Myth's Landing - A City '26 Project - Introduction

I'm excited to participate in City '26. This is the 2026 TTRPG/worldbuilding project, inspired by prior years' projects like Dungeon 23. This one was kicked off by Garblag Games and is loosely coordinated by Alone in the Labyrinth. 

Infographic of City26 Challenge by Peter Lattimore

For my City '26 project, I'll be detailing the town of Myth's Landing, setting for my dungeon-lit fantasy novel "The Company" about a group of friends who, without much experience and even less coin, try to start their own adventuring company, The Dungeon Hackers.

For this challenge, I'll be detailing the roughly ten districts that make up Myth's Landing. It's a bustling town, not a sprawling metropolis, so I don't anticipate this project will take me the entire year to complete. 

Welcome to Myth's Landing

Myth's Landing is a hub of adventure, founded as it is just a dozen or so miles from the entrance to the fabled megadungeon known as Mythbarrow. Once just a lakeside fishing village, the Dread Delvers' successful delve of the megadungeon a century ago turned Mythbarrow into an adventurer's boomtown. Today, Myth's Landing is home to numerous adventuring companies as well as a becoming a hub of trade for adventuring gear and goods and artifacts exported from the megadungeon by adventurers.

Myth's Landing sits on the Whistling River, which flows from nearby Lake Ravendark. It is in the foothills across the lake that adventurers can find entrances into the legendary Mythbarrow.

Myth's Landing is nestled in the foothills of the Ravenclaw Mountains at an altitude of roughly 5,000 feet. Travelers from the south typically have to acclimate to the thinner air upon arriving. The region has four distinct seasons. The climate is bitterly cold in the winter as the wind howls down from the mountains and the lake freezes. In the summer it is warm and sticky as the humidity rolls off the nearby lake. 

From late fall through the winter, most adventuring companies close and adventurers leave the city to venture south to warmer climes for vacation in Astrofall or to brave adventure in the Boiling Wastes or inside the Hexed Obelisks. They return each spring for Mythgate, the festival celebrating the re-opening of Myth's Landing, and the annual Adventurer's Parade, where each company marches along Grand Company Lane with magical floats pulled by monstrous mounts tamed by the adventuring companies. 

Myth's Landing's primary industry is adventuring, a form of tourism. Most of the locals work in industries related to goods and services for adventurers: of course that means weaponsmiths, armorers, traders in rope and ten-foot-poles and the like. But it also means courtesans, tavernkeepers, temples, tailors, stable workers, porters, and more. Many adventurers, especially those of the more notable Adventuring Companies, come from more wealthy families, often from outside the region, whose children can afford to go galivanting into dungeons. But there are smaller Adventuring Companies as well - some of these are less-reputable organizations involved in crime as much as adventuring, others are just small startups of a few capable adventurers trying to scrape enough gold from the dungeon to pay for their gear and cover the cost of a business license.

As home to adventurers from across the land, Myth's Landing is a diverse place, filled with people of many different heritages and ethnicities. While humans and halflings were native to this land, the town is also populated with elves, dwarves, gnomes, half-gnomes, orcs, goblins, and even the occasional ogre. Rarely, kobolds, hobgoblins, and lizardfolk may venture out of Mythbarrow to trade.

The Thieves' Guild in Myth's Landing is an influential organization, heavily involved in bribery, corruption, theft, prostitution, and smuggling of illegal artifacts. But the Shadow Dwarf Cabal, coming from the Underdoom beneath Mythbarrow, is trying to move in on their territory with their darker trades of extortion, murder, humanoid trafficking, and slavery.

Myth's Landing is governed by an elected governor and a town council with representatives from the adventurer's guilds, the local churches, the mercantile guild, the constabulary, other trade guilds, and even a representative for the tribes and factions within Mythbarrow itself, who aims to ensure the megadungeon isn't completely pillaged and all its denizens slaughtered in an organized raid.

Myth's Landing is a place where adventuring has gone from its scrappy roots to becoming a booming industry capable of supporting its own cottage industries. The biggest adventuring companies hire risk analysts for their risk management departments, contract out with the Guild of Hirelings and Henchpeople, keep lawyers on staff for dealing with terse contractual territory negotiations with rival companies, and pay for resurrection insurance policies for their most notable and valued members.

Notable Adventuring Companies still operating in the town include Skull and Crossbows, Hell's Hammers, The Jade Stabbers, Seekers of the Wyrm, the Gleamers, and the Golden Ogres. The Dungeon Hackers company is the subject of my recent novel, a small startup scraping by on loans from questionable business partners.

In each subsequent post, I'll be detailing a separate district in Myth's Landing. Detailed geography isn't important to me, but I may attempt to scrawl some crude maps simply to show relationships and proximities of different districts and features as I go on. 

I'll be riffing on the suggested City '26 topics since this is intended as worldbuilding for novels rather than strictly TTRPGs. I plan to cover:

- What is the principle feature in the district? Any prominent monuments or buildings?

- Who lives or works there? Are they rich or poor? What are the demographics?

- What is the architectural style? How does it look and feel and smell and sound?

- Why do people come to that ward?

- What kinds of things are happening there in the day? What kinds of things happen at night?

- What goods or services are available? Black market or legal? How are prices established?

- What do people do for fun in this district? For work? 

- What are the key factions that have influence in this district? How do they influence the district? Who are they in conflict with? How do the citizens feel about the factions in power?

- Who are prominent characters located in the district? What role do they play? What factions are they aligned with or against?

- What might be relevant or interesting here for the Dungeon Hackers? 

That's it for this Introduction! The first district I'll present will be Grand Company Lane, coming up next week.