Lady Ilsten Bain dreams of glory. Of the grand City of Baintoch that sprawled across the land, the city that welcomed with open arms the pilgrims that flocked to its famous blessed bathhouse. Of the money they brought with them, and the prestige.

She looks out from her governor's mansion into the rain falling on the Town of Baintoch, imagining grand boulevards reaching far into the obscuring fog. But she knows the twisting streets no longer extend much further than she can see.

The rain began falling long before she was born, and the waters crept ever higher, drowning the land, forcing the City and the world into a gradual diminishing and retreat to ever higher ground. Eventually, the pilgrims stopped coming, the baths closed, and Baintoch fell back to the old walls of its original settlement, from the time of Saint Orvus.

Saint Orvus, who had cleansed the waters in that ancient era when the sky was bright and goddesses walked the land.

Baintoch had grown into greatness from these walls before, why should it not flourish once again? The Baths still lay under the town, decrepit, dangerous, half-collapsed, occupied by generations of kobold bandits, the nasty little lizard-folk that refused to bow to the Admiralty and join civil society.

A few sailors, drunk already at midday, stumble across the wet cobbles below, looking for their ramshackle lodging.

Lady Bain turns from the window and regards the pile of jewels and gold artifacts on her desk, scattered beside a heavy old tome: the haul from some lowlifes with more daring than sense. They'd recently arrived on a merchant ship, spent some nights at the Butchered Ogre, and delved down into—and if they are to be believed, below—the Baths to steal these treasures.

Town guards had found the bruised and bloody party stumbling out of the Baths while on patrol, arrested them and confiscated the fruits of their thievery. But if the tale they told was true—and the tome suggested it might be—the Baths went deeper than her patrols had ever gone.

She walks over to the desk, staring down at the pages covered in archaic script recounting many old myths of this place, of underground kingdoms and lost elvish tribes, of goat-folk tyrants and serpentine madwomen. And of all their fabulous treasures.

Yes, she decides, closing the book, she will release the grave-robbers and send them out on the next ship. And she will even return the treasures to them—minus a hefty tax, of course. Her son, the captain of the guard, will protest, but he does not know sailors and scoundrels as she does. They will do as their kind always do: boast and lie and flaunt their wealth until some other scum slits their throat for it. And thus with words and gold and blood they will spread the tale of treasure under the streets of Baintoch, and the town's ancient myths will find a new life on the lips of sailors across the Admiralty.

The Baintoch of old became wealthy and powerful hosting pilgrims seeking healing and comfort in the Baths. That era is long gone, but Baintoch will rise again on the backs of a new kind of pilgrim: adventurers, seeking filthy lucre.

So: I'm happy to share with you a new video update about my #dungeon23 project, The Blades Of Gixa, specifically about Baintoch, the town that sits above the megadungeon. This spread was an interesting challenge, mostly because it was quite difficult to work out what information should be on it!

Ultimately I landed on referencing the various surface factions but not delving too deep into their inner workings, as that will go onto a dedicated factions spread (and there just wasn't room for that here!) Instead, the surface spread features more surface-level information like where the different factions are located, a bit of info about them, general information about the island and town, and a few specific procedure things like a weather table and information about lodging and banking.

The banking thing might seem a bit odd, but I was reminded of it listening to 3d6 Down The Line, an old-school megadungeon actual-play podcast in which managing heaps of loot becomes a big problem for the player characters! I figure that part of my job as the person making the setting is to figure out some of the boring stuff for the referee like taxes and banking and moving wealth around, so they can just have some quick stuff to reference and focus on the more interesting bits, like encounters and factions and weird characters.

My next steps for The Blades Of Gixa are to create the Factions spread, make more tables, and continue fleshing out and cleaning up the keying of the 12 dungeon levels. I'm also starting to clean up the scanned final-ish pages, as you'll see at the end of the video. Turns out, every step of this is a lot of work! Thanks so much for your patience and support!