Tragak
2015-02-11, 08:58 PM
Personal note if anybody's interested: it is just past the 2 year anniversary of when I first joined this site, and I am coming up on the 1 year anniversary of when I first started the project that I consider to be my favorite personal contribution to this site: my Planar Re-imaginings. A few paragraphs of description for each of the 16 aligned Planes (posted here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?287209-Outer-Planes-analysis-(PEACH-)), WotC (http://community.wizards.com/content/forum-topic/3742711), and MinMaxBoards (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=11186.0)) eventually grew into a reading binge of other peoples' write-ups where individual planes got several pages each, which themselves inspired a writing binge where I came up with 4 of my own over the course of 5 months.
Now, after an extremely long period of creative burn-out, I would like to share a new one that I'm especially satisfied with for one specific reason: this plane was the spark that made me fall in love with writing about the planes in the first place. Here’s hoping my expansion does the original summary (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?265884-afroakuma-s-Planar-Questions-Thread!-(You-ask-I-ll-answer)/page38&p=14640630#post14640630) justice, because my other projects would never have happened without Lord_Gareth’s description of
Acheron
“…The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Acheron is technically the most Evil of the 3 Lawful Neutral realms, and yet the tyrants here are not as proactive about personal goals as are the magistrates of the less selfish Mechanus and Arcadia. Likewise, Acheron is technically the least Evil of the 3 Lawful Evil realms, and yet the wars that rage across this landscape are more legendary and destructive than are those of the crueler Baator and Gehenna.
A Mechanian or Arcadian magistrate wishes to build something, and yet an Acheronian tyrant wishes simply to not be destroyed. A Baatorian and Gehennan tyrant is so cruel that none dare openly oppose her, and yet an Acheronian doesn't think about his enemies as even being people worth trying to scare.
This plane may be most fundamentally similar to Baator and Mechanus in their shared view that The System all-important and that the people merely support it, and yet at first glance the plane appears more like the Grey Waste of Hades: Mechanus is a world of professional efficiency and Baator a world of professional cruelty, but Acheron is a world of professional emptiness.
Variable numeric effects of Healing spells are minimized (applying the Maximize Spell feat once cancels out this effect, and the feat may be applied twice in order to gain the normal effect of applying it once), and anything brought into the world by an arcane Creation spell lasts only as long as the caster can maintain his Concentration: the DC starts at 10, decreases by 1 for every 1d4 HP the caster sacrifices, and increases by 1/round on Avalas, 2/round on Thuldanin, 3/round on Tintibulus, and 4/round on Ocanthus.
Even death offers no reprieve to those suffering here, as any Acheronians whose corporeal bodies die are immediately brought back elsewhere on the plane as ghosts, wraiths, specters… The total number of corporeal Acheronians is kept all but constant, with anybody who dies or leaves the plane being replaced within a fraction of a second by a dead soul or an extraplanar traveller that had been waiting in line (although a traveller has to wait for any noticeable amount of time: Acheron will get the dead souls anyway, so travelers are always allowed in ahead of them), but it has not been confirmed that the number of incorporeal is restricted in the same way. If they are not, and the number would naturally be increasing as a constant response to the droves of corporeals dying and being replaced, then the question no becomes "what happens to the incorporeals that prevents their numbers from flooding the plane?" Not that anybody bothers asking questions like that one.
Conformity and violence are the anthems here (doubling the values of all Favored Enemy bonuses for all who hunt specific races across this plane) and all of the great masses of earth and metal in this plane - from the largest "planets" to the smallest debris - would be perfectly geometric but for the scars of battle and bloodshed. These masses collide on such a regular basis that those on approaching surfaces always have enough advanced warning escape underground with ease, and yet they generals - safe in their bunkers - always force their troops to follow the schedule that was set.
"If they had done their job in time, they wouldn't have needed to worry about the deadline. Now I have one less army that was probably going to lose anyway if they allowed the battle to continue for that long, my enemy has one less army that was probably going to win, and my next army will know to fight harder than this one did" - quoth the generals of both sides
The vast majority of these masses are cubical - the shape that most perfectly represents congruity over individuation - and even those not shaped like cubes are generally referred to as such: individual examples do not matter, only the categories that they belong to.
