Introduction
Ah,
Dancamort: the Granite Metropolis, the City of Sin and Splendour, the Diamond in the Depths. The land of the last huzzah, if you will. This has been one of my most-requested guides for years, and I am—as always—but a humble serf in my readers' fiefdom. That said, though I knew a comprehensive guide to good old Hadestown would inevitably find its way into my ouevre, I never looked forward to writing it. You see, I'm not terribly fond of holes in the ground—and despite all its accoutrements, Dancamort is, precisely, that. They've made a rather ingenious go of sprucing it up over the years, though, turning real estate once coveted only rats and eels into a veritable rainbow of higher comforts.
Area Overview
There is one major route in and out of Dancamort: the harbor at the delta of the
River Styx. Boats sail to and fro regularly from most major ports, including
Cantonova,
Port Nabucco,
Brightwater, and
Archvale. My Scaladosian readers should take note that it's difficult to charter a boat directly there from
Undacítta or
Enchalmida, and none leave regularly from those ports.
Nature-lovers, don't expect to be able to take a respite from the slumberless hustle and bustle of King
Hades's mortal domain. The great outdoors is quite inaccessible from Dancamort, unless you happen to be blessed with the means to travel vertically into the air. Even if your wingéd boots
can carry you up the ventilation shafts and out into the landscape above, you'll be sorely disappointed by the rewards. The surface of
Hadesia blazes like Avernus in the summer sun, freezes over like Stygia at the first whiff of winter, and rages with the winds of Pandemonium throughout the year.
And yet, miracle of miracles: the city itself is comfortably cool year-round, and even the most future-blind
Diviner can confidently predict a zero percent chance of precipitation. The caverns, hewn with great craft and effort from the basalt earth, rarely resemble their original earthen form. Many are lushly carpeted, alluringly tiled, hung with rich curtains and tapestries, and bathed in continuous magical light at all hours of the day. (Of note is the peculiar timekeeping system of the city; time is measured not in hours, nor in the position of the hidden sun, but by a series of ten clangorous bell tones that echo throughout most of the city. They ring about as often as you'd want to eat: fourth bell is lunchtime, third bell is elevenses, second bell is second breakfast, and first bell is entirely too early for all of that bell noise.)
Landmarks
Your first stop in town will be the great gates of Dancamort, unless you happen to be traveling via teleportation circle. The gaping maw of the mountain is adorned with a spectacularly tall sculpture of hundreds of writhing, screaming, clawing souls desperate to get in (or perhaps out). It's a stunning work of art, and remarkably preserved, given it dates back to the years shortly after the dawn of the current Age. (One must suppose, from looking at the torturous detail on the sculpture, that the psychiatric therapy which the artist clearly needed had not quite been invented yet.)
By dint of its positioning directly across the entrance to town, the Stygian Market will be any travelers' first stop, and it is certainly a worthy one, if a little less uniquely Hadesian than some of the points of interest further down this list. Its prices are shockingly reasonable for a tourist hub, unless one wishes to purchase fresh fruit or flowers, in which case they are merely shocking. Nevertheless, any souvenirs you wish to purchase—from costume jewelry to commemorative daggers—are found here in great abundance.
The casinos in the city are abundant, with many specialized to their needs. The Olympiana Casino attracts a luxurious clientele, with more than enough gold to spend and lose. Old-money aristocrats more often frequent the Royal Jochaastan to bet on its chess grandmasters. Merchant-class families often alight at Tiamat's Tavern, which combines small-bets dice gaming with an all-you-care-to-eat (which, given the bland and oily menu, may not be much) buffet.
And of course, I must mention the
Grand Plutonia Casino, the largest venue of its kind—in fact, I would hardly call anything else outside Dancamort "of its kind" at all! The behemoth of a place is its own little neighborhood, really, complete with eateries and lodging (more on those later) alongside the multiple vast gambling floors. Between the tantalizing games of chance, the intoxicating music (and beverages), and the fascinating and attractive strangers, it is altogether dangerously easy to lose one's sense of time and self wandering its halls.
But if you (somewhat improbably) have time for one, and only one, of the famous sights of Dancamort, I implore you to skip the casinos and pay a visit to the
Conservatory of Souls. It is, in a word, splendiferous. The extraordinary connection with the earth its caretakers must have, to get such lucious and luminous plants to bloom so happily underground! And once a week, the garden glows—not with the bioluminescence of the native fungi, but with the souls of Hades' charges, passing through from his realms towards brief respite in Elysium.
Special Events
Nearly every time of year is festive in the caverns below Hadesia. Major gladiator circuits run in July, October, and February, drawing warriors from as far away as
Erdelan and
Cypruvalu. In August, the spectacular
Hall of the Daemon Ascendant is flooded, and sailors simulate grand naval battles each night on the makeshift sea. And while the position of the sun typically matters little in the ever-glowing caverns, Dancamort cashes in on its lack of snow during the Winter
Solstice to host quite the dazzling weeklong music festival.
I spent quite a fair while in Dancamort—as I do all the destinations I visit, so as to get a genuine feel for them. Naturally, this means I stayed for plenty long enough to witness the famed
Blood Moon's Nexus, an event so long held only in whispers.
Reader, I implore you: do not ask what it entails. I wish in this instance that I had not done my due diligence. I simply warn you to stay far, far,
far away.
Food, Drink, and Lodging
Realistically, this section should be titled Drink, Lodging, Drink, Drink, Libations, Potations, Intoxications, More Lodging, More Drinking, and Perhaps A Light Snack If You Look Hard Enough. My editors nixed this title for reasons of brevity and clarity, but I have fought to provide it to you in the body text nonetheless, because I am, above all, a purveyor of truth.
