Xallace
2009-09-15, 07:07 PM
DM info:
The world was at war. An assassination by a secret group caused two nations to take up arms against each. Soon each of their allies joined, and their allies joined, and eventually... the whole of the prime material was locked in bloody conflict.
It was in the growing destruction that General Phaedrus saw opportunity. Taking around 2000 of his nation's best men, women, and their families -all loyal followers- and relocated to the evacuated Dataga City in the country of Enbalm. It was here that his wizards toiled for months on the secret project.
Phaedrus believed that the world would do well under his rule. He felt that now was the time to strike, while everyone was preoccupied and low on resources. But a military strike would not do. No, the General had been an adventurer once- even saved the world a couple times. He knew that any show of might would end with his head on a pike, probably at the hands of some rag-tag group of nobodies.
So Phaedrus had a brilliant idea: a mass enchantment spell. When his project was complete, he'd just press a button and *poof.* Instant ruler of the world.
The day was upon them. Phaedrus' followers were gathered into the main square of the city, a huge screen having been erected there for Phaedrus to address his people.
But as Phaedrus finished his speech and put the last elements in place for the ritual to be completed, something went wrong. The magicks altered somehow. The broadcast interrupted. Everything went silent.
On that sunny summer afternoon, in Dataga City, the city that had escaped the magical apocalypse that ended the great war, a fisherman turned to his wife. His eyes showed no love, and when he spoke it was as though speaking to a perfect stranger.
"Where are we?"
That was five years ago.
Updated DM Info:
I imagined Dataga City was one of the first cities evacuated when the war broke out; being a manufacturer of war machines, it was a solid initial target.
Now, "half of the city"- that is, the half on the South side of the river that cuts through Dataga- was very old to begin with. A historic district, if you will, and one that required constant upkeep. So when the population left, and there was nobody around to take care of it, it just started falling apart. If we say the war started ~10 years before the cataclysm (this was a freakin' big war), I'd say that gives plenty of time for natural decay to set in.
In contrast, the North side of the river was much newer, and much more stable. This is where the 2000 made their residences, and still do today.
I imagine the attack on Dataga involved some kind of summoner's rampage, which would account for all of the monsters. Not urban beasts, they retreated to the mountains.
Some distance from the city - far enough that nobody has gotten that far yet, on land anyway - there is a ring.
It completely surrounds the city.
Careful analysis with sufficiently precise instruments will reveal that the ring is merely where the surface of a sphere intersects the surface of the ground.
In effect, a humongous ice-cream scoop lifted Dataga and the surrounding area out of its world and deposited it in a similar-size hole in another world - or maybe another time. The city is appropriately leveled and at sea level (so the boats are in the water and the city isn't, while the walls that were vertical before the change are still vertical), but it is not necessarily the case that anything else matches very well.
In particular you're likely to have some interesting cliff-faces, new lakes where streams can no longer flow across the edge and maybe drained lakes because they are no longer enclosed on one side. Roads from the city will go to the ring and just stop. Animal trails that cross the ring will be post-event on at least one side. If there are any roads outside the ring, they will also just stop where they intersect the ring.
Outside the ring can be:
* The same sentient races, with more primitive technology - the radios actually work just fine, it's just that there's nobody else out there with radios
* Other sentient races, with whatever technology - and they probably don't speak Common.
As for flight magic, well... it's not reliable enough and doesn't last long enough to get out over the ocean, and there's always the fear of flying monsters in the mountains.
And as rail-roady as all this might sound, I'm using it to keep the NPCs in check more than the PCs. If and when the PCs decide to venture beyond the city, I want I reason for why nobody else has been able to.
Magical apocalypse caused by the other countries is what I was thinking; accounts for why the spell was disrupted and why divinations don't work (lingering magical energy interfering), also for why no-one has come to save them in five years.
Player info:
"Not a single one remembers why we're here. Over the five years since "awakening" the people of this city have tried to rebuild their lives from the ground up. Some have had more success than others; certain things trigger memories long lost, and to this day our people are still discovering things about themselves. Skills they had, people they knew. We've achieved a sense of "normalcy," a day-to-day grind that we've settled into and be happy with.