Those who reach the highest levels of leadership in Acheron are those who believed that the fruits of an institution’s labor go to the people with the highest titles in the institution, not to those who did the actual work. When told that workers deserve to enjoy the fruits of their own labors, these robber barons insisted, “But they wouldn’t have been able to work without my institution giving them jobs, of course they should be rewarding me for allowing them to do so.” In life, they were allowed to die in peace and luxury, blissfully unaware that thousands of their own servants had starved to death so that the masters could keep more money to spend on themselves. Now, reborn as immortals, the leaders will most certainly live long enough to taste for themselves the emptiness they inflict the world around them, but they no longer think to do anything else.
Those who remain lieutenants in the middle positions are those who believed that loyalty to “The System” was a goal in of itself, rather than a means to accomplishing something real. These people did not want to actively hurt others, but if somebody happened to get hurt during the course of The System’s official proceedings, then these people didn't see what anybody had the right to complain about. In death, it turned out that they were no different from the people that they insisted weren't important, and now they feel for themselves that The System they worshiped so much does not care for them either; but as with those on top, the lieutenants no longer think to do anything else.
Those on the bottom are only grudgingly acknowledged as being people in the first place. They only barely get by on the table scraps that The System deigns to give them, and yet they continue to toil because they do not have anywhere else to go. Unless they are lucky enough to achieve a position of authority – and often, even then – they will not experience anything that can truly be called living.
In life, many had previously been like those now on top, and they had previously claimed - from a position of comfort - that their legions of servants should've been thankful for the "privilege" of starving to death with a job as opposed to starving to death without one, insisting that their servants were merely "envious and lazy" when told that said servants were starving to death while the robber barons basked in luxury. Now they are the ones who come into a new world with all of the disadvantages that they had blamed their own servants for being born into.
Many had previously been like those now in the middle, and they had previously claimed - from a position of comfort - that the mere presence of an official protocol was enough to turn suffering from a "tragedy" into a "footnote." Now they are the ones who tell their superiors that they are suffering and find themselves being told in return, "Nonsense, you can clearly see that our procedures were followed perfectly, come back when an actual problem arises."
They will win no sympathy when they live in poverty, they will win no glory when their commanders drive them to war, and they will win no peace when they finally die, undie, die again...
They will, pure and simply, exist. Mechanically, catatonically, pointlessly.
Just like they wanted us to.
Lawful: Completely devoted to the strong
Lawful characters gain a +2 bonus to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks, Chaotic characters take a -2 penalty
Lawful characters cast spells at +1 caster level, Chaotic characters cast spells at -1 caster level
Lawful spells are cast at +1 caster level, Chaotic spells are cast at -1 caster level
Neutral/Evil: Mostly apathetic – but not completely antagonistic – towards the weak
Good characters take a -1 penalty to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks
The Exemplars that would be most comfortable here are the slightly-more-evil Formians and Modrons (LN) and the slightly-less-evil Devils (LE).
Archons (LG) and most Formians and Modrons would be uncomfortable in a world where the only widespread system is of destruction rather than creation.
Any that come to Acheron would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Chaos
*Trying to convert the “parasites” to a life of “responsibility”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened elsewhere
*…
Yugoloths (NE) and most Devils would be uncomfortable in a world where so many of those inside the system are so willing to “settle” for positions of low risk and medium reward instead of trying for those of medium risk and high reward.
Any that come to Acheron would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Good
*Trying to convert the “busybodies” to a life of “reward”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened elsewhere
…
Avalas:
"They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil! We must sound the Drums of War!"
"They're different from us, which means they can't be trusted! We must sound the Drums of War!"
The most war-torn layer of a plane legendary for warfare. This is a world where commanders drive their legions to wage war not because their enemy has something that the commanders want, but simply because they are afraid that anybody not part of their own group must obviously want to kill them at some indeterminate point in the future, and thus each group tries to “protect” themselves by wiping the other out first.
