Sewers of Waterdeep & Rat Hills

Post by **McDeath** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 1:12 pm

I've threw some posts out to Dragonsfoot and the Candlekeep forum about some detailed maps of these areas hoping for complete maps in the 10'scale similar to undermountain. Alas there are none. I'm contemplating on working on this for a project but it seems kinda large. I'm wondering how many adventures/resources out there have some sample areas of the sewers and the rat hills. Perhaps I should glean some ideas from other sewers.

I posted this topic on the old forums, but I thought I'd just make another here. Google doesn't really help a whole lot besides eye of the beholder (an extremely limited sample of a dinky section of the sewers). I was just hoping others had sewer ideas.

Post by **LeSong** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 7:21 am

I believe the module on Raven's Bluff contained a decent amount of sewer activity. I think I have it laying around and will look it up for you this week.

On a side note, what information specifically are you looking for? I'm sure most of us have miles of tunnels and/or sewers to draw

from.

Post by **McDeath** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 10:28 am

I'll take anything I can get. This is actually going to tie into a larger project I'm thinking of working on here and there. My basic scope is a Dark Land Version of Karameikos. Essentially, I'm combining Waterdeep, Specularum, Phlan, Bardstales - Skara Brae, and the Ruined City In Wizard's Crown into one massive metropolis. Many main people are flat out of the picture and the Waterdeep section will be nothing like in City of Splendors.

This metropolis is still in the area where Specularum sits, except the river delta is slightly changed. The city is perched on massive cliffs overlooking the ocean and the river bisects right through it. Undermountain is located beneath of course and there are an extensive series of tie-in caves, sewers, and independant dungeons.

Much of the town is in ruins save a small relatively corrupt section of civilization. Other major areas of the city are either run by overlords or the opposite version of King Stephen who is indeed in liege with his brother in the Black Eagle Barony.

I haven't decided if I want to have a winter theme though. I'm also tying in a private war between the civilized section and a neighboring warring town called Thornville (tacky name but oh well) in which the battlefield is covered with magical briars of various sorts. In all actuality the civilized section could be crushed easily but higher commanders unknown to either side keep it relatively even for their amusement.

Right now I'm just interested in working on a sewer system for the entire city. How deep it in itself will be I'm uncertain.

Post by **LeSong** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 10:55 am

In that case, you might not have ever checked out city planning guides in the library. Many moons ago that is where I conducted my research on city sewers. Using the old Roman models and Indian models, helped immensely.

The modern examples are even better, applying a little imagination. Track down Paris's system for example.

Good Luck

Post by **McDeath** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 4:52 pm

Well, I've been doing some reading and scaling the size of the sewers. I've suddenly read some parts that didn't interest me before about these areas:

City of the Dead
The Dungeon of the Crypt
Waterdeep Harbor

There's also mention of other 'Dungeons' that I'm not sure what they'd be. One thing that bites my butt is that the City of Splendors Boxed set keeps referring to the "Knight of the Living Dead" book. Well, I've been looking around and found out it is a Catacombs Soloquest book:

Catacombs Soloquest Adventures

Damn WOTC couldn't have put them all for download on their site just the gnomes one. So naturally my interest is piqued in 2 of the books (Faerie Mound & Knight of the living Dead). I'll probably have to buy them from Amazon or something. There just couldn't be a pdf of them floating around somewhere.

I'm still having trouble deciding on mapping software (hey Hal those offers of CC & DD still up?). If only that damn Core Rules would let me save as bmp, gif, jpg or something.

I did a google search on the Dungeon of the Crypt and found out it was an adventure created by Ed G. before there were official FR products (campaign notes and stuff I imagine). There is a remake of the dungeon in Dungeon 127 (3rd ed go figure). I downloaded a supplement to that that has some maps.

The City of the Dead has a vast array of portals that lead to crypts as deep as I want to make. I could have some good Undead fun with that. In the long run as I stated at the very beginning of this thread, I plan on making most of Waterdeep a battleground similar to the ruins of Phlan. Right now I'm trying to find a reference in feet for each of the entrances of sewer openings. Once I get this done I'll make a very simple sketchy map of the main sewer primary & secondary passages. The city is pretty large and I think I need to overlay the ward/districs over the various sewer sketches in the books.

Wed Feb 20, 2008 12:38 am

McDeath, if you want a copy of the CC and DD, just LMK. PM me and I can send them to you. Orcus knows, I'll never figure it out!

Post by **McDeath** » Fri May 23, 2008 10:56 pm

I started thinking about articles that were written about Waterdeep and Undermountain, so I went and took a look at the Dragondex. The following articles I printed out for my own reference but I'll list the Dragon's, author, page, and article title for other's to look at if they are interested in these areas.

Interesting Articles:
Woodlands of the Realms Dragon 125 pg14 by Ed Greenwood

Welcome to Waterdeep Dragon128 pg8 by Ed Greenwood

The Wizards Three dragon 188 pg27 by Ed Greenwood

3 Wizards Too Many dragon 196 pg83 by Ed Greenwood

Seeing the Sights in Skullport dragon 172 pg10 by Ed Greenwood & Steven E. Schend

The Game Wizards -- Understanding Undermountain - the king of all dungeons dragon 167 pg88 by Ed Greenwood

Reports From Undermountain dragon 227 pg14 by Steven E. Schend

I sing a Song by the Deep-Water Bay (There Harpers & Waterdeep) dragon 211 page29 by Steven E. Schend

Rogue's Gallery -- Gangsters of the Underdark -- dragon 228 pg52 by Keith "Pinball Strohm

Gangsters of the Underdark (Waterdeep's Most Wanted) dragon 238 pg34 by Keith Francis Strohm

I found the Gangster's of the Underdark kind of silly.

Post by **Halaster Blackcloak** » Sat May 24, 2008 1:20 pm

Oooh! I'd love to see this one!

The Game Wizards -- Understanding Undermountain - the king of all dungeons dragon 167 pg88 by Ed Greenwood

Anyone have that available in electronic format?

Post by **McDeath** » Sat May 24, 2008 9:57 pm

I have it but sending it would be difficult via dial-up. I can probably save each page as an image and send that via email. At least it would be readable. Let me see, I just printed that out yesterday..... Ah, a simple 2 page article. I'll get that sent ASAP.

Post by **Zherbus** » Sun May 25, 2008 7:33 am

I'd love to find the electronic collection of Dragon mag, period.

Post by **Mira** » Sun May 25, 2008 12:27 pm

I have the first 250 on CDs somewhere, but I don't know where they are at the moment. Having been in the process of selling our house for quite a while, a lot of stuff was boxed up. So they are probably in a box somewhere, but I couldn't say where they are. Still, there might be copies somewhere for sale, it was a 5 CD set with all of the Dragon magazines in PDF form, along with a search program that worked with them. (although the PDFs were perfectly viewable without installing that program).

Mira (Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries)

Post by **radwizard** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:59 pm

I have all the Dragons and Dungeon too. My only problem is that I'm technically inept. I know a little about FTP programs, so given a code I could probably upload anything to a given site that u wanted. E-mailing some of those files is just out of the question due to the size of the things, even by splitting them using Winsplit it takes forever.