Tragak
2014-04-01, 02:55 PM
The only plane in the universe that functions specifically as a prison, this world is used as containment for those neither personally reliable enough for the tyrannies of Hades, Baator and Gehenna nor inter-personally active enough for the orgies of the Abyss, Limbo and Pandemonium.
In life they viewed the world around them as simply an obstacle to be avoided in order that they could hurt anybody anytime they wanted. So too in death are they kept in an infinite prison the way they pretended throughout their lives to be obstructed by already, and their new prison is called...
Carceri
“An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind”
“In a land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”
It is said that the Yugoloths rule over this plane (just as they rule over Hades and Gehenna), and that a single Yugoloth rules over the Yugoloths of Carceri (just as the Oinoloth rules over the Yugoloths of Hades, or the General of Gehenna rules over the Yugoloths of … you guessed it); however, nobody gives this legend much weight. Not because there definitely isn't a Yugoloth leader like Hades or Gehenna have, but because it wouldn't make any difference there is or isn't: Carceri doesn't value leadership the way that Hades and Gehenna do.
The people in this world do not live with each other, they simply live next to each other. Loyalty to strangers is considered in a weakness where everybody is cruel, vindictive, treacherous, manipulative, and most importantly knowledgable that so is everybody else. Loyalty exists only on a one-to-one, intimately personal level (and sometimes not even then), and groups of people will only stay together if every single person is individually loyal to absolutely everybody else.
If there is so much as a single pair within the group that does not trust each other, then they will see no reason not to fight against each other at the first sign of trouble (or even just opportunity), and most groups are defined by the people who don't know each other instead of by the people who do. Clans of these traitors only grow one member at a time, and chain reactions of betrayal and infighting can destroy them all at once.
Civilizations never developed in this world, they never had the chance. The natural environments of Carceri (the swamps, the jungles, the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, and the ice caps) are all but undisturbed, and they are as cruel and bloodthirsty as are the people living - and dying - inside them.
However, this may be a natural prison colony instead of an artificial prison fortress, but it is still fundamentally a prison, and the "guards" - armies of fiends called demodands - go to great lengths to keep anybody from escaping to another plane.
However again, do not be fooled that this is a prison of justice, a prison where sinners are isolated to protect their victims from near- and far-future violence. This is a prison of corruption, a prison designed to ensure that the only thing sinners see in their lives is the violence of other sinners that they must now defend themselves against by Any. Means. Necessary. Even those who call themselves "guards" only do so for the prestige and the privileges rather than for devotion to any belief in justice, and they are ultimately as trapped as everybody else.
Carceri is not one of the Celestial Realms, and it does not exist to protect innocent people from evil. Carceri is one of the Infernal Realms, and it exists to "protect" evil people from the knowledge that innocence exists to begin with.
Neutral/Chaotic: mostly apathetic – but not completely antagonistic – towards the strong
Lawful characters take a -1 penalty to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks
Evil: completely antagonistic towards the weak
Evil characters gain a +2 bonus to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks, Good characters take a -2 penalty
Evil characters cast spells at +1 caster level, Good characters cast spells at -1 caster level
Evil spells are cast at +1 caster level, Good spells are cast at -1 caster level
The Exemplars that would be most comfortable here would be the somewhat-more-chaotic Yugoloths (NE) and the somewhat-less-chaotic Demons (CE).
Devils (LE) and most Yugoloths would be uncomfortable in a world where not a single potential minion can be trusted to do what they are told.
Any that come to Carceri would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Good
*Trying to convert the “parasites” to a life of “service”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened anywhere else
*…
Slaadi (CN) and most Demons would be uncomfortable in a world where everybody spends more energy on hurting each other than they do on enjoying themselves.
Any that come to Carceri would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Law
*Trying to convert the “spiteful” to a life of “excitement”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened anywhere else
*…
Captivity: even if one can elude the armies of demodands that hunt escapees to the less treacherous Planes, the curses of Carceri make it next to impossible to escape in the first place. Casting a spell to travel out of Carceri requires a successful caster level check with a DC of 15 + 10 x the rank of the layer that you are attempting to escape from, and casting a spell to move between layers requires a caster level check with a DC 15 + your starting layer’s rank – your target layer’s rank.
