The Campaign Builder's Guild

[ooc]Go ahead and discuss this in this thread. As I add new material to the thread, I'll update this post. If this post ever gets too long, I'll create a new thread and turn this into a discussion thread, but not gonna do that until this post reaches critical mass to avoid cluttering the boards.[/ooc]
[ic]This was once a desert. I know that word doesn't mean anything to you, Elossi, but there used to be naught but rocks and dust here. Don't roll your eyes at me like that. You're not so old that I can't take you over my knee, girl. This was once a desert, before the Mad Druid Cyril Bitterbark found the Ritual of Awakening long ago. No, I don't care that you've heard this before. When you've reached my age, you'll ramble on too, and you'll hope your decendentants will show some respect!

Anyway, this was a desert. This desert was important, though. This desert is where the Temple of Rebirth was hidden, where the Ritual of Awakening's final component was hidden, and where us - myself and some friends, most of them dead - that's where we failed to stop the Overgrowth.

That got your attention, didn't it? Haven't heard that part before, hmm? Maybe this old man's got a tale or two left for you?

For you see, that is the truth of Reclaimers, a truth that is yours now. All of us in some way - either by person or by blood - but all of us hold some responsibility for the Overgrowth and as such we are bound by magic older than you to fight against it. You don't have to, not really, but it'll call you. Until then, guard this secret closely, for many would seek bloody vengance against our family - all of it, right down to little Psaelia.

Ahhh, now you want one of your grandfather's stories. Very well, little Elossi, sit down and let me tell you about...[/ic]

THE VERDANT APOCALPYSE

A world once covered with diverse biomes, plains and hills and deserts and oceans and mountains and tundra and all manner of natural land. A world where the March of Progress reached a point where the forests begin to dwindle and a coven of Druids and Shaman and Witches sought to restore them to life. Led by the Mad Druid Cyril Bitterbark, they began the Ritual of Awakening. Now, if the Mad Druid Cyril knew what the ultimate result of the Ritual would be is questionable, but for the rest, only a few suspected the Overgrowth was possible. It was supposed to simply restore the forests felled by man and create a new desert in the Arid Wastes where no life could ever have flourished before, giving mankind a wholly unnatural grove they could harvest without upsetting the delicate balance of the forests. A valiant group of adventurers, the Order of the Drake, fought to stop them - and ultimately, failed. The Verdant Circle completed their ritual, and the forests began to blossom, and life began to sprout in the Arid Wastes. For just a moment the Order of the Drake began to wonder if they were wrong.

And then the growth accelerated. And spread.

Now the world is dominated by the Overgrowth. On land it is jungles and forests of varying densities, in some patches the entire land covered with plants nearly too thick to move through while in others the canopy is so dense it creates vast stretches of clear, relatively easy to walk through lands of overbranched twilight and fungal growth. Animals underwent a rapid evolution as well, empowered by the awakening, and the biodiversity of this world is maddening. In the oceans it is even worse, vast forests of kelp choaking the coasts and, in the deep sea, nightmarish plants that are rumored to have their roots in the lightless depths at the bottom of the ocean threaten ships with their alien life.[note=Alien Life]For the deep sea things mentioned here, my "alien life" are not my typical aberrations, but instead things like viperfish. Look those up if you want to see what God created immediately after he conceived the art of Geiger.[/note]

But humanoids will find a way. Some have moved back to a more tribal, harmonious life, working with the bounty provided by the Overgrowth for sustenance at the cost of the benefits provided by city. Others surround themselves with magic and deepstone, a toxic granite that poisons roots that attempt to grow through it, providing walls that are not immediately cracked by roots. The stable communities maintain deep agriculture below the surface, farmers harvesting edible mushrooms and other fungi to feed the city above. Adventurers travel beyond the city walls to try and find new resources for the cities or guard trade caravans. But this world is not made for humanoids anymore, and the peoples of the Verdant Apocalypse know it. Now they, deny it or not, are subject to the law of nature: survival or extinction are their only options.

