The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: JokerYou really should read some more of Terry Pratchett's Discworld - I suggest the Death series, which is Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time in that order.

I will. I have new impetus now that one of the PC's in the first port campaign is named Captain Artichoke ("Captain" being his Christian name and not his rank). I've been told that any resemblance between this guy and a certain Captain Carrot are strictly intentional.

Quote from: JokerI keep laughing at things here and there in this setting, probably because of the seemingly laid-back sarcasm inherent in the writing, and it reminds me a lot of Pratchett in a good way, especially the lists of notable people.

The tone is meant to keep other people reading it (and us writing it). It's supposed to be fun (and I'm glad you agree).

Quote from: JokerAlso, Onomatopoeia - do you or anyone else in your group read Green Arrow?

Not me. The only DC I've read lately was All-Star Superman (I heart Grant Morrison).

Quote from: IshmaylA very interesting adaptation

I like stealing things, blending them together, casting them in different contexts, then topping it off with a bit of wordplay.

Creative process-wise, Ishmael began as with the phrase/title 'the man who fell from grace with sea' bouncing around me head, probably because it fits the mood of the port setting. This quickly became 'the man who waged war with the sea', complete with the image of a flying ship emptying its cannons into roiling waves. Which led to Moby Dick being converted into the Kraken, Ahab being converted into Ishmael, and given the family name from the character in Brideshead Revisited, because 1) I had just read a review of the new film, and 2) "Flyte" made a wonderfully obvious pun.

The Magistrates of the Port:


Lord Thomas Winterborn is an Eladrin nobleman who follows the Fae legal system, which is either insanely complicated or entirely random. Those who come before him are questioned closely on such arcane as their birthday, their favorite color, whether or not they were wearing a hat at the time of the incident in question, and if so precisely how wide its brim was....

His Bailiffs are also Eladrin, and rumored to be his brothers.  They wear full helmets, entirely devoid of features, which give them a very ominous appearance.  No few of them are warlocks.

Stefan Petard is a former Naval Artilleryman 1st Class, a rank which is entirely literal in the Port's Navy.  A wizard of some power, he was made a magistrate after he did a favor of some sort for the Governor.  The details of this have never been revealed, and likely never will be. Petard has turned out to be a surprisingly reasonable Magistrate '" he bases most of his rulings on a simplified form of Old Imperium Goetia law -- saving perhaps his habit of personally executing --in a very explosive manner-- anyone that he condemns to death. His bailiffs are, like himself, veterans of naval service.  Their only uniform is a red and black strip of cloth worn on their right arm, intricately knotted.

Henry Scatter was born into a wealthy family, which promptly disowned him after an ill-fated fishing trip on the Aster left him twisted into the shape of a goblin.  How exactly he became a Magistrate is a hotly debated mystery, but it's generally assumed that blackmail of some sort was involved.

Scatter makes no pretense at objectivity; any case that involves a goblin will be declared in his favor, no matter what the actual circumstances.  His bailiffs are mostly Bugbears, with a handful of ogres, and it's not unknown for them to beat people nearly to death for failing to give them the proper respect. It's unlikely that Scatter will survive much longer, as he's already been the subject of several assassination attempts.

Lord Bartholomew Choke sometimes prefers to be called Dr. Choke, or Lord Doctor Choke, as he is the port's self-appointed Minister of Health. He rarely makes his preferences known, however, and his temper is on the short side of mercurial. The good doctor is a man, barely; just shy of 8ft tall and more than 500 lbs. Rumor has it he afflicted himself with gigantism during an experiment trial of curative elixirs. It is said he must regularly endure a ghastly kind of 'pruning' to keep himself even remotely man-sized. It's also said that as his body grows larger, his conscience and his ability to feel for the smaller creatures grows proportionally less.

Lord Choke is an indifferent public servant, except during outbreaks of plague.

Lord Myles Lively and Lady Lively are a rarity; a pair of married Magistrates. Lord Lively is a famous bon vivant and Lady Lively is known for her charitable activities. He is often described as having a '˜delicate cast to his face' and she as '˜having large hands'. They are never seen together at the same time and it's entirely likely that they are the same person.