(Editor's note: Fine, Merriweather. This section's long enough already. Just get on with it.) The culinary scene in the city is dismal, heavily weighted towards bland beef-and-mushroom disappointments salted with an iron fist. Home cooking seems to be the preference among the locals, and even my most knowledgable sources within the city pointed me primarily towards the restaurants within the sprawling Grand Plutonia Casino.
Now, given that one of the Grand Plutonia's advertised points of attraction is its wide variety of fine dining, you'd think they would have employed a halfling chef, or at least someone with some semblance of our refined taste buds. My dearest reader, how I regret to inform you that this seems not to be the case! I was horribly disappointed to discover that "fine dining" overwhelmingly did not mean "dining of a high quality" but rather something more like "fine, I will admit that this technically constitutes dining." Rather than waste your all-too-fleeting life with the minutiae of every restaurant's abundant libations and paltry, underherbéd sandwiches, I offer a short and simple list of the highlights and lowlights of the complex.
- Best: Passata Grill. Pricey even for a steakhouse, this establishment caters towards holders of box seat season tickets at the Planetar Lounge next door. The upcharge seems to go not just towards the striking décor and near-wizardly bartenders, but towards supplementing the much-lauded meats with the freshest produce ever to grace these dismal caverns. If you manage to get a reservation (a difficult feat, particularly during the busy seasons), arrive hungry: you'll want to enjoy the world-class bleu-cheese-and-bacon wedge salad to the fullest before your steak frites arrive. And be sure to linger after your meal, not for the chance of spotting a local luminary—which I'm told is quite common here—but for the extraordinary pear crème brûlée.
- Worst: Lounge Lucifera. One evening (or morning?) in my travels, at gods only know what hour of the blasted Hadesian bell system, I found myself wandering the eastern wing of the Grand Plutonia, with my stomach crying out for aid and my senses well addled by a particularly nasty round of luck at the Threestone tables. Lounge Lucifera, with its nest of inviting seating and its marvellous bluish-green glow, seemed to be the destination du jour. Alas, the only nourishment I found was the bouquets of fruit perched on the rim of its adventurous cocktails, and a bowl of heavily-salted (and not even complimentary!) mixed nuts. I persisted in sampling the menu for the sake of scientific inquiry, but I recall little of the taste and far too much of the violent illness I had upon waking. Drink may be a gift of the gods, but I would wager far more than I spent at the Plutonian that the hangover was an element of the package added by Asmodeus before his fall.
- Most Surprising: Longtime readers know I am well fond of Scaladosian cuisine, and so I was delighted to find the Taste of Arborea eatery tucked amongst the threestone tables. Though its teas were refreshing and its breads were mostly up to the wood elven standard, I doubt many wood elves would quite recognize the dishes Taste of Arborea serves as "authentic." Who has ever heard of an ornëramen stew with lamb? Who is General Tso, and from whence comes his vaguely Scaladosian-spiced chicken?
- Least Surprising: Wherever there are humans behaving wildly, there are worshippers of Dionysus. And wherever there are worshippers of Dionysus, there is inevitably a Dinny's. If you find yourself losing track of mealtimes during a night of dice and dancing, stuck with a grumbling stomach at gods-know-which-bell, and with no patience to brave the lines for the Passata Grill, Dinny's sadly may well be your best bet. (I say this meaning no ill will towards the fine worshippers of Dionysus, but simply with the full awareness that it does not require divine intervention to properly fry two eggs and a rasher of bacon, a feat that Dinny's accomplishes nearly eight out of ten times it attempts.)
Safety
Fear not the scaremonger's tales of Dancamort as a haven for ghouls, ghosts, and fiends. Your intrepid explorer here sought out even the darkest, seediest parts of town, looking quite explicitly for trouble, and received nary a whiff nor a flicker of Hell's creatures daring to cross his path.
What I
did receive, however, was an uncomfortable jostling from a trio of Chainguards who mistakenly thought I had skimped on the toll for the town transportation (which I would never! Though at two silver per voyage, it's a tad steep). They were quite violent and most ungentlemanly in their approach; I escaped by apologizing profusely and offering to pay twice over for my supposed transgression, but I'd imagine a gentlehalfling of lesser means might not otherwise escape such a situation without a scrape or two from their formidable scythes.
It is my esteemed opinion that these
Chainguard brutes—who seem to be the official policing force of the city—pose quite a bit more danger to the average traveler than the creepy-crawlies of myth and legend, which I have found to be altogether absent. That said—when you see a bright spot from the ventilation shafts above, do keep a weather eye out for falling stalactites. Some of them, I'm told by the locals, have rather nasty teeth.
Final Thoughts
Despite my objections—the abysmal cuisine, the draconian law enforcement, the interminable subterranean gloom—I do still understand the common impulse to see the sights of Dancamort at least once in one's lifetime. All I ask is that you be honest about yourself as to why you wish to travel to Dancamort. Is it for the glorious art and architecture? You're better off taking in the extraordinary spires of the
Citadel of the Wild, the marble arches of
Val-Nurem, or even the silver-veined caverns of
Straoskern. Is it for the luxurious shopping? I would steer you instead towards
Kyolondë's
Témamírëa or
Cantonova's
Duomo te-Arwë. Is it for the dancers, the drink, the gambling, and the guilty thrill of decadence hidden away from eyes of most gods? Then enjoy your paradise, dear traveler, and may the dice roll in your favor.
About the Author
Merriweather Jaunt, aka "The Homesick Halfling," is an award-winning travel writer whose books have reached thousands across the continent. He has written over two dozen guides, including best-sellers "(The Homesick Halfling's Guide to) Brightwater" and "(The Homesick Halfling's Guide to) Cantonova, Vol. 1 and 2." The Homesick Halfling is proud to say he has only been kidnapped by ogres twice.
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