Fresh campaign setting idea

[Joanne]

I just came up with this idea, and i would like your opinion on this.


the planet was originally an eartlike planet, but about half the size.
Due an occurance (the impact of a meteorite of moonstone )it is now turning slow on its own axis, half of the planet is continual lighted and the other half is continual dark.
it didnt completely stop turning arround its own axis, but turns very slow...
It moves about 5000 meters per year. To complete a full turn will take about 3600 years.
If you build a city in the center of the light part of the planet , it will be on the dark site 900 years later.

Over the centuries the dark site became so cold because of the darknes and lack of sun that an ice-cap evolved. The dark site is now completely covered with ice.

The planet is moving very slow, so the city I was just talking about will eventually not only be on the dark site, but ALSO be covered under the icecap.
Many ancient cities have been swallowed by the ice and are ofcourse partially(the ruins) inhabited by the creatures that live on the icy/dark site.

centuries later the covered cities will pop up again on the other site, where the creatures of the light will move in again, build upon the ruins again etc etc etc,

maybe they have forgotten a city was ever build on the place , so it could be that 3 cities lie on top of eachother without someone knowing.... ofcourse mystery awakes lots of plot possibilities

Imagine living in a city that is coming near dark side of the planet. What do they do? Abandon the city?
Resist the cold and the evil of the dark side? Maybe some try... but all fail.

And when a city comes from the dark side to the light side, maybe full of treasures and ruins, I can almost imagine bands of adventurers running like vultures looking for the reamains. And weird monsters can still dwell there.

If the city took many years to cross the dark side, then the people on the light side may have forgot about it - or think that some specific city was just a myth that never existed.

The cities, in that world - and that is fascinating - are like living creatures: they will eventually die.
That is spooky for a city. They grow and get more rich every year... but they are also one year nearer death.


I have even though about the magic system.
I was thinking of about 4 moons or so, each moon representing an God.
Priests/clerics draw their divine power from the moon, when the moon is on the other site of the planet the power of these clerics weaken.

wizards/sorcerers also draw power from these moons since they are filled with somekind of magic.
the 5 moons are all on a different distance to the planet. so what i was thinking about is the closest moon replresents the low level spells, the one the most far away represents the high level spells.

actually wizards/sorcerers draw their magic from moonrocks. due to meteorites hitting the moons, rock from the moons has been slingshot to the planet. Because of the BIG meteorite of moonrock that hit the planet, from the moon that is the closest is that moonrock most commonly found on the planet. you NEED pieces of the rock as a spell component in order to cast a spell. NO ROCK = NO SPELL

 

[Joanne]

Ian Hoskins wrote:
I used something similar to this in my own campaign world, although in that case it was shards of these artefacts created by the ancient elves.
The elves thought they could control the world and nature completely using five power artefacts (which looks like huge, perfectly spherical gemstones, one for each of the moons), but they failed to realise that there was a 6th month, further out in the orbit around the planet, and the artefacts exploded, tearing a huge chunk out of the planets surface (this looks really neat of a map, there's just a big, suspiciously circular ocean where the elven land used to be) and ripping holes in the fabric of reality. Through these holes came other races, dwarves, goblins, monsters, etc, and thus creating the world that exists today.
The explosion also destroyed the normal system of magic, as it was being pulled into the artefacts at the time and is now held there.

So to cast any sort of magic (except divine magic) the caster has to possess a shard of one of these ancient artefacts. Of course, each of the five artefacts controlled a portion of magic (in the forms of air, earth, fire, water, and spirit magic) so depending on what artefact you controlled, you gained magical powers from that particular source. The shards also had additional powers and could be combined, allowing access to more powerful spells and abilities.

This is an interesting idea you brought up.
That explosion could also be the cause that the planet was slowed down. It sound more exciting then "a meteor hit the planet a long time ago".
When i thought of the meteor hitting the planet it created also a big hole on the surface, which is now filled with water.

Do the shards loose its magical power when you cast a spell, so that you have to find more shards in order to cast more spells?
These shards, you said they represented the moons, does this mean these shards are FROM the moons?
did any of the elves survive?

Maybe the shards are still in-directly linked to the moons, that way when the moon is out of sight only limited level spells can be cast.
just like i had in mind with the priests worshipping the moons.

an interesting idea is then, the priests, they worship a moon. But is this moon a "god"? or should they worship the elements then.
What is possible is that in time they created an figure-like person for each moon that they call "god".
each good thus representing a portfolio which is based on the elements.

for example

MOON > Spirital
Great Spirit (greater god)
The Great Spirit is the most powerful of all moon deities.
Though it would be incorrect to say that he is the leader or ruler of the pantheon,
he is the master of light and the breath of life. Without him, no living thing
would inhabit the physical world.
The Great Spirit is known by a variety of names, including Master of Life,
Father the Sky, Great Mystery, ..........
The Great Spirit has all of the powers of a normal greater god. In addition,
he controls the weather of the physical world.