(Orthrys’s rank = 1 … Agathys’s rank = 6)
Orthrys: The surface of Carceri is a world of stagnant rivers, swamps, quicksand, and the occasional mountain here and there (see SRD for the mechanical effects of Marsh and Mountain terrains).
The mountains are primarily raised by spell casters who Transmute Mud into Rock over extended periods. Some the most powerful builders have found that mile-high piles of bodies - be they already dead or merely soon-to-be - provide enough weight to crush those at the bottom into somewhat stable masonry. (Comparatively) less bloodthirsty builders have found castings of Flesh to Stone and Sculpt Stone to be more "efficient."
These mountains are constantly - though not normally very quickly - being eroded by rival spell casters who Transmute the Rock back into Mud, normally for the purpose of catching specific enemies in the ensuing mudslide, though occasionally "just in case" the owner of the mountain needs to be "taught a lesson" at some unknown point in the future.
The largest of these mountains are maintained by titans, false gods banished to Carceri for trying to bring down the Olympian deities.
The quagmires beneath the mountains are populated by the corrupt politicians and charlatan cult leaders who drew great masses of people away from the institutions that were built to do good in the world. The people here may appear somewhat Lawful at first glance (building massive organizations full of people that they are never going to meet personally), but the defining feature is that they themselves don’t actually care.
Even the worst dictator of Acheron, Baator, or Gehenna still fundamentally cared for the system itself that he controlled, albeit not for the people who supported it. If a dictator went to the Orthrysian swamps of Carceri instead of to a more Lawful plane, it was because he thought about his organizations in terms of his victims doing what he personally wanted them to do (Chaotic leadership), rather than them doing what his system needed them to do (Lawful leadership).
These people do not want to spend effort building true order in their world, merely to build false order and corrupt true order such that they waste the time of people who are trying to build true order. They trapped their victims in a microcosm where everybody wasted time, energy, and resources by getting bogged down in simply going through the motions, struggling to wade through the quicksand of their figurehead's meaningless ceremony, and nobody had time to notice that nobody was actually accomplishing anything.
In life, many of these bogus leaders were able to gather great numbers of minions because they found people willing to care about their system even where they themselves did not. In Carceri, they do not normally find this success because all potential minions are as uncommitted as they are, and nothing that anybody builds is supported by enough people to have a chance of lasting for very long before being consumed by the pestilent wasteland.
Potential NPCs:
Juforpio: a demon mage who enjoys tempting his victims with the promise of ruling Abyssal mobs in the Blood War, teleporting them out of Carceri while sneaking stolen gems onto their persons that the demodands are searching for. The plane’s own guards are forced to do the dirty work of hunting/killing the “fugitive,” and Juforpio steals more gems from their posts while they are distracted. Do the PCs try to kill him and/or turn him in to gain favor with the demodands, or do they help him find “opponents” for his “games”?
Potential Conflicts: two High Priests of Nerull – a Yugoloth and a Demon – have secretly agreed to a sectarian war between their respective churches, guaranteeing that their god will receive a greater number of murders committed in his name. Do the PCs sell their services to the pair, or do they try to turn the churches against the treacherous leaders?
Cathrys: Immediately below Orthrys is an overgrown wilderness dominated by jungles and grasslands whose threat comes from the plants that are alive, rather than dying and contaminating the water as in the layer above. The humidity of the jungles deals 1d6 acid damage per hour to anybody caught inside, and the trees deal 1d4 further acid damage per round that a character spends climbing on them. The razor-sharp grasses beyond the jungles deal 1 slashing damage per 5 ft moved to the foot-wear of anybody who runs on the ground as a full-round action, and characters who walk on the ground with neither protective foot-wear nor a Natural Armor bonus take 1 slashing damage per 5 ft moved regardless of speed.
