Blazing World, The first planar document release

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Gosh I sure do like writing game material

Okay so a few years ago I thought I should make a formal release for legacy and cash purposes.

And the thing I thought would be easiest and most toothsome to people was the semi-coherent notes about the use of the planescape setting

So for the last 2 years (possibly more??)  I have been thumping away at something. But I hate it.

To get it finished as acceptable product for sale will just take so much longer because it is chore and I have no real passion for it. More of "hey this would be cool I guess" feeling.

Working around the planar alignment setting and something so broad is horrible as a first project.
There is stuff I am way more interested in making into a presentable book than this.
Stuff that I would use myself at the earliest opportunity and is not titanic in scope.

I think that is the main thing, I don't have any urge to run a planar campaign anytime soon. I definitely have a urge to run Wide-on-for-destruction or Islands or VeryBigSpaceShip and creating material for that is creating material for myself, and it is easy to feel it is successful when, at the very least, you did a through prep job for once.

But I have a lot of stuff already wrote for it, which I don't want to "waste", and I don't want to sit on it indefinitely and I don't want to start other stuff with it unfinished.

So I am planning to polish up what is there, fill in the blanks and then release as free documents to you all because I am bounteous and so are many others .

The black things running from the Vale are called threads. They bridges of blackness in blackness and souls follow them and try not to get eaten by angler fish.

This is the first part, Blazing World:
BLAZING WORLD!!!!
download it, use it , don't make money off it without my permission, as I am still formerly declaring my rights as the author  and a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution license, or CC-BY-NC.

There are a couple of references to tables that will be in future documents. Vermin road Caravan and Flesh rift beasts.  For the first if you can't wait until that one is out, just do a random merchant caravan but weird it up. For a Flesh rift beast use a random animal intelligence evil beast . either an existing monster (hell hound, howler, eyewing etc) or use an animal with fire legs or something.

Give me feed back on it and it will help the finishing off of the future documents. They will be realise every couple of months depending how much polishing I can be arsed with.

Since I original thought I would be dodging intellectual property laws there are a few name changes , which I guess are not so necessary now.

I will give the lexicon and main changes and additions here, a lot of these will be elaborated into the document that talks about the basics of the thing Which would of been the obvious one to release first but hey.


Working Assumptions , adhered to partially

• all places should have something to do there that is fun
• 
  
• I'm not dealing with real world mythology because it's already been covered. G.ms can easily put gods everywhere if they want
• 
  
• The current alignment is not and has not been a constant feature. Bits and pieces of other arrangements are still there . The Planes/realms do not have to be consistent in tone for this reason. There are border realms and locations which are nearly realms in themselves as they are soley merging or emerging from another realm. 
• 
  
• No way am I doing the neutral good plane and the neutral neutral good plane. The torus is roughly a 9 point axis. G.ms can easily use bits of each places to flesh out whatever planes system they are using anyhow
• 
  
• I used off the cuff working titles for things and then I used them too long and that became the name. I guess that is how etymology works though.
• 
  
• Each Realm would see its self as morally correct. None of them would define themselves by their opposition to another. None of them would exist to punish people. The hell is a hell because everyone there believes this is the best way to behave to become strong and free and right. Reflected that in the naming and how it all works
• 
  
• The list of how spells get changed is gone. I was really tempted in some places but it opens up a can of worms with why would the realms let anything happen at all they don't want? Still half convinced that a giving each place a couple of effects that don't work , might write an appendix for it. Also makes everything about wizards. Like "how do we get the feeling of this place Oh let's change how magic works because Magic spells are the most important thing ever" Which I have mixed feelings about
• 
  
• People are going to want something they can use the very first time they read it. Like people will get their players teleported somewhere and they will go "oh shit , what is there? I need a table"
•  
• The Realms themselves are the power. The gods (if any) , demons, angry bears squat or pay rent there. It's about have a metaphysical congealment baser than religion or morality.
• The Realms do not clearly map to each other. Some will have formal occupants and manifestations. Others will have a dirty tent with a Free Beer sign, spelt wrong, hanging up upside down.

Lexicon:


Realms: Planes. Though they are less discrete than the original planes blending into each other and having bits that are nearly a plane by themselves.

The (Terminal )Torus: basically the great road /outer planes. The change is that the planes / realms are connected physically so they can be traversed without the use of portals.It's just more satisfying to me to draw and imagine. Some  of the realms act as a light source or sky for others.

Vale of Tears: The prime material plane, the "real world"

Glooming: Astral plane. Kinda. The black thing souls travel through to get to the realms.

Twilight: Ethereal plane. Kinda. Immediately overlaps the Vale of Tears and it's were you are when you leave your body. Go up from here and you reach the Glooming

Souls: The thing you have inside your meat. Will have a certain amount of Salt on it, which it will exchange to become an Imago when it reaches a realm. Souls aren't forced to go anywhere. Generally. A soul with a lot of Salt will be escorted or be spruiked to by representatives. Weak willed or indecisive or less valuable souls run a risk of being eaten on the way or press ganged or conned into somewhere. Souls do not have shadows and cannot gain levels.

Salt: the amount a soul has sweated, strived, suffered and cried in their life. It's what keeps the realms solid. A Realm lacking salt will break up and be absorbed by other Realms. It can actually be dug out of some Realms or stolen from in transit souls and since it is useful as a drug, a empowery for Denizens , and an additive to make food actually have nutritional value for people who are not dead but living here, it's the currency, and an entire black market called Vermin Road exists because of it.
A Denizen (like a demon or deva) that has been exiled or excommunicated will need regular Salt or they will be at greatly reduced strength

Vermin Road: not quite a specific place in the same way the "Underground" or  the "Black Market" is not a place though it has places and locations associated with it. Both a trading route, a network of trading posts and the economy that exists between the cracks of the Realms and gods agents and  representatives. It is made up of  exiles, refugees, traitors, squatters, remnants from past mythos, low and high level denizens trying to run something on the side, and of course fucking adventures. The currency is in Salt, but a great deal of other things are traded too , with some of seemingly opposed Realms having more economic ties they the would like to admit.

Denizens: So souls that exchange over their salt to a realm become an imago. An imago can then become (eventually) a Denizen. Denizens are big noise like demons and angels and they like. IF they are killed off Realm they reform in the Realm, with varying amount of time and loss of status and power.  If killed in the Realm , they are dis-incorporated ie destroyed

Imago: A soul that has become aligned to a Realm.. From there they might become a denizen or merge with the realm. Will reform if killed in the Realm but be destroyed off Realm. Will need constant Salt if they attempt to stay off Realm. Which can happen when an Imago decides one day that the Realm that seemed the coolest is Bullshit and it's taking too long to become a Denizen and also they might of pissed someone off powerful.

Dweller: Someone/thing that has lived (generally generationally though some being might be long lived enough)  long enough on a Realm to be changed by it and more importantly can survive there without needing Salt. Some Dwellers have  been on a Realm so long everyone assumes they must be Denizens or Congelates, the Slaadi being the most obvious. The Slaadi however just moved in a long time ago and act like they own the place. A Dweller will not be able survive without Salt on the Vale of Tears. A child born in a Realm is automatically a Dweller. Can be killed on or off realm. If killed on the Realm they have been aligned with , their soul will be absorbed immediately by the Realm without becoming an Imago. Dweller souls have no Salt.

Congelate: A some what coherent being directly made by the Realm itself. Will be permanently destroyed if destroyed off realm. but eventually regenerate if destroyed on Realm . Extremely rare to go  off Realm, will need Salt to survive off Realm

Incarnate: Like Congelate but is an abstract force of the Realm. The classic unseen possessing demon of horror movies or the burning wheel 6 winged angel is an example of Incarnate. Personifies the Realm to instinct that means they are extremely unpredictable, unfathomable, and dangerous.
Pinnacle of Virtue , The rifts of All Flesh, Heart of it All  and the Plains of Relevation are all known to have Incarnates. The other Realms are presumably y capable , but undocumented at this time. It's possible that out breaks of madness, weird arcane blights or unnatural fads have been Incarnates unrecognized

Tourist: anyone in torus that is not "from there" . Presumably a bad pun,  "torus-ist"  , made long ago. Sometimes used as insult by Dwellers to people that are also Dwellers but haven't been part of the place for an arbitrary amount of time or generations


Food:   Some Realms generate food that can sustain Tourists as well as Dwellers, Solitary for one (but its bland and gross) and Blazing World is another (but there is no regularity about anything here ever).
If a tiny amount of Salt is added to Realm food it will subsist a Tourist. Dwellers living in the Vale have the same problem, unable to draw substance from the food without Salt.