But there's nagging worry at the backs of our minds. When we remember our skills, we can't remember why we had them. When we remember a face, we can't remember our relationships with them. Why are there so few of us in a city this size? Why is half the city decaying? How did we get here? Why?
The people who explore 'the Maze' - as we've called it - report inoperative war machines. Some of us know how to fix them. Why were we building these things? Were we at war? Are our enemies still out there?
What's more, we're trapped here in our city - if it is our city. The endless sea on one side, and we have nothing but fishing vessels. On all other sides stand forested mountains and rocky crags that serve as home to all sorts of horrible monsters. And worse even still, any attempts to reach the outside - if there is an outside - be they magical or mundane, through scrying or radio broadcast, has been met with failure. As far as this city is concerned, we are the last remaining community on the planet. We are safe here, for now at least. Whatever god forsook us is long gone, wrath appeased or simply forgotten. We are alone, but we are thriving. " - Thomas Fisher, The Last City in the World
City Info:
Tall mountains, thick forests, dangerous monsters. Not impassible per se, but it's really difficult and dangerous. As for blimps and planes, there is an old airbase out past the Old City, but the planes and airships are nothing but scrap. While the engineers could probably work something up, the airbase was on the edge of the forest, which has started to grow over. So between monsters and non-working aircraft, hardly anyone's really considered the airbase worth fighting for.
The Maze is the nickname for a massive building in the South-West end of the industrial sector, near the mountains and about as far from the Residences as you can go without actually leaving the city. There are several things of interest about this building:
First, its sheer size. The Maze stands an imposing 5 stories tall, including a massive hangar space on the ground level. But beneath that is a network of tunnels and rooms that lead to all sorts of crazy things, like war machines and other strange experiments.
Second are the experiments. Inoperative machines, some half-finished, some seemingly prototypes, other fully-finished; all are found in varying conditions around the complex. Some of them are very clearly war machines, but others are less obvious as to their purpose. And while nearly every engineering lab contains some magical equipment, some rooms appear to be purely for magical rituals.
Third, a good chunk of the inhabitants seem to have skills relating to work in this building.
Unfortunately, the lower parts of the building is becoming increasingly overrun with monsters (be that because of the close proximity to the forest or because of the nature of the building, no one is sure). Combined with the labryinthine design, this has resulted in not a single person ever making it very far in.
So I've been thinking of a "Fisher's Guild" having been set up in the city. Originally it was just a group of citizens who had remembered boating skills, but very quickly gained the self-appointed mission to provide food for the city, keep the fish supplies steady (policing possible over-fishing), and keep pollution out of the water (rather preemptively, I might add).
Eventually the Fisher's Guild planted themselves squarely in the docks/seaport districts, making their homes out of the towers of cargo containers (I dunno, I think it's awesome). After their discovery of a desalination plant on the river's South shore, the Fisher's Guild took the responsibility of keeping it running.
Some of the inhabitants are a little worried that this increasingly separatist group is taking control of the main food and fresh water supplies for the city, but nobody can deny that they're doing a good job.
This strangely named mansion stands proudly in the center of Old City, oddly untouched by all of the decay around it. A massive gothic manor, this building is surrounded by a graveyard and a high stone wall. Even with the old architecture of the surrounding buildings, Crumplebottom is very out of place.
What's more, Crumplebottom Manor is rumored to be severely haunted. Where this rumor got started is anyone's guess, as not a single person has ever been in inside (that anyone knows of or is willing to admit, at least). Lack of interest in exploring it can be chocked up to lack of necessity in the last few years.
DM INFO:
The name and the rumors about this place were fabricated by JG Dobinspeck, a wizard and one of the engineers on Phaedrus' spell. By soem miracle, she still remembers. Boarding herself up inside Crumplebottom Manor, Dobinspeck has been trying to figure out exactly what happened on the day of the cataclysm, and if there is any way to reverse it. At the same time, she blames Phaedrus for the whole ordeal, claiming that it was his impatience that led to the situation everyone's in.
