Skysaber
2013-12-06, 03:55 AM
Netherese Enclaves
Sourcebooks vary in opinion as to how many enclaves existed in Netheril, all of the way from a few dozen to over a thousand (Netheril: Empire of Magic boxed set, states that during the Golden Age "Netheril began lifting one enclave into the air each year" and the golden age was a thousand years long - nor was it the only period when they were lifting enclaves). And they each sought to stand out from their fellows in some way.
Well, adventuring in Netheril it is inevitable we would visit some of these places, and our DM doesn't want to do all of the work of fleshing out so many highly individualized, extremely magic compounds himself. So it is now the players' responsibility for describing places we visit, with rewards offered for doing so.
Enclave Types
The standard archtype for a floating city was set by Ioulaum when he raised the first one, sheering off a mountain top, rotating it to be flat side up, and building a city on the flat surface thus revealed. They are typically about a mile across. Decoration and architecture are typically all that set these apart from each other.
Our DM ruled that about half of all enclaves fit the standard type.
Most of the rest are Themed enclaves. What Shade becomes is a good example of a themed enclave. They rely heavily on shadow magic, most if not all of the people who dwell there have the shade template, and darkness themes are rampant in food, clothing, architecture, and everything else. Themes can be deliberately arranged, such as when an archmage sets up his enclave to reflect his specialty. They can also be stumbled into accidentally by a few experts on a relatively normal enclave making a breakthough (much as Shade's was).
Special Rules
Netherese enclaves are locations of unspeakable power, and as such invoke a number of special rules - including a number not yet present when the Netherese rules were being devised.
All enclaves serve as Magic Locations, like the Otyugh Hole or Highest Spire, although specifics vary.
Additionally, all Netherese enclaves serve as Touchstone Sites, again the specifics vary.
Dragon Magazine #330 introduced a mechanic whereby a person could go to a specific location filled with a certain kind of energy and take a day to perform a rite to embrace that energy to gain a specific feat. This mechanic is in operation on all Netherese enclaves, although what feat they grant is highly dependant on what they focus on.
Crazyland
The Netherese Enclave called Crazyland began simply enough, and under a different name. It was a fairly typical city built on a floating hunk of sheered off mountaintop suspended flat side up, almost boring by Netherese standards. The divergance from normalcy began when they'd had a few deaths from commoners falling over the side, and a Feather Fall effect was added to the mythallar sustaining the city to prevent more of those.
Because the city could float at a variable height and the normal Feather Fall's duration was limited, a custom version was created that was basically contingent, activating 10ft before the falling body struck anything. By itself, this was a simple safety feature. However it soon became known as the cheapest mode of transport to the ground. Walking off the side was faster and cost less than hiring a gryffin or teleport, so swiftly became the default way of leaving the city.
The next stage also occurred naturally enough when the city was called upon to send soldiers to assist ground forces in one of the many wars against orcs. The enclave's entire army simply marched over the side, and the sight of them falling was sufficiently unusual that surprise and distraction won that battle. They swiftly improved on this technique by having each soldier carry with him a large rock, which he dropped before hitting the ground, with the soldiers themselves dropping right above the enemy, using their rocks to clear a landing area.
The city soon became known for these shocking tactics, as their soldiers would gladly leap off the side of their enclave carrying anvils or spears or other munitions to drop or throw on the unfortunate targets they landed on. Both barbarians and orcs found those tactics difficult to cope with. Wind powered whistles even got added to their helmets to generate shrieking as they plummeted to enhance the demoralizing effect of these attacks.
Leaving the city was easy. However returning to it proved far more difficult. Many solutions got proposed, but most had rather substantial difficulties (flying taxi services did not want to go one way, teleport booths following along on the ground below could be taken over and used by an enemy, etc). They wanted rapid return voyages since their troops were unquestionably at their strongest when plummeting towards their enemies. So once again the mythallar was altered, this time to automatically provide an arcane version of Teleport Trigger to those within. Cast on people by the mythallar while within its radius, and set off by a key phrase, it could return them even a full day after they'd gone outside of its boundaries. Returning was now as cheap and easy as leaving the city was.
