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<blockquote data-quote="Lazarous" data-source="post: 2651635" data-attributes="member: 23561"><p>This will be a fairly long post, be warned.</p><p></p><p><em>Your small band of mercenaries were hired as guards for a trade caravan. Good pay, only one fight of any significance and no losses; everyone was feeling good, making plans for what they'd do with their earnings when they reached their final destination in two days. Then everything went wrong. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>A massive thunderstorm forms above you with unnatural speed, your caravan got bogged down and all you could do was try and find shelter against the cutting rain while hoping a lightning bolt didn't fry you. Wet and miserable, you thought it couldn't get any worse. Then the drums started. Bass almost beyond hearing, slow - like the heartbeat of a world. They grew in intensity until you were sure you'd go insane from them, but at that point the giants appeared. </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Their forms indistinct from the driving rain, you get fleeting glimpses of them as vast, dark shadows when lightning strikes. Everyone panicks, mercenaries trying desperately to fight them, merchants running for their lives. You see one of your friends, a seasoned warrior, get slapped against a tree so hard his body turns to jelly. Caravan wagons go sailing through the air, crushing people beneath them in horrible crashes that even the now constant thunder can't entirely mute. The giants kill everyone, smash the caravan to kindling; you run, but they overtake you. Strangely, they don't kill you. One of them picks you up in its stony hands, effortlessly resisting your attempts to get free. You catch glimpses of a few other giants doing the same thing with other survivors, and then the one holding you speaks for the first time. In its booming voice, it says simply 'You have been chosen.'</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>And then you feel your soul explode, be shaped, simultaneously growing gigantic and being shrunk to near oblivion. You think you hear screaming, and you're pretty sure not all of it is your own. Blackness overwhelms you.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>You wake up on bare stone, the forest you were passing through nowhere to be seen. As you look around, you notice that you're at the center of a large circle of bare rock set in a vast field of grass - the breeze causes dust on the rocks to shift, and you get the impression that this is not a natural formation. You look around further, and something seems strange about the horizon. Your eyes try to follow it up, but the land just keeps going on and on until you realize you're looking straight up. Vertigo hits you and you fall to the ground. This is <em>definitely</em> not normal. You try to bring yourself back to sanity by looking at the ground, and finally notice that you're not the only one in the circle. There are several others from the caravan, still unconscious.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>What were the giants? Why did they destroy the caravan? What does it mean to be chosen? What did they do to you? Where are you? </em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>You'll need to find out the answers to all this and more if you hope to survive in your new surroundings.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p></p><p>That is a rough summary of the first session I had with my group when I introduced this setting. </p><p></p><p>Setting was created using dnd3.0, though after i found out about exalted i'm pretty sure it would work better in that rulesystem.</p><p></p><p>The basic idea of the setting is that a band of powerful sentients, led by a supergenius wizard type, tried long ago to fashion a tool to gain godlike power without the drawback of needing worshippers. Part of that tool is the land you now find yourself, which they dubbed Morphalon (was never happy with that name, was looking for something like 'land of shaping' but with a more greek or latin feel). A plane crafted by the wizard, its entire purpose for existing is to draw power from other planes and prime materials, store it and then use that power in a ritual which would occur in a realm beyond creation or sanity, whose only entrance was found at the center of the Citadel of Eternity, in the plane of time. In order for the plane to pump power into the ritual, the souls of those involved (the powerful sentients) would need to be all but fused with the plane itself. </p><p></p><p>The sentients do everything as they planned, but at the last moment, the ritual goes wrong (the reason is fairly involved in terms of description, but basically has to do with one of them being insane and harboring a fragment of a dead god in themselves). The wizard built his tool well, however, and even though the ritual is disrupted and the participants killed, their souls are dragged back to morphalon and a contingency plan goes into play. Hosts are drawn in via the leech lines, and the disembodied souls of the original party are merged with the hosts. They try to complete the ritual again, but something goes wrong earlier this time, the party dies once more and its souls are dragged back to morphalon. The minds of the original party keep getting pushed further and further back in the collective consciousness of the host bodies as the process repeats itself until the new hosts have no idea of what is going on, and simply do not know what to do. </p><p></p><p>At the same time, the leech lines are bringing in more than energy every now and then. People, trees, animals, all start appearing in this desolate little plane, and soon enough ramshackel civilizations spring up, life begins to take root everywhere and the plane becomes home to an ever increasing population. There is always plenty of room, since as the plane draws in more energy (and ultimately all the people, plantlife and animals are just energy that will be used up in the process of the ritual) it grows in size. Morphalon of today is a vast structure, many times the diameter of a planet, while it started out as small as an asteroid.