The sadists here had more fun physically torturing their victims than socially manipulating them, and they may as well have been predatory animals rather than intelligent people. In Carceri, they find themselves in a world where there is no civilization to speak of because everybody else would rather hunt each other like animals than work together to make the environment more survivable.
Potential NPCs:
Theraph: a bebilith cleric of Baphomet who eats the demons who do not join his following, those who get killed by infighting within his cult, those who threaten his control by encouraging infighting, … and those who might potentially do any of the above at some unspecified point in the future. Do the PCs protect other demons from his cult, do they encourage demons to join him by representing him directly, or do they play an enemy for him to defend them against?
Potential Conflicts: one Yugoloth Druid wishes to burn down a jungle so that his dragons can have more razor-sharp grassland to hunt their prey across, a second wishes to spread the jungle as far as possible so that his demons can be “safe” from enemies not immune to poison (however much they may kill each other). Do the PCs take a side, play the two Druids against each other, or try to negotiate a truce?
Minethys: Beneath the jungles of Orthrys and Cathrys rage an endless barrage of sandstorms that leave a desert world in their wake, and those trapped here must dig whatever shelters for themselves that they can manage for however long that they can manage (see SRD for mechanical effects of Duststorms, Sandstorms, and Heat Dangers). Even if the people here could trust each other enough to protect one another, it wouldn’t matter because they spend so much time digging in the ground that they don’t even notice each other in the first place.
The thieves and hoarders who find themselves trapped here had spent their lives gathering as much wealth for themselves by any means “necessary,” and then hiding themselves and their ill-gotten gains from the world. They buried their heads in the sand lest they be asked to use their resources to aid the real people starving to death in the real world, and now those who could save them from raging sandstorms do not even know they exist: the potential saviors are forced to bury their own heads in the sand to protect themselves from the very same storms.
Potential NPCs:
Verger: a Medusa who is trying to collect enough statues to maintain a shelter, she uses a tamed purple worm to protect her from her enemies, to carry her far enough to find new victims, and to carry any new statues back to her home. Do the PCs try to kill her or help her to find more victims to create statues from?
Potential Conflicts: A clan of Tarterian Dragons has lured a legion of demodands to the deserts by instigating an attempted mass escape, and are planning on keeping the demodands distracted by battle long enough for them to be consumed by an unusually nasty sandstorm while the dragons fly out of harms way to wreck havoc somewhere else while the guards are busy enduring the storm. Do the PCs warn the demodand leaders about the trap or help the dragons complete it?
Colothys: Liars who tricked others into making bad decisions by giving them bad information with which to make decisions, making their victims hurt themselves indirectly instead of / in addition to just hurting them directly, find themselves being tossed by powerful storms (see SRD for the mechanical effects of Severe Force Winds or stronger) from mountaintop to mountaintop. Infinite valleys are always waiting to swallow them if they should ever fall from the far-too-narrow walking paths (rarely more than 10 ft wide).
However, to seek shelter in the tunnels that have been dug through the mountains, the roads that have been paved around them, or the bridges that have been built between, would be far deadlier than to avoid them: any such infrastructure in Carceri has been built by the kind of malicious predator who belongs in Carceri.
Potential NPCs:
Cirri: A vampire who uses his Gaseous Form to fly above the valleys between the mountains, he hunts by flying right next to his prey, turning corporeal before the prey has a chance to react, pulling the prey off of the edge with him, and turning Gaseous again when he is done feeding. Do the PCs try to stop him from hunting or try to help him?
Potential Conflicts: Two Glabrezu – secretly brother and sister – have established a pair of cults where initiates to each must kill members of the other in exchange for wishes and membership. Do the PCs try to expose the two leaders or help them play their servants against each other?
Porphatys: The next-to-lowest layer of Carceri has been swallowed by a great acidic ocean (see SRD for the mechanical effects of Acid). The closest things in this world to landmasses are just networks of sandbars, between which the depth of the acid is only a few feet, yet even the largest of these sandbars are being as devoured from within by acidic lakes and snow-banks as they are from without by the oceans. The people here are not just the lazy thieves and hoarders of Minethys who hid from the world of people dying of sickness and starvation, but who flaunted their ill-gotten wealth for all the world to see and who still acted offended whenever asked to use their wealth for something real to help the real people in the real world.
