Attachment 'LocationNotes.html'
DownloadPRPG3 GM Location Notes:
Cardioid Point:
Emerald’s office there has some souvenir items from PRPG2, such as the red ‘wizzard’ hat and Baleful’s horn-guard. Possibly also the ever-burning flame, if it didn’t go out when En-Bequ'avar was smited.
The three phoenixes: Phoebe, Phyllis, and Phillipia
Docktown:
Docktown is a large city with a Hong Kong sort of feel to it,[a] as the major trade intersection between Yore and Hayminnow.
The docks are pretty active at all hours with loading and unloading ships. Weather is controlled to keep the harbor safe. The city has a lot of restaurants and shopping.
New Baltimare Hotel: the PCs have rooms booked here for their use. They probably won’t need them overnight if they get on the ball about leaving quickly, but might if they decide to defer departure to Hayminnow for the next day. This hotel is an upscale one. Room service is not covered, though, so PCs who try to use it get charged and Dawn’s not covering for them. The hotel has a nice restaurant, The Lucky Coin, whose specialty dish is a kind of seaweed salad with sesame dressing.
If the players choose to travel to Hayminnow by ship, they can take a ferry (one leaves once every few hours during daylight hours, tickets are trivially priced at about the equivalent of $7 for each person) or charter a private passenger vessel to take them (departure can be arranged any time, although possibly the crew will think the party is up to something shifty if they insist on leaving under cover of darkness, and this will be more expensive, probably equivalent to $100-$200, or more if they manage to make the owner feel like they’re sneaking around).
Ferries: The Docktown and The Hayminnow
Forbidding Forest:
Near Gallup: if the party investigates the hook from Gallup, they will find, deep in the forest, a small clearing with some rocks arranged in a circle. They can discover that it’s actually a ritual magic circle (runes will light up if magically poked at).
This circle was created by Mel-Anhu, but she has since moved on and is not there.
Free Town:
Small town near the coast on the way to Nevershyed. It’s a bit run-down, but generally an alright place. There is a statue of Sootstreaks, proclaiming him to be “The stallion who made Free Town free”.
Gallup:
Many regional farmers take their produce here to sell, and buy manufactured goods in exchange. Lots of stores. Lots of vegetables.
Haven Island:
An isolationist community has been living on the island since the Dark Age. They are mostly crofters and survive on subsistence farming, which is hard labor for a low return. Their diets are supplemented heavily with grass, which grows in common pasture made up of the stonier ground unsuitable for growing better vegetables. The population during the Dark Age was low, due to poor agricultural output, but has increased as the carrying capacity has risen with the return of regular rains. During the Dark Age, they obtained metal and some other resources through small scale ship-breaking of wreck hulls exposed by the absence of water. Thus being relatively self-sufficient, they didn’t tolerate mainland Yore ponies visiting them. Since the return of the oceans cut off these sources of metal, however, the local ponies begrudgingly tolerate some traders sailing over to the island out of necessity. Harmonia has also deployed census workers to count the island’s population, but the islanders have resisted services such as vaccinations. Still, this marginally increased contact has lessened their previously violent tendencies towards outsiders; now they merely shun unwanted visitors rather than repelling them by lethal force.
Their isolationist habit originates with an effort to strictly quarantine the plague introduced by En-Netsusep (whom they refer to as Netsu the Devil) at the onset of the Catastrophe. Success at preserving themselves in this way led to a general sentiment that they had been favored by some higher power for cutting themselves off from whatever wickedness had resulted divine retribution by allowing En-Netsusep to ravage of the rest of civilization. They have remained isolationists ever since out of a fear of being re-contaminated by the potentially sinful ways of outsiders. They are especially cautious to inspect any outsider for signs of hoofrot (“Netsu’s Corruption”) before interacting with them, and have a hereditary priest class of unicorns, roughly analogous to druids, who are responsible for magically examining ponies and verifying that they do not carry the disease. They have, unsurprisingly, not detected any cases in about three centuries, but out of superstition and the entrenchment of this priest class, continue to rigorously check. It is taboo to speak to, or indeed to even be near, any unchecked outsider.
The priest class also performs divination, which is somewhat similar to the seed-reading seen in PRPG2, as well as various other prayers, pseudo-magical rituals, and genuinely magical procedures that they are specially trained to do. These have cargo cult elements. One such ritual is the “praise of the sun and moon” performed by the priest, which is actually simply a superficial light-show performed in a special, traditional sequence at dawn. These rituals are believed to earn the favor of the Two Queens, whom the islanders believe currently smile on the world, accounting for the return of the rains and generally better conditions than during the Dark Age.