Potential NPCs:
*The Khargali: a Rakshasa family who seek the bragging rights of conquering Avalas from Acheron and sending it to Mechanus. The team maneuvers high-ranking generals and their entourages into meeting – without the benefit of their more massive military forces – and wait for hostility to begin before taking both generals hostage. The Kharghali then try to convince both sides that if it would be a bad thing for them to kill both leaders, then the both sets of minions killing each other doesn’t make sense either. Do the PCs join the family’s campaign, kill them to preserve the status quo, play them and their targets against each other, or try to convince them that their campaign to end the violence is as pointless as the violence itself?
Potential Conflict:
*There's no "Potential" anything: all of the most militaristic races in the universe have been thrown into the blender. Humans versus Humans, Orcs versus Orcs, Humans versus Orcs, Hobgoblins versus Hobgoblins, Humans versus Hobgoblins, Orcs versus Hobgoblins, Achaierai versus Achaierai, Humans versus Achaierai, Orcs versus Achaierai, Hobgoblins versus Achaierai… Do the PCs sign up for a specific army, or play several different sides against each other?
Thuldanin:
"At the end of the war, if there are two Humans and one Orc left alive, we win!"
A barren wasteland left behind by eons of wars fought and lost. Many powerful weapons can be found in the ruins and the killing fields, and many wars are raged solely for the purpose of procuring these weapons for the sake of other wars before anybody else has a chance, but all creatures not immune to petrification must make both a Willpower and a Fortitude save every day (DCs start at 10 each and increase by 1 every consecutive day that the person does not leave Thuldanin) or be turned to stone. Even if one is restored, the days spent in Thuldanin as a statue still count against him when resisting petrification on the next day.
While Avalas sees it’s wars fought by soldiers who live and die at the instruction of commanders who are still using them to accomplish specific battle-plans, the wars of Thuldanin are fought by mindless Undead and Constructs whose makers have long since ceased to be and yet who nonetheless continue going through the motions. While every battle-cry in Avalas ultimately boiled down to "Destroy them before they destroy us," Thuldanin hears nothing but "Destroy them even if they destroy us!"
Many nations with powerful weapons threaten Mutually Assured Destruction in the hopes that their enemies are more rational, reasonable, and self-preserving than they themselves; Thuldanians would make sure that it actually happens.
Potential NPC:
*The Weeping Adder: A Medusa who was kidnapped by a Pit Fiend wishing (allegedly) to study the effects of Thuldanin’s petrification of species that can naturally petrify others. The Medusa knew that she was almost certainly not immune and she tried using a mirror to petrify herself before the plane could do it to her, but somehow her mind has still survived the thousands of years since she fossilized her body. Do the PCs restore her, leave her be, or put her out of her misery?
Purtagenam: formerly a Human (or Orc) field captain whose legion had been warring with Orcs (or Humans) on Avalas, both sides became so suicidal in their zeal to exterminate the "hideous, evil monsters" that even Avalas rejected them and the cube fell into Thuldanin. Over 95% of the troops in each army were petrified within the first week, and Purtagenam blamed the other army for dragging his own race down with them. On the verge of petrification himself, he discovered an ancient bomb, fixed it up to the best of his abilities, and detonated it by hand inside the enemy survivors' camp. He came back as an Allip and found that he was not "allowed" to join any of the incorporeal armies until he "completed his mission" of destroying the army that he had been fighting in life, but all of the "survivors" have been turned to stone and he is unable to harm them. Do the PCs put him out of his misery, resurrect him into a physical body so that he can destroy the statues, or search for an ancient fabled weapon that can supposedly be used by an incorporeal to destroy physical objects?
Potential Conflict:
*An up-and-coming Lich Cleric of Kyuss has been attacking an established Formian colony to create an army of corporeal undead under her control. Do the PCs fight one side or the other, play the two against each other, find the Formians a place to escape to, or find the Lich a new colony to hunt?