Now, they are in a world so flat that the only things that anybody can see for miles around are the other people, all living mere inches from being digested alive by the ocean, and where they know that everybody else for miles around can see that they too are in the same danger. However, not only do they betray almost all who try to save them, but likewise do they claim that they should not try to save others for fear of the same betrayal.
Potential NPCs:
Ferrox: a Druid who keeps a swarm of Rust Monsters for the purpose of destroying any metal ships that are sent from other realms to resist the acid of the ocean. Do the PCs try to kill her to gain favor with the realm’s sailors, or vice versa?
Potential Conflicts: a clan of Black Dragons is working to conjure islands so that they can rest without drowning in the ocean, and a clan of Green Dragons is working to destroy these islands so that they can chase the Black Dragons to exhaustion. Do the PCs take a side or play the two against each other?
Agathys: The core of Carceri is a frozen wasteland dominated by glaciers - most of them at least moderately acidic from Porphatysian outflow - that constantly grind and crush against each other, threatening inhabitants with icequakes, geysers, eruptions, and avalanches (See SRD for the mechanical effects of Cold Dangers).
The people here not only hurt strangers, teaching the innocent to fear the cruelty of strangers, but they feigned personal friendship with the people they intended to victimize, teaching the innocent to distrust even those who love them and whom they should expect to depend on the most. They taught the innocent to freeze their hearts against other innocents for fear that everybody might be as treacherous; now the traitors themselves are frozen where they stand, incapable of moving more than inches at a time even to escape being crushed and mangled. The innocents in life were forced to ignore the people around them for fear of being hurt again, constantly afraid that the people surrounding them might be predators; now the traitors in Carceri find themselves surrounded by people who are forced to ignore them in return.
Potential NPCs:
Coturac: a Red Dragon who melts portions of ice into warm pools, frees the people who had been trapped within, and forges Minor Rings of Acid Resistance for herself and her "guests" to swim in the pools for warmth. She convinces those she’s saved that she will let them freeze again for being untrustworthy unless they “prove their compassion” by bringing others still encased in ice to be thawed in her pool, however she then starts boiling her cauldron once she feels that there is enough food swimming in it. Do the PCs try to convince Coturac's victims that they are in danger, do they fight her in order to gain her victims’ favor, or do they help to feed her?
Potential Conflicts: an army of Avolakia have laid siege to an ice fortress dedicated to Nerull, demanding that the vampire colony inside be offered as a tribute of food. Do the PCs take a side, play the two against each other, or do they convince the Avolakia to hunt for easier meat?
**
New Feats:
Disillusionment: You have seen so much deception and cruelty in the world that you cannot imagine anything else. If you are being gamed by somebody who has a secret, vicious angle for what he's doing, then you are very good at determining what that angle is, but you have no idea what to make of people who genuinely do not have angles for everything and everybody.
Prerequisites:
Knowledge (Planes) 5 ranks, Sense Motive 5 ranks, Bluff 5 ranks
Affinity for either Baator, Gehenna, Hades, Carceri, and/or The Abyss (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17048470#post17048470)
When making a Bluff or Sense Motive check against a target of Evil alignment, you roll twice and take the higher result. When making a Bluff or Sense Motive check against a target of Good alignment, you roll twice and take the lower result.
Coward's Strike: You have learned that there is only honor in games and contracts, and sometimes not even then. In life or death situations, you survive by any dirty handed means necessary. You try to strike as quickly as possible so that your opponent has as little chance to fight back as possible, and you have learned to control your body language to keep him from guessing what kind of attack to defend against.
Prerequisites:
Sneak Attack class feature
Knowledge (Planes) 5 ranks, Bluff 5 ranks
Affinity for Carceri (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17048470#post17048470)
When making a successful sneak attack, you deal 1 extra point of damage equal per rank that you have in Bluff.
