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Over in my brainstorm thread, I've been exploring some creatures of law and chaos, since, IMO, they get a lot less attention than those specific to good and evil (and, indeed, even the LG/CG/CE/LE ones rarely, or half-heartedly, have abilities related to smiting chaos or law, being almost single-mindedly focused on opposing good or evil). But really, this is turning into something that warrants it's own thread, and I'm interested in seeing what others might think would be suitable additions to the law/chaos version of the good vs. evil trope.
Some random thoughts on the Maelstrom, intended to supplement (and not replace or refute) what Todd Stewart has already written about it in The Great Beyond.
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The Maelstrom
Elemental wells are weak points within the maelstrom into which forces and matter from the elemental planes pour through. Alternately, elemental wells are staging grounds from which the maelstrom is siphoning in and devouring the elemental planes that spun off from it, reclaiming what was stolen. Depends on who you ask, really.
Earth wells appear as moon-sized bodies of stone, earth and metal ore, with tumbled mountains and vast riven plains of earth and stone, constantly heaving and shuddering as new material is brought across deep within its core from the elemental plane of earth, pushing all of the current matter higher and further away from the center of the well itself. These upheavals periodically become explosive, and vast quantities of elemental-born earth, stone and ore are thrown free of the mass, to hurtle through the maelstrom, some the size of boulders, others the size of continents. Of these masses, some break down and are absorbed by the maelstrom, while others remain intact, sometimes for centuries, and are settled by a combination of native creatures and visiting life-forms, in some cases, when conditions are right, even being colonized by vast forests of extraplanar flora and alien ecosystems of alien fauna. There does not seem to be any hard and fast rule as to which of these territories will be temporary, and which will endure, but, to the residents of the Maelstrom, this is as it should be, and nothing is predictable. Indeed, some of these rocky outposts have gravity, similar to that of a world many times their size, or less, perhaps more appropriate to their actual size, or none at all, and even the nature of the gravity is unpredictable, with some spherical bodies having traditional gravity that draws all to the center mass, and other ‘floating continents’ having gravity that pulls one down to either the ‘top’ surface or the ‘bottom’ surface, and none at all on the edges.
Water wells appear as globes of water, sometimes covered with ice, other times awash in a zone of steam or mist, but always roiling with powerful currents, as new water pours in at the center of the well from the elemental plane of water. As with the masses of earth and stone that accrue at earth wells, at certain points, the mass reaches some unclear critical state, and vast quantities of water (or shelves of ice) expel into the surrounding Maelstrom, forming ‘sky rivers’ that meander through the chaotic plane, apparently held together by little more than surface tension and their own strange pseudo-gravity. Some water wells have constant ‘streams’ of water flying high into the sky, and twisting off into the chaos, and do not suffer the same constant turmoil and periodic eruptions of excess water, and these water wells are often settled by aquatic creatures, sometimes transplants from other realms, but as commonly forms of proteanic life.
Air wells manifest as powerful storms of wind, often shot through with discharges of lightning, and, like the other wells, are prone to launching forth high-pressure blasts of air, like a ‘river of wind’ wandering off into the maelstrom. Unlike the ‘sky rivers’ that erupt from water wells, these gusts of wind rarely remain cohesive for more than a few miles distance, and dissipate into the background chaos of the maelstrom. Intense static discharges of lightning also tend to shoot up from the heart of the well, but these are even shorter-lived, and usually travel no further than the turbulent funnel-cloud-filled ‘skies’ of the air well, except when they travel ‘up’ one of the streams of wind that occasionally shoot forth.
Fire wells could be mistaken for suns, although smaller and more active. Like other elemental wells, they seem to have a certain maximum size, and ‘excess’ fire pouring in from the elemental plane of fire erupts in massive solar displays that launch forth, sometimes in massive dancing sheets of flame, other times as semi-permanent spheres of fire that meander around the maelstrom. It is known that the fire wells are often heavily colonized by creatures from the elemental plane of fire, that that these ‘solar flares’ are sometimes ‘tamed’ by some unknown process, and used as exploratory vehicles (or weapons…) by unusually intelligent groups of salamanders, who ride around the maelstrom in these huge burning ‘carriages’ of fire, steering them through unknown means.
