The Clockwork Jungle [Old Thread]

[Polycarp]

Closed, per Polycarp's Request

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[ic=Ot, On Life]Some have said they doubt me when I say the Forest itself is a living thing '" as I too am not alive, by their own musings on the subject.  To them, I am artifice, a peculiarity of time and substance, a puzzle of wood, stone, and metal.  But if I am artifice, so are they '" each one an odd mélange of blood, bone, flesh, feathers, scales.  They seek their artificer; I seek my own.  They miss the truth that I perceive: life dwells in the compositions, where blood mingles with flesh and wood mingles with water.  Plants thrive where the air meets the earth, and the speckled cats awaken when the day meets the night.  It is in the combination of things that life is realized.

How do I know the Forest itself is alive?  Because it composes all things.

- Ot, Cog philosopher[/ic]

The Clockwork Jungle

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Imagine a vast jungle, replete with a vast chorus of living things.  The land is a verdant sea, blooming and lush, in which some creatures may live for centuries and never see the sky, obscured as it is by canopies of leaves and vines that rise higher than any fortress wall.  The sky is roiling and chaotic; blue skies are replaced in minutes by ear-shattering rainstorms that turn a footprint into a swamp.  There are valleys and mountains alike in this world, but there are few places to escape the ever-present jungle '" only the largest of the Seas and the Obsidian Plains, where barren mountains disgorge lava and sulfurous fumes into an ocean of broken blackness.  Even these features, however, are islands in a sea of life.

One might even lose a city in here '" and in fact, long ago, a forgotten people lost a whole civilization.  There are lonely statues, overgrown outposts, and entire empty metropolises shrouded in vines and ferns, with no builders to admire their works and no families to live in long abandoned houses.  These places are ancient indeed; some have been forgotten so long that they are unrecognizable underneath untold ages of growth.  It is an Empire of Neglect.

Who made these great structures?  Who could carve out such things from the ever-present Forest, which grows so quickly that a idle village could be swallowed in weeks?  They left no pictures of themselves.  Their artwork is everywhere, on walls and in grand statues, but they depict only abstract designs and strange, foreign animals that none have ever seen in life.  Of all the creatures that now live in the Forest, only some are depicted '" why thousands of pictures of the same bird, but no trace of a hackler, or rock serpent, or even a speckled cat?  Why do no jungle trees appear in their carefully made engravings and frescoes?  The denizens of the Forest can only guess at these questions.

This forgotten people, however, did leave some semblance of life behind '" the Cogs.  There are nearly as many kinds of Cogs as there are types of animals.  The Cogs are constructs, made of wood, metal, stone, and even glass, and animated by fine clockwork and some magic spark within them.  There are Cogs that appear like animals: Cog monkeys that look down curiously on denizens of the forest floor with empty glass eyes; Cog songbirds that flit about with clicking wings, singing beautiful and haunting melodies; even Cog speckled cats that will stalk and kill prey, only to leave its corpse for the scavengers '" for Cogs have no use for food.  There are other Cogs too; Cog haulers, tremendous lumbering tripods, and even Cog soldiers, gaunt sentinels watching over weed-strangled posts.  Save for those that have been 'awakened' through magic, they are at best semi-intelligent, like golems that have lost their master and continue their ancient instructions eternally.  The Cogs are uncannily drawn to magic, for it is magic that sustains them.  A shaman may call for a blessing of light, only to find that Cog lizards draw near him to bask in its glow.  Few spellcasters have not been, at some time or another, surrounded by a halo of twittering Cog birds upon casting a spell.  A spellcaster must be wary, however, less his magic attract something more dangerous, or awaken a Cog forgotten for millennia.

The sentient races of the Forest do not pay much heed to the Cogs.  To them, they are not too different than their 'natural' counterparts '" just less edible.  Just like their counterparts, however, Cogs are hunted, not for meat but for metal and glass.  The Iskites, the Gheen, the Umbril, and other races use these remnants to fuel their advanced societies; a Cog's tooth becomes the head of a spear, and the Iskites carry clockwork crossbows crafted from the metallic innards of their prey.  Some have even 'tamed' Cogs, through magic or accident; no Gheen is as feared as the World-Queen, who rules with the stone-faced (literally) Unfeathered Legion, a battalion of Cog soldiers who have been bound to her through sorcery.  Through the gifts of nature and of the forgotten Artificers, societies thrive in this land '" though it is a dangerous one, beset by peril as well as promise.  The undiscovered country lies around every tree and bush, for they say the Forest never sleeps.

