Athas meets Rogue Trader + Exalted.

[Telok]

Sooo.... some may recall that I've been running a Dungeons the Dragoning game. Its going well, although I have seriously fallen behind on writing down what happened, and haven't kept up the old play thread in even longer.

I need a decent world map of Athias that either would do for an orbital scan, or that I can scrape the text off of so I can render it into an orbital scan.

The party is planning on "landing" a damaged and inoperative Syrne (forerunner) 'planetary assault shuttle' ship* on the planet for repairs. Said ship is approximately semi-circular, 3000 meters wide, 2000 meters long, and 500 meters high. It's armor plating consists of 2 meter thick magically hardened hexagrammatic gold. It's power core is intact but partially cut off from much of the rest of the ships main systems, except life support and two transit corridors. The spelljamming helm was removed and the Geller field is... gone.

The reason they're doing this (beyond pure greed) is that they dumped most of their supplies to make room for a bunch of torpedos from an Elven Imperial Nave base they knocked over, and they used the rest to repair their curren (and still damaged anyways) ship. They're currently in a side pocket of a corridor through the Weird, a section of astral space that the Warp intrudes into. The Warp in the Weird is nearly un-navigable, but they have a guy who can make those rolls. So they're going to tow the ship into the Weird to get into the Warp because their ship can't punch a big enough hole into the Warp to get the towed ship through. This means they also need to come 'out' in the Weird at/near a crystal sphere. The only two decent options are 1) a major mind flayer / aboleth / neogi controlled sphere, or 2) a crystal sphere marked as a low tech death world sphere in a pocket in the Weird. Cue DarkSun and Athias.

Their big reason for landing is because there are about a million shadow minions on the ship. They are... semi-incorporeal, they can't pass through walls but they fly and all that. They do wounds/fatigue instead of Str damage but people they kill turn into another clump of minions. Immune to normal weapons but magic, energy, and power weapons work. They sense and attack souls/life but die after about 10 minutes in direct sunlight. The plan is to land the ship, the shadows abandon the ship in search of life, the party scavenges local materials to repair the ship, then they go jaunting around the cosmos in a giant pirate magnet.

Also in the ship are about a fifty count of 4 meter long worm/slugs that can spit a 3 meter radius acid spray, eat holes in metal walls, and detect creatures that are in contact with their slime trails. Plus an immortal and nearly indestructable donkey. Because. The donkey has recently aquired an everfull flask of rather good brandy.

I don't even have to come up with problems or quests for this group anymore. Just keep track of who they annoy and when those enemies show up. Plus, they now have a baby space kaiju zombie. It's cute, only 30 meters long and the necromancer is at 97/100 insanity points.

So. Maps of Athias?

* The 'shuttle' designation is an indicator of function and design. Sort of how our navies call things ships or boats depending more on what they do than on size or shape.

[Lord Torath]

If you're talking about the Dark Sun campaign, the world is called "Athas", not "Athias". No "i".

There is no official world map of Athas. Only a small portion of the planet was detailed in TSR/WotC Dark Sun products. The bottom of the Dark Sun Cartographers' Guild has a fan-made map that might be helpful.

This website Dark Sun Atlas might also be useful.

[Telok]

My bad on the spelling. Sorry. Those sites look good, I'll check then in more detail on a when I get to a real computer. Yeah, they're gonna crash a huge gold spaceship with a million shadows on Athas.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan...

[Lord Torath]

All that sparkly gold... on metal-poor Athas. Yeah, that's going to have everyone rushing to claim it. Sorcerer Kings, slave tribes, secret societies, 'rogue' Dragons (you know how dragons work on Athas, right? humans/half-elves that have hit level 20 as both defilers and psionicists, and they're all "E" Evil!), tohr-kreen nations - it's going to be fun! Well, for a particular definition of "fun" anyway. Any thoughts on where you're going to have them set down? Or do they get to pick?

So.... is there a version of The Spelljammer in your game?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've read this three times and I'm still not sure what's going on, but I wanna be part of your game.

[Cluedrew]

I agree with Grod_The_Giant: this sounds confusing and awesome. You said you are working on a campaign log?

[Telok]

Yeah. I need to catch it up. It's about three or four weeks behind.