And if things had stopped there, things would have stayed relatively ordinary. However, there was a slight problem that when too many soldiers ran off they did not all do it at the same time, so some were below others and the occassional friendly fire incident occurred where an early jumper got struck by an anvil dropped by one above him. The answer to this was to invent and install a new 10th level spell into their mythallar: Protection From Energy: Kinetic. While within the radius of the mythallar, and for a handful of rounds after leaving, physical harm was nearly impossible for living humanoids (excepting orcs & goblinoids - as virtually all of their enhancements would).
At about this time it was decided that, since falling off the enclave was now no longer considered a danger, and in fact was routine to most of its residents, that there was no harm in applying a permanent Reverse Gravity to the underside of their city so it could be lived on. An obscene number of Stone Shape spells later and the big conical hunk of rock that had once been a sheered off mountaintop was now a flat disk, very much like a thick coin, that had equal cities on top and on bottom so they had double the living space.
Transport between the two city facings had to be arranged, and this was done simply by placing large tubes or shafts that someone could jump into and fall out the other side. Spells had to be added to those tubes to enhance the falling energy somewhat so it was sufficient to carry a creature all of the way through, rather than left stuck suspended in the middle. But it got done and functioned very smoothly.
Even at this early point, the city had begun to attract the adrenaline junky type. Soldiers who are willing to skydive into battle directly above the hated orcs are effective, but prone to more wild and outlandish behavior, and they began taking this in directions nobody had thought of, as well as influencing the attitudes of the ordinary citizens.
Something had to be done to keep these troops in fighting trim even during the off season, the years between large scale orc incursions. So the archmage in control of the city made additions to the mythallar so that it provided the Braciation feat and a +20 bonus to each of Balance, Jump, and Tumble skills to all of the people within, then he put trapezes everywhere, thinking some military advantage would inevitably be developed from this.
It did not have quite the effect he was looking for, and the combination of this plus the attitude of the soldiers generally was indisputably the point where things began to grow a little wacky in the enclave.
Leaping and falling without fear or danger was the one claim to fame of these men, and many began to like it more than a bit. Several of the tubes through the middle of the enclave got altered by their request to begin shooting people out of the other end, firing people tens or even hundreds of feet into the air, only to fall back down to the surface of the enclave again and be saved by the innate Feather Fall. Because of the Reverse Gravity, this worked regardless of whether they were shot up or down, so long as they stayed within the radius of the mythallar. And it was felt by some to be great fun to shoot out of the bottom of the disk towards the ground, only to reverse and fall up right back to the bottom surface of the enclave again. Then it was found to be more fun if those tubes were made twisty and curvy.
Much like modern water slides, these tubes were soon being configured into complex arrangements that were constantly changing. More were added, not for transportation but strictly for amusement, firing people in all sorts of directions, including out the sides away from the protective mythallar so they could feel the rush of falling unprotected for a while before teleporting back inside to safety (or to settle to ground using the contingent Feather Fall).
The Protection From Energy: Kinetic spell also had a side effect that no one anticipated, in that it did not cancel kinetic energy as much as redirect it. This was learned the first time a misaligned tunnel got used to shoot a person against the side of a building, and he bounced off of it harmlessly.
This was what most would consider the beginning of the end for sanity in Crazyland, as they not only liked that effect, they began work to duplicate it on a large scale. Tubes began to get added in sequence, so that once you shot out of one, if you angled your body just right, you could fall back down into another and be shot out somewhere else. Soon it was possible to pick, by how you angled yourself, among many tubes to shoot back through, and the whole experience just began escalating.
Reflecting surfaces, acting like trampolines or superball style bounce accellerators, began to be added to the sides of buildings. Work on this sort of necessitated altering the inherent Feather Fall effect of the mythallar so that it only activated 10ft away from a damaging impact, or on a command word. But it enabled those who were inclined to achieve tremendous speed, shooting out of a tunnel then bouncing around among several reflective surfaces. Soon, as those bounce networks linked together, it became the fastest method of travel within the city to leap through a tube, even a tube going in the wrong direction, then rebounding rapidly off of various surfaces to your destination, where a quickly spoken command work for the Feather Fall ended one's momentum.
Given the attitude of the people generally, it did not take long for this to go from the fastest method of transportation within the city, to the standard method of transportation within the city. As it gained acceptance Zones of Telekinetic Thrust to fling people into the air, or sideways, began to be added as a courtesy outside of businesses and government buildings to augment the tube networks, and even linked in sequence. Gradually the sight of people rapidly careening around in a sort of living game of pinball over streets and down alleys began to be regarded as simply 'traffic'.