The Forest is very much awake.  It is an entity all its own; it moves and grows faster than any 'normal' plant has any right to.  It bestows favors and curses, causing a vine to trip the unwary or making a traveler's path lead to a bounty of fruit.  It is the source of all things, and all things praise it.

It is not the only such entity in the world.  The Saffron Moss is a thing to be feared, like the awesome and terrible deity that it surely is.  Villages must flee the onset of the Moss, which bends anything it grows upon to its own unitary will.  Cogs overgrown by the Moss serve its desires, and the hapless living things it possesses end up neither dead nor alive, wretched slaves of its dark and inscrutable plans.

Welcome to the Clockwork Jungle.

[ooc]Some themes, which you may have picked up on:
Nature and machines.  Rather than making these things in opposition to each other, as they often are in fantasy, I want to explore the prospects of them co-existing.
A lost world.  This is a staple of fantasy '" nothing really new here, but I do want to emphasize the ubiquity of the ruins (they're everywhere, to the point where they aren't really anomalies so much as a part of the environment)
Verticality.  Something that's always bothered me about D&D games generally is their tendency to remain firmly 2d.  Sure, you have the occasional fly spell, and the beholder's levitation is a neat and interesting one-time challenge to a party, but I mean to make verticality an ever-present feature '" tall forest canopies give every encounter the possibility of 'busting out' into three dimensions, even if you're a 1st level fighter who's never heard of a fly spell.
Marginal civilization.  Once you exit your village and enter the Forest, you're in no-man's land.  There are no sprawling nations or 'civilized zones.'  Every village is an island, and civilization is the exception, not the rule.  Self-sufficiency is key, as the Forest takes a special delight in destroying roads and 'misplacing' markers.  It sounds trite, but the only law out here is '" well, the law of the jungle, I guess.

Your comments are, of course, welcome.
[/ooc]

[Polycarp]

The Clockwork Jungle

Hey!  More complete information on the Clockwork Jungle can be found at the wiki page.  The wiki is much more up to date, has more articles, and is much easier to navigate.  If you have questions, comments, reviews, and so on, you can post them in this thread.  From time to time I will post big articles, stories, whatever in this thread, but for the best setting experience you should be on your way to the wiki!.

If you've contributed to the Clockwork Jungle, including with comments and criticism, please feel free to take a campaign badge:
It links directly to the wiki.  Just quote this post to see the code.

Thread Table of Contents
(A little out of date)

Races

The Umbril*The Iskites*The Gheen*The Tahro[/list]
Current Topics

A Note on Gravity*The Secrets of Lodestones*Races of the Jungle*The Saffron Peril*Dendronautics*The Obsidian Plain*The Court of the Netai Confederation*A Clockwork Bestiary*A Basic Map*The Grove of Tranquility[/list]
Pending Topics

Symbiotes*Carnivorous Plants*Deities and Powers*More on Netai, the World-Queen, and others*For even more, check

the wiki![/list]

[SA]

I love the opening vignette.  Very evocative and compelling.

I was also struck by the strong similarities to a location in my own setting: ancient cities hidden in monolithic forests, their first inhabitants long-gone but their constructs enduring.  To top that off, your Saffron Moss reminds me of my own telepathic enslaver-fungus, the Viskke; they can't control constructs (they just rape souls), but their flavour seems (at least outwardly) very similar.  

Great minds, eh?

The similarities alone are enough to warrant my continued attention.  I'll be keeping my eye on this.

One question straight up: how advanced is civilisation?  What with the seeming impermanence of the forest's geography, how do folks manage enough stability to advance beyond the most subsistant existence?

[Polycarp]

Great minds, eh?

One question straight up: how advanced is civilisation?  What with the seeming impermanence of the forest's geography, how do folks manage enough stability to advance beyond the most subsistant existence?
[/quote]

Parts of our own technological experience have been "skipped."  Nobody ever had a bronze age, for instance; they went straight from stone and obsidian to working the iron and steel found in Cogs.  The sentients deal with the problems posed by the Forest in various ways; the Gheen are feathered humanoids who live largely in tree-cities, and so the expanding forest doesn't bother them.  The Umbril carve their homes out of a tree's roots (imagine a building within a massive banyan tree's roots, for instance).  The Iskites are the most traditionally "advanced," as - like the stubborn and lawful creatures that they are - they simply slash and burn the forest around their villages, keeping the Forest back continually through meticulously organized labor.

