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Leliel
2009-09-09, 10:49 PM
Well, for an upcoming game-basically, a mecha anime in Eberron-the PCs will be using a lot of-and, if I have enough inspiration, will be creating-technology culled from the relics of the Ruestli, a pre-Riedra Sarlonan empire that existed from around the Age of Giants to the height of the Dhakaani empire (Yes. They lived that long).

The interesting thing about their technology is that it was actually alive-everything in their nation was built on the backs of specialized beasts that served as machines and livestock, created by the science of life-shaping. Essentially, a reverse-engineered form of daelkyr flesh-warping.

Despite what the phrase "daelkyr flesh-warping" implies, they weren't an evil or insane culture at all, and in fact came pretty close to utopia in their prime. The way they learned the basics of the Xoriat...art...was that they sprang a trap on a daelkyr during a failed planar invasion and forced him to tell them before chucking him unceremoniously back to the Far Realm. It wasn't even aberrations that led to their demise: The power to play god went to their heads, and led to the creation of an actual deity during a civil war. You can guess how that went. The bizarre half-planar nature of Sarlona is due to the fallout of the weapon they had to use to defeat him.

The thing is, I want the PCs to explore the remaining remnants of the Ruestli civilization (most of them were destroyed by the survivors, so as to prevent the repetition of their mistakes-although the BBEG differed on that point, which is why the PCs even know the Ruestli existed), and I want to show just what kind of a society they were. How they fought, how they lived...you know, their daily lives from an archeologist's perspective.

So, ideas?

And no, they didn't evolve into Deep Ones. Stop thinking of that writer and his attitudes towards mixed races and fish.

quick_comment
2009-09-09, 10:52 PM
Man created the cylons

Admiral Squish
2009-09-09, 11:01 PM
Perhaps they could be the silithar? Or however it's spelled.

I had an ide alike this, but it wasn't for eberron. Trolls, with their incredible regenerative abilities, were incredibly useful to the silithar, back in ancient times. Through a process of pruning, binding, and shaping, trolls could be shaped into a nigh-infinite number of shapes. One process for creating numerous small items: Troll eanters room. Cieling falls down and squishes troll. Troll regerates... but the ceiling is still there. Cleverly-placed holes in the floor drain the troll-mash into shaped forms. Seal. Wait for the forms to finish regenerating, and now you have trollflesh items. Keep the troll's main portion and it regrows a new troll. Repeat process.

seedjar
2009-09-09, 11:13 PM
There's a Dark Sun module that has exactly what you need. I think it was from the 3.5 port... "Wind-Riders of the Jagged Cliffs." It has life-shaping, which is essentially magical bioengineering. There are life-shaper classes, guidelines for life-shaped monsters and items - a great starting point.
Er... duh... that's where your cribbing this from to begin with, isn't it? I knew Ruestli sounded familiar...
~Joe

Leliel
2009-09-09, 11:24 PM
There's a Dark Sun module that has exactly what you need. I think it was from the 3.5 port... "Wind-Riders of the Jagged Cliffs." It has life-shaping, which is essentially magical bioengineering. There are life-shaper classes, guidelines for life-shaped monsters and items - a great starting point.
Er... duh... that's where your cribbing this from to begin with, isn't it? I knew Ruestli sounded familiar...
~Joe

Mainly.

I was skimming the Dark Sun archives on Arthas.org, and I noticed how great the general idea of life-shaping was if ported to Eberron.

Several differences though-the Eberron Ruestli were humans, and had no particular deference to the science beyond a science.

And the fact that they had a completely different culture.

There's also one other thing I'm not quite sure of...I think it had something to do with magic...specifically, draining something...

Meh, it'll come back.

BobVosh
2009-09-09, 11:30 PM
Could you explain "flesh-warping" a bit more? Is it magic? Creatures natural abilities? A mixture? A race created by the epic spell that makes a new creature for the purpose of cheap easy magitech?

Also where do they live? Forest/swamp/mountain? Let us know more about it so we at least know where to start.

AslanCross
2009-09-09, 11:46 PM
As far as I can tell, the Daelkyr were creatures so alien that their very presence corrupted reality and could kill you and/or warp you into something else. It's never really elaborated how the Daelkyr did their business, but the results of the Daelkyr's experiments resulted in a lot of tentacled creatures. (In Eberron, the Illithids, Beholders, and almost all aberrations are created by the Daelkyr.)

Leliel
2009-09-09, 11:59 PM
Could you explain "flesh-warping" a bit more? Is it magic? Creatures natural abilities? A mixture? A race created by the epic spell that makes a new creature for the purpose of cheap easy magitech?

