[Creative Exercise] Worlds in a word, planes in a paragraph
- Thread starter Mouseferatu
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Fecaurum - Abyss
This abyssal layer appears to be full of rare treasures, but these treasures are in fact partially real illusions (although unlike most partly real illusions they are not based on shadow). When removed from the layer these treasures revert to their physical substrate, which is literal bull$#!+. In the case of magic items, they also turn to bull$#!+ if their charges run out (which may happen randomly to an item that should still have charges left or even to one that should never run out of charges). The illusions are very convincing and only someone extremely strong willed and wise could possibly see through them while on the layer.
Murder-Con
A seemingly infinite convention center holds a seemingly endless convention dedicated to the art of murder and warfare. The convention center exists simultaneously on Gehenna, Pandemonium, and the Abyss
The Umbrella - Far Realm (or possibly Faerie?)
A small chamber where an umbrella is embedded in a mound of wax. Acid congeals on the umbrella and drips up into the sky. The umbrella is semi-intelligent and insults anyone who comes near
Pilabum City - Ravenloft
A city banished to the mists for its use and abuse of blood magic. The city had ubiquitous magic in every household, but it was powered by the mass slaughter of intelligent magical beasts, whose blood was pumped out into households and shops to recharge the magic items there. The power plant did not make it to the mists, and now the residents are eager to waylay outsiders and take their blood. The darklord is the inventor and popularizer of this system of blood magic, a powerful mystic theurge. This particular mystic theurge worships a dying-and-reviving vampire god whose renewed undeath brings the winter.
This abyssal layer appears to be full of rare treasures, but these treasures are in fact partially real illusions (although unlike most partly real illusions they are not based on shadow). When removed from the layer these treasures revert to their physical substrate, which is literal bull$#!+. In the case of magic items, they also turn to bull$#!+ if their charges run out (which may happen randomly to an item that should still have charges left or even to one that should never run out of charges). The illusions are very convincing and only someone extremely strong willed and wise could possibly see through them while on the layer.
Murder-Con
A seemingly infinite convention center holds a seemingly endless convention dedicated to the art of murder and warfare. The convention center exists simultaneously on Gehenna, Pandemonium, and the Abyss
The Umbrella - Far Realm (or possibly Faerie?)
A small chamber where an umbrella is embedded in a mound of wax. Acid congeals on the umbrella and drips up into the sky. The umbrella is semi-intelligent and insults anyone who comes near
Pilabum City - Ravenloft
A city banished to the mists for its use and abuse of blood magic. The city had ubiquitous magic in every household, but it was powered by the mass slaughter of intelligent magical beasts, whose blood was pumped out into households and shops to recharge the magic items there. The power plant did not make it to the mists, and now the residents are eager to waylay outsiders and take their blood. The darklord is the inventor and popularizer of this system of blood magic, a powerful mystic theurge. This particular mystic theurge worships a dying-and-reviving vampire god whose renewed undeath brings the winter.
The Black Colosseum - Abyssal layer
Abyssal Layer 76567* is dominated by a staggeringly enormous stadium, about 500 miles in radius, which is surrounded by an endless tar pit. The entrances to the stadium proper are haunted by gangs of yugoloth bandits who threaten that visitors will forefeit their health and safety unless they surrender their worldly goods. The concourse is filled with bazaars and tent cities which are periodically destroyed by roving bands of murderous demonic hooligans. The seating bowl is enchanted so that a one can clearly see the entire immense field.
On the field are small city states and the game that they play is war against each other. The city state teams lack formal rule of law, but most have a combination coach/general who is typically a powerful or unique demon and who trains the team in combat, hires ringers, sources performance enhancing substances, and devises steategies that are haphazardly followed. A team that manages to dominate the stadium goes off to the "championship", ie. the Blood War
The Ghastroom - Abyssal layer
The Ghastroom is a seemingly infinite concatenation of GAS station resTROOMs. It is dark, littered with piles of dung, and haunted by cannibalistic undead. The dung piles, as well as the ghouls and ghasts, both carry a disease that combines the effects of filth fever and ghoul fever
*Did I use #76567 already?
