Adventure Sites in Crecia#
One province of Adventure Sites, which has the map of every site. Using a site says how to run one.
66 sites, levels 1 to 29. What Crecia is like.
- The North Road
The road north out of Blithe toward the hill mines. It leaves town past the last cottages and the old toll stone, runs between hedged fields and the prosperous Hollin farm, then goes in under the beechwood that carters call the Dark Mile before it climbs into the bare hills to the North Hill iron mine, half a day out. It is quiet country and usually safe. This week it is too quiet: Tobin Fairweather's supply cart is two days overdue, the ore wagons that feed Vargas's forge have stopped coming, and the band hired for the festival has not arrived.
- The Old Quarter
The first streets of Blithe, a short walk below the south gate. The town began here as one farmstead around a hearth and a well, and the lanes still bend the way the old field paths did. It grew into the trading post Esthar kept on this coast, and it filled with people fleeing the ruins when Menes fell. The quarter was outside the walls when the siege came, and it took the worst of it: the bell tower rang the alarm until its bell cracked, and it has not rung since. What is left is poor and a little forgotten. The Temple of Mercy feeds whoever comes to its door and takes in the town's orphans, the old well at the quarter's edge has been dry at the top for years, and the tower stands locked and empty over the lanes, or nearly so.
- Blithe Market Square
The bustling commercial heart of Blithe. Merchants hawk wares, guards patrol the streets, and the shadows of the Syndicate grow longer each day.
- The Wrecker's Coast
South of Smuggler's Cove the shore turns to the old Wrecker's Coast: black rock shelves, gullies, tide pools, a long shingle strand, and reefs that bare at low tide. For centuries the wreckers of Lonely Down hung false lanterns on these rocks and stripped whatever the sea brought them. Two hundred years ago the Battle of Three Tides was fought in the shallows here, and the Gallant, the last ship to stand against the wreckers, went down on the reef. Her ribs still show at the ebb. Out past a tidal bar sits a small rocky islet that nobody fishes from, and lately somebody has been keeping a fire there.
- Smuggler's Cove
A hidden inlet where syndicate ships offload contraband under cover of darkness. Rocky cliffs hide lookout positions and sea caves conceal secrets.
- Hunter's Camp
A remote hunter's camp deep in the Rhinestone Woodland. Brennus the Hunter has made this his home for decades, but recently the syndicate has established a depot in the old wartime trenches nearby.
- The Cliff Caves
East of the False Lighthouse the cliffs of the Lonely Down are honeycombed with sea caves. The way in is a crack in the cliff face that the spray from a blowhole hides from anyone on the path, and behind it the caves branch and twist for longer than most people care to follow. Coast folk say that at low tide the deepest of them reach the Veiled Catacombs under Blithe. The syndicate has made one run of them its own: boats unload at a sea door on the eastern face, the goods wait in a cache cave and go up a chimney to the downs, and a weak stretch of roof over the landing has been rigged so it can be dropped on anyone who follows them in.
- The Cold Beacon
One of the old sea-watch towers of the Crecian Highland, a short walk west of Hemlock's camp along the goat track. When raiders came in off the eastern sea the crews lit these towers one after another, a chain of fire from the coast to the inland towns. This one went dark the night three sails came at dusk: the coast tower lit, and this fire would not catch. The crew held the stair; the watchman Tavin Rook died on the roof with the flint still in his hand. Wild dogs den in its gate and buzzards nest on its crown now, and the herders swear the roof lights up some nights with a fire that gives no heat.
- Tilton Well
A walled well station on the Merchant's Trail, the last sweet water between Blithe and the Vhall Oasis. It stands where the Crecian grass gives out and the Tilton Drylands begin, and every caravan bound for Vhall stops here to water its beasts, fill its casks and hire the guides and troll escorts who know the road to the Canyon of Tolls. The Geni dug the well when the old Wet Era well of Tilton village died, and they keep it still under Rokson: a caravan that pays the cup-toll drinks here under guest-right as far as the canyon, and the Guest Stone at the edge of the grass marks where the law of Crecia ends and the honour code of the tribes begins. East of the walls the roofless houses of old Tilton crumble around their dry well, and the bandits who prey on the trail are said to sleep in them still.
- The Drowned Mother's Shrine
A temple cut into the sea cliff east of Smuggler's Cove, sacred to the Drowned Mother, a sea goddess the coast worshipped long before there was a kingdom to tax it. The sea took the shrine centuries ago. Only at the lowest spring tides do its steps show below the cliff, and then for a couple of hours a person can go down into the flooded halls before the water comes back. The fishermen cross themselves when they pass it and will not beach a boat within sight of the steps. Gulls hold the cliff top, crabs the foreshore, and something long and pale moves in the great hall when the tide is out.