Realm Equivalents :

Limbo ,  -> Seether

Arborea, . BeastLands -> Blazing World

Elysium-> Starry Night/Desert of Leavings

Mount Celestia-> Pinnacle of Virtue

Mechanius-> Encyclopedia of All Machines

Acheron-> Grind

Baator-> The Heart Of It All

Grey Wastes-> Plains of Revelation

The Abyss, Gehenna-> The Flesh Rifts aka Canyons of All Flesh

Pandemonium -> (Mt)  Solitary 

No real equivalent but usable material for could be found in

Ysgard-> Seether, Blazing World

Carceri-> Solitary, The plains of Revelation

Bytopia-> Blazing World, Desert of Leavings, Pinnacle of Virtue, Infinite Library

Arcadia-> Pinnacle of Virtue, Heart of it All, Infinite Library, Encyclopedia of All Machines

Astral, Ethereal -> Starry Night, Seether, Glooming, The Blood Clouds

Red Lands Character Creation in readable format

Print PDF Tony Pace absurdly kindly formatted the red lands character creation post into a vastly more readable goggle document:
ZING!
(seriously dude, you are a champion!)



 and here is more background on the thing
Red lands agogo

Scrawling over all the classics Planescape, Darksun , Spelljammer

Print PDF So that I now have collection of house rules in the shell of game, I'm planning to run a g+ game.
But what kind of campaign? Planescape? But with a  Frankensteined darksun and spelljammer grossly flailing from it? Why yes. Yes I will.

It goes  a little something like this:
THe Outlands are now called the Redlands, and are mainly a horrible desert with various oxide shades of sand , salt plains, profane crystal and rock formations , and bug riding barbarian cannibal tribes. In addition when a world or cosmology collapses the various detritus tends to end up here. So just past those sand dunes might lie the broken basalt form of a dead god, a lush fantastical of song and agony, ruins of glass, or whatever.
Also the dead who were vague on their choice of destination or cleaved to gods or cosmologies now defunct, emerge from black black tunnels to blue flaming rifts here, blinking in the harsh sunlight (sun is actually the positive material plane, at night time the negative material plane insinuates night across the sky, the elemental planes far away orbs locked in a tidy orbit with their demi and quasi planes attendant as moons).

YOu can tell the dead (a petitioner) for they cast no shadow, and cannot gain nor lose levels.

And they are valuable to the planes, for planes cannot maintain without petitioners to merge with the plane.
So these orphaned dead are valuable and coaxed, captured , enslaved, or lured to a plane. If they can take on the philosophy they will eventually merge with it. For experiencing eternity will erode your sense of identity until you are nothing more than an aspect of the plane Only a handful of petitioners will be promoted to Solars, Fiends or the like.

The Red lands has 16 portals ringing its unimaginable size. Each one is massive , 1000 feet in height. Each of the planes has one of these portals for it. Around each portal is an Edge City. An edge city is sprawling city state, and while aligned to its plane not completely subject to it. Indeed if a Edge City becomes too much like it's plane, it will slide into the plane and a new Edge City will slowly form. Both the authoritys of the plane and the Edge City are not desirous of this. For a plane to try and directly muscle into the Redlands will run straight into the Lady of Pain who can shut the Portals at will , and cut off all divine power following to would be invaders. Including that of gods. So the Edge Cities try and hussle the orphaned petitioners that trickle their way and salvage the ruins and fragments of cosmologys that turn up in the sands of the Redlands.

 Conversion of various Outsider tribes and denizens of lost cosmology is also a constant enterprise.
Because it's  dangerous to be entirely reliant on the resources of the planes, each Edge City is bitterly entwined with trade with the others. Torch needs the crops of Tradesgate, Excelsior needs the steel of Regis.

Privateering and Piracy goes hand and hand with trade agreements here.
Each Edge City has Psychopomp, (kind of like a sorcerer king or Proxie) who has to balance the interests of the plane and the Edge City. They would be equivalent to level 25, so at least 10 levels lower than a god.
Also a soul tithe must be paid yearly to the plane, and if they have not had enough converts , the cost must be paid in planars, and while merging with your plane is bliss it's also complete identity death.
There's a certain time of year that you really don't want to be caught breaking laws in an EdgeCity.


The situation is comparable to Europe in the height of colonizations era.

The Redlands is too fast to easily travel by foot or terrorbird , and also the menace sandworms (from beetle juice), as well as the fiercely independent Outsider tribes, clad in the hide of a 1000 forgotten monsters and wielding monstrous weapons of bone and fang. So what's a girl to do?
Flying ships of course!
Each Edge City has found its own method of taking to the skies and such wondrous craft serve the  needs of transport, trade and bitter warfare.

Sigil is both a neutral ground and site of bloody political maneuvering.

The edges of the Redlands continue for a a distance past the Edge Cities before reaching an endless Sandstorm of Dissolution.

Flying Straight up from the Redlands eventually gets you to the astral/ethereal plane where the elemental planes are found. Occasionally chucks detach and crash down as meteorites.

Strange storms and their twisters can bring primes from anywhere and dump them in the Redlands.

Current list of player races
Human
Thri-Kreen (native to Redlands)
Elf (any prime,drow and outsider , which is dark sun elves)
Dwarf (any prime (barring gully because really?), + duegar, derro, and clay)
Halfling (any prime)
Gnome (if you must but I hate you)
Lizard folk
Rag Dolls (race of cloth constructs with human organs)
Ghuls (Horned, Scuttler and Peacock. Former Corpse constructs with 3 stable lines of generation )
Tiefling
Gensai (including demi and quasi planes)
Aasimar
Githerzerai
Baurier
Modron
Squirrel (because of reasons)
Crow( cause Odin. OR something)
Some kind of Sentient Ooze

Factions will be like prestige classes.
You can start as a member but you don't get ability's until you spend a level in it.
Characters will have a fair amount of ability early on, but fairly mechanically subdued level advancement. Hitpoints will come back with half a hour but you are only gonna get 1 or 2 a level, and actual body hunks start coming off when you get below zero. Cure light wounds is not going to cut it for healing missing limbs. Spells will do less damage and even large creatures will have only like 30 hitpoints or something.
So it's kick in the door, big damn heroes style of play but things can turn against you very fast.

EDGE CITY NOTES:
AByss:
Edge City: Turmoil
Psychopomp: The Whore, a 12 year boy wearing only rouge and a utterly corrupt smile. Like across between  Machiavelli  and every fucked roman emperor
Caligula era Rome, elaborate scabrous frescoes, gladiator rings and chariot racing, enforcers armoured like beetles with scything limbs grafted to them.
Ships:
Propulsion:Lighter than air nonflammable gases by product of decay of vast lava worms from some unknown layer. Either as zeppelin style one balloon, or numerous pustules all over it.
traits:
Ships tend to be either lumbering excessive fire powered juggernauts, or fast lightly armoured ram and board craft. Also the use of piloted rockets that over take enemy fleets and leave trails of spores, acid webs, and poison gas.
weapons:
Cannons, flamethrowers, gas, acid catapults, acid webs, sporebombs, harpoons and grapples, and ship mounted jaws , drills and ramming prowls
appearance and construction:
Air bladder is generally constructed from a vast worms , bloated and filled with gas, with chitin like claws holding it in place. Rotten, chaotic, spiked, and skeletal.


Gehenna:
EdgeCity:Crucible
Psychopomp:The Cremator, A cancer voiced old man with metal hands.
city is grim half hollowed mountain factory city, with vast steel pipes lakes of toxic sludge, like oil refenarys build and populated by furious deranged drunks.
Mines, refines and smelts a variety of steels , ores , and what not.
Propulsion:
innate levitation of Gehenna volcanoes and/or flaming thrusters below and behind
traits:
rock construction is resilient  to damage, but unstable core. More artillery focused than anything, launching  freezing liquid, lava and larvae via trebuchet . Fly in crescent formation to concentrate fire.
weapons:
Catapults, trebuchets , lava, ice lava, boulders, rocket boulders, ravenous worms
appearance and construction:
flying volcanoes and citadels. For speed and transport use a "hagbat" like vast batwinged kite with thrusters, relying on speed and attitude to evade.

Grey Wastes:
EdgeCity:Ashen

Like that reed city on a lake, lake is vast oxbow of the river styx. reeds dry and brittle like the bones of birds. Architecture tends to shanty town , ragged coverings and many stored stilted houses, like what a chronically depressed Dr Seus might draw. Fish for swallowed secrets in the styx and make cloth and hide from secrets , betrayals , and liars. Also lemure and gloomworm silk
Psychopomp:The Dredger, a glum hunched hag wearing layers and layers of rotting rags.

