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View Full Version : Landfall!; the Humans



kopout
2009-06-15, 04:19 PM
Discus the Humans and related concepts here.
Landfall!

Jane_Smith
2009-06-15, 04:20 PM
Um, not to sound mean or anything but.. this is kinda spam-like. Why not just make 1 thread with multiple posts/edits with all the links?

kopout
2009-06-15, 04:23 PM
Because I alredy have a central thread. I made that first and am making these spin offs because it got to confusing (at lest thats what they said, I had no problem following it and it had a sort of lived in feel) Check the link in the OP.

jagadaishio
2009-06-15, 10:26 PM
I think that Colenchor would be spread out across the shallows and the shore where the red is:

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/1865/basemapp.th.jpg (http://img504.imageshack.us/i/basemapp.jpg/)

jagadaishio
2009-06-16, 12:38 PM
Right, I guess I'll start summarizing and listing the various human cultures. I'll probably miss some, so please point them out or post them yourself if I do.

I'll start with Gont.

Back in the day, there was a community of seaborne people even before the floods. They lived as a community of rafts tethered together and with houses built on top. They were a very small village, rarely exceeding 100 people. They had a four-year trade route, going from coastal settlement to coastal settlement to trade.

Once the floods began, the first noticed when they came to a coastal village which was normally a short ways inland, now directly on the water's edge. Many citizens of the village asked to join Gont, fearing rightfully that their village's days were numbered. Gont accepted them; they had always accepted anyone that wanted to join. This was the explosion of Gont's population.

For the next few years this trend continued, going to villages and accepting anyone who wanted to join. About half of the refugees from the previous town would leave at or die on the way to each new one, but their population still steadily grew. Gont started growing scared, though. While they could easily provide enough food to support nearly any amount of mouths, with the rate land was flooding, they would soon no longer have wood for new rafts.

To offset this frightening trend, Gont actively recruited some druids, hoping to find a way to grow more wood out on the ocean. The druids labored on the problem for many years without much success. By the time the last of the land was subsumed by water, many rafts of Gont had grass and lifestock. Druids had even experimented on growing plants with jellyfish-like tendrils to collect nutrients from the water. Unfortunately, this experiment made the plants thoroughly inedible.

It gave them an idea, though.

The druids of Gont had, some time ago, been provided with a sampling of cypress saplings by scouts shortly after the first rise. They decided to work their magic on these, giving them massive poisonous tendrils, reaching deep into the water. The cypress roots grew together, forming a mass of trees with nothing but danger reaching beneath the water. Anything stung would get wrapped up and drawn up into the nutrient-extracting roots above.

And so the ocean groves of Gont were born.

Few animals are easily able to live in the groves. Enough still venture in to provide enough nutrients to the trees, but few have actually adapted to life there. But some, exposed to the transmutative magics of the young groves, did.

A prime example is the grove eel. The grove eel is a fairly intelligent animal covered in a thick, sting-resistant mucus. It has tiny grasping claws in the front, and is principally a scavenger. It eats from carcasses held and being digested by the grove. Occasional, grove eels have been known to drag people under the water in order to get them trapped in a grove with the intention of eating them later.

Because of their unique abilities, pirate ships sometimes train them as pets. They're taught to drag victims under, whether into a grove or just down to drown them. They then fetch valuables off of the people for their masters, and are allowed to feast. These pet eels are also harvested for their unique mucus, which fetches a high price for anyone who will be soon dealing with stinging cniderians.

Gont & the Ocean Groves (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6289569&postcount=98)
Grove Eels (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6292656&postcount=127)

jagadaishio
2009-06-16, 01:02 PM
As the legend goes, back in the day, there was a desert kingdom ruled by the pharoh Elimanishon. As the waters of the first rise began filling his desert, he feared for the safety of his people. He asked his wizard-sages to do two things for him: build a great wall around the lands surrounding his capitol, to hold back the waters, and to give him the means to rule his people forever.

They complied, turning him into a mummy and magicking a great wall into existence around the capitol. When the second rise struck, the wizards raised the walls even higher. When the third rise came about, however, they extended the wall beneath the kingdom and magicked the dominion afloat.

Since then, the culture of Elimanishon's floating desert has changed very little. There are strict population control factors in place, and most of the workforce has been replaced with mindless undead. This leaves the living humans to be nobles and scholars, pampered by a slave caste that carries no ill will or hostility towards their masters.

The city is extremely isolationist. All of its needs are met internally, and the only people that tend to go in and out are explorers bringing news of adventure or hoping to have one there. This is allowed. After all, what is a bored, idle nobility to do all day but listen to stories or go live them if they grow bored enough?

jagadaishio
2009-06-16, 01:19 PM
The wizard's college of Sonomanilon was once the greatest seat for arcane knowledge and education in the world. Its sweeping arches, massive alabaster spires, and glowing crystals marked it as possibly the most beautiful building in the world. When the seas began rising, the wizards did all that they knew how to do: they relied on their magic.

As the waters approached, the wizards magicked into existence a vast invisible dome around their college, impermeable to the coming waters. They magicked into existence a continual air supply within the dome. And then they were lost beneath the waves.