It is said that the Bag of Holding got invented here, as with all of the high accelleration bounces one had to go through to get anyplace, there was simply no other way to carry home a bag of groceries. (It was still possible to walk normally, but that would be boring.) In keeping with their crazy reputation, however, they also invented Never-Spill Mugs and Endless Bags of Popcorn.
The enclave began to take on something of the air of an amusement park. Experts began rebounding off each other as a way to increase speed, and games were played where tubes got deliberately aimed so people got fired out of both at the same time, to bounce off of each other as just one more planned rebound on their way across the city. Floating Walls of Force began to be suspended in the air, transparent yet brightly colored, just as surfaces to bounce off, with more Zones of Telekinetic Thrust mingled in among them so no one had to slow down.
Tall and multifaceted buildings, designed for the specific purpose of getting better bounces, started to get built. Trampoline surfaces got added mid-air, so that people shooting upwards could rebound downwards at greater speed. Moving surfaces got added to the bounce network to increase the thrill. Horizontal launch tubes got installed so one could be shot even out of the side of the enclave and with a modicum of skill rebound back inside safely. Daredevils even began to extend the network of floating bounce targets outside of the radius of the mythallar itself.
Nevertheless, the whole bouncing thing does have its serious side. No matter how insane it all may appear, everyone is aware the underlying purpose of it all is to train their soldiers for combat. Endlessly training to navigate and maneuver at high speed gets coupled with tricks teaching them to both perceive and react at speeds far higher than an invader could hope to cope with. In light of that, their sports are as high speed as anything else on their enclave. But the serious is under a thick coating of silly.
Of the sports that began to be developed, taking advantage of the unique conditions there, first and most common were all fairly simple. By holding an Eversmoking Bottle in one hand it was possible for a very skilled bouncer to do skywriting. Sparklers and wands producing a silly string like substance even got available in multiple colors, leading to Bounce Art and Smoke Art. Gangs of youths took hold on this concept and arranged with their friends so each took a paint brush and tried to time their passage so enough of them bounced past a building to turn the entire thing a different color in seconds. Rather than be offended at his suddenly pink library, the ruling archmage saw in this the potential for exactly the sort of military capacity he'd been seeking, so rather than be punished those youths got graded on their work, how complete the coverage, how suddenly it got accomplished, etc. then rewarded based on those scores. With this encouragement gangs bearing paint cans who would suddenly decide that that building over there needed to be orange, and it needed that RIGHT NOW! grew fairly common, until they got replaced by organized teams who did really very detailed work, portraits and mosaics, all performed in seconds by scads of artists bouncing by at a terrifying pace, each taking a single swipe.
So "Drive-by-graffiti" is not only a very common event there, it is a sanctioned sport. As is catching and releasing live birds in flight, with points taken off if those delicate birds are harmed. Even the Archmage of the city got in on the insanity, and soon the enclave began flipping end over end through the air, just like a giant coin that had been flipped seen in slow motion. With the gravity within set to 'the coin is always down' all this produced was a dramatic visual effect. Still, the alchemists of that city swiftly became very skilled at producing cures for motion sickness.
They also found it necessary to install automatic puke cleaners enchanted throughout the whole city for dealing with the puke cascades, for at those high speeds when one person (typically a newcomer) starts vomiting it gets all over everything and everyone, often triggering off more of the same reactions.
Strangely enough, inside of the buildings Crazyland is quite normal, almost deceptively so, as the people get enough thrills just going about their daily business to and from work, or shopping, that slower paced life is appreciated for the contrast. It is possible, though unlikely, to live a fairly normal life on Crazyland, walking the streets and shopping or doing business much like anywhere else - if one could ignore the crazies rebounding like mad overhead.
Food at all of the many sidewalk cafes and outdoor restaurants is free, provided by the archmage without charge. He funds those restaurants because of a quaint little game the locals play called "Drink Your Beer." The rules are very simple, go to one of the many outdoor eateries and order a drink, take it back to your table, and drink it. Yet you will never, ever, EVER succeed! It doesn't matter how fast you are, or if you don't wait to get it back to your table, just drink it right where you got it. It never works. Because one of the countless bouncemaniacs whizzing by at insane velocities will steal it from you before you could ever get it to your lips. This, to them, is awesome great fun. In fact, the person who stole it from you won't keep it, either. They will have it stolen from them as other people rebounding past snatch it before *they* can drink it. Sometimes a mug will pass through several thousand hands and traverse the entire surface of the enclave dozens of times before some lucky person manages to get it to their lips (at which point they have won, and mug changes color to show this) but most often it only changes hands fifty to a hundred times before someone drinks it.
