The Source of Residuum

[Ell975]

I am designing a city to act as the setting for a stretch of campaign.My idea for the city is a magitech/steampunk setting, influenced by Paul Shapera's music and China Mieville's Bas Lag novels crossed with Eberron.

Residuum is going to be the main power source for the city, both on an industrial and a personal scale. I need ideas for how this much residuum could be generated and I was hoping you guys could be a source of inspiration. Thanks.

[ryguysolis]

You could put your city on the ruins of an ancient civilization. Commoners or slaves (depending on how dark you want to go) mine the upper levels of the undercity for magical trinkets which are destroyed for their residuum while adventuring parties explore the deeper, more dangerous regions and return with more powerful magic items and artifacts which they can sell for a high fee to the "powerplant". There are additional "mines" outside of the city which are less controlled and more dangerous, but the rewards are even greater. Be careful though, raiding parties often attack the caravans leading from the mines to the city, and nobody pays for goods not delivered. If you want to ensure you get your money, you'll probably want to secure its passage yourself

Cheers!

[Ell975]

You could put your city on the ruins of an ancient civilization. Commoners or slaves (depending on how dark you want to go) mine the upper levels of the undercity for magical trinkets which are destroyed for their residuum while adventuring parties explore the deeper, more dangerous regions and return with more powerful magic items and artifacts which they can sell for a high fee to the "powerplant". There are additional "mines" outside of the city which are less controlled and more dangerous, but the rewards are even greater. Be careful though, raiding parties often attack the caravans leading from the mines to the city, and nobody pays for goods not delivered. If you want to ensure you get your money, you'll probably want to secure its passage yourself

Cheers!

I love the idea, and I may even implement it into a game at some point, but unfortunately it doesn't quite fit my idea of the city. The city is very focused on moving forward, and so relying on the ruins of an older civilization seems like something this city would avoid.

But still an excellent concept.

[ryguysolis]

If you like the general idea but not the specifics you could change it from underground, ruined civilization to another plane. The powerplant controls a gate and adventuring parties go in etc...

Cheers!

[Ell975]

If you like the general idea but not the specifics you could change it from underground, ruined civilization to another plane. The powerplant controls a gate and adventuring parties go in etc...

Cheers!

Hmm, using another plane gave me an idea. This is a rather industrial approach to the problem. The feywild is more magical than the mortal plane, so if you had small portals to the feywild, magic would diffuse across. If you could find a way to crystallize the magic, you would have a renewable source of residuum.

The only problem is how to crystallize it.

[SiuiS]

Hmm, using another plane gave me an idea. This is a rather industrial approach to the problem. The feywild is more magical than the mortal plane, so if you had small portals to the feywild, magic would diffuse across. If you could find a way to crystallize the magic, you would have a renewable source of residuum.

The only problem is how to crystallize it.

Custom ritual? Even have different grades of residuum based on trade secret formulae.

[hewhosaysfish]

Maybe I'm just confused but I don't believe enchanting magic items actually needs residuum. The ritual is Arcana based so by default it would require alchemical reagents. You can use residuum instead of these reagents (as you can use residuum in place of any ritual component) but it's not necessary.

It could be possible that the only source of residuum is through disenchanting magic items (either with the ritual or some natural alternative such as those magic-eating rust monsters).

[Iron Penguin]

How about acquiring residuum through killing magical creatures of some kind - either native beasts with some sort of innate magic or extraplanar/aberrant/fey creatures? Battery farming dragons, keeping them docile with drugs or magic, then slaughtering them and rendering them down for their residuum, with the renderers making a bit of money on the side selling the hide, flesh etc. On the right scale, it could be a pretty industrial process. It feels suitably New Crobuzon-esque to me...

[Leewei]

I like the idea of mining -- that's an activity that is closely tied to industry, and which thematically works very well with steampunk. It also gives you a very dungeon-like structure in which to hold an occasional adventure.

As far as the residuum's origins, I'd suggest it's from a not-quite-dead primordial, buried far beneath the city. The creature is a titanic creation from a past age, forged from molten stone, having bones laced with enchanted silver. The miners delve into the form of this inhuman colossus, extracting materials to sell in the city, overhead.

Recently, these miners struck a rich vein. Mysteriously, while the tunnels are sparse and well-framed, there has been a rash of earthquakes. Some miners have gone missing as well ...

