Showing posts with label limbo. Show all posts

Tuesday, 22 December 2020

Planescrap : Ocean Protean

Was posting these in a clockwise fashion , but should of done this one (Chaotic Neutral) before Erebus (Chaotic Neutral with Slight Evil). This one is another old post and is closer to the original planescrap posts, which assumed Planescape was still being used (so Sigil , various factions etc). I think I've sanded off all Planescape bits. The Slaadi get renamed Xoads even though this isn't a commercial work anymore. When the plan was to release this commecially , this Realm was marked for an extenstively rewrite, with the adding of "void crawling" rules,and dialing down the early scrap mania tone, maybe less tables for the sake of tables.

However since it's now a blog post with the intention of giving you maximum content to pick through I'm not rewriting into some elegant slick piece. Hope there's something useful or interesting here

Here's the links to the planescrap primer:

Other Realms:

THE OCEAN PROTEAN

Aka Protean Ocean, All Sea, Seether , Limbo

Like a unidirectional polluted sunset, like a big old mess of floating stuff, a gravitationally shameless ink-sea, Ocean Protean is a bright burning chaos. Drifting island clumps, the materials of which are an odd mixture of basic, protean, stratified, and recognisably stolen from elsewhere.

Xoads

They are most definitely here and making nuisances of themselves. There’s broadly 2 categories: the chromatic; which you can find in various D&D monster manuals (as slaadi), and the perverse; which are newly created here.

Perverse Xoads are not colours. They are simple concepts like slangral and spumescent but in a large frog being way. They don’t really associated with the chromatic Xoads in any consistent way. Someone decided to categorize with lesser, wanton and coherent .

Lesser are animalistic and simple and about as dangerous as medium wide animals with inconsistent and often violent behaviour

Coherent are clever fellows and have ideas and plans and will use words with them.

Wanton are possible clever , but do not care about anything you might care about and generally are destroying everything around them and are extremely dangerous.

Numerous islands are infested with the Xoad Either a couple of mobs of bickering red and blues (maybe with egg-laden humanoids in the middle of it) or a couple of more powerful quantophrenic or mellifluous Xoad. They have been known to play games where each Xoadseals up a number of creatures into a twisted hive and watch or listen to the creatures explore and fight. Other times, a more recognizable arena is made, with an audience of Xoad and Mockers* and travellers. The conditions of the arena are prone to sudden change by the grey or death Xoad who has claimed it.
*(Mockers described here)

Sometimes various structures and buildings (up to half a city) are stolen by the Xoad and used as a playground / battlezone / gladiator arena / zoo. It's not so much a coordinated effort as it is mob of Xoad all randomly having the idea at the same time and pouring through a portal to grab whatever architecture and flora fit their bizarre whim. These haphazard clumps are steadily warped and dissolved by the Protean Ocean, causing the ill nature of it to become even moreso.

These stolen landscapes / battlegrounds / arenas / playgrounds are known as a Glean, and sometimes they proceed to attract more floating pieces of whatever from the churning matter seas, and grow and grow. Xoad are then more likely to dump more found structures on top of this mix. There is also what is known as a Gleck, which is basically an even weirder Glean, sometimes with even space and time operating as strange as anything else here. Glecks has been wholly generated by the Protean Ocean, whereas Gleans are made of things brought to Protean Ocean

However! is not uncommon for Glecks and Gleans to be combined in some fashion. The largest is known as Detropolis, which seems to be able to draw more material to it than any other Gleck or Glean. It’s a “city” in the sense that it has structures that people live in and they joined together but any other comparisons to one are more of a stretch. Yet it has a thriving trade -- somewhat hampered by having no portals directly opening to it, meaning visitors have to make a dangerous journey across the Protean Ocean to find it. The safest bet is to use its trash gravity and dump a large mass of rubbish and hide in this trash raft: the currents of Ocean Protean will guide in towards Detropolis. However, nothing is certain in Protean , and while most Xoad will not bother investigating a trash raft, some might.

Surprisingly, Detropolis is safe(ish) from Xoad attacks, rumored to be because of a particular large and powerful quantophrenic Xoad in its core. Leading strength to this rumor is the fact that Whisper Forms of unusual power defend the city and inflict a mockery of city codes on its inhabitants. Most chromatic Xoad (blue, green, red) barely visit here, but dessicated, slangral, mellifluous, spumescent, bleached, and quantophrenic make themselves at home.

Bric-a-bracs

16 | Some other humanoid group like halflings or something. Roll on some other table someone else wrote

17 | Seemingly empty, 50% of something there but hidden! roll again it that case. If you get this result again, ignore the 50% thing just roll again but make it super super hidden

18 | A theatre:

1 | Is performing

2 | Is rehearsing

3 | Is empty but still used

4 | Is long abandoned

5 | Undergoing repairs

6 | About to began / just finishing. Thespians and Audience potentially anything

19 | Treasure stash:

1 | Badly hidden

2 | Well hidden, and it's rubbish!

3 | Kinda cool

4 | Real good but someone will come looking for it and it's got a tracking device

20 | Prisoners infected with blue / red Xoad eggs:

1 | Xoad not here

2 | Xoad guarding

3 | Xoad with arrive in a couple of minutes

4 | Some other creature tied up and guarding (roll on any encounter table, reroll if it seems too stupid like a lich, but keep if it's only kinda stupid like a giant crayfish or octopus)

Table: Okay, So What's This Gleck Made of Then? (d30)

1 | A insane warren of cardboard cells , like corrugated cardboard with the surface peeled off, and additionally modified by drunk paper wasps

2 | A clump of stone with ever burning trees growing out of it

3 | An iceberg with frozen iron poles stuck in it

4 | A paper thin plate of obsidian

5 | A spider's web of coral

6 | A hollow crystal skull

7 | A tropical island made entirely of glass

8 | Smooth iron ball 50% chance of being hollow

9 | Columnar basalt

10 | A ball of water

11 | A churning yet solid storm cloud

12 | A castle made entirely of flesh

13 | A dirt mass with giant fungus also made from dirt

14 | A giant ball of string

15 | Big rock mass

16 | Big dirt mass

17 | A frozen wave of blood

18 | A honeycomb made from tin

19 | A delicate fluted tower made from solid purple light, 1 in 3 chance of it existing in a radial symmetrical form

20 | A goliath diatom!