Also where do they live? Forest/swamp/mountain? Let us know more about it so we at least know where to start.

I've been ninja'd, but oh well:

The daelkyr are the humanlike overlords of the Far Realm of Eberron, Xoriat. They are the creators of most aberrations in that world, though a technique called "flesh-warping"; Essentially, taking a normal creature and corrupting it with Xoriat's influence, usually through a magic item.

They mostly live in, well, Xoriat, but on the occasions when it become coterminous with Eberron, they stream through in attempt to turn the planet "beautiful" by their standards.

The ones trapped on the material plane live in the Underdark, but only because the druids trapped them there.

EDIT: The Ruestli on the other hand developed life-shaping through observing how flesh-warping mutated things, and refined it using arcane magic to make it occur in a predictable, controllable manner.

They lived on the now quori (nightmare elemental) dominated continent of Sarlona, though they expanded into the Underdark after they decided that the surface was to competitive.

Fizban
2009-09-10, 05:48 AM
There's a Mongoose Publishing book called Flesh and Blood (of the Encyclopaedia Arcane series) about detailed mechanics for magically crossing pretty much any two creatures. It might be good for giving the players entry level flesh warping, before they learn how to make bio-vending machines.

Examples of flesh-warped everyday convenience items? The Zerg and Half Life 2 seem relevant, though that's not really what they're like. Well you've got your standard adapted mounts for cars, with big hollow chitinous domes to keep the rain off off the passengers. Living nervous tissue forming a network through every home becomes a direct brain-linked telephone grid. Factories become pod-egg thingy growing and storage facilities. Important structures could be towers of chitin and flesh with transparent spots for windows? Funky box shaped organisms that eat food pellets (money) convert it into snacks?

Aside from the cheap flesh analogue of modern technology I'm drawing a blank on any unique "tech" they might use. Usually flesh-warping tends to just go into the people directly and/or be used for big fleshy war machines.

Bigbrother87
2009-09-10, 06:35 AM
It appears to me that you may be able to borrow from the Yuuzhan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuuzhan_Vong) Vong (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Yuuzhan_Vong) as well.

Their society is all organic technology, from their ships to there communications to their sanitation devices. They shape life with knowledge 'handed to them by their gods.' Now, they're actually highly religious zealots, hating all technology, but you can look at the kinds of devices they used, and perhaps how they thought.

Set
2009-09-10, 08:54 AM
Weapons and armor would be grown organically, from a substance like chitin or bone, and, assuming fantasy beasties, could easily be as strong and light as steel or mithral (and wearable by druids).

Armor wouldn't just be grown on a tree, however, it would be grown on the surface of the creature who needed it, and armor of this sort might be sold as a pod shaped like a legless turtle big enough to hold a man. It would open by some means, and pull the nearest person into it, dissolving any items worn or held and secreting the armor over the person's body. (The natives obviously knew to strip down before they opened the pod!) The armor might be permanant, and the pod single-use, or the pod might be re-usable, and the armor might start to decay at the end of the day or something. The armor could even be alive, slowly repairing itself, but draining nutrients directly from the user's body (who takes 1 pt of Con damage each day, or even more for heavier armors or armors requiring more extensive repairs, to nourish and maintain the armor). The pods themselves have been sitting in a state of near starvation for much longer than they were ever intended to go without sustenance, and they might not recognize the 'taste' of adventurers who are swallowed by the clam-like creatures, thinking instead that the adventurer is food and not a 'client...' It might be best to feed them a medium-sized animal or something before stepping in for a suit of organic fullplate... Armor types available would depend on the pod. Some would produce breastplates of chitin. Others would cover the whole body in a scaly leather or hide coating, perhaps even with ornate spines (armor spikes). The best would create fullplate. Chainmail and chain shirts would be right out, as no pods were ever designed able to craft those types of armor.

Super-special armor might be fused to the body of the recipient, and allow the user to ignore armor check penalties (and possibly even becoming a natural armor bonus, instead of an armor bonus!), and could have it's own internal musculature (free Bull's Strength while in the armor), it's own built-in weaponry (big claws), it's own sensory organs, linked to the 'driver's' nervous system (free Alertness feat), etc. Such armor would be the rarest and essentially be a weak organic suit of 'powered armor.' Even ranged utility could exist, with the armor having spines that can be propelled out via compressed gases to strike at range, like light crossbow bolts. Replacing those spines would likely require getting back in the pod, or waiting a day (and possibly losing some Con, as the armor has to draw on the wearer's body for the nutrients needed to replace missing 'bolts'). An Eternal Wand of Lesser Restoration might be a necessary 'battery' to help a wearer survive extended use of such a suit!

