I started this post around the time
a thread on the Piazza Mystara forum about Minrothad and its gazetteer began and that thread has certainly influenced this. I may have been overly harsh with
my overview of the Minrothad Guilds. Yes there aren’t the sorts of adventures I am used to. But that does not mean the nation should be dismissed as an oversized trading post.
Should Minrothad have adventures?
This is one idea that was brought up in the Piazza by Cab that caught my attention.
cab wrote: ?Sat Mar 15, 2025 11:54 am
Interesting that responses to this GAZ are so varied. I loved it (I mean, everything's better with pirates), because of what it adds to a campaign almost anywhere across the wider setting. I didn't view it as a setting to base my campaign in, but I wasn't looking for that.
Minrothad isn't a setting to adventure in, at least not much. But its a tremendous toolkit to adventure from, the extended maritime and trade rules are a handy toolkit.
This is a really good take. I’ve had the assumption that each nation visited in the gazetteers was expected to host its own adventures and campaign, with the themes of each campaign depending (at least partially) on the themes and character of the nation. And I think the Gazetteers make that assumption as well. But if we drop the assumption that there ought to be adventures in each nation, then it becomes a question of “What role does this nation play in a Known World campaign?”
Minrothad then becomes a stable, lawful (maybe too lawful in its social structures?) trading nation that has neither the imperial ambitions of Thyatis nor the dangerous northern border of Darokin. As such it has fewer distractions (though there are pirates) from generating money and prosperity. In fact it could be seen as the largest trading fleet in the Sea of Dread and the second largest navy (after Thyatis). Minrothad Merchant Princes could be seen not so much as a PC class so much as powerful and wealthy patrons, like nobility but without so many airs and graces.
This is something to bear in mind - Minrothad city and its islands are not just somewhere to shoehorn adventures into but may play a quite different role in the wider campaign.
Nonetheless in this post I am also considering how to make Minrothad, especially its capital city, could host adventures, even dungeons.
My Changes to Minrothad City
Let’s make it more like Ptolus or Waterdeep or even like Ravnica. It’s still more civilized and organised than the pirate ports of Ierendi such as Vlaad. There are city watch patrols at least in the nice parts of town. The upper parts are well maintained. But there is an underbelly, quite literally.
I'm going to bump up the population of Minrothad city. Page 45 says population across all islands is 280,000, with 25,000 in Minrothad City? Make the city closer to 100,000 people and 300,000 across all the islands. Can food supply cope or do they need new sources of food? I'm going to say that Minrothad as a nation is mostly self-sufficient in food, with both Guild Corser and Guild Quickhand overseeing farming and food production on all the islands, and Guild Eshan bringing in fish. And since Minrothad is famed for its trading prowess and is well-situated to import food from Thyatis, Karameikos, the Five Shires, Ierendi and even Darokin, bringing in food from elsewhere is always an option.
I imagine Minrothad City now having the same layout as the map in the gazetteers, but with a larger scale and therefore larger surface area. Perhaps use the existing map but double all measurements?. The majority of the city is still raised considerably above the water level, contained by a large outer wall. At the water level the city is still surrounded on all sides by the river, with the Seagate leading to an underground harbour. However, the harbour does not extend all the way under the city, but instead takes up a smaller area inside the seagate. The rocky base that Minrothad City sits on is riddled with tunnels, passages and vertical winching shafts that connect the underground docks with the city above, and of course constitute part of the Underbelly (see below).
Minrothad is big, organised and powerful enough to act as a foil against Thyatis and its imperial ambitions, particularly with its privateer navy. Although clearly not enough to take Thyatis on in an all-out one-on-one war, Minrothad would certainly prove a major thorn in the empire's side should war break out. However, as Thyatis is a major trading partner, none of the guilds nor merchant princes want this to happen. Foreign agents, particularly from Thyatis, might seek to influence or destabilise Minrothad. Darokin might even be the bad guy here if they seek to hinder a major trading rival.
