D&D General Looking for fantastical ideas: The Moon

[Brainwatch]

The decapitated god isn't Dead, just sleeping. The actions of one or more of the groups threaten to 'wake up' this god. Other groups who could oppose them are divided as to whether or not this would be a good or bad thing to allow to happen.

The god's dream can manifest as anything from a temporary fantastical creature, to sucking people wholly into the dream scape.

Magic is overcharged and unpredictable. Where applicable all spells are automatically upcast to higher level.

Anytime a spell or any magic is used, roll on the wild magic table for additional effects.

 

[J.Quondam]

The Lens of Creation is a huge, perfectly-circular crystalline feature located deep underground where where one of the dead god's eyes was (or perhaps where its 'third eye' was).
Scholars who know the lost secrets can look into the Lens and see the distant past through the dead god's own eyes. Foolhardy seekers can even watch the maddening events that led up to the dead god's destruction and sundering into the world and moon! Of course, doing this never ends well for observers with merely mortal minds.

 

[Blue]

Magic is overcharged and unpredictable. Where applicable all spells are automatically upcast to higher level.

Anytime a spell or any magic is used, roll on the wild magic table for additional effects.

Great minds think alike. I am already automatically upcasting every spell. And with both you and @Unwise suggesting wild magic rolls on spell casting, I think I will have that happen when below the surface so surrounded by magic.

 

[Blue]

One of the things I was playing with was that inhabitants like the lost High Elf house would have been mutated by such a large amount of ambient magic. I don't want to go "standard" tentacles and the like since I do have aberrations and specifically mindflayers. What would you suggest that fits with being mutated by magic?

 

[J.Quondam]

One of the things I was playing with was that inhabitants like the lost High Elf house would have been mutated by such a large amount of ambient magic. I don't want to go "standard" tentacles and the like since I do have aberrations and specifically mindflayers. What would you suggest that fits with being mutated by magic?

• sensitivity to magic (manifests as tickles, arousal, music in the mind, etc)
• sensitivity to lack of magic or antimagic (manifests as headache, absent mindedness, moodiness, etc)
• innate ability to detect magic, sense auras, follow ley lines, or etc
• luminous bones or faintly glowing blood/veins
• ethereal features (eg, some sort of feature like filigree tendrils, extra/animate shadow, third eye, or something that's normally invisible except on the ethereal plane, or to truesight or something; perhaps such features grow with age, so a youth might have none, while an elder could be draped in strange features.. especially interesting feature if all elves look young, so these ethereal growths are the only way to guess an elf's real age.)
• very minor uncontrolled "wild" magic effects (say comparable to 5e thaumaturgy) when ill, impassioned, confused, etc
• a magical organ (eg, near the heart, behind the eyes, etc) that, if wounded, renders them unable to cast spells or use magic
• extra finger joints or malleable hand/arm bones, the better for channeling magic with
• strangely-shaped skull (perhaps they're actually earless, but odd sweeping points on their skulls look like ears at first glance)

a

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Lycanthropes everywhere, all the time. Except they’re been like this so long, they’ve become able to control their wilder nature, and even have rudimentary civilizations.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In my Masks of the Imperium D&D 5e campaign, the earth is the body of a decapitated, murdered god in an otherwise pretty empty and magic-less plane. That long departed deity is the source of all life and magic, it's bones literally are magic (and it's getting used up). The skull has formed the moon. Now, by the time fo the camapign people are like 'yeah, the moon liiks a little like a skull, that's why we call it that", in the same way that the earth beneath their feet isn't generally known as the body of a god.

The 9th level band I run has managed to, through line-of-sight transportation magic from before the high elven civil wars, have gotten onto the moon.

And I looking for more ideas to make fantastical.

Things we know:

• It has a breathable but indescribable atmosphere.
• The surface has dinosaurs on it.
• It is chock full of magic - to the point that all spells are automatically upcast one level, and various other features are supercharged (e.g. the moon druid counts as a level higher for CR and access to elemental forms).
• There is a minor house of High Elves on the moon who have escaped and been cut off, but they have been mutating in the high magic.
• There are aberrations on the moon, including a Elder Brain from a broken colony that no longer has access to any living mindflayers or a tadpole pool and as such can't procreate.

But what I'm looking for are fantastical elements to add. Things that they would never have a chance to see elsewhere. And they have been through the feywild, where I already pulled out a lot of oddness and illusions.

What whimsical and wonderful elements should I include? Don't worry about adventures and hooks (though you can mention them), think about instilling a sense of wonder in the players.

The dreamy musings of the dead god sometimes float like bubbles of gas through the air. Very Hard Arcana or Religion check might gain secret knowledge or piece together the true nature and purpose of the god, after experiencing a few thought bubbles.

Some animals and plants emit soft moonlight.

The world looks different than it should from the moon. It’s not an illusion, but neither is the normal understanding of the world. A paradox in real time, simply sitting there, unresolved.

An old but not decrepit person lives there, who seems to have always lived there, in spite of being of a race that doesn’t live super long and being entirely unmagical themself.

 

[CreamCloud0]

One of the things I was playing with was that inhabitants like the lost High Elf house would have been mutated by such a large amount of ambient magic. I don't want to go "standard" tentacles and the like since I do have aberrations and specifically mindflayers. What would you suggest that fits with being mutated by magic?

Webbed wing-arms dolphin-manta-ray style deal (similar to Chaos0 from the sonic franchise), gliding around on a combination of low gravity, the weird air and psychic/magic telekinesis, maybe decorative frilly fins for aesthetic purposes.

They rarely manipulate things physically anymore preferring to use their their magic telekinesis.

Have their bodies be made out of something odd like living stone, plant matter, crystal/jewels or metal, being super durable while still behaving like ordinary flesh would, you could even mix and match with all of those materials for extra oddness.

Chameleon-like skin colour changing, maybe illusion magic based?

Blind, having no eyes on their face(except a single third eye?) or very small eyes with poor vision instead relying on their magical sensory abilities to ‘see’.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Perhaps the god is still in the process of dying, its life (literally) flashing before it. This results in time storms. Creatures caught in these storms are transported back to a place and time from the deity's memory. But because this is a god, it isn't merely a memory, but entirely real. Changing things in the memory also changes what actually happened.

Which would be incredibly powerful in the right (or wrong) hands, except that they're nearly impossible to predict. The elder brain is the only creature on the moon able to forecast the storms, and even its predictions aren't an exact science. Moreover, it is obviously scheming to extricate itself from its current predicament, and any agents/adventurers in league with this creature would best keep that in mind.

 

[Blue]

@J.Quondam Those are very cool, and I may apply them to the PCs after a time. I was thinking something a bit more, discoverable and off-putting in terms of mutations. Sorry I didn't mention that up-front.