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stone_dog 08-31-04, 05:46 AM

Since it seems that my earlier post was deleted during the update I'll post it again. Recently I downloaded this bit of planescapish goodness from Monte Cook's website. Here is my take on slipping some of this into Eberron and its planar environs. They are pretty short blurbs, but there are a lot of them. Avidarel, The Sundered Star This cursed place holds treasures and dangers easily transported into Mabar. A place of endless cold, a hell of darkness and devoid of life this place is easily a match for the Endless Night. Surprisingly this place is absolutely RICH with mineral wealth. A team of adventurers that make it to this place could retire. If they survive the soul sapping chill, the -4 penalty to strength and -2 to dex (described as heavy gravity, but Mabar might just pull the vital potency right out of your limbs), hordes of hungry undead and some power that drains and dims all light. Heck, I'd even cut darkvision in half for this kind of place! The thing is, the place wasn't always like this. Indeed, it might have been a twin of Irian, but somehow it started to die. It isn't quite dead though and may be healed if the secrets are made known. A full write up of the history of Avidarel would take a bit of typing, but carrying it over to Eberron might make for an interesting campaign to alter the very nature of negative energy and undeath. Carrigmoor The last city of a destroyed world. Floating on a chuck of rock and set under a jeweled dome you will never find a more wretched... well you know the rest. Corrupt nobles, thieves, brigands and worse plot and scheme in this fallen place. Perhaps my personal least favorite of the planes in this book I still think there is use for it. Tweak it about and it can be the last home of the githyanki floating in the Astral after Xoriat destroyed it. Perhaps Spelljammer fans can find use for it as a smugglers outpost deep in Syberis-space. Curnorost, Realm of Dead Angels Syrania, the Azure sky is a glorious realm of celestials, beauty and virtue. Except for this corner over here. Don't look too hard, the locals don't like it, but if you go far enough there is a place that is almost dusky. A place where trumpets and laughter give way to chanting and the silence of ages. This is where angels go to die. Filled with an eternity of sorrow and mourning, this necropolis has been tainted over the many eons. Darkness creeps into the perfection of the plane and there may be a time when Syrania knows a shadow in the far reaches of the perfect blue sky. The Crystal Roads of Deluer Described as an elemental plane of earth, this could be an adjunct to Lamannia. Lamannia would not have stars if this were the case, but jewel worlds in a crystal lattice far far above. Xorns and Elemental earth creatures dwell up there and defend their words against invaders seeking to plunder the wealth of metal and gems. Or the jeweled citidels could be perched atop the highest mountains of the plane with strange crystal pathways arching through the sky. Dendri (Expansion 11) The thing about lawful critters is that they are generally pretty stubborn. Daanvi may be a plane of “Perfect Order,” but each inhabitant may have a different opinion of what that means. Like the formians. They know damn well that serving the hive is the best of all things. Why can’t others see that? No matter, they will. But this particular rain forest in a remote reach of Daanvi isn’t having it. The aranea lords of this place had everything neatly in control thank you very much when the hive cities started popping up everywhere. Need some secret of Order against a chaotic fiend that the spidery aranea have? Then you are going to have to do a little favor for the resistance. Nah. You don’t need planar travels to have a story like this. Drop it into a corner of Xen’Drik, Q’barra or even the rainy King’s Forest in Breland to bring the urgency of a Formian invasion right to your doorstep. Faraenyl Thelanis. Easily. If not Thelanis than four manifest zones of Thelanis that have taken on attributes of each of the four seasons. Or both. The tone and flavor are strongly aligned with the faerie tone of Thelanis and should be ample inspiration for anybody taking a jaunt to that plane. The Principality of Spring. The Kingdom of Summer. The Land of Fall. The Mountains of Winter. Do these places reflect the natural seasons of Eberron or do they control them? This is easily my favorite of the places in this text and I wouldn’t do it justice by revealing its secrets here. It gives an extra bit of life to Thelanis though and it alone is worth the price of a download. The Burning Shadows of Kin-Li’in. Sometimes I wonder if the Doorway crew was reading Eberron when they thought of some of this stuff. Kin-Li’in. City and court of demons. Tucked away in the Demon Wastes it is a subterranean home to many beasts of evil, including the evil in your own soul. The place is so steeped in vileness that your own shadow may come to life with all the malice deep in your heart and seek to end your life. Eberron may not have a hell as such, but this place is dangerously close to being it. Ashtakala may be the heart of the demon wastes. The place where fiends gather to revel in the glories of their past, but Kin-Li’in is the seething soul. The place where fiends plot and tempt, gather their might and wait to take back what was theirs. The Lizard Kingdoms Dinosaurs! More of them than you can shake a stick at. You like Dino’s? Here they are! Those plucky colonists over in Q’Barra don’t realize the danger that they are in. There is an older colony in the jungles. The giant lizardfolk that dwell there and their dire kobold servants have settled in nicely and may not take kindly to some soft fleshed humans taking up their resources. What if the colony is destroyed though? What if the colony is wiped out by zealous humans that seek to tame the wilderness of Q’Barra? What fate awaits Khorvaire when the reptilian armada comes to take revenge for the death of their national heroes? The Maze Need a planar juncture, but don’t like Sigil? Try this little town. No one really knows where it is, but it leads everywhere. Is it some shadow plane mirror of Sharn? All roads do seem to lead to it, but it is hardly a metropolis. It just sits, nestled among innumerable and invisible walls. An entire