Propulsion:
Fine tattered sails , like flayed human skin and dirty spiderwebs, catch the ghosts of winds.
traits:
fragile, but alarmingly maneuverable
weapons:
Arrows, poison mists, bat like shapes trailing razor hooked thread, blowguns, baslistas shooting screaming arrows that have mind effecting magics
appearance and construction:
Like classic sailing ships but thin, weak and gaunt. Sails are actually lemure hide or silk

Canceri:
Psychopomp:Incarcarator, an agenderous figure wearing a chain mail wedding dress with a long trail and a long scroll of law covering their face
edgecity: Curst
Like the classic Canceri prints, a vast prison maze. Makes weapons and various outsourced industrial processes
Propulsion:
rows of oars like scapels that cut away the ties of gravity
traits:
All rounded , but on the slow armoured side
weapons:
Spinning discs, ballistias, that Korean multiple spear launcher, catapults. Fire breathing faces with laser eyes.
appearance and construction:
Like iron maidens and iron clads and squat turtle ships. Often with face mounted at front , judgmental eagles and solemn titans

Baator:
edge city:The Tyrant , a white haired grim faced warrior, always wears her armour, like a frost giant but human sized
Torch
 resembling nazi era berlin, all brutalist architecture , and secret vices, secret police and draconian laws. Baator green steel , casinos , night life, and banking are its major draws.
So many different kinds of guards, spies and police here, often competing for bribes.

Propulsion:
Spinning propellers on underside. Helicopter like things
traits:
Armour and range with harassing swarms of one seated helicopters
weapons:
Cannons, lightning from wind up dynamos, ballistas with bolts becoming centipede like scalpel golems, sniper turrets, rust-rats
appearance and construction:
squat turreted iron clad like things. Bulit fairly traditionally from steel and wood

Archeron


edgecity:Rigus
psychopomp:The Warlord, looks like Sauron but with inspiring chisel jawed face straight from soviet propaganda
nature of city:
Lets go with the soviet thing. Lots of big monuments, futurists style architecture, big parade squares and rust and spikes. Military police
resources:
Weapons, weapons, weapons.
Ships:
Propulsion:A big central wheel like a deranged Ferris wheel that allows the craft to fly because of reasons. Can Magnetically attach to the cubes of Archeron and hurtle around the outside at great speed.
traits:
Balanced range of craft each specialized for different strategies, good formations, but tend to flounder if attack patterns disrupts
weapons:
Cannons, drills, buzzsaws, spinning discs, ball and chains, fletchette cannons
appearance and construction:
Like some of the bizarre pulp deco space ships with a central wheel and also soviet and rusty.

Mechanous:


edgecity:Automata
psychopomp:The Arbiter, A stern eyed sage with a typewriter beard
nature of city: Like symmetrically layered with moving travelators and cogs and bureaucracy stuff
resources: automation, fine mechanics, libraries, archives, mathematics and geometry schools. Modrons serve as guards and peace keepers
Ships:
Propulsion: Central gyroscope taking up most of internal room.
traits:Maneuverable , fancy looking, weird weapons
weapons:
gravity cannons, blade mines, automated crossbows, lightning
appearance and construction:
Often spherically , or resembling a diatom. Like models of the universe or sextants. MAde of metal and glass.


Arcadia:

edgecity:Tradegate
psychopomp:The Forge, a burning figure in cased in armour of glass and iron
nature of city: Hearty and industrialist, neat , organized and efficient , a little bit Swiss alps and a little bit world fair new york
resources: various and sundry goods, vast grid like farms
Ships
Propulsion: Mechanically bat wings and 10 wing "biplane" like things.
traits:all rounder, favour boarding actions
weapons: grapples, huge big harpoons, batwinged clockwork bombs.
appearance and construction: Like your classic sailing ships of yore but with a stack of Leonardo DaVinci on top and early flying machines


Mt Celestia

edgecity: Excelsior
psychopomp:The Judicator , the paladins paladin. Actually glows at all times coz he so paladin.
nature of city: Like all stained glass and vaulted arches and every rose-tinted version of Camelot and that shit.
resources:
Healthy and loyal peasants churn out hearty food and all that.
Ships:
Propulsion:
Big crazy crystals like  3 dimensional stained glass , get charged up with singing special holy songs so they resonant with special flying frequency. Called a Chalice.
traits:
Healing auras for crew on board and  bless spells.
weapons:
archers with arrows imparted with magics from the "chalice", bells and sonic weaponry, like angel trumpets
appearance and construction:
Like flying churches


Bytopia:

edgecity:Fortitude
psychopomp:The Duke, a fierce looking blind man with long eyebrows and the master of the flying Guillotine
nature of city:
Regimented but peaceful. Elaborate wall network allows guards to deploy rapidly to any area. Guards ride cabybaras and are armed with chains and mancatchers. Think Imperial Chinese Palace. Underground is huge machinery of unknown purpose, and is also where  clay dwarfs make more of their own.
resources: Pottery, crops (especially cotton and other fabrics), medical herbs and rare minerals
Propulsion:
Hot air balloons
traits:
Slow, okay armour, ceramic boats resistant to fire and magics (via protective calligraphy), terracotta monkey golems
weapons:
Exploding fire pots on small balloons used as mines, fire work style rockets, fire lances, terracotta monkey golems, cannons, flaming arrows, greek fire, asbestos armour, can burn holy script in the central burner, fires lit from it then ignore fire resistance of evil creatures.
appearance and construction:
Kinda of like a Chinese Junk but squatter and made from thick glazed ceramics covered in elaborate protective calligraphy. Slung under hot air balloons
Elysium:

edgecity:Ecstasy
psychopomp:The Serene, blue faced lady with a crescent moon combination mask and hat
nature of city:
All art noveau, and gentle babbling fountains, hanging gardens and idealized moon kingdom utopia. Lots of balls and swanning about indulgently. Guards are lycanthropes that turn into large panthers and huge blue wolves.  City is perpetually in twilight. Counts as daylight from vampires though. SUCK IT.
resources:
Wine, rare and magical fruit, luxury goods,drugs and herbs.
Propulsion:
Either pulled chariot style behind great swans, gondola held by great moths, or whispery barge things that ride moon beams across the sky
traits:
Fast, lightly armoured, agile
weapons: Archers with homing arrows, sleep dust, lightning, rays of frost from crystals on sticks, ball lightning (ala ring of shooting stars)
appearance and construction:
either chariot or gondola style or like art noveau barges

BEastlands

edgecity:Roar
psychopomp:The Fury, a Jaguar headed bare chested mighty wrestler known as King.
nature of city:
Hannah barbara cartoon primitive yet techno. Jack Kirby style cubey things of purpose. Bamboo and logs. Petitioners here have animal heads.
resources:
Meat! Gladiators! Hides tusks and bones! The great game which is a free for all safari.

Ships:
Propulsion:
All the beast land ships are blessed by mighty raptor spirits and therefore have great eagle wings
traits:
fast , damaging , okay armour, short on tactics, big on punching you in your stupid face
weapons:
"pointing bones" rune carved bones which channel the Primal energies. I.e lasers. Javelins, arrows, crystals in the eyes of the figure head which shoot lasers.
People riding pterodactyls , bolas, jaws and claws on figure have REAL SHIP TEARING ACTION
appearance and construction:
Like a techno pirate ship with animal head and limbs carved in front. Jaws really move! Also has wings.

Arborea:

edgecity: Vagrant
psychopomp:The Dancer, she's a young girl with goat legs and magic pipes and she's like Delirium from SandMan
nature of city: ITs build in tree houses on the back of a massive giant snail. The snail has lasers that it shoots from its eyes and its slime is holy water. Slime.
It's all hippy , and swings, and trees and parties but it's cool. Like the Lost boys hide out from the stink Hook movie. HAs fierce sparrowmen archers and squirrels. ANd hatch ways into the shell of the snail.
resources:
fun! good vibes! Fancy wood! Snail shells

Ships:
appearance and construction:
Rainbow coloured nautilus and snail shells with bright silk sails. With a tree growing out the of it and tree huts in the tree.

Propulsion: Fly with fucking pixie dust. Has drummers and musicians which make crew immune to fear and panic as long as they play. If musicians killed, and morale fails, so does the pixie dust.

traits:

as well as the morale effects above, not as fragile as they look and annoyingly fast. Weapons not hugely damaging , but repeated hit and runs from Arborea ships start to take their toll
weapons:
Actual flying trees as missiles that take root and fuck up the enemy ship. Music that causes Ottos Irresistible dance (musicians can't maintain both morale boost and this at the same time) . Brightly coloured mushrooms that shoot spores that have sleep/hallucination/confusion effect. Puff ball mines. Archers.