The cups have been enchanted to keep track of this, and there is a daily record, as well as several awards.
They also play fun games like "Eat Your Chicken" or "Steal Your Hat" played along similar themes. It should be noted that theft of food or drinks served at outdoor cafes are not crimes in Crazyland, nor is stealing hats. Why should it be when the archmage himself picked up an awesome hat that way? (A hat that he subsequently transferred the powers of into a brooch.)
The penalty for playing any of these games and doing too poorly is to be sentenced to wait tables during the next lunch or dinner rush, carrying out meals to empty tables so the maniacs flying by have someone to steal food and drinks from. These punishments always end with a meal served indoors, however, so no one goes hungry and it's all in good fun, at least by local standards.
Foods that can be eaten one-handed are preferred.
Now we could also go into detailing their crime and punishment, for example trying to poison them during their games, but that would turn the nature of this article very grim indeed. Suffice it to say they will find you, and they will catch you, and you will regret it for what remains of your short and miserable life. Nobody messes with these guys on their home turf.
But other than that, they're pretty laid back party animals (as much as wired adrenaline junkies can be), content to amuse themselves and have fun.
So, questions for the board:
What we have not worked out as a group are any of the game rules associated with this. So if anyone should have any suggestions for what Crazyland should offer as a Touchstone Site, Magical Location, or what you might get out of meditating/performing a ritual there, sling em on down, we'd like to see em.
Also we have vague ideas for two Prestige Classes: Bouncemaniac and Rebounding Guard, both offer Flyby Attack for free at first level. Either can go to any outdoor location in the city in a single move action, double all jump distances and have no maximum distance to their jumps. But if anyone else has ideas on how to fill those out, they'd be welcome.
Also any other suggestions, say for feats or spells or what have you, appropriate to this place would be fun to listen to, so share em all.
And remember, this is Netheril, OP is part of the entry price to get in.
Sourcebooks vary in opinion as to how many enclaves existed in Netheril, all of the way from a few dozen to over a thousand (Netheril: Empire of Magic boxed set, states that during the Golden Age "Netheril began lifting one enclave into the air each year" and the golden age was a thousand years long - nor was it the only period when they were lifting enclaves). And they each sought to stand out from their fellows in some way.
Well, adventuring in Netheril it is inevitable we would visit some of these places, and our DM doesn't want to do all of the work of fleshing out so many highly individualized, extremely magic compounds himself. So it is now the players' responsibility for describing places we visit, with rewards offered for doing so.
Enclave Types
The standard archtype for a floating city was set by Ioulaum when he raised the first one, sheering off a mountain top, rotating it to be flat side up, and building a city on the flat surface thus revealed. They are typically about a mile across. Decoration and architecture are typically all that set these apart from each other.
Our DM ruled that about half of all enclaves fit the standard type.
Most of the rest are Themed enclaves. What Shade becomes is a good example of a themed enclave. They rely heavily on shadow magic, most if not all of the people who dwell there have the shade template, and darkness themes are rampant in food, clothing, architecture, and everything else. Themes can be deliberately arranged, such as when an archmage sets up his enclave to reflect his specialty. They can also be stumbled into accidentally by a few experts on a relatively normal enclave making a breakthough (much as Shade's was).
Special Rules
Netherese enclaves are locations of unspeakable power, and as such invoke a number of special rules - including a number not yet present when the Netherese rules were being devised.
All enclaves serve as Magic Locations, like the Otyugh Hole or Highest Spire, although specifics vary.
Additionally, all Netherese enclaves serve as Touchstone Sites, again the specifics vary.
Dragon Magazine #330 introduced a mechanic whereby a person could go to a specific location filled with a certain kind of energy and take a day to perform a rite to embrace that energy to gain a specific feat. This mechanic is in operation on all Netherese enclaves, although what feat they grant is highly dependant on what they focus on.