community thrives here, fed by those beings that make their way from plane to plane along those few paths that are well known and traveled. How do you get here? Easy. You just have to know about it… really KNOW and want to get there to increase your power and glory. That should give you a hint as to the kind of people that make up the populace. Egos galore flex and push against each other as everyone is straining to find the next big thing. It is a planar boomtown in a perpetual gold rush of magic and artifacts. Eberron might be a vastly different place with the Maze lurking on the edge of urban desire and avarice, but if you are into that kind of thing (and lord knows I am) eventually the PCs will certainly make their way here. Mountains of the Five Winds there is a Manifest Zone of Kythri that is seldom seen in the world. It roams the skies of Eberron as a cloud of chaos and the land beneath it suffers a blight. Above the Cloud are five towers that are home to people who are dedicated to keeping the fundamental chaos in check as best as they can. Generally they are successful, and the Cloud only twists the lands beneath it in minor ways. Occasionally though an entire realm is laid to mutation and suffering. An investigation of the Mournlands could lead to this place easily. Ouno, The Storm Realm Speaking of Kythri, the Sea of Chaos boils over in more than one place. An ocean realm of githzerai pirates in aerial ships. Strange flying creatures and an Ocean that may well be alive and sentient. Nestled in hollow islands floating above the surface the inhabitants of this strange place shelter from the acidic storms and occasionally venture out into the world to raid and plunder. Palpatur Okay, this place is just weird. Drop it into the plains of Shavarath. These mountainous faces loom out of the otherwise featureless plane of endless battle and strife. Deep in the maw of these mournful countanainces dwell cities of tiefling refugees hiding from the eternal conflict and scavanging from its wastes. PCs might have to go here to gain knowlege long lost about an eldritch machine that is vital to some plot or other. Be careful though. If you pick the wrong place to go poking you nose in I have the feeling that you may have a planar version of "Deliverance" on your hands. What would be the planar version of banjos? Sleeping God's Soul Nestle this one beneath the Glass Platau. A demiplane spawned from the energies of the Mourning and a potent Eldrich Machine from a Cannith forge. Who knows what this thing was origionally intended to do or what it does now, but it is doing something... ticking away with its insane creator bustling about and making sure it doesn't run down. Has he really tapped into the very being of a deity long forgotten by all of sentient life? The Ten Courts of Hell More demony goodness! Dolurrh. the realm of the dead. Where souls go to dwell in apathy forever (unless the Host is right about a post-afterlife). Unless they are particularly vile and villanous, then the few demons that have managed to make their home here harvest them and herd them here to suffer torments unheard of in the Courts of the Yama Kings. One would hope that the Sovereign Host does gather the righteous and guide them beyond the fields of apathy to a new paradise, because every so often the demonic and diabolic judges tire of the usual fare of sinners and send their hounds out to gather other souls. Tevaeral, Magic's Last Stand This doesn't strike me as a location so much as a campaign seed. It describes a world where magic is on the decline and spellcasters of all sorts have become hunted out of fear. In the magic rich world of Eberron this changes the fundamental flavor of the setting. It would take much more work to accomplish than I can go into here, but perhaps on the plane of Daanvi an intellegent artifact decides that magic is the bane of an ordered society and seeks to consolidate all magical might in itself making it an arcane dictator. Venomheart, Haven of the Sleep Pirates A demi-plane that borders every ocean in the world and is home to the most infamous pirate of the high seas, Harvock. Sailing the Neverest, a ship built from the corpse of a black great wyrm, he and his crew raid where they wish and vanish without a trace. They are not limited to the seas however, as the Neverest is perfectly capaple of flight. The pirates raid for treasure now and again, but their main booty is sleep itself. There isn't much you have to do to convert this actually. the setting practically cries out for a weird master pirate like this. The Violet "The Violet is a strange world without gravity. The entire plane exists within a hollow sphere of solid ground, about 100 miles across. Long, violet vines from massive plants that grow within the sphere float towards the middle of the plane; the natives pull themselves along the vines to get around. Most magic does not function in the Violet, making it a place that certain individuals use for storing dangerous magical items and artifacts." So we have a planar Fort Knox of magical items ready for some villain somewhere to raid for Nefarious Purposes. Sounds good to me! Throw in the other wierd stuff about the plane (ie, time is broken here. Ever play the new Prince of Persia: Sands of Time? Every once in a while that will happen. The last few rounds will just reset on you) and let the strangeness ensue. The Primal Gardens of Yragon Okay, as much as I want to spread the weird out a bit and keep it all from clumping up in Xen'Drik, this is just way too wierd to place anywhere but a remote corner of the world. It even might lead to an aliance between the heroes and the Dreaming Dark. What? If you were the Quori and you found out there were slavetaking demon apes controlled by telepathic viruses muscling in on your territory, you would want all the resources you could get your hands on too. I'm not kidding. Well, the apes are more eugenicly altered and enhanced by the sentient viruses than demonic and they don't KNOW that they are subtly controlled by said virus', but that is the gist of it. Making a movie margarita out of this is pretty easy. The ingredients are Planet of the Apes, Outbreak and Fallen. Take them in whatever proportions you want and let the blender rip. Personally I would go for mostly Planet of the Apes and Fallen with just a bit of Outbreak for that fear of contagion paranoia.