Fun thought here: the Syrne ship runs on magic the same way a nuclear submarine runs on electricity. It has a power core that is a crystal and mithril heart the size of... three or four school busses? With wrist thick oralchium "power" cables leading off different directions and a big blind spot in the center. This thing has kept the lights on for the past 20,000+ years (gosh those forerunner races make good LED lightbulbs).

They're going to tow this through the equivalent of the WH40k Warp for a few weeks. They aren't even trying to get the Geller field working before they do this.

On the 1 to 10 saftey scale I know this is a negative number. But I'm having a hard time figuring out the absolute value of that number.

[Destro_Yersul]

On the 1 to 10 saftey scale I know this is a negative number. But I'm having a hard time figuring out the absolute value of that number.

It may not be a real number. Have you tried negative infinity?

[The Glyphstone]

I've read this three times and I'm still not sure what's going on, but I wanna be part of your game.

There's a reason I coined 'Acid Trip: The RPG' as a shorthand for this system.

[Lord Torath]

Yeah. I need to catch it up. It's about three or four weeks behind.

Fun thought here: the Syrne ship runs on magic the same way a nuclear submarine runs on electricity. It has a power core that is a crystal and mithril heart the size of... three or four school busses? With wrist thick oralchium "power" cables leading off different directions and a big blind spot in the center. This thing has kept the lights on for the past 20,000+ years (gosh those forerunner races make good LED lightbulbs).

They're going to tow this through the equivalent of the WH40k Warp for a few weeks. They aren't even trying to get the Geller field working before they do this.

On the 1 to 10 saftey scale I know this is a negative number. But I'm having a hard time figuring out the absolute value of that number.

Is there anything alive on the ship they're towing? If not, there's not much from the Warp that will stay when they return to normal space. Daemons and Warp Entities are drawn to the living. With no living minds on that ship, they won't find it at all interesting, at least as far as I understand things. Admittedly, my "Fluff" knowledge of 40k is almost entirely from 1E and 2E 40k products, with a bit more gleaned from the boards here, The Jungle, and The All-Guardsman's Party (everything I know about Gellar Fields, for example). I haven't read any of the 40k novels. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt.

[comicshorse]

Yeah. I need to catch it up. It's about three or four weeks behind.

Fun thought here: the Syrne ship runs on magic the same way a nuclear submarine runs on electricity. It has a power core that is a crystal and mithril heart the size of... three or four school busses? With wrist thick oralchium "power" cables leading off different directions and a big blind spot in the center. This thing has kept the lights on for the past 20,000+ years (gosh those forerunner races make good LED lightbulbs).

They're going to tow this through the equivalent of the WH40k Warp for a few weeks. They aren't even trying to get the Geller field working before they do this.

On the 1 to 10 saftey scale I know this is a negative number. But I'm having a hard time figuring out the absolute value of that number.

Go watch 'Event Horizon' . Every second of the journey will be like. Only worse

[Incorrect]

On geller fields and safety levels.
In one of the earlier Horus Heresy novels, an entire ship filled with space marines and human soldiers was forced into the warp with no warning. The Geller fields did not start up in time. If I recall correctly, the space marines lasting the longest, survived for 15 seconds.


But this campaign sounds really awesome.

[Telok]

Right. So the good news is that I've caught up the outline+notes part of the game log and the PCs got through the warp with only half the crew getting derangements, two dismemberments, and an increase in STDs among the crew. Bad news is that the ship they were towing had 40% of its insides randomized, three greater daemons took up residence (only one has an entourage), two malevolent ghosts appeared, and the "ghost ship" they ignored was an Elven Imperial Navy hunter/killer looking for them.

So raise your hand if you think that a sorcerer-king would be unhappy if an SST orbital plane left contrails above his/her/its city.

And now I get to 1) figure out the exponential growth curve of life draining shadows that manage to reach the nearby jungle, and 2) stat up four 30 level dragons and/or 20/20 level defiler/psions, plus artifacts and minions.

[Cluedrew]

Just another day at the office.