Ysguard


edgecity:Glorium
psychopomp:The Champion, pretty much Toph from Avatar the last air bender
nature of city:
Glorious! Grows on the side of the Yggdrasil. Kinda of Norse but Mongolian and Celtic influence as well. Basically a sprawling tent city with the only real solid construct being drinking halls and arenas. Gravity aligns to side of tree. Squirrels.
Fierce , fierce squirrels. Fortune telling one eyed crows. If you are being a dick, everyone will fight you.
resources:
brawls, wood, giant fungus, fruit the size of a horse. A fat berry horse.
Ships:
appearence and construction:
Long boats viking style! But flying!
Propulsion:
Rows of muscular  warriors lift ship into the air, while dudes propel it forward with rowing
traits:
Yggdrasil provides strong wood. Not much long range weapons. Fast though if turning axis not great
weapons:
Warriors! Grappling! Bezerkers delivered by catapult. Ramming prow, and lightning breathing figure heads



Limbo:


edgecity:Detropolis (same name as the one in limbo. Actually kind of the same place. Sometimes)
psychopomp:The Anarch. who the Anarch is changes moment to moment. So any particualt person could suddenly be the most powerful in .
nature of city:
Like someone got 10000years of Cities and shook them in a jar and then had drunk ants rebuild them. Except the ants were imaginary.
resources:
Impossible things smuggled out of limbo/

Ships:
Appearance and construction:
2 kinds, one is Kludge which is an alarming collection of things tied together and flying by sheer ignorance of physical laws. The GIthzerai have their own fleet of Voidrazors, which are kind of like a canoe made by a artist trying to reference tribal culture without being too "primitivist" about. Githzerai sometimes give slaadi experimental version of a void razor with magical monitoring  devices and let them loose
traits: varies, Void Razors are fast as hell and  hard hitting
weapons: varies, Void razors are armed with monofliment floss and beams of vorpal light.


Pandemonia:


edgecity:Bedlam
psychopomp: THe Mocker, a harlequin with long pointy nose mask. Wanders around giving dire prophecys and cutting fashion advice
nature of city:
It's okay if you like the slums of London but the buildings reach 12 stories and an elaborate series of flying foxes are cabled everywhere because the river Styx occasionally floods the city.
resources:
Poor as edge Cities go. Occasionally artifacts or lost treasures retrieved from Pandemonia show up here. Similar to the markets of Detropolis in that you will find anything for sale for any price if you look longer enough. Also has the finest collection of books written by mad scholars in all of the planes!
Guards? Bleakers mounted on howlers serve to keep the trouble at a muttering constant and not a full blown riot.

Ships?
Rare, not as expansionist as other edge cities. There is one shipyard though, where mad inventors work tirelessly to make ...things.
The occasionally Pandemonium ship looks like a weaponized church organ and more or less is.
Traits: Slow, protected by winds of discord and deflection, alarming amount of firepower
Weapons: Disintegration effects, confusion effects, rockets fired from pipes, weapon effects depend on the skill of the organ player
Ships organ must be continuously played and the music directs its defenses and weapons.

Scrawling over the classics part 7 Planescape, Arborea

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Arborea:

Wow. Arborea. I just read the entry on it. It is super ranger land. Like it's wilderness but BIGDEAL wilderness . Oh but to make it interesting there is elvish and  greek gods.
I don't even know when to began . Elysium is peaceful ruins .. with laser animals, and Mt Celestial is Trials and Kirby Celestials, beastland is super wilderness encounter world. Chaotic good huh... did I already do a oversized wilderness where-you-are-like bugs, yes yes I did in Beastlands. Okay I got it, Arborea is about freedom and potential, and the landscape is fantastic worlds that could never exist in such a cruel world, but here in Chaotic Good land they can, and animals absurd and friendly. Like the best kids books ever, a land of towering purple bouncy mushroom forests, rolling hills that are friendly turtles, edible clouds, and flying jungles. PICTURE DUMP (shit that was harder than I thought to find anything..)

 Arborea is populated with all kinds of impossible animals, while beastland has all possible animals, Arborea has pushme-pullyous, sidehill gougers, hoop-snakes and go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearsome_Critters for more stuff.
The petitioners here can take the form of these beasts, weird creatures of their own imagination, or their original form. Some live raucous lives of adventure and wildness, others find contemplative realms to chill the fuck out but most swing wildly between the two. Petitioners here can't really be killed, and can regenerate from their original body or dissolve it and create a new one. This makes them even more reckless than the may have been in their original lives, and sometimes can be unaware that visitors to this realm  may not be so baize about their own safety.
Arborea is a mash of all kinds of fantastic realms, and they do not lead on from each other linearly. You can only find a realm depending on your intentions. If you are exploring it with plunder and bloodshed in mind, you are going to find realms of fierce punching arm trees and double-tigers. If you want a serene la-la walk you will get gently drifting blue warm icebergs, and rubbery purple mushroom forests and aerial brooks and mossy smiling frog statues.

As well as the usually upper plane crowd of devas, couatls, moondogs and solars and some stupid animal themed angels that I can't be bothered look up right now, there is the Galloons.
Galloons come in 3 flavours. They are like wild playtime monsters invented by 6 year olds. They represent the spirits of freedom, adventure, and running around like a maniac screaming your head off with the shear joy of being alive.
All Galloons regenerate 3 hit points a round in  Arborea, and if reduce to zero , they dissolve back into the substance of the plane, to reform next "sunrise". Outside Arborea they cannot heal at all, and lose 1 hitpoints a hour. If they die outside Arborea they are dead forever. Thus it's extremely rare to encounter them outside Arborea.
Also possess a low level empathy, allowing them to sense the intentions of any intelligent being who's presence they are aware of.
The Galloons that represent great big lovable brutes are called Hurly-Burlys. The appearance is large giant hulking things, that are somehow adorable in a fierce way. Each individual appears different, some a giant purple rabbits, some are blue muscle men with grumpy catfish faces , and some are boar-ladys.
(
okay so most people are thinking of Where the Wild Things are, and that is an inspiration for this, but not solely , Ned and The Joybaloo (anyone know the correct spelling of this book? I really wanted to use images from it but I couldn't remember the proper spelling of the title or the illustrators name.) , My neighbor Totoro, and the like also were. Anyone my point is, the illustrations from the original book "Where the Wild things" creep me out. I can't deal with them at all. That's why I'm not using them. It's like The yellow Submarine and some other art styles, it makes me feel sickened in this weird way and I don't know why.
)

Bored!

...sO letS plAY CCCCAAAALLLVINNN BALLLLL!

They can change their size heaps, and can do great feats of strength, and are frequently building forts, or damns, and general doing what a giant 5 year would do. Maybe not the animal cruelty though. Although if you are looking for a epic brawl, Hurly Burlys will happily oblige.

YEAH THAT SOUNDS GRRRRREAT

GUYS I WANNA PLAY GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS

Sussurruss (yeah fiend folio I don't care, using the name, you can call those guys Whispering Apes, or Snitherhulks or Hush) are incarnations of flying , swimming and movement. They are found rocketing through the skys and seas of Arborea, and can be bribed with tasty fruits to give people rides from one side of Arborea to the other.

They can fly equally well in air or water and know many secrets places of healing and riches in Arborea.

Finksters are the incarnations of mischief, hijinks, out-foxing people and the little guy triumphant. Anasai, Puss In Boats, Coyote etc. They have numerous illusion and shapechanging magics, and might just ruin your day by stealing all your stuff. But all in good fun. Um. Man these guys sound annoying. Have them more swashbuckler Merry highwayman than "the invisible pixie hits with a sleep spell and then steals your backpack" if don't want them to be dicks.

I AM A FINGER PAINTING COYOTE

S'up

My whimsy nature is reflected by my choice to look like a bad tattoo 

Balls these posts take along time if I have to search for images. Anyway here's a thing.
a d12 table for random Arborea colour

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID

1:Hurly Burlys building a damn. One looks like a sumowrestler with a slughead the other looks like a steroid hamster.
2.People wearing paint having a wild party suspend from trees by obliging spiders and their webs.
3:A raging free for all brawl between elves , barbarians, goats, and wildebeasts. All weapons are melons grown in the shape of weapons.
4. People sledding down a giant frog back into crystal waters.
5. Flying trees with squirrels doing stunts
6. A mushroom forest where all the mushrooms have been hollowed out and made to look like brass instruments. People waiting for the wind to pick up to start the contest.
7.Little tiny pixies playing polo on rabbits with a glass eye. Someone is trying to get the glass eye back.
8.A hot air balloon made to look like a shark smoking a pipe has crashed into a tree.
9.A sussurruss is trying to make the biggest waves it again on a lakeside bank with sonic booms
10. A finkster is doing the old shell game with some raccoon rangers
11. Dogs playing cards
12.A magical snail that can do anything to food, offers to turn random rocks and branches to food. "This boulder tastes like marshmallow, but do save room for the oak branch, it is a finely smoked cheese flavour"


Okay this table is for determining what the environment is like, modifier it by up to -4 for hostile enraged parties, and up to +4 if they are looking for a rest.