*in the last great war on a particular prime world, both sides used a new kind of weapon that left entire stretches of land forever devastated and lifeless. That was a thousand years ago and the secret on how to build this weapon was lost. But now, small smoldering conflicts have ignited a new world war and both sides have sent parties to Thuldanin to find one of these weapons that never went of and was then lost. Do the PCs help one or the other sides for money or ideology or destroy the weapon forever?
[B]Tintibulus:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
A world where the beauty of knowledge, theory, science and discovery is reduced to merely another weapon of domination and violence. Great libraries and laboratories have been dug out miles underground to withstand the collisions between their respective landmasses and any others adjacent, but what are supposed to serve as beacons of civilization are instead painstakingly hidden and ferociously defended - so as to prevent their owners' perceived enemies from gaining access to the knowledge inside - and the only discoveries to be found are of more efficient ways to control and annihilate.
Chaotic, Good, and/or Healing spells automatically fail here, but all others are cast at +1 caster level, and an Lawful non-Good character who makes a Spellcraft, Use Magic Device, Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (planes), Concentration, or caster level check rolls twice and takes the higher result.
These people could’ve spent their magnificent mental prowess and arcane potential to make the world a safer, freer place for all to live in, but chose instead to give their wondrous gifts to the slave drivers and the fear mongers.
Potential NPC:
*Dispirius: an Imp Wizard who “employs” a network of Artificers, he never goes more than an hour without a Widened, Energy Substituted Fireball set to detonate as a Contingency in the event of his death. Do the PCs help his business, try to sabotage him, or take their chances on fighting him?
Potential Conflict:
*A platoon of Achaierai are hard at work cooking up new armor for their overlords in Avalas, but a flock of Rust Dragons have been sent to raze their forges to the ground. Do the PCs fight the dragons so that the Achaierai can escape and/or continue working, offer to finish manufacturing the armor so that the Achaierai can deal with the dragons, help the dragons destroy the forges, or play the two against each other?
*"If we can't have him, no one can!" This seems to be the order of the day as two mighty planar armies, one goblins, one bladelings, have both become convinced that a great researcher living in seclusion on Tintibulus has been bribed by the other side to make weapons for them. So they are both sending assassins to make sure his secrets die with him. Do the PCs help the researcher escape the plane while evading assassins or do they betray him to one of both sides? Of course, both sides will quickly be convinced that the PCs are a third side they don't know about...
[B][I]Ocanthus:
"I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race."
The entire “natural” world has been disintegrated into a tempest of rocks and razors, and any solid ground to stand on must be built (and protected) consciously by the people who wish for someplace to stand. Every round, an exposed character, item, or shelter endures an attack worth +0 ranged (2d6 of each piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning, treated as law-aligned and evil-aligned magic weapons for the purposes of damage reduction) and the character is denied her Dexterity bonus to AC.
The people who find themselves here in death are those who saw competition for resources in life and decided that the choices were “there’s not enough to go around, if we don’t kill the competition we will starve to death” without trying to make more for everybody. They convinced themselves that their environment in life was responsible for any bloodshed they committed, and now they find themselves in an environment that is indeed trying to kill them in the way that they had claimed their previous was.
Potential NPC:
*Verusten: A Rust Dragon Cleric whose parents were murdered on the order of a Erinyes, he then killed killed her in revenge and is now hiding from her superiors until he becomes powerful enough to resurrect his parents. Do the PCs help him find better healing and shelter, resurrect his family for him, attack the devils to keep them off of his back, sell him out for the devils’ favor, or play the two against each other?
Potential Conflict:
*A Mummy Lord and his cult devoted to Nerull are constructing a fortress to withstand the storm, and a devil has “accidentally” revealed their location to an army of enemy bladelings. Do the PCs try to fight one side or the other, play the two against each other, help the Mummy and his cult escape, or send the bladelings misinformation so that the cult can stay?
**
New Feat:
Unstoppable Frontline: Acheron’s militaristic energy compels your soldiers to keep moving forward, never breaking formation, never falling behind.
Prerequisites:
Knowledge (Planes) 5 ranks
Leadership feat
Affinity for Acheron (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?332741-Planar-Affinity&p=17048470#post17048470)
When allies within 30 ft. of you roll initiative, add a bonus to the lowest roll equal to the number of said allies.
