The City of Xenby is set in a rural (almost Ruritanian) landscape on the world of Delta. It is famous for its university. Any resemblance to Oxford or Cambridge is entirely coincidental, as it's really based on the Germanic universities to be found in Ruritanian romances and operettas.
Xenby is a medium-sized city. It is one of many cities of a similar size on the continent to the east of Atlantis; it is unique amongst them in that it has a noted magical university.
The university buildings are ancient and decrepit; they are built amongst and around a complex of even more ancient megaliths.
The University is governed by the Pedagogical Council. The constitution of this council is communist and feminist, and is ignored by everyone. The council is riven by factionalism and is unable to make any but the most straightforward decision. Members of the council carry expensive ornamental daggers as symbols of their status. (The daggers are completely useless for any practical purpose, but this additional symbolism is unintentional.)
Xenby University mints its own coin, the gold hyperpyron. The Pedagogical Council likes to think that because these coins are backed by the University they have value greater than the value of the metal. The nominal value of a gold hyperpyron is 2gp. Outside the University, anyone but the most gullible treats it as having a value of 1gp.
Outside the university, the city is also riven by factionalism, so the Pedagogical Council, useless as it is, provides the nearest thing Xenby has to a government.
The people of Xenby are of mixed stock, having both Atlantean and continental ancestry. The customs of the city are unique, owing little either to Atlantean or to continental traditions.
Practitioners of many unusual crafts can be found in and near the marketplace. Many of these crafts are connected with gemstones or jewellery, and some involve creating items which project illusions.
One of the reasons why the University of Xenby has so many vacancies (and why so many of the academics there are keen to leave) is that it leaks wild magic.
I'll put a table up in due course. In the mean time, see below.
Although this setting is aimed mainly at characters with a scholastic background, there are enough laboratory accidents with wild magic to keep characters of all classes busy.
There are several wizards at the University of Xenby. Most of them are either illusionists or invokers (there are reasons why the Institutes of Atlantis have lured away other specialists but not illusionists or invokers, but those reasons are to do with Atlantis, not to do with Xenby).
Most of the illusionists and invokers can cast wild magic spells (and have an additional opposition school to balance this). Assume that they have a rather higher chance of generating wild surges than do proper wild mages.
Selmarina Zencina, the Deputy Director of the Department of Wild Magic, is one of the few specialist wild mages.
(AD&D-Specific: ) Selmarina Zencina, human female, 14th level wild mage, Str 16 Dex 13 Con 15 Int 16 Wis 15 Cha 13, Hp 45, Align neutral good.
Like all wild mages, Selmarina Zencina is a disaster area on legs. She seems to be lucky - so far, the disasters have always happened to other people.
Selmarina Zencina looks to be in her late thirties. She is rather plump but still quite pretty, apart from her luminous pink hair, which she thinks looks cute and anyone with any taste at all thinks is ghastly. She is more interested in research than in people (she quite likes other people in principle, but doesn't have much in common with them), and would welcome assistance with the administration of the department.
And where, you may ask, is the Director of the Department? Any answer NPCs give to this question will be evasive. A laboratory accident turned him into a frog, and he hopped off before anyone could catch him. No-one knows his current whereabouts, or even if he is still alive.
(Space reserved for scenario information.)
Scenario under construction: North Gods Valley.
Scenario under construction: Purple People Eaters.
Opryroman Masud, the Caliph of Agvhazar, is honest but incompetent. What he says is true to the best of his knowledge. He is in his early twenties, rather idealistic, and very inexperienced in the ways of the world.
(AD&D-Specific: ) Opryroman Masud, human male, 1st level fighter, Str 18(98) Dex 7 Con 15 Int 9 Wis 10 Cha 14, Hp 4, Align lawful good.
Provided that one takes off at sunup and heads in the right direction, it is possible to fly to any of the suggested destinations (Atlantis, Omnatia or Thoqmaxar) on Masud's flying carpet during the hours of daylight. But only just.
Remember that flying carpets are not heated. Characters must dress warmly for long-distance flights or suffer the consequences.
Xenby suffers from wild magical surges caused partly by over-active research magicians and partly because over the course of time so many spells have been cast in the city that reality itself is only provisional. Since most of the problems suffered by ordinary citizens of Xenby can only be put right by magicians, magicians are considered to be very important people. It is this status in society, rather than pay or working conditions, which attracts research magicians to Xenby.