Then roll a 1d8

-3 Huge chasm with mighty rivers pound through them. Octopus cling to the walls and throw boulders at each other. A maze of nets and rope bridges guarded by tightrope walking ogres and jumping spiders eager for violence is strung above it. It periodically rains weapons.
-2 Fields of flaming grass with great icy basalt bisons lumbering along, which are a serviceable islands. Antigravity icebergs ricochet around shattering each other and bursting into steam.
-1 A mysterious inviting cave, with great vaulted halls and eerie lighting, huge flying bat-bears will respond to any slight disturbance with rambunctiousnity
0 Green grass plains but the land heaves and rises like a stormy ocean.
1 Fields of flowers, with strange perfumes. Sniffing a flower too close duplicates a random potion effect.
2 A Steaming swamp, that smells earthy, and somehow pleasant. The mud is warm and relaxing, and squibbons yodel through the goblin trees.
3 A forest of huge towering luminous mushrooms
4 A snowy plain, that is cold, yet somehow you feel warm as your mood dictates. The snow slowly molds itself into hills and beasts and back again.
5 A vast shallow lake, only ankle depth. A sun rise and sets every ten minutes and bizarre skimming frogs and geese alternative peruse the lake for food.
6. Everything is cake
7.A salt plain with mammoths that are limbless and vegetine,with green shaggy fur. They are rolling everywhere, followed by flocks of butterflys, insects and humming birds.
8. A beach of mighty mighty sand dunes and flying umbrella plants
9.A lunar surface with silver brooks and owls. The waters heal wounds at 1 hitpoint per round and are chill but not too so.
10. A festhall of epic portions, every hearty food, and merry song is here. Eating your fill here, gives you the effect of a bless spell for the next day.
11.A deep purple sky with flying whales above a pink frothy ocean with swimming cats. Soft thick mud islands are willy-nilly , on which can be found glazened chalk temples to various chaotic good deities. Most are uninhabited but a a few have a relaxed petitioner who will trade the casting of cleric spells for stories of peoples travels.
12. A forest of fruit trees, each one more bizarre than the last. Each fruit tree has a 1 in 4 chance of  its fruits duplicating a potions effects. (roll random potion but roll twice and choose the more benign result). Each tree has 1d20 fruits ripe enough to eat, and the fruits retain their powers outside Arborea but only if you do not pick all the fruit off the tree.


A 1d12 table of my players just rocked up here , need something to do, oh and they are like level 1.

1. The player stumble into a in progress game of Calvinball. Pertiioner and/or Galloons/ and/or random whatever are playing Calvinball. The players are playing too, like it or not. The prize for "winning" the game is something like a silver statue of a rabbit or +1 2 handed sword or a branch that grows flaming berrys or something.
2.Something adorable like a baby goat requests the p.cs aid to help a Hurly-Burly trapped on the other side of a portal. They have stuck their head in a magic amphora and can't remove it and it's too big to go through the portal. Aid and gratitude will be the reward for helping the removal of the amphora.
3.A angry gang of badgers confronts the p.cs. If they don't help them solve a riddle , they will beat them unconscious, take all their stuff and stick in a narrow warren.
 4.A flood! A dam has burst (or the landscape just felt like it) and water rushes through the land. The p.cs will have to find high ground or floatation devices, or wind up battered , half drowned, and separated.
5.A hurly-burly demands a battle! It will play fair and agree to submit if it takes a certain amount of damage appropriate  to the level of the p.cs. It will offer healing streams to any causality after the fight. It will offer a fine prize for victory.
6.A sussurrus grabs one of the p.cs and strands them in high high tree or absurdly narrow tower or bean sprout, and flies off. It has mistaken the p.c for someone else it need of a pranking.
7.A weakened ogre covered in bees , maddened with pain , is charging the p.cs way and will fight them if it sees them through its apisian doom.
8. A finkster challenges a p.c to wager and partake in an absurd contest, such as greased pig wrestling. It will have a sneaky  edge though , like a concealed invisible rope in the pig contest, or mimic disguised as a napkin in a pie eating competition.
9.A dangerous animal starts stalking the p.cs like a double-tiger, or Siege-Goose. It will make itself known in rustles and monumental glimpses, but will not attack unless they panic or betray a lack of confidence.
10.They enter Arborea (or the path is blocked) and find themselves surrounded by vast herd of hatted rhino. It is laborious to squeeze past the tightly packed rhino, and the rhino are not easily provoked, ignore curses, prods, shoves and being climbed on but if attacked in earnest they will promptly stampede. Which would be bad.
11. Treasure lies at the bottom of a strange pool. It is as normal water , but the surface tension is far greater, you would need a great weight to allow yourself to make it to the bottom of the pool. And then surface tension strangly acts against you again, making it difficult to get off the bottom. Mermaids in a neighboring stream, mock and try a lure the p.cs  into playing with them instead (tag or calvinball). They don't understand death is not a recoverable condition for the p.cs.  If ignored rudely they will cast charm spells to get their way. If attacked they will flee.
12.A limbless petitioner, still in quite good spirits asks the p.cs if they would not mind recovering their limbs, which are in the possession of large carnivorous squirrels currently.


One last table of stuff to lure mid to high level p.cs to the plain
 1.The location and capture of Impossible animals; either for "balancing" a ecosystem, a private zoo, or general mayhem
2. As above but the magical property of hides, eyes, horns etc.
3. To pass a vast wilderness they need the advice of a long dead ranger, who now inhabitants Arborea. He will demand tests to prove their mightyness. Such as fighting polar bears naked in the snow.
4.Usually blah blah lift the curse with this magic flower, but found here, guarded by X etc
5.A to B, Arborea has quite a few out going portals and if you can get on the good side of a Sururrus you could get dropped off right beside a portal to almost anywhere.
6.Blueprints for fantastic society's
7.Market places where anything could be traded for anything.
8.Lost relics of forgotten gods
9.Bizarre materials for making impossible buildings, floating rocks, warm ice, mood sensitive mud etc. And finding materials that can be removed from Arborea and still retain their properties.
10.Calvinball grand tournament and it's prizes
11.Fantastic vehicles and inventions of madmen, who live here , as it is the only place were it is possible to build what is in their dreams.
12.Finding teachers and trainers who can teach you impossible physical feats, such as stealing and shadow, or punching someone into next week.

Okay that's is done. Yes going to eventually do d12 tables for the planes I already covered for colour, low level, mid/high level. (low level is more "fall into the middle of something encounters", while the mid/high are more sand box bait. So keep that in mind.

picture unrelated. Except possibly as explanation for why these posts take far far longer if I have to spend too much time image searching


UPDATE:
This book ---> right here, is what I'm talking about. Kid gets to sweet ass dream land with his magic buddy every friday. Hates everything but friday. Starts trying to use every day. UNTIL IT DON"T WORK ANYMORE, so he has to start getting high through everyday activity so his tolerance levels will drop enough for him to get proper fucked up again.
Its what lifes all about really. Relationships are all about managing the endorphin fix and spacing it out enough so you don't get tolerant of it. Oh and some how trying to think rationally enough to work out if the person you are getting buzzed off is actually fun to be around when you are not high on your bodys internal sex drug supply.

Scrawling over the classics part 6 Planescape, astral etheral

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ASTRAL AND ETHEREAL

Blah blah blah shiny void,
One of them has dead frozen gods lying around. This is good, these are in astral now, and some of them are broken up, so there's like a big floating head or arm or whatever.
Athar setting up camps their drilling into god brains, learning how to kill them etc. Some god bodies are hollow, and githyanki use as citadel's or it's a dungeon or a prison. What ever. Note, gods are normally like whatever size their worshipers are, except when they die their carcass gets giant and turns into black glass and shows up here.  Because. Is very resistant to harm, but Githyanki have like horrible Ian milleresque siege engines that have silversword style magics concentrated on a tiny drill bit or saw blade, and they can painstakingly cut up or hollow out god carcasses. Athar have managed to trade a few of this of githyanki.
Cults of various gods who are now ex-gods camp out on their gods body and still have spells but are losers and their stupid imaginary friend is never coming back.