Crazyland
The Netherese Enclave called Crazyland began simply enough, and under a different name. It was a fairly typical city built on a floating hunk of sheered off mountaintop suspended flat side up, almost boring by Netherese standards. The divergance from normalcy began when they'd had a few deaths from commoners falling over the side, and a Feather Fall effect was added to the mythallar sustaining the city to prevent more of those.
Because the city could float at a variable height and the normal Feather Fall's duration was limited, a custom version was created that was basically contingent, activating 10ft before the falling body struck anything. By itself, this was a simple safety feature. However it soon became known as the cheapest mode of transport to the ground. Walking off the side was faster and cost less than hiring a gryffin or teleport, so swiftly became the default way of leaving the city.
The next stage also occurred naturally enough when the city was called upon to send soldiers to assist ground forces in one of the many wars against orcs. The enclave's entire army simply marched over the side, and the sight of them falling was sufficiently unusual that surprise and distraction won that battle. They swiftly improved on this technique by having each soldier carry with him a large rock, which he dropped before hitting the ground, with the soldiers themselves dropping right above the enemy, using their rocks to clear a landing area.
The city soon became known for these shocking tactics, as their soldiers would gladly leap off the side of their enclave carrying anvils or spears or other munitions to drop or throw on the unfortunate targets they landed on. Both barbarians and orcs found those tactics difficult to cope with. Wind powered whistles even got added to their helmets to generate shrieking as they plummeted to enhance the demoralizing effect of these attacks.
Leaving the city was easy. However returning to it proved far more difficult. Many solutions got proposed, but most had rather substantial difficulties (flying taxi services did not want to go one way, teleport booths following along on the ground below could be taken over and used by an enemy, etc). They wanted rapid return voyages since their troops were unquestionably at their strongest when plummeting towards their enemies. So once again the mythallar was altered, this time to automatically provide an arcane version of Teleport Trigger to those within. Cast on people by the mythallar while within its radius, and set off by a key phrase, it could return them even a full day after they'd gone outside of its boundaries. Returning was now as cheap and easy as leaving the city was.
And if things had stopped there, things would have stayed relatively ordinary. However, there was a slight problem that when too many soldiers ran off they did not all do it at the same time, so some were below others and the occassional friendly fire incident occurred where an early jumper got struck by an anvil dropped by one above him. The answer to this was to invent and install a new 10th level spell into their mythallar: Protection From Energy: Kinetic. While within the radius of the mythallar, and for a handful of rounds after leaving, physical harm was nearly impossible for living humanoids (excepting orcs & goblinoids - as virtually all of their enhancements would).
At about this time it was decided that, since falling off the enclave was now no longer considered a danger, and in fact was routine to most of its residents, that there was no harm in applying a permanent Reverse Gravity to the underside of their city so it could be lived on. An obscene number of Stone Shape spells later and the big conical hunk of rock that had once been a sheered off mountaintop was now a flat disk, very much like a thick coin, that had equal cities on top and on bottom so they had double the living space.
Transport between the two city facings had to be arranged, and this was done simply by placing large tubes or shafts that someone could jump into and fall out the other side. Spells had to be added to those tubes to enhance the falling energy somewhat so it was sufficient to carry a creature all of the way through, rather than left stuck suspended in the middle. But it got done and functioned very smoothly.
Even at this early point, the city had begun to attract the adrenaline junky type. Soldiers who are willing to skydive into battle directly above the hated orcs are effective, but prone to more wild and outlandish behavior, and they began taking this in directions nobody had thought of, as well as influencing the attitudes of the ordinary citizens.
Something had to be done to keep these troops in fighting trim even during the off season, the years between large scale orc incursions. So the archmage in control of the city made additions to the mythallar so that it provided the Braciation feat and a +20 bonus to each of Balance, Jump, and Tumble skills to all of the people within, then he put trapezes everywhere, thinking some military advantage would inevitably be developed from this.
It did not have quite the effect he was looking for, and the combination of this plus the attitude of the soldiers generally was indisputably the point where things began to grow a little wacky in the enclave.
Leaping and falling without fear or danger was the one claim to fame of these men, and many began to like it more than a bit. Several of the tubes through the middle of the enclave got altered by their request to begin shooting people out of the other end, firing people tens or even hundreds of feet into the air, only to fall back down to the surface of the enclave again and be saved by the innate Feather Fall. Because of the Reverse Gravity, this worked regardless of whether they were shot up or down, so long as they stayed within the radius of the mythallar. And it was felt by some to be great fun to shoot out of the bottom of the disk towards the ground, only to reverse and fall up right back to the bottom surface of the enclave again. Then it was found to be more fun if those tubes were made twisty and curvy.
