<Homebrew> The Port on the Aster Sea

Mallus · Jun 30, 2008

Hobo said:
Still looking for names for the port?

I really don't know. The guy who's going to run it first is partial to Penultima Thule, though I'm starting to favor 'Nameless'. This is the exact same process that led our previous 3e homebrew being named 'CITY'.

As would Kadath.

Kadath is nice.

R'lyeh is too much, though.

A little. Though I'm now seeing a pub on the docks named the Elder Sign.

Mallus · Jun 30, 2008

Kid Charlemagne said:
Yeah, it does have a kind of Dreamlands vibe to it...

I was --aware of, at any rate-- channeling (read: stealing from) Clive Barker, Fritz Leiber, and Sam Keith's The Maxx, though I'm not sure the Leiber influence is visible to anyone but me.

dystmesis · Jun 30, 2008

Argh, you stole the setting I was working on right from underneath my fingers!

Mallus · Jun 30, 2008

dystmesis said:
Argh, you stole the setting I was working on right from underneath my fingers!

Steal it back! Just be sure to post any interesting notes re: the crime here.

dragon_eater · Jul 1, 2008

Wow, this is all great stuff. I especially like the fluff about Dragonborn and Dragons.

My current campaign has a few similar things, though nowhere near the extend that you have them. The main parallel in my campaign is the Ocean of Stardust where the veil between the Feywild and the world is thin. Sailors easily lose themselves in the Feywild and few dare travel in the Ocean of Stardust without a Eladrin navigator. The farther out you go the closer the worlds become until you reach the end of the world and enter into the Astral Sea.

Mouseferatu · Jul 1, 2008

Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

I may steal a good chunk of this myself, next time I run a campaign.

Mallus · Jul 1, 2008

Mouseferatu said:
Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

Thanks, man.

I may steal a good chunk of this myself, next time I run a campaign.

I'd --err, we'd, this is a collaborative effort-- be honored! Just be sure to create a thread about the campaign that we could mine for inspiration.

BTW, I dug your work on Cityscape...

Mallus · Jul 3, 2008

A few words about Masters and Commanders:

The port is protected by a sizable navy, the Grand Armada.

The Governor has sole access to a ritual that allows ships made of mundane wood to sail the Aster and survive the experience -- under normal circumstances, the planking is all too likely to mutate and start putting forth new roots, or worse, have star-filled cracks appear along the seams -- and he uses this magic to keep the Armada afloat. And under his thumb.

And he also sells it to private merchantmen, for a hefty fee. The captain and crew need to vacate the ship while it is being performed, but the results are good for a year and a day.

However, the Armada's flagship, The Delicate Needle of Inquisitive Purpose, isn't wood at all. It's a recovered Black Ship, made from the glass of Avernus, that had been split in two by the Kraken.

Unfortunately her captain, the High Admiral, is afraid to sail her into deep waters. Some say he's a coward, afraid that the Kraken took it personally that she was not destroyed and wants shot at her. Others say he's man entirely without faith, and that would surely doom the Needle since the ritual that protects her hull from the Aster won't work unless the entire crew believes.

Mallus · Jul 8, 2008

edit: double post

Mallus · Jul 8, 2008

And now, peoples (or 'things', depending on your POV):

Orcs come from somewhere within the Aster; they will not discuss their origins, though the uninformed often speak of the "Monstrous Archipelago". They arrive in the Port on ships of carved bone, silently disembark, and never look back as the ships sail back to wherever they came from.

Orcs are highly in demand as bodyguards and soldiers; they will work for anyone willing to pay them, will do whatever they are to ordered to do without protest, and are utterly faithful to their current employer. What they do with the money they are paid is one of the many small mysteries of the Port.

Shadar-Kai are children conceived in the brothels on the Other Side; half alive, half dead, belonging neither to this world nor the next but passing more or less freely between the two. Many act as intermediaries between the living and the dead, passing on the wishes of those caught in the machinations of the Eternal Bureaucracy to their surviving relatives.

There is a ritual, in fact, that allows the Dead to reanimate their own corpses, and walk among the living once more. It's a way of passing the time, continuing to annoy your relations, and perhaps earning some cash with which to bribe the bureaucrats.

Cremation, not surprisingly, is quite popular.

Goblinoids -- goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, and ogres, probably ettins as well -- are folk who have been changed by the Aster; either by the sea itself, or by being caught in one of the storms that blows in off the sea. The waters mutate them into things of horrific appearance and bizarre shapes --no two look exactly alike. The people of the port call them Flotsam, or "The Changed" if they are being polite.

They are a despised and generally exploited underclass, doing much of the dirty and dangerous labor for the Port. The Driftglass Society is making an attempt to organize them into a sort of political force, but have met with little luck thus far. Most of the Changed are altered in mind as well as in body.

Dopplegangers, also called the All-Men, were normal humans changed by the power of the Interior. A doppleganger is literally 'Everyman' (or woman).

Shifters are either humans who have regressed to a more bestial state, or animals who have evolved into something that is arguably more advanced, again due to the influence of the Interior.

Demons/devils come in from the Aster Sea, while angels wander in from the Interior. Some devils are tractable and honorable, after a fashion, and some angels remain terrifying, destructive and mad.