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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by afroakuma View Post
    It may be a border area of Ooze - the Muckmire, the Slag Marshes, and the Oasis of Filth all would have regions that are "silt"-esque, being the borders to Earth, Minerals, and Dust respectively.
    Ah. To clarify, on Athas, the silt is... not earth-silt.

    The silt itself is a grayish powder, like very fine and dry dust. It runs through the fingers like water, leaving not a trace on one's hands. The slightest trace of moisture causes it to stick and clump; it can cake the eyes, nose, and throat in seconds. Breathing the airborne silt slowly lines the lungs with powder and chokes the life from even a Giant.

    Like water, silt has a devilish ability to find its way into everything. A traveler walking along the borders of the Sea of Silt on a windy day finds boots, packs, and even pockets filling with gray dust. Most of the time it is merely annoying-but contamination of a canteen or food supplies is a sore blow to the wayfarer on short rations.

    Silt is heavier than air, but far lighter than water. Stories tell of inventors who tried to copy the hulled, wheelless vehicles the ancients used to travel through water. The silt is so light, and of so little substance, that even the most carefully built boat sank through the dust to rest on the bottom. Others tried to strap great baskets to their feet, hoping that these could support their weight over the silt. They were no more successful.

    Water sinks rapidly through the silt. A gallon of water thrown into shallow silt leaves a foot-wide muddy shaft through the dust down to the rock below. This rapidly fills over and collapses, but some Sages observing this effect have speculated that a sufficient amount of water, such as one good rain, could pound the entire Sea into a single mud flat. Of course, the terrible heat of the sun would soon dry the mud back into silt.
    It honestly seems pretty close to regions of elemental dust, but on Athas, it... doesn't appear that the paraelemental plane of ooze is known or accessible.
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  2. - Top - End - #152
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Is there a canonical organization in Spelljammer that's devoted to exploring the various known crystal spheres and seeking out new ones, basically being to Prime worlds what the Planewalker's Guild and Planar Cartographic Society are to the planes?

    Not necessarily in a full-on "Sphere Trek: Where no demihuman has gone before!" sort of way, but just an ideal one to use for a plot hook along the lines of "[Organization] has discovered a new [crystal sphere/Prime world/celestial body/phlogiston phenomenon/etc.] N days' travel from here and they'd like you to check it out"?
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    I don't really think that Lady is actually the maker of the Multiverse, but as far as ideas go, this one isn't worse then squirrels. Nothing is worse then squirrels.
    Somewhat off topic, are there more characters, in any book or game that have a nature unknown even to author? Tom Bombadil, of course, but anyone else?

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Edreyn View Post
    Somewhat off topic, are there more characters, in any book or game that have a nature unknown even to author? Tom Bombadil, of course, but anyone else?
    There are a couple of types of answer to this (at least).

    The first is when the author hasn't decided on an answer at the time of writing, an example is probably be the prisoner of Elysium. Various suggestions and false versions have been printed, but it is unlikely that anyone knows because I would guess that the original author wanted it to be a mystery and so never decided on an actual entity. If Tolkein did not know what Tom Bombadil was (I am not aware of anything saying that Tolkein hadn't decided what Tom was, but I have not read Christopher's series exploring his dad's work) then he fall into this category

    The second is in multiple-author environments. Some novel settings have other people writing additional stories and they can use characters where the primary author is still keeping the true nature of the character secret. Usually though they avoid these characters (because of the probalmes on getting things wrong). However this is a lot more common in RPG settings where there is a primary authority and a load of other authors who are given notes on what they can and cannot have the characters do. These can be glaringly obvious to people who know the setting better than the author of a specific module/article that (mis)uses a character.

    Technically cases where the author decides a character is more than originally written are an example, but I think they are not a subset of option 1, but not really an example at all as the author knew at the time of writing, but changed their mind later.
    Last edited by Khedrac; 2020-10-15 at 03:30 PM.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    I've been kicking around an idea for my homebrew game world. The idea is that there is a god of magic, but it is not actually a single entity, but rather a gestalt of all that world's most powerful spellcasters, individually ascended to demigod-hood and collectively wielding an intermediate deity's power.
    I'm just looking for a sanity check on the idea. How many demigods would it take to equal one intermediate deity? Could several individuals wield a greater spark of divinity than any one of them possess?