Special: if you have the Endurance feat, all allies within 30 ft. are treated as though they too have the Endurance feat.
**
Does anybody else have ideas to add? NPCs, locations, conflicts, mechanics? Feedback on what I've already come up with?
Now, after an extremely long period of creative burn-out, I would like to share a new one that I'm especially satisfied with for one specific reason: this plane was the spark that made me fall in love with writing about the planes in the first place. Here’s hoping my expansion does the original summary (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?265884-afroakuma-s-Planar-Questions-Thread!-(You-ask-I-ll-answer)/page38&p=14640630#post14640630) justice, because my other projects would never have happened without Lord_Gareth’s description of
Acheron
“…The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Acheron is technically the most Evil of the 3 Lawful Neutral realms, and yet the tyrants here are not as proactive about personal goals as are the magistrates of the less selfish Mechanus and Arcadia. Likewise, Acheron is technically the least Evil of the 3 Lawful Evil realms, and yet the wars that rage across this landscape are more legendary and destructive than are those of the crueler Baator and Gehenna.
A Mechanian or Arcadian magistrate wishes to build something, and yet an Acheronian tyrant wishes simply to not be destroyed. A Baatorian and Gehennan tyrant is so cruel that none dare openly oppose her, and yet an Acheronian doesn't think about his enemies as even being people worth trying to scare.
This plane may be most fundamentally similar to Baator and Mechanus in their shared view that The System all-important and that the people merely support it, and yet at first glance the plane appears more like the Grey Waste of Hades: Mechanus is a world of professional efficiency and Baator a world of professional cruelty, but Acheron is a world of professional emptiness.
Variable numeric effects of Healing spells are minimized (applying the Maximize Spell feat once cancels out this effect, and the feat may be applied twice in order to gain the normal effect of applying it once), and anything brought into the world by an arcane Creation spell lasts only as long as the caster can maintain his Concentration: the DC starts at 10, decreases by 1 for every 1d4 HP the caster sacrifices, and increases by 1/round on Avalas, 2/round on Thuldanin, 3/round on Tintibulus, and 4/round on Ocanthus.
Even death offers no reprieve to those suffering here, as any Acheronians whose corporeal bodies die are immediately brought back elsewhere on the plane as ghosts, wraiths, specters… The total number of corporeal Acheronians is kept all but constant, with anybody who dies or leaves the plane being replaced within a fraction of a second by a dead soul or an extraplanar traveller that had been waiting in line (although a traveller has to wait for any noticeable amount of time: Acheron will get the dead souls anyway, so travelers are always allowed in ahead of them), but it has not been confirmed that the number of incorporeal is restricted in the same way. If they are not, and the number would naturally be increasing as a constant response to the droves of corporeals dying and being replaced, then the question no becomes "what happens to the incorporeals that prevents their numbers from flooding the plane?" Not that anybody bothers asking questions like that one.
Conformity and violence are the anthems here (doubling the values of all Favored Enemy bonuses for all who hunt specific races across this plane) and all of the great masses of earth and metal in this plane - from the largest "planets" to the smallest debris - would be perfectly geometric but for the scars of battle and bloodshed. These masses collide on such a regular basis that those on approaching surfaces always have enough advanced warning escape underground with ease, and yet they generals - safe in their bunkers - always force their troops to follow the schedule that was set.
"If they had done their job in time, they wouldn't have needed to worry about the deadline. Now I have one less army that was probably going to lose anyway if they allowed the battle to continue for that long, my enemy has one less army that was probably going to win, and my next army will know to fight harder than this one did" - quoth the generals of both sides
The vast majority of these masses are cubical - the shape that most perfectly represents congruity over individuation - and even those not shaped like cubes are generally referred to as such: individual examples do not matter, only the categories that they belong to.
