Planescape Sigil's Backroom (Planescape Spin-off)

[LuisCarlos17f]

Backrooms Wiki

Explore, discover, and document the dark, liminal reality known as the Backrooms, experiencing dread and isolation as you navigate it. We wish you luck in your travels.

backrooms.fandom.com

I have thought about a retelling of the creepypasta about the "backrooms" (The SCP Fundation is more about one place to keep the menaces or hunting the monster of the week, without enough exploration).

It would start as a special place found in the "Haze", within Sigil. The first "levels" to be explored really are the floors of the ruins of "archology", a superskycrapper. It is by reinforced concrete but without remains of modern technology but empty spaces for cables or tubes, and latrine with siphon, without bad smell, but neither water. The look is a mixture of retrofuturism, gothic-noir and postapocalyptic punk. The are underground rooms, for parking of vehicles (nothing with a modern motor has been found) but also urban vegetable gardens using special artificial lights (source of energy power unknown). There are also ruins of buildings floating in the mist, but to go there you need flying movement or special bridges.

There are zones with "vertical forests", this means tall building with a lot of the vegetation on the walls. These are ruled by a strange lineage of driades who can use a special biopunk technology. They are willing to trade producer goods, and they sell graphene as replacement of felled wood. Also they are the suppliers of a magitek version of solar planers.

For inter-megapolis trade flying skyships are used, bigger as an aircraft carrier, but these can't be created, only found the remains in certain old battlefield (and later restaured). They work without fuel, energy or motor, and necromancer feels a familiar power. Even being necessary the vision of a ghost holey shell battleships flying on the cities isn't pleasing to watch.

Some zones are totally covered by clouds or mists, and some times brave explorers have found within floating mountaings with valious mineral recourses, but other times hostile savage tribes of humanoids.

* There are reports of false hydras.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I have found this, and I hope this can be used as source of inspiration.

Main - Liminal Archives

Study the Archives, learn the unknown, and eventually, explore them yourself.

liminal-archives.wikidot.com

My target was a new plane with a little of bizarre and mistery, but not too grimm, as setting for a potential group of planar-explorer PCs. This could be the ultimate sandbox, because PCs could be the first ones to arrive to a zone, and create a settle, but later get ready for the unpredictable, for example a raid of gnolls riding vehicles with biopunk motors, or attacks of maneater zombie-like giants.

How would be if the PCs were living their own creepypasta adventure?

Spirit World

The Spirit World was one of the planes of existence[1] in the World Tree cosmology. It was home to the Celestial Empire and its Bureaucracy, the overarching pantheon of Kara-Tur.[2] The Spirit World was apparently incompatible with the Great Wheel cosmology, coming as it did from a radically...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

World Serpent Inn

The World Serpent Inn was a renowned, multidimensional establishment[1][3] and transitive demiplane,[1][7] irregularly linked to every plane and world within the multiverse.[8] This inn was named for the ancient deity of the same name.[9] Descriptions of the Inn varied from world to world...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

Plane of Mirrors

The Plane of Mirrors, also known as the mirror realm,[1] was a mysterious secret plane[3] known to and visited by few inhabitants of the Realms.[2][4] This transitive plane existed behind mirrors and other reflective surfaces,[note 1] such as windows.[1] The Plane of Mirrors was essentially a...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

Infinite Staircase

The Infinite Staircase, sometimes known to the inhabitants of Toril as the Celestial Staircase[1] or the Celestial Stairway, was a network of pathways linking the Realms with the planes.[1][3][4] From various locations, a stairway led to a nexus, which led to the homes of all the gods. The...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

NoEnd House

Season 2 of Channel Zero is based on the creepypasta NoEnd House[1], written by Brian Russell. It follows a 20-something woman named Margot Sleator who goes with friends to a six-room haunted house, where each room is more terrifying than the last. It aired on Wednesdays from September 20, 2017...