Homes and structures could be formed of a coral-like substance created by trained vermin. Hardened mucus-like secretions, that have become crystalline in structure, could be used for transparent elements (windows). Alternately, rodent-sized giant termites could scuttle around, making bricks of mud and straw and saliva, and maintaining the houses of entities that have been dead and forgotten for ages. They would have long since ceased being harmless, and happily devour intruders...

Spider-like creatures could provide cloth goods, with 'Loom Spiders' being Large Monstrous Spiders with engorged backsides that have dozens of spinnarets, allowing them to fill areas with web-spell-like quantities of silk (making them quite dangerous when running wild, millenia after they stopped being domesticated). Their legs could scissor back and forth like the shuttle of a loom, pushing threads into various patterns, and some might still instinctively create whatever sort of cloth goods their ancient ancestors were 'programmed' to make.

'Security' could be brightly colored giant praying mantises. Different regions would have different colored guards, each representing an ancient family or power-group or guild, and the various mantids would fight each other as readily as any other intruders on their specific territories. Some will be further enhanced by their original masters, and have the ability to fire venomous spines at distant foes, spit acid, produce damaging sonic attacks, attack with an extra pair of glaive-like limbs, etc. The scariest will have class levels and guard the ruins of the 'royal palace,' have Int scores of 6 and use Large polearms and shields made from the carapaces of fallen comrades. Most will be Fighters, but some may be Sorcerers or even Adepts, and while they aren't terribly bright, they know only that they are the Guardians who Wait. They've been waiting a long time, but they are patient.

Various engineered creatures would produce and harvest food, from specialized plants that very efficiently turn nutrients, soil, water and sunlight into edibles. Vast shallow lakes would teem with water growing plants such as rice. Special boars, with scything tusks and broad backs would move through the rice paddies, swinging their head from side to side, harvesting the grains, which they would carry to special places and dump into a pile, where it would promptly rot, as no one is left to turn the grain into food. While harvesting, the boars would feed off of the plentiful eels that live in the paddies as well, with their harvesting action and movement in file serving to herd the panicky eels in front of them, with a big feast at the end, with the eels leaping out of the water to avoid the scything tusks of the boars. The next day, the boars will move on to the next paddy, and start all over again, looking forward to a big meal at the end of the day's work...

Other engineered beasts would have long since stopped doing their jobs. The oversized wasps (only size Small, but still bigger than expected) whose job it was to pick fruit and deliver them to special areas have long since lost that programming, and now only harvest fruit for their own use, buzzing in angry drunken swarms as they feast on the pulp of fermented fruit that stews into a potent brew in the hollows of tall trees.

Herons once intended to keep the rice paddies neat and orderly have also abandoned their ancient task, and the rice grows where the rice wants, according to no pattern. The herons continue to perform their secondary task of eating any water creatures that would endanger the crops, but that is something they would have done anyway...

seedjar
2009-09-10, 10:06 AM
Other engineered beasts would have long since stopped doing their jobs. The oversized wasps (only size Small, but still bigger than expected) whose job it was to pick fruit and deliver them to special areas have long since lost that programming, and now only harvest fruit for their own use, buzzing in angry drunken swarms as they feast on the pulp of fermented fruit that stews into a potent brew in the hollows of tall trees.

Nice post! I like this idea a lot. Maybe the wasps were also used to carry product-egg things from factories, and have since regressed to just being generally grabby with anything bulbous and container-like. There's something I just love about thieving creatures. I know 99% of the time they're only there to bone the players, but adding cute animal antics makes it so endearing!
~Joe

Zaq
2009-09-10, 10:21 AM
The interesting thing about their technology is that it was actually alive-everything in their nation was built on the backs of specialized beasts that served as machines and livestock, created by the science of life-shaping. Essentially, a reverse-engineered form of daelkyr flesh-warping.

...No one else read this and immediately thought "Flintstones?"

bosssmiley
2009-09-10, 11:29 AM
From the (sadly incomplete) Book of Gears:


Vermin: Remnants of a Fallen Empire

“Great holes secret are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice. Things have learnt to walk which ought to crawl. . . ”

Ants track by smell and follow trails left by other ants and bees see deep into the ultraviolet spectrum and perceive a beautiful tapestry of gorgeous colours that escape the eye of the man and the mouse. And when dealing with Vermin type creatures that all means precisely nothing, because Vermin in D&D don’t do any of that. It’s not because the scent ability was ”left off ” the Monstrous Ant description, it’s because the Ant described in the Monster Manual genuinely doesn’t have a good sense of smell. It does have Darkvision out to 60 feet like an outsider or a Construct, and that’s not an accident either despite the fact that Earthly ants really demonstrably don’t do that regardless of size.

