Elves
2019-07-23, 11:40 PM
I'm trying to sketch out a high-magic 3.5 setting based on various posts from this forum.
That means several Tippyverse elements, but no abuse of magical traps since that makes things too easy. The same goes for Wish loops or thermodynamic/infinite energy exploits.
Please suggest and link stuff that I've missed.
Contents
1. Society
2. Tech and Materials
3. Warfare
4. Factions
5. Classes
6. Religion
7. Bestiary
Cities
Cities are linked by teleportation circles, leading to an “Infinite City”: a megalopolis without regard to geography that may even span multiple planes and planets. A few city-states have resisted incorporation into this sprawl by heavily regulating teleportation.
Augmentation
Anyone who can afford it gets magically enhanced. This goes far beyond cosmetic changes. With the right procedures you can gain psionic powers, flight, immortality, increased ability scores, feats, spell-like abilities, and more. Anyone left in their normal state (like many of the urban poor, and especially the rural poor who live outside the Infinite City) is pitied and profoundly disadvantaged.
There are huge Transformation Facilities where these processes are carried out. Almost every facility contains its own sacred pool with a resident water weird, who uses her healing powers to help patients endure and recuperate from their augmentation process.
Thus, any citizen who's well off is an exotic and probably immortal transhuman with grafts, psionic and incarnum powers, magic gems in their body, and so on, making them powerful despite their lack of class levels. And all but the very poor can be expected to have at least one or two augmentations. The beggar’s option is to try and catch lycanthropy in order to enhance yourself physically, but as you'd expect this often goes wrong and turns those who try it into ravening mutts. A solid middle class option is necropolitanism — simple undeath — to stop aging.
Source: Gavinfoxx (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9NJIs751Af3i0IEIJwCkIp9H9YFiZYZ7u-wmYVaheI/edit)
Labor
Cheap labor is provided by unseen servants and undead servitors.
Resources
With abuse of traps and infinite loops ruled out, we get a society that is not truly post-scarcity but is still very rich thanks to the creations of artificers and the powers of wizards.
Money
While there's normal money, there's also ambrosia (from BoED), a substance that can be used to create magic items, which serves as a currency-like commodity in most of the world.
Poor people without magical capabilities -- who have nothing but their bodies to offer -- often find themselves forced to labor in sexual sweatshops, where they're given pleasure-enhancing drugs and forced to bang within energy transformation fields while distilled joy is cast on them in order to create ambrosia.
Psychic Reformation
Psychic reformation is a popular if expensive service that people use to change their personality, knowledge, talents, inclinations, and habits. It also gets used as a means of brainwashing people, rehabilitating criminals, and so on.
Civic Infrastructure
Healthcare - Urban centers contain a civic altar of resurrection, or even an altar of true resurrection in the richest areas. This doesn't stop death from old age, so despite benefiting from these amenities most middle and working class citizens will save up throughout their lives either for transit to the timeless Astral Plane where they can retire, or for the Crucimigration Ritual to become necropolitan. Healing stones serve most non-resurrection needs.
Libraries - Information facilities contain publicly accessible tablets of knowledge. Citizens simply pick up the appropriate tablet, note down what they had wanted to know, and then move on, leaving it for the next person. (Many citizens have the Jack of All Trades feat, letting them take full advantage of the tablets.) Rare parts of the Infinite City offer a tablet of all knowledge as well, though you'll have to book an appointment in advance.
Cafeterias - Civic cafeterias for the poor provide faucets of create food, plus faucets of prestidigation for flavoring (though those are usually broken).
Transportation - Some teleportation circles are restricted access but many are free to use so long as you have proper documentation. Most are ten feet wide, so while they can fit a lot of traffic and goods through, they do form spacial chokepoints. For other travel needs, the wealthy hitch rides via dominated nightmares (the largest provider is called Nightmare Coach) who astral project them where needed.
Control Weather Towers help control the weather.