The recent destruction of the Harmony has a mixed reaction on the Haven. They have always associated the Boreal Eye with great evil, since it is held by them to have appeared at the same time Netsu did. Some fear it portents the descent of a new Devil to torment the world again, while others believe it was the Two Queens having finally destroyed the source of such Devils after becoming satisfied that the wickedness they had been watching for was gone from the world. Islanders of both persuasions will urge the party not to leave (the optimists believe it’s time to mix in fresh blood now that the sinfulness has been purged from outsiders, while the pessimists believe the party will perish with the rest of the world if they leave and the only way to be saved is to stay in the safe haven).
If the party ends up here, they will have to be screened by the current priest, call the mainland using the island’s one communications link in Martingale’s Haven, wait several hours for a boat, and end up near Shaded Hollow, from which they can catch a train to Mulephis and then to the Crooked Tower.
Hayminnow (City):
A large city (though smaller than Docktown), and like Docktown also has busy docks and the collection of conveniently available restaurants, shopping, etc. The PCs can choose a hotel ranging from upscale to a sleazy dive.
Nice hotel:
The Stonepipes (expensive, the expedition probably won’t pay the whole bill for this one)
Mid-tier:
Mareiot Hayminnow (Dawn recommends this place)
Restaurants:
(Party has eaten here) The Running Eggplant, whose specialty is baked eggplant with cheese, optionally spiced with just enough poison joke to make something funny happen during the course of the meal but not to cause any lasting effects afterward.
(Party has eaten here) Zhariva’s, serving standard zebra food (Zhariva recommends the carrot and pepper stir-fry with an exciting lemon-butter and herb sauce).
Hayminnow (Island):
Governer of Hayminnow Island:
Jamala, a 1/4 pony zony. Dawn takes the party to the governer’s office to meet her. A deal has already been made to export the cans of hayminnows, but she asks the party to be very discreet in dealing with antiquities and the exploration of ancient ruins - they may be seen as artifacts of zebra cultural legacy and many zebras might be offended by outsiders hoofing through them.
General population:
About 60% phenotypical zebras, 25% zonies (many earth, some pegasus and unicorn), 15% phenotypical ponies (all types).
Hayminnow (Route to cannery):
PCs will have to trek through about 15km of mixed jungle / scrub / grassy plains to get to the eastern cove with the abandoned cannery.
Possible hazards:
Army snails (like army ants, but bigger and with shells and radula and they move slower, though still fast for snails)
Hayminnow (Old cannery ruins):
Mostly old steel and sheetrock structure housing the remains of an old canning line (actually a complex of several canning buildings, but only Canning #1 is still relevant). Largely overgrown with jungle and rarely, if ever, visited by anyone for centuries. Most of the sheetmetal and girder roof has collapsed over time, and plants and trees have begun growing through the cracked concrete floor as the jungle tries to reclaim the structure.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GzzJgjYMBLb6_5oFHwcSboCvQYZeeTfx/view
Relic cans are in the QA lab. The lab door is shut. The lab is a smaller sub-structure within the cannery plant. The roof of the lab can be reached by fliers. There is a motor atop it that opens the door, which is unpowered until the party restores power. The buttons by the door don’t work, somepony will have to hotwire it from on top of the lab roof. The controller has two sets of three contactors each, labeled R and F, which can be manually closed. Holding the R contacts closed shuts the door if open. Holding the F contacts closed opens the door if shut.
Power station outbuilding #1 has three magical thermocouple devices, mounted inside large steam pipes that descend into the ground. There are valves in a lower pit that open the steam flow to the devices. One is intact, the other two have broken or corroded open over the centuries.
To restore power, the party will need to activate the functional magical thermocouple device (made by Thermalectric Co.) by opening the steam valve to heat it. They will also need to close the breaker to Canning #1.
If any line machinery has been switched on by the party, it may be activated when power is restored. There is a 10% chance it will work correctly. There is a 90% chance it will not work correctly. If it doesn’t work, there is a 50% chance that it will be shorted and will trip the breaker, which the party will then have to close again. A shower of sparks will come from shorted machinery, hopefully tipping the party off to the problem and that they should probably deactivate that machine.
Power station #2 is totally nonfunctional. Its steam piping is broken open, and it is very hot and filled with plumes of steam making it hazardous to enter.
An old safe in the office has some ancient zebra petty cash. The safe’s anti-picking enchantments have long since faded, and it may be opened by Night Chime if he uses his hearing skills or by the various means of brute-forcing open a safe (chemical attack, cutting, etc.). The contents, if given to the zebras, will be much appreciated as culturally valuable historical relics. If kept secretly and not turned over, it might earn the party a reprimand for being opportunistic looters or thieves if discovered.