21 | A big flat clay dish with miniature sand dunes

22 | An massive organ fully functioning:

1 | Heart

2 | Lung

3 | Stomach

4 | Intestines

5 | Liver

6 | Brain

23 | A tent like structure like a massive leather box kite

24 | A tooth

25 | Some kind of giant candy!

26 | Some kind of congealed half dried organ mass like old meat and very old coffee

27 | Snowball

28 | Roll on Bric-a-brac form table, if result is an animal, it is not alive but not rotting (...or it can be if you want, but you know that right?) 1-in-3 chance to roll again and either merge the results or have them on top each other

29 | Roll on Glean table and 2-in-3 chance to roll again and either merge the results or have them on top of of each other

30 | Roll twice and merge the results

Table: Hey This Gleck Is There Madness In Its Very Physics? (d20)

1-12 | No not really

13 | Okay its gravity kicks in as soon as you get within 20 metres of it, thus sending you falling toward it at high speed

14 | It looks flat but actually is a sphere, and if you go off one side you wind up on the other

15 | Weird lagging effect. Every round or what have you:

1-2 | Affected as if by a slow

3-4 | As if by a haste

5-6 | Nah you good

16 | All surface on the Gleck are frictionless. As a grease spell but also means you do not stop sliding

17 | The air tension is weird. It's like being underwater, but in air

18 | Lighting reversed. shadows glow and light sources darken

19 | Sound is twice as loud

20 | Silence, no sound can be made

Table: I Can't Help But Notice There Is Not A Table For Type of Xoad

1-5 | Chromatic

4-7 | Perverse, Lesser

8-9 | Perverse, Coherent

9 -10 | Perverse, Wanton

11 | Grey or Death Xoad

12 | Roll twice

Table: Chromatic Chromatic (d4)

1-2 | Green

3 | Red

4 | Blue

Table: Perverse, lesser (d4)

(weaker, or more animalistic)

1 | Slangrel

2 | Bleeding

3 | Dessicated

4 | Verminous

Table: Perverse, coherent (d4)

(medium to strong power, will start encounter with conversation, have to be motivated to commence violence)

1 | Quantophrenic

2 | Spumescent

3 | Mellifluous

4 | Bleached

Table: Perverse, wanton (d4)

(strong to very strong in power, immediately dangerous, do not approach, does not play well with others)

1 | Radiant

2 | Prismatic

3-4 | Fizzing

Table: Artifacts of No Purpose Nor History (d12)

This is a table for huge weird things that can be stumbled upon. Each artifact is unique. That does not mean it can't keep showing up in unlikely places; indeed it's incredibly unlikely that they will ever be in the same place they were last time.

1 | A huge brass bull (the size of a 4 story building) with 7 long necked swan heads emerging in place of its head. It is hollow and the insides of it can be accessed via its anus. If one travels up to any of the swan heads (which is a difficult climb) there is a large pearl the size of a baby's head. Looking into this pearl's murky depths reveals a vision of who hates you the most. If all the pearls are removed from inside the bull (and not just the swan head), it animates and relentlessly and unerring chases the pearls (going for the closest one first) and when it reach of them will swallow them up with a swan head. It will then continue until it has retrieved all of them. It cannot planeshift but will hone in on a portal large enough for it that will take it a step closer to the pearl. It will not attack or undertake action other than moving towards the pearls. Anything in its way will be crushed, however, if it cannot evade its great hooves

2 | An insanely complex siege engine. Anyone educated in engineering matters who attempts to decipher it's workings must make a will save (DC 20) or spent all the time engrossed its endless gears and devices. They will not sleep or seek out food (and so will starve unless food is brought to them). After each week they may attempt the save again. If they are entranced for 4 weeks in a row, they discover that the underlying logic that has been teasingly out of reach, is in actual fact a cosmic farce, and will forever crush any hope of a greater order to the multiverse. They lose any lawful alignment (and can choose another off either axis to replace it) and 6 points of wisdom. However if they succeed on the 2nd will save they will gain EXP equal to 200 times their level (but still be convinced that there is something more to discover in the workings of the artifact)

3 | A featureless, glossy black cube, 20x20x20 feet. It is immune to everything, including spheres of annihilation. Can be moved, but weighs as much as an iron cube of twice its size (assuming gravity is present)

4 | An endless waterworks , an M.C Escher print in actual form

5 | A great stone foot with 4 toes and inscription on its plinth. The inscription is in a language that the viewer knows (if any), and will be describing a particular bitter childhood memory of theirs

6 | A rat wheel, big enough for a man to run in. Actually contains a man, naked, screaming, and endlessly running. He will not respond to stimulus, and is just a weak ass 0 level human if you shoot him with something. If you remove him from the wheel, he will stop screaming, and give a look expressing emotions unknown to any other. Then he will age to dust in seconds. If this dust is mixed with water and consumed, the drinker will awake from their next sleep 1d4 times 10 years younger, and haunted by dreams of eerie grandeur and loss that they will never quite shake

7 | A large black iron crab, adorned higgledy-piggledy with fine wooden chairs with lush red velvet cushions. Emerging from its head is a formidable cannon, the length of 2 horses. If the cannon is primed and fired as would you any other cannon, the ball (or indeed anything else in the barrel) shoots out and arrives somewhere else in the multiverse, unhurt. The destination is seemly random, but may be influenced by additives to the black powder used to fire it

8 | A great ornate empty frame. big enough to ride a stagecoach through. Anyone passing through it feels lighter and freer but with a sadness as if something was lost a long time ago and suddenly not quite recalled

