Planar Travel! Githyanki fortress x mid-level party

[true_shinken]

OK, guys. For a few months now, the goal of my players is to find the world's missing archmage. Recently, one of their allies (who once upon a time was a player character) managed to find him. Now the players will have to get to him.
About the archmage: he (a Wizard/Archivist/Mystic Theurge, really) is really paranoid and a genius. My world only has magic up to 6th level - everything above it was sealed many years ago, so even a 7th level spell in a scroll is treated as an artifact. This dude? He managed to recreate 7th level spells by himself. He isolated himself to pursue his studies away from impending war at the heroes' world. The party found his abandoned tower (complete with shield guardian butler and advanced flesh golem 'daughter') and the aforementioned ex-PC used the archamage's lab and resources to find him - or rather, trace his last 'dimensional shifts'.
For now, I know their first stop is a githyanki fortress in the astral plane itself, but I don't know how I can make it interesting, alien-feeling and challenging for them at the same time.
Any advice on the githyanki fortress and next stops on their planar travelling will be greatly apreciated.

Party consists of aasimar Swordsage 8/Paladin 4/Shiba Protector 1, human Artificer 10/Samurai 1/Sohei 1, half-elf Rogue 3/Swashbuckler 3/Dread Pirate 5, elf Warlock 7/Cyran Avenger 5, human Lurk 5/Chameleon 6 and half-giant Psychic Warrior 6/Elocator 5.
The party will probably split up, with only 4 characters going for the planar travel arc.

[dsmiles]

Stuff.

Well, lemme see what I can remember about Githyanki...

1. They have a lich-queen whom they revere as their goddess.
-> Potential plot: Run away from the lich-queen.

2. They have a bargain with red dragons, allowing many of them to ride red dragons. In exchange for what, I don't know.
-> Potential plot: Run away from dragon-riding army of githyanki.

3. They live in the Astral Plane. That's pretty cool.
-> Potential plot: Astral travel is pretty dangerous in its own right. All kinds of things want to sever your silver cord and eat your astral body.

4. That's pretty much all I got. My memories of the Gith are sketchy, at best.
-> Potential plot: Ask somebody else for help. :smalltongue:

[LOTRfan]

Have the Githyanki be embroiled in a war with both the Githzerai and the Mindflayers.

Also, Dragon #309 and Dungeon #100 featured the Githyanki heavily.

[true_shinken]

Have the Githyanki be embroiled in a war with both the Githzerai and the Mindflayers.

Also, Dragon #309 and Dungeon #100 featured the Githyanki heavily.

Hmmm, I'll try to track those issues down. Thanks.

[LOTRfan]

Also, it turns out that the first Githyanki queen made a deal with Tiamat's consort, Ephelomon. In exchange for Gith eternally serving Tiamat, the red dragons and the Githyanki would work together.

Not sure if this helps, but I found it interesting.

[hamishspence]

Planar Handbook has stats for Vlaakith the Lich Queen in 3.5- and I think they were derived from the Dungeon stats.

[Starbuck_II]

Githyanki have a level limit. If they go beyond (14?), the Lich queen devours them.
Only rogue ones can exceed that limit (and they are hunted than).

[LOTRfan]

Why can rogues exceed the limit?

[hamishspence]

Because there's no lich queen around to eat them?

I think it was

"they reach the relevant level, Lich queen summons them to be devoured, those who choose to flee, can go higher levels, since they have the opportunity to".

EDIT: From Manual of the Planes, it's "more than 16 character levels" that does it. Though in Exemplars of Evil, there were some githyanki of slightly lower level that fled Vlaakith.

[jiriku]

The level cap is 16. You can make some very fun Githyanki fighter/swordsage/master of nine builds with that.

Githyanki fortresses are built without a defined up or down, since the astral plane is a null-gravity zone. They're also built in exotic locales, like the petrified body of a dead god or a clump of primal matter dragged in from another plane. towers and chambers and galleries exist at all angles from one another, all crazily embellished and ornate. Play up the baroque githanki style of decoration with objects so ornate that it's difficult to determine their function, and elaborate galleries that must be navigated by spiralling about and constantly changing your subjective gravity.

Githyanki astral ships (they have astral ships) are built as mirrors of themselves, with decks and masts projecting both up and down from the "waterline" of the ship. They're also fast, armed to the teeth, and protected against magical assault.

Githyanki opponents will vary, depending on whether you use the XPH. I have a lot of stock githyanki opponents lying around, if you'd like me to post them.

[Logalmier]

Why can rogues exceed the limit?

Rogues as in rebel Githyanki, not Githyanki with levels in the rogue class.

[LOTRfan]

Rogues as in rebel Githyanki, not Githyanki with levels in the rogue class.

Oh, well... now I feel like an idiot. :smallredface:

Definitely play up the Red Dragon pact. It makes things a lot more challenging.

[Trundlebug]

Not sure how accurate this fluff is, but I recall Githyanki are also avid Astral scavengers. Floating around on their barges looking for displaced debris. They could have or come into contact with an item owned by said archmage, or one that will help them get to wherever he is.

Also the archmage (since he's so awesome) may have made his own color pool, that's buried in the depths of a god-body gith fortress and not a common free spawning one.

Also a chance to at least feature an astral dreadnought?

[true_shinken]

Also a chance to at least feature an astral dreadnought?
I was planning on that, yes. ^^

Any thoughts on fun stuff I could do with the astral plane itself?
Also, since time does not pass in the astral plane, how do githyanki age? Are they raised in the material plane and then taken to the astral plane when they mature or do they cover whole cities in the 'time bubbles' seen in Neverwinter Nights 2?

[Raenestro]

I'm currently running a campaign that includes githyanki making raids on the prime in search of a lost artifact. To give things the alien feel, I went with the "the astral plane contains the petrified corpses of dead gods" thing. The raids are being lead from a fortress called Fury's Heart, which is a massive, stone heart. Eight towers correspond to the major blood vessels (superior & inferior vena cava, aorta, pulmonary artery, and 4 pulmonary veins), and four vast chambers within the stone correspond to the atria and ventricles.

[Runestar]

I recall an old dungeon adventure (3.0) for lv13 PCs. Has them exploring this astral castle belonging to a githyanki wiz15/cleric2 (the story was that he surrounded his castle in an astral storm to hide from the lichqueen). Has a succubus cohort, and you also bump into githzerai monk8 and their sorc13 leader.

The castle is quite fully fleshed out, IIRC, and it shouldn't take much work to convert them to 3.5. Does this ring a bell with anyone? I loaned all my past issues to my friend many months back and never really bothered to get them back from him, so I can't check at the moment. :smalltongue:

[Eldan]

I was planning on that, yes. ^^

Any thoughts on fun stuff I could do with the astral plane itself?
Also, since time does not pass in the astral plane, how do githyanki age? Are they raised in the material plane and then taken to the astral plane when they mature or do they cover whole cities in the 'time bubbles' seen in Neverwinter Nights 2?

Canonically, they build fortresses on the prime, where they hatch their eggs, raise their young (which also has the advantage that they develop normal bodies, instead of being stunted by the weightlessness of the Astral) and raid the countryside. Then they go back to the astral. Which also gives them fantastically long lives: they only age when out raiding.