Villages are largely self-sufficient; trade and communication are upheld by travelers, who usually go in large groups to avoid being attacked by a predator or other sentient group.  This is generally quite effective, since not even a Cog cat would attack 20 armed sentients together.  

The landscape is very volcanic and thus iron-rich.  This means two things: first, that despite the availability of Cogs, the Iskites know rudimentary iron-working techniques.  Large Cogs can be hard to find and difficult to hunt, so Iskite "scale iron" is traded and used for second-rate goods like pots and pans, anvils, and tools.  These days, Cog metal is generally reserved for weapons, artwork, and clockwork machinery.  Most villages have extensive knowledge of clockwork mechanisms salvaged from the Cogs, so the mechanical knowledge is equivalent to late medieval/early renaissance earth.

The second advantage of the iron-rich earth is that lodestones are well known.  Though often a trip to the Obsidian Plains is required, lodestones ensure that caravans stay on target even without maps or roads, or even steady landmarks.  Lodestone compasses are very valuable pieces of equipment, but they are common enough to ensure semi-regular travel between villages.

The general result of all this is a society that is very advanced in some ways (mechanics, navigation, metalworking) but quite backward in other ways (social organization, agriculture).  The result is societies that resemble "renaissance hunter-gatherers," who collect nuts and berries in woven baskets but know it's time to return home when they hear the tolling of their village's mechanical clock (usually the most important building in a village).  The Iskites are somewhat more advanced then the rest, but their advancement too is strangely "lopsided" given Earth standards.

[Stargate525]

This is downright awesome. It's what I wanted to kind of do in Dilandri with the halflings, but extrapolates it far further.

I can't wait to see this thing develop.

[Atlantis]

indeed, this is awesome. and the opening paragraph itself is amazing.

[Polycarp]

A Note on Gravity

Trees in the Forest are tall '" really tall.  The tallest of redwoods or sequoias in our world would be unimpressive to a resident of the Forest, as they would seem rather average and bare in comparison to the trees of the Clockwork Jungle.  This is partially the result of a trait notable to us, but utterly unremarkable to the beings of this world: the Clockwork Jungle is, almost universally, a low-gravity environment.

Low-gravity environments are defined by the Manual of the Planes; there are both benefits and drawbacks, since the average adventurer, having grown up in an 'average' gravity environment, find their movements to be most ungainly.  Denizens of the Jungle, however, don't know anything else; they are used to low gravity and don't consider it 'low' at all.  Thus, anything from the Clockwork Jungle gains all the benefits from low gravity and none of the drawbacks.

Benefits of low gravity:

All items weigh half as much.*Weapon ranges are double.*All creatures gain +2 on Jump and Climb checks.*Damage from falling is 1d4 per 10 feet, rather than 1d6.

What does this mean for characters?
Firstly, it makes upward mobility much easier.  Any character will have an easier time climbing and jumping in the multi-layered forest canopies, and if the character happens to fall, the fall will be significantly less deadly.
Secondly, ranged combat is theoretically made more powerful, but in practice this isn't so; the Forest is so dense that there are very few places where one could realistically take advantage of huge weapon ranges.  It's only really going to make a difference in the air (above the canopy) and in certain environments (e.g. on one of the Seas).  Range increments are doubled, however, so ranged combat at even close and medium ranges will tend to be more accurate.
Thirdly, it means adventurers will be able to carry more equipment and more loot (twice as much, actually), so the DM should exercise caution '" that 'unliftable' gold statue you put as a decoration in a dungeon might be hauled away by adventurers who realize that it's only half as heavy as it seems.  You should still keep track of encumbrance, but carrying capacity (i.e. the size of your backpack) is likely to be a more serious concern than weight in this world.

Outsiders (which includes all those from 'other' planes and worlds), of course, will suffer the normal penalties for operating in low gravity (though they'll gain the benefits as well).  This takes the form of a -2 circumstance penalty on attack rolls and Balance, Ride, Swim, and Tumble checks.  Denizens of the Forest will perceive outsiders as clumsy and slow, at least until they adapt to their surroundings.