Coming Soon:

Gods: Including an Evil Goddess of Life and a Good Goddess of Death!

Monsters: Giant Arthropods, Apes Galore, Psychic Tigers, King Crows, Carnivorous Plants Galore and So Much More!

Races: Besides humans, what's out there that has language and society?

[spoiler=Cities and Cultures]

Overview of Peoples and Places:

[note=Why Humans?]There are other races in The Verdant Apocalypse. However, another species should mean something, IMO, not "fantasy vulcan" or "surly miner." As such, the way I'm working it for Verdant Apocalypse is that most sentient races are exactly that, races – in the same way people outside the speculative fiction genre use race. An elf isn't just a human with pointy ears and a slender build, it is LITERALLY a human with pointy ears and a slender build. Dwarves are short, stocky, and hairy members of homo sapiens. In essence, the fantasy races don't exist, but the genus homo displays biodiversity similar to canis or felinis as opposed to it's current singular existant member.[/note]The men of the Overgrowth have had to develop new ways to survive, excepting those protected by natural oddities like the Cuddinians (see below). While there is a great deal of diversity into how each group manages it, here are some of the most common ways:

Reversion: To the city-dwellers, reversion as survival often seems no different than tribalism. However, those who interact with either of the two groups for long quickly realize the differences are pronounced. The Reverted often walk with a stooped posture and are unkempt by any standards, though often oddly hairless. They cover their bodies with inks toxic to most life, giving themselves stripes and spots like great cats or other predators to better blend in. They are skilled climbers and, through a druid ritual, actually warped their spines long ago so they could move on all fours even more swiftly than most men could walk. And, most horrifically of all, as soon as they hit puberty they are subjected to the Ritual of Joining, where a male and female mate before the entire pack, signifying they are available for rutting. After which, the skin is flayed from the last joint of each finger and seared shut, and the bone sharpened into claws while the teeth are filed into fangs.

It would be easy to dismiss them as monstrous nightmares and horrific killers, then, and it's truck a pack of Reverted angered is a terrifying foe, fighting with the lethality of a cornered animal combined with the canny intellect of a man. However, there is some things to be said for the reverted. First is that there have been numerous accounts of Reverted rescuing stranded city-dwellers and treating them with kindness tinged with pity until they could be returned to their dwellings. Second is the fact that no report of cannibalism among the reverted has ever been factually reported – though it's not impossible it could happen.

[note]Given the nature of Tribal peoples, it is encouraged for a player to want to play as a tribal individual to make a tribe that suits their need with DM approval[/note]Tribal: The tribal people struck the middle ground between the reverted and the city-dwellers. Living in a culture and using tools but more at peace with the land, staying to the "tamer" parts of the Overgrowth, the Tribal people's individual cultures varying immensely. Often worshiping either a pantheistic faith or a polytheistic faith of nature spirits, the tribal people's general attitude is that the Overgrowth is a fact of life that cannot be avoided and therefore must be worked with. However, each individual tribe varies so much beyond that – moreso than the reverted, who have many shared attitudes, and the city-dwellers, who cling to the old ways and are more densely packed – that that's about as general as one can get for the tribal people, who are the most numerous group of humans and the single most diverse.

City-dwellers: Or as they call themselves, Urbanites. The closer one gets to the Heart of the Growth the fewer cities there are, but deepstone's toxic properties were known before it began, and in the weeks that it spread those further away had time to build walls that would keep the Overgrowth out of their cities. Across the oceans, where the Overgrowth reached last, Cities are close to common, though still separated by miles of Overgrowth and nowhere near the majesty they obtained before. Inside the city life is much like one would expect in a medieval fantasy setting, though the presence of towers are much more marked as the effort needed to expand the walls would never exceed the much more simple effort of building upwards.
   However, those who chose to remaine Urbanites were faced with a unique problem – with farmlands engulfed by apocalyptic vines, there was no way for normal agriculture to support them. Two solutions developed: those that had access to the Lowerlands, which were curiously unaffected by the Overgrowth, began harvesting edible fungi called Loafshrooms and learning how to grow them more easily, a dietary staple that has replaced bread and gave them their...unique name. The others became harvesters – essentially reverting to hunting gathering in a world where plant and animal life is so much more ubiquitous that it actually is possible to support a large population off of it. Those who gather food for the community are some of the most revered individuals in any city society, and are given the simplest but best reward they could hope for: first pick of their findings. Many adventurers from cities started out as part of the Gatherer Armies.