There's a mysterious bunch of people with holes drilled in their skulls, either 3rd eye still or heaps of little ones like a colander. Their brains glow really bright blue, so there's always light shining out of these holes.
They are called the Cult of All Dead Gods, and draw upon divine magic from all the god parts littering around the place. The believe when the astral plane is entirely full of god bodies, the bodies will rot and form a holy compost and a super tree will grow out of the holy compost and they can climb up the super tree and the true nature of reality can began with them as cosmic tree frogs or something.
They are not sure what the best fungus will be for rotting the gods, and are often busy tended elaborate lichen , fungus and mushroom gardens on top of the dead gods. They are on good terms with the Doomguard and Athar, and worshipers of Jubilex  , often trading various what-have-yous to obtain new molds and slimes to experiment with in god rotting. They are true neutral in alignment and only really give a poop about their spiritual superjob, and so can be quite happily be growing fungus on screaming alive people.
They have various horrible astral oozes contained in glass spheres and weird divine magic eating fungus growing on them sometimes.

Other attractings on the astral plane include Feral spells. Magic is somehow tied to the astral plane , and spells can get stranded and grow wild and sentient. A feral spell looks like an elemental made of things that only exist to people on bad drugs.
Like..

What? A random table? but.. this is quick post because I don't wanna speend half the night..
fuck it
Starting elemental:
1fire
2 water
3air
4earth
5 mineral
6 lightning
7steam
8 radiance
9 ooze
10 magma
11 ice
12  smoke
13 salt
14 dust
15 vacuum
16 ash

 but then its all:
1 made up of horrible small people and or animals melted into each other
2 a big floating head that keeps vomit up another face which eats the first face etc
3 like geometric animal
4 acts and has all the visualness of base element but it's made of flesh, so if you rolled fire as the base, it would be flesh that somehow rippled and licked like fire. The flesh is 1 normal meaty colour 2 strobing  black and white 3 a unnatural bright hue 4  rainbows!
5 is tied into a mobias strip
6 flat and 2 dimensional
7 is unmoving, like a snapshot, but somehow physical attacks from it still resolve
8 like a combination of 2 different monster but still made of element

and it:
1. attacks from it use another randomly determined elemental or reverse , so ice elemental that burns, earth elemental forming tornados
2. give one randomly chosen spell which it uses every other round as a free action , usefully or not
3. converts your flesh into more of it's base element, healing from its attacks need SPECIAL MAGICS
4. randomly chosen spell comes into effect everytime it hits something
5. No magic can be used within 4 metres of it
6. Blinks as blink dog /displaced like displacer beast
7: Random chosen person within 100 metres is the only one that can see it. Invisible to everyone else (including truesight spells). Determine new person that can see it every 1d100 rounds
8 can only be hurt by non magic weapons/ weapons of a certain colour/ unarmed attacks
9 roll twice
10 roll thrice

And it's mind?
1. it is blind force, like a storm cloud or a flaming tree stump
2. Like a dumb kitten, is searching for a master
3. Has something of the mind of the original caster. Has one day memory though, so has keeps forgetting that is like an abomination of magic now
4. Has an imprint of the original caster, and also everyone that caster had sex with. The horror salad of personality wage constant mind war on each other
5. Like a bear on meth!
6. Coherent but alien

Oh poopdog , is it going to kill us?
1 no, not unless you speak near it
2. no, it is a gentle being , content with drifting and being made of stuff.
3. Yes. For REASONS INVOLVING SOMEONE ELSE
4. Yes, it has mistaken you for someone else
5. Yes, it is cruel and likes to ruin people
6 no, unless alarmed.
7 maybe but only if you come to close and ignore its warning dance
8 Mirrors the intent of the approacher


That's a bare skeleton of table. You get the idea.


Other denizens of the astral include the Norns , weird geometric things of glowing force bands.
They zoom about incredibly fast. The astral seas are totally their home. The current fashion of entertainment in their glowing alien culture is causing feral spells (by interfering with artifacts, sabotaging magical experiments, etc), capturing them (they have extensive force powers like Sue storm richards, so magic missiles , floating blades, lesser force walls .) and making them fight. Like pokemon. This guys are mystery glowing alien that create magical mayhem so their stable of feral spells has something else to fight.

SPINDAL NORN

They can't exist anywhere but on the astral plane, and have to use "colour pools" to get their feral spells into a prime material realm for their own amusement. If forced somehow to leave the astral plane, they are instantly destroyed. Here are the norns in descending order of power, starting at equivelent to 3rd level magic user, and progress to a 15th. They cast spells like a sorcerer , and just spells that you could conceivably reskin to being glowing light magic.

ARBORAL NORN

SERPENTAL NORN

SPINAL NORN

BOXAL NORN

PENTAL NORN

SPHERAL NORN

 ARCH NORN

MANDALUAL NORN

And.... what does the astral plane actually look like? The "top" astral looks like a thin sea of hazy polychromatic clouds and weird gross shell horns.
 Like the back ground here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqrsw-KottA
with occasionally this:

The "top" astral leads to the outlands, where it overlaps with, the only outer plane accessible by astral travel. Overlaping means that the plane in question appears as ghostly out line on the astral and certain powers can be used on the people on the plane. Access out of the astral plane is either by leaving your body behind and using an astral body (which remains connected to your body by a silver cord) or accessing a special portal known as an colour pool.

The deep astral is the bit inbetween. It's more like this this this this. That's where you most likely to encounter the githyanki and Norns.
The Sideways astral is where all those bits of god corpse are. Then as going "lower" you reach the fringes where the astral overlaps with the prime plane and the ethereal plane. The ethereal is "down" where the astral is "up", the colour of the astral fades and it's black black ocean with the occasional gleaming dancing scratch thing

 The ethereal plane is black but not always dark. How far you can see is entirely variable, with out anything to reference for scale or distance, it is impossible to know if you a in particular patch of the ethereal where visibility extends for 1000 of miles, or where visibility is only a couple of metres. Meaning that suddenly seeming out of nowhere can appear horrible toothed predators like these happy guys below.

While the astral is connected with consciousness and belief  the ethereal plane is where matter dreams of being matter. Diving deep enough leads you to elemental planes, where the ethereal plane over laps the "top" fringes of the plane.dancing nothing things
Gleaming lines rapidly snaking and arcing, like lightning bolts or retina damage are the denizens (or possibly weather ). It is near impossible to judge how far or how big one is, and they seem to be just out of reach always. It's even complete unclear if they are alive or not. They do seem to be able to lead one into dreams,
 not in the way of unconsciousness but literally encounter something from your slumbers gloaming from the darkness. Further down and farther away are weird folded spaces where it is said you can find anything you have ever dreamed.
Why this is the ethereal and not the astral is unclear to sages. Neither is it clear if one projects oneself to the ethereal when one sleeps, or if the stuff itself of the ethereal molds itself to your hidden nocturnal realms.

Scrawling over the Classics Planescape part 4 Pandemonium

Print PDF I don't have access to a scanner and I so wanted to draw up some of this shit up and scan it.

technology is lawful evil!  Baator needs forms! Okay I found out about Henrich Kley and it's going to be like that for this post okay?   

Also cannot get camera to talk to computers , I brought a new cable for it and everything. It is frustrating no small amount I can tell you. Also? My give a shit take is on nearly empty right now and my head has the chemical buzzing like small refrigerators. I will do my Princessly best to make this worth the use of your eyeballs skins but if I just wind up type fuck shit balls arson over and over do not be too surprised.

Pandemonia

Its tunnels and winds!

I like Pandemonium . I reckon there's fun to be had here! If nothing else , you get to play some really harsh ambient drone music for a sound track. There's this c.d , called Our Glassy Azoth (not sure if that's the album or the band name) that I got for a dollar from a bargain bin that has the most amazing horrible alien soundscape noise. No listen for you, because I can't find it.

Look okay short notice , heres a live recording of Coil doing elves.  Haha that's actually the kind of joke that they would make.  Play loud for instant Pandemonia player immersion. Skip to 3 30 minutes in if you must. Best Orchestral Industrial Gay Sex Magic band ever.

 "No there's no blood in my alcohol tonite, I have some horse tranquilizer  for later, though.....I have a tranquilized horse for later... its back stage... I tranquilized a horseeeee...for later..."

It's a safe bet anyone who got that reference has owned a black trenchcoat at some point in their lives.