The world was at war. An assassination by a secret group caused two nations to take up arms against each. Soon each of their allies joined, and their allies joined, and eventually... the whole of the prime material was locked in bloody conflict.
It was in the growing destruction that General Phaedrus saw opportunity. Taking around 2000 of his nation's best men, women, and their families -all loyal followers- and relocated to the evacuated Dataga City in the country of Enbalm. It was here that his wizards toiled for months on the secret project.
Phaedrus believed that the world would do well under his rule. He felt that now was the time to strike, while everyone was preoccupied and low on resources. But a military strike would not do. No, the General had been an adventurer once- even saved the world a couple times. He knew that any show of might would end with his head on a pike, probably at the hands of some rag-tag group of nobodies.
So Phaedrus had a brilliant idea: a mass enchantment spell. When his project was complete, he'd just press a button and *poof.* Instant ruler of the world.
The day was upon them. Phaedrus' followers were gathered into the main square of the city, a huge screen having been erected there for Phaedrus to address his people.
But as Phaedrus finished his speech and put the last elements in place for the ritual to be completed, something went wrong. The magicks altered somehow. The broadcast interrupted. Everything went silent.
On that sunny summer afternoon, in Dataga City, the city that had escaped the magical apocalypse that ended the great war, a fisherman turned to his wife. His eyes showed no love, and when he spoke it was as though speaking to a perfect stranger.
"Where are we?"
That was five years ago.
Updated DM Info:
I imagined Dataga City was one of the first cities evacuated when the war broke out; being a manufacturer of war machines, it was a solid initial target.
Now, "half of the city"- that is, the half on the South side of the river that cuts through Dataga- was very old to begin with. A historic district, if you will, and one that required constant upkeep. So when the population left, and there was nobody around to take care of it, it just started falling apart. If we say the war started ~10 years before the cataclysm (this was a freakin' big war), I'd say that gives plenty of time for natural decay to set in.
In contrast, the North side of the river was much newer, and much more stable. This is where the 2000 made their residences, and still do today.
I imagine the attack on Dataga involved some kind of summoner's rampage, which would account for all of the monsters. Not urban beasts, they retreated to the mountains.
Some distance from the city - far enough that nobody has gotten that far yet, on land anyway - there is a ring.
It completely surrounds the city.
Careful analysis with sufficiently precise instruments will reveal that the ring is merely where the surface of a sphere intersects the surface of the ground.
In effect, a humongous ice-cream scoop lifted Dataga and the surrounding area out of its world and deposited it in a similar-size hole in another world - or maybe another time. The city is appropriately leveled and at sea level (so the boats are in the water and the city isn't, while the walls that were vertical before the change are still vertical), but it is not necessarily the case that anything else matches very well.
In particular you're likely to have some interesting cliff-faces, new lakes where streams can no longer flow across the edge and maybe drained lakes because they are no longer enclosed on one side. Roads from the city will go to the ring and just stop. Animal trails that cross the ring will be post-event on at least one side. If there are any roads outside the ring, they will also just stop where they intersect the ring.
Outside the ring can be:
* The same sentient races, with more primitive technology - the radios actually work just fine, it's just that there's nobody else out there with radios
* Other sentient races, with whatever technology - and they probably don't speak Common.
As for flight magic, well... it's not reliable enough and doesn't last long enough to get out over the ocean, and there's always the fear of flying monsters in the mountains.
And as rail-roady as all this might sound, I'm using it to keep the NPCs in check more than the PCs. If and when the PCs decide to venture beyond the city, I want I reason for why nobody else has been able to.
Magical apocalypse caused by the other countries is what I was thinking; accounts for why the spell was disrupted and why divinations don't work (lingering magical energy interfering), also for why no-one has come to save them in five years.
Player info:
"Not a single one remembers why we're here. Over the five years since "awakening" the people of this city have tried to rebuild their lives from the ground up. Some have had more success than others; certain things trigger memories long lost, and to this day our people are still discovering things about themselves. Skills they had, people they knew. We've achieved a sense of "normalcy," a day-to-day grind that we've settled into and be happy with.