Not every place in the Forest is low gravity '" specifically, the Obsidian Plains are what we would call 'normal.'  Perhaps it has something to do with the heavy rock or the effect of so much lodestone in one place.  Natives find that they lack the normal advantages of their environment; weapon ranges are normal, items weigh the normal amount, and falling deals normal damage.  Keep in mind that for these creatures, none of this will be 'normal' at all.  Natives will also be uncomfortable in this environment, and suffer a -2 circumstance penalty on attack rolls and Balance, Ride, Swim, and Tumble checks (there is no negative modifier to Jump and Climb checks, but the positive modifier enjoyed in the Forest is, of course, lost).  Outsiders from 'normal' gravity worlds find the Obsidian Plains to be most suitable, at least in terms of gravity.  The few things that grow on the Plains look stunted and short to Forest races, though they are probably fairly normal by Earth terms.

[Eclipse]

This is facinating. I love the idea of the lopsided development, with "renaissance hunter-gatherers" quite possibly being my favorite mental image in ages.

My primary question is of weaponry. With the abundance of metal and relatively advanced technology, are rifles, cannons, or other more advanced weaponry avaliable? If so, how does it impact the setting? Since trade/travel between the villages is doable, does that also mean wars occur, or does the overwhelming threat of the forest mean that the primary struggles are against it? (I just noticed that spears and weapons are used, which answers that questions. However, do any more advanced Cogs exist that are armed with such weapons? Or ones with self-destruct sequences? Or even ones that just pose a bigger threat to the sentient races of the Clockwork Jungle - things like giant Cogs with their last order being  "destroy cities" or something less melodramatic but still dangerous to people?)

Also, I just want to hear more about Saffron Moss. What is it? where did it come from? What does it want? Does it have a purpose beyond just spreading? Is it at "war" with the sentient Forest?

Great stuff, and I cannot wait to see more.

[Polycarp]

Weaponry is very advanced, but pre-gunpowder, which remains undiscovered.  Halberds, crossbows, and all sorts of swords and axes are used.  Long pike weapons tend to be uncommon because it's hard to wield them in a jungle thicket, but they are occasionally used against large and dangerous creatures.  The Iskites use special arbalests (crossbows with a steel prod, instead of wood) that use a cranequin and a gear/pulley system to achieve tremendous power; this is probably the height of weapons technology.

Gunpowder would be frankly useless in an environment that is beset by torrential rain a significant part of the time.  Given local climate and the availability of magic, gunpowder is unlikely to ever be discovered.  It just wouldn't be reliable enough to be useful.

Siege weapons do exist, but they are less for sieges than for defense, since it's hard to drag a catapult through the jungle.  The Iskites use large ballistae that work in a similar manner to their crossbows; catapults are used by larger settlements, and the Gheen are especially fond of Ewok-style traps and snares.

Wars do occur, but they tend to be small in scale and rather rare generally.  It's not very feasible to attack another settlement with the intent to conquer it, because it would be impossible to link both together in an empire when you have to send a caravan through the jungle for a few weeks just to get a message through.  As a result, political entities beyond the single village level are very rare, and when they do exist it is usually because their rulers have access to magical communication.

Almost all organized combat, then, usually takes the form of raiding.  Raids are organized to take resources, and sometimes to take slaves - unless a slave can steal a lodestone, he has no way of finding his way back home, making escape difficult and slavery quite profitable.  For the most part, however, settlements are not inspired to go fight foreigners for things that are probably readily available somewhere else.

When wars do occur, they tend to be small affairs between squads of heavily armed, highly trained professional warriors who have honed their skills hunting since they were children.  The logistical difficulties inherent in supplying a large army on a long trek through the jungle mean that most rulers sensibly go for quality, not quantity.  A large army is not nearly as impressive, nor as useful, as a small group of powerful heroes.  Of course, if beset by enemies, a village will mobilize all the manpower it can to back up its best and strongest warriors.