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Demigods are rank 1 to 5, and intermediate dieties are rank 11 to 15, so as few as 3 or as many as 11 in a strictly by the numbers sense. I kind of like the idea of 3 rank 5s, good evil and neutral, but since SDA and class levels are more a determination of power thank raw rank, just use what you see fit.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by aj77 View Post
    I've been kicking around an idea for my homebrew game world. The idea is that there is a god of magic, but it is not actually a single entity, but rather a gestalt of all that world's most powerful spellcasters, individually ascended to demigod-hood and collectively wielding an intermediate deity's power.
    I'm just looking for a sanity check on the idea. How many demigods would it take to equal one intermediate deity? Could several individuals wield a greater spark of divinity than any one of them possess?
    Your idea reminds of a bunch of different phenomena on the planes.

    The Undying Court are the ancestors of the elves of Aerinal on the world of Eberron, returned to the world of the living as deathless, a positve energy based counterpart of the negative energy based undead. They advise the rulers of Aerinal and are worshipped by their people. As a collective, they are roughly equivalent to a demigod.

    The Moongods are eldritch wildspace entities associated with the stars, omens and catastrophy. They are most well known among the mortals for creating the aberrations called mooncalves as their agents, but some astrologists obsessed with omens revere them. Their collective power, again, equals a demigod.

    The Xammux is a deity described in the Book of Vile Darkness. The Xammux is not a single entity, but a conglomerat of six other gods whose identities have been lost to the collective. The Xammux' portfolio includes cold logic divorced of any kind of morals and forbidden experiments. Sadly, the BoVD doesn't give information about it's divine rank, or how powerful the individual pieces were.

    Angharradh is the queen of the elven deities, wife to their creator Corellon Laretian. She's a triune deity, at once a single being and the fusion of three lesser ones. She herself is counted as a greater deity, while her components are the intermediate goddesses Aerdrie Faenya, Hanali Celanil and Sehanine Moonbow.

    All in all I can say that your idea has merit, but you can't expect a rocksolid formula of "6 demigods = 1 lesser god" or something like that.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    I am not sure what exactly you have in mind, but if you mean that demigods actually merge into one entity, with single mind, forfeiting all their personality, then yes, it can work. If they work as collective, and everyone stays with his mind, then it isn't.

    The closest example I can think of is from sci-fi and not fantasy. In Starcraft series, when the old Overmind was killed by Protoss, surviving cerebrates physically and literally merged into a new one. Yes, they aren't deities, but they literally control all their subjects every aspect, so I think the example can fit here.
    Last edited by Edreyn; 2020-10-16 at 08:39 AM.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by aj77 View Post
    I've been kicking around an idea for my homebrew game world. The idea is that there is a god of magic, but it is not actually a single entity, but rather a gestalt of all that world's most powerful spellcasters, individually ascended to demigod-hood and collectively wielding an intermediate deity's power.
    I'm just looking for a sanity check on the idea. How many demigods would it take to equal one intermediate deity? Could several individuals wield a greater spark of divinity than any one of them possess?
    The idea of pooling power to achieve something greater than any individual caster could is pretty common and occurs in various ways throughout existing rules - see things like Circle Magic, the Metaconcert psionic power, Co-operative Spellcasting feat, Epic Spells that use ritual participants, or the pool of spellcasting power managed by the Arcane Order (of the eponymous Prestige Class.) It's not a big stretch to say that gods of magic could work the same way. The question would be how you determine what the will or desires of this 'god' would be - does it actually have separate desires from the mages that make up its power supply? Is there no real separate entity, and the individual contributing demigod-mages are simply able to perform much greater feats than they should by tapping into it? If so, how is that access regulated? What kind of compacts, traditions, or accords control how they can use that power?

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost View Post
    Is there a canonical organization in Spelljammer that's devoted to exploring the various known crystal spheres and seeking out new ones, basically being to Prime worlds what the Planewalker's Guild and Planar Cartographic Society are to the planes?

    Not necessarily in a full-on "Sphere Trek: Where no demihuman has gone before!" sort of way, but just an ideal one to use for a plot hook along the lines of "[Organization] has discovered a new [crystal sphere/Prime world/celestial body/phlogiston phenomenon/etc.] N days' travel from here and they'd like you to check it out"?
    Hm. The Seekers would be the closest thing; they're more dedicated to seeking out knowledge and answers to mysteries in a broader sense, but certainly discovering new or uncharted planets would be within their idiom. They're also known as the Order of the Orb and Sword.

