I'm a moderately new and rusted GM, yet after a measure of repeated watching of Afro Samurai and a long desire to discard medieval tropes I've decided to attempt to conjure forth a Magitek setting with heavy Anachronism and Eastern elements, while yet querying for ideas from the fertile commmunity. Forgive my horrid writing prowess. I ask for criticism and construction of this concept, and aid in making it.
The World is a vast sea of dense, energized gas ascent of a marred and upheaving Waste, mined and wandered by those too primitive or poor of timing to rise on a floating landmass during ascent. The Wastes are poor, and yet above them is a hunger for what they bear. The epicenters of the setting are the "Continent acast of the Pale Sky", vast floating nations and entire empires adrift from the energetic wind, astrewn with advancing and clashing peoples, from the wandering "Nomad Admirals' in vast skycraft that chase storms to bottle, to the trade city and epicenter of my camaign "ANum Suyat" a refinery and shipping city of runic technology, strange sciences and countless races under the golden hands of hte Guilds and the Jackboot of the Orcblooded Rajput and Sagely Elfblood Shedi. Anum Suyat itself is affixed amid a vast, cold fen at a crucial point of passage for wandering skisles and the long haulers and miners of the rich scarred land beneath. With this wealth has come technology, from runic computers to the epitome of ranged warfare, the elecropyrotechnic projector gun or older, cruder revolvers. The city is an admixture of the primitive and pristine, with simple earthen pubs carved into the stones, aside data stores, record shops and passed by magitek road engines. Anum Suyat is rarely hunger, but never truly peaceful, as Guilds contest themselves and eachother for the wealth of pacing ships, the prestige of the finest contracts, the favour of the supposedly impartial guildmasters. A howling and loud city. Cults innumerate and often infused into common life, worshipping nature or the rare cults of prestige, imparting the elements into themselves. Vast temples devoted to such Gods as "Iron", "Rust" "Satiation" and headed by Oracles speaking with the sound of broken glass, and shadows solid eyes that see the stars, and nothing else. The great Pale Sky brings foreigners and intrigue, as Guilds and Gentry attempt to out market or assail the nemesis City State of the Bronze Jari, hiring mercenaries and corsairs to contest the rare alloys and technologies traded along the Windpath currents and the fearsome Elecrum Stormships vast floating fortresses composed of lightning and crewed by immortal golden men.
With the countless warring factions and barely held civility, the various races of Anum-Suyat tend to gather in "Companies", from the Mulyan Dwarven Labour pools, masters of ferroglass and the brawl, to the famed and feared Orcblood Rajput Bersekers, Stoneheart engineers and cyclopean Sages of the Copper Flame, to be of a race is both liberating and stifling, as your blood bears what you're expected, and to contest this flexible, but occasionally binding path is to risk your "Company" and counterraciton whether passive or violent.
AMong the most crucial Guilds are the Guild of Power, sustained by a protected and hidden caste of elemental astomoi, meditating on the nature of power and generating it through will and focus itself, the Rajput Enforcers of Peace, and the Dragon's Scions, representatives of the displaced, and ever moving Guildmasters, Admirals, and rare Cartels, a hereditary caste of Negotiators, accountants, and Duelists famed for their martial arts.
The foreign planes are oft ignored, sans the "Path of One Voice", a zen land of the dead, and the more infernal planes known of Demons, Devils and the warped personas that praise them, called "The Capho".
Lots of cool stuff here. I wonder how easy it is to access some of this magitek (runic computers, skycraft, elecropyrotechnic projector guns) for the player characters? Do they cost thousands or tens of thousands of gold (or whatever currency you're going to use), or would they only be available to those in favor with some guild, or is it fairly easy to pick up the equivalent of a modern smartphone?
If someone falls off a skycraft are they likely facing 20d6 damage, or is there something like Eberron's feather fall tokens (one-use 50 gp items which can cast feather fall) in your setting?
From the names I'm getting an impression of the Indian subcontinent rather than the whole of Asia, or general 'Eastern', despite the mention of samurai. Is that right?
