[4E] Lamannia - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

[4E] Lamannia

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
Gilo
May 16, 2009 6:41:31 My players have entered the plane of Lamannia (this is a side-trek where a new PC is introduced to the party - a shifter monk with a Tarzan like background story).

What I'm looking for are ideas on how to make Lamannia feel more like a plane and not just another location on Eberron. also any suggestion on unique encounters/hazards or special crunch for Lamannia will be greatly appreciated.
#2
ieattrollsforbreakfast
May 16, 2009 10:33:13 My players recently had a very short jaunt into Lammania. It was about 2 rounds, actually, during the campaign's final climactic encounter. They were fighting at a boundary between many realities, so there were several planes bleeding into the material world during the combat.

Lammania is all about raw, untamed wilds, which I think means you have to play around with the flora and fauna to emphasis the nature of the plane. Go over the top with everything to do with nature. Ever seen Honey I Shrunk the Kids? Leave out the giant lego bricks and cookies, and you're golden.

The path I chose for my couple of rounds with the go with the more 'untamed' side of things than the 'wild' side. It's a pretty standard trope, but I gave life to the trees, which shifted the terrain and trapped the players as they grew around them.
#3
nthdegree256
May 16, 2009 11:35:11 I did a short trip through Lamannia a while back; I don't think I really fully did it justice, but a few things that I'd recommend:

* Spice it up narratively. Describe how the trees are bigger and simultaneously more ancient and livelier than anything they've seen on Eberron, how the ground is matted with foliage and thick undergrowth. Rocs circle overhead and the sounds of wind and animals are omnipresent. Don't forget the non-flora/fauna aspects of the plane, too - throw in mind-bendingly-huge mountains, stark cliffs, raging seas, a brewing thunderstorm on the horizon.

* Hazards from the natural terrain. Grasping vines, massive landslides, maybe a raging wildfire.

* Monster choice. Throw in some animals the PCs have never seen before, and consider filling out the encounters largely with creatures that are a couple levels removed from the PCs. An encounter chock-full of lower-level animals makes the plane seem brimming with life, while an encounter with higher-level beasts emphasizes the "wild and untamed" nature of the plane. Back up either route with narration - describe how the animals flock from every direction for the low-but-many, or how the dire bear they're up against is massive and scarred.

* Also on the "monster choice" angle - avoid magical beasts and other magical effects. This is fantasy nature, you can get a lot of wacky effects out of pollen clouds and oversized animals without having to introduce breath weapons or teleportation.

* Lycanthropes! A number of lycanthropes and some shifters fled to Lamannia to escape the Silver Flame's purge. Maybe the PCs encounter some of these wayward werecreatures guarding a gateway out of the plane (I did this one), and need to either fight them or negotiate with them to make it out safely.
#4
rekko
May 16, 2009 17:02:59 Maybe you can create some planar effects that could affect the PCs sort of like a diseases. Maybe the final state of the planar effect could add a template such as feyborn, savage berserker or lycanthrope to the PCs.
#5
Gilo
May 17, 2009 13:33:21 A great set of advices everyone, thanks.
#6
AvonRekaes
May 17, 2009 14:35:19 I thought about doing Lamania, for a game once, and I decided on the "huge tree with no ground". If you have the 3.5 Manual of the Planes, check out the optional plane "Elemental Plane of Wood" in the back, and that's where I was getting my inspiration from.
#7
Gilo
May 17, 2009 16:00:03
I thought about doing Lamania, for a game once, and I decided on the "huge tree with no ground". If you have the 3.5 Manual of the Planes, check out the optional plane "Elemental Plane of Wood" in the back, and that's where I was getting my inspiration from.

kinda like Larry Niven's The_Integral_Trees
#8
AvonRekaes
May 18, 2009 13:50:05 Mmm... sorta...

The best way for me to explain this is through a little imagination-game I used to play as a kid, before I knew what a d20 was. Every christmas my parents would get a live tree and put it in the corner of our living room. I was small enough to climb underneath it and sit in the very corner, staring into the tree branches. I would bring little G.I Joes, lego men, or little action figures I made with K'Nex pieces, and play with them among the branches. I'd imagine that their entire world was that tree.