Astral Heaven
A common form of retirement is to save up and pay for passage to the Astral Plane, which as a timeless plane you don't age on (nor can you have kids there, etcetera...). Huge, lazy retirement communities have been built in its silver expanse.
Voidstone
Voidstone is an extremely hazardous material: shadow energy compressed to the point of solidity. It’s what spheres of annihilation are made of, but those are hard to make. Voidstone in its raw state isn't controllable like a sphere, but still annihilates everything it touches; it’s used to create impenetrable barriers, horrific grenades, demolition devices, and some very frightening wastepaper baskets. Some wackos even dare use it to make weapons and armor, despite the risk to themselves.
Source: Jowgen (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480986-The-Voidstone-Arsenal-For-when-you-really-want-stuff-gone)
Agriculture
In industrial-scale farms, timed spell-clocks cast plant growth on the crops at regular intervals.
Terraforming
Far-off planets are magically terraformed to be fit for inhabitation via scry-and-colonize.
Source: Jowgen (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?504415-Terraforming-planetoids-in-a-self-sufficient-fashion)
Spelltanks
Commonly called cubes (source: Sofawall (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?147304-The-Cube)), these fantasy tanks have three main functions, all of which may be present in a single vehicle.
- The most expensive ones are dimensionally locked, forbidded cubes of magically-hardened adamantine, layered with walls of force, prismatic walls, and more. They push forward effortlessly flattening stuff, and more importantly, are almost impossible to penetrate.
- Some serve as transports containing soldiers, typically battle horrors, which get rapidly disgorged as leaping shock troopers via a greater pad of launching.
- Some are outfitted with spell turrets, serving as artillery.
Soldiers
Armies were once made of living men. No more! Now several forms of automaton are used as soldiers instead. Three main forms of automaton are used:
Horrors - Battle horrors, and their lesser cousins the helmed horrors, are magically animated suits of armor that serve as the mainstay infantry.
Simulacra - Simulacra are a potent weapon, the most powerful kind being the dreaded ice assassins: perfect simulacra made of ice that will stop at nothing to kill the being in whose image they're made.
Golems - The height of golem technology is the trademarked Shadesteel golem, produced by the massive Shadesteel Corporation. They look like creepy metallic bone aliens and can fly magically. But less expensive types of golem are fielded as well, though the more primitive kinds, like those of flesh and clay, are considered archaic.
Wands as Personal Arms
Wands are the analogue to guns. A 3rd or 5th level wand of magic missile does nearly as much damage as a shotgun and has perfect accuracy.
Cheap single-charge wands are manufactured en masse by artificers who combine the staffsprout spell with their power surge infusion. In this way they can sprout single-charge wands off of magic staves without draining any of the staff's charges. Source: thethird. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?497918-Wandman-All-the-partially-charged-wands)
Traditional multi-charge wands remain expensive, making them the purview of the well-off or the militarily high-up. Upper class and upper middle class children are taught how to use these wands, and other magic items, even if they don't take any other magical training. Upper and upper middle class families may have a family staff or runestaff in the same way they would have a family heirloom sword in chivalric settings.
The Celestial Courts
Since ancient history, divine casters have been the major counterpower to arcane casters. They benefit from being united by devotion to their deities, meaning they can work together more easily and form larger, more stable organizations than mages. These churches have often been the foundation of their societies, overseeing the legal system and healthcare.
Today, many major churches and the courts they administer have united into a bureaucratic behemoth known as the Celestial Courts. The Celestial Courts provide the public services (which earns them more public goodwill than the arcanists have) while the mages mint the money, fight the wars, and enjoy great levels of wealth and some level of impunity from the law.
The Conclave
A mafia of powerful arcanists, the Arcane Conclave has its headquarters and its own grand domain on another planet in the solar system, as well as a vast network of private demiplanes. They forbid building teleportation circles to their planet: it’s only reachable with greater teleport, and access is restricted to mages of a certain stature. Most mages are individualistic and highly competitive; this is the largest organization of them that exists.