The hefty restrictions on foreigners visiting Minrothad needs to be relaxed. Quite bluntly as the gazetteer stands a typical adventuring party sailing from Specularum or Shireton would find Minrothad City more trouble than it is worth if work is so tightly controlled by the guilds. And I really don't think there is enough going on in the Minrothad Islands to justify a campaign for Minrothad-native PCs. Perhaps this is something the current Guildmaster has changed in his recent reforms.
Another look at the guilds.
Established Family Guilds include
- Guild Corser (humans, dealing with various things including magic items)
- Guild Hammer (dwarves, dealing with metal, mining & smithing)
- Guild Verdier (Forest elves, dealing with wood)
- Guild Quickhand (halflings, dealing with leather)
- Guild Elshan (water elves, dealing with ships)
These family guilds will try to protect their monopolies on their various trades, but there are inevitably situations where either independent workers, craftsmen and traders or even members of other guilds will do their own work outside the guild that claims that field. Point in case: food and farming. Although Guild Corser has tried to maintain guild dominance over farming, it cannot stop others from farming. Food is just too important to depend on a single guild for it. However, some within the guilds take their monopolies very seriously and will take drastic action against anybody they see as infringing on their turf. This can seem an overreaction, even nonsensical, to outsiders who do not appreciate how protective guild members can get.
Established Political guilds include
- Tutorial Guild (Wizards) This contains individual members and also orders and circles for mages with similar goals and attitudes. See Orders of mages of Karameikos and apply the same principle to Minrothad, especially those who are not so commercially minded that they would rather join a merchant trader company.
- Mercenary Guild (Fighters). Split into companies, as in commercial companies not necessarily military companies. They are all authorised to act as Minrothad’s militia but some just act as mercenaries.
- Thieves Guild (Thieves!)
- The Privateers
- The Assassins Branch, never officially acknowledged
- Merchant Sailor Guild (including most Merchant-Princes)
Guilds that I have created
- Spiritual Guild (clerics)
- The Gravediggers branch
- The Healers branch
- Guild of Governance (administrators & lawyers)
None of the guilds are entirely evil but some can have their dark side with certain members using their skills and positions for evil or Chaos. These guilds are sanctioned to do certain jobs in Minrothad that need to be done (thieves act as spies, privateers act as navy, gravediggers dig graves and conduct funerals) but within each there are plenty of individuals and groups who go beyond their official remit and into criminal activity. Being in these guilds means the government has given them permission to do some things for the good of Minrothad, but not carte blanche. It is unlikely that the guild will get into so much trouble that the Guildmaster of Minrothad disbands the entire guild, but that is a threat when a guild seems to get out of hand.
One idea is that I don’t need a complete list of guilds and branches. I intend to keep and use established ones but smaller ones can always be invented. In fact one step further, the exact structure of each of the guilds is not that important in most cases. Whether net-makers are part of Guild Elsan or part of their own small guild is not important to most adventurers, unless net-makers become an integral part of an adventure or mystery.
Also it is not necessary to come up with adventure hooks for every guild. Cabinet makers, large shell workers and barding-makers (all found under various family guilds in the gazetteer) are unlikely to be involved in activities that threaten other citizens or involve lootable treasure in way that attract adventurers.
There are also NPC good guys. The White Pennants are part of the mercenary guild and act as the police in Minrothad city. Many of the members of the Spiritual Guild (the Minrothad Church of Law) and Governance Guild are interested in keeping the peace and serving justice. Much of Minrothad City and the surrounding islands are lawful and peaceful because of decent folk like these. In fact most of Minrothad is in stark contrast to the unbridled lawlessness of the pirate ports of Ierendi just over the sea to the west.
I imagine most adventures will occur within the city itself. It simply requires suitable bad guys. These include battling against criminals who will often be members of guilds. They will be vying for political control, money, resources, vengeance and the like. There might be merchant houses and companies that have become centres of chaos worship. In fact chaos cults infiltrating the city at various levels (hiding down in the dungeon-like cellars, pulling strings as guild-masters) could be a major threat to the city. Clashes between guilds over control of trades, territory and sources of income could pull the PCs in.
