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00:45, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Sharn.

Posted by DM PaulFor group 0
DM Paul
GM, 8 posts
Sat 10 Apr 2021
at 23:18
  • msg #1

Sharn

The core conceit of this game is:
Sharn is a points-of-light setting, all by itself.

Official sources list Sharn has having a population of about 200,000. Unofficial sources give different numbers, but we're going to stick with this.

It's not easy to figure out the intended size of the city, but it can be extrapolated from the cost to take a skycoach between the two most distant districts: 6 miles.

Sharn's towers are thousands of feet high, and very big around. I'll spare us all the math.

The point is that Sharn has quite a low population for how much living space it represents. On average, it's a ghost town.

But that's on average, and the books also say that some areas are crowded. So what gives?

The answer, for the purposes of this game, is that Sharn is mostly empty at any given time, but that there are also "points of light" that are filled with people. Some areas are almost constantly alight and abuzz (the lightning rail station, for instance, and the red light districts), and there are districts, towers and parts of towers that are like cities, towns or villages unto themselves.

In-between these areas are vast regions that are not official inhabited. They are the equivalent of wilderness, inhabited by people, creatures and monsters that find cracks and crevices to squat in, or who take over abandoned spaces. There are also spaces that have been lost or forgotten, perhaps intentionally.

Sharn is, in essence, a smaller points-of-light setting, inside the larger points-of-light setting of Eberron.
DM Paul
GM, 9 posts
Sat 10 Apr 2021
at 23:32
  • msg #2

Sharn

What are the implications?

Partly, they're the same as for the overall points-of-light approach: the world is mostly dangerous and frightening, with only a few truly secure areas, and even those sometimes aren't there when you come back to them later. It's not as though scary, exciting things can't plausibly happen even in a place as crowded as New York, but providing more empty space provides more opportunity for more types of situations (and not incidentally makes it easier to run encounters and safer for PCs to blow things up with impunity).

The main takeaway should be that once one leaves a bright, populated part of the city, it's easy to wind up in places where there is no one else to be seen besides those one is with. Most travels, even by vehicle are lonesome affairs.

Well, ideally. There's plenty of danger, because criminal and otherwise dangerous elements are able to thrive in the areas between the points of light. As with a forest road between towns, bandits can set upon someone and then be gone before anyone else, let alone the authorities, can arrive.

Even if there are others nearby, the labyrinthine nature of the city make it so that they might easily be out of sight, or miles of corridor and staircase away. If you see someone being mugged on a bridge far below you, the mugger could be long gone by the time you arrive to help.

The various districts of Sharn are, by and large, the equivalent of different villages and towns in the larger world. On average, each of the wards would have about 11,000 inhabitants, the amount of a "town" as described in the DMG. Obviously some have more and some have fewer. As there's no way to mine or farm or lumber, the districts are reliant on outside resources, but many people are born and die in the same district.
DM Paul
GM, 10 posts
Sat 10 Apr 2021
at 23:33
  • msg #3

Sharn

Sharn has close interplanar ties to Syrania, the Azure Sky, a world of clouds and angels. Don't kid yourself: Syrania is not heaven; it's dangerous as all get-out. But the practical upshot of this cosmic conjunction, is that Sharn exists in a "manifestation zone" of Syrania, and benefits from the plane's disregard for an overall concept of gravity.

So, in Sharn, flight and similar effects are relatively easy to come by. Most notable are the Lyrandar skycoaches, which are unique to Sharn and don't function outside its Syranian manifestation zone. There is also the floating district of Skyway, a playground for the very rich. And of course, Sharn's architecture would not be possible without the reduced structural stresses offered by the Azure Sky.

The manifestation zone also serves to make a city composed of nothing but towers and bridges less lethal than it might otherwise be. People and objects who fall or fly through open air do not do so in quite the expected way. In particular, falling bodies have a surprisingly low terminal velocity, such that a fall of 100 feet is not much more dangerous than a fall from 20 feet. On top of this, it's not difficult for a conscious person, with their wits about them, to direct their fall toward a bridge or something softer. Often the trick is getting back to where one started.

For game purposes, this means that pushing someone off a ledge is not a reliable way to kill them, though it might be a reliable way to take them out of the action.

It also means that daring jumps across open air (as opposed to jumps that are directly over a solid surface) are less risky than they might otherwise be.
DM Paul
GM, 205 posts
Fri 17 Dec 2021
at 05:38
  • msg #4

Sharn

Sharn is built on the eastern cliffs of the valley formed by the Dagger River. It's right near the "Hilt" where two small waterways join the Dagger, right before it pours into the ocean. Ships ply the river, but also venture out into and come in over the sea.

The towers in the district of Cliffside have their foundations at the level of the water. Goods are loaded into and unloaded from ships that dock at Cliffside, partly by brute labor and partly by magical or mechanical means, which might raise a crate high up to a warehouse level in a tower.

Cliffside can be reached on foot via tunnels or by a few bridges that reach from towers in Dura to towers in Cliffside.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:00, Fri 17 Dec 2021.
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