A City Lost In Time

Over 100 years ago, this city was THE epicenter of culture, magic, and industry. They mastered the use of Golems in everyday life, magic that could alter and travel through Time, and casual disregard for laws of space, mass, and gravity. Then one day, the entire city was gone, as though it had never been. A few days ago, it reappeared, as though it had never left. It doesn't appear that more than a few hours have passed for the city, except that not a single living person seems to have returned with it.

Your party is hired to head the first treasure-hunt into the abandoned city.

>How prepared is your party?
>What sort of treasures do you find?
>Something is in here with you, and it's hunting you. What is it?
>Where are the people?

>Where are the people?
A giant mass of flesh, bone, and limbs all melded together in the deepest recesses. Upon closer inspection it appears to still be alive.

>How prepared is your party?
Terribly.
First reports say there's nothing living, yes? Then we'd prepare to fend off wildlife that wandered in, not whatever's actually there.

That sounds bad. Is that bad?

Nah, it's fine. They're just chillin'

Do we have any insurances ?

Geico, but their coverage isn't that great.

Can we postpone this for a few days ?
Our party is poorly prepared, those gold is good, but not worth my life

>gold
>not worth my life
Get a load of this faggot.

Damm son, this gonna be a suicide expedition

In situations like this, you really want to be in the third or fourth expedition.
First expedition is doomed because they've got no idea what they're getting into.
Second expedition looks for the first and actually takes notes this time, trying to find out what happened to them. Then most of them get killed by what got the first expedition, but there might be a survivor or two who can come back and provide information.
And the third expedition already has the hard work of figuring out what's dangerous done, and can go through and loot the place with relative ease, reasonably well prepared for the oncoming horrors.
Fourth and later expeditions gradually become less and less worthwhile to go on, while at the same time becoming less and less likely to be fatal.
Third and fourth expeditions are the sweet spots, just enough information that you can go in and not get slaughtered, and plenty of loot to make it worth your while.

Whenever you go dungeon diving into a lost city, what enemy types do you suspect? What types wouldn't you?

there needs to be a line chart of this

I'd play it like Event Horizon, only a city instead of a ship. As a result of a wizard's ritual, the entire city ended up in a hellish dimension and it's citizens slaughtered each other in a feverish, religious, murderous orgy. Their remains have long since decayed as if they'd been there for a hundred years.

As for the city, it's possessed by a demonic entity (or entities). This includes the golems who are initially inert but come alive to stop the players from leaving. Parts of the city also come alive, such as bridges and doors, to impede the players.

The players are constantly assaulted by visions from the demon. This is where you need to dig around in the character backstories, but ultimately the players see revived loved ones, their hearts' desires, etc. Hand out insanity points like candy to even the most stoic of characters.

The city is filled with top-to-toe with arcane treasure but most of it is tainted in one way or another as it is all now extensions of the demon. If the city returns to where it's been then it takes most of the loot back with it.

Speaking of that, whether any PCs fall or not, their NPC guide (perhaps a descendant of the city's citizens) goes mad and tries to recreate the wizard's ritual to send the city back into the hellish dimension. With escape from the city extremely difficult it may be best to try and stop the ritual and find a way out later. Or let the ritual go ahead but find protective magic to avoid being taken as well. Alternatively, the PCs can attempt to exorcise the demon and free the city, but they have to pull all the stops as all the golems swarm to stop them.

This is going to be a disappointing dungeon.

The descriptions of Dwemer ruins and tech in the 4 to 12-page books in Morrowind put the rendered dungeons to shame.

So it's Kharazan minus the everyone dying part?

This is some good shit.

>>How prepared is your party?
They're level 2. They aren't prepared at all.

>>What sort of treasures do you find?
Nothing usable. All of the treasure of the city was in magical lore and tomes of power. Turns out that the party can't make use of this sort of thing. However, it is extremely valuable to those who hired the party, so it works out alright.

>>Something is in here with you, and it's hunting you. What is it?
A quarut, a being that exists to punish those who fuck with the time stream. It is extremely powerful and relentless, as befits its clockwork nature. The party cannot fight it and must instead evade it, somehow.

>>Where are the people?
Truly well and gone. The quarut removed them from the timestream for their transgressions.

They're just playing Twister. like Rem

Well it was still a Bethesda game. I was chuffed to bits to discover ruins mentioned in books, but they invariably turned out to consist of three rooms with some enemies and loot that isn't worth picking up.

...

At first glance, you'd think the Golems would be a source of danger in the city, but on closer inspection that doesn't really make sense.
Nobody in their right mind wants the robot they use to do their dishes or whatever to suddenly up and decide to go on a murdering rampage. Even if there was a police force constructed of golems, you don't want them killing people left right and center without human oversight.

So when does the game start and where do I sign up?

I think we'd do alright depending on just how wierd things got. Moving slow, sweeping the area throughly, sticking together and making sure we have clear lines of retreat and established strong points to fall back to if need be. Until creepy crawlies started clawing their way out of the walls/the golems turn en mass/the city turns out to be alive like we'd be more concerned with other treasure hunters or the city getting ready to disappear than anything else.

>How prepared?
Decently. We'll have magic users to prevent magical fuckery and martials to murderate anything that gets too close.

>Treasures
Obviously powerful artifacts that may or may not deal with time travel and casual disregard for the laws of physics.

>Something is hunting you
Minor Eldritch abominations and strange twisted creatures

>Where are the people?
Either the minor eldritch abomination or the twisted creatures.

Party will be herded to big boss fight against not!Cthulu. Break the curse and so on, get phat lewts.

Basically this, though I'd probably be nicer with the loot.