channel-zero-syfy.fandom.com

Eldritch Location - TV Tropes

In fictionland, some places just don't agree with the laws of physics, geography, and the way we understand the world. Eldritch Locations take many forms: Lost Worlds, Wonderlands ("Wonder" is not always a good thing), Strange Planets, …

tvtropes.org

 

[Malmuria]

This might be helpful:

Vast in the Dark by Feral Indie Studio

A zine about the exploring dark and alien megastructures of an infinite realm.

feral-indie-studios.itch.io

 

[jgsugden]

The start of your post reminds me of a part of my setting:

In my setting, my Sigil floats in the Astral Sea, but originally was a location in the Prime Material Plane that was violently ripped from the Prime and throw into the Astral when the Far Realm Cosmology collided with the Prime Cosmology (an event which also turned Devils into Demons, created the Shadowfell, Feywild and Ethereal Planes, and drove a number of Gods mad). When bad things like that happen on the Prime in my setting, it often springs off a Ravenloft Domain in the Shadowfell. So, in my setting, on the Shadowfell in the equivalent place where Sigil once resided, I have a really messed up version of Old Sigil (which was technologically advanced) that is trapped in a tortured state of massive infestation of personified madness. Many Ravenloft domains began in that day, but I think of this as the first. PCs have only been there once, but I worked really hard to make it a place that was threatningly crazy and scary.

 

[Faolyn]

The start of your post reminds me of a part of my setting:

In my setting, my Sigil floats in the Astral Sea, but originally was a location in the Prime Material Plane that was violently ripped from the Prime and throw into the Astral when the Far Realm Cosmology collided with the Prime Cosmology (an event which also turned Devils into Demons, created the Shadowfell, Feywild and Ethereal Planes, and drove a number of Gods mad). When bad things like that happen on the Prime in my setting, it often springs off a Ravenloft Domain in the Shadowfell. So, in my setting, on the Shadowfell in the equivalent place where Sigil once resided, I have a really messed up version of Old Sigil (which was technologically advanced) that is trapped in a tortured state of massive infestation of personified madness. Many Ravenloft domains began in that day, but I think of this as the first. PCs have only been there once, but I worked really hard to make it a place that was threatningly crazy and scary.

Heh--now that makes me wonder what it would be like if Sigil was originally a Ravenloft domain (with the Lady of Pain as Darklord) that managed to escape the Dark Powers and Mists.

 

[jgsugden]

Heh--now that makes me wonder what it would be like if Sigil was originally a Ravenloft domain (with the Lady of Pain as Darklord) that managed to escape the Dark Powers and Mists.

My Lady of Pain is a Straight out of Hellraiser Cenobite. Her nature and the path Sigil took to the Astral are not coincidental in my game ... and she is not unfamiliar with that Ravenloft domain...

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I read the Lady of Pain is (very freely) inspired in Our Lady of Dolores. And that sounds very as Blasphemous videogame.

Reading about a list of official demiplanes I like these options as seed of adventures:

The Isle of the Ape

(from the classic module of the same name). Also run by the prankster-god Zagyg, this is a jungle demiplane dominated by dinosaurs and oversized primates. The fabled crook of Rao was hidden here. A portal exists within the castle of the archmage Tenser

Demiplane of Haven:

A small city Demiplane resently created by the Mercanes to compete with Sigil as the Hub of the planes.

Demiplane of Labyrinth:

Somewhere floating in the Ethereal is an enormious near-infinite maze known as the Demiplane of Labyrinth. Unlike one of the Lady's mazes, this maze is composed of an indescruptable stone-like substance, and is lade out in the forms of walls laid out in strait angles(picture one of those classic mazes you used to do for fun on the back of cereal boxes, whatever that is). It is said that a cold, sinister intellegence studies those who end up here(Usually threw accidents in Planar travel), as they try to escape.