Lord Lively is also reputed to be the head of the port's number one pleasure syndicate, the so-called Guild of Revelry.

Lord Dandy is rather unusual for an Elf; he is far from flighty, he disdains wine and song, in fact, he seems altogether unnerved by, even frightened of, the pleasures of the flesh. While he does have impeccable style and the appearance of a fop, he is better known as the port's foremost authority on botany (his love of flora is perhaps the only truly Elven trait), and for his seven, beautiful, unmarried daughters.

Despite his daughters, Lord Dandy is long-rumored to be asexual. Of his wife little is known, or even said. Dandy claims to have met her on a botanical expedition into the Interior, though none on the trip recall his leaving the Interior with the bride-to-be. Just wagon and wagon of floral samples, some quite massive. According to Lord Dandy his wife is his '˜unique flower', and, as he puts it, '˜an all-consuming woman'. Supposedly she never leaves his manse, spending most of her time in its enormous glass hothouse. However, his daughters are often about town. By name they are; Dahlia, Iris, Violet, Lily, Primrose, Hyacinth, and Larkspur.

They are highly sought after, being pretty and always intoxicatingly scented, thought their eyes are disconcertingly empty. None have married, though they've gone through quite a number of suitors each. Apparently the experience is so heart-breaking the men leave the port immediately after and are never heard from again.

Also, there exists a certain rivalry between Lords Lively and Dandy.

Tom Hollow is a half-elf. He's gregarious and informal; he's prefers to go by his first name, even during official business. People say of Tom what they say of all his kind; that there's a hollow space in his chest where half of a man and half of an elf should go. That he's doomed to spend his whole life wanting.

Billy Twist is the same as he always was; a big black man who likes to be carried around on a surprisingly tasteful divan. Both former slave and slaver in the Snake States, he's now a man of the people.

The Lord Moribund is a title given to the Magistrate whose sole jurisdiction is the Hereafter, though '˜sole' in this case is misleading, seeing as, thanks to some spectacularly badly worded legislation, his jurisdiction actually extends beyond the mortal world to encompass the whole of the Other Side.

Sebastian Androgore is a Tiefling Magistrate. The story of his life is best described as 'pending'

Balthazar Lux is a Dragonborn Magistrate. One day he'll have a backstory worthy of his name.

-Gaming systems you use

D&D 4e
D&D 3.x
M&M2e

Keen to play WHFR2e and SWSG.

-General gaming history

My mom taught me backgammon and Vegas rules blackjack when I was a wee lad... have yet to make any money from either. Played a lot of chess and Risk growing up. Discovered RPG's via an article in Issac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine --oh first bloom of nerdery-- and played my 1st D&D campaign some years later, in late high school. Been playing RPG's on and off ever since.

-Personal likes and dislikes

In general: a good martini, cinema, fiction and rambling-yet-occasionally-pointed conversations in smoky bars (make that smoke-free bars now that I've quit and my city's instituted a smoking ban). Also, HD travel programming, actual travel --when I get to it--  cute puppies, and, though it should go without saying, my lovely wife.

In gaming: like I said once to a friend who asked my what I wanted out of his D&D campaign "Make a violent story book that I can cavort in".

-Strengths and weaknesses in game design

My strengths are basically a knack for language and the synthesis of seemingly incompatible influences.

My weaknesses are a generally unfriendly relationship with game mechanics and plotting.

-What published settings have you used/do you like?

I like Freedom CITY in M&M, Eberron --and in a nostalgic way Greyhawk-- in D&D. Other than that I really only play or run homebrews.

-Major influences on your world-building

Really whatever is striking my fancy at the time; recently that was Clive Barker, The Maxx, the setting of M. John Harrison's Nova Swing , and random imagery in my head that resembled Pirates of the Caribbean as directed by Tim Burton.    

Pirates, Criminals, Sailors, and Aeronauts:


The Crimson Orb is a beholder pirate. He wears a patch over his central eye because his gaze is like "a spiteful blast from one of Hell's own cannons". He is not only captain of his ship, The Ocular Bastard, but also its chief armament. The Orb only removes the patch in battle, where he's raised above the mast on a covered platform so he can fire upon all comers, or he's lashed to the prow as if he were his own baleful masthead, shooting deadly rays as a prelude to ramming.

