don't like it being brought up.

In particular, there are three places in Cocytus that shades tend to congregate; the Dive, the Crush, and the Vice.

The Dive is about as miserable a bar as you could ever find. Even more dissolute that normal spirits stretch themselves thin beyond thin, and no-one is even drunk, just depressed and  pretending. Its quite obnoxious. It is run by an especially spiteful shade by the name of Ixion. He can tell you the names and sins of each of his patrons, and has a book of grudges that any particular patron has built up against him.

The Crush is what passes for a market here. Shades with nets hook and snatch up the scraps that tumble off the dome and peddle them, shouting to swap and barter for other things, like tickets to be spent in the Dive or the Vice. No-one has anything of worth, they just trade shit round and round.

The Vice is as close to a brothel as incorporeal, miserable beings can manage, mashing ghosts and writhing spectres. They are all deluded, and its the only thing that stops many of them fading away completely, such is their desperation. 

You could also descend under the water into the ruins of the old house, where it is said that many treasures still lie. You don't need to ask about much to hear many more tales of the dangers that lurk in the black sea.

Asphodel

The largest and most mediocre district of Hadestown. Grey and cold, but not so much so as Tartarus of course. The streets are not quite ruined, but they are certainly close to it. Fabrics even survive here a time, and craftsman make objects that do not succumb to the weight of years after a matter of hours. Shades wander the streets, make small talk, and even eat together. Life is somewhat normal here. Somewhat.

Here are the great houses of Lethe, and Acheron. 

Lethe

This is the house of forgetting, a bar of some notoriety in Hadestown. Here, many, many souls come to be even more dissolute than normal, sometimes to the point of fading away entirely. Its like the Dive, but classier, and set in the dusty shell, refurbished many times over the millenia, of an old and noble house. Ancient Frescoes peel away from the wall as drinks cups are manufactured from ancient jars and flower pots.

Occasionally, balls are hosted by the proprietor, Mighty Lord Eschataloc, who claims to be the best friend you will ever meet, insist on becoming the first person you meet, and is far too comfortable grabbing strangers by the shoulder as her pushes dead drinks on them. He desires to be everyone's friend and have as many links to the world as he can, so that he can delay his fading away. All his friendships are shallow and artificial, and he can't for the death of him figure out why.

Acheron

The fighting pits of Acheron are some of the best entertainment in Hadestown, if simply for the reason that here the shades which frequent it can genuinely be said to be having a good time.

There are 7 pits in all; three are for shade versus shade bouts, three for shade versus beast bouts, and one basically always empty pit. The beasts are generally abducted from the dungeon above, and the living can (sometimes) be paid handsomely for catches that will put on a good show in the pits.

The pay is in relics of older ages, so value is not always consistent, let alone guaranteed.

The final pit is almost always empty because your opponent in the final pit is the owner of the Acheron, Axis. Axis is bad news.

He stands about 12 feet tall, and is wreathed in terrible flames, and crowned with many horns, and has many arms ringed about him, at least, when he doesn't want to be civil about things. His head is also a skull most of the time. Axis organises the fights, and occasionally asks favours of those who do particularly well. Very few are not friendly with Axis (not to his face at least) and his connections make Mighty Lord Eschataloc of House Lethe quite, quite jealous. 

Elysium

As good as it gets in Hadestown. The buildings are actually cared for (often by souls from Tartarus who are bullied into doing it), and the streets are clear of rubble, even the back streets. The tea houses have comforting candle glows, and here, you might almost forget you're dead.

Almost.

In Elysium is the last of the great houses, Styx.

Styx

The final great house, it is something of a temple, something of a gathering place. One thing about it in particular stands out, while within its walls, no harm can befall you, of any kind. Knives will not cut, fires will not burn you, and even hurtful remarks gutter and die in the throat of those that would say them (if the saying would actually cause any offence to any that would hear it). It is a neutral meeting place for the dead and those that would visit them.
It is all presided over by The Dour Dowager, a woman of some startling age, beauty (considering her advancement at least) and cunning. She has little stake in the schemes and politics of her fellow dead, but she does so enjoy knowing about all about it, and is more than happy to trade secrets with those who offer. It is also she that controls the schedule of who can make use of each of the Styx's private rooms, the price often being a piece of juicy, fresh gossip.

The Lord's Palace

There are no records of it, but the Lord of the Dead was overthrown, and his corpse thrown into the black sea. In his place, 3 Judges sit in counsel of Hadestown, and continue the charade of the Lord's rule. His throne sits empty. This is very much secret.