Much like modern water slides, these tubes were soon being configured into complex arrangements that were constantly changing. More were added, not for transportation but strictly for amusement, firing people in all sorts of directions, including out the sides away from the protective mythallar so they could feel the rush of falling unprotected for a while before teleporting back inside to safety (or to settle to ground using the contingent Feather Fall).
The Protection From Energy: Kinetic spell also had a side effect that no one anticipated, in that it did not cancel kinetic energy as much as redirect it. This was learned the first time a misaligned tunnel got used to shoot a person against the side of a building, and he bounced off of it harmlessly.
This was what most would consider the beginning of the end for sanity in Crazyland, as they not only liked that effect, they began work to duplicate it on a large scale. Tubes began to get added in sequence, so that once you shot out of one, if you angled your body just right, you could fall back down into another and be shot out somewhere else. Soon it was possible to pick, by how you angled yourself, among many tubes to shoot back through, and the whole experience just began escalating.
Reflecting surfaces, acting like trampolines or superball style bounce accellerators, began to be added to the sides of buildings. Work on this sort of necessitated altering the inherent Feather Fall effect of the mythallar so that it only activated 10ft away from a damaging impact, or on a command word. But it enabled those who were inclined to achieve tremendous speed, shooting out of a tunnel then bouncing around among several reflective surfaces. Soon, as those bounce networks linked together, it became the fastest method of travel within the city to leap through a tube, even a tube going in the wrong direction, then rebounding rapidly off of various surfaces to your destination, where a quickly spoken command work for the Feather Fall ended one's momentum.
Given the attitude of the people generally, it did not take long for this to go from the fastest method of transportation within the city, to the standard method of transportation within the city. As it gained acceptance Zones of Telekinetic Thrust to fling people into the air, or sideways, began to be added as a courtesy outside of businesses and government buildings to augment the tube networks, and even linked in sequence. Gradually the sight of people rapidly careening around in a sort of living game of pinball over streets and down alleys began to be regarded as simply 'traffic'.
It is said that the Bag of Holding got invented here, as with all of the high accelleration bounces one had to go through to get anyplace, there was simply no other way to carry home a bag of groceries. (It was still possible to walk normally, but that would be boring.) In keeping with their crazy reputation, however, they also invented Never-Spill Mugs and Endless Bags of Popcorn.
The enclave began to take on something of the air of an amusement park. Experts began rebounding off each other as a way to increase speed, and games were played where tubes got deliberately aimed so people got fired out of both at the same time, to bounce off of each other as just one more planned rebound on their way across the city. Floating Walls of Force began to be suspended in the air, transparent yet brightly colored, just as surfaces to bounce off, with more Zones of Telekinetic Thrust mingled in among them so no one had to slow down.
Tall and multifaceted buildings, designed for the specific purpose of getting better bounces, started to get built. Trampoline surfaces got added mid-air, so that people shooting upwards could rebound downwards at greater speed. Moving surfaces got added to the bounce network to increase the thrill. Horizontal launch tubes got installed so one could be shot even out of the side of the enclave and with a modicum of skill rebound back inside safely. Daredevils even began to extend the network of floating bounce targets outside of the radius of the mythallar itself.
Nevertheless, the whole bouncing thing does have its serious side. No matter how insane it all may appear, everyone is aware the underlying purpose of it all is to train their soldiers for combat. Endlessly training to navigate and maneuver at high speed gets coupled with tricks teaching them to both perceive and react at speeds far higher than an invader could hope to cope with. In light of that, their sports are as high speed as anything else on their enclave. But the serious is under a thick coating of silly.
Of the sports that began to be developed, taking advantage of the unique conditions there, first and most common were all fairly simple. By holding an Eversmoking Bottle in one hand it was possible for a very skilled bouncer to do skywriting. Sparklers and wands producing a silly string like substance even got available in multiple colors, leading to Bounce Art and Smoke Art. Gangs of youths took hold on this concept and arranged with their friends so each took a paint brush and tried to time their passage so enough of them bounced past a building to turn the entire thing a different color in seconds. Rather than be offended at his suddenly pink library, the ruling archmage saw in this the potential for exactly the sort of military capacity he'd been seeking, so rather than be punished those youths got graded on their work, how complete the coverage, how suddenly it got accomplished, etc. then rewarded based on those scores. With this encouragement gangs bearing paint cans who would suddenly decide that that building over there needed to be orange, and it needed that RIGHT NOW! grew fairly common, until they got replaced by organized teams who did really very detailed work, portraits and mosaics, all performed in seconds by scads of artists bouncing by at a terrifying pace, each taking a single swipe.