[Fable Wright]

All that sparkly gold... on metal-poor Athas. Yeah, that's going to have everyone rushing to claim it. Sorcerer Kings, slave tribes, secret societies, 'rogue' Dragons (you know how dragons work on Athas, right? humans/half-elves that have hit level 20 as both defilers and psionicists, and they're all "E" Evil!), tohr-kreen nations - it's going to be fun! Well, for a particular definition of "fun" anyway. Any thoughts on where you're going to have them set down? Or do they get to pick?

So.... is there a version of The Spelljammer in your game?

Wait. Last I checked, there was one Dragon on Athas, unless the Sorcerer-Kings have gotten worse than I thought.

Right. So the good news is that I've caught up the outline+notes part of the game log and the PCs got through the warp with only half the crew getting derangements, two dismemberments, and an increase in STDs among the crew. Bad news is that the ship they were towing had 40% of its insides randomized, three greater daemons took up residence (only one has an entourage), two malevolent ghosts appeared, and the "ghost ship" they ignored was an Elven Imperial Navy hunter/killer looking for them.

So raise your hand if you think that a sorcerer-king would be unhappy if an SST orbital plane left contrails above his/her/its city.

And now I get to 1) figure out the exponential growth curve of life draining shadows that manage to reach the nearby jungle, and 2) stat up four 30 level dragons and/or 20/20 level defiler/psions, plus artifacts and minions.

IIRC, most of the Sorcerer-Kings are 20/20 defiler/psions plus at 3-8 levels in Dragon. If you're looking for inspiration, the 1d4chan page for Dark Sun has a quick summary of each of the active sorcerer-kings to give you a starting point.

The most logical place to crash is the actively inhabited jungle-city of Gulg, ruled by Lalali-Puy. You're dropping a Shadowpocalypse in an urban center controlled by a Defiler/Psion with a nature fetish, so you get beautiful exponential growth and an absolutely incensed near-deity on your hands.

Most likely to join in the frantic following melee are The Dragon himself, Dregoth the Sorcerer-King Lich (who no one knows even exists at this point, making a layer of fun and frantic confusion), and Abalach-re the insane and paranoid powerhouse that even the other Sorcerer-kings despise.

[Telok]

IIRC, most of the Sorcerer-Kings are 20/20 defiler/psions plus at 3-8 levels in Dragon. If you're looking for inspiration, the 1d4chan page for Dark Sun has a quick summary of each of the active sorcerer-kings to give you a starting point.

The most logical place to crash is the actively inhabited jungle-city of Gulg, ruled by Lalali-Puy. You're dropping a Shadowpocalypse in an urban center controlled by a Defiler/Psion with a nature fetish, so you get beautiful exponential growth and an absolutely incensed near-deity on your hands.

Good. Useful. I hadn't thought to check 1d4chan.

They only checked for city-with-farmlands type civilizations. Then they crashed the towed ship on a peninsula far away from 'civilization' and put their ship 1n low orbit to keep an eye on the ship and the peninsula. My version of Athas runs a 36 hour day, has more volcanic activity and ash waste mountains, and possesses the usual D&D-like overabundance of apex predators without good reason (reason: they're actually spontaneously generated from background magical pollution because a sorcerer-king wanted to try to kill everyone).



They're about 1200 km down peninsula from the jungles, the blots (they aren't exactly D&D shadows, can't go through walls but move around more, destroyed by direct sunlight @ 10% per minute) fly at about 30 kph, there are some low ash mountains in the way. Call it 15 hours of travel a night, affording time for getting to a hidey hole before daybreak and side trips to create more blots. That's about 3 nights, call it 4 for adding extra time (less life to seek/destroy) to cross the mountains. About 400 got away the first night while they lured megapedes close to try to lure out some blots. Call it 50ish heading down the peninsula, assume 50% losses every night but about +12 blots per thing killed (d10: 1-5 = 8, 6-9 = 16, 10 = 24), assume one kill per night per 8 in the desert... If we assume they kill nothing the night it takes them to cross the mountains that's about 56 blots into the jungle. At that point we stop counting and assume they kill & inhabit about a 75km radius zone the first night, then expand that by 100km per night.

Of course they landed about 40km from the sitl sea shore. So even after the first night there are pockets of them swarming through the silt where it's always dark.

Well. Athas never was much of a tourist destination any way.