Anywhere in the city, at any time, knots may tie or untie themselves. Residents of the city have learned from experience not to wear clothing which relies on knots, and not to have ropes or anything else which may knot itself on their persons.
The foundations of the city are crumbling. Dwarves have been called in to fix them, but they are fighting a losing battle. The dwarves do not like wild magic and do not like Xenby and are not trying all that hard, so it is likely that Xenby will start to collapse in the next few years.
Throughout the city, the light is wrong. There are unusual patches of light and dark. The light is too bright, and the dark is too dark. Shadows are sometimes the wrong side of buildings. Illusory buildings and people appear and disappear at random.
Wild surges are particularly common near the megaliths. In this region of the city, it is common for someone casting a spell on someone else to fall in love with the recipient of the spell, and it is also common for someone casting a spell on himself to polymorph into a random monster.
After a minor explosion in her laboratory, Selmarina Zencina starts glowing. Anyone she meets must save vs magic. If he/she fails, he/she becomes physically a duplicate of Selmarina (Str 16, Dex 13, Con 15, luminous pink hair and all). The first such transformation discharges the wild surge, so only one person will be transformed.
After a minor explosion in her laboratory, Selmarina Zencina starts glowing. Anyone she meets in the next 24 hours must save vs magic. If he/she fails, he/she is held for 28 rounds.
After a minor explosion in her laboratory, Selmarina Zencina starts glowing. Whenever she sings, anyone hearing her must join in (as in the film The Mask). After 24 hours, the glow fades and the power is lost. In the mean time, she keeps getting an irrestistible urge to burst into song.
After a dramatic burst of lightning originating in one of the laboratories, a plant somewhere in the grounds of Xenby University becomes a Dangerous Plant, as in the Monster Manual. Either choose randomly or select one according to taste. Choke Creepers are fun for those of the hack-and-slay tendency.
After a dramatic clap of thunder originating in one of the laboratories, visibility everywhere in Xenby University is reduced to five feet. Reversing this is straightforward, provided that someone can find the right laboratory, but the player characters should not know this until they get there.
A laboratory accident causes everyone in Xenby University to fall soundly asleep, and remain asleep until awakened by someone else or until the following dawn. The player characters might be caught by this, or might return to find that it has happened.
Someone investigating the previous accident unintentionally develops a new strain of grass which causes anyone walking on it to fall asleep. No-one notices until several months later: the new strain has escaped into the wild, and people walking in the park keep falling asleep. Where else has it got to?
A laboratory accident releases a free-willed (and hostile) Air Elemental.
The remains of a failed experiment, washed into the Xenby water supply, causes all rats in the city to double in size.
After a failed experiment, the smell of brimstone fills Xenby University. It's actually just a smell, but work on the player characters' paranoia.
After a silent implosion somewhere in Xenby University, a portal opened to the Plane of Shadow. Everything within the radius of a sphere centred on the portal loses its colour (turning to shades of grey). Every living being within the grey sphere loses 1 HP per round. The radius of the sphere expands by about ten feet per minute. The implosion happened ten or fifteen minutes ago, so the radius of the sphere is already 100 to 150 feet, and no-one knows precisely which laboratory the implosion happened in. If anyone finds the right laboratory in time, destroying the portal should just be a matter of smashing some obvious part of the experiment, but the player characters should not know this beforehand. [ If you want to make it a little more difficult, have shadows come through the portal to fight the player characters. The closer they get to the portal, the more shadows they encounter. ] [ If no-one takes care of this within the first hour, assume that a really powerful NPC is called in from outside to handle the problem, as by then it would be a threat to the entire world. ]
A laboratory accident causes all of the wizards in Xenby University to be feebleminded. That includes player characters, if they are wizards and were within the University when the accident happened.
After a minor explosion in her laboratory, Selmarina Zencina starts glowing. Whenever she passes a full-length mirror, her reflection persists, and five to ten minute later animates as if in a Mirror of Opposition. The wild surge is dispelled, and the glow fades, after 24 hours, or after 2d8 reflections have been animated. The reflections are evil, and their only purpose is to do as much damage as possible. If several reflections are animated, they may co-operate with one another. It may take some time for people (particularly Selmarina) to realise what is happening, and during this time she may well pass several more mirrors. Since the reflections are wild mages, any spells they cast may cause further wild surges.