The Cult of M
[Mystra/Insert name] is the goddess of magic. There are two main branches of her cult: the Initiates and the Dweomerkeepers. The Initiates of M are spell-priests whose magic runs so strong that they can even defy antimagic fields. The Dweomerkeepers guard the integrity of the world's magic and repair any flaws in the arcanosphere.
But the cult of M----- hasn't maintained its influence by being toothless. On their private demiplane, the Initiates breed super-soldiers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?499269-Planar-Soldiers-of-Mystra) who become resistant to almost all magic and most forms of attack. Meanwhile, the Dweomerkeepers are notorious for their liberal use of ice assassins. Normally rare and highly draining on a mage's power to create, the Keepers seem to have the secrets of creating such simulacra at no cost to themselves.
The Knights Vindicator
An order of fearsome, nightstick-burning priest-knights. They serve as sometime agents of the Celestial Courts but it's well known that they also serve the churches of gods who are more secretive and sinister. Two famous members are Ch'uck the Windicator and the mysterious Knight of Shadows (http://bg-archive.minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=333.0).
The Maho-Tsukai
Also called blood mages or blood sorcerers, the Maho-Tsukai (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?553798-Maho-Tsukai-Madness) are a specialized form of shugenja who deal with blood magic instead of the classical elements. Sorcerers often dabble in this path.
The Planar Shepherds
The druidic equivalent of the high-level wizards who ascend into extraplanar cosmogods. They learn to warp and master extraplanar creatures and terrain.
The Rainbow Servants
Mortal civilization is powerful and magical, but is by no means the only power in the world. For example, there are the mystical couatls. Those who serve the couatls, called the Rainbow Servants, gain great strength in prismatic magic. Another route to power over prismatic magic is held by the Initiates of the Sevenfold Veil, among whose most famous members is the priestess Priya (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?280365-Priya-the-Prismatic-Priestess-Buffs-Across-the-Spectrum).
The Shadesteel Corporation
The lynchpin of the military-industrial complex, its factories produce spell turrets and other engines of war. Most famous are its massive golemworks, which produce the trademark Shadesteel golems that serve as most of the world’s police force.
The Ur-Priests
An order of ultra-powerful priests who tap into divine power directly, worshipping no gods. Many of them are like Ayn Rand caricatures of Will to Power.
The Voidthrawn Army
Due to their preternatural resilience, magically augmented and crossbred trolls have long been a staple of warfare, known as “troll-zillas” or “budget tarrasques”.
Recently, a cabal of three mind flayers came together to conquer the world. One was a necromancer, one a psion, one an artificer. They decided to build an unbeatable army. They bred a stock of war trolls, who were put through several harsh modifications: undeath, lycanthropy, the replacement of their limbs with golem limbs, and at last the notorious Voidmind Ritual. The end result is a mercenary army of unkillable supersoldiers, the Voidthrawn Army.
Source: JeminiZero (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?101587-D-amp-D-3-5-The-Emerald-Legion-Mass-Producing-Ikea-Tarrasques)
Wizards and artificers are the central classes of the setting and are responsible for most of society’s current state. Druids are the one fearsome force fielded by people who live in the wilder areas outside the City, serving as key defenders of wild and rural communities against monsters and other threats.
The paths of the binder and warlock are two routes to power for those who don't have the intellect, proclivity or wealth to train as a wizard and weren't lucky enough to be born with the sorcerer's gift. Many of them therefore come from the lower echelons of society, and it's because of this and not just because of their unsavory patrons that warlocks are looked down on. In the City, they often congregate in gang-like covens.
Advancement
Wizards above 15th level find little more of interest in the mortal world and tend to leave it in order to wander the planes or create and populate demiplanes of their own. Some stay at home, either to help improve the world that birthed them or to indulge their pettier impulses of domination. For the most part, however, the highest level wizards you are likely to find in the mortal world are around 15th level.