- Old Man's Tor
The great granite tor that rises above Old Man Hemlock's grazing, a stiff climb south-east of the goatherds' pass. The weather has carved the face of an old man into its western cliff, and the highlanders named the hill for him long before they named Hemlock for anything. Heather and clitter lie around its knees, crags and ledges crown it, and caves open in its roots. Eagles nest on the high crags, a shrine of stacked stones stands on the summit, and the spring that waters the grazing rises under its eastern slabs. This year something has denned at the tor's foot and has been taking Hemlock's goats for months, and the spring has started to run brown.
- The Old Bridge
A few miles east of the Serpent's Coin toll post the trading route drops to a stream and crosses it on a bridge of grey stone, built long before anyone on this road paid a syndicate for the right to use it. A split rock leans against its western abutment. Upstream, the drove road had its own crossing, a timber footbridge, until the spring floods took it; travelers who will not pass the syndicate's watchers at the old bridge now wade the ford beside its wreck. East of the stream the prairie folds into a hollow where farmers see lights moving at night, and a copse of blackthorn below the road hides a small camp of bandits who have been picking off whoever walks alone. A cartographer's bench-mark is cut into the bridge parapet, and the road on either side of it is worse than any map admits.
- The Old Waystation
The trading route west of the Crossroads Inn, on the long road to Blithe. A coaching waystation stood here for a hundred years, changing horses for the grain carters and feeding the drovers, until the Serpent's Coin set its tolls along the road and the traffic dried up. The keeper bolted the cellar and walked away. Farmers still meet the Blithe buyers in its yard on market days, because there is nowhere else to meet. West of the yard the old migration stones cross the road, and beyond them the road drops into a cutting between high banks where no carter goes without an escort now.
- The Crossroads Inn
A weathered waypoint inn where the ancient trading roads intersect. Once bustling with merchants, now eerily quiet as syndicate extortion has driven most travelers away.
- The False Lighthouse
An abandoned lighthouse repurposed by the syndicate to lure ships onto the rocks. From its heights, they signal smuggling vessels and coordinate their operations.
- Gallows Gulch
A narrow rocky pass that once served as a natural chokepoint for trade caravans. The syndicate has fortified it with spiked barriers, crossbow nests, and guard posts, extracting brutal tolls from any who would pass.
- Serpent's Toll Post
The syndicate's main operations post on the Trading Route. From here, the convoy leader coordinates extortion across the region, collecting tolls and dispatching enforcers. The compound is fortified with barricades and well-armed guards.
- City Toll Gate
The main toll checkpoint controlling trade entering Blithe from the Trading Route. Quartermaster Borin stamps manifests here, knowing exactly which shipments to overlook.
- The Rusty Flagon
A grimy but honest tavern in the industrial district, known as a neutral ground where guards, workers, and even syndicate members drink side by side.
- Crecia: Blanket Square
Blanket Square and the Fountain of Visions at the heart of the Docks, where the harbor's buyers spread their cloths on the paving at dawn and sell whatever came in on the tide, and the streets of houses around it.
- Crecia: Goad's Corner
The Merchant District's south-east corner, under the Garlic Gardens: Goad's Walk and the Shrine of Goad, and the long row of houses that runs down the city wall to the south.
- Crecia: Granary Row
The middle of the Merchant District, where the Market Lane bends north-east around the Granary and runs on toward the Docks. Shops crowd both sides of the lane in double rows, from First Aid and the Clinic to the miners', the fletchers' and Kato Armory. North of the bend lies the Long Green, a strip of grass the district keeps for no reason anyone remembers, with the Crecian Baths and the East Prefecture facing each other across Bathhouse Lane, and the Dark Warehouse and the Mainstay Stables keep the lane's east end.
- Crecia: Sundance Plaza
Sundance Plaza, the great square of the Royalty District, ringed with inns, taverns and shops, and the Sundance Gate in the city's south wall, where the road leaves for Maelo, Drumund and the Monastery of the Yellow Dragon.
- Crecia: the Arena
The south of the Merchant District. Arena Street runs along the Crecian Arena, where Crecia fights for sport, between the rows of the players and tradesmen who live along the south wall. The Statue of Dekkashraen stands at the corner of Heroes Row.
- Crecia: the Barons' Row
Barons' Row, where four barons of Crecia keep their manors in sight of the palace gate, and the Palace Walk running east to the sea wall.