Missing teenagers / kids to be found at cannery:
Muraui (zebra filly)
Rino (earth zony colt)
Giddy Gust (pegasus zony filly)
Los Pegasus basin / La Neigha Tar Pits:
Near the (future) site of Los Pegasus, in the west of (future) Equestria. Megaflora seeking water become trapped in the tar and make easy prey. This in turn attracts predators (both ponies and otherwise - feral care bears frequent the tar pits and pose a hazard). The asphalt lakes and trapped megaflora also support insects such as petroleum flies. The petroleum bubbles with methane released by hydrocarbon-eating bacteria, making it appear to boil. Local ponies use the asphalt to weather-seal their homes and to build boats.
The Rock-Hay Mountains are to the east.
The unknown area on the rough map contains a settlement of local ponies, who are a mixed tribe of unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi. This is a fixed settlement, something unusual for the time since most ponies are nomadic and follow the motile vegetable yearly movements. Access to the tar pits allows these ponies to be permanent residents. They’re a small group with more mares than stallions, and sometimes take in or at least cross-breed with nomadic ponies moving through their lands in order to infuse fresh blood and avoid incest.
The tarpit settlement ponies are mostly pegasi and earth ponies, and just a few unicorns. Hunting party encountered will consist of three pegasi:
Breeze Glide (stallion, red coat with white mane, cloud cutie mark)
Flicker Flight (mare, white coat, brown mane, butterflies cutie mark)
Swift Dive (mare, pale blue coat, green and white striped mane, spearhead cutie mark)
The village has a wisemare named Moonglow (unicorn mare, dappled grey coat, purple mane, three stars cutie mark). Her grandfoal (Glowlight, unicorn filly, grey-blue coat, red and purple striped mane, blank flank) is her apprentice. She has some scraps of the elusive carrodactyl, a very rare and desirable type of flying megaflora, but because of its value as medicine is unwilling to trade it except for an equally valuable medicine, the flowers of fire, a bright red and orange bush that only grows high in the mountains controlled by Flämme.
Flämme is a red firewyrm. She enjoys testing those who approach with riddles. She uses their performance to evaluate the usefulness of those who enter her domain as potential pawns to do her bidding. She has a paralytic and somewhat mentally domineering gaze, and may attempt to impose a geas. Her interest in the party is in their potential use as assassins to kill the care bears she blames for stealing her clutch of eggs.
Colossal cucumbers and wooly radishes are stuck in the tar pits and may be captured / sampled there.
Spitting peppers (peppers that defend themselves by spitting capsicum) roam the Muckhoof Marsh.
Killer tomatoes are in the Hock Hills.
Running squash will be in the starting area.
Horsefeather lake has freshwater hayminnows. They’re impossible to catch without some sort of net. Such a net might be made with the help of locals, or bought from them.
The forest has dire squirrels.
Care bears will keep their distance from the crystal, and put up a ring-shaped shield that partially magically inhibits the party. One bear per turn will try to fire a mind-controlling beam at the party, which may be redirected with the crystal to try to hit another bear. Care bears hate being hit with the beam of another care bear, as this breaks their social contract not to use their compelling powers on each other: they will viciously turn on the offending bear. Subordinate creatures are really mostly there to pen in the PCs, but their magical mind miasma can be dispelled.
Whipvine is a very dangerous motile vegetable, somewhat like a rose bush that can move and attack with whipping, thorny vines. These will scratch and cut the PCs, and vines may grapple them. Defeating this will give Dark Spark her plant-fighter cutie mark.
Nevershyed:
At the Tower street intersection with Main St is the former Tower of the Three Wizards. This tower’s upper stories now serve as the tower of the Archmage of Nevershyed (Silver Staff), while the lower stories are used as general governmental offices. Across from it in a park is a heroic group statue of the Bearers of Harmony from PRPG2 (Emerald, Discolor, Akasha, Gabrio, Qotho, and Flint Spark). Also a statue of Numinous Spirit. Very old statue of a gryphon, on Gryphon street (the same statue erected by Malign Gaze). Nevershyed has the usual availability of shops and services expected in a city.
The surrounding lands (that aren’t sandy dunes) are well suited to agriculture, although some areas are still rocky and wild. Numerous small streams come down out of the Northern Yore mountains. The climate is particularly suited to vineyards, with a number of wineries around the countryside. Maybe this will interest Burdy.
Oceanview Lodgings (offers long-term rates to dockworkers and sailors - fellow guests will be rough sorts, might get interrupted in the night by shouting, etc.)
