Borough Bound

Nulvarith 01 - The Shattered Realm

Added 2025-04-30 23:16:31 +0000 UTC

The ritual was a success, but the world is just... gone

Greetings all, and welcomed to our newest borough: Nulvarith! This is a fractured world, a great magical civilization torn apart by some arcane cataclysm. Now, unlikely forces have amassed among the planet shards, and conflict seem inevitable. Weird plants sustain life, ghosts haunt crystal mines, and inscrutable mouthless aliens might be the key to everything.

Nulvarith is one of our zanier settings, a slice of true pulp fantasy. We've got some awesome variant maps for it, a heap of bonus music, and a story that your players will obsess over unraveling. We will explore the setting over the course of four releases, with a quick break for Hauthell - Definitive Edition along the way. Let's dive in!

Borough Guide

This first borough guide introduces you to the most important player in the events of Nulvarith: Archmage Alvist Treblyn. Elseridge-trained Alvist discovered this world, teleported to it, and now plans to mine the broken planet for its energy-rich crystals. This document explains the basics of Nulvarith, including some GM tips specific to the nature of your party, the essential tidbits about gravity / atmosphere / food / shelter / etc., and a brief overview of the factions. We then provide everything you need to know about that jerk Alvist and his wonky tower. The plot hook sees your party either killing the archmage, convincing him to return home, or working alongside the adventurers.

Maps

This first map is all about the Antipode (the location where Alvist and his crew first arrived in Nulvarith) and Alvist's Automatic Wizard Tower. This goofy tower is likely to be the centerpiece of many Nulvarith adventures, either a climactic dungeon or the site where the party takes orders from the despotic wizard. We've got an exciting batch of variants for ya: Dark (as opposed to night... y'know, cause of outer space), Desert, Underwater, Storm, Storm Aftermath, Spooky, and Asteroid (aka "non-magical space")

Our interior map selection for Nulvarith 01 is, of course, Alvist's complex lair. This multi-floor dungeon will piss your players off endlessly, as all good wizard towers should. A maze, laboratory, orrery, and observatory each serve as perfect locales for set-piece encounters.

Music

Archmage is pure pulp fantasy. Cheesy horns, mysterious strings, twinkling bells, big clash cymbals. This is a theme song for a conniving antagonist, great for frustrating confrontations with the arcane bastard. Use the Wizard Tower variant during quieter dungeoneering sessions.

Chief Courier tier patrons also get access to two bonus tracks! These are somewhat quirky, outer space variants of old Music d20 tracks:

Duel Compulsion (Orrery) is one of the stranger atmospheric tracks we've released, a highly filtered, mysterious, meandering track. Perfect for slow puzzle-solving or focused play!
Seven Stars of Arkus (Antipode) is more traditional science-fantasy. It is melancholy and ethereal, but also quasi-Medieval. It's the just the right track for this outer space setting that is still squarely in the realm of pulp fantasy.