Deepfolk: Merely rumors, but it is believed some humans, terrified of the oncoming wave of arboreal death, fled deep into the Lowerlands to the Realm Below. If this is true, their fate is unknown...or what forms they took in the wake of the Drift.

SAMPLE 1: Cuddinas – Located in a canyon, Cuddinas avoided the worst of the Overgrowth by lucky accident – the city was build into opposing sides of a canyon containing natural deposits of deepstone, crisscrossed by rope bridges. The result means that while the light of day is largely blocked by branches, the canyon is free of most plants besides a few fruit bearing vines. This luck has given Cuddinians the attitude they are the Blessed People who were meant to survive the apocalypse, and there are three attitudes as to what this means. One school of thought is that they are to wait in their canyon until the Overgrowth has passed, avoiding contact with the outside world until The Great Blight – an event they believe will wipe out most of the life above their canyon. Another is that they must hasten the Overgrowth's work and actively aid it in exterminating the remaining non-Cuddinian humans, thereby triggering the Great Blight. The final view is that the Great Blight is the inversion of the ritual that started the Overgrowth, and that they must venture beyond the canyon to find the ritual and bring about the Great Blight, saving all other humans – that they must share their blessing. While the first group rules within the city, the latter two are more often encountered beyond the canyons lip.

Cuddinians are a joyful people, on the whole. With skin that leans more towards stoney tones than other colors and darker hairs, they can easily appear dower, but adorn themselves in dyed flowers and smile easily. It's sacrilege for them to wear a plant in it's natural color – to do so would be admit that the Overgrowth has a beauty to it, and that their Blessing denied them beauty. A young Cuddinian is educated year round – six months of education a practical craft, be it harvest or warfare or maintaining the bridges or building utilitarian tools. The other six months are spent learning an art – painting, song, dance, sculpting. The end result is the Cuddinians fuse their two arts into their adulthood efforts, meaning everything a Cuddinian does has a basis in both art and use. Form and function are permanently intertwined for them.[/spoiler] Who's who where and why?

History: What existed before, and what's left?

Oh my god, I think I remember this from back on the wizards boards when I was a teenager!  Very cool setting, similar in some ways to Clockwork Jungle, but more... well, apocalyptic.

Hah! Can't believe it's been that long - I think I started this setting like 9-10 years ago. Last setting I ever posted on the WOTC boards before I migrated over here. Glad you like it. As I always ask, anything in particular you'd like to know more about?

I never frequented the WotC boards, so this is new to me... but I like it! :D

I'd personally like to know what it's like to live in this world right now. If I were going to play in this game, what sort of person might I want to be, what might I encounter, and so on. From your list, "cities and cultures" is the closest thing, with a few allusions to "History" and "Races" I think.

You mention psychic tigers.  These sound pretty trippy.  Are psychic powers a large part of the setting?  How are they different from magic?  Have they always been around?

QuoteYou mention psychic tigers.  These sound pretty trippy.

They're relatively small striped felines that hunt the darkest parts of the canopy by creating illusions of light and telekinetically "touching" arms and sleeves to make people feel they are being attacked by spirits to draw them into an ambush and away from other, larger predators.

QuoteAre psychic powers a large part of the setting?  How are they different from magic?  Have they always been around?

They are a fairly large part of the setting, and I have two explanations for where it comes from, that I can't decide upon.

