D&D General Brainstorming for Expanding a Dwarven Astral Colony

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm working on expanding a minor planar location called Mutas. As presented in the 4E source book Secrets of the Astral Sea, Mutas is a colossal goblet once belonging to Moradin that he tossed away, somehow growing to proportions large enough to hold a small city's worth of buildings in the interior. It floats in the Astral Sea and is sometimes attacked by githyanki pirates.

I have some details I have already added to it as part of my current campaign, but I was curious to see how others might go about fleshing put this location. Who would be there, what would they do, and how does being in the Astral Plane affect the environment and the inhabitants?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The influence of Moradin lingers, so it is a place of dwarves, craftspeople, and lots of gold.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Huh, I don't recall that one. An obvious approach:

It was a deity's goblet once, and lingering resonances make it a very, very good place to establish breweries, distilleries, etc. Most of the buildings are devoted to producing alcoholic beverages, with others being docks and warehouses for the alcohol trade - both taking in raw materials and exporting supernaturally-enhanced booze across the planes. Room for housing is pretty limited and many workers sleep on the premises, bunking down in the breweries - but most are Dwarves and like the atmosphere. Inns and taverns primarily serve visiting merchants and are often owned by brewers using them to demonstrate their products to visitors. The locals do their serious drinking in fortified drinking-halls that double as militia rallying points and armories during raids, with entry for outsiders by invitation only - and watch out for the low ceilings if you do get in.

Doesn't need much explanation for why githyanki pirates keep raiding the place but never really trying to conquer it. That ascetic tea-totalling nonsense is for monkish githzerai, not proper picaroons of the Astral Sea!

There may be some deep secret around a stash of divine dregs hidden somewhere on Mutas. These might grant amazing powers to those who don't mind drinking Moradin's backwash, although a Dwarf's idea of "amazing" may involve becoming shorter and sprouting a stunning beard.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Huh, I don't recall that one. An obvious approach:

It was a deity's goblet once, and lingering resonances make it a very, very good place to establish breweries, distilleries, etc. Most of the buildings are devoted to producing alcoholic beverages, with others being docks and warehouses for the alcohol trade - both taking in raw materials and exporting supernaturally-enhanced booze across the planes. Room for housing is pretty limited and many workers sleep on the premises, bunking down in the breweries - but most are Dwarves and like the atmosphere. Inns and taverns primarily serve visiting merchants and are often owned by brewers using them to demonstrate their products to visitors. The locals do their serious drinking in fortified drinking-halls that double as militia rallying points and armories during raids, with entry for outsiders by invitation only - and watch out for the low ceilings if you do get in.

Doesn't need much explanation for why githyanki pirates keep raiding the place but never really trying to conquer it. That ascetic tea-totalling nonsense is for monkish githzerai, not proper picaroons of the Astral Sea!

There may be some deep secret around a stash of divine dregs hidden somewhere on Mutas. These might grant amazing powers to those who don't mind drinking Moradin's backwash, although a Dwarf's idea of "amazing" may involve becoming shorter and sprouting a stunning beard.

I already decided there is an endless lake of alcohol in the middle of Mutas, but somehow it didn't cross my mind for their to be an alcohol trade. So far I'd mainly been developing it as a trade port used by the dwarven arms dealers Smith's Coster, but no reason there can't be more than one business located here!

For more of my own developments, I decided that a number of outsiders (basically souls that were supposed to become petitioners but for whatever reason are unable to enter the plane they should have gone to) also live and work here, nearly indistinguishable from their mortal peers.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

For more of my own developments, I decided that a number of outsiders (basically souls that were supposed to become petitioners but for whatever reason are unable to enter the plane they should have gone to) also live and work here, nearly indistinguishable from their mortal peers.

Yeah, they're pretty much always looking for a safe home to spend eternity in. Stupid broken routing soul-routing network really shafts some people.

 

[bloodtide]

Some ideas:

*the ale of the goblet has a horrible taste, the idea/myth is that is why it was thrown away. It's fine to drink, but tastes bad. For a twist, it might only have a bad flavor to a typical dwarf taste bud....so it has a soft, sweet, flowery flavor...for example.

*The whole goblet is full of ale and the city floats on that 'sea' of ale.

*Someone...or something...is drinking all the ale. Something like a 'living portal mouth' is at the bottom of the goblet 'lake' . Over the course of a year the 'mouth drinks all the ale...and the floating city sinks...until the end of the year when the ale is gone and the city crashes to the bottom. Then at the start of the new year, the goblet refills....and the mouth shows up again to drink it mid year.

*It's all an under ale city....A 'surface' like city under ale in bubbles...or a swimming aquatic race city

*The goblet causes things living on it to grow...so lost of big bugs and such

 

[Yaarel]

I'm working on expanding a minor planar location called Mutas. As presented in the 4E source book Secrets of the Astral Sea, Mutas is a colossal goblet once belonging to Moradin that he tossed away, somehow growing to proportions large enough to hold a small city's worth of buildings in the interior. It floats in the Astral Sea and is sometimes attacked by githyanki pirates.

I have some details I have already added to it as part of my current campaign, but I was curious to see how others might go about fleshing put this location. Who would be there, what would they do, and how does being in the Astral Plane affect the environment and the inhabitants?

I think of an "Outer Plane" as a network of "dominions" interconnected by portals. For example, Arvandor would be a dominion in the networkd that comprises CG Arborea.

Some of the dominions are exclaves of an Outer Plane floating independently in the Astral Sea, but still are part of the alignment plane.

Is this Goblet part of the LG Outer Plane, Celestia? If thrown away, it is probably not connected with Dwarfhome, the dominion of Moradin.

Is the Goblet now Unaligned?

 

[GuardianLurker]

So the Astral Plane is supposed to be (among other things) the plane of thought-forms and reified concepts. Maybe the goblet grew so large because it is the ur-goblet, the platonic form of all goblets. If so, it could serve as a scrying component/target for any goblet in the multiverse, or a teleport target. Or (if large encough) to serve as the unique material for an "anygoblet" - a goblet that can fill with any liquid specified.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I just ran another session and have a few more details to add.

• One of the local microbreweries serves alcohol created by combining samples from Mutas' lake with ingredients sourced from the Elemental Planes.
• Master artisans use special ingredients sourced from the planes to try and create magic items that could rival anything produced in the Outer Planes.
• Trade is maintained with both Astral Dominions and wildspace systems, the efforts enjoying the support of the goddess Erathis, who wishes to make the Astral Sea into a functioning civilization.
• The outsiders who are destroyed here do not cease to exist, instead entering a partial stasis within the representational sculpture throughout the city (this could include many minor sentient items with dwarven face motifs).

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Another tidbit based on the effects that alcohol has on dwarves in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes:

• Alcoholic beverages created using the lake in the center of Mutas and inspire pleasant-yet-fleeting memories drawn from anyone that has ever enjoyed a drink in good spirits. This confers the benefit of gaining a +1 to all saving throws until the end of the creature's next long rest. In addition, during the long rest the creature and any companions that shared a drink may have a dream based on one of these fleeting memories.