So my friend and I began working on thinking up a nice interesting Campaign setting and we think we have a winner. The idea stemmed from the thought of what a city the size of a universe (or in DnD terms, a Plane) would be like. Aromos is that city. However, it is an initially empty one. Whatever or whoever built the city is long gone now. Instead, all of the septillions of inhabitants are migrants from other planes, domains, and demi-planes.
So this plane is built a lot like the points of light campaign setting. We have pockets of densely populated communities surrounded by a blanket of uninhabited buildings. Instead of this wilderness consisting of forests and valleys it has towering buildings and streets. It's as though you removed every person in Tokyo and moved the population of Springfield, Illinois there. Everything has been left behind by the previous owners, a new city filled with mystery.
We also are using "bag of holding" style buildings. A lot of these buildings look 1000 sq ft on the outside, but once you're inside they are actually 1000 sq miles! and these aren't just huge warehouses, they are filled with all sorts of weird terrain (forests, hills, grass) it's speculated that these may have served as holding areas from animals from across the multiverse.
Aromos also has a huge underground, vault-like fortresses that stretch deep beneath the surface, sewers, and even a huge underground ocean.
When thinking about where this city came from, a few ideas came up:
* This is a Genesis style spell gone wild.
* This is the creation of a long lost uber god
* This is the physical manifestation of a long lost uber god's mind.
* It was created by a super-race who have since moved on.
So what do you think? Any thoughts? This is a huge Ecumenopolis the size of a whole universe, what else does it need?
A city is an entity in and of itself. New York City will have a much different "personality" than San Francisco, yet they are both major metropolises. It's not the people who set the personality of the city, it's the city that sets the personality of the people. Paris is different from London is different from Berlin is different from Tokyo, and so on.
Where do these cities come from? A plane that is made up of City. Much like a primordial plane, the Urbanscape is the source of all cities. Here can be found every type of architecture that has ever been channelled through the hands of a craftsman. Crowded Tokyo hives, flat Los Angelino spanses, it can all be found here. Every city known to every civilization is but a reflection of one aspect of The City.
The City has no natural inhabitants, but travellers can get lost there. They may exist for a time, surrounded by forests of glass, concrete and steel, but they either find a way out or go insane in the cold, heartless, maddening canyons surrounding them. Sometimes The City twists them into shadows of their former selves, and they become insane, gibbering creatures that live for a while in the shadows, the twisting alleys, the empty buildings, and woe to anything that wanders too near.
It's unknown how living things end up in The City. One can only guess. People and pets go missing all the time with nary a trace. They were possibly swallowed up by a warp in the fabric of reality as The City imposed it's will in our own plane once again. Your dear pet, missing for months now, survives by scavenging what it can in the unfeeling depths of looming edifices that leer down at this unwelcome intruder, never again to know the comfort of your hearth or the gentle pat of your hand.
Yet The City won't stop you from leaving. If you can find your way out, you may escape this heartless plane. But where are the portals? How do you escape? As you find your way along a narrow stone canyon, you hear the sound of someone beating a stick on the sidewalk. The sound echoes, and you can't be sure of the direction. It's getting louder, louder, until it's almost on top of you! You look up for an avenue of escape ony to see a humanoid figure, clinging spider-like to the wall barely 20 feet above you! It's eyes glow maliciously, it grins hungrily, and it pounces, the stick ready to plant itself in your skull...
Hope that gives you some ideas!
It would be like moving around the skeleton of a long forgotten god.
Aromos the Plane-City
So my friend and I began working on thinking up a nice interesting Campaign setting and we think we have a winner. The idea stemmed from the thought of what a city the size of a universe (or in DnD terms, a Plane) would be like. Aromos is that city. However, it is an initially empty one. Whatever or whoever built the city is long gone now. Instead, all of the septillions of inhabitants are migrants from other planes, domains, and demi-planes.
So this plane is built a lot like the points of light campaign setting. We have pockets of densely populated communities surrounded by a blanket of uninhabited buildings. Instead of this wilderness consisting of forests and valleys it has towering buildings and streets. It's as though you removed every person in Tokyo and moved the population of Springfield, Illinois there. Everything has been left behind by the previous owners, a new city filled with mystery.
We also are using "bag of holding" style buildings. A lot of these buildings look 1000 sq ft on the outside, but once you're inside they are actually 1000 sq miles! and these aren't just huge warehouses, they are filled with all sorts of weird terrain (forests, hills, grass) it's speculated that these may have served as holding areas from animals from across the multiverse.
Aromos also has a huge underground, vault-like fortresses that stretch deep beneath the surface, sewers, and even a huge underground ocean.
When thinking about where this city came from, a few ideas came up:
* This is a Genesis style spell gone wild.
* This is the creation of a long lost uber god
* This is the physical manifestation of a long lost uber god's mind.
* It was created by a super-race who have since moved on.
So what do you think? Any thoughts? This is a huge Ecumenopolis the size of a whole universe, what else does it need?
'Size of a Universe' is a subjective concept. A Universe is defined by possibility - size is infact an illusion of difference. I did this one: The PCs woke in glass canopied sleep cylinders in an otherwise empty apartment to a city that stretched out forever. Once they left their own sleep tubes and began exploring - some of them decided to go back to their own world - And made a mistake - they used someone elses sleep tube and became other people.
CITY OF ETERNITY: Once you go there it becomes insanity. The city you want should have no elevators or 'technological parts'. Levels are going to be traversed by public stairways and linked by public skywalks. They are as much a 3 dimensional Maze as any Dungeon.
Food and Water may be 'unavailable' or in the Gardens on level eight...if only you could get there.
I definitely enjoy the idea of Gargoyles. I actually pictured the Servitors as the ones who clean up the city. They are like platinum scarabs with tentacles and and metallic legs. Kind of like the sentinels from the Matrix. But they walk. There are also going to be different classes of Servitors.
If you are going with the 'insect Servitor' and the 'living city', you might want an architectual style that is consistent with that alien insect city. The strange black ribbed buildings; Organic, Spiked towers; the PCs might be changes some way - like while in the city they must all take a half-fiendish template; a city of awe inspiring horrors.
If you are going with the 'insect Servitor' and the 'living city', you might want an architectual style that is consistent with that alien insect city. The strange black ribbed buildings; Organic, Spiked towers; the PCs might be changes some way - like while in the city they must all take a half-fiendish template; a city of awe inspiring horrors.
That's not a terrible idea for some of the dimensional buildings (like a factory that spawns the Servitors). But to me this has become more like the Elemental Plane of City. We don't often think of civilization as an element, but now in 4th edition we have a plane dedicated to the wilds of nature, why not one of the wilds of the city?
The Magic boards might have some stuff, might be worth a check. Or wikipedia, everyone loves some wikipedia.