Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Omnirahk_half-Rahkshi Jul 19, 2011 18:30:59	So I recently started running a campaign in my homebrew setting, and I'm sharing it here.  Partly for the setting, and partly to get advice.  The gist of the setting is the world is brand-new.  The raw magic of creation still permeates the world, and it shows.  The tears of a betrayed lover may form a river of acid.  The blood of a dragon may spawn the world's first kobolds.  This is the age of mythology that existed in the ancient past of other settings, where nothing is mundane.  Because the world is so young, ancient dungeons, academies of magic, magic items, and the like do not exist.  The PCs are pioneers in the truest word - they are the world's first adventurers.  Nobody has ever so much as stood up to an ogre before, let alone slain a dragon.  Magic is the domain of the gods and random accidents (and those random accidents are seen as the will of the gods).  For a mere mortal to work magic with conscious intent - that's groundbreaking!  And because the world is so young, ancient rivalries do not exist yet, nor do power balances.  The common races have not yet become a central playing piece to the machinations of the gods.  We have attracted no more interest than ogres, medusa, dragons, or chipmunks.  Combined with the lack of heroes, this lack of divine oversight has created a power vacuum, allowing powerful monsters to become petty warlords, running protection rackets over the common folk.  A few safehouses exist, but they are almost all the work of gods: The Forge of Hephaestus.  Here in a volcanic crater, the high priests ("Apprentices") of the god of forging make their home.  It is protected by a gift from Hephaestus himself, an enormous clockwork dragon.  If you can accept the smothering heat and hard labor at the forge or mining for coal and ores, this place can be a comfortable home. Beowulf and his Thanes.  The god of battle wanders with his chosen, seeking glorious battle.  Although you wouldn't expect to find safety by following an army as it seeks out the world's most dangerous monsters, few can withstand Beowulf's onslaught, so the ramshackle mob following is usually quite safe.  Except when the thanes bet bored....  There's generally two kinds of people here: the soldiers, and the refugees.  The refugees follow behind, but aren't technically part of Beowulf's escort.  You better keep up, because they don't really care much for you.  And so a petty warlord often arises among the refugees, lording over them.  But he's rarely got any real power.  Slightly safer are the refugees that offer a valuable service to the thanes - armorers, cooks, and whores, etc. The Mikhailian Legion.  A more ramshackle version of Beowulf and his thanes, Prometheus stole fire (the Flame of Mikhai) from the gods, and he wields it now as a sword of fire.  A gypsie-like caravan follows him, and the potter's wagon is perhaps the most important one.  For when the Flame of Mikhai is used to bake clay statues, they come to life, and they form the armed escort for these refugees. Gilgamesh and the City of Knox.  The demigods Gilgamesh and Enkidu built this heavily fortified city, and as the final protection, they tore up the River of Death and rerouted it as a moat.  But the waters of Styx are dangerous even to a demigod, and Enkidu died in the endeavor.  Gilgamesh now rules Knox, and honoring Enkidu's sacrifice is the ruling law.  Failure to properly observe his many holidays is punishable by death.  It is an interesting thing to see, the River of Death flowing around the city.  Normally a subterranean river, it explodes upward from the earth like a gargantuan geyser.  (Well, maybe not quite the right term - it's at a diagonal angle, so there isn't really much space underneath). The Necropolis of Anubis.  Built upon the back of a giant mummified serpent, the Necropolis is home to the shifters.  Unlike in standard D&D, shifters are not the descendants of werewolves, but instead have an appearance akin to Egyptian gods - animal-headed people.  When they shift, they take on a death-like aspect (not unlike the Curse of the Black Pearl).  Non-shifters need special reason to be invited to the Necropolis, and for the most part, that means you've been honored with a form of immortality.  As long as you remain in the City of the Dead, you do not die.  But the Necropolis is a musty, lifeless tomb.  It is a place of philosophers, monks, and quiet contemplation.  A perfect contrast to the rest of the world, but quite dull. Quetzecoatl and the Dawn Forest.  Far to the east lies the Dawn Forest, and one tree towers far over the rest - Quetzecoatl, the Dawn Tree.  Each morning, a giant roc snatches a fruit from the Dawn Tree and flies it home to its nest to feed its young.  This fruit is the sun.  (It's worth noting that I'm using the roc myth that describes it as having two serpents for a tail).  Quetzecoatl is also the name of the elven city built into the side of the Dawn Tree.  So high off the ground, the city is safe from most threats.  