- Crecia: the Crecian Docks
The Crecian Docks, the long stone wharves of the gulf where Sedia's ships tie up. The Harbor Road comes down from the Merchant Gate to meet them, and the Fish Quay runs north along the sea.
- Crecia: the Daughters' Gardens (west)
The west of the Gardens of Lythantos' Daughters, the royal gardens around the palace, where esprit trees stand over the paths and the Jair Stream bends toward the city wall.
- Crecia: the Emerald Fountain
The north-west corner of Crecia's Merchant District, inside the city's north and west walls. A long row of narrow shopfronts and houses runs along the north wall, and in its lee opens Emerald Fountain Square, where merchants have haggled for generations over the green stone rim of the fountain. West of the square the paving widens into Plaza Auf Zeit under four old plane trees, the first open ground a caravan finds after the West Gate.
- Crecia: the Garlic Gardens
The east half of the spire complex, with the Spires of Han, Omn and Roahn, and east of it the Garlic Gardens, the Merchant District's great garden, laid around the plateau where the Grand Library of Crecia stands, its grand steps climbing from Goad's Walk. The Great Tree of Zavior and the Tears of Menus stand under the plateau's north face, and the Waters of Navus lie along its east side. North of the spires stand the Library Lodge and the Imperium Forum.
- Crecia: the Golden Theatre
The Golden Theatre Dolche and the streets around it, where the Imperial Gallery and the Imperial Library, the jewelers and the finest shops of Crecia stand close together.
- Crecia: the Jair Stream
The Jair Stream where it enters the city under the west wall and winds through the south of the palace gardens, and the first of the Royalty District's streets beside it.
- Crecia: the Linguist's Corner
A walled courtyard in the Merchant District's south-west, reached from Ray's Lane. Ray's School of Survival keeps its yard here, and the Linguist works in a narrow house beside it, among people who write in tongues no one else in the street can read.
- Crecia: the Long Rows
The Long Rows, street after street of narrow houses laid out in straight lines for the dockhands and their families, and the Manrik Gate at their foot, where Manrik Street opens on the gardens.
- Crecia: the Long Rows (west)
The east edge of the Garlic Gardens and the buildings along the Merchant District's east wall, and beyond the wall the west end of the Docks' Long Rows, Coopers' Row, Lantern Row and Caulkers' Row, down to Manrik Street and the corner of the Manrik Gardens.
- Crecia: the Lords' Rows
Where the Merchant District's north-east corner meets the Docks: the end of East Wall Lane inside the district wall, and beyond it the Docks' north-west rows, Netmakers' Row, the Ropewalk and Tarrers' Lane, where the city's nets and ropes are knotted, tarred and hung to dry.
- Crecia: the Main Wharf
The Customs Quay and the Main Wharf, where the biggest ships of the gulf come alongside and every cargo is weighed and taxed before it enters Crecia.
- Crecia: the Manrik Gardens
The Manrik Gardens between the Docks and the Royalty District, a long walled green with the Tree of Spirits in its north-west, crossed by a single path from the Manrik Gate down to the Garden Gate.
- Crecia: the Manrik Gardens (west)
The north-west corner of the Gardens of Lythantos' Daughters, just inside the Garden Gate.
- Crecia: the Merchant Gate
The Merchant Gate, where the Market Lane leaves the Merchant District for the Docks and Housing and becomes the Harbor Road, the last shops of the district's north-east corner around it, and on the Docks side Lords' Lane and the Lords Manor, the seat of the Archlord who answers to the king for the harbor.
- Crecia: the Merchant Rows
The north rows of the Merchant District, a grid of tall houses along the north wall, cut by Scribes' Lane, Long Green Walk and Prefects' Lane, where the district's clerks and shopkeepers sleep above the street.
- Crecia: the Netmakers' Rows
The Docks' north rows, packed tight under the north wall: net lofts, sailors' houses and the long sheds where the city's nets are knotted and tarred, with Lantern Street running through them toward the sea.
- Crecia: the North Mole
The North Mole, the stone arm of the harbor that runs out along the north wall, and the Basin it shelters: a square of still sea water walled in by the wharf, where the fishing boats lie in rows on a calm night.
- Crecia: the Palace Gate
The Jair Bridge over the stream, the Palace Gate where the gardens open on the streets, and the offices of the Royalty District around it: the Royal Prefecture, the City Guard Office, the Law Binders and the Hall of Transcripts.