So tunnels and wind? NOOOo I just wanna talk about Coil... okay fine. SO for adventures here just draw maps that look like intestines fucking

weeeee!

more that here: http://dtjsoft.com/disp/mazes

Wait. ANyone need back round info on this plane?

Its wind and tunnels! Okay it's maddening dark black tunnels with wind that's either howling or skin shredding. THe sound drives everyone batfuck, and there's oh look I'm just going to paste from http://marq.wikispaces.com/  because it's more interesting than the other wiki on it and 

bold is meeee

Pandemonium is a great mass of matter pierced by uncountable tunnels carved by the howling winds of the plane. It is windy, noisy, and dark since there are no natural sources of light. The wind will quickly extinguish any normal fires, and lights that last longer draw attention of wights who have been driven insane by the constant howling wind.   No we can do better than wights. More about that soon.

Every word, scream, or shout uttered is caught by the winds and flung to every corner of all of the layers of the plane. (this is good, there is Howlers which are like spikey wolves , but guess who drew them so they rule, anyway so, I, reckon HOWLER KINGS are a thing, they are big all their spikes have grown into a crazy tall crown and they are long, dirty and elegant, and they know which caverns the whispers stick to, and so they know all kinds of stuff and they will share their eavesdroppings but they give you a little quest to do afterwards, but they get all Hannibal Lecter on you and make it something that fucks with your head in some weird way. Um.. a crude way to mechanical represent this is give the character who asked the question a saving throw penalty (say.. will?) until the player works out what this quest is testing or saying about them or trying to teach them.. This hopefully makes the player all like ahh MY HEAD. 
I'm going give an example am I not? 

I swear there was another picture of a howler that he did?

Okay You play Joe BowJob the ranger and the HowlerKing tells you want you want to know (d6 1-3 it knows, 4 -5 it vaguely knows and is a dick about it6 it does not know)  and then says okay nowwwsss youss must escort thisss limbless lamb through the whissssperingg woodsss throough the porrrtalll. ANd Joe BowJob does and all kinds of stuff trys to eat the lamb, and all his rations have worms and nothing is good to eat. and so he either has to eat crap and gets sick or he has to kill the lamb and eat it.


 THe lesson is "nature is a cold heartless fucker, stop thinking your better than everyone cause you live outdoors"
 If the character does not do the quest the HowlerKing curses you so whenever you try and sleep you overhear anything nasty said about you anywhere.
 Conversation can be accomplished by shouting and even then the words are spirited away by the wind before traveling farther then 10 feet.Would it be fun to make everyone stand in a different room and yell at each other what they are doing, while , you the d.m walk in and out of the rooms so you know what the hells going? Coz It would work well for fostering paranoia of doppelgangers, betrayal and party theft. Plus some of the monster ideas I have below.


The stale wind of Pandemonium is cold, and it steals heat from any unprotected travelers. The endless gale buffets each inhabitant, blowing sand and dirt into eyes and carrying away loose items. In some places, the wind howls so fiercely that it lifts creatures off their feet and carries them for miles before dashing their forms against some dark cliff face or another. People have been known to be battered to pieces, their bones eventually ground to dust and added to the excess of sand being blown about. I like this. Natural traps that are just small holes in the tunnel , that sand blast the skin off anything in the way of the hole. Also puzzles with say a cave with huge gorge , and whatever you want on the other side. On the players side is a series of tunnel exits blowing wind, if they block all but one up the wind flow is strong enough to shoot someone to the other side. 
MAybe have some creatures using this earlier, with a swiss cheese wall that they jam all kinds of broken weapons and glass and bones into one hole, and then pull a switch and all these hatches slam over the other holes, and the wind blasts out of the remaining hole sending all the shrapnel rocketing forward. The first layer Pandesmos has bigger tunnels and spaces suiting this kind of shenanigans.

Also the worlds most horrible hydroslide is an option here, with the players on some kind of shitty ass row boat with wheels and a sail, shooming down some absurd fast wind speed tunnels.
 And have to make lightning fast decisons, "okay youse going left or right?" "up or down?" Under the spikes or over the spikes?" There is so many video games with this kind of nonsense. Maybe this is my low level adventure idea. THe party needs to get somewhere in pandemonia and worrys about running around and being destroyed by random encounters.
 So this addlecoved cutter is like "wahey lets I'll take you on my tunnel boat, I do trips across the first layer of pandemonia once a day for some hearty jink" and the party is like sweet (or says ah fuck it, lets go rob someones house in the upper ward) 
BUT then the mad tunnel boatmen gets injuryed or killed, and the party have to follow his stupid bleeding directions or maybe if he's dead , he has the way through the tunnels written in some crazyman rhyming bullshit.

Maybe have it like this mechanic which I can't remember what the fuck it's called (friction? heat? tension?) where everytime the players choose wrong, you make a note that they have one more going-wrong-point and at the end you look at their point total and see where they end up , and the higher the point total the worser the place they arrive at.
 Or possible have a couple of number totals that are actually really good even involve racking up a point total of 14. OR just make a roll on a table and add the point total to it, and higher is worse results. Table entrys would be like oh knows fungus in the way, or Spikes at your head, or crazy cavern jump, or rough ground damages wheel, really small tunnel have to duck for cover. 


MAybe this could be a time sensitive quest so you anything slowing them down or trashing the boat (and required absurd jury rigged repairs) can be enough of a bad result to make the party cuss and shake their fists at the uncaring skys.

picture unrelated

In a few relatively sheltered places, the wind dies down to just a breeze carrying the haunting echoes from distant parts of the plane, though these sounds are so distorted that they sound like cries of torment- which they very well may be!  

Residents

There are very few residents of this plane. SEE BELOW I MADE NEW MONSTERS Beyond a few nests of fiends, the only other residents are the Banished. These wretched creatures are the descendants of mortalhumans, goblinoids, giants, dwarves, drow, and other races that could never find their way out. None recall who banished them, but they form rag-tag groups that make up the sad bastions of civilization to be found on this plane.

or short  people that replaces their heads with tools?

blah blah here is crazy man village you try and buy something but oh noes roll d12

1- absurdly cheap! Like force you at sword point to take all their stock of what ever you want to buy

2-everything is so fine. and not weird at all and totally stress this fact about how normal and happy and everything everyone is and how the equipment looks decent and the prices are fair

3-10% of money is refused on the grounds that its fake, or has rude imagery or has some royal everyone hates or looks like that guy anyway

4-Coins not used. Just rocks. Just the right kind of rocks. 1 in 4 chance of anyrock presented to the shop owner being acceptable. If players start asking about what makes an acceptable make up some shit and but still have the shop keeper turn them down 75% of the time. "oh no, you see how this sedimentary and has a slant eplisoid  tilt to it? That is normally acceptable but only if its a clockwise tilt. This , I'm afraid is counter clockwise " Encourage players to make wisdom checks to look out for just the right kind of rock. It wouldn't do them any good.

5-roll again but this time have a flat 50% chance that half way through the transaction up number of townsfolk walk into the shop, and then they and the shopkeepers matter of factly draw weapons and attack, with a completely casual indifference

6-Choose one player that everyone in town discriminates against in complete arcane way "hey look at that frigging Lobeswinger, Pike off Lobeswinger, we don't want none of your shellfish around here!"

7-Shop keeper talks backwards

8- Everything is labelled and sold as something else torches as spoons etc. Shop is in the style of general store with everything behind the counter so you have to ask for what you want

9-Everything pretends to be deaf and illiterate . Actually are not. Use charades for communication

10-Shop unattended. Everything, and I mean everything, is nailed down.

11- Shopkeeper directs all questions to a hand puppet. Hand puppet overcharges. Shopkeeper starts argument with hand puppet and stabs it. Then is helpful and gives discounts before passing out from blood loss. Immediately another shopkeeper with a hand puppet enters from back room and repeats process

12- Win a paper scissor stone contest for a discount on food and perishables. Win a paper scissor stone wind beetle xorn contest for a discount on armour and weapons. Win a paper scissor stone rock beetle xorn paladin orb of destruction crossbow fireball shoes contest for a discount on anything else.

picture unrelated

Most petitioners are immediately swallowed by the winds and merge with it. A few actually take physical form, however. They appear much as they did in life, but they are bonier, and the howling winds seem to affect them as much as they do visitors of the plane. Also, most of them are utterly insane. And some have tool heads

gravity: if you live here, you get to decide which tunnel surface is down for you. If you don't , you don't. Down stays whatever direction for you that it was when you entered Pandemonia. Until you fail 4 will saves or wisdom checks. Then you can make a wisdom check to change which tunnel surface is down for you. Note:you have to fail this wisdom check though

Howlers, and other natives will use this to their full advantage, running along the "ceiling" to drop down with impaling attacks and then to fall back up to the ceiling again.