He is also known as the "Mad Eye of the Aster".

Short Paul captains the Memento Mori, and his story, which his entire crew shares, is a sad one...

For a time in the port it was in vogue to use magic to reanimate the corpse of your recently deceased child, in lieu of preserving their image using more conventional means such as portraiture or photography. The children looked as they once did, if more pale, and had the personalities and memories that they did in life, but they were still very much Dead. And un-aging. They got to watch their loved one grow old and die, while they continued to endure. Forever. It made them bitter, and twisted, and they found that only those like themselves could really understand.

About 100 years ago, they quietly boarded a ship in the dead of night, slaughtered the crew, and set sail in what was now The Memento Mori. They've done well for themselves. They're small, but much stronger and more experienced than they appear....

Captain Roux is the master of the Shifting Rose, a trireme that plies the seas near the Port. His crew is composed entirely of skin-changers and shape-shifters, all of whom have been somehow recovered from the sea over the years. It's been a matter of luck each time, as the Rose happens to be in the right place to find the were-rat who was thrown overboard, or the doppleganger who was the sole survivor of a shipwreck.

Roux claims that a goddess lives in his cabin. It is She who guides him to his crewmen and She who keeps the ship afloat upon the Aster when the Rose ventures that far from the Port. There is, he says, a connection between the ever-changing ocean and those who can change their own shape, and since She is a goddess of the sea, well...she protects her own. The goddess is named Luna and her domain is the Sea of the Moon, which she keeps inside herself.

Captain Roux has the rest of the crew blindfolded when the Rose sails upon her waters, so as to keep Her secrets. To outside observers, it seems the Rose simply vanishes when she enters the Sea of the Moon, only to reappear somewhere else upon the Aster to prey on unsuspecting ship.

Roux's secret is that he is a learned man, and he suspects there is some connection between the sea inside his goddess and the Interior.

The Deacon of Crook Street is the crime boss who runs the Stagger. He's in love with the adventuress Ingénue Santos and wants her for his bride. People assume this is so he can use her airship for piracy, particularly to rob the Gog-Magog Line, though this may not be the case.

The Deacon gets his nickname from the Stolen God, who is rumored to be stashed in a basement somewhere in the Stagger, or lashed to a barge hidden off the coast. Some folks assume the Deacon has unresolved verb-tense issues, that he means the God of Stealing, for whom he's a deacon. This is, of course, untrue. The Deacon stole a god. From where and from whom is a matter of intense speculation among criminals and theologians.

It's entirely possible that the Deacon is looking to sell the god. Again, to whom is a matter of some speculation. Perhaps he's interested in Ingénue Santos because of her proposed expedition deep into the Interior.

Onomatopoeia is an assassin. He is said to be a demon, completely invisible, and made entirely out of sounds; it's said he has a taste for both blood and music. Despite being fantastically dangerous, he is frequently sought out, not only by potential clients, but by a strange mix of killers and musicians. The killers believe there is no finer tutor in the arts of stealth and murder. Likewise, the musicians believe him to be the greatest vocal coach alive -- if he is alive in the conventional sense. Singers want the secret of his songs, which can sound like anything, anything you can put a name to.

These killers and musicians come from all across the Middling Lands, and even Across-the-Sea.

Jack Famish is a common thief, a second-story man, albeit a good one. He's nicknamed 'Two-Fingers Jack', for they say he can squeeze through a space no wider than two fingers. He is rather'¦ trim. Some say he's a doppelganger while others hold that he's merely under a witch's curse.

Dagobert Hax is the captain of Dancing Pig, and one of the chief providers of exotic beasts for the Ethical Circus.  He employs a motley collection of hunters and ruffians to the dirty work for him, and keeps the beasts in elaborate (and magically augmented) cages within the hold.  He was once Captain Claggoff's first mate and the two remain very good friends even now.

