Hey guys,
I've been thinking a lot about this project as of late, and I'd really love to bounce some ideas off/get some opinions from people. Here are a few of the basic ideas, organized into bullet points for your convenience. Hope you enjoy!!
- The Frontier is inhabited by many of the default D&D humanoid races (elves, dwarves, halflings, orks, etc.) Colonials have exploring and pillaging the continent for the better part of four hundred years, and clashes with indigenous tribes is common.
- The default religion amongst the settlers is a polytheistic faith of my own creation, loosely based on the Greek, Egyptian and Roman pantheons, mixed with Protestantism, and a tiny bit of Sumerian added in for good measure.
- Magic is relatively common in this world. Magic ultimately draws its energy from the ley lines, and ley points tend to be highly urbanised areas. The indigenous inhabitants of the Frontier worked this out long before the settlers, and many tribes call these ley points home.
- The technology level is steampunk-ish. There's two noted great inventors (loosely based on Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla) who have revolutionized Frontier life in the past few decades -- rumors that this world's Tesla-equivilant was involved in a potentially world-shattering project to redirect the ley lines' energy remain unsubstantiated.
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One particularly rare form of magic unique to this world is that of dreamweaving. Dreamweaving (which entails the creation of dreams with others) is regarded as an art by many, with elaborately crafted dream-plays being a highly regarded form of entertainment. However, some of the more puritanical adherents of the Hundred Gods believe that only the night god Zunn, who's eyes are the stars, can create dreams in the Silver Garden of the Moon. It is not unheard of for dreamweavers to be attacked in some of the more religious parts of the Frontier, and in some cases, entire dream theaters have been burnt down by angry mobs of religious nutjobs. Thankfully, these days, one does not need to travel to the dream theater to experience the art of dreamweaving - that wondrous new invention, the Oneirogram, allows for the recording and replaying of dreams -- just try not to wake up while you're using it, as that can lead to hallucinations.
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It's been more than thirty years since the Civil War ended. One of the main causes of the war was necromancy -- wealthy land owners making deals with necromancers to resurrect the corpses of poor townsfolk, who had agreed to this eventuality on the condition that their families be provided for after their death. Zombies in this world are highly strong, highly-resistant, flesh-eating abominations, although necromancers are able to "tame" them through use of a special potion, rendering them docile, and allowing them to be used for manual labor. However, it is vitally important that these working undead never come into contact with raw meat - this will remind them of their true nature, and cause them to regain their unending hunger for human flesh.
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Aside from zombies, there is another kind of undead, known as the "Incorporeal Receased", a category that includes Ghosts and Phantoms (there's an important difference). Ghosts are what a wizard creates when they are approaching death. Ghosts are physically indistinguishable from regular humans, except obviously they can't touch anything, and they are capable of (very limited) magic. They also have the ability to become invisible at will, which is useful in espionage. Phantoms are a more recent phenomenon -- they are similar to Ghosts, except they can be created by anybody, not just wizards, and rather than through pure magic, they are created by technology, a medical process known as Phantomogenesis. A person who is nearing death must fill out an application before undergoing this process (you're more likely to get accepted if you're wealthy or a patriot), as it is quite costly. Unlike Ghosts, Phantoms are obviously incorporeal - they are monochrome, and their physical appearance will match how they looked at the instant of their death.
Depending on the strength of the wizard, a Ghost will typically vanish, or "move on" as some prefer to say, quite swiftly after sixty or seventy years. Phantoms on the other hand, will fade out of existence very gradually, and very painfully. A phantom's existence relies on the part of the soul that doesn't decay until many years after death -- this means that they are not able to travel more than a certain distance away from their corpse. Phamtoms are confined to specialised homes (such as the famous St. Marley's Asylum for the Receased), and if they want to leave, they need permission, and somebody to transport their body with them in a special box (these people are commonly known as "corpse cabbies"). For obvious reasons, being a Phantom is not very desirable. It is not uncommon for the parents of terminally ill children to seek this out as an option of extending their child's time on Earth, although this is extremely controversial, particularly as children's souls are harder to work with during Phantomogenesis -- there have been many tragic cases where Phantom children were unable to stay afloat, and instead drifted downwards towards the centre of the Earth, until they faded away.