Since then, the college has continued its traditions of quality education, and its massive library of arcane knowledge has not dwindled in the least. Its population has, however. Though it always gets new students every generation, it gets far less than it did before it was lost beneath the waves. There is only a fraction of the college's actual capacity still living there. The college is currently eyeing the new lands hopefully, believing that if they relocated there, they may finally enjoy a large student population again. To this ends, they have sent out a number of wizards of various levels of experience to Colenchor in order to scope out the land for suitable lands to relocate to.

jagadaishio
2009-06-16, 01:36 PM
Colenchor had a dubious origin and continues to exist in that dubious state. Colenchor started as a single ship, the Colenchor, a massive merchant ship captured by a crew of pirates. This crew went to explore the new lands, having heard of them very shortly after their discovery. They saw this as an opportunity for profit and plunder such that the world hadn't seen since the days of their ancestors.

They sailed immediately to the peaks of Ramua but, while the crew was made up of expert sailors, they had never needed to account for shallow sand bars and land before. Because of this, the ship quickly ran aground on the sand bars of the shallow sea in the center of the islands. There it sat, unable to break free. Other ships soon followed, grinding to a halt there in the shallows, before the incoming explorers finally realized that they needed use different styles of boats when approaching shore.

Bridges were built between the ships and parts were cannibalized to build a small settlement shore-side, a long dock stretching between it and the wrecks. The city is now a lawless settlement, frequented by pirates, outlaws, and explorers both skilled and naive. It's a place where you can make your fortune one day and stabbed to death in a bar the next. It's like a cross between Tortuga and Stormreach, with a sprinkling of Swiss Family Robinson thrown on top.

It's also the last stop for adventurers before landfall.

jagadaishio
2009-06-16, 01:39 PM
I'll let you guys post the details for the orders of monks, the remains of the scattered kingdom of humans, and the whole dealio with Caina.

Owrtho
2009-06-16, 03:56 PM
Seems to look good, though I noticed a few errors with the description of Gont. First, the trade root took 4 years. Second, the people who began joining were lost through a combination of deaths before reaching land again and some then departing when they reached it. Third, the cypress saplings were found after the final rise (and the tendriled plants had been developed). They were from the floating swamp. Other than that it seems a rather acurate. Good job (though I'd suggest also putting links to the original post describing Gont, and maybe the eels, since they aren't as spread out as most of the other places).

Owrtho

jagadaishio
2009-06-16, 04:35 PM
Seems to look good, though I noticed a few errors with the description of Gont. First, the trade root took 4 years. Second, the people who began joining were lost through a combination of deaths before reaching land again and some then departing when they reached it. Third, the cypress saplings were found after the final rise (and the tendriled plants had been developed). They were from the floating swamp. Other than that it seems a rather acurate. Good job (though I'd suggest also putting links to the original post describing Gont, and maybe the eels, since they aren't as spread out as most of the other places).

Owrtho

Made the suggested corrections.

kopout
2009-06-16, 08:30 PM
About the floating desert and the magic academy I've been thinking that there would not be that many people making it down to the academy unless the came from a Katang (in a sub) or already had magic training. But the mages that made the desert float where probably not turned out into the wet after, I bet they established a university inside the wall. That would probably be where most wizards get their training.

jagadaishio
2009-06-16, 09:54 PM
About the floating desert and the magic academy I've been thinking that there would not be that many people making it down to the academy unless the came from a Katang (in a sub) or already had magic training. But the mages that made the desert float where probably not turned out into the wet after, I bet they established a university inside the wall. That would probably be where most wizards get their training.

That would be true if it weren't how obscenely isolationist it is. While a select few elite potential apprentices get accepted into the desert, the majority are unwanted. The ones that don't get accepted, though, and don't be fooled, most don't even try, instead catch a sub with a few dozen other prospective students down to the college beneath the waves. They have a larger library of magical resources and more willing instructors anyway.

Vadin
2009-06-16, 10:52 PM
It's not that no one knows about the college beneath the sea, it's just a little too inconvenient for most people with an interest in the arcane arts.

kopout
2009-06-18, 09:42 PM
Some one brought up the idea of a flying city of sorceress. I'm Kopout and I approve this idea. I'm thinking that it can fly because it is supported on many floating discs (the spell) that have had many many meta magics applied to them. The disc-city was a true Tippytopia, Everything done by magic traps. But now generations of inbreeding have left the residents not quit human, they have great magic but their intelligence and over all health has degraded significantly. Not all have faced this fate however, some realized what was happining to their fellow citizens in time to save their grandchildren from similar fates. While many of the sorcerers where to prod to marry into the ungifted a few where willing, now it is their offspring that rule a city of powerful idiots, the greatest arcaneists in the world, and they can barely dress themselves. The sorcerers where now the magetouched.

magetouched

-2 int -2 con +2 char
* Humanoid (Human)
* Medium: As Medium creatures, Magetouched have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.
* Magetouched base land speed is 30 feet.
* "Able to cast all 0-level arcane spells at will as spell-like abilities"
* Magical Aura: a magetouched is treated as having a caster level one greater than they really do for the purposes of spell range and other level-dependent effects.
* Automatic Language: Common. Bonus Languages: Any (not that most of them get any )
* Favored Class: sorcerer

jagadaishio
2009-06-18, 10:05 PM
You should specify "Able to cast all 0-level arcane spells at will as spell-like abilities" instead of just cantrips at will and instead of just caster level one higher, to clear up confusion specify "For the purposes of spell range and other level-dependent effects." I would get rid of the three first level spell-like abilities entire, and reduce the intelligence and charisma modifiers to -2 and +2 respectively. After all, I don't think that even the citizenry of this city would be duller on average than a half-orc. With those changes it should be a clearer, more balanced race.

kopout
2009-06-19, 10:28 AM
Ok, will do.
Edit: Done.