The Monstrous Scorpion isn’t a super sized scorpion at all. It has a set of abilities which are on the face of it completely bizarre from the context of what actual scorpions do, because it’s actually a living construct created by a long fallen empire for use in war. That’s why it’s immune to hallucinatory poisons and can see in perfect darkness. It’s actually created from biomass by powerful magic and not by the interaction of natural and magical mutation across a thousand generations and a harsh selection process hastened by unpredictable climate and predation by manticores.

The Vermin have a couple of neat things going for them which is why they were created as war machines in the first place:

Mindless - Unlike actual or even giant spiders, the monstrous spider has no mind at all. It cannot be influenced with magic or confused with poisons. It can’t even be detected with detect thoughts.
Brainless - Vermin are subject to critical hits because they have segments and organs, but they don’t have any brains. That means that they can be blinded, but not killed, by decapitation.
Darkvision - Vermin can see even in complete darkness, making them quite useful in cave fighting.
Aggressive - The vast majority of predators will retreat from battles where they are presented with even a chance at serious injury. Yet Vermin fight until they are dead. That’s a really bad plan for an individual or even a species, but it’s great for a battle platform.

Who made the Vermin?

“They did not know that steel marks flesh, and they did not know that flesh does not mark steel. In their ignorance they continued to do one task after another in the old ways. They did not know what we know.”

Vermin come from the before time. The time when metals were not made and words were not written down. It’s quite a feat of construction talent and a testimony to the power and ingenuity of these ancient fleshcrafters that these devices are still running, still attempting to fulfil their programming to this day. The answer is not known in the days that D&D is normally set. They are a product of a bygone age and their origin is a mystery to all but the Aboleth, and the memory fish are being extremely quiet on this subject. And yet, their conspicuous silence is probably more telling than anything they could possibly say. The Vermin were constructed during the days when aberrations ruled the world, and they were quite obviously designed to fight aberrations.

Individual groups of Vermin will usually have one type of aberration that they will not ever attack. It may be an entire race of aberrations (such as Kopru or Neogi), or it may be a specific clan of aberrations (such as the Aboleth spawn of the Great Mother of the Howling Wells, or the Ilithid of the Tallow Halls). In any case, determining the type of Aberration that is completely safe from any group of Vermin can be done by observing the markings on the beast. Extracting that information is a DC 30 Knowledge Nature check.

Vermin eggs persist apparently indefinitely and are produced by the hundred score. A starving Vermin cocoons itself and goes into a state of hibernation so deep that it is essentially mummified. When in the presence of magical auras, the eggs of Vermin progress steadily towards hatching, and the cocoons burst forth their contents. Thus it is not weird or unexplainable for areas that recently have been subjected to incursion by adventurers or mind flayers to spontaneously develop invasions by tiny monstrous centipedes or giant cocooned spiders.

There's more of this in the Book of Gears. Google it; it's free.

Set
2009-09-10, 11:58 AM
There's more of this in the Book of Gears. Google it; it's free.

Oh, that stuff is HOT. Thanks for pointing it out!

Venerable
2009-09-10, 12:01 PM
I want the PCs to explore the remaining remnants of the Ruestli civilization [...] and I want to show just what kind of a society they were. How they fought, how they lived...you know, their daily lives from an archeologist's perspective.

Tough challenge. If the society is 100% organic technology, then most of it will have decomposed eons ago when the civilization died. Dwellings would have been self-contained biological systems providing food, water, light, air, clothing, etc. Even the walls would have been organic. They would leave nothing behind.

Factories would have produced only those things that were either (a) too big for homes to make, or (b) not needed at home. Fighting creatures, perhaps, or vehicles (living blimps?).

Worker species (the wasps suggested previously) that could reproduce might still be around. Perhaps they've changed over the millennia. Alternatively, maybe there are vestiges of old fleshtech that survived not by reproduction, but by assimilating other flesh. After thousands of years, what twisted horrors might these initially benign creations have become?

As for daily life, the only things left for archaeologists to find will be things that were deliberately designed to last (out of stone or metal). So what would a civilization design to last for thousands of years? Libraries? Places of worship? Museums?

AslanCross
2009-09-10, 03:22 PM
Tough challenge. If the society is 100% organic technology, then most of it will have decomposed eons ago when the civilization died. Dwellings would have been self-contained biological systems providing food, water, light, air, clothing, etc. Even the walls would have been organic. They would leave nothing behind.