Time ceases to flow for a sod unfortunate enough to end up here, which gives anyone trapped here an eternity to find his or her way out. One cannot permanently die here either, and anyone who tries to commit suicide, will find themselves resurrected the following day, none the worse for wear back where they started in the maze.

Along with the twists and turns of the maze, weird round-one eyed monsters wander the maze and devour anyone they come across(Again, anyone killed will be resurrected and returned to his or her starting location in the maze).

There is only one exit for this plane, the bad news is that its in the exact center of the maze.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I continue with the idea of a demiplane inspired in the creepypasta about liminal spaces. It has to look mysterious and a little bizarre, and not too modern.

It is an "arcology" (super skyscrapper), funded in its origin to be a penal colony (for demigods?), with lots of spaces for urban vegetable gardens with "magitek" lighting LED, but today most of zones ar wild nature, as if it was part of the original intention. These are ruled by "cyberdriads" who can "pilot" anything like biorganic mechas or wood living constructs. Really is an "urbanitation" of floating arcologies, some movings like wood trunks in a (circular path) river and these can be used for trade between the blocks. Usually if you fall from the windows or balconies, you suffer an effect like "feather fall" and land softly to the closest floor or wall, as if it was designed by a higher power to avoid accidents, or suicides. In the void among the buildings there are floating gulfweeds and sometimes air-breather lying fishes, and even predators as giant sharks or octopus, but usually it only happens in the days of very thick fog.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I was thinking about new ideas. Aoskar, the god of the portals "killed" by the Lady of the Pain isn't totally "dead", and his cult has reappared, but this time his avatar is paler, thiner, with a metalic gaulent and a crystal eye. This cult is not evil not hostile, and some temples have been allowed to be built, and very "occultist" in the sense of "the knownledge is too valious for the masses, it has to be secret and only for special initiates". Most of people untrust them, but they are necessary allies against the secret cult of the elder elemental eye.

There is a trade of "light spheres" because these are necessary for underground growing.

Some zones are true battlefield, literally, but the phyrexians, the sheens (other type of biomechanical horrors) and a strange race of living contructs, the cybertronians, who try to protect the last vestiges of unpoluted life. Other zones are too tainted or polluted, and only creatures as trolls and werebeasts (or with regenerative traits) can live there. One of the main reasons of the failure of the phyreaxian invasion is the elemental-touched creatures summoned or created by the cult of the elder elemental eye to defend their (relatively) secret and hidden temples

There is a megacity with a strange variety of architectures, people and cultures. According historical reports, these zones were from other worlds, but because some strange reason zones were "sent" to other plane creating a "patch" city. In the beginng there were lots of epidemics and healing magic was neccessary until they found no-magic ways to stop those diseases. And the awesomest part is the neighbours are floating montains linked by bridges, and subjetive gravity, something up can be down from the other side.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now my last thoughts are inspired in something like the limbos from the movies "Koma" or "Inception", but also the STEM from the survival horror videogame "Evil Within".

The bridges between the floating islands create accidentally an effect as maze or labyrinth, because the links between the different points aren't like a spider web. Between the earth lands there are also floating water spheres, united by means of floating rivers/water pillars (creating a look like a neuronal network). These are very important not only as source of fresh water, but also to trade by ships, and fish as a secondary source of meat. Some theories tell this zone was created by an ancient alien civilitation to keep fauna and flora from the D&D worlds, like a zoo park, within a giant gas sphere, but the original builders disappeared, or they hide.

Other theory is the demiplane was created according a collective memory, the egregore trying to create a "clone" of the akasha realm (dreamlands created by the memory of the humankind, something like a backup of a timeline in the space-time continium), but something happened, maybe it became a nightmare because some serious crisis started to cause mental stress. Or it is the remains of a "erasured file" when some time-traveler rewrote the History. Or a demiplane as a "mirror universe" created by a forgotten pantheon to allow "petitioners" (souls of dead mortals) to be closer to the alive (something like the minisetting "Ghostwalk" but a little wicked twist).