Necromantic clerics can use consumptive fields to amass spellcasting power far beyond what they're normally capable of; left to rise in power unchecked they become capable of apocalyptic, nation-ending magics. (Source: Anthrowhale (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?527654-Death-Cults-a-BBEG-guide))
Fighters aren't necessarily useless, they just may not resemble the low-magic image of them. For example, a legendary fighter known as Ex (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?265730-The-ExFighter) successfully mind switched with a hagunemnon protean -- albeit with the help of powerful spellcasters -- allowing him to assume the powers of any creature or monster. And many fighters have gone to immense and exotic lengths to become viable mage-killers. (Examples from Anthrowhale: 1 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?251901-AMF-Fighter), 2 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?254630-An-improved-mage-killer&p=13832819#post13832819)).
The beings who more closely resemble the conventional D&D gods are the Ascended -- mages who each discovered some form of ultimate power. The Ascended now dwell in the Outer Planes, sometimes on planes of their own creation, and are seldom heard from, rarely affecting the mortal world (due, some speculate, to a mutual non-intercession pact). But every so often one of the Ascended returns to the world and does something that usually leaves everyone scratching their heads.
It's disputed whether the Ascended welcome others who would join their ranks, or whether they use their omniscience and omnipotence to prevent new competitors from ever arising.
The pantheon of Ascended includes Pun-Pun (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Pun-Pun), god of kobolds, munchkinry and exploitation, and the Clockwork Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?496834-The-Clockwork-Wizard-Everything-in-no-time), a robotic manipulator of time.
The "true gods" of the setting are obscure and alien, more like cosmic forces; they seldom take embodied form.
Automata
- helmed horror & battle horror
- shadesteel golem
Elemental Weird
- air, earth, fire and water weirds
Living Spell
Lumi (humanoid with floating, glowing head)
- lernean lumi (glowing humanoid with between 2 and 8 floating, glowing heads)
Simulacra
- simulacrum
- ice assassin
Transhumanoid
- empty vessel (incl. statblock for fully templated transhuman citizen)
- necropolitan
- blue goblin, stonefire dwarf
- halfling mageservant (shadow d'hin'ni halfling)
Ultra-Troll
- multiheaded troll
- Voidthrawn soldier
Helmed and battle horrors are vacant suits of armor and weaponry animated by magic. They’re standard infantry.
Shadesteel golems, produced by the Shadesteel Corporation, are commonly employed as police and peace forces, and also find their place on the battlefield. Though different models exist, the default Shadesteel golem model is creepy, alien and skeletal, made of smooth smoky silver material and capable of magically-powered flight. Other types of golems are also created, but they’re less high-tech.
Elemental weirds are elemental beings associated with prophecy who dwell in magic elemental pools on the Material Plane, like sacred lakes or never-drying mudpits. They can't leave their pool. Water weirds have healing powers that are invaluable to the process of augmentation; a water weird’s pool is present in most Transformation Facilities.
Transhumanoid: Empty Vessels (ECS p291) are the most common species for humans to be augmented into, basically “better humans” with a spark of psychic power. The name “Empty Vessel” is because they serve as an ideal substrate for further augmentation, often being the first step in the sequence performed. The equivalents for other races are the blue goblin and stonefire dwarf.
Elves are notorious for cynically trafficking with demons to increase their power. Most of them will use the Dark Chaos Shuffle to replace their four racial proficiency feats with feats of their choosing; this process leaves them with no ultimate bond to the Abyss but certainly leaves their souls tainted.
Halflings, meanwhile, tend to find their place as shadowy, unseen butlers and servants of the wealthy, inhabiting great houses and residences. Their favored forms of augmentation are the shadow and d'hin'ni templates, which make them fast, ultra-stealthy, invisible, and possessed of minor arcane powers -- like household spirits from folklore.
Necropolitans are a simple form of intelligent undead, leaving a creature much more mentally and physically intact than the so-called Degenerate Undead like zombies and ghouls. The downside is that the would-be necropolitan must first be killed in an excruciating ritual. This and other concerns make it unpopular with the rich, but the procedure's achievable price makes it appealing to plebs who would rather be an undead corpse on the Material Plane than alive in static silver Astral boredom.
