Cauldron (Shackled City)

Cauldron is the primary setting in the Shackled City Adventure Path, a collection of adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. The city is nominally located in the World of Greyhawk, though it is designed to be easily adapted to other campaign settings.

Shackled City's impact on Cauldron

The Adventure Paths were published by Paizo Publishing as serials of 12 modules, one adventure per issue over the course of a year. Before the publication of the Shackled City Adventure Path, Cauldron was an obscure part of the Greyhawk landscape without significant background or development. In the Adventure Path, the city was expanded greatly, and became the center of multiple plot threads within the overall evolving Greyhawk lore that Paizo developed, eventually dovetailing with the later Adventure Path, Age of Worms which was initially centered on a city not far from Cauldron.

The Adventure Paths were widely lauded throughout the industry, and the collected issues of Shackled City, including extensive background and location notes on Cauldron and its residents, were nominated for multiple ENnies in 2006.^[1]

Geography and population

Located in the caldera of a dormant volcano, Cauldron is a medium-sized city. The city has extensive sub-terrainian caverns that connect at various places to the Underdark.

In the World of Greyhawk, the city is set in the Hellfurnaces, near the Amedio Jungle, east of the Sea of Dust, and southwest from the Azure Sea and Jeklea Bay.

In the Forgotten Realms, the city is set somewhere on the Chultean Peninsula in the Jungle of Chult.

History

The city of Cauldron was founded by Surabar Spellmason around 500–600 years before the nominal "present day" in the campaign.

References

• Decker, Jesse, James Jacobs, Tito Leati, David Noonan, Christopher Perkins, and Chris Thomasson. The Shackled City (Paizo Publishing, 2005).