City of Death by Robert J. Schwalb and Gareth-Michael Skarka is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This supplement is part of the Lands in Shadow series that detail parts of the official Urth setting.
This is a ten page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $1.99 but was purchased at a reduced price as part of a special bundle. The first page has a half page illustration and around a quarter of the page is the Credits, the rest of the supplement is content.
It starts with a general overview of Azūl, the City of Death, as is seen in the series.
Next, A History of Death explains how Azūl, one of the Nine Great Cities on the eastern coast, was founded by the Witch-King as a port. After the Empire defeated the Witch-King, Azūl became known as the City of Death for the Kalasans killed nearly every inhabitant, as they were appalled by the horrors perpetuated by its inhabitants.
As the Empire declined, the coastal cities became more independent, but at the same time pirates become bolder. A pirate raid was carried out on the city, but those pirates who took landing craft to plunder the place all drifted back to the ship on those craft, dead. At this point, a society of assassins known as the Black Hand became much more widely known; they had intervened to save the city when their own lives were on the line. The assassins became a new reason for Azūl to be called the City of Death. The assassins were also paid money by the other eight cities when they broke away from the Empire to form the Confederacy, as they believed, rightly by the looks of it, that fear of the assassins, who operated throughout the Empire and other lands, would discourage the emperor from attempting to retake the Confederacy.
The Mistress explains that the Black Hand never took much interest in politics, until the then-autarch attempted to absorb them into the city government. At which point the Black Hand’s leader, the Mistress, killed the autarch and took his place. Now the Black Hand effectively runs everything in the city. The guilds used to have great power but the ascension of the Black Hand reduced that and all are terrified to act against them, to the point where councillors are afraid to vote on anything unless it looks like the assassins already support it.
Other groups are the Honourable Cloaks, who function as the constabulary, watch and militia, with stats for a typical member given, and the Dread Legion, who patrol the landward wall.
The Black Hand has details on the organisation, how it can be joined (a process that is fatal to most applicants, often before they even make it to where they can apply) and how they operate. Fingers of the Black Hand are the assassins and handlers are those who get the contracts for them, the latter tending to be retired assassins. There are stats for a typical Finger and a paragraph on player characters joining the organisation.
A Fearful Pall explains how the natives of Azūl tend to be very polite, because they never know if the person they are taking to is actually an assassin. The city also makes money from trade and shipbuilding, but religion has little to offer for the city’s inhabitants, with the strongest faith being that of Father Death. There are also two major festivals detailed for the city.
Next is a map of Azūl, with a d20 table of sights to see, and the various areas are given overviews.
There is a list of adventure hooks for Azūl and finally a new background table for characters hailing from the city.
City of Death in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, despite being comparatively short, these would have been useful. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a two column full colour layout and appeared to be nearly free of errors. There are a number of colour illustrations, including the map, which appear to be custom. Presentation is very good.
This is a quite brief detailing of a fairly important city-state, although none of the Lands in Shadow series goes into great depth about the regions they cover. Azūl is an interesting city and there are a host of potential adventure ideas but, as always, a GM will need to flesh things out rather more than is given here. Enough detail is given to spark some ideas, and the overviews of the different regions of the city does help with this. There are more stat blocks than are seen in many of the entries in the Lands in Shadow series. City of Death is an interesting, albeit brief, examination of the city-state and it can be found by clicking here.
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