And now you have introduced a new generation of #ttrpg players to the existence of this game.

You fiend!

They were fascinated by the fork.

Or possibly disgusted. Either way is good. 😁

There were some naturally-occurring caves, but also the following:

• Some eldritch horrors sleeping in the deepest caverns beneath the city who act as a “lodestone” for evil creatures, compelling them to come here.
• An ancient cleric once attempted to build a massive vault here as a safe depository for evil artifacts. He became corrupted by them, and turned into the first Evil Overlord.
• Much later on, a second Evil Overlord appeared who wanted the secrets of the first Evil Overlord. He expanded the caves and turned them into his military headquarters for his conquering horde of monsters.
• There was also a major dwarf hold here at some point before they abandoned it.
• There is an entire drow city deep beneath the surface.
• Assorted other groups of monsters keep showing up and making themselves at home.
• Oh, and the current incarnation of the city has been built on top of this, which includes a massive sewer system that is gradually breaking down from lack of maintenance.

The whole dungeon system has developed over the course of more than 8,000 years. The general inclination of the citizens above is to wall off any entrances they find, and otherwise let adventurers deal with it. (This is another unique aspect about this city - it’s the only one on the continent which has a professional class of adventurers.)

As for the Thieves’ Guild, they tend to grease a lot of palms in the city watch, so they don’t have to worry much from law enforcement unless they do something too blatant. However, there is a new criminal organization which is giving them a lot of trouble, and there are a lot of adventurers around, so they do have reasons to take their security seriously.

The guild have mages in their employ who could help with magical security, but none of them is present in this safe house.

The main headquarters are elsewhere, but the guild maintains lesser safehouses in most districts of the city.

But you are right, I haven’t put much thought into whether this is a hub for activities or a place to lay low. I’d say it’s primarily the former.

The city of Ptolus has a long and convoluted backstory, and is known across much of the continent as “that weird city with all the dungeons and adventurers”. Suffice to say, there are reasons why the region attracts all kinds of supernatural creatures, and there were many, many different groups of people and creatures who expanded these dungeons.

If you like the whole concept of “dungeon delving mixed with city adventures”, I can highly recommend Ptolus. Few do it better, or more exhaustively.

Thanks, these are excellent and very helpful!

A good fit, thanks!

Done. Thanks for the suggestion!

For anyone wondering about the photo, I believe this is the Catacombes underneath Paris. I visited it 2 weeks ago, it really looks like this. I am fairly sure this is a really photo.

Indeed it is, as I have mentioned in the Alt Text. 😉

I think I remember starting reading their campaign notes at some point, but I didn’t finish them! Thanks for reminding me!

Reminds me of the time when my Ulfen human Skald in the Pathfinder Giantslayer campaign died and was reincarnated by the party druid as an ysoki - more commonly known as “ratfolk”.

This was not something he expected, but he reasoned: “I have never been ashamed of who I am for a single day in my life, and I am not going to start now!”, and thus he rolled with it and stayed in that form for the rest of the campaign.

An addendum: I just discovered the SRD for Level Up: Advanced 5E by EN Publishing. And the document for NPCs does have simplified stat blocks which include spell descriptions for many NPCs!