Open-Minded Adventurers Wanted for Extravagant Planes-Hopping!

City of Dromus
Dromus is a planar crossroads rivaled by nothing else in this part of the multiverse; only the stories of far-ranging planeswalkers even hint at anything like it. Poised at the intersection of seven planes, Dromus does a brisk business with each while trying to establish its independence from its nominal founders. Said nominal founders will have none of this, and are forever scheming to take control of what is probably the most important mercantile and strategic center of all the seven planes.

This “city” is only a city in name. It sprawls over miles of countryside around the former technologist enclave of Dromus, resembling nothing so much as an entire country trying to squeeze itself into as small a place as possible. Most people who live on the edge of the city have never seen the other side, and many have never even been to the great markets of Khorvaire’s Square. It’s just too long a trip.

At least a few of anything worth having can probably be found here. Dromans are understandably proud of this fact. Of course, if it’s really valuable, it will probably be stolen from you in some mad plan to increase one group or another’s influence on the city. Dromans are oddly proud of this fact as well.

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The Imperium Mechanus
The Imperium Mechanus is a mighty steam-driven empire forged out of many smaller kingdoms, republics, and principalities. This makes for complicated government, though, since each of the formerly independent nations brought their own cluster of laws and regulations to the table that they simply could not live without. Newcomers to the Imperium find that they’re usually breaking a half-dozen minor laws at any given time, and acquire either a total disrespect for law and order or a justifiable paranoia for same.

The Imperium is located on a magic-poor plane, insulated by the elemental planes from the edge of the multiverse and the Astral Plane. When the plane began to move into its current alignment over a thousand years ago, the inhabitants were forced to develop a new kind of magic reliant on the incipient planar stability they were experiencing. Over time, this new force became the sole power source for great and wondrous works, demanding the sort of bureaucratic infrastructure that can provide the enormous natural resources required.

Though technology has come to dominate the Imperium, it hasn’t changed the life of the average person much. Due to the constraints of technology, even on a fairly stable plane, the Imperium doesn’t build in multiples; it builds big. Soldiers armed with sword and shield march alongside plodding iron war machines, farmers plow their fields with oxen as airships soar overhead, and blacksmiths pound out horseshoes in the country while the Emperor surveys the great foundries of Gilferrus.

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Kelluna
Wise travelers know that there’s always a bigger fish, no matter how capable you are. Kelluna is a sea of bigger fish. On first arriving on the plane, any newcomer is immediately struck by the sheer exaggerations of the place: the mountains are more mountainous, the swamps swampier, and the plains astoundingly featureless on Kelluna. Scattered through the plane in places where magic is strong are the Kellunan city-states, the seats of the Proxies, powerful sorcerous creatures (usually outsiders or dragons) who use the power of soul collectors to rule with the might of their patron deities.

The Outer Planes, home to gods great and small, are so distant as to be almost forgotten, but Kelluna is the next best thing. Any deceased soul leaving, or newly-created outsider arriving, must pass through Kelluna to reach the Droman planes, and the soul collectors, powerful artifacts built on key clusters of ley lines, direct the traffic. The Proxies who control these devices are granted the ability to shape their lands almost as a god might, and titanic forces are daily put into play in the struggle for the power of belief, both of the living and the dead, both for their far-away masters and for their own reasons. Virtually all religious sects in Dromus can be traced to one or another of the Proxies, and no two agree, even if they ultimately worship the same deity.

Because each city-state is dominated by a single being of great power and extreme ideology, government is a matter of dominating principles rather than shades of morality and ethics. Each city-state has its own supply of Templars, fanatical worshippers who enforce the will of the Proxy they worship. Now that Dromus has emerged from the sea of chaos to link the planes more closely than ever before, the Proxies have a new arena for their struggle for the hearts and minds of mortals.

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Caeldwyste
Caeldwyste is a thriving kingdom, a stable and prosperous land coincidentally located entirely within an arctic wasteland. Proximity to the Elemental Plane of Water ensures constant snowfall and freezing temperatures over most of the plane, but the Caelder are adapted to the extreme conditions and have developed a culture that now forms the baseline for the City of Dromus. A racially-diverse population is spread through the towns and cities of the countryside, and the people live more-or-less in peace, only occasionally threatened in any serious way by the beasts and monsters of the wilderness.