Lukas Castlemourne is the dwarven captain of The Sonata.  The ship has been fitted with vast numbers of intricately carved devices which produce music of disturbing beauty when she is under sail. Castlemourne claims that the music acts to protect this ship while it sails the Aster, and to his credit nothing has yet succeeded in devouring the Sonata.  He makes a point of hiring the deaf whenever possible, and has devised a simple system of hand signals to communicate with those members of his crew.  He generally acts as a merchantman, but he has been known to transport passengers in relative comfort.  Lucas is well thought-of by his peers, but few can stand his company for long -- he tends to go on and on about minutia of acoustic theory, regardless of his listeners' obvious lack of interest. Lukas Castlemorne is a said to be in possession of a flight of trained harpies and a pair of unusually efficacious earplugs.

David Ben-Benjamin is a fisherman, whose Woefully Adequate rarely strays far from the Port.  David has witnessed far too many shipwrecks over the years; if a ship gets consumed by a sea-serpent, founders upon a hidden reef, or gets taken by pirates within sight of the Port...chances are that the Woefully Adequate and her small crew will be there to see it.  Sailors despise David, seeing him as the worst kind of bad luck, but he's pulled too many of them from the sea over the years to suffer more than glares or the occasional spittle.  Even so, he avoids the docks at night.

Agatha Tripe captains another merchantman, the Red Rabbit.  Agatha takes great pride in the Rabbit's speed; she's made a goodly bit of extra income in races with her rivals.  She's not above smuggling, either -- although it takes some work to find anything that's strictly illegal to bring into the Port, some of the neighboring cities and towns are more...fastidious.  She is a worshipper of the Dog, and makes a point of bringing it a gift (usually, appropriately, of tripe) before setting forth on a voyage.

Saul Invictus is the Grand Admiral of the Armada. He is nearing 60 years, bald as an egg yet fit as a man half his age. He is stern, given to drink, and known for making any necessary sacrifice, so long it involves others. He hasn't taken his flagship, the Delicate Needle of Inquisitive Purpose out into the deep waters of the Aster in nearly twenty years, even though it is a rebuilt Black Ship, made out of hell-forged obsidian from the Infernal Isles. Nowadays he rarely sails it out of the port.

This wasn't always the case. It was a young and fearless Captain Invictus who discovered the wreckage of a Black Ship, cut evenly in two as if by some titanic butcher, on some nameless island in the Aster Sea. It was he who towed it back to the port, found engineers and occultists of sufficient skill to make her whole once more, and was subsequently made admiral of the Armada for it, claiming the black glass vessel as his flagship.

During the Needle's maiden voyage, far out on the Aster, Admiral Invictus met that titanic butcher who originally split his ship in two. It was the God or the Devil of that star-tossed sea that men call the Kraken.

Let's just say the Delicate Needle of Inquisitive Purpose acquitted herself slightly better that time around. Saul Invictus managed to flee, with only half his crew maimed or killed. To this day he won't brave the deep sea, for fear of meeting the Kraken again.

Ishmael Flyte once was promising young officer in the staff of Admiral Invictus, serving aboard the Needle. Fortunately, he survived the Kraken's attack. Unfortunately, he was maimed. Unlike the Admiral, he swore revenge. Flyte was eventually drummed out of the navy for 'obsession and madness', but nevertheless managed to both become an accomplished aeronaut and, later, a father.

Flyte now hunts the Kraken from the skies, a pursuit which has earned him the nickname 'the Man Who Wages War With the Sea', since the sea is, to this day, the only thing he's scored a reliable hit upon.

Arachnae Flyte is Ishmael's grown daughter. She is the 2nd woman to become an aeronaut, behind Ingenue Santos, and, like her father, has a host of serious personal issues. She is known as the Black Widow of the Air.

Honorata "Ingénue" Santos is widely considered the most beautiful woman in port. She is also the first woman aeronaut, captain of the Starry Night. Her nicknames are the "Heartbreaking Angel of the Skies" and simply, the "Heartbreak Angel".

Honorata was born in the town of Ingénue in the Clutch, near the shores of the Aster Sea. She was a dreamy, doe-eyed girl from a town full of dreamy, like-eyed girls until tragedy befell her, something she never speaks of. Now she breaks hearts and other, more durable things --she's become an adventuress, you see '" all across the Middling Lands.

She claims she will lead the first successful aerial expedition into the Interior to find the source of the Ossuary Flow.