Regardless of ‘where’ a given elemental plane may be, in respect to the maelstrom, in a grand cosmological sense, the wells locations have little or no organization or relevance to that positioning. An air well might be ‘right next to’ an earth well, even if those two elemental planes are generally thought to be ‘on opposite sides’ of some cosmological configurations.
Thanks to the existence of the elemental wells, one might find a vast continental shelf of stone, fed water from a constant sky river from a nearby water well that it orbits, impacting with its central mass, teeming with alien flora and fauna, and with a stable atmosphere somehow accrued from an air well in times past, and held in place by the pseudo-gravity of the entire mass. The native proteans are of divided thought on these quasi-stable worldlets, drifting within their chaos, alternately seeing them as part and parcel of the wonder of the maelstrom itself, and ultimately impermanent, or as offenses to the ‘pure chaos’ of the maelstrom and unwelcome intrusions of extraplanar elemental matter, attempting to ape the static patterns of life on other planes. Protean choruses are rarely of one mind on anything, and for every protean that regards the elemental wells themselves as wellsprings of creation, draining away the elemental planes and returning them to the primal chaos where they belong, there are those who find the elemental energies and matter around the wells to be intrusive and unwelcome, a pollutant within the ‘pure’ chaos of the maelstrom.
‘Elemental’ wells that lead to the positive and negative energy planes also exist, but they are rarer. The only widely-known positive energy well (also called a ‘life well’) is the World Tree, consisting of a vast spherical darkwood tree the size of a great city, with its own flora and fauna, said to have been formed when a darkwood shield fell into a positive energy well and became infused with wild growth and life, sprouting in all directions, and being possibly the largest individual living organism in the maelstrom, unless one subscribes to the protean theory that the maelstrom itself is alive... Several negative energy wells (called void wells) exist, and are places of perpetual cold and darkness, that the proteans attempt to ‘stop up’ by maneuvering vast stones into position to block them from drawing away from the maelstrom, as if staunching a bleeding wound. As a result, some floating stony ‘islands’ may be less hospitable than suspected, harboring portals to the negative energy plane at their heart…
I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. There are no weak places in the Maelstrom where other planes leak through. It's the other way around. Those are called entropy pools or anarchic fonts. That's where the Cerulean Void and its Protean Keepers dissolve reality.
Since the Void was Before and will still be After, it doesn't need any connection into it from these tumour-planes mortals know as the Great Beyond.
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I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. There are no weak places in the Maelstrom where other planes leak through. It's the other way around. Those are called entropy pools or anarchic fonts. That's where the Cerulean Void and its Protean Keepers dissolve reality.
Since the Void was Before and will still be After, it doesn't need any connection into it from these tumour-planes mortals know as the Great Beyond.
That was the sentence directly after the sentence that referred to them as 'weak spots.' The one that said that those are the points where the Maelstrom is devouring and reclaiming those other upstart planes.
So, yeah, I agree. Except when I don't. It wouldn't be ultimate chaos if there was only one right answer... :)
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Anywho, something about law now. The Formians haven't been, as far as I know, officially converted over, although they are OGL and have been mentioned in the Great Beyond.
Here's an interpretation of a lower-caste Formian that is kinda/sorta like a Worker, but different enough to be relevant (or, better yet, completely replace the worker).
This beetle is larger than most dogs, but flatter to the ground, and its head is eerily humanoid in appearance. Its carapace is a six-sided slab of black chitin the size of a heavy shield, and its six legs end in a pair of blade-like toes, which cling to the walls of the hive like the legs of a spider.
FORMIAN, BUILDER CR 1
XP 400
LN Small outsider (extraplanar, lawful)
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +8
DEFENSE
AC 15, touch 12, flat-footed 14 (+1 size, +1 Dex, +3 natural)
hp 6 (1d10+1); fast healing 1 (hourly)
Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +0
Immune cold, petrification, poison; Resist electricity 5, fire 5, sonic 5
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft., climb 10 ft.
