Post/Author/DateTime	Post
HamHam 09-06-07, 12:38 AM	I'm in the process of trying to flesh out what is happening and what is going to happen in my campaign world, and I thought I'd bounce some ideas around here and maybe get some feedback on which ones are good and what might need some work. And maybe it might make a somewhat interesting read as well: Eons ago, Cylex was home to many races: humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, lizardfolk, just to name a few, and they all lived in harmony and unity and they were collectively know as the Cylexian Federation. This peace and prosperity was founded on one thing: Elementia. Elementia was a magical condensate, made by taking raw elemental matter and energy and turning it into solid blocks of glowing, prismatic, magical fuel. But the process of seperating normal, crude matter into its base elements was difficult and expensive. But Cylexian Arcanists soon realized that there was a ready supply of pure elemental power available not so far away: in the Inner Planes themselves. Normal gates could no suffice to move large enough quantities of elementia, so they invented massive planar gates, some the size of a city, to provide easy access to the Inner Planes, and began strip mining them for resources. With cheap power came an explosion in things that used that power: trains, flying ships, horse-less carriages, buildings, and artifices of all kinds. The number and variety of their creations were unrivaled in all the multiverse. But the beings that made the Inner Planes their home were nto pleased with this exploitation, and eventually they were roused to open war against Cylex. Seemingly infinite armies of elementals and other outsiders poured through the very gates the Cylexians had made and swept them away. This came to be known as The Reckoning. Dwarves were wiped out in the apocalypse. The Elves took their last remaining city and fled to the Astral Plane, and have only recently returned to Cylex. Humans and many other races survived, though their civilization did not. Still, in time the world has been rebuilt, and the remaining elementia left over from the Cylexian golden age has become a precious resource that nations wage war over. But is this the full and complete story? Some whisper that there is another level to this tale: That the Chief Artificer at the time of The Reckoning had been working on a secret project. That his mastery of the planes extended beyond the elemental Inner Planes and to all of the multiverse. That he was working on discovering the absolute truth of the multiverse, knowledge that would give him or any who possesed it power over all of creation, beyond that of any god or being (save perhaps The Lady). That the deities learned of this and made a pact to prevent it, and used the elementals to destroy the Artificer and the Cylexians before it could be complete. But they were not quite fast enough. The Artificer sealed the product of his work into a Codex, and hid that Codex in the one place he knew no god, outsider, or planewalker would ever dare go, or be able to go in the first place, the Far Realms. But he could not save himself or Cylex. All traces of his work were destroyed (or nearly all) and he himself was imprisioned on Carceri. But it seems they were not thurough enough: in Logos, a city left over from the Cylexians and now reclaimed by their decendants, the aincent knowledge is slowly being remade. And it's High Magus has pieced together the true story. He has even gone so far as to travel to Carceri and speak with the Artificer himself. Enamoured by power, he seaks the Codex in order to avenge his ancestors and dominate all being. And he has a plan: First of all, he needs a vessel capable of supporting the sort of extended forray in the Far Realms that would be needed to locate the Codex. He has the perfect candidate: the Elven city. It has already proven capable of an extended trip into the Astral Plane. Then he needs the power to survive out there in the realm of monsters and aberations. For that, he needs all the power that the Cylexians once had and then some.
NorthWind 09-06-07, 10:06 PM	Very cool. I have a few questions, though: First off, how was the Cylexian confederation founded on elementia? Did they all work together to make use of it? Also, how do you concieve the elemental planes? An interesting idea could be to have the PCs visit one of them (whichever one makes you happy) only to discover that the plane's magical nature has been damaged - parts of the Plane of Fire have been reduced to deserts of smouldering ash, chunks of the Plane of Earth are naught but a fragile, dead crystaline substance, you get the picture. The characters now have to revise their views: the Outsiders attacking the world those many years ago weren't slavering beasts, trying to steal their power (as the High Magus has been telling everyone), but only trying to defend their homes... Why were dwarves wiped out? Any particular reason why the race couldn't survive? Do countries use their elementia to wage war...or do they simply horde it? Speaking of which, how much of the old technology still survives? Is the countryside littered with ruined machines and crumbling extraction plants?