Abimelech Aquilla-Fubar is a dragonborn air-pirate.  He wears a pair of clockwork wings which are utterly useless for flight, but make devastating melee weapons as they flail about at anyone who approaches him.  He wants desperately to achieve apotheosis and transform fully into a dragon, but each time he enters the Interior he finds himself leaving it months later with a new set of scars and no memory of his experiences.  More than half-mad at this point, he's kidnapped the renowned wizardess Miss Dare to act his guide into the Interior, using maps which he stole from the Dragon Library.  His ship, the Prurient Disinterest, sailed into the Interior some months back and has yet to return.

Quote from: MonikerI can attest that your campaign post over at ENWORLD has single-handedly inspired me to adopt/hybridize some of your ideas into my own campaign.

Great. I'd love to hear what you do with this stuff. Hopefully you'll take it in diametrically opposite directions from the ones I (really we) will.

I've always found that NPC's are the most important part of a successful setting. Probably because they're the parts of it that the players talk to. Anyway, here are an assortment of characters one can find around the port. Unless otherwise noted, they are human beings.

Local Color:


Vellum Bellicose is the head librarian at the Dragon Library. He was an orphan named by a fortune teller. His curious name comes from the vellum bellicose, the material on which the Dukes of the Infernal Isles write their formal declarations of war. The name is also synonymous with the writs themselves.

Vellum is a quiet man, given to study. As both his hobby and part of his duties at the Library he is making a list of all the names for the port. This will take many lifetimes, which he may, in fact, have seeing as this task has left him... curiously altered. Vellum is also the port's best marksmen. He owns a nearly priceless pair of Anathema pistols.

Erik Anathema is the Port's foremost gunsmith, despite being almost entirely blind.  He charges exorbitant prices for his work, but none can deny that they are worth it -- his creations are both beautiful and reliable, a delight to the hand and the eye alike.  Anathema keeps a god in his workshop, an entity called The Juddering Manxome, that protects and inspires him.  Each of Erik's guns has a invocation to the Juddering Manxome etched upon it, and each time one of those guns is fired it is a prayer to Him -- the god hears its voice and knows its target.

Count Orquiel is the ambassador from the Hells, which are referred to locally as the Infernal Isles. He looks like an enormous man with the head of a crocodile, riding on a skinless lion. If he can, as is generally believed, take other shapes, he has never been known to do so. The Embassy's gates are always open, and Orquiel will cheerfully accept visitors at any time of day or night.

He rarely leaves the Embassy grounds, only occasionally attending a function at the Governor's estate. He's a surprisingly good dancer. Or rather, the flayed lion is.

Lord Henry Jacinth is a kindly old racist, the founder and leader of a political movement called the Red Wheel. It's his belief that the world cannot advance until those responsible for ending it -- the Dragonborn and the Tieflings -- are gone. And so, politely and gently, he leads a campaign to establish death camps for the world-killers.

Jacinth publicly decries the violence that has been done in the name of the Red Wheel, of which there has been quite a bit. Things should be done, he insists, in a *civilized* way. Even so, it's a miracle that he's still alive. His long friendship with the Governor no doubt plays a part in this.

Captain Clagoff was the captain of a trading ship, up until the day he got his legs bitten off by a shark. He was ashore when it happened; this was a very...determined shark. These days, he rides about on a Tenser's Disk cast by one of his servants, and has made a fortune importing beasts for the Ethical Circus. He's not in the least discriminating about where he gets his animals, or how.

Clagoff has written a number of truly horrible plays, under a pseudonym. These have proven inexplicably popular -- The Milk-maid's Tragedie, and What Came After has actually been performed even under those Magistrates who haven't declared the Circus illegal.

Thrice-a-Day is an Eladrin clockmaker. He gets his name from an old Eladrin saying, 'even a broken clock is right thrice a day'. He actually crafts a variety of intricate curiosities in the shop he both lives and works in just off Five Fathoms Market, but it's his timepieces which are most readily identifiable.

In the small yard behind the shop, Thrice-a-Day is building his masterpiece; a Fae Clock Tower. Seen from the street, it resembles an ornate grandfather clock that just peeks over the wall around the yard. When looking out the shop's back door, however, the Clock Tower looms up 10 stories or more, at an impossible angle, seeming far larger than the space it's crammed in to.