But there's nagging worry at the backs of our minds. When we remember our skills, we can't remember why we had them. When we remember a face, we can't remember our relationships with them. Why are there so few of us in a city this size? Why is half the city decaying? How did we get here? Why?
The people who explore 'the Maze' - as we've called it - report inoperative war machines. Some of us know how to fix them. Why were we building these things? Were we at war? Are our enemies still out there?
What's more, we're trapped here in our city - if it is our city. The endless sea on one side, and we have nothing but fishing vessels. On all other sides stand forested mountains and rocky crags that serve as home to all sorts of horrible monsters. And worse even still, any attempts to reach the outside - if there is an outside - be they magical or mundane, through scrying or radio broadcast, has been met with failure. As far as this city is concerned, we are the last remaining community on the planet. We are safe here, for now at least. Whatever god forsook us is long gone, wrath appeased or simply forgotten. We are alone, but we are thriving. " - Thomas Fisher, The Last City in the World
City Info:
Tall mountains, thick forests, dangerous monsters. Not impassible per se, but it's really difficult and dangerous. As for blimps and planes, there is an old airbase out past the Old City, but the planes and airships are nothing but scrap. While the engineers could probably work something up, the airbase was on the edge of the forest, which has started to grow over. So between monsters and non-working aircraft, hardly anyone's really considered the airbase worth fighting for.
The Maze is the nickname for a massive building in the South-West end of the industrial sector, near the mountains and about as far from the Residences as you can go without actually leaving the city. There are several things of interest about this building:
First, its sheer size. The Maze stands an imposing 5 stories tall, including a massive hangar space on the ground level. But beneath that is a network of tunnels and rooms that lead to all sorts of crazy things, like war machines and other strange experiments.
Second are the experiments. Inoperative machines, some half-finished, some seemingly prototypes, other fully-finished; all are found in varying conditions around the complex. Some of them are very clearly war machines, but others are less obvious as to their purpose. And while nearly every engineering lab contains some magical equipment, some rooms appear to be purely for magical rituals.
Third, a good chunk of the inhabitants seem to have skills relating to work in this building.
Unfortunately, the lower parts of the building is becoming increasingly overrun with monsters (be that because of the close proximity to the forest or because of the nature of the building, no one is sure). Combined with the labryinthine design, this has resulted in not a single person ever making it very far in.
So I've been thinking of a "Fisher's Guild" having been set up in the city. Originally it was just a group of citizens who had remembered boating skills, but very quickly gained the self-appointed mission to provide food for the city, keep the fish supplies steady (policing possible over-fishing), and keep pollution out of the water (rather preemptively, I might add).
Eventually the Fisher's Guild planted themselves squarely in the docks/seaport districts, making their homes out of the towers of cargo containers (I dunno, I think it's awesome). After their discovery of a desalination plant on the river's South shore, the Fisher's Guild took the responsibility of keeping it running.
Some of the inhabitants are a little worried that this increasingly separatist group is taking control of the main food and fresh water supplies for the city, but nobody can deny that they're doing a good job.
This strangely named mansion stands proudly in the center of Old City, oddly untouched by all of the decay around it. A massive gothic manor, this building is surrounded by a graveyard and a high stone wall. Even with the old architecture of the surrounding buildings, Crumplebottom is very out of place.
What's more, Crumplebottom Manor is rumored to be severely haunted. Where this rumor got started is anyone's guess, as not a single person has ever been in inside (that anyone knows of or is willing to admit, at least). Lack of interest in exploring it can be chocked up to lack of necessity in the last few years.
DM INFO:
The name and the rumors about this place were fabricated by JG Dobinspeck, a wizard and one of the engineers on Phaedrus' spell. By soem miracle, she still remembers. Boarding herself up inside Crumplebottom Manor, Dobinspeck has been trying to figure out exactly what happened on the day of the cataclysm, and if there is any way to reverse it. At the same time, she blames Phaedrus for the whole ordeal, claiming that it was his impatience that led to the situation everyone's in.