[Lord Torath]

Wait. Last I checked, there was one Dragon on Athas, unless the Sorcerer-Kings have gotten worse than I thought.

In the original 2E version, there was only one level 30 dragon, but all the sorcerer kings (and queens) were at least level 21 dragons. They introduced a few other low-level (ie level 22-24) rogue (as in "doesn't rule a city-state", not as "dragon with thief or bard levels") dragons in some of the adventures. Dregoth, I think, was right on the verge of the bestial phase (levels 25-29). Or some of the writer decided they didn't like the bestial phase and ignored it.

[Telok]

Which sorcerer-king might be rash enough to launch an attack the same day that they (or a set of loyal subordinates) divined the location of the spelljammer?

He/she grabbed literally whatever troops could be readied in an hour, a dozen templars, and a half dozen giant undead beetles that serve as 120 person troop carriers. Then opened a portal (house rule, the gate spell can be the quick 100m range insta portal, or a several hour ritual to place the other gate end anywhere on the planet) to about 250m away from the ship, on the west side, right after sundown. The PCs attacked when about half the force was through the gate, during the second round the sorcerer-king went through the gate and used the combat version (ending the long range one, you can only have one set of portals open at a time) to drop a large summoned monster onto the wing of a vtol assault shuttle.

The PCs lost a garishly painted, stolen, Elven Imperial Navy, light grav tank. And the assault shuttle has some damage too, plus a broken windshield where one of the PCs got thrown through it. So they want to drop a couple of rift torpedos on said sorcerer-king's city. The sorcerer-king teleported home when he/she had lost about 3/4ths hit points, which really really annoyed them.

[Lord Torath]

Which sorcerer-king might be rash enough to launch an attack the same day that they (or a set of loyal subordinates) divined the location of the spelljammer?

Hammanu of Urik. He's the most war-like of the SKs, and considers himself the ultimate general.

On the other hand, Alabache Re is the most paranoid of the bunch, and might jump at the chance to gain something that would give her extra power.

He/she grabbed literally whatever troops could be readied in an hour, a dozen templars, and a half dozen giant undead beetles that serve as 120 person troop carriers. Then opened a portal (house rule, the gate spell can be the quick 100m range insta portal, or a several hour ritual to place the other gate end anywhere on the planet) to about 250m away from the ship, on the west side, right after sundown.

No need for a house rule. The psionic power Wormhole (from The Will and the Way - 2E Dark Sun Psionics supplement) has gotcha covered. And since all Sorcerer Kings are defiler/psionicists of 20th level, he'd have no problem having access to it. Might have a personal psionicist on staff who could do it too.

Sounds like fun!

[Telok]

Bonus question: Best guess as to the best interior decorator on Athas?

They finally checked other parts of the ship and discovered that it was starting to space hulk. Interior bits had been swapped with other ships in the Warp. They actually talked a greater daemon into relocating and gave it a teleportarium ride to Urik. Fought a batch of lesser daemons and got reasonably beat up / run down on resources (also a high damage roll on a frag rocket punched holes in a wall to become a friendly fire incident). Then they met the daemon lord.

They did not flee screaming in terror, but it was close. They were a reasonsble mix of respectful, arrogant, and amusing. They have effectively agreed to bring back the worlds greatest interior decorator in exchange for an ill defined "reward".

That morning one of them had taken the other shuttle and overflew all the other major cities at about 1 km altitude. To get pictures of flags, emblems, templar uniforms, etc., so they could ID the city that the troops had come from.

Issues:
1) All the sorcerer-kings, major organizations, and lots of adventurers, have now seen the "huge metal bird-like flying thing". Massing scrying / divination campaigns are going on. Some have already paid off.
2) Faustian bargin with a daemon lord to find the best interior decorator in the world. It may make other bargains with anyone else who looks promising and doesn't panic.
3) No more shadows on the ship, but in two more days some will reach the jungle and beging the exponential population increase. (Anyways there are now patches of Syrne ship with some shadows in at least 4 other ships somewhere in the verse).
4) The corpse field by the ship is attracting hungry megafauna. Next on the encounter list is a mated pair of Nightmare Beasts.
5) The soldiers who fled (and survived a night of wildlife) have regrouped. They won't pick a fight in the open but they need to get to shelter. Which means they are going to try getting in to the ship.