Private charter to Sickle Island: The Sprite, a privately-owned small craft. Launches from the marina rather than the commercial docks. Captained by Sea Legs, a pale green earth pony mare with a blonde mane.
Salt Pillars:
Known for its salt mines, which make up a large part of the local economy. Rather than shaft mining, the Pillar Salt Company uses brining to dissolve mineral salt deposits, pump the water back up, and evaporate it to leave the salt behind. It’s relatively very safe as mining operations go, but not cheap. They import a lot of biofuel via the railway and from local farmers to power this process. [b]The process is also not environmentally friendly; several large and dangerous sinkholes have formed as a result of salt removal weakening the ground in some places.
Shaded Hollow:
Most residents describe it as a quiet and pleasant place to live, surrounded by a scenic mix of open fields and light woods. Concern recently by some local farmers near the edges of the Forbidding Forest about the denizens of that forest - something has been coming out to take domesticated animals. No one has managed to see it, other than a tall tale about many eyes (causing misleading hypotheses about this being a spider).
Sickle Island:
The warehouse and machine shop at the pier are empty, having been primarily used in the initial construction of the lab complex, but the buildings are well preserved and stand ready to be used again.
Island has a minimum of staff, much of the machinery and equipment uses advanced autonomous magical constructs. The water tower has a magical attractor atop it that gravitates rainwater into the reservoir. It also serves as a security watchtower, if needed.
Simple dirt roads. Most of the land around the lab site is bare and dusty or overgrown with low plants. There is a separate camp for researchers monitoring the nature reserve. They generally don’t go the lab complex, and vice versa.
Most food eaten on the island is locally obtained, either from wild vegetation, or there are several fields north of the dining building where Strawberry Sorbet (assisted by Pepper Vines) grows fruits, herbs, spices, and other food plants. She has pretty strong earth pony magic. She is also protective of these fields and will shoo out any potential tramplers.
Portal 1 was a proof-of-concept experiment. Portal 2 was a data-gathering experiment and houses the isolated communications room. Portal 3 is the practical applications experiment and houses a portal large enough to pass ponies and macroscopic objects through. Portal 3 consists of a vertical ring portal generator. When a portal is opened, the destination is visible on the other side. No special sensations or effects are perceived when passing through; it is an apparently fluid transition. The portal is round and ringed with a telekinetic "donut" preventing travellers or objects from coming into contact with the edges. It can be traversed from either side.
Instrumentation and monitoring is connected with all of the portal experiments, and automatically sends telemetry to the Crooked Tower's Cardioid Point campus.
The isolated communications room has soundproofing in the fixed walls and the door, and special reversible window panes that allow light and sound to pass through them in one direction only. These panes are reversible so that the occupants of the isolated room can see and hear out but no one can see or hear in (configuration for holding test travellers into the past), or so that the outside can see and hear in but the occupants cannot see or hear out (configuration for the communications operator serving past travellers, to mitigate paradox risk).
Facility as a whole is 3 years old (from time of construction completion and operation commencement).
Steelshoe:
Steelshoe is a rail industry town. It was much more populous during the initial construction of the Steelshoe Railroad, connecting Hackmore Hills and Earthdrop to Edge to complete a rail circuit going all the way around the Isle of Yore. These days, the population is still mostly rail workers, although it’s visibly a tired old town with a lot of structures that have become run-down due to vacancy from the construction boom population leaving long ago.
The outer edges of town have large scrapyards of decommissioned train cars. Metal recyclers sometimes strip through them.
The rural surroundings are largely wild and unpopulated, owing to relative dryness (although still wetter than during the Dark Age). More farming takes place closer to the Great Western River and its tributaries.
Flange Wheel (earth pony, female, olive coat with grey mane) is a general store manager (the general store in question is rail company owned, a remnant of the construction boom era in which the company opened numerous shops to provide services for workers). She has seen part of Dr. Hour’s party passing through. An earth pony mare with a white coat and a pale pink mane (matching Pepper Vines’ description) bought camping equipment, which is not uncommon for hikers and explorers coming through Steelshoe, but this mare bought several sets.
She’s gruff and mostly cares about whether or not the party plans to buy stuff. Substance abuse (alcoholism predominantly) is a problem in the town, and she will not look well on drinkers (probably Burdy).
Chert Claws is the local mail-dragon. She has light grey scales with pale pink claws and ridge-scales. She received a letter to send from Dr. Hour (posing as Star Struck) to Moxie Mocha in Peppercup.
