What is the Problem with Union!

[Jürgen Hubert]

Okay, we've established that your hate of union know no limit, and that it fails in every aspect of game.

How can an epic city work?

An Epic city can work. But you shouldn't start with the layout or demographics of the place. Instead, you should start with epic-level people.

It all began with a party of (mostly) neutral-aligned adventurers with epic levels - say, around level 30 or so. They had become pretty much the top dogs on their home world - gone into the remotest wilderness, slain that dragon demigod, got the t-shirt. They had become rich beyond avarice from their loot. And they were getting bored.

Sure, they could have simply taken over or started their own empire on their homeworld. But there was no one who could challenge them, so that would have ultimately meant more boredom - and more responsibility. And interplanar empires had logistics problems of their own. So they decided to do something different.

Instead of conquering something, they set out to create the biggest multi-planar trade empire the multiverse had ever seen. They took over a (mostly) abandoned demi-plane that was also somewhat protected against deities (not quite on par with Sigil, perhaps - but enough that any visiting avatar would have been weakened) and founded the city of Argossos as their new home and headquarters. They also brought a couple of thousands of retainers to run the details of their planar trade empire, and opened for business by creating a network of portals to various planes.

They expanded rapidly at first - they were able to trade goods from one world to another at very competetive prices, and a group of epic-level adventurers can be very convincing when they ask you to open your market to them. But they soon ran into other rich and powerful merchants with similar agendas, and there were some disagreements between the original members on certain policy issues - and even a permanent death or two.

But instead of starting a destructive trade war with other planar merchants, they managed to co-opt them. The Argossos Trade Consortium was founded, and anyone rich enough is able to join it. Its rules are:

- The Consortium is a organization of planar merchants and merchant houses. Any entity able to afford the annual membership fee (about the "average wealth" of a 20th level PC...) is welcome to join it, as long as it agrees to abide by the membership strictures.

- New kingdoms, empires, and even entire planes must be opened up for trade with the Consortium. While these legal entities may declare certain goods traded by the Consortium to be illegal in their territory, if the goods are legal, then it must be possible for the members of the Consortium to sell them as well without extra tariffs. The Consortium will enforce its ideas of "Free Trade", whether these kingdoms agree with them or not - quite possibly by hiring high-level or even epic-level adventurers to convince them.

- The membership fees will be used for maintaining the organization of the Consortium, as well as for exploring new planes and possible markets, creating new portals, and opening up these new markets by any means neccessary. Important decisions will be voted on by the Consortium Council, a body consisting of all Consortium members (with the Chairman getting a tie-breaking vote, if neccessary). The position of the Chairman will be voted upon every five years.


The establishment of the Consortium brought an additional influx of very wealthy and powerful people, and Argossos is now thriving more than ever. With each new world opened up for trade, more people and wealth arrive. And that makes it great for epic-level adventurers.

One possibility is that the Consortium acts as a patron: "This continent is dominated by an empire that refuses to trade with us. You have a budget of one million gold pieces. If you succeed in opening them up, you get another million gp. Now go forth and show them what you can do!" Presumably, this empire also has a few epic-level NPCs that protect it, so the PCs must deal with them, one way or another - whether peacefully or not is up to them.

Less morally dubious are missions where they have to save worlds from large-scale disasters - after all, if the world is wrecked, no one there will be able to buy the goods of the Consortium! And the inhabitants will probably be quite friendly to the Consortium if its agents save it...

The PCs can also become members of the Consortium themselves. Not only must they make enough profit to maintain their membership fees, they must also stand their ground against the other merchants and merchant houses - most of who have epic-level people of their own, and many of whom are not nice people. Like in all things, their intrigues should also be epic.


Finally, they can also attempt to oppose the Consortium - after all, its apperance on a world somewhere can cause widespread disruption in the way of life of the natives, and many Consortium members are devils or other evil creatures who will squeeze the locals for all they are worth and then some. But with the kind of opposition they face, this is easier said than done - and will provide plenty of opportunities for an extended campaign...

 

[Yair]

That was one of the cool things about the Mentzer edition of D&D. Since it was organized into four boxed sets, each of these boxes assumed that by the time you got to it, you would start to change the focus of your campaign. Basic (1-3) was exclusively about dungeon-crawling, Expert (4-14) added wilderness adventures (which are more dangerous because things aren't organized in neat levels - nothing says you can't run into a dragon while walking through the forest), Companion (15-25) added rulership of domains, and the Master rules had you trying to achieve Immortality and exploring other planes. Sure, you would still be doing some of the old stuff but there was new stuff to keep things interesting as well.

I never considered this, but you're absolutely right.

 

[Ripzerai]

After the Great Upheaval, the guilds who had run Sigil for centuries saw the new factions as a terrible threat to their ambitions. Already they had seized control of many of the Cage's most crucial centers of power. The common histories don't say how ruthless the Fated were in taking over the office of taxation, or how uncompromising the Godsman takeover of the Great Foundry was. When the Hall of Speakers passed a law declaring dual membership in both a guild and a faction illegal, the guilds were sure it was their death sentence.

A little-known but ambitious gate-city called Carrigmoor was their salvation. Although founded by wizards - refugees from the destruction of an entire world - almost a century before, Carrigmoor had not had much luck persuading planar merchants to use its newly minted portals. Eager for planar-savvy contacts, the masters of the city gave the guilds generous offers of power and influence if they would relocate to Carrigmoor.

The Planewalker's Guild moved to the Infinite Staircase instead, while others settled for a lesser role in Sigil, but enough of the guilds accepted Carrigmoor's offer that it was suddenly elevated from Obscure Clueless Hole to Exciting New Place to Be. With the knowledge and experience of the exiled guilds, soon trade and skilled professionals were coming to Carrigmoor from all across the planes. For a time, it seemed as if Carrigmoor would rival the City of Doors itself.

Then, about forty years ago, Carrigmoor suffered a terrible plague. Reports of the exact nature of this disease are mixed. Some of the oldest guilders insist they symptoms were identical to the plague that decimated most of the Free League soon after Sigil's Great Upheaval. Others said it was more of a drain on creativity and spirit taken to extremes, a more immediately fatal strain of what would later be known as the Iron Shadow. Still others compared the malady to devil chills or other feared lower planar diseases.

Members of the enigmatic race known as the Merchants Arcane, or simply the mercanes, came to the decimated, terrified population of Carrigmoor and told them that they had recently created a city of their own, and that they were offering space for merchants and artisans at very reasonable rates. Desperate for escape, much of the remaining citizenry of Carrigmoor accepted. Only those too poor to leave or too proud to give up their power remained. A few even blamed the mercane for starting the plague, but most dismissed this idea as pure paranoia.

Today the demiplane of Union hosts the majority of these nomadic guilds. Under the watchful eyes of the mercanes they regulate business in this newest planar metropolis, though the reopening of Sigil to guilds after the Faction War has gotten many in Union to thinking they had set their sights too low. But after entering into business with the mercanes, is it still possible to get out with their souls and hides intact?