**
Does anybody else have ideas to add? NPCs, locations, conflicts, mechanics? Feedback on what I've already come up with?
In life they viewed the world around them as simply an obstacle to be avoided in order that they could hurt anybody anytime they wanted. So too in death are they kept in an infinite prison the way they pretended throughout their lives to be obstructed by already, and their new prison is called...
Carceri
“An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind”
“In a land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”
It is said that the Yugoloths rule over this plane (just as they rule over Hades and Gehenna), and that a single Yugoloth rules over the Yugoloths of Carceri (just as the Oinoloth rules over the Yugoloths of Hades, or the General of Gehenna rules over the Yugoloths of … you guessed it); however, nobody gives this legend much weight. Not because there definitely isn't a Yugoloth leader like Hades or Gehenna have, but because it wouldn't make any difference there is or isn't: Carceri doesn't value leadership the way that Hades and Gehenna do.
The people in this world do not live with each other, they simply live next to each other. Loyalty to strangers is considered in a weakness where everybody is cruel, vindictive, treacherous, manipulative, and most importantly knowledgable that so is everybody else. Loyalty exists only on a one-to-one, intimately personal level (and sometimes not even then), and groups of people will only stay together if every single person is individually loyal to absolutely everybody else.
If there is so much as a single pair within the group that does not trust each other, then they will see no reason not to fight against each other at the first sign of trouble (or even just opportunity), and most groups are defined by the people who don't know each other instead of by the people who do. Clans of these traitors only grow one member at a time, and chain reactions of betrayal and infighting can destroy them all at once.
Civilizations never developed in this world, they never had the chance. The natural environments of Carceri (the swamps, the jungles, the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, and the ice caps) are all but undisturbed, and they are as cruel and bloodthirsty as are the people living - and dying - inside them.
However, this may be a natural prison colony instead of an artificial prison fortress, but it is still fundamentally a prison, and the "guards" - armies of fiends called demodands - go to great lengths to keep anybody from escaping to another plane.
However again, do not be fooled that this is a prison of justice, a prison where sinners are isolated to protect their victims from near- and far-future violence. This is a prison of corruption, a prison designed to ensure that the only thing sinners see in their lives is the violence of other sinners that they must now defend themselves against by Any. Means. Necessary. Even those who call themselves "guards" only do so for the prestige and the privileges rather than for devotion to any belief in justice, and they are ultimately as trapped as everybody else.
Carceri is not one of the Celestial Realms, and it does not exist to protect innocent people from evil. Carceri is one of the Infernal Realms, and it exists to "protect" evil people from the knowledge that innocence exists to begin with.
Neutral/Chaotic: mostly apathetic – but not completely antagonistic – towards the strong
Lawful characters take a -1 penalty to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks
Evil: completely antagonistic towards the weak
Evil characters gain a +2 bonus to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks, Good characters take a -2 penalty
Evil characters cast spells at +1 caster level, Good characters cast spells at -1 caster level
Evil spells are cast at +1 caster level, Good spells are cast at -1 caster level
The Exemplars that would be most comfortable here would be the somewhat-more-chaotic Yugoloths (NE) and the somewhat-less-chaotic Demons (CE).
Devils (LE) and most Yugoloths would be uncomfortable in a world where not a single potential minion can be trusted to do what they are told.
Any that come to Carceri would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Good
*Trying to convert the “parasites” to a life of “service”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened anywhere else
*…
Slaadi (CN) and most Demons would be uncomfortable in a world where everybody spends more energy on hurting each other than they do on enjoying themselves.
Any that come to Carceri would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Law
*Trying to convert the “spiteful” to a life of “excitement”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened anywhere else
*…
Captivity: even if one can elude the armies of demodands that hunt escapees to the less treacherous Planes, the curses of Carceri make it next to impossible to escape in the first place. Casting a spell to travel out of Carceri requires a successful caster level check with a DC of 15 + 10 x the rank of the layer that you are attempting to escape from, and casting a spell to move between layers requires a caster level check with a DC 15 + your starting layer’s rank – your target layer’s rank.