9 | A whale skeleton formed from compressed sherbet

10 | A huge book, the size of an emperor's bed. Opening it and laboriously turning its pages reveals blank page after blank page. Every now and now again things seem to flicker off the page just as it is turned. Shutting someone in the book will press them flat and reduce them to a inky silhouette. They may then explore a hidden 2D world in the pages, the inhabitants of which are welcoming but do their best to remain unseen. One thus transformed may be freed from the book by cutting out their outline. They will then be able to move around the wider world as a Shadow (but without the strength drain). Any items they have will however be only able to affect them and other shadows. They do not count as undead. The book will heal from the cutting like butter melting in the sun. It should be difficult but not entirely impossible for them to recover their original form, depending on your whims

11 | A grinding wheel the size of a largish hill. On its side is a complex series of gears leading down to a small pedal drive, allowing someone of human size to pedal the wheel into motion. With this wheel one could grind down a towers’ worth of steel into a blade that could sever an astral cord or the fabric of the planes, depending on the quality of the steel

12 | A hourglass tall as a giraffe. If the glass is broken the sands will rush out in terrible roaring wind, to quickly disappear from sight. Randomly choose a person of great personal significance in the breakers life. The sands will sweep to that person, and whip past, taking with them the curse of age. They will no longer age, naturally or by any other means

Table: Excitement (d20)

1 | A caravan viewed in the distance is being under attack

2 | Xoad egging raid

3 Vermin Road Caravan

4 | Something going horribly wrong with reality

5 | Random monster encounter from anywhere (possibly escaped from a zoo or an arena or bathhouse or...kiln?)

6 | Mocker wanna get your opinion on an "art work"

7 | Flux Storm

8 | Lifesurge (inanimate stuff comes to life)

9 | Ferocious cloud of verminous Xoad

10 | 2 elementals mixed together , in pain

11 | Xoad (roll on random brute table)

12 | Horrible spiked ball the size of a castle starts pulling characters towards it with its gravity. Holes beside spikes with feeding tentacles

13 | In this area (assume half an hour of travel) every time you speak a verb you get a year younger

14 | Skeletons attack! Actually animated by intelligent translucent jelly creature. The creature is located a few metres behind the skeletons and animates them by extending pseudopods inside them. Doesn’t understand other things are alive and just wants more bones to play with, hence the attack.

15 | A whirlpool churns into existence d10x10 feet away, will get to full strength in 2d4 rounds and will suck everyone in it through a portal

16 | An ever burning forest makes passage difficult in the current direction

17 | The contents of 100 kitchens rocket around here at vast speed. Every round you get attacked by a thrown:

1-3 | Nah nothing this round

4 | Pot

5 | Vegetable

6 | Half eaten pie

7 | Knives or forks

8 | Chair

9 | Table

10 | Spoons

18 | A cloud bank swirls slowly into existence around the characters. The clouds are solid and it rapidly develops into a 3D cloud maze

19 | Huge deafening sounds out of nowhere, making conversation near impossible

20 | Everyone suffer mood swings for the next 10 minutes. Every minute there is a 50/50 chance of mood changing to:

1 | Really really sad. Nearly suicidal

2 | Sleepy. Catatonically sleepy

3 | Angry, pissy, irritated by the slightest thing

4 | Terrified

5 | Content. Smugly so

6 | Crying because sad

7 | Crying because happy

8 | Amorous

9 | Near berserkly angry

10 | Annoyingly talkative

Table: Stuff Going On Right Now (d20)

1 | A travelling Bric-a-brac band tootles past

2 | A giant (30ft) bust of someone's head, hollow and containing a bee hive drifts past

3 | A streaming of fluorescent water twists and spins through the Protean Ocean It could act as a hydroslide, leading possibly anywhere

4 | Wreckage of ship

5 | Big stone torus carved with Mocker texts

6 | 1d4 chromatic brutes fighting to the death

7 | A snowman complete with coal eyes and a fine top hat

8 | Limbs of great insects, torn and drifting

9 | Bubbles. Vast clouds of tiny bubbles, with giant bubbles interspersed

10 | A castle wall with graffiti carved into it. Graffiti might offer clues, but definitely offers abuse

11 | String. Either end disappears far off into the distance

12 | Grave stones, random numbers and letters mark them

13 | A drifting washing line with clothing. All the clothing has one extra leg or arm. One of the socks has a neatly severed foot in it

14 | Clump of Protean Material (see table)

15 | A merry whale!

16 | A wooden platform containing a guillotine and a stack of fruit, some recently executed

17 | A person with kites attached to pegs clamped on delicate areas of their body drifts past cackling "IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO FLY"

18 | Zepplin. Vermin Road traders

19 | Bemused horse

20 | Wickerman full of marshmallows

Table: Adventure Hooks, Bait, Rumours, Sweet Rewards, Etc. (d20)

1 | Impossible elements exist in the Protean Ocean Ice that burns, liquid steel, floating rocks, magnetic corn. Wondrous devices could be made from such things. There is a trick described in old tomes to attune a compass to such an element (assuming you have a sample of it in the first place), so you can guide yourself to a vein

2 |The strange property of Protean Material (see table)

3 | The Xoad have been known to use devices made from combining both animal and tool. It has been reported they do this by jamming them into mystery boxes that exist in the Protean Ocean for just this purpose. If you want a dog-gun or a horse-cage, you know what you need to do

4 | Detropolis is a major nexus of the Vermin Road. Making it there safely from the outskirts of the Blazing World or Solitary requires tricks, schemes, and more than a little recklessness. Vermin Road traders are always on the lookout for cavern guides, guards, or a new plan to make it Detropolis intact

5 | If you want to buy something that is impossible to find, Detropolis is where the impossible can be sold

6 | Some Gleans and Glecks have been there a long time. And some contain arenas, libraries, or theatres renowned for sights and prizes unheard of anyone else. You could properly find a reliable guide there, right?

7 | There are parts of the Protean Ocean that one can be unmade and remade, sloughing away all lingering traces

8 | Strange oozes of the Protean Ocean are corrosive to dimensional boundaries, making summonings or portal creation easier

9 | Luck can crystallize in the shape of objects here. The surrounding area will be dangerously unlucky, as all the luck concentrates in the form of a goat skull, old bottle, tiny shoe, etc. The lucky object can then be used to draw luck from other places (lucky objects have 1d8 rerolls stored in them. 1-in-3 will cause fumbles to occur on 1-to-5 instead of on 1 in the surrounding 20 metres, including the holder of the object. These "lucksucker" objects replenish one charge a month, up to maximum of 8).