Cogs usually don't have actual weapons, but this line is blurry - there is little functional difference between a dagger and a Cog speckled cat's canine teeth.  Soldier Cogs are the exception to this.  They are humanoid-shaped constructs who wield steel glaives.  These weapons are especially prized because they are nearly all magical (typically +1, but higher in rare instances).  Soldiers are probably the most intelligent of Cogs, and can be dangerous or benign depending on what their last orders were; some stand motionless, while others will only attack you if you come near the room they are supposed to defend, and some stalk through the woods killing everything in their path.  Unless their orders require your death, they are generally quite harmless unless you attempt to take their weapon or attack them.
[note=Insanity]I'm also thinking about having Cogs occasionally "go nuts" like lesser golems, so that might make an appearance later.[/note]

There are very large Cogs.  These are usually Haulers, cogs that were apparently made to carry and build things.  They aren't shaped like animals at all; they are commonly tripods or other multi-legged, blocky things.  They are usually harmless but can be dangerous in strange ways: for example, if a Hauler's last order was "bring stone here," it will do so, even if that means tearing down every last stone building in a nearby village.  Such encounters are rare but not unheard of.  Haulers will strike out in self-defense, so most villagers would rather just move elsewhere than attempt to kill something that could probably smash a bull elephant into paste.

Other Cogs are "predatory" and thus dangerous.  Most Cog animals act like real animals, so a Cog jaguar will actually try and kill you, though it won't eat you because it can't.  Nobody really knows why anyone would want to make a Cog predator that actually attacked people - the Artificers must have been a bit mad.  Like real predators, however, Cog predators are afraid of human settlements and are usually only dangerous to a lone traveler or a small group out in the Forest.

Cogs cannot be "tamed," but there exist ways to dominate them through magic.  In rare cases, a Cog may "imprint" when its orders coincide with reality.  A Cog last assigned to "protect my son" might wander the jungle aimlessly until finding a being that it, for some reason, perceives as a possible match for "my son," and then follow it everywhere and defend it to the death from any attacker.  Cogs without specific orders often just follow sources of magic, which provides their sustenance.  This can be very unnerving and a bit problematic, especially when the Cog following you is a 60 foot tall Hauler that makes the earth shake wherever you go.

[Polycarp]

The Secrets of Lodestones

[note]The Lodestar is a common symbol in the Clockwork Jungle - a heptagon with notched corners, often made of iron or lodestone.  Lodestars represent direction, purpose, eternity, and order.  They are commonly seen in jewelry, art, and religious pictographs; the world itself is often depicted as one enormous Lodestar, with the Grandmother Mountain at the center.[/note]

In the Forest, a compass is the most important thing a traveler carries.  Without it, he's in quite a pickle.  Food and water may be easy to come by, but sooner or later folks just want to get home.

Compasses of the Clockwork Jungle are not quite the compasses we know.  For one thing, they're not as compact.  A typical compass consists of a round bowl with a spike sticking up from the bottom and a slender spear point made of lodestone (but usually not sharp).  The bowl is filled with water (in a rainforest, this is usually not hard) and the pointer is floated carefully on the water; the spike touches the pointer at a little dimple corresponding to its center of gravity, keeping the pointer from sinking without hindering its movement.  If the bowl is on a level surface, the pointer will soon be pointing in the right direction.  More expensive compasses may have a glass lid on the bowl, which means you never have to refill it with water, but a level surface is still needed.  Of course, no compass is really very useable in combat or on the run.

Compasses in the Jungle, however, do not point north.  Nobody has ever heard of 'north.'  Compasses point to the one great source of lodestone, the 'mother lode' itself '" the Grandmother Mountain at the heart of the Obsidian Plains.

The Grandmother Mountain (so called because it is the supposed progenitor of all lodestones) is an immense active volcano, whose seething slopes are covered in lodestones ranging from pebbles to whole boulders.  Its power is so great that all lodestones point to it; it is the axis at the center of the world, around which all distances and directions are calculated.  All 'world maps' have the Grandmother at their center.  The most common theory is that every lodestone wishes to honor its great parent, so each turns to face her.  As a result, the lodestone is considered by many cultures to be a symbol of honor, fidelity, respect, and filial piety.

One's position is thus triangulated by taking compass readings at two places and determining the angles between them.  Trigonometry, incidentally, is one of the studies in which the sentient natives of the Clockwork Jungle are quite advanced (though most players won't want to dwell too much on this part of the campaign world :D ).  The way from one place to another is expressed in the form of a triangle, with its points being the departure point, the arrival point, and the Grandmother Mountain.

