Location: the Grail of Fangs

 At the request of George Michael and Semiurge, this is another entry in my Deltora Quest locations after the Poison Woods.

Rumors

1. The Grail is so cramped and poor that imperial guards do not patrol there (T)

2. The guildmaster of dog breeders, deep in the Grail, is on the payroll of the Dark Lord (F)

3. Leaving a shop without paying for anything has a fee in Silvertown (T)

4. Don't drink water in the Grail without boiling it! (T)

5. Neighborhood councils meet up at night and decide how to resist the Shadow (F)

6. The dog breeder's guild has taken down crime boss Dirk Gutslitter and captured the respected Keystone Staff (T)

Random Encounters in Silvertown

1. Candor the Dogcatcher. A bureaucrat with a big boxy black hat. Never actually catches the dogs himself. A spy for the resistance, but a double agent for the Shadow. Pitiful.

2. Traveling merchant. Gives bad deals, but not as extortionate as the locals. Happily trade rulers.

3. Swarm of Upscars (stats as flying wolves)

4. Roll a d8 on the Horrible Dogs table

5. Patrol of 2d4 Imperial Goons (as orcs, with special +1 blistering slingstones that lose their potency in a day)

6. Roll a d4 on the Grail encounter table.

Random Encounters in the Grail

1. Poesy the urchin. Plucky and chummy. A spy for the Shadow, selling out rebels to the imperial goons for a hot meal.

2. Flooded streets

3. Clam-gatherers wading through water, guarded by a pair of heavily armed stewards. (stats as bugbears)

4. Standing water or public fountain, infested with parasites. Drinking unboiled is a save vs infestation

5. Patrol of 3d4 bravos (as bandits with duel-madness, entering a sort of rage that only applies in one-on-one sword fights. Armed with epees and swordbreakers)

6. Roll a d10+2 on the Horrible Dogs table

Horrible Dogs

1. Coiffet. Floofy, playful, toadlike proportions.

2. Skamil Barker. Trained to repeat phrases like a parrot and set outside of shops and stalls. Shout nonsense conversations when the moon is new.

3. Brickworm Retriever. Small, fast, dark-furred. Trained as thieves.

4. Lucene Spaniel. Stout, attentive, guard dog. Eyes glow in the dark. Goes blind early in life.

5. Cadit. Long-faced terriers. Instinctively lunge for rats and errant urchin hands.

6. Pithodex Sniffer. Bloodhound whose cunning sense of smell is not foiled by its incredible B.O. 

7. Hairless Clampsome. Broad, slow, pissy. Squared frame makes them passable porters.

8. Bunjung. Quick, intelligent, and good leapers. Employed as messengers. It is a crime punished with mutilation to kill a Bunjung.

9. Bucros Hound. Luminous white. Good sense of smell. Drinks blood.

10. Soluderm. Soft, loam-like flesh with tufty saffron fur. The indigent plant garden vegetables in their backs.

11. Synego. Big and quick, with bluish mouths, tear ducts, and bellies. Loyal, but never run back to their owner when chased. Trained as assassins.

12. Marrow-Gnawer. Too big. Deeply miserable. Trained to crash through doors and tear up strangers

Hex XXXZ - Silvertown and the Grail

Silvertown, on the coast, is surrounded by depleted quarries and mines, home alike to robbers, dangerous animals, and billeting imperial goons. In the remote inland sections stand ancient forests, forbidden to all but servants of the Dark Lord. Signs on the road are contradictory and confusing.

Silvertown, in kinder days, flourished under the special status afforded to it by the goodly kings. Those who sought their fortune came to Silvertown and learned new trades, and in the councils that directed each neighborhood they learned to direct their own fate. When the Dark Lord ascended, he saw the burg as a source only of silver, masons, and trained hounds— for no canine will permit a direct servant of the shadow to train it. Silvertowners are uniquely inhospitable, and charge a fee for everything. Unfortunately, surrounding hexes are so miserable as to deplete a party traveling overland's supplies, all but forcing them to Silvertown.

When royals started taking an interest in Silvertown, not everyone was happy. Riverpads, parochial feudmen, kidnappers, and dog thieves retreated down into the Grail, the ruins of the former ground floor of the city, covered over after decades of wicked and destructive floods. Since then, levees and filling in of riverside sloughs have made the Grail barely habitable. When the Shadow fell on the land, the scoundrels were joined by rebels and refugees. As hostile as Silvertown is, the Grail is worse. It's like a dungeon to strangers such as the PCs despite the likelihood that they have the Dark Lord as a common enemy. They take on dysphemistic names, like Swindler, Heap, and Tite Barnacle

In the drier seasons, Silvertown is beset by Upscars, wolf-sized insects with dusty wings that leave discoloring slime everywhere they land. The market square is covered and well-guarded, but burghers walking home are sitting ducks. No one on the surface knows where they come from.

So, in the Grail they use "clams" for currency, tough white eggs which appear in standing water. Some clams inevitably find their way to the surface, and after a few weeks deprived of the humid air of the undercity they hatch into young Upscars. This fact is obscure to most Grailers, but the guildmaster of the dog breeders has come to understand it.

Half-sunk into the gunkiest muck is the guildhall of dog breeders. There, the wealthy guildmaster Aria Turncoot makes demands and commands and generally bullies her way into displacing the Grail where she wants it to be. Something about wading through bogwater makes men and beasts pliable, biddable, eager to do as she demands, and so the seat of power in the Grail is the worst place to be. The guildhall has stewards and guards, as well as patrolling dogs, but it also has stranger guardians. Aggressive pike swim through the halls, and mongrels too horrible to sell are kept in the yard. Among other residents, the rebel spy Frannek spends his days trying to move Turncoot against the Dark Lord. He is gruff and fierce, and rumored to have been a knight in the good old days.

Turncoot wears fine silks and gold bands, carrying begemmed cups and fancy display weapons. She carries a staff of polished cottonwood topped by the Keystone, a tree agate seen as the symbol of office for the meanest boss in the Grail. She does not know that the tree agate is one of the magic stones said by prophecy to be needed to defeat the Dark Lord. It lends clarity of mind to those who touch it, and the ability to communicate their thoughts clearly. Thus it improves their skill as a leader and general, and when held they charm and are charmed by people roughly as decent as they are. When she isn't carrying the staff, she hides in in a vault sealed by six dials surrounded by seemingly random numbers. When each dial is pointed towards the only prime number in its circle, the vault opens.

As Frannek grows more and more frustrated, he makes plans with other rebels, paying for the aid of roustabouts and brutes as they stockpile weapons. One day soon they will overthrow the imperial forces in the city. This could do much good in the short term, but if the Dark Lord isn't already on his last legs he will send a legion to destroy the town, and there will be much misery, and he shall come onto the tree agate.