10 | There is a great shoal of feral spell books, released into the wild eons ago

11 | Semi-abandoned citadels, lairs and crypts float here from cultures real and imaginary

12 | The great helliphant graveyard is here apparently, a fortune in dangerous ivory

13 | Giant Nautilus play host to delusional parasites. The parasites adopt a culture and crudely mold their own flesh and the internal shell of the nautilus to match. Inherent mental instability leads to banditry, and banditry leads to hoarding

14 | Sometimes crisis citadels go "wrong" and are sealed off by the anarchs and then abandoned with great haste, leaving considerable wealth behind. "Going wrong" is a catch all term to describe any variety of malignancy forming in animate object, dangerous localized phenomenon, and the spawning of hostile anomalies

15 | Miniature storms! So cute! Fits in a bottle! Bamboozle your friends! Inconvenience your enemies!

16 | Mad hags. The norns weave your fate; everything that happens appears on their looms. The mad hags weave everything that might happen, didn't happen and couldn't possibly happen in space-bending fractal tesseract looms. If it pleases, them they can attempt to rewrite your past

17 | Kaiju eggs

18 | Giant Friendship Snake

19 | Lost Worlds

20 | Dinosaurs made from leftover dinosaurs

Clum of Protean Material Table

Size of clump

Can reach arms around it
Can get anywhere with 3 steps
A medium room
You could build a house and have room for a garden
Size of a mansion
A small neighbourhood
Suitable for a town
Suitable sized being named after its main terrain feature, like the bays, the hills, the forest
If it was a forest you would risk getting lost in it, but not for longer than a day and night
If this was a forest and you got lost , you might not ever be found

Main material

Sticks
Sherbet/Sand
Rock
Paper
Dirt
Metal
Bone/Shell/Ivory
Mud/Jelly/Slime
Fungus/moss
Crystal/glass/ice

But it has the properties and nature of

Ball of Snakes
Candy floss condensing around the base of the machine
The life scuttering out of the light when a rotten log is turned over
The ponderous bubbles off a lava lamp
A trampoline in a Loony tunes cartoon
Brittle ice
Chocolate near melting point
Fluffy piled up cornflour
Chewing gum
Magnetised iron particles

Sunday, 5 April 2020

Image Response Ping Pong 20

PDF Previously On Image Response Ping Pong

Patrick has told us a mysterious tale of unlikely crusader against sinister forces
and given us these delightful lumps:


SOME LUMPS

(actually sculptures by Eva Funderburgh, she makes a whole series of these , go search them out)

We are also nearing the last couple of volleys of this game, as the kickstarter has under 60 hours left at the time of this post , having done QUITE WELL FOR ITSELF INDEED

I've got a few more images I want to see Patrick respond to , so let's see how quickly I can get these out.

WHAT IS IT?

A platonic crocodile, the name coined by some wag as they appear to be a pure distillation of the essential crocodileness of alternating sloth and gluttony.

They are found in the chaos of limbo, where they are less an active predator , and more like a scavenger , like a sucker fish.
But here they cling to Githzerai void-clippers , chaos serpents or the whale like protean-dreadnoughts.

The last of these is their preferred host, as when of those blunders through a floating landmass the resulting debris cloud is choice pickings for these, dozens of them flinging themselves from the dreadnought , like fleas from a submerging dog, each aimed at a choice target.

And while capable of speed and leaping when in contact with a surface, once a drift in the voids of Limbo they lack any ability to move independently.

Once adrift like this , they don't seem distressed , and fall into nearly instantly into hibernation , waiting collusion with something solid.

When in a hibernating state the platonic crocodile is never the less very aware of its surround environment and will be making internal calculations to itself on if such an expenditure of energy is worth the resulting gain in food of a sufficient quality.

Most often they are content to wait for something better, either nestled upon each other on a floating landmass, clinging to the underbelly of a Dreadnought , or often drifting independently through the space of Limbo.

Platonic-crocodiles are seemingly able to eat nearly anything , but seek "complicated" objects to eat. The higher something is on a food chain, the more it is processed ,and especially if modified in ways to store information or display intention , the more desirable it is as a food object.

So dirt is chosen over sand , grass over dirt, meat over grass, leather over meat, a book over leather, and a machine with moving parts over a book.

It can be quite easy to get used to Platonic Crocodiles as inert and harmless, but it is unwise to regard them as such , for it is never certain if one will suddenly decide it has waited long enough and it will settle on eating you and everything you own.

And now Patrick, our final volleys continue with this:

HIS REPLY

Lebbeus Woods

Monday, 26 March 2012

Limbo final edit

PDF

I COLLAPSED A COUPLE OF POSTS INTO THIS ONE AND NOW I'M REPOSTING IT AND MAKING A MESS OF EVERYTHING

SO this is edit number 5 of Scrawling Over The Classics Planescape part 5 Limbo, and I'm leaving it alone now:

Limbo. So here's the stuff I have to work with:

So it has no gravity or subjective gravity so you decide which way is down for you and the githerzai live here and the slaadi, with some swishy new types by me.

And lumps of raw elemental materials. Which you can learn to shape into stuff.

I am... yeah.

So yes a void with bland lumps in it.

Okay, sure pure randomness leads to nothing and blah entropy is the arrow of time pointing only to eventually heat death of the universe, but lets ignore the laws of thermodynamics and instead lets all look at the infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters. Who I do not out-source to, despite lingering rumors of the contrary.

Basically amongst the lumps of rock and churn there is found nearly anything if you look long enough. Things appear without history or function to drift , and slow dissolve into nothing again. These are referred to as Glecks. Very rarely a gleck will happen of bizarre complexity . There is a table at the bottom of this post for these Artifacts of No Purpose Nor History.