Sunshine Abbey:
Abbey facilities and layout:
The abbey grounds are blocked off from the outside world by a wall. Pegasi cannot fly over this wall, since this completely obvious route of intrusion into the abbey is protected by a magical barrier started up by Dr. Hour.
Entry is through the public-facing doors to the cathedral.
Proceeding through the cathedral gains access to the abbey grounds.
The grounds contain large outdoor gardens and farmland. Growing of simple haygrass and fruits occupied a great deal of space. These farmlands are now overgrown with scrub and weeds.
Cloisters surround the interior administrative and work areas.
Dining was in the refectory, which has an attached kitchen and stores.
There is a brewery, in which a great amount of beer and wine was made. Burdy might find an interesting recipe book here. A distillery produced spirits, which were then infused with herbs and the resulting liquors found many uses in alchemical concoctions.
A small hospital is on the grounds, which was mostly for the internal use of the abbey.
There was a small hotel with individual rooms, much more private than the cloister, for lay-guests, who were usually important mages, academics, and the like.
Laundry, tailoring, garden sheds, and general repairs are all in various workshops.
Work facilities include a solarium / greenhouse for growing herbs indoors for climate control, and a library with a scriptorium where books were labor-intensively copied by quill (a printing press was also present, however, for mundane books that didn’t need the magical infusions associated with quill-copying).
The central piece is the towering Solar Spire, which serves as the arch-mage’s tower for the Primequate, who was considered to be the abbey’s arch-mage. Subterranean tombs house the dead, with a wing reserved for the Primequates. The ground level constrains entry through puzzles such as the Pilgrim’s Path. The upper levels of this tower hold the reliquaries, with further puzzle-barriers to entry for the uninitiated. The very topmost level contains the Sunstone chamber.
Chapel of the Sun: Always glows with sunlight, leaves lingering sunlight on those who pray there.
Chapel of the Moon: Always glows with moonlight, leaves lingering moonlight on those who pray there.
Solar Spire:
First floor: looping tax puzzle.
Second floor: scrollroom.
Third floor: mirror into the EqG universe.
Fourth floor: roster of Primequates
Fifth floor: reliquary, contains the torcs and crowns of the Princesses.
Sixth floor: the Sunstone Chamber.
White Flats:
A largely barren area outside of Nevershyed. Unusually for the Isle of Yore after the return of the rains, it is comprised largely of a remnant of the desert environment, a dry, salty, alkaline lake bed that has never really refilled. It’s not agriculturally productive, but a small population makes a living there by mining valuable alchemical reagents from the dry lake bed.
Wickerby:
Wickerby is a remote farming town of mostly earth pony farmers in the rural outlying areas, and a few more unicorns providing services in the town proper. Most water travel is either down the eastern coast or up the Great Western River - superstitions about the deserted lands to the west, especially the Forgotten Weald, prevent most local ponies from going that direction. Local belief is that there’s something “wrong with the land” to the west, with claims by earth ponies that they can feel that the earth magic there isn’t right (or “it ain’t natural” in Applejack-like parlance, recalling her aversion to the Everfree Forest). This has been the case since time immemorial (since the collapse of Sunshine and its abbey, which is long enough that no one even faintly remembers it). Some boats run to Crystal Cliffs, but will refuse to stop along the western Yore mainland coast near Sunshine.
Mayor of Wickerby is Note Night, light pink unicorn, yellow mane, mare, former adventurer. She is aged but still fiery and determined to keep her town safe - she will relentlessly block attempts by the party to convince a boat to sail west along the coast, but will agree to allow one to sail to Crystal Cliffs, as they have customarily done.
Boat captain who may be consulted is Gizmo Talemane, black striped zony, brown mane, stallion. He will side with Mayor Night and refuse passage to the western coast.
Farmer: Velvet Eggplant, light yellow earth pony, pale fuchsia mane, mare.
Doctor: Staff Incense, blue earth pony, grey mane, mare
Witch Point:
A rural village sprawling around the site of the former fortress of the Gaze family. This small town can’t seem to escape its past reputation as a center of dark magic, even far into the Harmonic era. Although nopony seems to be able to point to any specific malevolence in living memory, rumors still go around about strange creatures being summoned by a local coven of sorceress-unicorns who meet in secret a few nights a year. The coven’s master, Glance, claims illegitimate descent from the Gazes, although of course this is impossible to verify and she repudiates having inherited their naked lust for power at any cost.
[a]I'm glad someone picked up on this at least. It has some Singapore about it too.
[b]Why not solar evaporators? Is the Isle of Yore much less sunny now than in PRPG2, where they had solar smelters in places? (Not an important question really.)
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