Thrice-a-Day is always in need of some odd part or ingredient for the elaborate Ritual that is the construction of the Clock Tower. He's sure he'll finish it one day, and from that glorious day onward, his Clock will 'tell time'. People assume he means it'll tell Time 'what to do' or 'how quickly to run', rather than in the conventional sense.

A professor at the University, Wulfram Fritz, has recently become interested, if not obsessed, with the impractical clocks Twice-a-Day makes. He's convinced that they all show the correct time. A fact which has disastrous, though unnamed, consequences for the Middling Lands.

The Old Man of Mole's Hill is the sovereign lord of a landfill in one of the more disreputable parts of the Port. An angel who wandered in from the Interior some years ago, and more than half-mad, he crouches atop a mound of earth, screeching out threatening prophecies to those who pass by. Generally gibberish or trivial nonsense ("Three years from today, at the stroke of noon, you shall stub your toe and your wine-goblet shall be spilt! Your tunic shall be ruined, and you will remember my words and grow wroth!"), but every once in great while he lets something significant slip. Since he has an angel's perception of time, he occasionally reveals truths from people's past. Perhaps this is why Medallion won't get within 5 blocks of him.

He looks like a filthy old man, but every time he opens his mouth a brilliant white radiance escapes. Tieflings find the touch of this light upon their skin to be quite extraordinarily painful.

Gladmarrow is very tall, wears a top hat, and is usually covered in sharp bony spines. He has something to do with the Petitioner's Hall, but exactly what is hard to say; member, boss, object of worship? He's unfailingly polite. Gladmarrow is said to eat human bones and is often seen in the company of a very dangerous man who goes by the name of Gentle.

Mr. Kloot, a ghoul, is in the business of corpse disposal for those in need of such a service. Nattily dressed, very well spoken, covers the reek of carrion with fine cologne. He gives whistles of carved bone to those who contract with him; blowing these whistles will call any ghouls within range to partake of their new meal.

It's an entirely legitimate business, although the Dead are none too fond of Kloot and his enterprise. There have been some nasty scuffles, both here and on the Other Side. Ghouls, naturally, can move between this world and the next with practiced ease.

An interesting fact: ghouls paralyze victims with fear, by grabbing their heads and forcing them to look into the ghoul's eyes, which contain a glimpses of the Other Side.

Medallion just might be a man, though port odds-makers give better than even money that 'he' is actually some kind of animating force that resides in the medallion he always wears around his neck. Either way, he basically owns the nicest part of town, including his fabulous estate on Memorandum Hill, which is said to contain pieces of the World Before.

Lord Bum is the port's "King of Beggars". He lives, when he can afford to, at a dockside flophouse in the Stagger called Bumcastle, in honor of him. He dresses in a mocking patchwork of "castoff" finery that suggests both a quick wit and more than a passing acquaintance with the criminal underworld. It's said he almost has as many eyes and ears on the streets as the Governor.

When asked his full name he usually gives it as "Arsely Bottom", or "Arsely Keister-Bottom". His "court" of homeless men and women can usually found meeting, or at least sleeping one off, on the benches of a park near the flophouse. They are known as the Unseemly Court.

Sidney Distaff is president of the Driftglass Society, an advocacy group for the goblin minority that seeks to improve the lot of all those unfortunate enough to be changed by the touch of the Aster Sea.

Eustace Mar is the Lord High Oceanographer of the Oceanographic Guild. His nickname, primarily among those who don't respect him, is 'Hydrocephalus'.

Meridian Cantor is the Cartographer-General of the Geographic Society.

Shem and Shaun are goblin tale-spinners and bards. They are compiling the complete, definitive, and wholly incomprehensible history of the port.

Quote from: Salacious AngelI don't know quite why this gets to me so much, but it does.  It's the kind of titbit that makes me salivate in a not-quite PG-13 fashion.

Glad you liked that bit. I was trying to pay attention to the language used in the setting write up. To make it more like fiction and less like an encyclopedia or technical manual. It's supposed to inspire/entertain the reader to run the setting, as opposed to just flooding them with detail.