That means several Tippyverse elements, but no abuse of magical traps since that makes things too easy. The same goes for Wish loops or thermodynamic/infinite energy exploits.
Please suggest and link stuff that I've missed.
Contents
1. Society
2. Tech and Materials
3. Warfare
4. Factions
5. Classes
6. Religion
7. Bestiary
Cities
Cities are linked by teleportation circles, leading to an “Infinite City”: a megalopolis without regard to geography that may even span multiple planes and planets. A few city-states have resisted incorporation into this sprawl by heavily regulating teleportation.
Augmentation
Anyone who can afford it gets magically enhanced. This goes far beyond cosmetic changes. With the right procedures you can gain psionic powers, flight, immortality, increased ability scores, feats, spell-like abilities, and more. Anyone left in their normal state (like many of the urban poor, and especially the rural poor who live outside the Infinite City) is pitied and profoundly disadvantaged.
There are huge Transformation Facilities where these processes are carried out. Almost every facility contains its own sacred pool with a resident water weird, who uses her healing powers to help patients endure and recuperate from their augmentation process.
Thus, any citizen who's well off is an exotic and probably immortal transhuman with grafts, psionic and incarnum powers, magic gems in their body, and so on, making them powerful despite their lack of class levels. And all but the very poor can be expected to have at least one or two augmentations. The beggar’s option is to try and catch lycanthropy in order to enhance yourself physically, but as you'd expect this often goes wrong and turns those who try it into ravening mutts. A solid middle class option is necropolitanism — simple undeath — to stop aging.
Source: Gavinfoxx (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9NJIs751Af3i0IEIJwCkIp9H9YFiZYZ7u-wmYVaheI/edit)
Labor
Cheap labor is provided by unseen servants and undead servitors.
Resources
With abuse of traps and infinite loops ruled out, we get a society that is not truly post-scarcity but is still very rich thanks to the creations of artificers and the powers of wizards.
Money
While there's normal money, there's also ambrosia (from BoED), a substance that can be used to create magic items, which serves as a currency-like commodity in most of the world.
Poor people without magical capabilities -- who have nothing but their bodies to offer -- often find themselves forced to labor in sexual sweatshops, where they're given pleasure-enhancing drugs and forced to bang within energy transformation fields while distilled joy is cast on them in order to create ambrosia.
Psychic Reformation
Psychic reformation is a popular if expensive service that people use to change their personality, knowledge, talents, inclinations, and habits. It also gets used as a means of brainwashing people, rehabilitating criminals, and so on.
Civic Infrastructure
Healthcare - Urban centers contain a civic altar of resurrection, or even an altar of true resurrection in the richest areas. This doesn't stop death from old age, so despite benefiting from these amenities most middle and working class citizens will save up throughout their lives either for transit to the timeless Astral Plane where they can retire, or for the Crucimigration Ritual to become necropolitan. Healing stones serve most non-resurrection needs.
Libraries - Information facilities contain publicly accessible tablets of knowledge. Citizens simply pick up the appropriate tablet, note down what they had wanted to know, and then move on, leaving it for the next person. (Many citizens have the Jack of All Trades feat, letting them take full advantage of the tablets.) Rare parts of the Infinite City offer a tablet of all knowledge as well, though you'll have to book an appointment in advance.
Cafeterias - Civic cafeterias for the poor provide faucets of create food, plus faucets of prestidigation for flavoring (though those are usually broken).
Transportation - Some teleportation circles are restricted access but many are free to use so long as you have proper documentation. Most are ten feet wide, so while they can fit a lot of traffic and goods through, they do form spacial chokepoints. For other travel needs, the wealthy hitch rides via dominated nightmares (the largest provider is called Nightmare Coach) who astral project them where needed.
Control Weather Towers help control the weather.
Astral Heaven
A common form of retirement is to save up and pay for passage to the Astral Plane, which as a timeless plane you don't age on (nor can you have kids there, etcetera...). Huge, lazy retirement communities have been built in its silver expanse.
