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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Matthias" data-source="post: 6151704" data-attributes="member: 3625">A dusty, sun-baked plane where arcane magic is impeded (half-strength); everyone who spends more than a month there begins to "grow" arcane SR equal to their HD, 1/4 total HD per week (this "arcane SR" does not stack with other kinds of SR). This arcane SR is unique to this plane only, and will not protect its possessor from arcane magic cast on other planes (including magic items crafted on other planes). Artifact magic of course ignores everything.Otherwise, everything alchemy-based can do more damage, lasts longer, has a wider area, etc; anyone who learns how to craft an alchemical item (via Craft or a class ability) can "learn" metamagics which apply to alchemical items...e.g., Maximize Alchemical Item lets any alchemical weapon you craft do maximum damage.The plane is rife with anarchy and disorder in the wastes that separate the handful of city-states scattered throughout the plane, most of them either built-up around oases of water, deposits of exotic alchemical ore, or have grown around the intersections of well-worn trade routes. There are portals to other, richer lands throughout this plane, but wherever a portal has been discovered there has grown a city around it, and a single warlord, a family of thugs, a band of mercenaries, or worse, has invariably walked in and taken over. Many settlements have changed ownership over the generations, a few of them having been captured and then recaptured by former rulers fleeing for their lives only years before. This institutionalized anarchy is the main cause for the widespread destitution among the common folk who inhabit this plane. Fledgeling rebellions are crushed and agitators are publicly executed. Only the richest and most powerful families or the occasional mighty despot can turn everything upside down, and then only within a single town, and before long they become the kind of evil they supposedly fought against. Meanwhile, the rabble have no chance, and no means to escape to better worlds, because all the portals are bitterly fought over and controlled by these hereditary oligarchs.One particular crossroads is considered to be more or less the "center" of the plane; the Valley of the Five Portals. As you might guess, it has five gateways to other planes all clustered together. One goes to each of the elemental planes, and the fifth connects to the plane of law. No permanent settlement has managed to sprout from this busiest of locales; it has become a "neutral ground" of sorts, and this unspoken code is respected and even enforced by the elite movers and shakers of the plane.There is a sprawling settlement about ten days' walk from the Valley of the Five Portals. It is a city-state called Goldstone, the richest and most powerful of all the city-states familiar to extraplanar visitors. Goldstone is ruled by a small cadre of master alchemists who, having discovered the perfect place to develop their art, used their technology to swiftly overthrow the runt of a warlord who previously ran the town. The alchemists were able to transform this gritty nowheresville into the greatest, most prosperous trade center ever known among the plane's native sages. Goldstone is a veritable fortress, defended by potent alchemical siege weapons and all kinds of deadly traps fortifying the massive network of tunnels which spread underneath Goldstone's surface levels. Of all the ruling elites of this plane, only the Goldstone alchemists seem to have conceived of the idea of democratic rule. The alchemists hunt for gifted individuals and savants, mentor them, and eventually induct them into their own clique which within itself is run more like a democracy than a benevolent dictatorship. The flower of individual freedom shoots up tiny and alone in a parched desert of anarchy and oppression, but it blooms nonetheless.</blockquote>

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