There is no gravity in limbo until you get near a largish mass (say.. the size of one room cottage) then gravity is directed toward the middle of the mass. It is a gradual thing so its not like you drift too near a lump of rock and then suddenly start fall toward it. But eyes sideways berk! Glecks often have their own physical laws! So this sudden plunge could happen!

Some, like the above, will be invested with the slaad. Either a couple of mobs of bickering red and blues (maybe with egg laden humanoids in the middle of it) or a couple of more powerful slaad like grey slaad quantophrenic or melliflous. In these occasions they have been known to play games where each slaad seals up a number of creatures into the twisted hive and watch or listen to the creatures explore and fight . Other times a more recognizable arena is made, with an audience of slaadi and githezerai and planetravelers. The conditions of the arena are prone to sudden change by the grey or death slaadi who has claimed it.

Sometimes various structures and buildings or half a city is stolen by the slaadi and used as playground/battlezone/gladiator arena/ zoo. It's not so much a co-ordinate effort, as more a mob of slaadi all randomly have the idea at the same time and pour through a portal to drag whatever architecture and flora fits the bizarre whim.

The haphazard clumps are steadily warped and dissolved by limbo causing the ill nature of it to be even more.

These stolen landscapes/battlegrounds/arenas/playgrounds are known as a Glean and sometimes they proceed to attract more floating pieces of what ever from the churning matter seas of limbo, and grow and grow. Slaad are then more likely to dump more found structures on top of this mix. The difference between a Gleck and a Glean is that a Gleck has been generated by the chaos stuff of Limbo and a Glean is material from elsewhere brought to Limbo. It is not unlikely for Glecks and Gleans to be combined to some fashion.

The largest is know as detropolis and it is more of architectural junk yard than a city. Yet it has a thriving trade city , somewhat hampered by it having no portals directly opening to it, meaning visitors have to make a dangerous journey across limbo to find it. The safest bet, is to use it's trash gravity and dump a large mass of rubbish and hide in this trash raft, the currents of limbo will guide in towards detropolis. Nothing is certain though in Limbo, and while most slaad will not bother investigated a trash raft some might.

Surprisingly detropolis is safe (ish) from slaad attacks, rumored to be because of a particular large and powerful quantophrenic slaad in it's core. Leading strength to this rumor is the fact that Whisperforms

(which are created by quantophrenic slaad, if you don't have a cool idea of what a whisper form is , here's one; A quantophrenic slaad may invest a number of hitpoints to bring into existence a translulence version of a person that is being talked often about within 6 miles of the quadtophrenic slaad. The personage has their face distorted to look some what like the quantophrenic slaad (ala Aphex Twin videos). It will have a percentage of its ability and hitpoints equal to the hitpoints invested (but as a percentage, so 20 hit points invested is a whisperform at 20% the strength of the original). If the hitpoints invested are equal to personages hitpoints at full health then the whisperform has 100% of the abilities of the personage )

of unusual power defend the city and inflict a mockery of city codes on it's inhabitants. Most of chromatic slaadi (blue,green,red) barely visit here, but Desiccated , Slangral, melliflous, spumscent bleached,and quantophrenic do

damn it blogger why are messing up the font colour.

DISCARDS: native mainly to detropolis but found else where in Limbo, but very rarely outside of there.

THey just showed up one by one and kind of just.. are. The don't really have a collective name, although in a pinch the Discards will do. The are a fairly benign bunch just kind of pottering around the place. Here is a trailer for the movie I'm totally ripping them from:The Lost Thing Trailer

There is a table to generate them at the bottom of this post.

Detropolis: yes it has cute things that are not going to drill inside your bones. Look the last post was horrible things okay? Felt like some cute happy guys. Look at that guy up there, he's just living in a cloud of wahey!

Also githzerai?

The monastery like fortresses of this guys dote the churning void here, adorned with strange devices of research and protection. Sometimes have one tower, sometimes 2 forming a card like symmetry . Some even develop until they are like spikey ball of cranky wizard monks.

Severance Blades are the Githzerai silver sword, although they would be angered with that comparison. Severance blades give a natural free-action effect to the user and the wielder may choose instead of inflict damage on a hit, instead sever an advantage of the opponent , removing a external enhancement such as a protection magic, effects of a magic item (including armour bonuses) or even terrain advantages. This severing lasts a day. This is particular dangerous if the individual is say in elemental plane of fire and the githzerai removes the fire protection effect allowing them to survive...

Severance Blade

Also the githzerai zoom around in ships. These are called Void Razors. The ships can cut through weak spots in the planar boundarys allowing travel from remote corners of planes to another planar outskirts. Sometimes they abandon one to the slaadi, letting the slaadi go all viking on the great ring, but not before entwining strange magics to monitor the ships progress. A mob of slaad running amok will put a new ship design through every possible situation and stress. The magics also allow the ship to disintegrated remotely by the githzerai. The Voidrazors look like this

RANDOM TABLES FOLLOW:

A merry Discard of Detropolis, Limbo and unknown gentlemen.

here is some tables to generate the Discards of Detropolis, the environment of said place, artifacts of no purpose and history, and Gleans.

DISCARDS:

WHAT DOES THAT CHEEKY LITTLE GUY LOOK LIKE?

Okay so the Discards of limbo range in intelligence from a smart animal to a person in smartness.

They are pretty much just local colour and to make some npc interaction a tad more interesting by having a clock face tube cat on wheels trying to sell you a rowboat. These tables might be more excessive than is needed. But hey, random tables. If you need stats for them just reskin an animal of similar size.

How big it is?

1 the size of a large beetle or mouse

2 the size of a cat

3 the size of medium dog (colour of dog not important)

4 as big as praying mantis that is big as person who is average in size

5 the size of horse

6 the size of a elephant

roll 1d4+1 , and then roll that many time of this table. Or , more quickly, roll a d20 and look across the table a roll a d4 times. Combine the results in some haphazard fashion. For example you are using the quick method. You roll a 11, and then roll 3. So that's hourglass (going down the table) and going across is anvil , kite and rabbit. So its some combination of those. Lets make it have a anvil for its body, hopping (loudly) with rabbit legs. There is a somehow a suggestion of a face at the front of the anvil. From its rear hovers a kite string but leading to a floating hourglass instead.