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Layers

Pandemonium consists of four layers.

Pandesmos

This is the first layer of Pandemonium and the largest. Relative to the other layers, at least, it is the most hospitable. The headwaters of the River Styx are found here flowing sometimes through the middle of caverns and tunnels since gravity has little pull here.
waters mean fish!

fish!

fish!

Part of this cavern is given over to winter's snow and ice. Here frost giants and winter wolves prowl, seeking what prey they can find.   SUre but dull. Although if those frost giants have never had a chance to stand up in their lives and drag them selves around surprisingly fast, their bulk filling the tunnel , their eyes wild and complete devoid of sane thought, and it lunges a calloused hand grasping the unlucky torch bearer  and biting his head clean off. And now it's dark, and loud with the sounds of chewing and muttering and the scrape of a great bulk still coming toward you. 

Cocytus

Cocytus, the second layer, is known as the Layer of Lamentation. It is here that the howling winds are strongest. The caverns and tunnels of this layer are smaller than those of the previous layer. Strangely, the passages here show signs of being hand chiseled but who might have done this and when it occurred is a mystery to all but a few learned sages.
those wacky sages. Where do they learn this? Also this layer needs huge open caverns with rock formations like organ pipes that play music. Horrible music. Possibly if you had some crazy musical  artifact that you needed to play a tune on , here's where you would try and find it. Maybe there's a place here where all the music that's ever been played is being howled all at the same time by the wind whipping through frightening rock formations. The cacophony its called.

Phlegethon

The caverns and tunnels of this layer are even smaller than the previous layer and many passages require crawling to get through. Of course, this tends to focus the force of the wind, so getting through these tunnels is a miserable experience.

Dripping water joins the wind's cacophony here. AND LITTLE POOLS WITH FISH Gravity is fairly normal on this layer so it pulls the water downward.

fish!

 Minerals are leeched from the cavern roofs and walls creating stalagmite and stalactite formations of rare beauty. Of course, the wind seeks to continually distort and destroy these shards of serenity.
lets play mistake rock formations for enemys! And have people that throw poison knives standing really still near these strangely human looking rock formations! Or tucked away in little grottos or alcoves near invisible in the bizarre twisting shadows. They are deadly silent except for the occasional giggle

Agathion

Agathion is the fourth and final layer of Pandemonium. It has only isolated caverns without any connecting tunnels. These chambers, howeve r, contain portals that lead to otherplanes.

Many of these caverns have stale air within them if any at all. Surrounded by solid stone, these bubbles of space hide many secrets. It is rumored that many a deity has either stashed treasures of great value or imprisoned beasts to mighty to be slain in these small, rounded rooms of stone.

Somewhere in the lower planes someone makes sculptures by trapping animals in these spaces and using magic to sustain and spur their growth horribly them until they grow to the very contours of the spherical rock, eventually dying from the bone pushing against organs. This vast skeletal ball is then teleported out and makes a fine conversation piece for your hellish entry way.

If you find a portal leading to one of these and are willing to fight a pig that's nearly taking up the entire 20 foot diameter chamber and can kill it and dig through its guts, you can find the ring of substance and abnormal growth implanted inside it! 

Monsters


Ah lets go back to regular font 

WHEN I THINK ABOUT YOU I TOUCH MYSELF

so GasperMen gliding along the floors and ceilings real sneaky like possessed door mats or manta rays, and then rear up gibbering (will save or paralysis) if it works they snatch on to you and fly off and dump you somewhere and then go back to to split the party up more, before finishing people off.




Okay I was drawing up these ones that were going to be like the fiends of pandemonia but no scanner so pfft.
Anyway these guys. 3 kinds. The  Kleshas,  "the 3 poisons" Desiderium , Dominus, and  Abhorreo .
All Klesha are surprisingly stealthy and have exact visual knowledge of their surroundings in 300 feet radius, even through barriers such as stone or darkness. Also true seeing.

 


Desiderium appear as naked humanoid with 2 great hands emerging from their back. The hands are arranged as wings the palms open and front facing and each one is bigger than the humanoid in between them, the feet of which do not touch the ground . The hands constantly feel out the surroundings. In a narrow environment the fingers support the central figure by pressing against the sides of the tunnel but in the rare event of encounter one in a open space the hands rotate , still palm forward, but with the fingers touching the ground. The central figure appears to be a drugged haze , with eyes closed and a smile of ecstasy on its face. Wounding the central figure does nothing to change the expression even though wounds to it are fatal as any other creature.


Like all Klesha it seeks to turn others into more of it. It either does this choosing a particular avaricious individual and tailing them slightly or  by isolating an individual by killing or otherwise removing its companions. That individual is "marked" .It then silently follows just out of sight of the individual, (sometimes in a parallel tunnel) and keeps the target safe from other monsters. Natives of pandemonia can tell when someone has been "marked" by a Klesha although some are crazy or dumb enough not to care. The desiderium can the make minor illusions to hint at shelter , the re-appearance of companions or treasure if the individual is so motivated. The more effort spent to chase these the more the taint grows (represent by wisdom loss everytime the player states "I want..." or  "I need.." (either in or out of character) deduct a point of wisdom. MAybe give them a save if you want, but either way tell them they just lost a point of wisdom. Don't tell them why of course) . If the reach zero wisdom they slip into a coma. If the Desiderium can get hold of them it will spend a hour gently cooing and massaging their flesh into a malleable putty and shape them into a egg like shape. The "egg" will then hatch , and the new Desiderium will emerge (the old form appearing as the humanoid in the middle). 


Desiderium are loners however and will not remain around an "egg" that it has formed.


 If the marked individual resists desire repeatedly and shows no sign of wavering , the Desiderium will kill them if they feel the have a reasonable chance to do so.


In Combat they attack with grabbing and crushing with one hand at a time (the desiderium can only move slowly if one hand is so engaged) or flinging a grabbed individual into its companions. It can also make the tips of its fingers sticky and seize weapons or shields in this way. SOme times it will use this on a marked individual, to take a beloved object and then run away.

art by Cédric Plante done especially for this!

Dominus appear as gaunt human figure with a row of stitches running from the groin to the top of the torso. It has no sex organs and instead of a head and neck it has a tall paper crown. Blood stains are seen in the paper crown occasionally that are suggestive of a face bleeding on the other side of the crown.
Dominus are a lot more aggressive than Desiderium and will sometimes attack and kill things without regard for anything other than killing. In combat they may inflict a variety of hold person , command, and domination effects with grandiose hand gestures. They have little strategy about this other than sewing confusion. THey attack with frightful strength despite their withered frame, often grasping one opponent  by a limb and using them as a club against others. Sometimes they will already be in command of weaker inhabitants of Pandemonia and will send them forth to die, sometimes supporting them with physical attacks and powers sometime merely observing.
Dominus create more of them selves by repeatedly  dominating a stupid or weak creature and then having that serving a marked individual. The more the individual relishes or abuse there new found minion the more wisdom them they lose (effects as Desiderium) . Again once the individual has fallen into a coma, it either commands the marks minion to carry them off, or it attacks immediately. Left alone with the mark, it will take off its crown (revealing another crown underneath of the exact dimensions of the first) and place it over their head and neck. The mark head and neck are then dissolved into bloody goo by the crown over the next hour. The new Dominus will awake and proceed to strip off it's clothes , pull off any external genitals and scoop out its guts and organs, and sew itself shut, using hair , pieces of cloth or intestinal strips.


Abhorreo appear as a black blurred resembledge of beetles standing on 2 legs, with an empty skin crudely draped over it's multiple mouth parts and antennas.
It has similar approaches to reproduction as desiderium but instead uses hate, paranoia and distrust. With illusions relating to the same (same mechanics but use words like I don't trust, or suspicions  of other people in the group). 
If has gotten a mark into a coma , it will peel their skin off and stuff it full of discards shell plates from its hide. It will then leave in to rot inside the skinless corpse, and after a week a new Abherreo will emerge.


In combat they have a varying amount of bladed fangs, claws, and hooks (roll a d4 each round , thats how many attacks it gets ) and can cast off their skin and fling in to wrap around a target holding them fast like a rubber straight jacket. IF the skin is damaged beyond repair, the Abhorreo will peel a new one off the first available body. While it lacks a skin it cannot mark or use its illusion powers.


This took way too long, I am so going to sleep now. No proof reading for you, I've been at this for maybe 5 hours or something. What the butt I tells you What the butt.