Last Haven: A setting formed on a titan's corpse

[sktarq]

So after reading your posts yesterday I was thinking about this for a bit and started having a few thoughs about this 100 mile tall robo-jeager-god-hunter-magic-robot....basically I tipped him onto his back mentally and realized it would still be REALLY tall. Mountain range sized tall....which started to get me to think about depth in general...how much does this corpse come out of the water? how about soil depth? if it is PacNW inspired region then I'm gonna assume big conifers are on you list of wants for image and theme. But lots of really big trees are more than 400 years old and so wouldn't have had time to grow even if there was soil available to start. Plus where would they get the seeds for all this if they so far out in the ocean. . . and the soil has to be thick enough to support farm pretty quick with the survivors landing on Fore and other parts....

So some thinking on Depth and its consequences and possible useful mitigations/solutions.

Spoiler: Judge Depth

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How "thick" is this Judge? If it is built similarly to slim-to-normal human probably 12 miles front to back and double that for a more stout build. which starts to give us ideas of effects. We don't want the main land masses to be too far up into the atmosphere or is going to start to effect the game in weird ways and will be more Tibet or Altiplano than PacNW so lets focus on going deeper than shallower. If it lands in an Abyssal Plain part of the ocean that ocean is going to be 2-4 miles deep. That would also account for it's remoteness. I like that things building off each other in logical ways. Now on earth oceanic tectonic plates are about 4 miles thick. A blast big enough to blast this thing could be excused for forcing this thing into said crust hard enough to break the crust and as I'm proposing that the Judge is harder and thicker than the crust fragments (especially the thicker bits like the torso and thighs/legs) those would sink into the upper mantle a ways. Also could be where the various parts of the judge broke up and dis-articulated. So if we take that as the basis for how the top of Judge is pretty flat around sea level sloping up to a couple miles about sea level in that mountain torso ring area what other effects does that have and what opportunities does that give?
Well ripping up the floor, lots of recent volcanic activity, lots of deep dramatic cliff faces, and civilizations already there ruined but deeper ones may have subterranean ruins may have been exposed. But it sounds like a great place for abboleths, sub surface civilization ready type place. With cracks from imperfect fits of the crustal fragments or edges of the judge pieces going much deeper than usual next to volcanic plains of infill and vents. Lots of adventure hooks here.
The sinking of parts of the Judge below the level of the normal crust....huh. heated from the mantel but presumably too tough to melt or collapse under that pressure. Parts of the access system may have climate control still working, but a lots of it will be super hot and stifling. Some parts may be slow sublimating causing weird smells. Well that sounds hellish. In fact you have totally reasonable pseudo "Hell" below the main parts of your region. This sounds like another place that could be interesting adventure wise. What would end up living down there? Would things from the plane of Hell or Fire plane start making their way in? Anyway it could be another setup for plot hooks, good reason to use more of monster manual, and the like.

Next issue

Spoiler: Soil Depth, Generation, and possible solutions

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Soil issues. Okay this not an easy one because it would normally take quite a while to build up soil on a dead robot. Then have that soil be thick enough to support trees the size you probably want. Very hard in time for the refugees to start farming when you want. So I think you'll need to short circuit this somehow. Fortunately I see two options that already feed into your stories.
First is that the judge was built of something that included an outer living layer. this comes up with issues of it moving from climate to climate and a bunch of others plus may ruin the idea of what you want the judge to look and feel like. Perhaps more Jeager robot covered in glowing magic writing is what I had from the stuff you had written but I may have been wrong.
Second (and my more favored option)....well these things hunted and fought gods right? and you have a God-o-nature (the Living Wild) already on your list. So perhaps this deity was involved with the Judges death. Maybe not alone but it helped in the battle that busted this thing up. And those blasts from the Living Wild deity being associated with a living attack could have included the way living moss and life attack things like stone weakening it. So the Living Wild tried to coat the judge in a living attack film filled the generative energy of the god itself. Now handwaving that this attack both busted up the outer layer (possibly disrupting the glyphs) creating soil and also generated a ton of plant, microbial, animal and even monstrous life as the energy settled down doesn't seem entirely implausible. Kind of a weaponized smaller scale Genesis effect/device from the old Star Trek movie. So ready to have a forest on day 1 then. Also solves how various monsters got there. Why weird illogical monsters even exist, etc. Also such widespread surface attacks on the Judge could excuse tunnels being dug by say a giant root like effect which has since rotted away and left a weird branching tube like series of caverns. Which sounds like a good dungeon exploring adventure if something interesting moved in after. Plus weird "lasting effects" could have the rules of life work very different in places where the magic didn't quite settle down...maybe this is what druids tap that is different than clerics, or t just causes life to thrive in places that it should be just microbes and bugs (like a deep underdark system-perhaps this combines with the still fading energy of the judge's animation to provide the energy for deep underdark fungi at the base of a food chain) or animated trees (treants, quickwoods,etc) etc.

Just some musings use what parts you like.

EDIT:

Spoiler: argument on not kitchen sinking again

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I'll have a little "world intro" for my players eventually, and I'll definitely let them know that starting equipment will be limited. Things like inventory and available equipment in each town are details that I do eventually want to have written down! I don't want to take away any background or class/subclass options, or mess with proficiencies though, as I feel like I can fit them all in somewhere.

Okay by this site the official list of subclasses is 85. That is 85 lines of training. If each averages 10 people that is basically 10% of your population. So if you want an important Cavalier's for example you may be talking about picking one a half dozen people around the entire game world. Some of this is more mutable than others but that is at least 7 monasteries to spread around? and how small are they? If you say they range from 4-12 people and average a smidge over 7 then you'll still have 50 and you basically have about seven communities total too start. Some like Purple Knights, Samurai, Crown (or Conquest) Oath Paladins, and Bladesingers seem like they could be adjusted but each will be taking from a very limited population and I'm not sure WHY they would be needed or what they would add to your world. And some like Scouts or Horizon Walkers may activly hinder your wish for things to be unexplored. Have an even small tradition of horizon walkers in such a small place and it will be explored in under a century I bet.

If you focus on say the PHB You are looking at 37 (22+7 domains+8 schools) and most of them fit pretty well. You can have populations of a 15-25 of something without it being a big deal. Again scattered across the entire archipelago. And sure add some more in from Xanathar's Guide, or maybe Eberron Artificers (who may make good links for Gylph work) but be selective and see how they work in your setting. This is what I mean by not Kitchen Sinking it.