[Telwar]

The (until recently) last book in the Black Company series, Water Sleeps, has a similar apocalypse happen to a world. It's not total, because there were a great many sorcerers on that world, but if you're not in a place with a badass sorcerer (or even slightly leveled casters) you're probably soooooooo screwed.

[thorr-kan]

The (until recently) last book in the Black Company series, Water Sleeps, has a similar apocalypse happen to a world. It's not total, because there were a great many sorcerers on that world, but if you're not in a place with a badass sorcerer (or even slightly leveled casters) you're probably soooooooo screwed.

That is a very good parallel I missed, and I should have caught it. Glen Cook is my favorite fantasy author.

[Telok]

These shadows aren't quite like those. Any sufficent life force (plants, vampires, and liches count, zombies don't) will allow then to spawn. Without obvious targets they random walk a couple of hours and then just sit still. They move away from bright light if they aren't attacking and on average 50% will find shelter from sunlight given reasonable terrain.

That said...

The zombies they left on the crashed ship died to two nightmare beasts (psychic 10m tall carnivorous BoatMurdered elephants of average humal intelligence, can cast teleport & some light evocation) that took up residence in the damaged section.

About 40 soldiers made it back to the ship. One of their commanders found and talked to the demon lord for another Faustian pact. The other commander didn't make the fear test and got... eliminated.

The shadows reached the jungle and have about a 120 km diameter half-circle of dead zone (two nights of expansion). 12 hours of orbital bombardment passes only slowed down the spread on one side the first night.

They beamed down to about 6 cities over two days. Found the best interior decorater working as the "circus maximus artistic activities director" in Draj and hired him. Although he's not going to be ready to go for another 3 days now. Dropping circular punch outs from a steel sheet as "foreign money" everywhere, talking to templars & merchant princes.

Scrying has taken place, of them, via the "coins". Both on planet and a couple scrying hits got to their ship in orbit. They noticed it, eventually.

There was an incident.
A defiling incident.
In Tyr.
In the merchants quarter.
Velon dispelled essentially a flame arrow/bolt type spell.
In an area 160 m (~520 feet) in diameter.
For 8 wounds.
Non-combatant humans have 4.
Mul bruisers have 6.
Elite soldiers have 7.
Default templars have 8.
Lesser daemons have 9.
Some PCs were badly injured.
And there was a flamer involved.
They duplicated the Great London Fire of 1666.
Except there's no river, it's in an arid climate, and it's high summer.
They attracted some attention.

[thorr-kan]

Talk about your gonzo campaign concepts! Keep the updates coming, please. This is fascinating reading.

[Telok]

I'm glad people are enjoying it.

Want to have somw fun? I have no idea what bargain/pact an Athan soldier from Urik would make with a daemon lord.

Context: The soldier's legion gets back from some mission or raid, a couple days later they get called back to duty because the king is in a tizzy. They get geared up, load up into zombie bug trucks with two ballista on top and wait. A bit later the king and about 2 dozen templars come out. The king works himself up for a while and casts Gate (planetary range, not interdimensional) and sends half the templars through. The bugs and some guys on foot start going through.

On the other side is a huge gold building. Ginormous, the side they can see is close to 2.5 km long and goes up at least 200 m hogh. The buiding has some damaged bits and looks like it fell out of the sky a bit. Disembark, form up, then it all goes to heck.

This stunty mutant halfling in golden armor riding a hovering metal lumpy, bent cylinder (and it's fast, really fast) zooms up in front of them and starts shouting in some language nobody recognizes. The front rank throws some javelins at at and get a fireball in return. A floating metal box comes around the corner. The tube sticking out the front spits fire and one of the ballista, plus all three of the guys crewing it, explode into little chunks. Then a big metal bird thing flies in 100 meters up and... I'm not sure what the soldier would think of taking suppressing fire from vtol gunship with twin storm bolters but it was enough to send lots of the troops running.

