His Majesty The Worm - The City and The Underworld

20 Aug, 2025

Finders VII, Out With You!

In His Majesty the Worm, a big city where everything happens finds a gate to hell - and promptly decides to crusade for treasure. This is a pretty terrible idea and gets a lot people killed. But for 50 years, guilders have been running in and out to get rich and attain their dreams.

This is the game i am running for 12 sessions, a game of OSR styled dungeon crawling with an innovative card based crawling system. Our Six Brave Guilders delve into the depths of THE UNDERWORLD and try to find their hearts desires.

The Underworld

Here's what I know about the underworld right now:

Around 50 years ago workers in the Lower Ossuary found a staircase down to Floor 2 into the megadungeon.
From Floor 2 Onwards, The Underworld are places and spaces in the world that have went missing mysteriously. It's a literal kind of underworld.
The scribe of the underworld is named Geshtinanna (Gesht-in-anna)
His Majesty the Worm is the sleeping god at the bottom of the dungeon. If he awakens, it will be bad.

The Layout

So What's the layout of the dungeon? There's 5 floors at the moment, though that can shift both as a city event or if I feel like it. It's also being built in play, with only one floor ready at game start.

The Lower Ossuary - The Sewers of the city mixed with an ancient temple to the cult of Mythris, the human religion.
The Dry Ocean - A Vast Ocean, dried up and left to salt - which was dragged into the underworld.
The Library Heretical - Burned Books are preserved in the library heretical.
The City of Ruin - The First City, named for the event it defined.
??? (Demense of the Worm)

1 has a steep fall to 5, 2 has a link to 4 and 3 stands alone... for now.

The City

The Griffin King reigns. You can often see him and his knights astride their monstrous steeds, riding the air currents to the upper ramparts of his Three-Faced Castle!

With this omen, we pulled the rest of the districts.

Starfall Pitt

When the star fell, everybody blamed the sorcerers. They did it. Them and their foul magics. It devastated most of the City. Those that lived had to flee the smoke and the dust. But—in time—many came back. They rebuilt. The City is eternal. But few dared go near the Starfall Pit. Few who did returned. Those who returned came back...wrong.

Court of the Grail

The Cult of Mythrys is a mystery religion, and its unknowable nature is mirrored in the Cult’s center of power, a district called the Court of the Grail. There are twenty-one initiations in the Cult. The higher initiations are wholly unknown to the lower initiates. As such, it is like many religions jumbled together, as reflected in the myriad temples of this district.

The Mortuary of the God-Kings

When the ancient god-kings died, their holy bodies were interred in the Mortuary of the God-Kings to be worshiped. When the Mythric faith took hold of the City, this pagan shrine was re-dedicated to martyrs and martyrdom. As such, it is a common place of pilgrimage for would-be crusaders.

The building is a testament to the limits of architecture. It boasts an enormous, free-standing dome and a veranda of Doric columns. Beneath the flagstones, all of the god-kings of old are buried. Enormous statues bearing their stylized half- animal, half-human seemings are set in alcoves around the main dome.

Master Hugo Underhill’s Menagerie

Hugo Underhill is a corpulent glutton that sponsors a large circus and menagerie. His main attractions are monsters and fantastic beasts captured and brought up from the Underworld. These attractions are hosted on his private estate, a large natural preserve and greenspace in the utterly urbanized center of the Wide World. Is it incredibly irresponsible to jam some of the deadliest and most magical creatures into cages and let the public come view them for a few gold? Absolutely. Still, here we are.

The Vinegar District

The City has taverns and winesinks at just about every corner and intersection. However, by far the greatest concentration of bars is in the Vinegar District. Extending thirteen blocks, the Vinegar District is famous for fermented food and beverages of all kinds, with each tavern having its own specialty. Somewhere in this district, you can buy fermented rat’s milk as well as “distilled regret,” “mermaid’s tears,” and “literal human blood.” You’re not sure that the bartenders are joking about those names.

Hangman's Hill

Hangman’s Hill is the district that executioners have historically used for their grim work. At the hill’s summit, an ancient, hunchbacked gallows stands. Peasants and princes, heretics and saints have all found death here. Whenever there’s an execution, folk from all over the City attend. The district’s street vendors and thermopolia are particularly famous because of this. Otherwise, the district is somewhat lonesome. The few natives are strange, reclusive, and just a little canny.

Street of Heretics

The Cult of Mythrys is the predominant religion in the City, but it is by no means the only one. The Veneration of the Feathered Swine, the Followers of Issek of the Jug, the Cult of the God Twins, the elven Tripartite, and dozens of other faiths have significant numbers of adherents. These fringe religious communities gather on the Street of Heretics. Congregating in a single district allows these minority communities to avoid persecution and political pressures elsewhere. Because each sect is more or less in the same boat, they are remarkably tolerant of each other.

The Gambol

The Gambol is a district perched like a carrion crow atop the City. It consists of ramshackle bridges spanning chimneys, attics, and garrets. Its residents spend days, perhaps even weeks, never setting foot on solid ground. There’s an old adage that runs, “People never look up.” As such, the Gambol is favored by those who want to disappear: debtors, revolutionaries, and deposed tyrants from foreign lands. Other than the fact that it is an aerial district populated by the incognito, the Gambol is a normal place. It participates in commerce, celebrates weddings, and pays taxes like every other district.

The Curio's Curia

Everybody knows that anything can be bought or sold at the Omphalic Market. However, that’s not entirely true. Some things are illegal, even in the eagerly permissive City. Seditious materials, false coinage, human chattel, and dangerous sorcerous artifacts are never traded in the Omphalic Market. The answer to economic constraint is the black market. In the City, this takes the form of the Curio Curia, a shadow economy for any illicit good. Some of the things traded here are truly vile.

The Court of Coins

In a lonely quarter of the City is a foreboding building: a strange temple to an unworshipped god. This is the Court of Coins. The name refers both to the fane itself and the organization that dwells there.

The Court of Coins is the preeminent guild of assassins. (There are a few others— the Drownies, the Hashashin, the Cat’s Paws—but none as ancient, noble, or famous.) They reasonably claim that all things have a price—even a life. If they are given the appropriate fee for the life, they consider that life forfeit. It is said they have never failed. However, the fees they ask are enormous. You could usually raise a small mercenary army for the price of a humble merchant’s head.

#HMTW