Savvy?

1 lemur 21 accordion 41 eel 61 sting or manta ray 81fragrant herb bush

2 chain 22 wagon wheel 42 cauldron 62 mushroom 82 newt

3 barrel 23 panther 43 cart 63 piano/harpsichord 83 walnut

4 bird cage 24 giraffe 44 windmill 64 scrolls 84 turtle/ tortoise

5 monkey 25 gazelle 45 kangaroo 65 magnifying glass 85 mortar and pestle

6 pig 26 horse 46 sloth 66 telescope 86 hat

7 tuba 27 donkey 47 rug 67 spider 87 clock

8 crossbow 28 shark 48 rose bush 68 catfish 88 dried seaweed

9 catapult 29 broomstick 49 orchid 69 flounder 89 candle

10 cutlery drawer 30 butter-churn 50 egg 70 beetle 90 pelican

11 hour glass 31 Anvil 51 kite 71 rabbit 91 hand drill

12 door 32 printing press 52 umbrella 72 bluebird 92 butterfly net

13 snake 33 organ 53 plough 73 condor 93 toasting fork

14 centipede 34 mattock 54 moose 74 vulture 94 pterodactyl

15 candelabra 35 pineapple 55 shield 75 owl 95 possum

16 bear 36 tree 56 bucket 76 lizard (gecko/skink) 96 bellows

17 dolphin 37 picture frame 57 teapot 77 iguana 97 mirror

18 squid 38 key(s) 58 drum 78 hedgehog 98 crocodile

19 cuttlefish 39 cat 59 flute 79 goose 99 kiln

20 book(s) 40 dog 60 grasshopper 80 cow 100 cupboards

and roll on this table if you want some addition pizazz . YOu could even roll twice if you are one who kicks caution out the backdoor while inviting the devil in the front!

EXTRA DOODAD OR WHATNOT

1 little jingling bells

2 Smoke stacks with weird coloured smoke puffing out

3 glowing orbs like head lights or a deep fishes lure

4 little tiny versions of it's self run about its body making repairs and adjusments

5 has tentacles for locomotion purpose

6 wheels (or wheel) that it toddles around on it

7 Ribbons and flags, baby , ribbons and flags

8 wearing clothes , possibly well , possibly like a tree in floodwater.

9 Has some cheap gaudy scepter , miter , or incense burner of authority

10 bounces around on springs

11 attached to a balloon, either decorative or large enough to support it's weight

12 has various slogans and mottos written on it in a variety of formal scripts

HEY CAN IT TALK TO ME?

1 its communicate with elaborate colour changing

2 it talks like a regular person

3 with body percussion!

4 with only 1d6 phrases!

5 scratches or writes on the ground or a chalk board

6 silent, except for surprisingly expressive body language

Note: All Discards can communicate silently with each other, with about a sight range

WOW WHAT'S IT DOING?

(supposing that you have not already decided that is a shop keeper, bartender or clue giver)

1 Hovering around like a humming bird , trilling musically

2 Sessile , watchful and ponderous

3 Follows people and mimics them

4 Shy, it runs and hides

5 stacking things artfully

6 offers people little wrapped gifts

7 drawing or painting on everything

8 being cheeky and playful , knocking stuff over

9 Collects things. Has little collections of things on artful display around the place

10 Is being protective of a person or place

11 Is being a teacher /mother for 1d12 miniature versions of it

12 Eating its environment

13 dancing with steady , but drunken, rhythmic lurches

14 Repairing its environment

15 Has a collection of objects that it has stolen. Its currently repairing and polishing them and will return them later

16 delivering messages at high speed, or asking if anyone would like a message delivered anywhere in limbo. Message will be at plot based speeds

17 Slowly dragged an improbable load

18 pushing a fancy tea trolley around , with dainty cakes. Will offer dainty cakes to p.cs

19 observing and taking notes

20 climbing it's surroundings and nearby tall objects and placing flags atop.

WOW GM THIS IS GREAT WHERES THE DUNGEON?

ah ..

So Gleans are parts of bulidings and stuff limbo has swallowed or the slaad have dragged back on some DIRE WHIM.

remember?

And detropolis is huge ball of them clumped together and constantly added to.

Here's a table to determine what its like. If you are generating a glean, also roll on the additional What is this Glean Being Used For.

A GLEAN/SECTION OF DETROPOLIS IS MADE FROM WHAT???

Mass of fused boxes, crates and rooms
Pillars from a 1000 lands , stacked and balanced
Upside down trees suspended from other upside trees by chains
Log cabin(s) and longhouse(s) with statues replacing some of the logs
Maze of severed church steeples
Floor, wall and possibly ceiling is made from wrought iron gates, portcullis, and taut sails and flags
giant sandstone bricks (Egypt like) and stained glass windows
Boats standing upright
Chinese style temple with headless stonelions. Severed animal and humanoid heads placed instead on stone lions.
Clay (still wet) walls with threatening drawings carve into them
Staircases, huge cauldrons and tapestrys
Wheels, ropes, cheap plaster walls, elaborate painted backdrops and other props from a theatre
Interwoven sticks and hair
Huge pearly shells and giant bees wax cells
Walls of empty shelves and iceberg hunks
Chimneys, mehirs, monoliths, irregular stone walls. Garden paths and herb garderns
Big Aztec stone faces, stacked like bricks, with child skulls inplace of the mortar
Curved half melted stones walls with irregular streaks of glistening metal and metal boiler plates riveted in places
Vaulted archs, big wooden doors and mighty anchors
books nailed together and grass meadows

AND IT'S LIKE A ROOM OR A CLEARING OR WHAT?