[Grinner]

I love the idea, and I may even implement it into a game at some point, but unfortunately it doesn't quite fit my idea of the city. The city is very focused on moving forward, and so relying on the ruins of an older civilization seems like something this city would avoid.

But still an excellent concept.

It doesn't necessarily need to rely on the ruins in and of themselves...

There's a game called Torchlight which follows an idea similar to this. Beneath the city of Torchlight, there's a set of mines where Ember is harvested. Ember, being an alchemical catalyst or something like that, is highly prized for the purposes of enchantment. What the citizens of Torchlight don't realize is that Ember eventually corrupts everything it touches. In fact, their fair city is built atop the ruins of another city (which became the mine), and that is in turn built atop another city, edit: all of which were brought low by Ember contamination. Thus our hero begins on his quest to stop technological advancement.

[Christopher K.]

One of my friends had a setting where Residuum was extracted via gigantic mechanical spires, which were large needle-like structures that "poked" into another plane. Different planes offered different "flavors" of residuum.

One event he talked about for the setting was a disastrous attempt to build a spire that entered the Far Realm, which produced rampant poisonous fungal growth a la Nausicaa.

[Arkhosia]

Maybe large golems mine for precious ores such as copper and silver, which they return to a large complex where wizards imbue the ores with magic to become residiuum. The closest to gold (without being actual gold-that's set aside for coins) the materials are, the more power the residiuum supplies.

[Yakk]

The source of the residuum mine is a state secret. Huge mining machines are sent into the mountain, and out comes residuum. Only a few elite operate the machines, deep in the dark, with the help of blind automata.

Even the raw material produced is a secret. The (secret) ivory white ore is distilled at the college and turned into the powder that powers the empire.

Now, what is really going on is that they have number of planar portals, and on the other side is a plane that seems to be nothing but a uniform, space-filling, alabaster substance. The mining tools grind, chip, and drill away at this substance, and the resulting ore is shipped out of the mountain.

This gives the empire a huge advantage, and the royalty their remaining hold on power (theirs are the mines). Secret police track down those who attempt to look into it, and kill/disable/discourage/brainwash them as needed.

Nearby empires are always poking around, and even the college (who knows about the ore, but not where it comes from) wouldn't mind knowing more.
The substance is the seal placed on the 9 hells to trap Asmodeus after he killed a god (to the level that nobody remembers who the god was) and took its power. The civilization is boring a hole into the prison that keeps the god-slayer trapped, and has no clue that is what they are doing.

Now, the seal is very large (very, very large), so there would be no immediate harm...

The empire has no clue that this is the case. Some suspect or know that it is distilled divine will that they are mining.
Agents of Asmodeus help the empire from the shadows, and help the secret police who keep the source of the empire's power secret. The secret police are aware that there is some shadowy organization shadowing them, and is attempting to figure out who they are.

In the medium term, there are multiple portals, and the agents of Asmodeus are trying to work out which one is where, and encourage production at the ones that will bring them closer to cracking the seals. At the same time, they are improving the mining technology of the empire, so the empire will mine faster: Once they have worked out which one is at the apex of the arch, they plan to sabotage the other portals to weaken the arch.

Most of the agents do not know that this is the goal: which is good -- the last thing Asmodeus wants is for it to be known that mortals are cracking the prison open. There are layers of cover[1]. They are simply tasked with goals from on-high. There are cells that are planning the sabotage, others that are diligently working on improving the empire's mining technology, others that are helping guard the secrets of empire.

A final plan involves setting off mines within the seal: ideally all of them at the arch, but even then only in desperation (because enough mining will solve their masters problem, and the master is patient).

Footnote [1]
Cover stories in layers. Each one is intended to be convincing enough, and the one under it "less friendly", so a justification for why they used the previous cover story seems reasonable. The important part is the residuum must flow:

First, the fact that the organization is an Asmodean one is secret, sometimes even from the front-line operatives. But when or if this is pierced, it is important that those who find out about it do not find out the real reason behind the activities.

Layer 1: (sweetness and light, not very believable...)
"We support Mortal Empires gaining power to rival the Gods themselves. The Empire's striving for power is exactly what the True Church encourages mortals to do: exceed your limits, and become greater than the Gods Themselves!"