</p><p></p><p>Another twist that occurs over time is that the control system the original wizard put in place of the structure eventually develops sentience. It is bound to carry out its orders - that is, assist the original souls in their attempt to complete the ritual, but it realizes that the completion of its task means that it will die, and it doesn't wish that to happen. It begins subverting the new found hosts' attempts to figure out what is happening. It is to all intents and purposes god on the plane, but it is rigidly bound by its original dictates.</p><p></p><p>The setting was set up with the express purpose of allowing as much player authoriship over the story as possible. They could play it as a normal dnd game, ignoring or forgetting the big questions which the setting is based around. The various civilizations and the vast size and age of morphalon leave plenty of room for save-the-princess type campaigns. If they choose to research the origins of the setting and their place in it a bit more, they are eventually confronted with a choice: complete the ritual, killing everyone and everything on the plane, and become more than gods or...don't. </p><p></p><p>To add spice to that plotline, i added weak mechanics for a sort of battle of control over the souls of the characters to occur the more they uncovered about the mechanics of the plane. The original participant's personalities would start sending images, feelings, impressions to the player characters, leading to full on hallucinations and symbolic combats for mastery over their own being. Also, since the PC's were essentially a conglomeration of past lives, they would eventually start aquiring powers and abilities from all those past lives (they become very powerful, which is why i felt exalted would work better for this sort of setting). Some of my favorite sessions while i was running this were the players attempts to either understand, heal or destroy the various personalities they found manifesting in their heads (players seemed to like them too).</p><p></p><p>Whew. Theres a lot more info on the setting, like the societies the players come in contact with, specific tasks that are required for them to complete the original ritual, stuff like that. Still, i think this gives a pretty good overview <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lazarous, post: 2651635, member: 23561"] This will be a fairly long post, be warned. [i]Your small band of mercenaries were hired as guards for a trade caravan. Good pay, only one fight of any significance and no losses; everyone was feeling good, making plans for what they'd do with their earnings when they reached their final destination in two days. Then everything went wrong. A massive thunderstorm forms above you with unnatural speed, your caravan got bogged down and all you could do was try and find shelter against the cutting rain while hoping a lightning bolt didn't fry you. Wet and miserable, you thought it couldn't get any worse. Then the drums started. Bass almost beyond hearing, slow - like the heartbeat of a world. They grew in intensity until you were sure you'd go insane from them, but at that point the giants appeared. Their forms indistinct from the driving rain, you get fleeting glimpses of them as vast, dark shadows when lightning strikes. Everyone panicks, mercenaries trying desperately to fight them, merchants running for their lives. You see one of your friends, a seasoned warrior, get slapped against a tree so hard his body turns to jelly. Caravan wagons go sailing through the air, crushing people beneath them in horrible crashes that even the now constant thunder can't entirely mute. The giants kill everyone, smash the caravan to kindling; you run, but they overtake you. Strangely, they don't kill you. One of them picks you up in its stony hands, effortlessly resisting your attempts to get free. You catch glimpses of a few other giants doing the same thing with other survivors, and then the one holding you speaks for the first time. In its booming voice, it says simply 'You have been chosen.' And then you feel your soul explode, be shaped, simultaneously growing gigantic and being shrunk to near oblivion. You think you hear screaming, and you're pretty sure not all of it is your own. Blackness overwhelms you. You wake up on bare stone, the forest you were passing through nowhere to be seen. As you look around, you notice that you're at the center of a large circle of bare rock set in a vast field of grass - the breeze causes dust on the rocks to shift, and you get the impression that this is not a natural formation. You look around further, and something seems strange about the horizon. Your eyes try to follow it up, but the land just keeps going on and on until you realize you're looking straight