Quote from: Option APrior to the Overgrowth, undead were fairly common - as much as in most Fantasy settings. The natural cycle of life and death run out of control is anathema to undeath which attempts to sidestep that cycle, so all those undead were destroyed and used for compost (the former Necropolis created the Rotwoods, where the unholy and the natural merge in a lethal union), but those spirits that did not have a corporeal element could no longer exist, but had to be incorporated into the natural cycle.

Natures response was converting them into psionic energy, and then the Death Goddess, Crovua, grabbed that energy and imbued most of it into mortals to give them a way to begin killing the Overgrowth and restore some of her dominion.

Magic and Psionics don't get along well, and not in the sense that they ignore each other. Magic is a natural power, Psionics are inherently unnatural. They are matter and antimatter. The impact of the two creates an explosion of twisted reality - one that the Overgrowth will swallow, but until then geometry, physics, and biology begin to function in horrific and wrong ways. The worst place to be when such an impact occurs isn't inside of it - although it will twist you horribly - but at the edge. Death there is inevitable as the new, temporary reality asserts itself for half of your body, but the other is left in it's normal state.

Quote from: Option BPsionics are powers drawn from within. With magic gone wild and unpredictable due to its inherent tie to the natural world, most spell casters function as Wild Mages - their spells have unpredictable and often disastrous side effects unless working in long, careful rituals for focus and control. In this way psionics become much less alien and much more akin to chi

Can't decide which of those I like better. :P

Quote from: sparkletwist
I never frequented the WotC boards, so this is new to me... but I like it! :D

I'd personally like to know what it's like to live in this world right now. If I were going to play in this game, what sort of person might I want to be, what might I encounter, and so on. From your list, "cities and cultures" is the closest thing, with a few allusions to "History" and "Races" I think.

Almost missed this! Thanks for the support. This requires a bit more writing than the other questions - I'll try to get an overview of cities/cultures/races up tonight or tomorrow.

However, here is a culture now to give a sample of a people that could be found living in the Overgrowth:

Cuddinas – Located in a canyon, Cuddinas avoided the worst of the Overgrowth by lucky accident – the city was build into opposing sides of a canyon containing natural deposits of deepstone, crisscrossed by rope bridges. The result means that while the light of day is largely blocked by branches, the canyon is free of most plants besides a few fruit bearing vines. This luck has given Cuddinians the attitude they are the Blessed People who were meant to survive the apocalypse, and there are three attitudes as to what this means. One school of thought is that they are to wait in their canyon until the Overgrowth has passed, avoiding contact with the outside world until The Great Blight – an event they believe will wipe out most of the life above their canyon. Another is that they must hasten the Overgrowth's work and actively aid it in exterminating the remaining non-Cuddinian humans, thereby triggering the Great Blight. The final view is that the Great Blight is the inversion of the ritual that started the Overgrowth, and that they must venture beyond the canyon to find the ritual and bring about the Great Blight, saving all other humans – that they must share their blessing. While the first group rules within the city, the latter two are more often encountered beyond the canyons lip.

Cuddinians are a joyful people, on the whole. With skin that leans more towards stoney tones than other colors and darker hairs, they can easily appear dower, but adorn themselves in dyed flowers and smile easily. It's sacrilege for them to wear a plant in it's natural color – to do so would be admit that the Overgrowth has a beauty to it, and that their Blessing denied them beauty. A young Cuddinian is educated year round – six months of education a practical craft, be it harvest or warfare or maintaining the bridges or building utilitarian tools. The other six months are spent learning an art – painting, song, dance, sculpting. The end result is the Cuddinians fuse their two arts into their adulthood efforts, meaning everything a Cuddinian does has a basis in both art and use. Form and function are permanently intertwined for them.