I like it. Were you to bring something like that to my table, I'd certainly be super happy to give it a try. Assuming your players are open to a floating island story of sci-fantasy technology and indian-flavored exoticism I'm pretty confident they should be intrigued.
So the pitch is solid. You said you were looking for folks to help constructing it? What blanks did you want help filling? I'd be more than happy to lend you some brainpower.
All usable. I'm going to suggest the lost skyland of Skylantis. Both grounders and Skylers seek the first and greatest of sky cities. It ruled the world for eons till a malfunction made it fall into the sea. Now it is a magitech maze with intermittent power and a broken main computer.
Rooms of this this humongous artifact can be cherry picked from random dungeons both magic and technological. For example, the pool room could have a pool of strange liquids added.
I meant Strange Fluids, but the time to edit passed.
avr wrote: Lots of cool stuff here. I wonder how easy it is to access some of this magitek (runic computers, skycraft, elecropyrotechnic projector guns) for the player characters? Do they cost thousands or tens of thousands of gold (or whatever currency you're going to use), or would they only be available to those in favor with some guild, or is it fairly easy to pick up the equivalent of a modern smartphone?
If someone falls off a skycraft are they likely facing 20d6 damage, or is there something like Eberron's feather fall tokens (one-use 50 gp items which can cast feather fall) in your setting?
From the names I'm getting an impression of the Indian subcontinent rather than the whole of Asia, or general 'Eastern', despite the mention of samurai. Is that right?
Relatively simple or nonagressive technology is rather cheap, as one of the players has a cellular phone with speed dial and agitating ringtones (A fli phone). More advanced and exotic technologies such as "Wind Walls" (A layer of air between two pillars that function as a motion sensor) or a more sophisticated or multi prediction computer system is moderately more expensive and may require a guild loan, where yet sky ships and light vehicles (And projectors (Usually) are rather cheap and affordable, as is Chakra Manipulation of hte Body or a prosthetic implant.
Grimcleaver wrote: I like it. Were you to bring something like that to my table, I'd certainly be super happy to give it a try. Assuming your players are open to a floating island story of sci-fantasy technology and indian-flavored exoticism I'm pretty confident they should be intrigued.
So the pitch is solid. You said you were looking for folks to help constructing it? What blanks did you want help filling? I'd be more than happy to lend you some brainpower.
Any concepts for the political, mechanical or esoterant, as my players are a squad of Guild Troubleshooters with connections to the "Elven Families" a rather subsumed mafia.
Grimcleaver wrote: I like it. Were you to bring something like that to my table, I'd certainly be super happy to give it a try. Assuming your players are open to a floating island story of sci-fantasy technology and indian-flavored exoticism I'm pretty confident they should be intrigued.
So the pitch is solid. You said you were looking for folks to help constructing it? What blanks did you want help filling? I'd be more than happy to lend you some brainpower.
Thank you, I'd like help with politics and more distant nations, the beasts and fiends of the Pale Sky or even the Wastes beneath, anything at all, from artifice to arcana.
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The grounders are probably adapting to the plasmatic seas. This includes sea weeds, sea serpents, luminous fishmen, ect. Like one of the early Dr Who episodes, there might be animals mostly made of metal and full of energy.
You probably have a history in mind and the people in charge are probably trying to hide it.
Goth Guru wrote: The grounders are probably adapting to the plasmatic seas. This includes sea weeds, sea serpents, luminous fishmen, ect. Like one of the early Dr Who episodes, there might be animals mostly made of metal and full of energy.
You probably have a history in mind and the people in charge are probably trying to hide it.
While not currently encountered, the plasmic seas were rather ancient and present prior to the inhabitation and rise of the continents themselves, however yet biometallic entities do exist and energetic entities do dwell underneath the waste and in the Pale Sky. The floating nations are large enough to contain an entire campaign, with the small floating continents being the size of a small continent, the largest holding entire oceans and simple tectonics.
Amid my ascriptions are a primitive data transfer system using controlled sound emissions, cellular phones and the hereditary berserker Rajput, so ubiquitous that orcbloods are oft considered Rajput immediately (As yet is our wizard).
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