Caelder culture is a mix of the barbaric and the civilized. Since normal crops cannot grow in the biting cold the Caelders combine many of the traditions of a hunter-gatherer society with the sophistication that bustling urban areas and a thriving culture bring. A revered tradition among the Caelder is the Odensjakt, the great hunt of remorhaz and frost worm that can provide food for a large town from the carcasses of just a few beasts. On the other hand, Caeldwyste produces some of the best merchants and artisans of the seven planes, and has a codified and well-respected code of laws. Most of the time, traditional Caelders and those who prefer a more urbane lifestyle coexist peacefully, but as Dromus has grown in importance, reactionary factions have sprung up demanding a return to the old ways. Sensible people on both sides of the issue have no desire for conflict, but that is no guarantee of peace in the future.

These tensions may explain why a respectable portion of the talented youths of Caeldwyste to become itinerant adventurers. Fortunes can be made by simply hunting the great beasts of the tundra, but the truly daring join the ranks of the flamboyant swordsmen and women of the upper class. Caelder high society loves nothing more than daring deeds and duels fought for honor, and those with a penchant for leading exciting lives can achieve great success.

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The Tangle
Part transitive plane, part maze of portals, and part unexplored jungle, the Tangle is an enigma to all who visit. The Tangle is place of fragments, bits of Prime matter jumbled together in ways that make no sense to the untrained observer. Taking the left-hand path around a bush may merely lead deeper into the grove while the right-hand path leads to a part of the omnipresent jungle hundreds of miles away.

Tangler villages are confusing places for non-natives, laid out around easy-to-follow planar minglings. Natives see nothing unusual about the village square leading to huts leagues apart, but visitors must remember to touch the red-striped rock when leaving the clearing or there’s no telling where they might end up. The Tangle can be used to reach many of the other planes, but only the most foolish traveler would neglect to hire one of the often-fickle natives before undertaking the journey.

Possibly due to the difficulty of plotting a deliberate route through the Tangle, the populace, made up primarily of elven clans, lives in relative harmony with the land and changes little over time. However, some enterprising Tanglers have turned this to their advantage as they grew experienced in the ways of the wider world, and today the Tangle produces the most skilled hunters, trackers, and explorers to be found in Dromus.

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Tila'kun
Tila’kun is a paradise: sunny beaches, clear blue skies, and endless waves lapping at the shores of a thousand islands. So infused is the plane with positive energy that mortal creatures are hard-pressed not to relax and enjoy the abundance of life here. Unfortunately, it is possible to get too much of a good thing – this excess of life-energy causes cancerous growth and eventually fatal mutations in those who are exposed to it for too long without some measure pf protection.

The people of Tila’kun consist of two groups that have essentially no direct interactions – the monasteries and the island tribes. The monasteries possess the power of ki, mighty fortress-abbeys made of rare and precious stone, and a disciplined, self-sufficient lifestyle. They monopolize the magical, herbal, and alchemical resources of the plane, and leave the rest to the island tribes, who get along as best they can in the shadow of the unassailable monasteries. Their only contributions to the scheme, as far as the monks and ascetics are concerned, are any children who show sufficient promise to be adopted by a monastery.

An idyll for any who have something to offer the abbots of the monasteries, except for one thing – the menace that rises from the seas. Aberrations of great power and sometimes deadly intelligence will occasionally appear, their only shared feature an implacable hatred for the monks. Most simply slay and murder until they are put down, but the more dangerous breed can provide the tribes with the power they need to cast down the monasteries by nurturing foul cults and exacerbating long-standing jealousies. Taking even the peace of a paradise like Tila’kun for granted would be foolish, it seems.

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Yesheveran
Yesheveran is a study in contrasts. Most of the plane is underground, but light exists even in the deepest reaches, allowing for fecund plant growth even deep in the Underdark. Life is abundant throughout, but the plane is vulnerable to plagues that can obliterate the ecosystems of whole caverns in a matter of days. The elder race of Yesheveran, the dark elves, are ancient beyond the reckoning of most races and mastered wizardry long ago. They have since redirected their energies to the subtleties of economics, a new battlefield where wealth provides the only score card.

Yesheveran’s surface is all rocky crags and verdant valleys, rugged terrain that makes for rugged people. There is no sun; instead, light waxes and wanes regularly with no visible source. As one descends below the surface into the deeps, which are lit with a glow as strong as moonlight in most places, the surface-dwelling races become less common. The depths are ruled by the drow elves, beings of urbane and sophisticated narcissism that see themselves as the bearers of civilization. The noble houses of the drow are essentially trading consortiums, elaborately Byzantine in structure and controlled at the top by a select few noble-born drow who manifest superior magical and mental aptitude at an early age.

The drow don’t directly control the human and demihuman dwellers of the surface and upper levels of Yesheveran. They simply sell them things they cannot live without. The more cynical see this as merely another form of domination, but the natives see the dark elves’ services as indispensable. Still, rumors persist of dangerous experiments and unethical industrial espionage in the depths, all committed in search of the next great economic breakthrough.

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