Voidstone
Voidstone is an extremely hazardous material: shadow energy compressed to the point of solidity. It’s what spheres of annihilation are made of, but those are hard to make. Voidstone in its raw state isn't controllable like a sphere, but still annihilates everything it touches; it’s used to create impenetrable barriers, horrific grenades, demolition devices, and some very frightening wastepaper baskets. Some wackos even dare use it to make weapons and armor, despite the risk to themselves.
Source: Jowgen (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480986-The-Voidstone-Arsenal-For-when-you-really-want-stuff-gone)
Agriculture
In industrial-scale farms, timed spell-clocks cast plant growth on the crops at regular intervals.
Terraforming
Far-off planets are magically terraformed to be fit for inhabitation via scry-and-colonize.
Source: Jowgen (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?504415-Terraforming-planetoids-in-a-self-sufficient-fashion)
Spelltanks
Commonly called cubes (source: Sofawall (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?147304-The-Cube)), these fantasy tanks have three main functions, all of which may be present in a single vehicle.
- The most expensive ones are dimensionally locked, forbidded cubes of magically-hardened adamantine, layered with walls of force, prismatic walls, and more. They push forward effortlessly flattening stuff, and more importantly, are almost impossible to penetrate.
- Some serve as transports containing soldiers, typically battle horrors, which get rapidly disgorged as leaping shock troopers via a greater pad of launching.
- Some are outfitted with spell turrets, serving as artillery.
Soldiers
Armies were once made of living men. No more! Now several forms of automaton are used as soldiers instead. Three main forms of automaton are used:
Horrors - Battle horrors, and their lesser cousins the helmed horrors, are magically animated suits of armor that serve as the mainstay infantry.
Simulacra - Simulacra are a potent weapon, the most powerful kind being the dreaded ice assassins: perfect simulacra made of ice that will stop at nothing to kill the being in whose image they're made.
Golems - The height of golem technology is the trademarked Shadesteel golem, produced by the massive Shadesteel Corporation. They look like creepy metallic bone aliens and can fly magically. But less expensive types of golem are fielded as well, though the more primitive kinds, like those of flesh and clay, are considered archaic.
Wands as Personal Arms
Wands are the analogue to guns. A 3rd or 5th level wand of magic missile does nearly as much damage as a shotgun and has perfect accuracy.
Cheap single-charge wands are manufactured en masse by artificers who combine the staffsprout spell with their power surge infusion. In this way they can sprout single-charge wands off of magic staves without draining any of the staff's charges. Source: thethird. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?497918-Wandman-All-the-partially-charged-wands)
Traditional multi-charge wands remain expensive, making them the purview of the well-off or the militarily high-up. Upper class and upper middle class children are taught how to use these wands, and other magic items, even if they don't take any other magical training. Upper and upper middle class families may have a family staff or runestaff in the same way they would have a family heirloom sword in chivalric settings.
The Celestial Courts
Since ancient history, divine casters have been the major counterpower to arcane casters. They benefit from being united by devotion to their deities, meaning they can work together more easily and form larger, more stable organizations than mages. These churches have often been the foundation of their societies, overseeing the legal system and healthcare.
Today, many major churches and the courts they administer have united into a bureaucratic behemoth known as the Celestial Courts. The Celestial Courts provide the public services (which earns them more public goodwill than the arcanists have) while the mages mint the money, fight the wars, and enjoy great levels of wealth and some level of impunity from the law.
The Conclave
A mafia of powerful arcanists, the Arcane Conclave has its headquarters and its own grand domain on another planet in the solar system, as well as a vast network of private demiplanes. They forbid building teleportation circles to their planet: it’s only reachable with greater teleport, and access is restricted to mages of a certain stature. Most mages are individualistic and highly competitive; this is the largest organization of them that exists.
