A Player's Guide to Ptolus

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A city of mysteries, secrets, and dark histories, Ptolus lies forever in the shadow of a towering stone spire reaching impossibly high into the sky, itself an enigma and a reminder of evil long past. In Ptolus, the supernatural is expected and treachery lies around every corner—or is it that the supernatural lies around every corner and eachery is expected? Either way, the city of Ptolus abounds with danger, magic, intrigue, and above all, adventure.

This guide is designed to introduce you as a player to the fundamentals of Ptolus, so that you can create and run a character with plenty of knowledge about the world. The city is rich enough in detail that it’s difficult to absorb it all at once, so keep this information handy as a reference while you play in the Ptolus Campaign — and be prepared to discover that the information you learn in these pages is only the very briefest overview.

Welcome to the City

You are a native of a port city called Ptolus, or you have recently arrived there. Native or not, you know a few things about this city—it is not without a reputation, to say the least. To call Ptolus a dynamic place with a strange and varied identity is to understate the situation greatly. Only now are explorers truly discovering how ancient the city really is and unearthing details of its varied history. Ptolus is where that strange breed that calls itself “adventurers” congregates. It’s a place where people are as concerned with what lies below the ground as they are with what’s above. This is like no place else in the world.

Ptolus lies in the world of Praemal within the bounds of a very old Empire unsure of whether or not it has toppled. Three different emperors claim the throne, and portions of the once great realm cleave off like icy shards from a melting glacier. This decaying society looks upon previous centuries and sees grander, more civilized, and certainly better days. Progress seems on the decline—skills and lore that people possessed just a few hundred years ago are lost now.

But this is not a time to lose hope altogether. This civilization, older than our own real-world cultures, is more sophisticated than our own in some ways, but less so in others. A myriad of races and peoples have come and gone, creating an intricate (and sometimes confusing) amalgam. Good struggles against evil, and law against chaos. But the shadows only threaten the light — they do not yet consume it.

Not so long ago, the first men and women who would one day be called “delvers” returned from exploring the catacombs below the city of Ptolus laden with gold and magical treasures. Today, hundreds of new would-be delvers pour into the city each month, hoping to strike it rich like others before them. Most never crawl up from the realms below, but adventurers keep arriving with dreams of gold and fame. Those who do emerge back into the light bring with them tales of surprisingly vast reaches of natural caverns and ancient hewn passages, perhaps dating back to the dark days when this area lay in the thrall of the terrible Skull-King, Ghul, and the region was pocked with winding warrens and subterranean chambers created by his dark armies. They also tell of the horrors that dwell outside the life-giving reaches of the sun: unknown monsters and devious demon-minded things with a cunning unknown to human-, elf-, or dwarfkind. In the city, entire industries have evolved quickly to service the needs of these adventurers. In the shadow of an unnaturally tall, ancient spire with a very dark past, a whole new form of economics, politics, and social structure struggles to be born.

Creatures and individuals (good, evil, and otherwise) that normally remain in the shadows are drawn to this large gathering of adventurers and magic. The needs of the delvers prompt renewed devotion to magic, science, and religion. As the Empire of Tarsis dies, Ptolus—for years a backwater town on the edge of civilization—is quickly becoming the center of something much larger than itself. Omens and prophecies of children born with strange birthmarks surface in the city with increasing frequency. No one yet knows exactly what, but something is happening in Ptolus. Something new stirs in the city… and that something is very, very old.

Campaign Feel

Ptolus is an urban campaign setting. However, it is also one that deals with dungeon delving and subterranean exploration. In your own Ptolus Campaign, you can probably expect about a fifty-fifty split between dungeon adventures and urban adventures. The latter involve a surprising array of organizations and of individuals that live in this less-than-typical fantasy city.

As a setting, Ptolus should prove a somewhat realistic interpretation of a place in which dungeon explorers really do plumb the depths of a gigantic underground labyrinth filled with treasure, monsters and traps. As much as possible, many standard tropes of fantasy adventures, including “dungeons,” are presented in a fashion that makes sense.