- Crecia: the Reservoir
The Reservoir and the Pump House in the city's south-east corner, the Actor Colony, and the bars along the sea wall.
- Crecia: the Royal Palace
The Royal Palace of King Redrin Von Crecia and Queen Isabel in the middle of the Gardens of Lythantos' Daughters, its white walls rising out of lawns and esprit trees, with the Jair Stream running along the gardens' east side to the sea.
- Crecia: the Shipyards
The Ship Development Compartments, the walled yards where Crecia's shipwrights frame and plank new hulls, and the Shipyard Quay where the finished ships are floated out.
- Crecia: the Spires (west)
Seat of the clerical order of Sedia. Wheel Way runs past the west half of the spire complex, where the Spires of Khai, Nu and Cho, the Chapter House and the Clavicle of Healing stand about the Hall of the Wheel, joined by cloister walks. West of it lie the Temple of Order, the Crecian Bank, the Barracks and the Jail, and the offices of the Forum & Herald, the debtors and the sheriff.
- Crecia: the West Gate
The heart of the Merchant District's west side. The West Gate opens in the city wall onto the road from the Plains of Sedia, and the Market Lane runs east from it past the Inn of Westhaven's Child, the Shatteredkeep Inn and the busiest shops in Crecia: smiths, butchers, potion sellers, chart makers and clothiers. North of the lane the Basilica Steps climb past the Crecian Basilica and the Campus Marticus toward Chandlers' Lane, Spice Lane and the potters and papermakers along the west wall, and south of it stands the Crecian School of Higher Education.
- Crecia: Theatre Mirage
The south-west corner of the Merchant District, inside the city wall: Theatre Mirage, the house of plays the Merchant District is proudest of, and the lanes of houses behind it.
- Hemlock's Camp
Old Man Hemlock's highland camp, a weathered but sturdy shelter where he has tended goats for sixty years. A fire burns constantly, and the smell of goat and herb fills the air.
- Tharsian Historical Society
A stately stone building housing the Tharsian Historical Society, dedicated to preserving the history and culture of the Tharsian people. Behind its scholarly facade, darker secrets lurk in the restricted archives.
- Goatherd's Pass
A winding mountain pass used by goatherds for generations. The trail rises through rocky tors toward the highland plateau where Old Man Hemlock tends his flock.
- Silverstream Logistics
A large warehouse complex serving as the front for syndicate money laundering operations. Numbers Nalia runs the books from her office on the upper floor.
- Crest Ridge Watchtower
A small, windswept watchtower and travel post perched high on a ridge in the Crecian Highlands. It offers a commanding view of the road leading north towards Tharsis. A lonely, quiet place for discreet meetings or somber departures.
- Jair Pool Retreat
A secluded, crystal-clear pool nestled deep within a lush, quiet valley. Fed by a natural spring and the Whispering Waterfall, its tranquil beauty belies its use as a syndicate hideout.
- The Silent Spire
An ancient signal tower from a forgotten age, now occupied by syndicate lieutenants as a remote meeting place. Guards patrol the exterior while the leaders plan within.
- Drumund Heights
The oldest street in Drumund, a crescent of stone manor houses behind black railings on the rise west of Valerius Manor. The founding families of Blithe's golden age built here first, and the Heights still sets the district's manners: swept pavements, polished brass, porters who note every caller and guards who walk the estate lawns at the end of each arm of the crescent. Behind the houses runs the mews, where the coal, the laundry and the servants come and go, and above them a country of lead and slate that nobody on the Heights ever thinks to watch.
- The Obsidian Club
An exclusive, members-only club for Blithe's most powerful merchants and city officials. Behind its obsidian-inlaid doors lies a world of high-stakes gambling, whispered deals, and carefully guarded secrets.
- The Whispering Gallery
A renowned art gallery housing priceless works from across the known world. Its unusual acoustics allow whispers to carry from one end to the other, making it a favored spot for discreet negotiations among the elite.
- Valerius Manor
The sprawling, lavish estate of Alderman Valerius, a fortified bastion of wealth and secrets. Manicured gardens surround the main manor house, with servant quarters, stables, and guard posts positioned strategically throughout the compound.