[spoiler=Examples, Calendars, and Lucky Numbers (Math!)]
Warning, math ahead!
Let's say we're going from the Iskite village of Fasikal to the Gheen village of Sipa Yik.  If we asked an Iskite 'which way to Sipa Yik,' he would say '5 days clock 4 small-marks and 82 small-marks.'

'Five days' indicates rough distance, though this can change quite a bit.
'Clock' indicates the direction you're going, either clockwise ('clock') or counterclockwise ('unclock') around the Grandmother.  If you're going straight towards the Grandmother, it's 'in,' or 'out' if you're going straight away from her.  A town that is 'two weeks out' is roughly a 14 day journey to the Grandmother (this is really close, probably only a few days from the edge of the Obsidian Plain).

The next two fractions indicate angles.  The Iskites have calculated Ï' to be 22/7 (about 3.143), which is obviously not perfect but better than '3.'  Thus, angles are represented in a number of 'sevenths,' or 'marks.'  For more precise measurements, they multiply this by seven again, to yield 154/49.  There are thus 154 'forty-ninths,' or 'small marks,' in a triangle, and 308 in a whole circle.  Thus, directions give you angle 1 at the Grandmother point, followed by angle 2 at your departure point, both expressed in half-marks.
[note]You won't get angle 3 because it's assumed you know that the angles have to add up to 154, and you can subtract it yourself.  'Asking for the third angle' is a near universal expression meaning 'Doing something really stupid' (as in He'll probably end up asking for the third angle and getting himself killed).  Sometimes it's shortened to just 'Asking thirds' (Stop asking thirds and get over here!).[/note]
For even more precision, you can use 'lesser marks' (2,156 in a circle) or even 'least marks' (15,092 in a circle).  Degrees more precise than this are too awkward to be used; most directions are given in small marks unless over a very long distance.  Because 22/7 is not exactly pi, any measurement is a tiny bit off, so some deductive work may be in order once you've reached where you're supposed to go.  Generally, however, this discrepancy is meaningless except for very long journeys.

As a result of pi being 22/7, counting systems in the Clockwork Jungle are all base 7, or 'septenary.'  What our Iskite guide would actually say (if he spoke English) would be '5 days clock 4 small marks and 145 small marks,' because 82 is rendered as 145 in septenary counting.  Pi is thus not actually 22/7, but 31/10 ('three and a seventh') in septenary.

'Holy numbers' abound in these societies, ranging from the Lesser Procession (7, 7 squared, 7 cubed'¦) to the Greater Procession (22, 22 squared, 22 cubed'¦).  Of course, these numbers are rendered differently in septenary (10 and 31, respectively), but I intend to keep using base 10 as to not thoroughly confound my readers.  Rituals are commonly done in sevens or 22s, and heptagons (seven sided polygons) are depicted everywhere.

The so-called 'True Calendar' or 'Rainbow Calendar' is also based on these numbers.  In this calendar, there are 7 'movements' (about half an hour) in each 'period' (about 3.5 hours), 7 'periods' in each day, 7 days in each week, 7 weeks in each 'season,' and 6 and 2/7 seasons in a year (corresponding to 2Ï', the number of radians in a circle).  The six seasons (and one 'partial season,' which lasts only 2/7 as long) correspond to the seven (there's that number again!) colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Purple.  The 'Red season' at the start of the new year is also the short one, lasting only for two weeks, but it is typically a time of celebration or worship in most civilized cultures.
[note]This makes more intuitive sense in septenary numbers, where there are 10 movements in a period, 10 periods in a day, and so on, until you get to 6 and 2/10 seasons in a year.[/note]
Other calendars exist, but they are usually used alongside the True Calendar, and are usually more localized and aimed towards certain ritual or commemorative dates.  Only the Iskites actually use an astronomical calendar as well '" because they clear their settlements of trees, only they see the sky on a regular basis.

It should be noted that a year of the True Calendar is only 44 weeks long, compared to 52 week Earth years, so a year in the Clockwork Jungle is only 11/13ths of the length of an Earth year.  Ages for races and so on are expressed in True Calendar years, so a 39 year old creature is really 33 in Earth years.

So what does all this mean for a DM and players?  However much you want it to mean.  Most players will only need to know that 7 is a lucky and holy number; it might also be helpful to know the calendar of 6 seasons and one 'short season.'  Your players may never know or care about most of the reasoning and mathematics behind this, and that's fine '" you don't need to know it either.  On the off chance that you or your players are actually interested in this stuff, however, it's here for the taking.