Peeking over a dune they watch about 2/3 of the troops get hosed, fireballed, and defiled to death. All the templars get killed. The floating box blows away another ballista & crew every round. The king comes through, summons a critter that puts a gash in the side of the vtol gunship, throws a fireball or two. They lose sight of him when he starts teleporting into melee with the floating metal box. The metal box flies way up, a steel golem comes out to fight the king. The gunship sprays the metal box with the storm bolters. Box flips over & starts falling, king teleports again, box explodes propelling the steel golem high enough to catch the nose of the gunship. Some guy gets thrown out the forward window, lands on his feet on the nose, and shoots a... metal staff of fire? into the gunship. King teleports out and starts to melee him. Steel golem climbs up. Guy rolls back into the gunship as it begins to go faster and higher. King follows with a glowy death touch spell. Steel golem apparently also has a metal staff of fire and starts shooting it into the gunship. Then the scramjets kick in, there's a sonic boom, and it heads almost straight up.

The mutant halfling has disappeared. It gets quiet except for the zombie megapedes tap dancing on the top of the building (and they're ignoring people, weird). The survivors regroup a couple klicks away. Leaders missing, gate home is gone, unfamiliar desert, no landmarks. Night comes, one of the guys figures out from the constellations that they are at least 1500 km north of home, but thats like among some islands past the coast of the silt sea from any maps they know of. So they know they're way way off any maps they know.

Next morning the survivors trek back toward the gold building. Someone sees nightmare beast tracks heading towards the corpse field. They decide to try the other end of the building. Find an open hatch, everything inside is metal and weird shapes. Lots of rounded doors with heavy seals and locking mechanisims, magic lights that aren't magical, places for people but no people, occasional rooms coated with dried blood.

They meet a 4 meter tall daemon lord, way out of this world thing (seriously, polar bear head and furry pants, an eyeball in each muscle in the buff humanoid torso). He's decorating. Lots of screaming & running away. This one guy makes the will save and it talks to him. It offers a deal.

I don't know what the deal should be.

There's also two angry ghosts on the gold ship that the PCs don't know about yet. But I know what I'm doing with those.

[Telok]

Status: Jungles being consumed by shadows at about +150 km radius per night. Urik has a major daemon ally & is ready for another attack on the grounded ship with more scrying & better info. Six other sorcerer kings have scrying campaigns on the PCs and their ship in orbit. The rest of them are scrying/spying on those six for more info. The PCs have the best interior decorator on the planet, the artistic director of the Draj Coliseum. Draj got nuked from orbit. The sorcerer king of Draj is (pissed^(pissed+they kicked his dog))*2 and standing in the crater that used to be his coliseum.

[ivegotanickel]

You mentioned there’s a campaign journal for this? I really want to see how you got here.

[Telok]

Yeah, I need to update it again. Then I'll uplad and link it.

Athasian citirs are freaking tiny! And overcrowded. Officially Draj is like 15k people in a 1 sq. km area. New York NY is a bit over 10k in the modern world.

So I cranked it up to 40k & 8 sw. km. Two torpedos still flattened it. Now I need to check damage roll statistics, figure survival rates, and generate mid/high level Athas adventurer groups to be in the city.

[The Glyphstone]

The Walled City of Kowloon packed 50,000 people into roughly 0.25 km^2. So 15,000 in 1 km^2 is definitely tightly packed, but it's been beaten in the real world by a substantial margin.

(New York, NY, for comparison, has a density of 32.7 people/km^2 (20.1million over 732km^2).

Draj 2.0 is was 625 people/km^2.)

[Lord Torath]

The Walled City of Kowloon packed 50,000 people into roughly 0.25 km^2. So 15,000 in 1 km^2 is definitely tightly packed, but it's been beaten in the real world by a substantial margin.

(New York, NY, for comparison, has a density of 32.7 people/km^2 (20.1million over 732km^2).

Draj 2.0 is was 625 people/km^2.)

I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude there, Glyphstone. By my math, New York's pop. density is 27,500 people/km², given the 20.1 M/732 km numbers you cited. Using Wikipedia's numbers (8.40M/784 km²) gives 10,700 people/km².

I think you may have used the New York Metropolitan Area's population with New York City's area.

Athas's cities are indeed, small and dense, but as The Glyphstone pointed out, not unreasonably so.