So picture a world that is just huge branches and leaves splitting off in all directions. There's an up and down, but no bottom or top to the tree. Just endless brown and green.
#9
Gilo
May 19, 2009 11:02:42 How about Lammina as a checkers landscape, where (radically) different natural terrain types (and their associated wild life) co-exists/interlaced with no consideration to geography/climate zones (after all its a plane not a planet).

For example, 'zooming in' on a zone of Lammina that stretches for 12 square miles: a green forest is surrounded by an icy frozen tundra, in the forest center is a large clearing which is a sand-desert. a shallow ravine cuts through the forest its bottom is a subtropical swamp etc.
#10
AvonRekaes
May 19, 2009 13:57:44 I like the idea of covering different elements, but the image of it happening all among the branches of a giant endless tree still speaks to me from some primal center of my imagination.
Picture swathes of branches going off in all directions, big enough to walk on and perhaps not even see the edges of. Above you, sand trickles in a stream onto the branch, building up a sea of dunes as far as you can see, with a branch-filled sky. Toward the edges of the branch, the sand continues to sift and fall down, to unknowable, wooden depths. Overhead, blindingly bright, giant sunbloom flowers beat down on the miles-wide branch below, making the expanse of sand hot and dry.
Traveling for days through this tree-dessert, you finally come to a large verticle "trunk" that extends upward for thousands of yards. You begin climbing. At the top, the trunk splits into a web of branches and leaves. Climbing through the canopy, you come to a giant rocky mountain, as tall as three Everests, supported by the web of giant branches below. Roots pierce the mountain side and become more branches of leafing wood as they extend out across the endless wood and leaf sky.
You walk around the mountain for weeks, coming to the opposite side relative to the dessert you just came from. A river snakes down the olympic mountain, pooling into a vast sea at its base, the leaves of the leaf canopy holding the water up. Some leafy branches rise and twist up from the silvery sea, breaking its surface. Some branches, the thin ones, end it tufts of leaves a mere ten to thirty feat above the ocean. Others, miles thick, continue to rise into the web of wood and leaves in the skies above, joining the branches extending from the roots protruding from the mountain.
You construct a sailing vessel out of the watertight leaves and set sail on this suspended sea, well aware that you saw no water streaming while climing the thousands of yards just to get to the mountain's base. You sail for a day or more, around gigantic wooden towers rising into the webbed wooden sky. Eventually the branches and leaves around you take on a teal tinge, and it starts to get cold. You run aground on an iceberg, with the frozen branches extending from the water and ice around you sporting sharp evergreen needles the length of a spear or lance. Snow drifts down from the needled sky, and you treck across the white landscape...
After what feels like weeks, the snow starts to thin as you continue to walk. It starts to get warmer and warmer until it becomes sweltering. The snow and ice you were walking on slowly grew wetter and wetter until you were walking in thick bogs of mush, and the lush green sky above you hangs with vines miles long. You wade through the morass of rotted vegetation and stagnant water, ever onward, listening to the buzz and call of exotic jungle creatures....
#11
_radagast__dup
May 20, 2009 0:05:29
My players recently had a very short jaunt into Lammania. It was about 2 rounds, actually, during the campaign's final climactic encounter. They were fighting at a boundary between many realities, so there were several planes bleeding into the material world during the combat.

Ummm yeah. Consider this stolen.
#12
androkguz
May 29, 2009 10:35:19 Wild and untamed...

I can see Lammania's geography: colossal volcanos that never stop spitting magma, brutal tornados that never seem to die, continent-sized deserts full of sandstorms, mountains bigger than anything seen in Eberron, from which the tallest waterfalls of the cosmos fall, oceans with waves so big that each would be a Tsunami in the Material Plane (or is it the natural world now?)