While late medieval culture provides one building block of the setting, it’s not the focus that you might think it to be. The Core Rules are that focus. So, while Ptolus is based strongly in historical reality, many notions from real-world history that often hold true in other campaigns (most adults don’t believe in monsters, everyone’s bewildered by magic, you never see lizard men walking down the street) are not present here. Instead, Ptolus is a campaign where the Core Rules and all that they imply hold sway. That means “monsters” are common. Wizards are everywhere. Lots of people walk around in plate armor. Humans strolling down the street rub shoulders with elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-orcs, and even stranger beings.

In a way, this campaign is “the d20 System rules with the volume turned all the way up.” Creating this city did not involve building a fantasy world first, then adapting the rules to make it work. Just the opposite, really. As a setting, Ptolus has been under the influence of the Core Rules for a long, long time. The things that make d20 fantasy unique—the prevalence of magic (including the specific spells we all know), the ever-increasing power of individuals, and the creatures of the MM—have shaped the reality of Ptolus. And because I used this setting as a playtest backdrop as I worked on the design of the Third Edition Core Rules, Ptolus influenced the d20 System rules as well. This is a setting steeped in game history and significance.

That doesn’t mean Ptolus contains nothing new, however. As the city developed, new material grew out of the process. The firearms, creatures, spells, races, and foreboding atmosphere all came very naturally.

The Ptolus Campaign is a fantasy that some would label “dark,” although it’s as much about rising up out of the darkness as living within it. It is clearly an urban fantasy, for the campaign takes place entirely within or beneath the city of Ptolus—a place with a vast history of dark secrets waiting to be discovered.

A cidade de Ptolus

Ptolus is a major city of about seventy-five thousand people. It is located in the land of Palastan near a large bay on the southern end of the Whitewind Sea. The place was established to serve as the port for an important fortress built at the time of the Empire’s foundation, a citadel called Dalenguard. More significantly, however, it lies in the shadow of an impossibly tall (almost three thousand feet) and thin pinnacle of rock known simply as the Spire. The Spire and its surroundings seethe with mysterious legends and rumors. These tales tell of ancient battles waged and cities erected on the site, of demons and dark lords, of forgotten kings and mighty wizards. Many such stories might be at least somewhat true, for recent developments have revealed vast complexes beneath the city.

Of late, Ptolus has become a city of adventurers. Treasure-seekers flock there to explore and plunder the labyrinthine structures beneath the streets, which they call the “Dungeon.” If the stories are correct, these catacombs include:

  • The sewers of the city.
  • Vast stretches of subterranean passages and chambers created by Ghul and his minions (see Timeline).
  • The remains of an even older city.
  • An abandoned underground dwarven settlement called Dwarvenhearth.
  • And levels that plunge incredibly deep below the present urban area.

Ptolus lies in a cool, rainy coastal region with harsh winters. It serves as an important port on the Bay of Ptolus off the Whitewind Sea and belongs to the Empire of Tarsis, although a growing faction in the city feels that Ptolus should declare itself independent.

Rulers

The city is ostensibly ruled by a council, at whose head is the Commissar, a representative of the Empire of Tarsis. The other main council members are Kirian Ylestos, the Prince of the Church, and the Mother Superior of the Sisterhood of Silence (see below). Other City Council members (with less influence) include guildmasters, the heads of the noble houses, and a few wealthy merchants. People of the town often refer to this body as the “Council of Coin,” because money is a powerful and influential force among its members.

Guildmaster Delver Sorum Dandubal, also a council member, is quickly becoming another force to reckon with—almost a fourth main member — but the three forces controlling the council dislike and oppose him.

Truth be told, the real ruler of the city is the Commissar, Igor Urnst. The City Watch operates under his direct command from Dalenguard, a historic fortress that still stands in Oldtown. Urnst’s group of advisors in charge of the city’s defense and protection is called the Twelve Commanders. These include Lord Dorant Khatru of House Khatru, Aoska (a half-celestial), and other local luminaries.

The Authorities and the Law

To police the streets, the Commissar of the city commands a force of more than eight hundred troops and City Watch guards, including a few dozen elite individuals (captains, mages, clerics, etc.). While the constables in many of the Empire’s cities are considered glorified street-sweepers with little competence or desire to actually enforce the law, this is not true of the experienced and well equipped guards of Ptolus, particularly those known as the Commissar’s Men.