Frankly, a lot of parts I wrote were a deliberate attempt to keep myself interested in the process.

[quote1220631856]Really reminds me of a cross between Ankh-Morpork and New Crobuzon, with a touch of Neverwhere.[/quote]

While I haven't read much Pratchett, I've read my share of Mieville and Gaiman. There's also quite of bit of Clive Barker in this, and the whole idea of the Interior comes from Sam Keith's comic, The Maxx.
 
[quote1220631856O]... and that beautiful city map just makes me want to cry.
[/quote]

Thanks. I had nothing to do with those. One friend did the continent map using Campaign Cartographer, and another made the city map in Photoshop.

Quote from: Snargash MoonclawThe humor reminds me of Pratchett, but darker and more perverse.

Thanks. I was intentionally shooting for a kind of perverse, storybook feel, perhaps my collaborators were more consciously trying to ape Pratchett. He's a writer I need to read more of. Hell, even A.S. Byatt sings his praises...
 
[quote1220630602]I brought up the question about the setting being the actual land of the dead not so much as a possible meta-game reality as a probable in-game working theory for some groups.[/quote]

Thinking on it more, the real question the setting should pose is: what's the difference between the living and the dead? In the port they mingle, interact, engage in commerce. "Living" and "dead" are clearly different states, so it's unlikely that the entire place in the afterlife. Maybe its all some kind of commentary on belief systems that posit an afterlife that's essentially the same as the living world, except, you know, better. Which this obviously isn't.

[quote1220630602]You've already presented and/or alluded to enough possibilities to really have fun with any more philosophically minded players/PCs here.[/quote]

I think "alluded to" is a great way to describe our approach to setting in general; rather then exhaustively and explicitly detailing the setting, we alluded to things, made sly remarks, tried to drop some pretty phrases meant to inspire the reader, rather than just provide hard data.

If I'm going to put the setting to any philosophical use, it's to explore the idea that the campaign world is the start of the golden age of humankind; a time of exploration, expansion, industry and art. Unfortunately, this is occurring after the end of the world, amidst the literal ruins of the physical and metaphysical worlds. A time of both vitality and melancholy, as it were.

That is, unless my philosophizing and thematic dramatics get me pelted with dice by my players...

And that's it, for now. I'll post the personages of historic importance, and some others, over the next few days.

Comments, criticism, general observations et al are appreciated.

 

The map of the Port...

The map of the Middling Lands...

Concepts and Miscellany

The sun rises in the west from the Interior, and sets in the east, into the Aster Sea.

Residuum: it's literally the residue from the torn-apart World Before. The inhabitants of the port use it to forge magic items. Some items that originate from the Interior and Across-the-Sea can't be broken down into Residuum, but they can be used as a part of item creation Rituals to impart special properties.

Language has a strange power and existence in the World After, which manifests in myriad and only rarely consistent ways. One of the few, for example, is that everyone '˜knows' the true name of the Port as well as they know their own name. But nobody can remember where or when they first learned that name, let alone who from, and no two people know it by the same one. For convenience, it's usually referred to as 'Here', or 'There', or simply as 'The Port'.

Some Remarks on the Races of the Port

The Dragonborn Magna Publica Machina, the Great Machine of State, was one of the two great powers of the World Before. Where the Tiefling Imperium Goetia had demons and devils to do their bidding, the Dragonborn had devices of cunning intricacy, wedded to magics of power and subtlety. It was the Dragonborn who made the automatons now called Warforged, although the secret of commanding their obedience has long since been lost.

At times, a Dragonborn will become lost within the Interior (and thus, within himself). Most such unfortunates are never seen again, but others somehow manage to find their true selves in the wastes, and to embrace that aspect of their Self. Such individuals are known as Dragons, and the emergence of one from the Outback is a cause for both celebration and terror. Few linger in the World for very long; most pass on across the Aster, to parts unknown.

Tieflings seem quite at home in the World After. They refer to it as the Show, and insist what they call '˜the final curtain' is yet to come.