The Cult of M
[Mystra/Insert name] is the goddess of magic. There are two main branches of her cult: the Initiates and the Dweomerkeepers. The Initiates of M are spell-priests whose magic runs so strong that they can even defy antimagic fields. The Dweomerkeepers guard the integrity of the world's magic and repair any flaws in the arcanosphere.
But the cult of M----- hasn't maintained its influence by being toothless. On their private demiplane, the Initiates breed super-soldiers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?499269-Planar-Soldiers-of-Mystra) who become resistant to almost all magic and most forms of attack. Meanwhile, the Dweomerkeepers are notorious for their liberal use of ice assassins. Normally rare and highly draining on a mage's power to create, the Keepers seem to have the secrets of creating such simulacra at no cost to themselves.
The Knights Vindicator
An order of fearsome, nightstick-burning priest-knights. They serve as sometime agents of the Celestial Courts but it's well known that they also serve the churches of gods who are more secretive and sinister. Two famous members are Ch'uck the Windicator and the mysterious Knight of Shadows (http://bg-archive.minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=333.0).
The Maho-Tsukai
Also called blood mages or blood sorcerers, the Maho-Tsukai (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?553798-Maho-Tsukai-Madness) are a specialized form of shugenja who deal with blood magic instead of the classical elements. Sorcerers often dabble in this path.
The Planar Shepherds
The druidic equivalent of the high-level wizards who ascend into extraplanar cosmogods. They learn to warp and master extraplanar creatures and terrain.
The Rainbow Servants
Mortal civilization is powerful and magical, but is by no means the only power in the world. For example, there are the mystical couatls. Those who serve the couatls, called the Rainbow Servants, gain great strength in prismatic magic. Another route to power over prismatic magic is held by the Initiates of the Sevenfold Veil, among whose most famous members is the priestess Priya (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?280365-Priya-the-Prismatic-Priestess-Buffs-Across-the-Spectrum).
The Shadesteel Corporation
The lynchpin of the military-industrial complex, its factories produce spell turrets and other engines of war. Most famous are its massive golemworks, which produce the trademark Shadesteel golems that serve as most of the world’s police force.
The Ur-Priests
An order of ultra-powerful priests who tap into divine power directly, worshipping no gods. Many of them are like Ayn Rand caricatures of Will to Power.
The Voidthrawn Army
Due to their preternatural resilience, magically augmented and crossbred trolls have long been a staple of warfare, known as “troll-zillas” or “budget tarrasques”.
Recently, a cabal of three mind flayers came together to conquer the world. One was a necromancer, one a psion, one an artificer. They decided to build an unbeatable army. They bred a stock of war trolls, who were put through several harsh modifications: undeath, lycanthropy, the replacement of their limbs with golem limbs, and at last the notorious Voidmind Ritual. The end result is a mercenary army of unkillable supersoldiers, the Voidthrawn Army.
Source: JeminiZero (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?101587-D-amp-D-3-5-The-Emerald-Legion-Mass-Producing-Ikea-Tarrasques)
Wizards and artificers are the central classes of the setting and are responsible for most of society’s current state. Druids are the one fearsome force fielded by people who live in the wilder areas outside the City, serving as key defenders of wild and rural communities against monsters and other threats.
The paths of the binder and warlock are two routes to power for those who don't have the intellect, proclivity or wealth to train as a wizard and weren't lucky enough to be born with the sorcerer's gift. Many of them therefore come from the lower echelons of society, and it's because of this and not just because of their unsavory patrons that warlocks are looked down on. In the City, they often congregate in gang-like covens.
Advancement
Wizards above 15th level find little more of interest in the mortal world and tend to leave it in order to wander the planes or create and populate demiplanes of their own. Some stay at home, either to help improve the world that birthed them or to indulge their pettier impulses of domination. For the most part, however, the highest level wizards you are likely to find in the mortal world are around 15th level.
