Before I embarked on the initial Motherlode campaign, I'd spent a large chunk of time defining the background of the setting, the different capital cities and their populations, the special things about each race. As time went on, I found myself becoming less and less inspired by the fluff that I had written. So forget Shrapnel and the City of the Cathedral for the time being. In this new imagining, I'm just going to start at Square One: the boomtown of Motherlode.
The initial idea of Motherlode was inspired by the gold rush boomtowns of the Wild West, small towns containing everything that a prospector needed (bunking, a general store for tools and equipment) and wanted (mostly drink and women). Only instead of veins of gold, the inhabitants of Motherlode would be searching for ancient artifacts and treasures. Motherlode is built on the outskirts of a Valley of the Kings-esque buried civilization that has just recently been discovered by university scholars, many of whom will want to hire a group of adventurers for protection in these delves. Or you could always buy a hastily drawn ruin map from a guy at a tavern. It's all up to you
Motherlode can also work as one of the Mummy Towns in the Troll Lands of Uresia: Grave of Heaven (of which I will be posting some more about in the future. Needless to say, it will have to do with some cool conversion-type stuff)
The western boomtown as home-base for dungeon crawlers and tomb robbers is a fertile concept. I've used it very successfully on two previous campaigns and would gladly return to it in another setting.
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