This ends our math tangent![/spoiler]

A lodestone in the Clockwork Jungle isn't like a lodestone on Earth.  In this campaign world, lodestone is like adamantine - a rare mineral with properties specific to itself.  Other materials can't be magnetized; only a lodestone can point the way.  Lodestones are dull, black rocks with a lot of metal in them (they have the same hp as iron, 30/inch, but are as brittle as rock with a hardness of 8 ).  They can be forged and purified into iron, but this makes them permanently lose their powers.  The value of lodestone depends on how rare it is in your locality, but usually lodestone is usually more valuable than precious metals by weight.

So how are lodestones obtained?  The Obsidian Plain is a dangerous place, and very uncomfortable for most creatures because of its higher gravity.  Special expeditions must be mounted '" from which some never return.  Those who do return, however, often become quite wealthy, since only a spear point's worth is needed for a compass that will last for lifetimes and will guide whole caravans from place to place.  Seasoned adventurers could easily find themselves courted as expedition members by a local ruler or village council wishing to add a few more compasses to their collection.

Because of their value, lodestones are sometimes used as jewelry or ornamental stones; they aren't very pretty looking, but a person who can afford to decorate their house with lodestones from the Grandmother's slopes must be very rich and powerful indeed.  Lodestone can't be forged or melted without losing its properties, so 'castings,' or pieces of lodestone that are too small, too irregular, or too weak to be useful compasses, often become jewelry.

Castings are also sometimes used for spell components, when called for.  Servants of lawful powers almost always procure lodestone holy symbols as soon as is practical; in some sects, the acquisition of a lodestone holy symbol represents one's transition from an initiate to a full member of the sect, and an initiate might have to procure such a symbol before being accepted as an equal.

[Eclipse]

I did skip the math part, I must admit. :P

This looks very interesting. I like the Grandmother as being the center of the world as opposed to typical North. Is the world actually round, or is it a flat disk with Grandmother at the center? If it's not, then is there a null point on the other side of the globe from Grandmother?

I just discovered the idea of the Obsidian Plain. I love it, and I'd like to hear more about it. (I do think it would make more sense for people to have normal rules off the plain and then penalties on it, but that's just a preference thing.)

You mention that servants of lawful powers use lodestone holy symbols. What about chaotic powers? Or good or evil? Or did you mean lawful as in those that serve the law, not the Law?

Finally, can lodestones be used to magnetise normal iron?

[Polycarp]

I did skip the math part, I must admit. :P

This looks very interesting. I like the Grandmother as being the center of the world as opposed to typical North. Is the world actually round, or is it a flat disk with Grandmother at the center? If it's not, then is there a null point on the other side of the globe from Grandmother? [/quote]I just discovered the idea of the Obsidian Plain. I love it, and I'd like to hear more about it. (I do think it would make more sense for people to have normal rules off the plain and then penalties on it, but that's just a preference thing.) [/quote]You mention that servants of lawful powers use lodestone holy symbols. What about chaotic powers? Or good or evil? Or did you mean lawful as in those that serve the law, not the Law?[/quote]Finally, can lodestones be used to magnetise normal iron?
[/quote]

I left out a really important part of the Lodestone "chapter" above - Lodestones aren't really like normal Lodestones in this world.  They're more like Adamantine or Mithril, a special material with special properties.  In the Clockwork Jungle, you can't make iron into a Lodestone any more than you could make an iron sword into an adamantine one by rubbing adamantine on it (though that's a cool idea).  This is a bit different from real world physics, obviously, but it preserves the "Lodestone economy."

I'm going to update the Lodestone section with that information.

[Polycarp]

Added a new table of contents to the second post, with a list of topics to be covered in the near future.

[Stargate525]

I stand in awe.

No seriously, I was openmouthed at the directionality thing. It's very, very cool. Especially how the 'counting thirds' slang came about.

[Tybalt]

This is amazing...you're truly creating a unique world, one which is only vague in similarity to our own. The RULES are different. Congratulations--I hope your creativity continues to flow.

BTW, I don't think anyone else has mentioned it but I'd find it terribly creepy. There's something weird and alien about this world.