The Cobra Cabal from my previous Minrothad post is still a thing, not a guild in itself but an organisation or network that infiltrates and corrupts established guilds. Even within the dark guilds the Cobra Cabal has its recruits and agents.
The Underbelly of Minrothad City
There are now dungeons beneath Minrothad city. Like beneath Ptolus or maybe Necromunda or the process of Ditlana in
Empire of the Petal Throne. Not so much specifically excavated as dungeons so much as old levels of the city that have been built over enough times to become buried by newer layers. The Underbelly is the network of sewers, cellars, tunnels, ancient ruins and the like that have gradually expanded over Minrothad's history. And of couse it connects to the underground docks that ships load and offload cargo in. There are a few well-patrolled stairwells that lead directly between the city surface and the docks, but there are also passages leading off these safe routes into far less maintained and far more risky areas.
According to the gazetteer the city of Minrothad was founded about 500 years ago. Actually the gazetteer suggests that it is on the site of "New Alphatia". I'm going with the idea of a blend or patchwork of different cultures, including elven, Nithian, Alphatian and Thyatian, all contributing to the Underbelly's architecture. Like Rome, Athens or Istanbul, the city has been inhabited for a long time and has accumulated a lot of odd architecture.
Although I suppose all sorts of monsters could be found in the Underbelly, I am inclined to imagine it being more human-oriented, with gangs of thieves, bandits, cultists, slavers, evil mages and the like more common than gnolls, hill giants or harpies. It's not exactly impossible for such fantastic monsters to appear, but it does raise questions in my mind "How did it get here underneath a major city on an island?". Creatures that are sometimes found underneath other cities, such as giant rats, carrion crawlers, otyughs and similar scavengers are known to lurk in the Underbelly. Similarly undead and rogue constructs abandoned by their makers are occasionally encountered.
Adventure Hooks in Minrothad
A merchant prince has been feeding information about his rivals to pirates. The PCs are hired to escort one of the rivals ships from Specularum when it is attacked by tipped-off pirates. This could lead back to the merchant prince. The pirate ship actually comes from Vlaad in Ierendi, where the pirates will fence their stolen goods and the merchant prince will sometimes visit to pick up such wares at a reasonable price.
Unscrupulous members of the gravediggers have been passing corpses to a necromancer who has been animating them in his laboratory in the Underbelly. However, some of these have wandered out and attacked sailors and dock workers in the underground harbour. Both merchant princes and the dock-workers branch want this investigated before people die.
A mercenary company is guarding a Chaos cult based down in the Underbelly that has been kidnapping and sacrificing innocent victims from Minrothad City.The cult is led by a senior member of the Guild of Governance. This has come to the attention of some merchant princes but they are not equipped to deal with these situations, and given the cult leader, reporting it to the authorities is unlikely to resolve the problem. As well as the mercenaries the cult has summoned several demons.
A scion of a powerful merchant prince has run away from an arranged marriage into the Underbelly. His father wants him to return to complete the marriage. His mother is okay if he just makes it out of the underbelly alive, and maybe escape to Thyatis or Specularum.
A merchant prince has sponsored an art exhibition in one of the smart areas of the city. As well as attracting a lot of attention from wealthy art collectors, it has been targeted by several gangs of thieves. However, the patron expects this and wants to set a trap to capture the thieves who stole a valuable heirloom and either punish them or retrieve the heirloom.
The PCs are hired by the Cabinet-Maker branch of Guild Verdier to retrieve stolen furniture from a warehouse of a merchant prince. In fact the goods are not stolen but have been crafted in Minrothad but outside of the guild. Therefore as far as Guild Verdier is concerned the furniture is illegal. The merchant prince strongly disagrees and so do his mercenary guards. [this one is to see if I could create an adventure involving Cabinet-makers!]