- Aurelius's Secluded Retreat
Aurelius's Secluded Retreat: a hidden valley deep in the Rhinestone Woodland, an ancient forest of towering kauri trees whose leaves shimmer like polished gemstones and whose bark holds the natural crystals the place is named for. The air is cool and pine-fragrant; the only sign of habitation is the modest stone villa of Master Linguist Aurelius, integrated among the giant trees, and beneath it a natural resonance chamber where the dead celestial tongue of the Tome of the First Seals can be spoken and awakened. The map runs from the woodland entry up the kauri path, past a crystal grove and a paranoid scholar's traps, to the Villa of Stones where Aurelius works, and on down into the Resonance Chamber where, under assault from Choir assassins who tracked the player from the Grand Library, the translation ritual is performed and the location of the first seal is at last revealed. It is a place of peace and profound study turned, for one violent and luminous session, into a battlefield and a workshop both: the quiet scholar's retreat where the Tome begins, finally, to speak.
- The Forbidden Annex
The Forbidden Annex: the deep, subterranean vault cut into the plateau beneath the Grand Library of Crecia, far below the public halls, where the texts judged too dangerous or too destabilizing for any open shelf are kept under iron and ward and cold blue flame. The air is chill and smells of ozone and ancient dust; the shelves are cold iron, the most dangerous tomes chained or barred, the light dim and flickering blue. The map runs from the warded descent through the Hall of Chained Books, past the patrol-routes of the Annex Sentinels and the geometric light-puzzle of the Chamber of Wards, to the Repository of Ages and the Tome of the First Seals at its heart, and back out again under heightened patrol. It is a stealth-and-puzzle dungeon: direct combat with the Sentinels is discouraged and potentially catastrophic for the delicate archives, so the way through is care, silence, and cleverness. Here are kept the Shadow Records, the only true accounts of the clashing gods, the making of the Eye, and the binding of Dekkashraen, and the player has come, with the Archivist's signet and his grudging leave, to read what the Library has spent a thousand years keeping shut.
- The Grand Library of Crecia
The Grand Library of Crecia: the intellectual heart of the continent, a sprawling complex of white marble and stained glass crowning the plateau that rises out of the Garlic Gardens in the heart of Crecia's Merchant District, where millions of scrolls and tomes and artifacts are kept in a hush as old as the kingdoms. The map runs from the grand entrance steps up through the great atrium and its reception desk, past the Map Room and the Hall of Whispers, into the deep reading-stacks and the warded edge of the Forbidden Annex, and on up the spiral stair to the highest spire and the Archivist's Sanctum. After the war and the long green road north, it is the first place of the scholar's path: a sanctuary of patient knowledge where a desert-walker carrying a god's cryptic clue must prove a genuine need and a respect for the protocols of the library before its deepest doors will open. No blade is drawn here; the most dangerous thing in the building is a question no one has been allowed to ask.
- The Temple of the Sun-Seal
The Temple of the Sun-Seal: deep in the sweltering jungles of Maelo, where a dense tropical forest loud with exotic birds and droning insects has all but swallowed the ruins of an ancient Crecian temple once devoted to the study of natural life and the divine. The temple was abandoned centuries ago as the jungle aggressively reclaimed it, fed, some say, by the leaking power of the second of the three seals that bind Dekkashraen, sealed beneath its inner sanctum. Now the Silent Choir has come: not to break the seal directly but to drain it, having hauled a massive experimental siphon machine into the overgrown courtyard to slowly bleed the seal's power for their own dark rituals, and the leaking, siphoned energy has driven the surrounding jungle into hostile mutation. The map runs from the jungle entry through a courtyard of aggressive mutant flora and the hunting-grounds of camouflaged predators, up to the raised Siphon Platform where the brilliant, unstable Choir artificer Kael tends his machine, and down at last to the Inner Sanctum and the second seal itself. The player must brave the mutated jungle, sabotage or destroy the Choir's machinery, cut down its engineer, and restore the second seal to full strength before the Choir can drain another lock on the end of the world.
- The Grand Library - Under Siege
The Grand Library of Crecia under siege: the intellectual heart of the continent turned overnight into a fortress at war. The Silent Choir, learning the Library had translated the Tome and uncovered the ritual to unmake their master, has thrown an armada of airships, flying sky-screechers, dark-magic siege engines, and waves of shocktroopers at the plateau to bury the secret and everyone who knows it. The map runs from the exposed approach along the plateau and its long-silent alarm bell up through the hard-pressed main gates and battlements, across the bombed rooftop and the smoking siege line, past the ward-stone gallery where the scholars hold the failing shields and the field aid post where the wounded are tended, and up the contested spire to the long-sealed Tower of Glare, where the Library’s secret weapon waits, and finally to the high battlement where High Justicar Kael leads the Choir’s last desperate charge. No quiet here now: the most dangerous building on the continent is fighting for its life, and the world’s memory will be saved or lost on these walls.