Its a clearing or a open town square type thing. Choose one of the features to be the floor and the others politely bordering it
Its like a mess, you are pretty much crawling through tiny gaps in between what its made of
It is stacked like an apartment block having sex with an apartement block with most of the walls missing
Mostly opened with irregular partitions
Everything is just floating in the air like a platform game
The structure of it is like a winding alley way or ravine
The matter of it is piled like a hillock
It has been formed into a cavern like space with small alcoves branching of it

OH HOW BIG IS IT? (gleeks, detropolis sections and gleans)

THe size of a 3 bedroom hut
2 of these huts!
The size of a town square
The size of a festhall/medium buliding
about half a city block
The size of cricket pitch

SO WHAT IS HERE THEN? d20 roll it baby

If this is a section of Detropolis roll here:

1-5 nothing at the moment

6- a copse of trees planted by Desiccated slaadi. Roll once on the Discard table to determine what the trees are growing

7 a fight between 2 creatures (1-2 is just starting, 3-4 it's in the crux of it, 5-6 one lies defeated). Roll on any encounter table you want to determine creature

8 Roll on the Artifacts of No purpose nor History. Note, if the players leave this area, without taking ridiculous methods to make sure they can find it again, the chances of every being able to find it again is slim. As in roll again and if you get an 8 again its there

9 A bustling market selling 1 food, 2 clothing and general goods, 3 weapons and armour, 4 arcane objects and trinkets, 5 jewellery 6 roll twice

10 Various shops and professional services tucked away in little alcoves. 1 a shop , roll on above, 2 blacksmith 3 cobbler 4 leather worker 5 sage 6 healer or cleric 7 masseuse 8 Fortune teller 9 brothel catering to bizarre fetishs 10 pet shop 11 library 12 roll twice, combining results

11Fountain. Out of which flows 1 nearly rusted to dust coins 2 oil 3 blood 4 water 5 salt 6 ink

12 A mural is covering half this space made with paint , clay and mirrors. 50/50 chance it reveals the location and key of a portal somewhere in sigil if studied

13 A garden 1 medicinal 2 fruit 3 herb 4 poisonous 5 psychoactive 6 roll twice

14 Giant tools and weapons, swinging ponderously by vines/cloth/rope/chain/spider web

15 1000s and 1000s of lit candles

16 Completely out of place animals looking gormless

17-18-19 1d6 discards/ slaad/ or humanoid (githerzai , human, tiefling etc) inhabitants and roll again

20 roll twice combine results

AND MY EXITS OUT OF HERE?

draw the shape of this section on a bit of paper. Roll a d6, trying to get it inside this outline of the section. If it lands on the outline that's where a secret/hidden exit is. If it rolls over the outline there is no exit. If it is a 1, trace a line from the top left corner of the die (using the upright numbered face as the orientation ) on 45 degree angle. Where that line hits the the outline of the section, put an exit there. If you roll a 2,3,4 do the same and then for the additional corners , counting clockwise from the top left.

If it's a 5 there is trapdoor in the floor on that spot where the die landed. ANd reroll the die. If it's a 6 there is a trapdoor on the roof, and then reroll the die.

If it's a Glean/Gleck

roll a d20 here to see just what is being done with the place

1-2 A fighting pit /ring /arena 1 in use 2 empty 3 looking for new contestants 4 crowd just starting to form

3-6 Roll on detropolis table

7 Slaadi!

8.A lair for a monster (roll on any encounter table )

9A stockpile of dangerous leaking magical equipment or a ongoing experiment, unattended at present (may contain telsa coils, caged monsters, eggs, bubbling vats , forges or kilns)

10 1d10 trees planted by dessicated slaadi. 1 in 3 chance they are around still. If you can't think of something cool for the trees to be doing, roll on the discard form table and that's what they are growing.

11 A library , the books have inside 1 words, as books do 2 words completely at random 3 pressed leaves 4 pressed faces 5 pressed insects 6 music

12A meditation room for githzerai 1 in 3 chance inhabited now

13 A wrecked Voidrazor

14 A stockpile of pickles and cheeses and/or weapons

15 Githzerai. Doing something githzerai. Presumably some else has done a "what is that humanoid group doing" table, because I do not want to. Oh wait I think I did here scroll down a bunch.

16 Some other humanoid group like halflings or something. Roll on some other table someone else wrote

17 Seemingly empty, 50% of something there but hidden! roll again it that case. If you get this result again,ignore the 50 % thing just roll again again but make it super super hidden.

18 A theatre, 1 is perfoming, 2 is rehearsing 3 is empty but still used 4 is long abandoned 5 undergoing repairs 6 about to began / just finishing. Thespians a mix of Xaostects, githzerai, bleached slaad and others. Audience potentially anything

19 treasure stash badly hidden/well hidden, and it's rubbish!/kinda cool/ real good but someone will come looking for it and its got a tracking device

20 prisoners infected with blue /red slaad eggs. 1 slaad not here 2 slaad guarding 3 slaad with arrive in a couple of minutes 4 some other creature tied up and guarding (roll on any encounter table, reroll if it seems too stupid like a lich, but keep if it's only kinda stupid like a giant crayfish or octopus)

OKAY SO WHATS A THiS GLECK MADE OF THEN?

A insane warren of cardboard cells (like the picture)
A clump of stone with ever burning trees growing out of it
An iceberg with iron poles frozen in it
A paper thin plate of obsidian
A spiders web of coral
A hollow crystal skull
An Tropical island made entirely of glass
Smooth iron ball 50% chance of being hollow
Columnar Basalt
A ball of water
A churning yet solid storm cloud
A castle made entirely of flesh
A dirt mass with giant fungus also made from dirt
A giant ball of string
Big rock mass
Big dirt mass
A frozen wave of blood
A honeycomb made from tin
A delicate fluted tower made from solid purple light, 1 in 3 chance of it existing in a radial symmetrical form
A goliath Diatom!
A big flat clay dish with miniature sand dunes
An massive organ fully functioning (1 heart 2 lung 3 stomach 4 intestines 5 liver 6 brain )
A tent like structure like a massive leather box kite
A tooth
some kind of giant candy!
some kind of congealed half dried organ mass like old meat and very old coffee
Snow ball
Roll on Discard form table, if result is an animal, it is not alive but not rotting. (..or it can be if you want, but you know that right?) 1 in 3 chance to roll again and either merge the results or have them on top each other
Roll on Glean table and 2 in 3 chance to roll again and either merge the results or have them on top of of each other
roll twice and merge the results.