Halflings are humans who, as they hit the age of 10 or so, stop growing and start changing into something that is not quite human. As their ears develop points, they become quicker, stronger, and much, much luckier. Most end up on the streets, rejected by their own family; Halflings, as is well known, simply cannot be trusted. Of course, it's no surprise that so many Halflings turn to thievery in order to survive, under the circumstances. Halflings are themselves infertile, but they know their own even before they change. It's not uncommon for a Halfling to kidnap a child, and take him to grow up among his own kind. The common belief is that the Halflings are actually changing human children, using some twisted ritual, but this is nonsense. Mostly. This, of course, contributes even further to the reputation that Halflings have, and is one reason that they stay on the move as much as possible. Common wisdom has it that trimming a Halflings ears will make him human once more; this is not in fact the case, but that hasn't kept it from happening with appalling regularity.

Gnomes wear peaked caps, deep red in color, dyed with the blood of their many victims. They kill easily and casually, moving unseen and slitting throats on behalf of their Eladrin masters. No one with any sense trifles with a gnome, lest he take offense and murder the perpetrator. And his family. And the dog (they like cats).

The Dwarves have a holy task; they are working to carve the chambers and caverns deep below the surface into an enormous musical instrument sounded by the underground movement of air, one that will '" when it is completed '" sound the Last Trump, finish the apocalypse, and allow the new world to be born. In the meantime, Orthodox Dwarves spend their entire lives underground, venturing to the surface only when it is absolutely necessary. And even then, they keep all exposed flesh covered; only when The Job is done will they be allowed to feel the touch of sunlight once more. A lot of dwarves reject this, not surprisingly. They leave their homes and family behind and venture to the surface to forge new lives for themselves. When they get older, many of them return to the caverns of their birth, take up their tools, and get to work once again. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Shadar-Kai are children conceived in the brothels on the Other Side; half alive, half dead, belonging neither to this world nor the next but passing more or less freely between the two. Many act as intermediaries between the living and the dead, passing on the wishes of those caught in the machinations of the Eternal Bureaucracy to their surviving relatives.

Orcs come from somewhere within the Aster; they will not discuss their origins. The ignorant talk of a place called the Monstrous Archipelago, but it's just a rumor. Orcs arrive in the Port on ships of carved bone, silently disembark, and never look back as the ships sail back to wherever they came from. Orcs are highly in demand as bodyguards and soldiers; they will work for anyone willing to pay them, will do whatever they are to ordered to do without protest, and are utterly faithful to their current employer. What they do with the money they are paid is one of the many small mysteries of the Port. Those who chose to leave the ranks of their people have the memories of thier homeland literally carved from their brain.

Goblinoids '" goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, and ogres, probably ettins as well '" are folk who have been changed by the Aster; either by the sea itself, or by being caught in one of the storms that blows in off the sea. The waters mutate them into things of horrific appearance and bizarre shapes '" no two look exactly alike. The people of the port call them Flotsam, or 'The Changed' if they are being polite. They are a despised and generally exploited underclass, doing much of the dirty and dangerous labor for the Port. The Driftglass Society is making an attempt to organize them into a sort of political force, but have met with little luck thus far. Most of the Changed are altered in mind as well as in body.

Gnolls begin life as hyenas, living on the fringes of the Interior. After consuming a living human '" and his soul '" they rapidly grow and change, developing the ability speak, to walk upright, and to use weapons. This last, they do with particular eagerness. Packs often grow regularly, as gnolls take travelers captive and feed them, still alive, to the hyenas that travel with them.

The Kuo-Toa are somewhat resistant to the effects of the Aster; most of them work at the docks as stevedores, loading and unloading the ships that come to the port. They keep to themselves, and only a few designated representatives can speak or understand Common.

Doppelgangers, also called the All-Men, were normal humans changed by the power of the Interior. A doppelganger is literally '˜Everyman' (or woman). Shifters are either human beings who have regressed to a more bestial state, or animals who have evolved into something that is arguably more advanced, again due to the influence of the Interior.

Quote from: Munchausen's MonkeyAn aerial battle between celestial blowfish shooting bolts of void?  Now this is what I call fantasy.

Come to think of it, that is pretty fantastic. I can't claim credit for the idea of airships hanging suspended beneath airborne puffer fish, but I was the one responsible for arming them with the void.