Abyssal Layer 76567* is dominated by a staggeringly enormous stadium, about 500 miles in radius, which is surrounded by an endless tar pit. The entrances to the stadium proper are haunted by gangs of yugoloth bandits who threaten that visitors will forefeit their health and safety unless they surrender their worldly goods. The concourse is filled with bazaars and tent cities which are periodically destroyed by roving bands of murderous demonic hooligans. The seating bowl is enchanted so that a one can clearly see the entire immense field.
On the field are small city states and the game that they play is war against each other. The city state teams lack formal rule of law, but most have a combination coach/general who is typically a powerful or unique demon and who trains the team in combat, hires ringers, sources performance enhancing substances, and devises steategies that are haphazardly followed. A team that manages to dominate the stadium goes off to the "championship", ie. the Blood War
The Ghastroom - Abyssal layer
The Ghastroom is a seemingly infinite concatenation of GAS station resTROOMs. It is dark, littered with piles of dung, and haunted by cannibalistic undead. The dung piles, as well as the ghouls and ghasts, both carry a disease that combines the effects of filth fever and ghoul fever
*Did I use #76567 already?
Solarinite Wasteland - for a sci-fi sett8ng. A vacuum collapse event has occurred, but the true vacuum isn't sufficiently different from the normal vacuum in energy nor a good enough self-catalyst to cause a runaway chain reaction. Instead there is a growing irregular "scorched" region of space where the true vacuum has propagated along the paths of high energy cosmic phenomena ((gamma ray bursts, supernovae, stars, cosmic rays, etc) that have collided or intersected with it. Possibly bright light, as from a star seen from within its own system, may be sufficient, depending on how you want to play it.
A planet where the land of the dead is a physical place contiguous with the land of the living, occupying one hemisphere while the land of the living occupies the other. A modernized take on Ra's nightly journey into the land of the dead in egyptian mythology, with the 12 timezones most directly opposite to Egypt acting as the location of the land of the dead
The Macrocosm- Planetary system where each planet corresponds to one of earth's continents. Possibly Africa, Eurpoe, and Asia are all moons of a single gas giant, and north and south america are a double-planet system. The PCs are anthropomorphic animals (rats probably work best; stowing away in the greys' spaceships, going between planets) with a red-in-tooth-and-claw society like the one in the webcomic Kevin and Kell. Everything in the setting is overshadowed by the setting's equivalent of humans - grey alien type creatures with an interplanetary civilization (verging on becoming interstellar), frightening levels of individual intellignece, a language too complicated for anyone else to speak, cat and dog servitor races that worship them as gods (and who will try to sacrifice the PCs to them if the PCs are rats as recommended), and a cthulhu-like disregard for the other creatures of the system.
Polysol - Crystal sphere with no large central sun, necessitating lots of Apollo style solar chariots (or Ra style solar barges) that each serves its own locality about the size of a US state. Potentially the time of day, length of the day, and the direction of the sun's travel may vary between regions in an unsynchronized way. (Edit: alternately they could be perfectly synchronized and with a simgle sun god controlling all of them, in parodic contrast to D&D's usual nonsensical situation of multiple non-collaborating sun gods but just one sun)
The Barge of A Million Years - Speaking of Ra, sci-fi/science fantasy setting featuring the egyptian gods where Ra's "Barge of A Million Years" that carries the sun is reimagined as a Stellar Engine such as a shkadov thruster or caplan Thruster
The Over Under - World where the Dwarves live aboveground and are kind of messed up because in ancient times they were driven out of the underdark by an invasion of the Mindflayers and their (at that time) Githyanki minions. (in what is intended as a parody of the underground society from GRRM's Dying of the Light)
The Barge of A Million Years - Speaking of Ra, sci-fi/science fantasy setting featuring the egyptian gods where Ra's "Barge of A Million Years" that carries the sun is reimagined as a Stellar Engine such as a shkadov thruster or caplan Thruster
The Over Under - World where the Dwarves live aboveground and are kind of messed up because in ancient times they were driven out of the underdark by an invasion of the Mindflayers and their (at that time) Githyanki minions. (in what is intended as a parody of the underground society from GRRM's Dying of the Light)
W'rkncacnter
Hero
are they also australian, like drow normally are?
Nellisir
Hero
Multiple small suns over one planet? I rather like that idea. Each sun gets a different personality. Some are dead. Or missing.
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