Nevertheless, this well-trained and well-paid force has its hands full maintaining order in the city. Helping to enforce the law is a special order of monks called the Sisterhood of Silence. These nonspeaking female monks patrol the streets and apprehend criminals, even though they are not—strictly-speaking—sanctioned to do so officially. A male eunuch always accompanies a small unit of the Sisters of Silence to speak on their behalf.

However, neither the city guard nor the Sisterhood of Silence is willing to go down into the Dungeon and fight monsters. Nor are they likely to help against well-known and influential noble families such as House Vladaam or House Sadar, or powerful groups like the Church of Lothian or the Shuul. Of course, those groups would never break any laws, so there’s surely nothing to worry about. . . .

The Forces of Light

Aside from the law-enforcing authorities, both official and self-appointed, Ptolus benefits from the presence of various forces of munificence. Orders of knighthood like the Keepers of the Veil, Order of the Dawn, and Knights of the Pale uphold such concepts as benevolence and nobility. There are even angelic beings in Ptolus—more than anyplace else in the world—from aasimars to half-celestials to true angels. Many of these beings congregate in a place called the Pale Tower and call themselves the Malkuth. Paladins and clerics of good deities like Lothian, Gaen, and Navashtrom help Ptolus stand against the darkness as well. And in Ptolus, the dark is deep.

The Dark Side

Like every city, Ptolus has a dark side. Here, criminal lords command veritable armies of rogues and assassins, and war amongst each other as well as against the law. These criminals deal in extortion, smuggling, gambling, usury, and prostitution. Chief among these criminals are Menon Balacazar, leader of the oldest criminal syndicate in the city, and the newcomer Kevris Killraven. They are bitter enemies. Depraved assassins called the Vai hunt victims for money and to fulfill their own bloodlust.

But worse things lurk in Ptolus than simply criminals. Dwelling among the crypts of the city’s graveyard are the death-loving Forsaken, so called because the rest of society finds them so abhorrent. Worse still, chaos cultists—in league with terrible inhuman things—plot the city’s downfall and, in fact, the annihilation of the entire world to sate their lust for destruction. Lastly, and strangest of all, Ptolus is home to actual demons from the lower realms: Some are merely demon-blooded tieflings, but others are full-blooded fiends that call themselves the Fallen. These beings dwell alongside the Forsaken in a place called the Dark Reliquary.

The people of Ptolus

Ptolus is primarily a trade city, serving not only as a major port but also as a link between the northwest and the central portions of the Empire of Tarsis. About two-thirds of the population is human, with the remaining third being (from most populous to least): Shoal elves, Stonelost dwarves, halflings, litorians, Grailwarden dwarves, gnomes, half-elves, centaurs (aram), orcs and half-orcs, and others—lizardfolk (assari), ogres, and far stranger things.

Districts of the City

Ptolus lies between the Spire and the sea. The highest portion of the city, the Nobles’ Quarter, is built on the base of the Spire. From there, the level of the city drops down a sharp cliff to Oldtown, and then down again into Midtown. The final cliffs at the edge of Ptolus drop into the bay, with the only area of dry land at the bottom of those cliffs occupied by the city’s docks. Wellworn paths connect the various elevations and help make Ptolus very defensible (although the city has never been attacked).

The King’s River flows through the city, spilling into an eroded chasm in the northwest corner and flowing down to the Bay of Ptolus near the docks. The bottom of the chasm, called the King’s River Gorge, is eighty feet below the level of the ground on the north side, but more than two hundred feet below on the south side. The south side still holds the old city walls and fortifications. A bridge built atop two massive pillars, themselves erected atop natural rock columns, stretches across the King’s River Gorge at a steep angle, leading into the area of the city known as Oldtown. Another bridge stretches across the chasm to join Oldtown with the Rivergate District. Although Oldtown is higher, the difference in elevation between these two districts is not steep, so the slope of this bridge seems far less noticeable than that of the other.

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