- Many legendary figures from American folklore have their own counterparts in the world of the Frontier -- Johnny Appleseed, for instance, is reimagined as the folk villain Gullie Goldenseed. Legend has it that Gullifred Goldman, as she was then known, was descended from loyalists, who were tortured and hanged during the Revolutionary War. She therefore chose to spend the rest of her life seeding the plains of the Frontier with golden apples, which she promised poor townsfolk would cure what ails them, and give them lifelong good health. The apples were delicious and plentiful, although they bore a terrible curse -- they would gradually cause an intense and growing paranoia in anyone who ate of them. They would grow suspicious of their neighbors, accusing them of being devils, and demon offspring, in some cases, even throwing them off cliffs, and burning them alive. Entire towns and villages have been wiped out by Gullie's golden apples.
- During the Civil War, alchemists concocted a potion, which, when given to pubescent males, would cause a truly massive growth in both size and strength. These young soldiers -- or Bunyans, or they're now known -- rarely live longer than twelve years, and since the Civil War has finished, many of them have now found work as loggers, able to level entire woodlands in just a short space of time. Interestingly, another potion similar to Bunyan Solution is used by Dwarves, except rather than causing their male children to grow at the expense of their life expectancy, it instead causing them to shrink, and allows them to live much longer. The resulting, miniscule Dwarves -- who have since become known as Tommyknockers -- are often used for mining, able to reach through impossibly tiny crevices in rock. Unfortunately, one of the side-effects of this potion is psychopathy, and many Tommyknockers that escape the mines go on to become serious pests, causing mischief and damage wherever they rear their golfball-sized heads.
- The Frontier is inhabited by many strange and bizarre life forms, such as the jackalope, the splinterpuss, the hidebehind, and the furred whale (the first furred whale, commonly known as Hefty Jack, was captured by a sailor who went mad after pursuing the creature for years on end). Once sought after for their fur, these days, whale fur coats are dirt-common, and seen as clothing for peasants. Chupacabras are a common problem, and if their venom doesn't kill you, it will surely turn you into one of the Changed, short-lived, vampiric monsters. The Changed lose all their hair, nails, and teeth (their dentures come with or without fangs). Their senses become weakened, and their eyes turn blood-red, and they become highly sensitive to water. Because of their poor vision, they tend to come out at night, when they can see better. Although they require blood to live (typically extracted from prisoners, or from the rare, kind donor, though some prefer to hunt for their food), blood extracted from sorcerers is highly dangerous -- and highly addictive, with wizards' blood being a common find in the magical black market. Although werewolves do not exist in this world, moonwolves are a major problem -- moonwolves are shapeshifting wolves which can take on the appearance and mannerisms of their last human victim, in the hope that this will lead them to their next meal. Housewives are warned that if their husband disappears whilst hunting, only to reappear a week later under a full moon, they would be wise not to let them in, particularly if they have children.
- Another species of animal unique to this campaign are the Clockwork Cattle. Clockwork cattle are cow-like creatures, not made from flesh and bone, but from brass and steel. They are highly valued for their oil, which they produce in plastic udders to keep their young healthy and fully functional. Although these silver beasties appear slow and unintelligent, they are not quite as docile as their mammalian counterparts - when threatened, they can speed across the landscape on their four wheels at a frightening speed, leaving trackmarks and a trail of exhaust smoke behind them. Some male clockwork cattle have also been known to be capable of firing beams of pure light through their horns, which can be directed at the sky to kill birds in the winter months when food is scarce. Because water causes them to rust (and in some cases can cause them to catch fire), their tails can extend to form a kind of umbrella, protecting them from rain.
Submitted September 04, 2018 at 05:27PM by Gulfred59 https://ift.tt/2PE1w9p
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