HEY THIS GLECK IS THERE MADNESS IN ITS VERY PHYSCKS?
d20
1-12 no not really
13 okay it's gravity kicks in as soon as you get within 20 metres of it, thus sending you falling toward it at high speed
14 it looks flat but actually is a sphere, and if you go off one side you wind up on the other
15 weird lagging effect. every round or what have you roll a d6 1-2 affected as if by a slow 3-4 as if by a haste 5-6 nah you good
16 All surface on the Gleck are frictionless. As a grease spell but also means you do not stop sliding
17 the air tension is weird. It's like being underwater, but in air.
18 Lighting reversed. shadows glow and light sources darken
19 sound is twice as loud
20 silence, no sound can be made

SLAADI I CAN'T HELP BUT NOTICE THERE IS NOT A TABLE FOR TYPE OF SLAADI:

really? Fine

1-5 Chromatic

4-7 Perverse , Lesser

8-9 Perverse , Coherent

9 -10Perverse, Wanton

11 grey or death slaadi

12 roll twice

Chromatic

1-2 green

3 red

4 blue

Perverse, lesser

(weaker, or more animalistic)

1 slangral

2 bleeding

3 Dessicated

4 Verminous

Perverse, Coherent

(medium to strong power, will start encounter with conversation, will have to be motivated to commence violence)

1 Quantophrenic

2 Spumescent

3 mellifluous

4 Bleached

Perverse, Wanton

(strong to very strong in power, immediately dangerous, do not approach, does not play well with others)

1 Radiant

2 Prismatic

3-4 Fizzing

Artifacts of No Purpose Nor History

this is a table for huge weird things that can be stumbled upon in limbo. Each artifact is unique. That does not mean it can't keep showing up in unlikely places. Indeed it's incredibly unlikely that they will be in the same place as they were last time.

1 A huge brass bull (the size of a 4 story building) with 7 long necked swan heads emerging in place of its head. It is hollow and the insides of it can be accessed via its anus. If one travels up to any of the swan heads (which is difficult climb) there is a large pearl the size of a baby's head. Looking it to this pearl's murky depths reveals a vision of who hates you the most.

If all the pearls are removed from inside the bull (and not just the swan head), it animates and relentlessly and unerring chases the pearls (going for the closest one first) and when it reach of them will swallow them up with a swan head. It will then continue until it has retrieved all of them. It cannot planeshift but will hone in on a portal large enough for it that will take it a step closer to the pearl. It will not attack or undertake action other than moving towards the pearls. Anything in its way will be crushed however if it cannot evade its great hooves.

2 A insanely complex siege engine. Anyone educated in engineering matters who attempts to decipher it's workings must make will save (d.c20) or spent all the time engrossed its endless gears and devices. They will not sleep or seek out food (and so will starve unless food is brought to them). After each week they may attempt the save again. If they are entranced for 4 weeks in a row, they discover that the underlying logic that has been teasingly out of reach, is in actual fact a cosmic farce , and will forever crush any hope of a greater order to the multiverse. They lose any lawful alignment (and can choose another off either axis to replace it) and 6 points of wisdom. However if they succeed in the 2nd will save (the one they attempt after the first week) the will gain exp equal to 200 times their level. But still be convinced that there is something more to discover in the workings of the artifact.

3 A featureless glossily black cube of 20 by 20 by 20 feet. It is immune to everything, including spheres of annihilation. Can be moved around though, but weighs as much as an iron cube of twice its size would (assuming gravity is present).

4 An endless waterworks. See picture on left.

5A great stone foot with 4 toes and inscription on its plinth. The inscription is in a language that the viewer knows (if any) , and will be describing a childhood moment of theirs of utter bitterness.

6 A rat wheel , big enough for a man to run in. Actually contains a man, naked and endlessly running and screaming. He will not respond to stimulus, and is just a weak ass 0 level human if you shot him with something. If you remove him from the wheel, he will stop screaming, and give a look expressing emotions unknown to any other. Then he will age in seconds to dust. IF this dust is mixed with water and drank , the drinker will awake from their next sleep 1d4 times 10 years younger, and haunted by dreams of eerie grandeur and loss that they will never quite shake.

7 A large black iron crab, adorned higgledy piggledy with fine wooden chairs with lush red velvet cushions. Emerging from its head is a formidable cannon, the length of 2 horses. If the cannon is primed and fired as would you any other cannon, the ball (or indeed anything else in the barrel) shoots out and arrives somewhere else in the multiverse, unhurt. The destination is seemly random, but may be influenced by additives to the black powder used to fire it.

8 A great ornate empty frame. big enough to ride a stage coach through. Anyone passing through it feels lighter and freer but with a sadness as if something was lost a long time ago and suddenly not quite recalled.

9 A whale skeleton formed from compressed sherbet

10 A huge book, the size of emperors bed. Opening it and laboriously turning its pages reveals blank page after blank page. Every now and now again things seem to flicker off the page just as it is turned. Shutting someone in the book will press them flat and reduce them to a inky silhouette . The may then explore a hidden 2 d world of inky silhouette in the pages out of sight, the inhabitants of which are welcoming but do their best to remain unseen. One thus transformed maybe freed from the book by cutting out their outline. They will then be able to move around the wider world as a Shadow (but without the strength drain). ANy items they have will however be only able to effect them and other shadows. They do not count as undead. The book will heal from the cutting like butter melting in the sun. It should be difficult but not entirely impossible for them to recover their original form, depending on your whims.

11A grinding wheel the size of a largish hill. On its side is a complex series of gears leading down to a small pedal drive , allowing someone of human size to pedal the wheel into motion. With this wheel one could grind down a towers worth of steel into a blade that could sever an astral cord or the fabric of the planes, depending on the quality of the steel.

12 A hourglass tall as a giraffe. If the glass is broken the sands will rush out in terrible roaring wind, to quick disappear from sight. Randomly choose a person of great personal significance in the breakers life. The sands will sweep to that person , and whip past, taking with them the curse of age. They will no longer age , naturally or by any other means.

Monster Manual Sewn From Pants

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