The Three Judges

Mila - A general in life, she is stern, tactical, and imperious. This is also all a facade to ensure that none try to get too close to her. She is haunted by her old comrades.

Rhadaman - A king in life of a small but prosperous realm, brought to ruin in a single night because of a single mistake. Deeply disturbed by his past failings.

Aedriad - A mere beggar in life, long suffering and deeply empathetic, and yet also capable of startling acts of pragmatism in the name of Hadestown.

Together the three run the settlement fairly, if tersely and occasionally brutally. They are not above throwing shades into the lake and not looking back. They would do anything to continue the town's legacy, and their own standing.

Inconvenient Locations

Sometimes, you just really need to put something out of the way, like really out of the way, where reaching it takes some sort of actual investment of the party's resources beyond just time. Some of these are actually quite hard to reach (like the past) so be a bit careful, but otherwise, go wild!

Ruin Worms

As hostile as the Underdark is, the will to survive and thrive in the sentient peoples of the world is strong, and somehow settlements, towns, even cities have been built in the unwelcoming depths of the earth. That being said, sometimes trade caravans from the surface, winding through the lightless tunnels and caverns, will arrive at their destination to find only shattered stone, fallen towers, and pulverised buildings. This, though they don’t know it, is the work of Ruin Worms.

Their skin is rough like stone, segmented into boulders and shards of sharp, rocken plates. They are huge, like the shadows of Cathedrals. Their maws are filled with thick, iron-tough arms like the legs of massive insects, ringed all around in a unbroken circle of crushing and smothering. They can burrow through the earth, but only slowly, dragging their mighty bulks through the stone and heart-rock. Despite the fearsome appearance of their mouths, Ruin Worms aren’t very effective against foes such as people and beasts. They can bring their weight crashing down upon aggressors, but they are also slow, and are left vulnerable after doing so. They could swallow prey, where their powerful (if inflexible) mouths can pulverise what is inside down to powder, like the rock they chew their way through. But even that is fraught with peril for a Ruin Worm. Even a modestly lithe opponent might slip through their teeth-arms relatively unscathed, and even if they are unarmed, a Ruin Worm’s digestive tracts aren’t equipped to handle solid food. A blockage such as that might cause severe problems for a Ruin Worm that isn’t able to expel it quickly enough (though it should also be noted that if it is deadly to the Ruin Worm it is also most certainly deadly to whatever caused the blockage as well).

The Ruin Worm’s prefered method of hunting, if you can call it that, requires the demolition of cities. Slowly as they force and strain their way through the earth, they riddle the substructures of a city with a web of tunnels, backfilled with a milky-grey, sandstone-like excretion of the worm’s, formed from the detritus of the tunneling. This excretion is strong enough to support the tunnels for a time, but will slowly erode, but usually slowly enough for the Worm to compromise the entire foundation of a city, nearly silently and invisibly. When the time finally comes, the worm releases a jet of enzymes from its rear, which starts a cataclysmic chain reaction, destroying the Excretion, and causing the sudden and total collapse of the city above.

The oozing and pulverised sludge of the cities inhabitants can feed a Ruin Worm for the months and even years it requires to find and collapse a new city, the fleshy slurry sitting and fermenting in the worm’s slow, but exceptionally efficient digestive tracts. Thus those that might somehow survive being swallowed by a ruin worm must not only contend with escaping the Ruin Worm before it and thus they both, die, it must also do its best not to be overcome by the rotten and liquefied remains of the city’s old inhabitants.

The only reason Ruin Worms have even been identified at all, let alone been identified as being the doom of cities beneath the world, is that for months after a city’s collapse, a Ruin Worm will sift through the rubble of the cataclysm, filtering out the rubble and retaining whatever flattened and crushed organic matter might remain. Sometimes they will even hibernate or sleep within the rubble of civilisation, resembling just another pile of ruin and rubble. One such worm was discovered slurping up the pounded remains of a previous set of intruders who had apparently not realised the danger posed by a piled up coil of stone.

If knowledge of the existence of Ruin Worms is obscure, even more so is knowledge of their origins. Some speculate they were created magically, specially transmuted as weapons of sabotage and terror. Some tell the tale of a deep-dwelling, primal beast-god, enraged by the predation of man upon its hunting grounds, and its revenge wrought in the shape of earthen serpents that devoured cities. And yet others describe how they are yet myths, wild stories invented wholesale by merchants keen to keep others off their turf. Surely this last explanation is the most likely though; the processes by which creature’s such as these are far too wild and unbelievable to have actually occurred. The faint rumbling beneath your feet is probably just the seasonal quakes starting a little early.