It's already been stated that the planes of Eberron will all be distributed in a way that the 4E cosmology still holds true, and my money in on Lammania been on the Elemental Chaos (or perhaps in a mixture of Elemental Chaos and natural world, to explain both the elemental and natural inhabitants)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Gilo May 16, 2009 6:41:31	My players have entered the plane of Lamannia (this is a side-trek where a new PC is introduced to the party - a shifter monk with a Tarzan like background story). What I'm looking for are ideas on how to make Lamannia feel more like a plane and not just another location on Eberron. also any suggestion on unique encounters/hazards or special crunch for Lamannia will be greatly appreciated.
#2 ieattrollsforbreakfast May 16, 2009 10:33:13	My players recently had a very short jaunt into Lammania. It was about 2 rounds, actually, during the campaign's final climactic encounter. They were fighting at a boundary between many realities, so there were several planes bleeding into the material world during the combat. Lammania is all about raw, untamed wilds, which I think means you have to play around with the flora and fauna to emphasis the nature of the plane. Go over the top with everything to do with nature. Ever seen Honey I Shrunk the Kids? Leave out the giant lego bricks and cookies, and you're golden. The path I chose for my couple of rounds with the go with the more 'untamed' side of things than the 'wild' side. It's a pretty standard trope, but I gave life to the trees, which shifted the terrain and trapped the players as they grew around them.
#3 nthdegree256 May 16, 2009 11:35:11	I did a short trip through Lamannia a while back; I don't think I really fully did it justice, but a few things that I'd recommend: * Spice it up narratively. Describe how the trees are bigger and simultaneously more ancient and livelier than anything they've seen on Eberron, how the ground is matted with foliage and thick undergrowth. Rocs circle overhead and the sounds of wind and animals are omnipresent. Don't forget the non-flora/fauna aspects of the plane, too - throw in mind-bendingly-huge mountains, stark cliffs, raging seas, a brewing thunderstorm on the horizon. * Hazards from the natural terrain. Grasping vines, massive landslides, maybe a raging wildfire. * Monster choice. Throw in some animals the PCs have never seen before, and consider filling out the encounters largely with creatures that are a couple levels removed from the PCs. An encounter chock-full of lower-level animals makes the plane seem brimming with life, while an encounter with higher-level beasts emphasizes the "wild and untamed" nature of the plane. Back up either route with narration - describe how the animals flock from every direction for the low-but-many, or how the dire bear they're up against is massive and scarred. * Also on the "monster choice" angle - avoid magical beasts and other magical effects. This is fantasy nature, you can get a lot of wacky effects out of pollen clouds and oversized animals without having to introduce breath weapons or teleportation. * Lycanthropes! A number of lycanthropes and some shifters fled to Lamannia to escape the Silver Flame's purge. Maybe the PCs encounter some of these wayward werecreatures guarding a gateway out of the plane (I did this one), and need to either fight them or negotiate with them to make it out safely.
#4 rekko May 16, 2009 17:02:59	Maybe you can create some planar effects that could affect the PCs sort of like a diseases. Maybe the final state of the planar effect could add a template such as feyborn, savage berserker or lycanthrope to the PCs.
#5 Gilo May 17, 2009 13:33:21	A great set of advices everyone, thanks.
#6 AvonRekaes May 17, 2009 14:35:19	I thought about doing Lamania, for a game once, and I decided on the "huge tree with no ground". If you have the 3.5 Manual of the Planes, check out the optional plane "Elemental Plane of Wood" in the back, and that's where I was getting my inspiration from.
#7 Gilo May 17, 2009 16:00:03	I thought about doing Lamania, for a game once, and I decided on the "huge tree with no ground". If you have the 3.5 Manual of the Planes, check out the optional plane "Elemental Plane of Wood" in the back, and that's where I was getting my inspiration from. kinda like Larry Niven's The_Integral_Trees
#8 AvonRekaes May 18, 2009 13:50:05	Mmm... sorta... The best way for me to explain this is through a little imagination-game I used to play as a kid, before I knew what a d20 was. Every christmas my parents would get a live tree and put it in the corner of our living room. I was small enough to climb underneath it and sit in the very corner, staring into the tree branches. I would bring little G.I Joes, lego men, or little action figures I made with K'Nex pieces, and play with them among the branches. I'd imagine that their entire world was that tree. So picture a world that is just huge branches and leaves splitting off in all directions. There's an up and down, but no bottom or top to the tree. Just endless brown and green.