(Orthrys’s rank = 1 … Agathys’s rank = 6)
Orthrys: The surface of Carceri is a world of stagnant rivers, swamps, quicksand, and the occasional mountain here and there (see SRD for the mechanical effects of Marsh and Mountain terrains).
The mountains are primarily raised by spell casters who Transmute Mud into Rock over extended periods. Some the most powerful builders have found that mile-high piles of bodies - be they already dead or merely soon-to-be - provide enough weight to crush those at the bottom into somewhat stable masonry. (Comparatively) less bloodthirsty builders have found castings of Flesh to Stone and Sculpt Stone to be more "efficient."
These mountains are constantly - though not normally very quickly - being eroded by rival spell casters who Transmute the Rock back into Mud, normally for the purpose of catching specific enemies in the ensuing mudslide, though occasionally "just in case" the owner of the mountain needs to be "taught a lesson" at some unknown point in the future.
The largest of these mountains are maintained by titans, false gods banished to Carceri for trying to bring down the Olympian deities.
The quagmires beneath the mountains are populated by the corrupt politicians and charlatan cult leaders who drew great masses of people away from the institutions that were built to do good in the world. The people here may appear somewhat Lawful at first glance (building massive organizations full of people that they are never going to meet personally), but the defining feature is that they themselves don’t actually care.
Even the worst dictator of Acheron, Baator, or Gehenna still fundamentally cared for the system itself that he controlled, albeit not for the people who supported it. If a dictator went to the Orthrysian swamps of Carceri instead of to a more Lawful plane, it was because he thought about his organizations in terms of his victims doing what he personally wanted them to do (Chaotic leadership), rather than them doing what his system needed them to do (Lawful leadership).
These people do not want to spend effort building true order in their world, merely to build false order and corrupt true order such that they waste the time of people who are trying to build true order. They trapped their victims in a microcosm where everybody wasted time, energy, and resources by getting bogged down in simply going through the motions, struggling to wade through the quicksand of their figurehead's meaningless ceremony, and nobody had time to notice that nobody was actually accomplishing anything.
In life, many of these bogus leaders were able to gather great numbers of minions because they found people willing to care about their system even where they themselves did not. In Carceri, they do not normally find this success because all potential minions are as uncommitted as they are, and nothing that anybody builds is supported by enough people to have a chance of lasting for very long before being consumed by the pestilent wasteland.
Potential NPCs:
Juforpio: a demon mage who enjoys tempting his victims with the promise of ruling Abyssal mobs in the Blood War, teleporting them out of Carceri while sneaking stolen gems onto their persons that the demodands are searching for. The plane’s own guards are forced to do the dirty work of hunting/killing the “fugitive,” and Juforpio steals more gems from their posts while they are distracted. Do the PCs try to kill him and/or turn him in to gain favor with the demodands, or do they help him find “opponents” for his “games”?
Potential Conflicts: two High Priests of Nerull – a Yugoloth and a Demon – have secretly agreed to a sectarian war between their respective churches, guaranteeing that their god will receive a greater number of murders committed in his name. Do the PCs sell their services to the pair, or do they try to turn the churches against the treacherous leaders?
Cathrys: Immediately below Orthrys is an overgrown wilderness dominated by jungles and grasslands whose threat comes from the plants that are alive, rather than dying and contaminating the water as in the layer above. The humidity of the jungles deals 1d6 acid damage per hour to anybody caught inside, and the trees deal 1d4 further acid damage per round that a character spends climbing on them. The razor-sharp grasses beyond the jungles deal 1 slashing damage per 5 ft moved to the foot-wear of anybody who runs on the ground as a full-round action, and characters who walk on the ground with neither protective foot-wear nor a Natural Armor bonus take 1 slashing damage per 5 ft moved regardless of speed.
The sadists here had more fun physically torturing their victims than socially manipulating them, and they may as well have been predatory animals rather than intelligent people. In Carceri, they find themselves in a world where there is no civilization to speak of because everybody else would rather hunt each other like animals than work together to make the environment more survivable.
