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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 6197106" data-attributes="member: 6750502">The Outlands <img src="http://i.imgur.com/c0OtCrZ.jpg?1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> <a href="http://iburo.deviantart.com/" target="_blank">Center of the Multiverse, by IBuro of Deviantart</a>    The Outlands is the center of the Multiverse, haven of cross-planar travel and trade.  It’s the home of Sigil, the fabled City of Doors.  It is home to the Spire, a place so powerful that it can rob even the deities of their powers.  No trait or faction on the Outlands is dominant, not even Neutrality; it is all the Planes, and none of them.Gatetowns    Arranged in a rough circle 1,000 miles away from the Spire are 17 towns of varying sizes.  Each of them has a portal to an Outer Plane, with limited dimensional influence.  Xaos, the gatetown to Limbo, has a highly morphic nature, while the Elysium gatetown of Ecstasy has a limited Entrapment trait.    If a gatetown becomes too “close” to its connecting Plane, or a dimensional breach occurs, the settlement runs the risk of being “absorbed” into the Plane and taken out of the Outlands.  The inhabitants are aware of this, and power struggles between community leaders occur between those who want to move to the new Plane and others who prefer the setting of the Outlands.  Planes with more expansionist power groups (such as Mechanus and Elysium) are poised to overtake the gatetowns and everyone within them.A Storehouse of Knowledge    The Outlands is home to a disproportionately high amount of libraries, mausoleums, museums, and other places containing the ancient memories of the past.  Deities representing concepts of knowledge reside on the plane, making the Outlands a safe haven for people with forbidden texts, censored works, and various pieces of information others might want to restrict or destroy.    One might assume that this would make the Outlands an easy target for would-be tomb raiders and thieves, but this is hardly the case.  A rare spellbook may be under the guard of divine minions, treacherous traps, and secluded among the shelves of tens of thousands of other books of a similar nature.  A person might know that the Book of Vile Darkness was last seen in Boccob’s Library of Lore, but that doesn’t mean that anybody can just waltz in and find it easily.    Boccob’s Library of Lore is a giant building full of scholarly texts, almost an entire city in and of itself.  Most areas are well-patrolled and home to sages and wizards of all stripes, but the Restricted Areas are home to the more dangerous tomes.  Full of malevolently sapient books, ethereal living magical symbols of death and worse, these sections of the Library are rarely traveled and given over to decay and ruin.  Boccob’s more fiendish and eccentric petitioners live here, jealously guarding their hidden knowledge from “the unworthy.”    The Cavern of Thought is home to Illsensine, deity of the Illithids.  It is said that the God knows of primordial, forgotten secrets and of cataclysmic disasters yet to come.  His lair is an underground cavern, its walls, ceilings, and floors fleshy and pulsating to the rhythm of a heartbeat.  Illsensine and his petitioners tolerate no visitors, but anybody who manages to make it to the largest chamber can come into contact with the god himself.  Illsensine can bestow knowledge upon the person strong enough to make it here, yet in exchange they must give him one of their own memories.  Such a memory must be of value to Illsensine and hard to obtain, otherwise he’ll slay the intruder for wasting his time.Khaasta and Rilmani    The Rilmani are Outland natives committed to the balance of powers between the Outer Planes.  They believe that the Multiverse is ideal as it is and reject any attempts of expansion by any of the forces of Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos.  Rilmani believe that their home plane’s diversity is the ideal, and the Multiversal dominance of any one group of planes on the Great Wheel will result in the destruction of a large swath of their homeland.  Many Rilmani seek Neutrality for the sake of Balance, but many more seek it out of fear of destruction.    Since they frequently intervene in the affairs of many powerful planar factions, the Rilmani’s policies earn them a lot of ill-will throughout the Planes.  Were it not for their bases near the Spire, it is probable that multiple forces would have destroyed their people long ago.  Rilmani also have a presence beyond the Spire and adamantly champion the right of gatetowns to stay on the Outlands; they argue that planar absorption, even of a voluntary nature, is an invasion of their land.    Adventurers in the Outlands (and possibly the rest of the Great Wheel) inevitably get entangled in the Rilmani’s affairs.  They might be hired to prevent an incursion of Formian expansionists into the gatetown of Automata, or might need to protect an Archon, Eladrin, or other Outsider from a Rilmani assassin.    The Khaasta are the other well-known natives of the Outlands.  They mostly live in the region closest to the chaotic-aligned gatetowns, roaming the land as tribes.  Khaasta are violent and hostile to others outside their tribe and survive by plundering and attacking other settlements.  They have a well-deserved reputation as bandits, slavers, and thieves.  Most inhabitants view them as a scourge upon the land.Sigil, the City of Doors    Sigil is the crown jewel of the Outer Planes, a multicultural haven of inhabitants from all over the Multiverse.  Constructed along the inside band of a giant floating ring, the city has no true sky, and its architecture adheres to grim, foreboding towers and citadels.  Sigil is home to the largest amount of portals per square inch of all planar metropolises.  The portals are usually subtle: a portal to Pandemonium might take the form of an echoing sewer hole in the slums, while a portal to the Abyss might take the form or a dark alleyway covered with demonic graffiti.    Some of the most powerful people and organizations gather in Sigil, and the city’s factions plan events on an interplanar scale.  Whether it’s searching for a portal to a wondrous location or sabotaging the plot of a faction conspiracy, there’s more than enough quests for adventurers in the City of Doors!Adventure Hooks in the Outlands:•    The PCs are caught in an unconventional dilemma.  The Elysium gatetown of Ecstasy just got absorbed into the Upper Plane.  It won’t be long before the town’s petitioners and inhabitants get assimilated by the Plane.  A village of Rilmani living close to Ecstasy is enraged, and demands the return of their family, friends, and fellow citizens.  The Guardinals understand their plight, but argue that the inhabitants will be happy and provided for once they’re assimilated.  Whether it’s due to influence or experience, the PCs are called in to provide some sort of solution.  Even Good-aligned PCs might feel uncomfortable with Elysium’s policies, and Clerics of like-minded deities and Paladins who choose to side with the Rilmani might even be threatened by the Guardinals “for siding against Good.”•    A group of archeologists is planning an expedition to a long-abandoned ruin in the Outlands.  Once the site of a deity of knowledge, the scholars believe that the ruins might contain hints of ancient secrets of long-dead civilizations.  The PCs are hired to provide safety and security to the team of archeologists.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the ruins once belonged to Vecna, Evil deity of secrets and magic!  The PCs and archeologists are now marked for death by the Whispered One’s servants, and they’ll need to fight their way out if they hope to survive!•    While performing research at Boccob’s Library of Lore, the PCs come upon a tome of powerful illusion magic.  The book’s spell activates unexpectedly, and the PCs find themselves in an imaginary world full of ancient myths and legends!  The spell will end once the PCs finish the saga.  Feel free to borrow inspiration from real-world epics and myths, but with a D&D twist!</blockquote>

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