Ranged 2 claws +2 (1d3)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 1st; concentration +1)
At will – mending
1/day – make whole (requires 3 builders each taking a full round action)
STATISTICS
Str 11, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 9
Base Atk +1, CMB +1; CMD 12
[1] Feats Skill Focus (craft - hive)
[3+1] Skills Climb 1 (+12), Craft (hive) 1 (+8), Craft (armorer or weaponsmith) 1 (+5), Perception 1 (+4); Racial Modfier +4 to Craft skills
Languages Formian; hive mind
SQ cower, hive mind, shared skill
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Cower (Ex) A formian builder can pull its legs up beneath its shield-shaped carapace and is treated as taking the Total Defense action, while hiding behind a tower shield. The carapace has hardness 5 and 10 hit points, and if sundered, the builder can no longer take the this action, and its natural armor bonus is reduced to +1 until it is regrown (which takes 24 hours).
Hive Mind (Ex) All formians within 50 miles of their queen are in constant communication. If one is aware of a particular danger, they all are. If one in a group is not flat-footed, none of them are. No formian in a group is considered flanked unless all of them are.
Shared Skill (Ex) Formian builders can coordinate their actions via the hive mind they share. When a builder makes a craft skill check, another formian builder can use Aid Another, regardless of the distance between them, so long as both remain connected to the hive mind. For a check that requires a long action, such as most craft checks, the assisting builder must remain inactive during the entire crafting period required, to provide this assistance. No other checks can be Aided in this manner, although a builder can use the Aid Other action normally.
ECOLOGY
Environment Axis, the planes of law
Organization solitary, pair or work-crew (six)
Treasure standard
Formian builders both erect and maintain the domed hive-cities that the formians occupy, composed of millions of hexagonal panels roughly the size of a heavy shield, and pulled from the backs of the builders and glued into place with thick mucus they secrete. So long as the builder receives proper nutrition, a new backplate hardens into place within 24 hours, and they can spend long weeks gluing a new structure together, from the plates they dispassionately tear off of their own backs. They also move among structures, using saliva to moisten the pre-existing buildings, keeping the plates strong (as they tend to dry out and become brittle without maintenance), and so long as kept up in this manner, the plates are as strong and light as darkwood, making excellent building material (and also being well suited for the warriors to use as shields).
The legs of a builder are uniquely double jointed (and, indeed, the lower half of the leg lacks circulation and is only partially alive), and a builder can walk on four legs, while carrying a heavy burden on its flat back with two of its legs folded up to steady the load, making them also handy beasts of burden. Its legs end in two blade-like ‘fingers,’ which are useful for slicing away their own back-plates, to use in construction, and yet are also clever at finding toe-holds, making the creature a more than competent climber. The bladed lower limbs are also used by the warriors, sometimes as daggers or arrows, other times as spear tips, although the passive builders do not use them to defend themselves, either retreating when threatened, or curling their limbs up beneath their carapace and taking a total defense action (while treated as if under the protection of a tower shield, as their entire body curls up under the carapace), calling all the while across the hive-mind for warriors to repel whatever intrusion has threatened them. If ordered to fight, they slash with the blade like ‘fingers’ at the end of their forward pair of legs, but will not do so in absence of instruction.
A builders thick legs also can be detached, apparently painlessly, and are used as supporting struts and the basis for other works of construction, or even weapons, and formian builders heal at an accelerated rate, regaining a hit point every hour, if injured.
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From the least of the Formians, to an alternative take on the 'Queen,' allowing for the 'starter queen', who doesn't have a bunch of Hit Die or a hive of thousands yet...
Everybody's gotta start somewhere. Even dragons aren't born with twenty HD!
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This slender limbed insectoid is only loosely humanoid in appearance, her lower torso being a bulbous structure bearing four legs that carry her along in an upright stance. Her carapace is adorned with complicated geometric patterns, and her two arms move in equally complicated gestures, as she conjures forth magical power.
FORMIAN, REGENT CR 1
XP 400
Formian regent cleric 1
LN Medium outsider (extraplanar, lawful)
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +4
DEFENSE
AC 18, touch 12, flat-footed 16 (+4 chain shirt, +2 Dex, +2 natural)
hp 9 (1d8+1)
Fort +3, Ref +2, Will +7
Immune cold, petrification, poison; Resist electricity 10, fire 10, sonic 10; SR 11
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft.