MOON > Earth element
Earth (intermediate god)
Earth is known by several names: Earth Mother, blabla etc. and the Grandmother.
She is the beginning and end of all life, for all mortal beings spring from her
bosom upon birth and return to it upon death. She feeds all animals, men, and
plants, and is the provider of the Water of Life.
Earth derives her power from the Great Spirit, who has bestowed upon her the ability and duty to nurture life.

MOON > Air element
Air(intermediate god)
Air, also known as ......, is the master of weather and climate. Upon his breath, carries life-giving rains or the parched gasps of drought. He can cool off a hot day, or can uproot trees and topple even the sturdiest of lodges with a tornado.
Air takes great joy in his liberty from the Great Spirit’s authority, exercising his powers with caprice and whim.

MOON > Fire element
Fire (intermediate god)
Upon Fire, also known as ....., the Great Spirit has bestowed the ability to destroy anything living. He is also charged with providing warmth and light, but is resentful of this duty and only executes it if constantly fed

MOON > Water element
Water (intermediate god)
Water is the god of the seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, and earthquakes.

MOON > Darkness (6th moon, wasnt represented during the big blast after the elves ceremony.)
Darkness (intermediate god)
Darkness, the Lady of the Night, is the goddess of the black moon. She is the kindly patron of all animal growth. But she is also the goddess who brings the terrible things of the night — cold damp air, the poisons of the atmosphere, ghosts, and other fearful shapes and shadows. Darkness is the deity who brought continual night to half of the world by interupting the ceremony (to which she was not included, but the elves didnt know that)led by the elves to control the worlds nature.
In her home on the black moon, she is a beautiful, ghostly woman of silver light.

 

[Joanne]

The shards are artefacts in their own right, they do lose their power when spells are cast, but regain it over time. Also, the size of the shard dictates how much power it contains. They can also combine. So if you have two fire shards they can meld together to form a more powerful shard. Thus, it would be possible to combine all of the shard in existance to reform the ancient stones the elves used, but most of the pieces lie at the bottom of the ocean. The largest shard in existance is a semi-sentient artefact called the heartstone and it is in the hands of the royal family of a small, isolated island near a the world's largest kingdom.

Elven beliefs stated that the 5 moon represents the five aspects of life, so the stones were named after the moons, but they were forged out of pure magic, collecting the magical weave/whatever that surrounded the world, which is why normal magic no longer worlds on the planet, only priests and elements (if the mage controls on the shards)

The elves did survive, but that is an interesting story. There were
actually three different sorts of elves, according to the ancient elves.
1st were the High Elves, the ones responsible for forging the stones.
Then the common elves (half-elves) and then the humans (who the elves considered part of their race, admittedly a much lower form of life).
After the cataclysm, the home of the high elves was gone, and only a few scattered settlements survived. Common elves and humans were spread across the continent, so they survived and have florished. The high elves (what few survive) have retreated to a small island half a world away and are trying to forget what happened. Other race, such as dwarves, goblins, a couple of unique races, arrived on the world during, or shortly after the cataclysm and also carve out empires for themselves.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

The idea for the light & dark halves sounds neat. I like the bit with the ice caps, also. Here's a couple of thoughts:

1. Does the planet's slow rotation have any other effects on the inhabitants? I'm no astrophysicist, but I think that it might make the gravity somewhat less, which could lead to a few different things- quicker travel, that sort of thing.

2. Without the setting of the sun, there's no way to tell one day from the next. What do people do as an alternative? I assume they would do it by tracking the moons instead. Time tracking, history, and clockmaking could be the purview of clerics associated with a specific moon- probably the spiritual moon, or perhaps just whichever moon's orbit most closely represents a single day (or rather what people think a single day used to be).

 

[Agback]

1. Does the planet's slow rotation have any other effects on the inhabitants? I'm no astrophysicist, but I think that it might make the gravity somewhat less, which could lead to a few different things- quicker travel, that sort of thing.

Nope. No such effect. The strength of gravity depends only on the mass and radius of the planet.

On the contrary, at the equator on Earth the centrifugal effect offsets gravity very slightly, and on this planet that won't happen. Apparent gravity at the equator on this world will be very slightly higher than it would be if the planet were spinning faster. The effect is very slight: on Earth it was not noticed until a French astronomer at Cayenne noticed that his grandfather clock ran a two and a half minutes per day slower than at Paris.

Regards,


Agback