Potential NPCs:
Theraph: a bebilith cleric of Baphomet who eats the demons who do not join his following, those who get killed by infighting within his cult, those who threaten his control by encouraging infighting, … and those who might potentially do any of the above at some unspecified point in the future. Do the PCs protect other demons from his cult, do they encourage demons to join him by representing him directly, or do they play an enemy for him to defend them against?
Potential Conflicts: one Yugoloth Druid wishes to burn down a jungle so that his dragons can have more razor-sharp grassland to hunt their prey across, a second wishes to spread the jungle as far as possible so that his demons can be “safe” from enemies not immune to poison (however much they may kill each other). Do the PCs take a side, play the two Druids against each other, or try to negotiate a truce?
Minethys: Beneath the jungles of Orthrys and Cathrys rage an endless barrage of sandstorms that leave a desert world in their wake, and those trapped here must dig whatever shelters for themselves that they can manage for however long that they can manage (see SRD for mechanical effects of Duststorms, Sandstorms, and Heat Dangers). Even if the people here could trust each other enough to protect one another, it wouldn’t matter because they spend so much time digging in the ground that they don’t even notice each other in the first place.
The thieves and hoarders who find themselves trapped here had spent their lives gathering as much wealth for themselves by any means “necessary,” and then hiding themselves and their ill-gotten gains from the world. They buried their heads in the sand lest they be asked to use their resources to aid the real people starving to death in the real world, and now those who could save them from raging sandstorms do not even know they exist: the potential saviors are forced to bury their own heads in the sand to protect themselves from the very same storms.
Potential NPCs:
Verger: a Medusa who is trying to collect enough statues to maintain a shelter, she uses a tamed purple worm to protect her from her enemies, to carry her far enough to find new victims, and to carry any new statues back to her home. Do the PCs try to kill her or help her to find more victims to create statues from?
Potential Conflicts: A clan of Tarterian Dragons has lured a legion of demodands to the deserts by instigating an attempted mass escape, and are planning on keeping the demodands distracted by battle long enough for them to be consumed by an unusually nasty sandstorm while the dragons fly out of harms way to wreck havoc somewhere else while the guards are busy enduring the storm. Do the PCs warn the demodand leaders about the trap or help the dragons complete it?
Colothys: Liars who tricked others into making bad decisions by giving them bad information with which to make decisions, making their victims hurt themselves indirectly instead of / in addition to just hurting them directly, find themselves being tossed by powerful storms (see SRD for the mechanical effects of Severe Force Winds or stronger) from mountaintop to mountaintop. Infinite valleys are always waiting to swallow them if they should ever fall from the far-too-narrow walking paths (rarely more than 10 ft wide).
However, to seek shelter in the tunnels that have been dug through the mountains, the roads that have been paved around them, or the bridges that have been built between, would be far deadlier than to avoid them: any such infrastructure in Carceri has been built by the kind of malicious predator who belongs in Carceri.
Potential NPCs:
Cirri: A vampire who uses his Gaseous Form to fly above the valleys between the mountains, he hunts by flying right next to his prey, turning corporeal before the prey has a chance to react, pulling the prey off of the edge with him, and turning Gaseous again when he is done feeding. Do the PCs try to stop him from hunting or try to help him?
Potential Conflicts: Two Glabrezu – secretly brother and sister – have established a pair of cults where initiates to each must kill members of the other in exchange for wishes and membership. Do the PCs try to expose the two leaders or help them play their servants against each other?
Porphatys: The next-to-lowest layer of Carceri has been swallowed by a great acidic ocean (see SRD for the mechanical effects of Acid). The closest things in this world to landmasses are just networks of sandbars, between which the depth of the acid is only a few feet, yet even the largest of these sandbars are being as devoured from within by acidic lakes and snow-banks as they are from without by the oceans. The people here are not just the lazy thieves and hoarders of Minethys who hid from the world of people dying of sickness and starvation, but who flaunted their ill-gotten wealth for all the world to see and who still acted offended whenever asked to use their wealth for something real to help the real people in the real world.
