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PCs vs. 1-mile long living airship!
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<blockquote data-quote="Deadguy" data-source="post: 1388970" data-attributes="member: 2480"><p>Two quick questions, RW: is the ship internally aware (that is can it both sense and act upon those sensations within itself)? And how intelligent is the ship (is it a passive, mindless entity, or does it have a certain amount of animal cunning)?</p><p> </p><p> I ask, because an aware entity might be able to serve as its own defender. Imagine the facility to open and close doors, to dilate or crack windows, to buck the deck, perhaps even to cause windstorms or exhalation, or flood sections with fluids. That might make for an interestingly different fight, against the fabric of the 'dungeon' itself. Especially as there's unlikely to be enough damage that the PCs can easily do to stop the ship from hurting them.</p><p> </p><p> Another factor of such a huge living entity is that it is likely to need maintenance, so there's scope for living constructs acting as servitors, tasked to repairing and maintaining the vessel. And since this is a biomantic specialist, you can let your mind go wild with the forms they'd take. Perhaps monkey-like entities that can climb over all the surfaces of the ship, equipped with claws and rasps to clean surfaces and filters. Or things that swim in the ship's giant blood vessels, clearing out parasites. How about cleaner oozes, that flow through corridors, absorbing waste materials and patching damage to the internal walls. Whilst it might be outfitted to look like a ship, there's a living thing hidden behind those walls.</p><p> </p><p> I'd imagine there'll be plenty of rooms where servants, whether bioconstruct or humanoid, can work, along with the many tools they'll need. But there will also be plenty of areas that are devoted to the nature of the living construct itself: blood vessels, vast filter chambers where the ship strains nutrients from the air, nutrient reserve bladders, filled with gunk that te ship survives on (and perhaps uses to give itself a boost in combat). In other words there's a whole parallel world, hidden behind the normal ship that the PCs see when they first enter.</p><p> </p><p> And since it <em>is</em> a living ship, and since its Master <em>is</em> a biomantic specialist, I'd want vast growing chambers for producing new lifeforms: polyps and cysts with 'things' growing inside them. Indeed, these needn't be entirely separate from the ship itself... perhaps it has some power to 'borrow' these entities for its own defence? Oh, and since you have a mind-cntrol specialist onboard, can he have leant some research to allow the lich and/or the ship to control those onboard?</p><p> </p><p> If you had the time I'd recommend taking a look at the Peter F. Hamilton <em>Night's Dawn</em> trilogy, since those books include enormous intelligent living space stations. The defence of the habitat <em>Valisk</em> would give some useful pointers as to how living things on that scale can pull off stunts that mere humans can scarcely comprehend, let alone handle!</p><p> </p><p> Oh, and since my own game (the <em>Shattered World</em>) includes a huge airy Abyss in which the Fragments of surviving land float, I am really going to have to steal this idea of a living, biomantic ship! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> You really are an amazingly imaginative and innovative guy, Ryan!<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool :cool:" data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Deadguy, post: 1388970, member: 2480"] Two quick questions, RW: is the ship internally aware (that is can it both sense and act upon those sensations within itself)? And how intelligent is the ship (is it a passive, mindless entity, or does it have a certain amount of animal cunning)? I ask, because an aware entity might be able to serve as its own defender. Imagine the facility to open and close doors, to dilate or crack windows, to buck the deck, perhaps even to cause windstorms or exhalation, or flood sections with fluids. That might make for an interestingly different fight, against the fabric of the 'dungeon' itself. Especially as there's unlikely to be enough damage that the PCs can easily do to stop the ship from hurting them. Another factor of such a huge living entity is that it is likely to need maintenance, so there's scope for living constructs acting as servitors, tasked to repairing and maintaining the vessel. And since this is a biomantic specialist, you can let your mind go wild with the forms they'd take. Perhaps monkey-like entities that can climb over all the surfaces of the ship, equipped with claws and rasps to clean surfaces and filters. Or things that swim in the ship's giant blood vessels, clearing out parasites. How about cleaner oozes, that flow through corridors, absorbing waste materials and patching damage to the internal walls. Whilst it might be outfitted to look like a ship, there's a living thing hidden behind those walls. I'd imagine there'll be plenty of rooms where servants, whether bioconstruct or humanoid, can work, along with the many tools they'll need. But there will also be plenty of areas that are devoted to the nature of the living construct itself: blood vessels, vast filter chambers where the ship strains nutrients from the air, nutrient reserve bladders, filled with gunk that te ship survives on (and perhaps uses to give itself a boost in combat). In other words there's a whole parallel world, hidden behind the normal ship that the PCs see when they first enter. And since it [i]is[/i] a living ship, and since its Master [i]is[/i] a biomantic specialist, I'd want vast growing chambers for producing new lifeforms: polyps and cysts with 'things' growing inside them. Indeed, these needn't be entirely separate from the ship itself... perhaps it has some power to 'borrow' these entities for its own defence? Oh, and since you have a mind-cntrol specialist onboard, can he have leant some research to allow the lich and/or the ship to control those onboard? If you had the time I'd recommend taking a look at the Peter F. Hamilton [i]Night's Dawn[/i] trilogy, since those books include enormous intelligent living space stations. The defence of the habitat [i]Valisk[/i] would give some useful pointers as to how living things on that scale can pull off stunts that mere humans can scarcely comprehend, let alone handle! Oh, and since my own game (the [i]Shattered World[/i]) includes a huge airy Abyss in which the Fragments of surviving land float, I am really going to have to steal this idea of a living, biomantic ship! :) You really are an amazingly imaginative and innovative guy, Ryan!:cool: [/QUOTE]
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