So "Drive-by-graffiti" is not only a very common event there, it is a sanctioned sport. As is catching and releasing live birds in flight, with points taken off if those delicate birds are harmed. Even the Archmage of the city got in on the insanity, and soon the enclave began flipping end over end through the air, just like a giant coin that had been flipped seen in slow motion. With the gravity within set to 'the coin is always down' all this produced was a dramatic visual effect. Still, the alchemists of that city swiftly became very skilled at producing cures for motion sickness.
They also found it necessary to install automatic puke cleaners enchanted throughout the whole city for dealing with the puke cascades, for at those high speeds when one person (typically a newcomer) starts vomiting it gets all over everything and everyone, often triggering off more of the same reactions.
Strangely enough, inside of the buildings Crazyland is quite normal, almost deceptively so, as the people get enough thrills just going about their daily business to and from work, or shopping, that slower paced life is appreciated for the contrast. It is possible, though unlikely, to live a fairly normal life on Crazyland, walking the streets and shopping or doing business much like anywhere else - if one could ignore the crazies rebounding like mad overhead.
Food at all of the many sidewalk cafes and outdoor restaurants is free, provided by the archmage without charge. He funds those restaurants because of a quaint little game the locals play called "Drink Your Beer." The rules are very simple, go to one of the many outdoor eateries and order a drink, take it back to your table, and drink it. Yet you will never, ever, EVER succeed! It doesn't matter how fast you are, or if you don't wait to get it back to your table, just drink it right where you got it. It never works. Because one of the countless bouncemaniacs whizzing by at insane velocities will steal it from you before you could ever get it to your lips. This, to them, is awesome great fun. In fact, the person who stole it from you won't keep it, either. They will have it stolen from them as other people rebounding past snatch it before *they* can drink it. Sometimes a mug will pass through several thousand hands and traverse the entire surface of the enclave dozens of times before some lucky person manages to get it to their lips (at which point they have won, and mug changes color to show this) but most often it only changes hands fifty to a hundred times before someone drinks it.
The cups have been enchanted to keep track of this, and there is a daily record, as well as several awards.
They also play fun games like "Eat Your Chicken" or "Steal Your Hat" played along similar themes. It should be noted that theft of food or drinks served at outdoor cafes are not crimes in Crazyland, nor is stealing hats. Why should it be when the archmage himself picked up an awesome hat that way? (A hat that he subsequently transferred the powers of into a brooch.)
The penalty for playing any of these games and doing too poorly is to be sentenced to wait tables during the next lunch or dinner rush, carrying out meals to empty tables so the maniacs flying by have someone to steal food and drinks from. These punishments always end with a meal served indoors, however, so no one goes hungry and it's all in good fun, at least by local standards.
Foods that can be eaten one-handed are preferred.
Now we could also go into detailing their crime and punishment, for example trying to poison them during their games, but that would turn the nature of this article very grim indeed. Suffice it to say they will find you, and they will catch you, and you will regret it for what remains of your short and miserable life. Nobody messes with these guys on their home turf.
But other than that, they're pretty laid back party animals (as much as wired adrenaline junkies can be), content to amuse themselves and have fun.
So, questions for the board:
What we have not worked out as a group are any of the game rules associated with this. So if anyone should have any suggestions for what Crazyland should offer as a Touchstone Site, Magical Location, or what you might get out of meditating/performing a ritual there, sling em on down, we'd like to see em.
Also we have vague ideas for two Prestige Classes: Bouncemaniac and Rebounding Guard, both offer Flyby Attack for free at first level. Either can go to any outdoor location in the city in a single move action, double all jump distances and have no maximum distance to their jumps. But if anyone else has ideas on how to fill those out, they'd be welcome.
Also any other suggestions, say for feats or spells or what have you, appropriate to this place would be fun to listen to, so share em all.
And remember, this is Netheril, OP is part of the entry price to get in.