Now, they are in a world so flat that the only things that anybody can see for miles around are the other people, all living mere inches from being digested alive by the ocean, and where they know that everybody else for miles around can see that they too are in the same danger. However, not only do they betray almost all who try to save them, but likewise do they claim that they should not try to save others for fear of the same betrayal.
Potential NPCs:
Ferrox: a Druid who keeps a swarm of Rust Monsters for the purpose of destroying any metal ships that are sent from other realms to resist the acid of the ocean. Do the PCs try to kill her to gain favor with the realm’s sailors, or vice versa?
Potential Conflicts: a clan of Black Dragons is working to conjure islands so that they can rest without drowning in the ocean, and a clan of Green Dragons is working to destroy these islands so that they can chase the Black Dragons to exhaustion. Do the PCs take a side or play the two against each other?
Agathys: The core of Carceri is a frozen wasteland dominated by glaciers - most of them at least moderately acidic from Porphatysian outflow - that constantly grind and crush against each other, threatening inhabitants with icequakes, geysers, eruptions, and avalanches (See SRD for the mechanical effects of Cold Dangers).
The people here not only hurt strangers, teaching the innocent to fear the cruelty of strangers, but they feigned personal friendship with the people they intended to victimize, teaching the innocent to distrust even those who love them and whom they should expect to depend on the most. They taught the innocent to freeze their hearts against other innocents for fear that everybody might be as treacherous; now the traitors themselves are frozen where they stand, incapable of moving more than inches at a time even to escape being crushed and mangled. The innocents in life were forced to ignore the people around them for fear of being hurt again, constantly afraid that the people surrounding them might be predators; now the traitors in Carceri find themselves surrounded by people who are forced to ignore them in return.
Potential NPCs:
Coturac: a Red Dragon who melts portions of ice into warm pools, frees the people who had been trapped within, and forges Minor Rings of Acid Resistance for herself and her "guests" to swim in the pools for warmth. She convinces those she’s saved that she will let them freeze again for being untrustworthy unless they “prove their compassion” by bringing others still encased in ice to be thawed in her pool, however she then starts boiling her cauldron once she feels that there is enough food swimming in it. Do the PCs try to convince Coturac's victims that they are in danger, do they fight her in order to gain her victims’ favor, or do they help to feed her?
Potential Conflicts: an army of Avolakia have laid siege to an ice fortress dedicated to Nerull, demanding that the vampire colony inside be offered as a tribute of food. Do the PCs take a side, play the two against each other, or do they convince the Avolakia to hunt for easier meat?
**
New Feats:
Disillusionment: You have seen so much deception and cruelty in the world that you cannot imagine anything else. If you are being gamed by somebody who has a secret, vicious angle for what he's doing, then you are very good at determining what that angle is, but you have no idea what to make of people who genuinely do not have angles for everything and everybody.
Prerequisites:
Knowledge (Planes) 5 ranks, Sense Motive 5 ranks, Bluff 5 ranks
Affinity for either Baator, Gehenna, Hades, Carceri, and/or The Abyss (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17048470#post17048470)
When making a Bluff or Sense Motive check against a target of Evil alignment, you roll twice and take the higher result. When making a Bluff or Sense Motive check against a target of Good alignment, you roll twice and take the lower result.
Coward's Strike: You have learned that there is only honor in games and contracts, and sometimes not even then. In life or death situations, you survive by any dirty handed means necessary. You try to strike as quickly as possible so that your opponent has as little chance to fight back as possible, and you have learned to control your body language to keep him from guessing what kind of attack to defend against.
Prerequisites:
Sneak Attack class feature
Knowledge (Planes) 5 ranks, Bluff 5 ranks
Affinity for Carceri (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=17048470#post17048470)
When making a successful sneak attack, you deal 1 extra point of damage equal per rank that you have in Bluff.
**
Does anybody else have ideas to add? NPCs, locations, conflicts, mechanics? Feedback on what I've already come up with?