I'm about to run Damned Cities with my players and I have a bit of an issue with the distances involved.

How far out of the city if the Folly? It seems to be a fair distance away (unless the city is tiny), and yet there is supposedly an underground tunnel that goes from the folly all the way under the city to the Celestine Wharf.

I don't understand how the risen would ever be able to go back and forth using this tunnel unless they were walking for days on end.

Has anyone else encountered this issue? If so, how did you deal with it?

I don't understand what makes you feel the Folly being so far from the city.

When I look to the map, to me, it seems very close, instead.

Sorry, perhaps I should have said so far from anywhere important in the city.

There is no scale provided on that map, so I can't determine if Sinophia Magna is extremely small for a (formerly) major city on an imperial world, or things are extremely far apart.

For instance, how long is it likely to take to drive from the Folly to District XIII. Is it 30 minutes, is it an hour, is it 2 hours?

Each of those distances still implies that the city is extremely small in Imperial terms, but they still mean that it is going to take the zombies 6 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours to walk (shamble?) that distance.

I'm thinking that an extremely small city is the way to go.

When I ran it, I based the scale off of my home town (Portland, Or.), so, a medium-sized city by real-world standards, but not a huge hive. I doubt any cities in the Calixis Sector would qualify as 'big' by most Imperial standards, since that assumes an age of 10,000 years. By comparison, Calixis (a 'mere' 2,000 years old) is a virtual 'frontier', where any major settlement is called a 'hive' out of tradition, even though none of them approach the scale of Necromunda's Hive Primus or the other truly ancient hives of Segmentum Solar.

Also, as far as the Risen using the sewers to get around the city, since it is constantly raining, I assumed that the sewers were raging torrents, and the Risen move very slowly against the current, but to return to base they just have to jump into the sewer and by fairly quickly swept into the Saint's Wash (it's not like drowning is an issue...). I added lengths of chain (hidden underwater) connecting the sewer outlets to an opening in the cliff at the base of the Folly, which the Risen use to find their way back 'home'.

Hive Sibellus is pretty large, it is twice as large across as the US (8000 km), which is pretty mind boggling if you ask me.

I think I will go with Sinophia Magna being fairly small with it previously being the domain of the nobles and the wealthy. As Sinophia started to fall, the dwindling population started to congregate there after the Hive was abandoned.

This also makes more sense as looking at the map, the city is probably only 20 or so km wide, otherwise the harbour is barely a harbour.

Hive Sibellus is pretty large, it is twice as large across as the US (8000 km), which is pretty mind boggling if you ask me.

That sounds a bit excessive for a hive. Where is that figure from?

pg 293 of the main rule book.

I agree that it is excessive, though I do recall that Sibellus is a low spread out hive rather than a tall spire like hive.

Haha, and old classic!

See the wonderful discussion here:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/5479-sibellus-crunching-the-numbers/

Back on-topic, Sinophia Magna is NOT anywhere near this big.

I'd say you could walk through it in a couple of hours, provided you didn't drown, get shot/stabbed or lost on the way

Yeah I think I am going to go with 30km or so across. Which is really more of a town than a city and you would be able to walk as the crow flies from one side to another in 6 hours or so. Of course, you can't actually walk in a straight line, so any kind of transport that isn't a nefarious tunnel, takes longer. That should give some advantage to the zombies.

Oslo (Norway) is pretty small as Capitals go, but It's more of a city than a town.

And it measures only about 15km across. So I think 30 is fine.

pg 293 of the main rule book.

I agree that it is excessive, though I do recall that Sibellus is a low spread out hive rather than a tall spire like hive.

Thanks and LOL.

Scintilla has a measly total pop of 25 billion, so I guess most of Sibellus is just empty space. Good call desingers! <facepalm>

Make it eight thousand square miles, urban sprawl and all and it's still a big place.

Malleus.dk have tried to make a map of Scintilla that actually makes sense.

Plus a quick glance at Armageddon reveals what hives should look like.