The Shackled City Adventure Path

The Shackled City

The cover of the collected Adventure Path hardcover
Rules required	Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (original modules in Dungeon) / 3.5 Edition (collection)
Character levels	1 - 20
Campaign setting	Generic D&D
Authors	Jesse Decker, James Jacobs, Tito Leati, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins, and Chris Thomasson
First published	2003 - 2004 (original modules in Dungeon) / 2005 (collection)

The Shackled City Adventure Path (or simply Shackled City) is a role-playing game adventure designed for the Dungeons & Dragons game, originally published as articles in Dungeon magazine, and later re-printed as a hardcover book (ISBN 0-9770071-0-3), collecting all eleven articles plus one additional article that was not published earlier. Various parts of the game were revised for the collection. The city of Cauldron was enlarged to better suit the needs of a typical high level game.

Campaign information

Location

The adventure begins, and is primarily set in the city of Cauldron (to which the title refers). The city is nominally located in the World of Greyhawk, though it is designed to be easily adapted to other campaign settings.

Shackled City's Impact on Cauldron

The Adventure Paths were published by Paizo Publishing as serials of 12 modules, 1 per issue over the course of a year. Before the publication of the Shackled City Adventure Path, Cauldron was an obscure part of the Greyhawk landscape without significant background or development. In the Adventure Path, the city was expanded greatly, and became the center of multiple plot threads within the overall evolving Greyhawk lore that Paizo developed, eventually dovetailing with the later Adventure Path, Age of Worms which was initially centered on a city not far from Cauldron.

The Adventure Paths were widely lauded throughout the industry, and the collected issues of Shackled City, including extensive background and location notes on Cauldron and its residents, were nominated for multiple ENnies in 2006.

Geography and population

Located in the caldera of a dormant volcano, Cauldron is a medium-sized city. The city has extensive subterranean caverns that connect at various places to the Underdark.

In the World of Greyhawk, the city is set in the Hellfurnaces, near the Amedio Jungle, east of the Sea of Dust, and southwest from the Azure Sea and Jeklea Bay.

In the Forgotten Realms, the city is set somewhere on the Chultean Peninsula in the Jungle of Chult.

The city of Cauldron was founded by Surabar Spellmason around 500-600 years before the nominal "present day" in the campaign.

Purpose

The adventures are designed to begin with first level characters and to end with characters at or near twentieth level, taking them through twelve distinct adventures that span basic dungeon crawls, urban adventures, political intrigue, and even extra-planar excursions.

The Adventure Paths

The Adventure Paths are an ongoing element of Dungeon magazine, of which the Shackled City was the first. The next adventure path is called Age of Worms, and it contains a few elements that carry over (such as the Ebon Triad, who are minor characters in Shackled City) but each Adventure Path stands on its own as a campaign.

The third Adventure Path, Savage Tide, begins just north of Cauldron, in the city of Sasserine, and includes at least one character from the Shackled City storyline.

Summary

The entire Adventure Path consists of the following adventures:

• Life's Bazaar By Christopher Perkins, Dungeon #97, March 2003. In this adventure the player characters investigate kidnappings. The trail leads to a slaver operating from Underdark passages below the city.
• Drakthar's Way, added for the hardcover collection. In this adventure small bands of goblins raid and vandalize the city. The player characters track the goblins to a hideout in a series of caves below the city that lead out the side of the mountain. The goblins are led by a vampiric bugbear, the eponymous Drakthar.
• Flood Season By James Jacobs, Dungeon #98. In this adventure the city of Cauldron is threatened by flooding during the rainy season. Magical wands of "control water" normally used to control the flooding are stolen and taken to a lair below the city. The player characters presumably track down and recover the stolen wands.
• Zenith Trajectory By David Noonan, Dungeon #102. The player characters are asked to rescue Zenith Splintershield, a dwarf who has been missing since heading into the Underdark to fight evil. Zenith has gone insane and is treated as prophet by the kuo-toa (fish-people) who captured him.
• The Demonskar Legacy By Tito Leati, Dungeon #104. In this chapter, the heroes must find a missing paladin to stop an incursion by Cauldron to nearby Redgorge. After retracing his steps through a jungle, a giant-controlled cavern, and an otherworldly maze, they must face the demonic architect of the area's strife.
• Test of the Smoking Eye By David Noonan, Dungeon #107. Following their warning from a dying paladin to "seek the sign of the smoking eye", a mysterious plane-wanderer asks for their help in completing a series of test to redeem an abandoned layer of the Abyss.
• Secrets of the Soul Pillars By Jesse Decker, Dungeon #109. After several assassins attempt to kill the heroes, they are traced back to the temple of Wee Jas. After assaulting the temple and fighting its undead inhabitants, they are led to an ancient frozen spell weaver complex, where a powerful oracle is guarded by a horrific undying dragon.
• Lords of Oblivion By Christopher Perkins, Dungeon #111. An ally of the heroes is kidnapped and taken to a safe house of the Last Laugh, Cauldron's thieves guild. Once they break in and rescue him from the den of thieves, they learn of a secret meeting among some of the realm's most horrific criminals at a noble's mansion. In addition, their beholder overlord is practicing unholy rituals in the complex below.
• Foundation of Flame By Chris Thomasson, Dungeon #113. The Cagewrights begin their plans in earnest now, awakening the volcano on which Cauldron is built. Spewing lava, earthquakes, and collapsing buildings require the heroes help to get everyone evacuated. Worse, demodands begin to emerge from a planar rift already building, and a certain local dragon gets riled up by it all.
• Thirteen Cages By Chris Thomasson, Dungeon #114. The heroes must march on the Cagewrights' headquarters, in the heart of a volcano, before their ritual is complete and a permanent gate to Carceri is opened above Cauldron.
• Strike on Shatterhorn By Christopher Perkins, Dungeon #115. What few Cagewrights remain must be hunted down and exterminated in their jungle retreat.
• Asylum By Christopher Perkins, Dungeon #116. When the twisted mind of Adimarchus, imprisoned Demon Prince of Madness, leaks into Occipitus and begins resurrecting his followers, the heroes realize they must go to the otherworldly asylum of Skullrot where Adimarchus is imprisoned and destroy him utterly.

During the course of the adventure, the city is nearly destroyed by an eruption of the volcano under it, which is triggered by magical forces. Shattered, but still inhabited, the city of Cauldron still exists at the end of the adventure.

Awards

The hardcover expanded collection of the Shackled City Adventure Path won three ENnie awards at the 2006 Gen Con Game Fair, taking home the gold award for Best Adventure and Best Campaign Setting/Supplement as well as the silver award for Best Cartography.

References

• Decker, Jesse, James Jacobs, Tito Leati, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins, and Chris Thomasson. The Shackled City (Paizo Publishing, 2005).