Mycellids

Deep down in the worm-riddled heart of the earth there was a tribe of men. Fierce they were, angered by many things, though especially by being lost. And indeed, lost they inevitably became, and their anger was stoked by frustration, and they set about butchering whatever they found. Men were reduced to meat, worms withered to rubbery husks, and the tunnels ran with fluids. But the men were not exempt from harm themselves. Soon they too were ran about with cuts and bruises, and blood loss and fevers were beginning to set it. Sepsis was not a name they knew, but it wouldn’t have helped if they had.

They were slowly dying, bleeding and rotting from within. There was nothing they could do, not for all their steel and rage. But a voice came to them, which had settled in their wounds, took root in their flesh. “Let me in,” it whispered into their nerves, “Let me glut upon you, fill you up, and never will you hurt again.”

Now, they too are among the servants of the Fecundity. Their skin is green and pitted with roots. Their bellies are grey, sagging and swaying. Their mouths are meshes of fungal flesh, and their backs are crested in mushroom crowns. They run hunched over, nails scratching on the cold stone, and their eyes are glazed over with fibres and grain. They have forgotten their tools and weapons and clothes, and even had they not, it would have corroded long ago.

In battle, for they are feral creatures now, they strike from ambush, invisible amongst the fronds and stalks of the underworlds Fungus-Jungles. They sweep and slash with rotten nails, bite without teeth, though the pressure is enough to break bones and mash flesh, and grab and wrestle and grapple. It is once they are wounded however that the real damage is wrought. The wounds the Mycellids inflict are not themselve particularly deadly, but they do open up flesh and bare open bloody gashes, and it is through them that the new spores spread.

Once a Mycellid has been wounded, it is scarcely to its notice. They are too hazed with rage and drunk on pestilence to notice the wounds, and besides, the Fecundity is upholding its bargain, and it knits together separated flesh with sclerotic webs and binds broken bones with stalk-like splints. The more alarming part however, is the sudden burst of spores, like a thin greyish-green mist. The spores intoxicate and embolden the Mycellids, and sicken and wither those unblessed by the Fecundity. The most usual symptoms are weakness, nausea, dizziness, loss of balance, fainting, vomiting, and occasionally even cardiac arrest. Even those who can fend off the insidious nature of the spores will find their eyes cloying with grime, and their lungs thick with muck. Indeed, even those who emerge victorious from battle with the mushroom men will find the hardest trials yet ahead of them, as the sickness spreads throughout body and mind, and they are pursued by the fungus-boys they thought dead but were sewn back together by their saviour, and all the while the words of the Fecundity whisper promises of salvation…

The final tragedy of the Mycellids is that their saviour is also now their prison. The more wounds they sustain, and the more they are healed, the more the spores spread their mycelium throughout their flesh, and the more their thoughts become replete with fungus. They are forced to rely on their mushroom saviour, and the more they rely, the more they depend on it. In the end, the entire being is lost to the spores, and all that is left is the Fecundity.

There are some cures to the sickness the spores spread, but they involve willful ingestion of potent venoms to burn and purge the victim’s system free of spores. Magic may halt the disease’s progress for a time, but only mighty magic will destroy the spores as well. If a creature so infected should die without submitting to the Fecundity, and spores are allowed to remain in the corpse, then the resulting abomination will be utterly bound to the Fecundity’s will. It may appear human for a time, and even act it, though in a basic and clumsy manner, but eventually the spores within will bloom in a vibrant and deadly canopy of musk and fungus flesh, a raging beast which ignores mere wounds and weapons. Such a beast can eventually be destroyed, with the help of unconventional weapons and magic, but it must be hacked to uttermost pieces, and even then the damage is already done, and the spores of the Fecundity spread far and wide on the wind. And heaven’s all help you if you burn a corpse ripe with spores; they will not burn, and will be carried up on the wind.

The Fecundity itself is secretive in the extreme, and no records from the surface will know its name or purpose. In person, it fills a mighty cavern with itself, spread and grown over everything, a forest of great stalks and fronds of fibrous flesh, and a single beating heart-stalk at its centre. It may once have had a single home, but now all Mycellids are linked to its mycelium mind, and even if the central stalk of the Fecundity were to be somehow utterly obliterated, then if even a single Mycellid were to survive and escape, nursed and nurtured with the full attention of the Fecundity, then it could again, with time and nutrients, be restored. Its ultimate purpose is nothing higher or grander or more profound than any other fungus, it merely will grow and thread itself amongst the whole world. Its survival strategy is merely better than most.