Those who reach the highest levels of leadership in Acheron are those who believed that the fruits of an institution’s labor go to the people with the highest titles in the institution, not to those who did the actual work. When told that workers deserve to enjoy the fruits of their own labors, these robber barons insisted, “But they wouldn’t have been able to work without my institution giving them jobs, of course they should be rewarding me for allowing them to do so.” In life, they were allowed to die in peace and luxury, blissfully unaware that thousands of their own servants had starved to death so that the masters could keep more money to spend on themselves. Now, reborn as immortals, the leaders will most certainly live long enough to taste for themselves the emptiness they inflict the world around them, but they no longer think to do anything else.
Those who remain lieutenants in the middle positions are those who believed that loyalty to “The System” was a goal in of itself, rather than a means to accomplishing something real. These people did not want to actively hurt others, but if somebody happened to get hurt during the course of The System’s official proceedings, then these people didn't see what anybody had the right to complain about. In death, it turned out that they were no different from the people that they insisted weren't important, and now they feel for themselves that The System they worshiped so much does not care for them either; but as with those on top, the lieutenants no longer think to do anything else.
Those on the bottom are only grudgingly acknowledged as being people in the first place. They only barely get by on the table scraps that The System deigns to give them, and yet they continue to toil because they do not have anywhere else to go. Unless they are lucky enough to achieve a position of authority – and often, even then – they will not experience anything that can truly be called living.
In life, many had previously been like those now on top, and they had previously claimed - from a position of comfort - that their legions of servants should've been thankful for the "privilege" of starving to death with a job as opposed to starving to death without one, insisting that their servants were merely "envious and lazy" when told that said servants were starving to death while the robber barons basked in luxury. Now they are the ones who come into a new world with all of the disadvantages that they had blamed their own servants for being born into.
Many had previously been like those now in the middle, and they had previously claimed - from a position of comfort - that the mere presence of an official protocol was enough to turn suffering from a "tragedy" into a "footnote." Now they are the ones who tell their superiors that they are suffering and find themselves being told in return, "Nonsense, you can clearly see that our procedures were followed perfectly, come back when an actual problem arises."
They will win no sympathy when they live in poverty, they will win no glory when their commanders drive them to war, and they will win no peace when they finally die, undie, die again...
They will, pure and simply, exist. Mechanically, catatonically, pointlessly.
Just like they wanted us to.
Lawful: Completely devoted to the strong
Lawful characters gain a +2 bonus to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks, Chaotic characters take a -2 penalty
Lawful characters cast spells at +1 caster level, Chaotic characters cast spells at -1 caster level
Lawful spells are cast at +1 caster level, Chaotic spells are cast at -1 caster level
Neutral/Evil: Mostly apathetic – but not completely antagonistic – towards the weak
Good characters take a -1 penalty to INT/WIS/CHA-based checks
The Exemplars that would be most comfortable here are the slightly-more-evil Formians and Modrons (LN) and the slightly-less-evil Devils (LE).
Archons (LG) and most Formians and Modrons would be uncomfortable in a world where the only widespread system is of destruction rather than creation.
Any that come to Acheron would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Chaos
*Trying to convert the “parasites” to a life of “responsibility”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened elsewhere
*…
Yugoloths (NE) and most Devils would be uncomfortable in a world where so many of those inside the system are so willing to “settle” for positions of low risk and medium reward instead of trying for those of medium risk and high reward.
Any that come to Acheron would most likely be:
*Seeking aid against the forces of Good
*Trying to convert the “busybodies” to a life of “reward”
*Settling a personal matter that could just as easily have happened elsewhere
…
Avalas:
"They're not like you and me, which means they must be evil! We must sound the Drums of War!"
"They're different from us, which means they can't be trusted! We must sound the Drums of War!"
The most war-torn layer of a plane legendary for warfare. This is a world where commanders drive their legions to wage war not because their enemy has something that the commanders want, but simply because they are afraid that anybody not part of their own group must obviously want to kill them at some indeterminate point in the future, and thus each group tries to “protect” themselves by wiping the other out first.