Necromantic clerics can use consumptive fields to amass spellcasting power far beyond what they're normally capable of; left to rise in power unchecked they become capable of apocalyptic, nation-ending magics. (Source: Anthrowhale (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?527654-Death-Cults-a-BBEG-guide))
Fighters aren't necessarily useless, they just may not resemble the low-magic image of them. For example, a legendary fighter known as Ex (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?265730-The-ExFighter) successfully mind switched with a hagunemnon protean -- albeit with the help of powerful spellcasters -- allowing him to assume the powers of any creature or monster. And many fighters have gone to immense and exotic lengths to become viable mage-killers. (Examples from Anthrowhale: 1 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?251901-AMF-Fighter), 2 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?254630-An-improved-mage-killer&p=13832819#post13832819)).
The beings who more closely resemble the conventional D&D gods are the Ascended -- mages who each discovered some form of ultimate power. The Ascended now dwell in the Outer Planes, sometimes on planes of their own creation, and are seldom heard from, rarely affecting the mortal world (due, some speculate, to a mutual non-intercession pact). But every so often one of the Ascended returns to the world and does something that usually leaves everyone scratching their heads.
It's disputed whether the Ascended welcome others who would join their ranks, or whether they use their omniscience and omnipotence to prevent new competitors from ever arising.
The pantheon of Ascended includes Pun-Pun (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Pun-Pun), god of kobolds, munchkinry and exploitation, and the Clockwork Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?496834-The-Clockwork-Wizard-Everything-in-no-time), a robotic manipulator of time.
The "true gods" of the setting are obscure and alien, more like cosmic forces; they seldom take embodied form.
Automata
- helmed horror & battle horror
- shadesteel golem
Elemental Weird
- air, earth, fire and water weirds
Living Spell
Lumi (humanoid with floating, glowing head)
- lernean lumi (glowing humanoid with between 2 and 8 floating, glowing heads)
Simulacra
- simulacrum
- ice assassin
Transhumanoid
- empty vessel (incl. statblock for fully templated transhuman citizen)
- necropolitan
- blue goblin, stonefire dwarf
- halfling mageservant (shadow d'hin'ni halfling)
Ultra-Troll
- multiheaded troll
- Voidthrawn soldier
Helmed and battle horrors are vacant suits of armor and weaponry animated by magic. They’re standard infantry.
Shadesteel golems, produced by the Shadesteel Corporation, are commonly employed as police and peace forces, and also find their place on the battlefield. Though different models exist, the default Shadesteel golem model is creepy, alien and skeletal, made of smooth smoky silver material and capable of magically-powered flight. Other types of golems are also created, but they’re less high-tech.
Elemental weirds are elemental beings associated with prophecy who dwell in magic elemental pools on the Material Plane, like sacred lakes or never-drying mudpits. They can't leave their pool. Water weirds have healing powers that are invaluable to the process of augmentation; a water weird’s pool is present in most Transformation Facilities.
Transhumanoid: Empty Vessels (ECS p291) are the most common species for humans to be augmented into, basically “better humans” with a spark of psychic power. The name “Empty Vessel” is because they serve as an ideal substrate for further augmentation, often being the first step in the sequence performed. The equivalents for other races are the blue goblin and stonefire dwarf.
Elves are notorious for cynically trafficking with demons to increase their power. Most of them will use the Dark Chaos Shuffle to replace their four racial proficiency feats with feats of their choosing; this process leaves them with no ultimate bond to the Abyss but certainly leaves their souls tainted.
Halflings, meanwhile, tend to find their place as shadowy, unseen butlers and servants of the wealthy, inhabiting great houses and residences. Their favored forms of augmentation are the shadow and d'hin'ni templates, which make them fast, ultra-stealthy, invisible, and possessed of minor arcane powers -- like household spirits from folklore.
Necropolitans are a simple form of intelligent undead, leaving a creature much more mentally and physically intact than the so-called Degenerate Undead like zombies and ghouls. The downside is that the would-be necropolitan must first be killed in an excruciating ritual. This and other concerns make it unpopular with the rich, but the procedure's achievable price makes it appealing to plebs who would rather be an undead corpse on the Material Plane than alive in static silver Astral boredom.