Melee 2 claws +2 (1d4)
Special Attacks command 6/day, mental blast 100 ft. (1d6+1 nonlethal + shaken 1 round)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 1st; concentration +3)
At will – detect chaos, lesser confusion
1/day – comprehend languages, detect thoughts
Spells Prepared (CL 1st)
1st – bless, magic weaponD, summon monster I
0 (at will) – detect magic, guidance, stabilize
D domain spell; Domains Law (Inevitable), War (Tactics)
STATISTICS
Str 10, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 15
[0 + 5 + 2 + 0 + 5 + 3 = 15, +2 racial Wis and Cha]
Base Atk +1, CMB +1; CMD 13
[1] Feats Iron Will
[2+1] Skills Diplomacy 1 (+6), Perception 1 (+4), Sense Motive 1 (+7)
Languages Formian; hive mind, telepathy 100 ft.
SQ hive mind, seize the initiative, shared skill
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Hive Mind (Ex) All formians within 50 miles of their regent are in constant communication. If one is aware of a particular danger, they all are. If one in a group is not flat-footed, none of them are. No formian in a group is considered flanked unless all of them are.
Mental Blast (Ex) As a standard action, a regent can barrage the mind of a single target with telepathic gibberish, causing 1d6 nonlethal damage, +1 hit point per Hit Die of the regent, as well as rendering the target shaken for 1 round. This is a mind-affecting effect. When she advances to size Large, the mental blast inflicts 1d8 + HD nonlethal damage, and the shaken effect lasts for 2 rounds. When she advances to size Huge, the mental blast inflicts 2d6 + HD nonlethal damage, and the shaken effect lasts for 3 rounds.
Shared Skill (Ex) A formian regent can use the Aid Other action to assist any skill check, through the hive mind, at any range (although she must be trained in the skill). She cannot Aid other actions in this manner.
ECOLOGY
Environment Axis, the planes of law
Organization hive (one regent and anywhere from one to half a million followers)
Treasure standard
A Formian regent is the only member of a hive able to reproduce, and she needs no male to assist her in this task, laying one egg a day, as long as she is healthy and well-fed. For each member of the hive, the hive-mind grows, and she can draw more power from it. Initially, the strength of purpose and will she draws from the hive-mind grows quickly, but all too soon, she must produce vast numbers of drones for the hive to increase the power of the hive mind, and thus, her own power.
This power is represented by levels in the cleric class, and a starting formian regent has only a single drone, usually a warrior, and a single level in cleric. Every time she doubles the size of her hive, she gains another level in clerical ability, and a regent with only a single level in cleric is almost never seen, as a result of how quickly the very vulnerable fledgling regent either outgrows this stage, or is killed before escaping it. By the time she has produced a little over five hundred drones, which requires the territory and resources to support that size of hive, a regent is a 10th level cleric, and must produce five hundred and twelve *more* drones before she advances to 11th level in clerical ability. At least one formian regent with 20th level clerical ability does exist, and far more terrifying than her divine spellcasting potential, is the fact that she has secured and dominates a territory and the resources necessary to support a hive with over a half million fanatically loyal drones!
In addition to gaining spellcasting ability, the regents size and intelligence also grow as her hive grows, with an 8th level regent (requiring 128 drones) expanding to size Large, and a 16th level regent (requiring over 32,000 drones!) reaching Huge size. In addition to the usual attribute changes associated with these size increases, a Large regent only moves at 10 ft., and a Huge regent can only make a single 5 ft. move per round, and is no longer capable of taking a free 5 ft. step. Due to the increased mental prowess she derives from the hive-mind, the regent also gains an additional point of Intelligence for every 2 levels she gains, in addition to the normal attribute increase gained at each four level increment, so that a 4th level regent (8 drones) has a base intelligence of 12, and can choose to increase one attribute (even intelligence) of her choice.
Regents cannot increase their class level in a more traditional method (gaining no experience for acts of combat, or similar procedures), nor can they increase the number of drones through the Leadership feat or other means (although leaderless drones from a hive that has lost its regent can be absorbed into another hive-mind, this is rarely done except in desperate circumstances, as most regents vastly prefer to only enter communion with drones they birthed themselves).
In addition to vastly increasing her spellcasting ability, the number of drones also increases the range of the hive-mind. At 1st level, she can only communicate with her single drone at a range of five miles, but with each additional level, the radius increases by another five miles. By 10th level, her hive will be able to remain connected to the hive-mind so long as they remain within 50 miles of the regent, and by 20th level, drones can be 100 miles from her, and remain in constant communication through the hive-mind.