Potential NPCs:
*The Khargali: a Rakshasa family who seek the bragging rights of conquering Avalas from Acheron and sending it to Mechanus. The team maneuvers high-ranking generals and their entourages into meeting – without the benefit of their more massive military forces – and wait for hostility to begin before taking both generals hostage. The Kharghali then try to convince both sides that if it would be a bad thing for them to kill both leaders, then the both sets of minions killing each other doesn’t make sense either. Do the PCs join the family’s campaign, kill them to preserve the status quo, play them and their targets against each other, or try to convince them that their campaign to end the violence is as pointless as the violence itself?
Potential Conflict:
*There's no "Potential" anything: all of the most militaristic races in the universe have been thrown into the blender. Humans versus Humans, Orcs versus Orcs, Humans versus Orcs, Hobgoblins versus Hobgoblins, Humans versus Hobgoblins, Orcs versus Hobgoblins, Achaierai versus Achaierai, Humans versus Achaierai, Orcs versus Achaierai, Hobgoblins versus Achaierai… Do the PCs sign up for a specific army, or play several different sides against each other?
Thuldanin:
"At the end of the war, if there are two Humans and one Orc left alive, we win!"
A barren wasteland left behind by eons of wars fought and lost. Many powerful weapons can be found in the ruins and the killing fields, and many wars are raged solely for the purpose of procuring these weapons for the sake of other wars before anybody else has a chance, but all creatures not immune to petrification must make both a Willpower and a Fortitude save every day (DCs start at 10 each and increase by 1 every consecutive day that the person does not leave Thuldanin) or be turned to stone. Even if one is restored, the days spent in Thuldanin as a statue still count against him when resisting petrification on the next day.
While Avalas sees it’s wars fought by soldiers who live and die at the instruction of commanders who are still using them to accomplish specific battle-plans, the wars of Thuldanin are fought by mindless Undead and Constructs whose makers have long since ceased to be and yet who nonetheless continue going through the motions. While every battle-cry in Avalas ultimately boiled down to "Destroy them before they destroy us," Thuldanin hears nothing but "Destroy them even if they destroy us!"
Many nations with powerful weapons threaten Mutually Assured Destruction in the hopes that their enemies are more rational, reasonable, and self-preserving than they themselves; Thuldanians would make sure that it actually happens.
Potential NPC:
*The Weeping Adder: A Medusa who was kidnapped by a Pit Fiend wishing (allegedly) to study the effects of Thuldanin’s petrification of species that can naturally petrify others. The Medusa knew that she was almost certainly not immune and she tried using a mirror to petrify herself before the plane could do it to her, but somehow her mind has still survived the thousands of years since she fossilized her body. Do the PCs restore her, leave her be, or put her out of her misery?
Purtagenam: formerly a Human (or Orc) field captain whose legion had been warring with Orcs (or Humans) on Avalas, both sides became so suicidal in their zeal to exterminate the "hideous, evil monsters" that even Avalas rejected them and the cube fell into Thuldanin. Over 95% of the troops in each army were petrified within the first week, and Purtagenam blamed the other army for dragging his own race down with them. On the verge of petrification himself, he discovered an ancient bomb, fixed it up to the best of his abilities, and detonated it by hand inside the enemy survivors' camp. He came back as an Allip and found that he was not "allowed" to join any of the incorporeal armies until he "completed his mission" of destroying the army that he had been fighting in life, but all of the "survivors" have been turned to stone and he is unable to harm them. Do the PCs put him out of his misery, resurrect him into a physical body so that he can destroy the statues, or search for an ancient fabled weapon that can supposedly be used by an incorporeal to destroy physical objects?
Potential Conflict:
*An up-and-coming Lich Cleric of Kyuss has been attacking an established Formian colony to create an army of corporeal undead under her control. Do the PCs fight one side or the other, play the two against each other, find the Formians a place to escape to, or find the Lich a new colony to hunt?
*in the last great war on a particular prime world, both sides used a new kind of weapon that left entire stretches of land forever devastated and lifeless. That was a thousand years ago and the secret on how to build this weapon was lost. But now, small smoldering conflicts have ignited a new world war and both sides have sent parties to Thuldanin to find one of these weapons that never went of and was then lost. Do the PCs help one or the other sides for money or ideology or destroy the weapon forever?