Layer 2: (self interest, and when Layer 1 is pierced, this is a good excuse. There is no such heir, but the Church does random acts of kindness (tm) for the Royal line -- the current Royals are keeping the residuum mining, and a revolution could destabilize that. They do not, however, want them to be members of the Church: that would risk exposure too much.)

"We have gained control over a heir (which one the agent does not know) and are building the Empire up, so when our heir inherits we control a greater Empire."

Layer 3: (They would rather this not be exposed, but it is better than the truth. Lusting after raw power in the form of raw magic seems very much in character for the Church, and anyone who manages to prove that every heir is actually not part of the Church and who then finds this out will think "oh, how clever, complicated stories, when it is really about raw power". The monologue that goes along with this is rather funny: "What, do you think I would be happy with running things via a royal proxy? You fool, we will simply burn the Empire to the ground and take the power and use it directly. The heir red herring just kept busy bodies like you away until it is too late!")

"This is a long game involving gaining control over the source of the Residuum and using it to strike down another God."

Layer 4 is the actual truth, which is that they just want the Residuum mining to occur. There are plans to redirect it to the weakest spot, but that is less important than making it continue. And there are emergency plans that involve sending a weapon into the chamber and seeing if they can break the arch, but that plan should only be put into effect if there is serious risk that the mining would stop, or that the true nature of the source is exposed.
Meanwhile:
The Church of Ioun has agents in the city who are attempting to figure out where the Residuum comes from: they suspect it is somehow connected to the Astral Sea, or maybe some other unknown process, and they don't like secrets that power empires, because when the empire falls, the knowledge could be lost. Even if they managed to see the ore, they would not initially recognize it, but they might after further research. The first thing they'd figure out is that the ivory is solidified divine will of some kind...

Agents of Vecna are also present in the city, with similar goals: they want the secret of infinite residuum, and then they want to kill everyone who knows the secret so they can keep it for themselves. At the same time, Vecna helps the empire by making sure that nobody else finds out about the secret, because if a second empire learned what was going on, it would be harder to contain afterwards. Their #1 goal is to keep it a secret, #2 to learn it for themselves, and #3 to wipe out everyone else who knows it, in that order. There are followers of the Vecnan way in the college, in the manufacturing, and in the nobility.
The above needs some other kingdoms to spy on the Empire.

We could take a page from the Age of Sail. The Empire would be the British Empire, with residuum powered craft (airships?) colonizing the world. Airships can only approach the ground near water, because the element of Earth is what pulls them to the surface. Far away from the ground, in the sky, things simply float and are blown around by the air. Airships consume resources to "take off" from water (large bodies of water are by far the easiest), and once in the air use magic to propel themselves (but no effort is required to "keep them up there"). Landing on rivers is possible, if extremely dangerous, and taking off from them is impractical.

Gravity on ships is provided by the wood hull of the ship, which pulls things down like the Earth does.

Flying too high is dangerous, as elemental Fire starts to dominate, and things can burst into flames rather easily.

So airships are constrained to the middle altitudes.

...

For rivals, we could have the Dragonstates, which are ruled by Dragon-riding nobility. They where the primary nobles of the continent before the rise of the Empire. They consider themselves to be the only "true" nobles.

The Empire threw off some Dragon nobles in its early days, but hasn't engaged directly in an invasion against the Continent: instead, they have colonized weaker civilizations further away (like the British Empire).

Another one might be the Cathedral, a holy state that follows Pelor. It controls an island off the south coast of the continent, with enclaves in most cities.

Old Arkhosa might be a morbund empire even further away (think the Ottoman Empire).

The Dwaves could be the French to the Empire: a technological and magical empire that doesn't have the secret of residuum.

When Beal Turath fell, it left behind its experimental human crossbreeds. Half elves where diplomatic and house slaves, half orcs where the backbone of their legions, and half giants (goliaths) where used as laborers. Accidental crossbreeds between races don't work, but their magic made these possible -- these races are true races. (They have some limited crossbreeding ability with their source races, but such children tend to breed true to the half-breed, and fertility is low).

To the East, the former legions of Bael Turath formed a multi-racial realm. (Russia)

Not sure what to do with the colonial holdings of the Empire.

[Tegu8788]

That, is beautiful. May I all but blatantly rip that world building?

[Yakk]

Sure. I did some editing, such as giving Asmodeus's Agents onion layer misdirection motivations, as fits the Church of the Chessmaster.