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Wraithy
2008-01-09, 03:15 AM
I've started Homebrewing my own Campaign, but I'm still new to this sort of thing, and although I have quite a large amount of ideas I still need help with certain mechanics in the campaign.

The campaign is set 100 years after the start of the normal Eberron campaign setting.
The mournland (uncertain of the spelling) had expanded and changed in nature, its expansion had swallowed up the entire world, all but one city: Sharn.
The nature of the mist had made the surface of the world uninhabitable to most races, and refugees flocked into sharn.
But some chose not to live within the walls of the megacity, they used breakthrough advances in airships to populate the skies.
With the former nations gone, new communities emerge and struggle against the new world which threatens to consume them. A great opportunity has arisen for those with courage and strength, wether they are benevolent or exploitative has yet to be seen.

This is the main idea of the campaign: Air Pirates, although it has evolved from this and may not necessarily be restricted to a seafaring (Airfaring?) adventure.

More information-

The mist: The mist evolved from the mournland, but the actual nature of it may be quite different. The mist began expanding 90 years before the start of the campaign. The mist is halfway between gas and liquid, it cannot be breathed in, but it offers far less resistance than water.
The mist magically changes creatures who enter it depending on their race.

Creatures with the Shapechanger subtype are unnaffected by the mist, but it is still treated as liquid for breathing purposes.

Creatures with a certain criteria are changed by the mist. This is quite a difficult part, the criteria for this group was origionally age, but I'm not entirely sure. The category includes elves and warforged (maybe a few other races). Once per day when a member of one of these races is within 1/2 a mile of the mist, the DM rolls a D100, if they roll a 100 they must roll the D100 again, this time on a seperate table. depending on their roll they get an adjustment to their character (eg: +2 stat/-2stat/+1lvl/-1lvl etc.) the exact table is still unmade.
I'd like the criteria for races in this character to allow races like warforged and elves, but leave most races alone, this should be a small category for maybe 2-4 races, constant character sheet changes for every character would just be tedious.

Other creatures. This should encompass most races. Upon entering the mist, these people must make saves regularly to resist the twisting magic of the mist.
If they fail even one save a template will be added to the person which basically makes them a hostile monster (lowers their int to 2, gives them various boosts, makes them hostile to any creatures without the template. So basically a creature loosly similar to the zombies from I Am Legend). These creatures die if outside the mist for more than a few rounds. Numerous beyond count, they make the mist a place of terror for those without proper protection.

Airships:The ships in this campaign are nothing like the zeppelin like ships in the origional Eberron campaign. It would be too bothersome and impractical to restrict airship use to members of one dragonmark house. Advances in flight technologies made 90 years ago have made flight as common in the world as ships are in normal campaigns.
The mechanics and even the prices of the ships are lifted from Stormwreck, and any ideas for adapting the rules from Sea to Air would be wonderful.
The ships are powered by a Psionics based system, with a symbol on the floor of a part of the ship. A Pilot needs to have this feat:
Pilot [psionics]
Prerequisites: A daily reserve of power points.
Benefit: May Pilot any psionically powered ship
The system would involve the user sitting or standing on the symobol and psionically linking with the ship. By traveling directly ontop of the mist or a solid or liquid surface, the ship's speed can increase dramatically, however the risk of attack from the mist's inhabitants is a constant threat. A pilot can expend power points to increase the speed of the ship. Once again, any help with the details would be great.

Sharn: Sharn is the only land based city unaffected by the mist, experts speculate that this is due to its connection to another plane. Sharn has swelled to ten times its origional size, and suffers from a massive wealth divide and claustrophobic overcrowding. The city has become imensely fortified.
Sharn is governed by the High Council, a body chosen from the elite of the city, it includes at least one member of each Dragonmarked house and various representatives of temples and other organisations.
The mist closes in on Sharn in an almost tidal pattern, it began ten years ago, once per month the mist covers the defensive walls, and is barraged by the mist dwellers for two nerve shredding days named the days of moaning, after the moans of the mist dwellers. The magical wards prevent the mist from spilling through, but the wards cannot do anything against those who are transformed by the mist, their attacks degrade the wards. The guards and inhabitants of the lower city fear the wards breaking above all things.
Sharn is divided into many layers, the largest is the lower city, this is the most overcrowded and impoverished part of Sharn, almost all of the refugees reside here, it suffers total unemployment, its population surviving off the free food source called Greyblock, as appetising as it sounds.
The middle city contains those hard working enough to leave the lower city, it is still a large part of Sharn, though not as large as the lower city. A mix of many groups live in the middle city, from the working class to the merchant class. Greyblock still makes up a significant portion of the diets of the inhabitants of the middle city, but as wealth improves, the diets of these people gain more veriety, many in the middle city keep animals, but only the richest in the middle city can afford plant matter in their diet.
The upper city contains the middle class, the richest merchants, and the upper class. There is no overcrowding here, hunger is never a problem, and many here have never tasted Greyblock, but the inhabitants of the upper city still dream of the very top layer of society.
The overcity, this is a similar size to the upper city, but with a much smaller population consisting of Aristocrats and their servants (taken from the upper city).
Greyblock is a grey material with a similar consistency to wet clay, if only it had the taste. The mist has made normal agriculture impossible, so desperate times have lead to Greyblock: made from the recycled waste of the collective megacity (waste, ALL of it), purified by a process that makes it safe for consumption, and distributed to the lower city as food, and the few rich farmers as furtilizer.
Clerics are in huge demand, mainly due to their ability to create food and water, but fewer and fewer each year are capable of channeling divine power, a constant undertone of unrest floods every diminishing holy order.
Other Settlements:Although Sharn is the only city in the world, small towns called Ports float high above the mist where they are safe from the mist dwellers (but not necessarily pirates). Certain races affected differently by the mist, especially the Elves, build their settlements especially high to prevent the adverse effects of the mist.
Another new technology to have emerged in the last hundred years is the Psicomm, a device capable of relaying messages in the form of morse code, the equiptment is generally quite expensive, though most Airships are equipped with an SOS beacon which is only capable of relaying the SOS message and the coordinates of the device. Each Port has at least one Psicomm station.

The Hub-
This Port was the origional Psicomm hub, it was built 90 years ago and since then has expanded into a large town which has become the trade centre of Eberron. The working population of the Hub is split between operating the Psicomm systems and running the immense market. Trade in all goods found on Eberron can be found here. The Hub, like all Psicomm hubs, has its own gravity despite its size, and hosts towers sprouting in every direction outwards, the view from the tallest towers makes it feel like there are two skies. Hirelings flock to the Hub in hopes of finding work, a surefire way to find extra hands is to send an advert directly to the Hub

There are other Psicomm hubs which have slowly advanced through Eberron over the years, though few are any more than small stations that house their operators, the latest edition to the Psicomm network is the Sharnview hub, built ten years ago, which finally connected Sharn with the Ports. Envoys from Sharn, now aware of the Ports, have been sent to list every one of them by the council. Once the census has finished, the council can begin leading the effort to rebuild Eberron anew.

hawkboy772042
2008-01-09, 03:37 AM
First thing that comes to mind is "Cloud City" from Star Wars... sounds like a fun campaign to be in. Perhaps you can also add in Planescape type adventures.