#9 Gilo May 19, 2009 11:02:42	How about Lammina as a checkers landscape, where (radically) different natural terrain types (and their associated wild life) co-exists/interlaced with no consideration to geography/climate zones (after all its a plane not a planet). For example, 'zooming in' on a zone of Lammina that stretches for 12 square miles: a green forest is surrounded by an icy frozen tundra, in the forest center is a large clearing which is a sand-desert. a shallow ravine cuts through the forest its bottom is a subtropical swamp etc.
#10 AvonRekaes May 19, 2009 13:57:44	I like the idea of covering different elements, but the image of it happening all among the branches of a giant endless tree still speaks to me from some primal center of my imagination. Picture swathes of branches going off in all directions, big enough to walk on and perhaps not even see the edges of. Above you, sand trickles in a stream onto the branch, building up a sea of dunes as far as you can see, with a branch-filled sky. Toward the edges of the branch, the sand continues to sift and fall down, to unknowable, wooden depths. Overhead, blindingly bright, giant sunbloom flowers beat down on the miles-wide branch below, making the expanse of sand hot and dry. Traveling for days through this tree-dessert, you finally come to a large verticle "trunk" that extends upward for thousands of yards. You begin climbing. At the top, the trunk splits into a web of branches and leaves. Climbing through the canopy, you come to a giant rocky mountain, as tall as three Everests, supported by the web of giant branches below. Roots pierce the mountain side and become more branches of leafing wood as they extend out across the endless wood and leaf sky. You walk around the mountain for weeks, coming to the opposite side relative to the dessert you just came from. A river snakes down the olympic mountain, pooling into a vast sea at its base, the leaves of the leaf canopy holding the water up. Some leafy branches rise and twist up from the silvery sea, breaking its surface. Some branches, the thin ones, end it tufts of leaves a mere ten to thirty feat above the ocean. Others, miles thick, continue to rise into the web of wood and leaves in the skies above, joining the branches extending from the roots protruding from the mountain. You construct a sailing vessel out of the watertight leaves and set sail on this suspended sea, well aware that you saw no water streaming while climing the thousands of yards just to get to the mountain's base. You sail for a day or more, around gigantic wooden towers rising into the webbed wooden sky. Eventually the branches and leaves around you take on a teal tinge, and it starts to get cold. You run aground on an iceberg, with the frozen branches extending from the water and ice around you sporting sharp evergreen needles the length of a spear or lance. Snow drifts down from the needled sky, and you treck across the white landscape... After what feels like weeks, the snow starts to thin as you continue to walk. It starts to get warmer and warmer until it becomes sweltering. The snow and ice you were walking on slowly grew wetter and wetter until you were walking in thick bogs of mush, and the lush green sky above you hangs with vines miles long. You wade through the morass of rotted vegetation and stagnant water, ever onward, listening to the buzz and call of exotic jungle creatures....
#11 _radagast__dup May 20, 2009 0:05:29	My players recently had a very short jaunt into Lammania. It was about 2 rounds, actually, during the campaign's final climactic encounter. They were fighting at a boundary between many realities, so there were several planes bleeding into the material world during the combat. Ummm yeah. Consider this stolen.
#12 androkguz May 29, 2009 10:35:19	Wild and untamed... I can see Lammania's geography: colossal volcanos that never stop spitting magma, brutal tornados that never seem to die, continent-sized deserts full of sandstorms, mountains bigger than anything seen in Eberron, from which the tallest waterfalls of the cosmos fall, oceans with waves so big that each would be a Tsunami in the Material Plane (or is it the natural world now?) It's already been stated that the planes of Eberron will all be distributed in a way that the 4E cosmology still holds true, and my money in on Lammania been on the Elemental Chaos (or perhaps in a mixture of Elemental Chaos and natural world, to explain both the elemental and natural inhabitants)