But there is a darker side to their life.  The other trees of the forest are in fact shoots of the Dawn Tree, and their fruit are orcworts - vaguely human-shaped fruits that seek out victims to slay and use as fertilizer for the Dawn Tree.  Living at the base of the Dawn Tree are the drow, a pariah caste tasked with dealing with the orcworts.  Drow arm the orcworts and help them find victims.  When all else fails, drow become sacrifices to the Dawn Tree.  It's also worth noting that elves are known for their coatl mounts, which roost up in the branches of the Dawn Tree.  It was a talking, one-winged coatl that first suggested the caste system, and every once in a great while he will reappear, whispering more unsavory advice. Loki's Hearth.  A small village has a tendency of appearing in the middle of blizzards.  Unfortunately, it has a tendency to disappear as well, and more than one traveler has gotten lost when the village vanished before he made it there.  Loki's Hearth is home to tricksters who've caught the Great Trickster's attention.  To keep them safe, the village is veiled in illusions and keeps moving.  Of all the refugee camps, Loki's Hearth is most eclectic.  While most others are only home to the common races, Loki's Hearth draws all sorts of tricksters - gnomes, boggles, rakshasa, and many other illusionists.  The vast differences in physical power would normally make Loki's Hearth yet another place ruled by petty warlords, but the more powerful you are, the more interesting a target you become.  Especially for Loki's infamous pranks.  xD The Tenth of Nine.  The Tenth of Nine is a self-styled lord of hell.  However, they're out of positions, and the Tenth doesn't quite have enough forces to take over.  So he set out on his own.  Wandering the world is his own mobile fortress.  He offers safety to those who reside inside, but at a cost: your soul.  Besides the usual fiendish uses for souls, the Tenth of Nine uses them to fuel his mobile fortress.  In addition, he is himself a veteran war devil, and multiple battles going badly has rendered him a cyborg - again powered by souls.  He is quite recognizable with his cloak of tortured souls, eye patch, and right hand made of lightning.  (Personality-wise, think steampunk sky pirate captain meets rebel leader.  An odd blend of military formality and rebellious edge). Since the heroes literally get a chance to shape the course of history, I've been interrupting the game with little flash forwards, showing them how the world turns out thanks to their influence.
#2 Omnirahk_half-Rahkshi Jul 19, 2011 18:47:08	And now that you know the world, here's the details of my campaign I'm running.  I've got a drow, Montezuma, from the Dawn Forest, exiled for hating the life of a parriah for saving his lighter-skinned brethren.  We have Enkufu, a human from Knox who lost his sight and gained a second sight in its place.  He's Deadpool-level insane.  And we have Dirk, a necromancer who stole the Book of the Dead from the Necropolis and is on the lam.  They found a town "owned" by an ogre, and arrived just as a dragon laid claim to the land.  While the titans clashed in the distance, their lackeys waged war in the town, with the PCs getting caught in the middle of it all.  The dragon won, of course, and demanded the PCs as a sacrifice.  The PCs animated some zombies (Dirk is a necromancer, of course), disguised them as them, and ambushed the dragon.  They burned their hemp rope to get him stoned.  The death of the dragon Aegyptus transformed Dirk's dagger and spawned the kobold race.  Enkufu then convinced a portion of the kobold race that they are in fact emissaries of their god Aegyptus, who needed to die in order that they, the kobolds, may live.  They then started a civil war amongst the kobolds and used the survivors on their side to lay claim to the town they'd just freed.  Next time, the enemy kobolds will strike back.  But in the larger scheme of things, far more interesting challenges await.  The shifters of the necropolis will be hunting for Dirk.  And far in the future, a spell of epic proportions will be discovered by the Tenth of Nine: time travel.  He totally plans on going all Terminator on the world's first adventurers to remove the greatest obstacles to his ascension to power.  Most it's lackeys he's sending back, but there will also be a troll named Grosht.  Grosht briefly appeared as a random encounter in another game I ran, where he climbed aboard an airship, menaced them with their anchor, and then found himself neutered by a barbarian's flaming mordenkrad hammer.  And since it's fire, it's not growing back.  Grosht hates all adventurers, and he wants revenge.  And so he'll even have his own introductory speech.  "Who am I?  I am the echo of the words you should not have spoken.  I am the shadow you cast behind you.  I am the fires you leave burning in your wake.  I am Vengeance."  Yes, Grosht is quite intelligent for a troll.  Also, his pact with the Tenth of Nine has given him a few fire-themed powers.  Like a toned-down version of Minions of Malbolge.