[B]Tintibulus:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
A world where the beauty of knowledge, theory, science and discovery is reduced to merely another weapon of domination and violence. Great libraries and laboratories have been dug out miles underground to withstand the collisions between their respective landmasses and any others adjacent, but what are supposed to serve as beacons of civilization are instead painstakingly hidden and ferociously defended - so as to prevent their owners' perceived enemies from gaining access to the knowledge inside - and the only discoveries to be found are of more efficient ways to control and annihilate.
Chaotic, Good, and/or Healing spells automatically fail here, but all others are cast at +1 caster level, and an Lawful non-Good character who makes a Spellcraft, Use Magic Device, Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (planes), Concentration, or caster level check rolls twice and takes the higher result.
These people could’ve spent their magnificent mental prowess and arcane potential to make the world a safer, freer place for all to live in, but chose instead to give their wondrous gifts to the slave drivers and the fear mongers.
Potential NPC:
*Dispirius: an Imp Wizard who “employs” a network of Artificers, he never goes more than an hour without a Widened, Energy Substituted Fireball set to detonate as a Contingency in the event of his death. Do the PCs help his business, try to sabotage him, or take their chances on fighting him?
Potential Conflict:
*A platoon of Achaierai are hard at work cooking up new armor for their overlords in Avalas, but a flock of Rust Dragons have been sent to raze their forges to the ground. Do the PCs fight the dragons so that the Achaierai can escape and/or continue working, offer to finish manufacturing the armor so that the Achaierai can deal with the dragons, help the dragons destroy the forges, or play the two against each other?
*"If we can't have him, no one can!" This seems to be the order of the day as two mighty planar armies, one goblins, one bladelings, have both become convinced that a great researcher living in seclusion on Tintibulus has been bribed by the other side to make weapons for them. So they are both sending assassins to make sure his secrets die with him. Do the PCs help the researcher escape the plane while evading assassins or do they betray him to one of both sides? Of course, both sides will quickly be convinced that the PCs are a third side they don't know about...
[B][I]Ocanthus:
"I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race."
The entire “natural” world has been disintegrated into a tempest of rocks and razors, and any solid ground to stand on must be built (and protected) consciously by the people who wish for someplace to stand. Every round, an exposed character, item, or shelter endures an attack worth +0 ranged (2d6 of each piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning, treated as law-aligned and evil-aligned magic weapons for the purposes of damage reduction) and the character is denied her Dexterity bonus to AC.
The people who find themselves here in death are those who saw competition for resources in life and decided that the choices were “there’s not enough to go around, if we don’t kill the competition we will starve to death” without trying to make more for everybody. They convinced themselves that their environment in life was responsible for any bloodshed they committed, and now they find themselves in an environment that is indeed trying to kill them in the way that they had claimed their previous was.
Potential NPC:
*Verusten: A Rust Dragon Cleric whose parents were murdered on the order of a Erinyes, he then killed killed her in revenge and is now hiding from her superiors until he becomes powerful enough to resurrect his parents. Do the PCs help him find better healing and shelter, resurrect his family for him, attack the devils to keep them off of his back, sell him out for the devils’ favor, or play the two against each other?
Potential Conflict:
*A Mummy Lord and his cult devoted to Nerull are constructing a fortress to withstand the storm, and a devil has “accidentally” revealed their location to an army of enemy bladelings. Do the PCs try to fight one side or the other, play the two against each other, help the Mummy and his cult escape, or send the bladelings misinformation so that the cult can stay?
**
New Feat:
Unstoppable Frontline: Acheron’s militaristic energy compels your soldiers to keep moving forward, never breaking formation, never falling behind.
Prerequisites:
Knowledge (Planes) 5 ranks
Leadership feat
Affinity for Acheron (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?332741-Planar-Affinity&p=17048470#post17048470)
When allies within 30 ft. of you roll initiative, add a bonus to the lowest roll equal to the number of said allies.
Special: if you have the Endurance feat, all allies within 30 ft. are treated as though they too have the Endurance feat.
**
Does anybody else have ideas to add? NPCs, locations, conflicts, mechanics? Feedback on what I've already come up with?