Update to people and cultures:

[spoiler=Overview][note=Why Humans?]There are other races in The Verdant Apocalypse. However, another species should mean something, IMO, not "fantasy vulcan" or "surly miner." As such, the way I'm working it for Verdant Apocalypse is that most sentient races are exactly that, races – in the same way people outside the speculative fiction genre use race. An elf isn't just a human with pointy ears and a slender build, it is LITERALLY a human with pointy ears and a slender build. Dwarves are short, stocky, and hairy members of homo sapiens. In essence, the fantasy races don't exist, but the genus homo displays biodiversity similar to canis or felinis as opposed to it's current singular existant member.[/note]The men of the Overgrowth have had to develop new ways to survive, excepting those protected by natural oddities like the Cuddinians (see below). While there is a great deal of diversity into how each group manages it, here are some of the most common ways:

Reversion: To the city-dwellers, reversion as survival often seems no different than tribalism. However, those who interact with either of the two groups for long quickly realize the differences are pronounced. The Reverted often walk with a stooped posture and are unkempt by any standards, though often oddly hairless. They cover their bodies with inks toxic to most life, giving themselves stripes and spots like great cats or other predators to better blend in. They are skilled climbers and, through a druid ritual, actually warped their spines long ago so they could move on all fours even more swiftly than most men could walk. And, most horrifically of all, as soon as they hit puberty they are subjected to the Ritual of Joining, where a male and female mate before the entire pack, signifying they are available for rutting. After which, the skin is flayed from the last joint of each finger and seared shut, and the bone sharpened into claws while the teeth are filed into fangs.

It would be easy to dismiss them as monstrous nightmares and horrific killers, then, and it's truck a pack of Reverted angered is a terrifying foe, fighting with the lethality of a cornered animal combined with the canny intellect of a man. However, there is some things to be said for the reverted. First is that there have been numerous accounts of Reverted rescuing stranded city-dwellers and treating them with kindness tinged with pity until they could be returned to their dwellings. Second is the fact that no report of cannibalism among the reverted has ever been factually reported – though it's not impossible it could happen.

[note]Given the nature of Tribal peoples, it is encouraged for a player to want to play as a tribal individual to make a tribe that suits their need with DM approval[/note]Tribal: The tribal people struck the middle ground between the reverted and the city-dwellers. Living in a culture and using tools but more at peace with the land, staying to the "tamer" parts of the Overgrowth, the Tribal people's individual cultures varying immensely. Often worshiping either a pantheistic faith or a polytheistic faith of nature spirits, the tribal people's general attitude is that the Overgrowth is a fact of life that cannot be avoided and therefore must be worked with. However, each individual tribe varies so much beyond that – moreso than the reverted, who have many shared attitudes, and the city-dwellers, who cling to the old ways and are more densely packed – that that's about as general as one can get for the tribal people, who are the most numerous group of humans and the single most diverse.

City-dwellers: Or as they call themselves, Urbanites. The closer one gets to the Heart of the Growth the fewer cities there are, but deepstone's toxic properties were known before it began, and in the weeks that it spread those further away had time to build walls that would keep the Overgrowth out of their cities. Across the oceans, where the Overgrowth reached last, Cities are close to common, though still separated by miles of Overgrowth and nowhere near the majesty they obtained before. Inside the city life is much like one would expect in a medieval fantasy setting, though the presence of towers are much more marked as the effort needed to expand the walls would never exceed the much more simple effort of building upwards.
   However, those who chose to remaine Urbanites were faced with a unique problem – with farmlands engulfed by apocalyptic vines, there was no way for normal agriculture to support them. Two solutions developed: those that had access to the Lowerlands, which were curiously unaffected by the Overgrowth, began harvesting edible fungi called Loafshrooms and learning how to grow them more easily, a dietary staple that has replaced bread and gave them their...unique name. The others became harvesters – essentially reverting to hunting gathering in a world where plant and animal life is so much more ubiquitous that it actually is possible to support a large population off of it. Those who gather food for the community are some of the most revered individuals in any city society, and are given the simplest but best reward they could hope for: first pick of their findings. Many adventurers from cities started out as part of the Gatherer Armies.

Deepfolk: Merely rumors, but it is believed some humans, terrified of the oncoming wave of arboreal death, fled deep into the Lowerlands to the Realm Below. If this is true, their fate is unknown...or what forms they took in the wake of the Drift.[/spoiler]