Borough Bound

Yllmourne 01 - Boom and Bust (Patreon)

Published:

2023-05-18 18:47:43

Imported:

2023-07

Content

This city ain't what it used to be

Hey all, and welcome to Borough Bound's newest city! Yllmourne is a newly busy port town, bustling in a post-war industrial boom. Of course, not everything is peachy keen in the dreary harbor: criminals and pirates have the town in an icy grip, the bordering nations threaten to annex the free city, and sinister forces linger deep beneath the mountain.

Yllmourne will consist of five total releases, taking us through the middle of June. Let's dive in!

Borough Guide

Our first document introduces you to Yllmourne, the Dreglian Channel on which it sits, and the political scenario in which the city finds itself. We also meet three of the key players in town, characters who will shape countless events to come.

This first borough guide also introduces you to the primary conceit of this setting: the Secret Dispatch. Throughout our guides, we'll periodically present optional plot variants for you to skew the narrative in one of three directions: dark fantasy, pirate adventure, or political intrigue. Pepper these plot wrinkles into your story as you see fit to present a tailored version of Yllmourne that suits your GMing style.

Maps

This first map is the northwest corner of Yllmourne. Farmers grow what pathetic crops they can in the salty soil, ramshackle platforms connect the poorly organized rooftops, and town hall rises up above the neighboring structures. We have a suite of useful variants for this map as well: misty, rainy, summer, winter, low tide, and Shadowfell.

Patrons at the Chief Courier tier and higher gain access to four floors of the town hall. At some point, your players are almost guaranteed to sneak into this town center, so make sure you've got these maps handy for when they do!

Music

Yllmourne is full of idiosyncratic urban flavor, and crime rules the day, so we had to whip out that cinematic "dirty gang city" music for this one. "Secret Dispatch" perfectly exemplifies the atmosphere in Yllmourne: hammered strings play a mysterious melody while distant horns honk some crunchy harmonies. For a more rhythmic and less melodic version of the track, throw on the "Bad City" variant.

Dreglian Channel Map | Collaboration with Deven Rue

It's hard to come to grips with Yllmourne without getting a sense for its greater geography. That's why we teamed up with legendary cartographer Deven Rue to create this stellar regional map. Deven is one of the most prolific and well-known cartographers in fantasy, most notably making maps for Critical Role and Wizards of the Coast. We were so lucky she was interested in helping us bring Yllmourne to life with this awesome map.

If you want to support Deven Rue, you can grab her maps from her website or support her on Patreon.