The regent is the dominant voice and personality in the hive-mind that links all formians of her hive. While formians of different hives can communicate, or even temporarily benefit from the effects of a shared hive-mind, these instances are unpleasant for all concerned, and formians prefer to remain in sole communication with their own hive.
The nature of the hive-mind, with the regent constantly drawing upon the mental resources of her hive to fuel her own spellcasting, make other spellcasters in a given hive extremely rare.
At 3rd level, the regent can birth her first sub-regent, who is a 1st level adept, and for every level she gains, it gains another level as well, always remaining two levels behind her. Every two levels after 3rd, she births another sub-regent, and each of them remains two levels behind the sub-regent who preceded it, so that a 7th level regent will have a 5th level sub-regent, a 3rd level sub-regent and a 1st level sub-regent. Sub-regents are always adepts, but in place of the summon familiar ability gained at 2nd level, instead gain a single Domain from those available to their regent (although these sub-regents do not need to pick one of the two Domains their regent selected, from those available to her).
At 7 HD, the regent also gains the use of the Leadership feat, and almost inevitably uses this feat to take a spellcasting cohort, to shore up her hive’s limited access to spellcasting. Adept followers may also be selected, but cost twice the usual number of ‘follower’ positions of the appropriate level, so that a regent with a leadership score of 15 could have two 2nd level expert followers, or a single 2nd level adept follower. Despite the nature of the feat, she must birth each of these cohorts or followers normally, and does not ‘attract’ them from an external source.
At every odd level after 7th, a formian regent can spend another feat on improving her leadership abilities, adding another cohort (equal to her level -2, just like her primary cohort) and adding +2 to her leadership score for determining how many followers she can possess. In this manner, most regents choose to shore up the arcane deficiencies of their hives, producing wizards, witches or sorcerers.
Due to the nature of the hive-mind, the loss of drones can cause a regent to suffer temporary negative levels, until those drones are replaced, and cohorts and sub-regents also suffer this effect, losing as many negative levels as the regent lost, until the hive replenishes its numbers. If the regent suffers enough negative levels in this manner that a sub-regent or cohort would be reduced to 0 or less levels, that sub-regent or cohort slips into a coma and dies within eight hours.
Regents can have a number of eggs ‘on reserve,’ already laid, and maintained alive, but not yet quickened to hatch, equal to three times her hit dice, allowing her to quickly replace losses in the field, at the cost of 1 point of temporary Con damage per egg hatched in this manner (it takes only an hour for an egg prepared in this manner to hatch). Normally a regent only quickens a single egg per day in this fashion, and the depletion of her own life-energy recuperates overnight, but in an extreme situation, she may find it necessary to quicken dozens of eggs to replace losses, and replenish her own vitality by spell, potion or scroll of lesser restoration.
Most formian regents are clerics of a nameless LN insectoid deity who provides them with the Artifice, Community, Knowledge, Law and War domains, and whose favored weapon is the scythe, but other choices are known. Other than the mysterious formian deity, represented in artwork by a lustrous purple metal egg, the most common divine choice in Axis is Abadar, followed by a pair of violently competitive hives devoted to Brigh. A single hive devoted to Irori is known to exist, and a wildly improbably rumor speaks of a hive that follows the Prophecies of the Kalistocracy, led by a voluminous regent draped in many dozens of yards of immaculate white linen, embroidered with golden thread, and draped with jewelry of gold, lapis lazuli and black opal.
In the lawful upper and lower planes, celestial and fiendish formian hives exist, remaining lawful neutral, but adapted and changed by exposure to their new territories, and in those places, hives may be devoted to Erastil, Torag (and his dwarven family, particularly Angradd, Dranngvit, Kols and Magrim), Asmodeus and the left-hand path of Diabolism. With the exception of hives following the path of Diabolism, or Torag, who may have drones who individually reverse different Archdevils or members of Torags extended family, drones always follow the deity of their regent.
Of the remaining lawful powers, Aroden was never known to answer the prayers of any regent, and Iomedae, despite her appropriate nature, is shunned by formian regents, for her association with the ‘man-god.’ A prominent and powerful hive devoted to Zon-Kuthon formed, and mysteriously disappeared, leaving no current new regents showing any interest in repeating that experiment.