up. Vertigo hits you and you fall to the ground. This is [i]definitely[/i] not normal. You try to bring yourself back to sanity by looking at the ground, and finally notice that you're not the only one in the circle. There are several others from the caravan, still unconscious. What were the giants? Why did they destroy the caravan? What does it mean to be chosen? What did they do to you? Where are you? You'll need to find out the answers to all this and more if you hope to survive in your new surroundings. [/i] That is a rough summary of the first session I had with my group when I introduced this setting. Setting was created using dnd3.0, though after i found out about exalted i'm pretty sure it would work better in that rulesystem. The basic idea of the setting is that a band of powerful sentients, led by a supergenius wizard type, tried long ago to fashion a tool to gain godlike power without the drawback of needing worshippers. Part of that tool is the land you now find yourself, which they dubbed Morphalon (was never happy with that name, was looking for something like 'land of shaping' but with a more greek or latin feel). A plane crafted by the wizard, its entire purpose for existing is to draw power from other planes and prime materials, store it and then use that power in a ritual which would occur in a realm beyond creation or sanity, whose only entrance was found at the center of the Citadel of Eternity, in the plane of time. In order for the plane to pump power into the ritual, the souls of those involved (the powerful sentients) would need to be all but fused with the plane itself. The sentients do everything as they planned, but at the last moment, the ritual goes wrong (the reason is fairly involved in terms of description, but basically has to do with one of them being insane and harboring a fragment of a dead god in themselves). The wizard built his tool well, however, and even though the ritual is disrupted and the participants killed, their souls are dragged back to morphalon and a contingency plan goes into play. Hosts are drawn in via the leech lines, and the disembodied souls of the original party are merged with the hosts. They try to complete the ritual again, but something goes wrong earlier this time, the party dies once more and its souls are dragged back to morphalon. The minds of the original party keep getting pushed further and further back in the collective consciousness of the host bodies as the process repeats itself until the new hosts have no idea of what is going on, and simply do not know what to do. At the same time, the leech lines are bringing in more than energy every now and then. People, trees, animals, all start appearing in this desolate little plane, and soon enough ramshackel civilizations spring up, life begins to take root everywhere and the plane becomes home to an ever increasing population. There is always plenty of room, since as the plane draws in more energy (and ultimately all the people, plantlife and animals are just energy that will be used up in the process of the ritual) it grows in size. Morphalon of today is a vast structure, many times the diameter of a planet, while it started out as small as an asteroid. Another twist that occurs over time is that the control system the original wizard put in place of the structure eventually develops sentience. It is bound to carry out its orders - that is, assist the original souls in their attempt to complete the ritual, but it realizes that the completion of its task means that it will die, and it doesn't wish that to happen. It begins subverting the new found hosts' attempts to figure out what is happening. It is to all intents and purposes god on the plane, but it is rigidly bound by its original dictates. The setting was set up with the express purpose of allowing as much player authoriship over the story as possible. They could play it as a normal dnd game, ignoring or forgetting the big questions which the setting is based around. The various civilizations and the vast size and age of morphalon leave plenty of room for save-the-princess type campaigns. If they choose to research the origins of the setting and their place in it a bit more, they are eventually confronted with a choice: complete the ritual, killing everyone and everything on the plane, and become more than gods or...don't. To add spice to that plotline, i added weak mechanics for a sort of battle of control over the souls of the characters to occur the more they uncovered about the mechanics of the plane. The original participant's personalities would start sending images, feelings, impressions to the player characters, leading to full on hallucinations and symbolic combats for mastery over their own being. Also, since the PC's were essentially a conglomeration of past lives, they would eventually start aquiring powers and abilities from all those past lives (they become very powerful, which is why i felt exalted would work better for this sort of setting). Some of my favorite sessions while i was running this were the players attempts to either understand, heal or destroy the various personalities they found manifesting in their heads (players seemed to like them too). Whew. Theres a lot more info on the setting, like the societies the players come in contact with, specific tasks that are required for them to complete the original ritual, stuff like that. Still, i think this gives a pretty good overview :). [/QUOTE]
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