Depending on the conditions, they could leave fossilized remains.

More recent ruins could probably leave behind carapaces, rib arches, and shells. The image that comes to mind immediately is the Forgotten Capital in FFVII.

EDIT: Also, an Internet for Set. That was a great post.

EDIT 2: Finally, organic tech taken to its logical conclusion: Diebuster. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLZWkvHf3K4) (Spoilers)

Leliel
2009-09-10, 04:31 PM
Tough challenge. If the society is 100% organic technology, then most of it will have decomposed eons ago when the civilization died. Dwellings would have been self-contained biological systems providing food, water, light, air, clothing, etc. Even the walls would have been organic. They would leave nothing behind.

All will be explained below.

Factories would have produced only those things that were either (a) too big for homes to make, or (b) not needed at home. Fighting creatures, perhaps, or vehicles (living blimps?).

Huh. Didn't think of that.

Worker species (the wasps suggested previously) that could reproduce might still be around. Perhaps they've changed over the millennia. Alternatively, maybe there are vestiges of old fleshtech that survived not by reproduction, but by assimilating other flesh. After thousands of years, what twisted horrors might these initially benign creations have become?

Good point, but once again see below.

As for daily life, the only things left for archaeologists to find will be things that were deliberately designed to last (out of stone or metal). So what would a civilization design to last for thousands of years? Libraries? Places of worship? Museums?

Remember what I said about the BBEG wanting not to destroy the relics of their civilization?

He's still around as an archlich, and has been busy with the upkeep the relics he controls. Which, given that he's the last Ruestli, is most.

Well, that, and they liked to build things of religious and historical value out of stone. He has a few of those statues still around.

Venerable
2009-09-10, 07:50 PM
More thoughts on libraries & memorials:

Perhaps the Ruestli stored their cultural memory in fleshtech creatures that are still around. They could make an interesting maguffin: who realizes they exist and hold Ruestli knowledge? Who wants the knowledge they hold? Are the creatures' memories reliable? How do they protect themselves?

As a player, it would be more fun to interact with something that had experienced Ruestli life first-hand instead of listening to a big infodump about how they lived. It's more fun to ask questions of a sentient being than to listen to someone recite what's been chiseled on a rock.

Tiki Snakes
2009-09-10, 08:00 PM
Note on organic tech and decaying;

http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/840/840131/alien_ship_002_1196992514.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Forgotten_City_FFVII.jpg

There is precedent for it still being around, I'd say, :)

Kalirren
2009-09-10, 08:38 PM
Have you ever heard of the Geneforge series of cRPGs? There are a lot of elements in that universe that I think would fit your desires -the basic premise of the games is that there are a race of people led by mages called Shapers who are mage biologists. They can throw magic at living things, mutating them to eventually fit certain functions and purposes their society needs. They can create some forms of life out of pure magical essence. They make and grow living weapons. Their greatest achievements were the creation of an intelligent race of humanoids which they keep in slavery, and the alteration of the human form itself to be better at channeling magic and essence.

Wikipedia I think has an article on the game series, if this sounds good to you. All in all it's a very well thought out and detailed setting, and this is coming from a regular reader of Nature Futures sci-fi. (Nature Futures is a regular column at the back of every issue of the weekly journal Nature, consisting of one page of what real scientists think is intellectually stimulating sci-fi. If you have access via a university or some such, I recommend mining that for ideas...)

warrl
2009-09-14, 05:37 PM
The interesting thing about their technology is that it was actually alive-everything in their nation was built on the backs of specialized beasts that served as machines and livestock, created by the science of life-shaping. Essentially, a reverse-engineered form of daelkyr flesh-warping.

So, ideas?

Shouldn't be too hard. Have a yabba dabba do time.

Edit: I should have read the whole thread...

Agrippa
2009-09-14, 08:14 PM
Note on organic tech and decaying;

http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/840/840131/alien_ship_002_1196992514.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Forgotten_City_FFVII.jpg

There is precedent for it still being around, I'd say, :)

As beautiful as the second picture is, in spite of the graphical limitations of the day, any thing Final Fantasy VII makes me think of my Davros created JENOVA theory. That said there really is precidence for long lasting organic technology in fiction.

Agrippa
2009-09-14, 10:26 PM
I should add that in my opinion necromancy, the magical school of life and death, should cover organic magi-technology. The eptomie of the necromantic arts in my opinion would be the ability to restore or create life on a grand scale. Why make a typical rotting and festering flesh colossus (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/colossus.htm#fleshColossus) when you can make a living flesh colossus out of lab grown parts?