    Quote Originally Posted by aj77 View Post
    I've been kicking around an idea for my homebrew game world. The idea is that there is a god of magic, but it is not actually a single entity, but rather a gestalt of all that world's most powerful spellcasters, individually ascended to demigod-hood and collectively wielding an intermediate deity's power.
    I'm just looking for a sanity check on the idea. How many demigods would it take to equal one intermediate deity? Could several individuals wield a greater spark of divinity than any one of them possess?
    It's hard to give a particular figure, since it's not a simple matter of addition. I would say you'd likely want a goodly number of them, if they're demigods. Personally I wouldn't want to go lower than 12, and I'd probably prefer a higher number, but that's just me.
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Say, Afro, what do you think about my version of the su'luk two pages back? Is that roughly how you imagined it when answering back then, or do you think something should be changed?

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by afroakuma View Post
    Hm. The Seekers would be the closest thing; they're more dedicated to seeking out knowledge and answers to mysteries in a broader sense, but certainly discovering new or uncharted planets would be within their idiom. They're also known as the Order of the Orb and Sword.
    Good call, thanks, I'd completely forgotten about them.

    Quote Originally Posted by aj77
    I've been kicking around an idea for my homebrew game world. The idea is that there is a god of magic, but it is not actually a single entity, but rather a gestalt of all that world's most powerful spellcasters, individually ascended to demigod-hood and collectively wielding an intermediate deity's power.
    I'm just looking for a sanity check on the idea. How many demigods would it take to equal one intermediate deity? Could several individuals wield a greater spark of divinity than any one of them possess?
    Quote Originally Posted by afroakuma
    It's hard to give a particular figure, since it's not a simple matter of addition. I would say you'd likely want a goodly number of them, if they're demigods. Personally I wouldn't want to go lower than 12, and I'd probably prefer a higher number, but that's just me.
    I think 64 would be a good number for that, for two reasons:

    1) Out-of-game, in 3e there are many level-related things that double in power every increment or two (e.g. Versatile Spellcaster turning 2 level X slots into 1 level X+1 slot, 2 creatures of CR X having a CR of level X+2, and so on). Thus, one might assume (though of course the relationship between gods isn't nearly so clear-cut) that 1 rank 6 deity is "worth" 2 rank 5 deities, 1 rank 7 deity is worth 4 rank 5 deities, etc., and so the minimum ratio of demigods to intermediate deities would be 1 intermediate deity of rank 11 being equivalent to 64 demigods of rank 5.

    2) In-game, there are 8 schools of magic, so having 82=64 demigods in the collective and having 8 be a sacred number for them that gets used in a lot of imagery and scripture and so forth would be nicely thematic. Especially if the demigods ascended one by one over the centuries and you can have a somewhat Avatar-like setup where the god collective cycles through the different schools to pick powerful specialists in each school to join it, to ensure that it doesn't happen to skew towards one facet of magic because e.g. the last century saw a bunch of powerful conjurers and no powerful diviners so the collective is conjurer-heavy now.
    Last edited by PairO'Dice Lost; 2020-10-18 at 06:17 PM.
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Tzardok View Post
    Say, Afro, what do you think about my version of the su'luk two pages back? Is that roughly how you imagined it when answering back then, or do you think something should be changed?
    Seems good! Ran it by some more balance-familiar amigos and they agreed.

    Dice: I like your rationale on that one. I was also loosely braining the 8 schools of magic.
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Thanks for all the feedback.
    I also like 8 as a sacred number for the collective; I had chosen an 8 pointed star as the god's holy symbol, representing the balance of the 8 non neutral alignments. One of my concepts was that the demigods were of all various alignments, with the collective averaging out to TN. Having it also refer to the schools of magic is a great plus.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Is there a depression deity? A deity who's always sad and depressed all the time.
    It's time to get my Magikarp on!

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Afroakuma - where can I find a compiled list of your 3.5e crunch homebrew with links?

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Bartmanhomer View Post
    Is there a depression deity? A deity who's always sad and depressed all the time.
    Shar isn't really depressed all the time, but is a deity of loss and enjoys nurturing pain, grief, and sadness.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Wny is Sigil seemingly so uniquiely important, given the fact that there are other planar trade/transport hubs, and sigil's portals seem to be often inconvenient to use and are generally too small to get a wagon through?
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    Wny is Sigil seemingly so uniquiely important, given the fact that there are other planar trade/transport hubs, and sigil's portals seem to be often inconvenient to use and are generally too small to get a wagon through?
    Sigil is, just off the top of my head,
    • the biggest metropolis in the planes besides Dis;
    • directly reachable from everywhere without needing magic assistance if you know what you are doing;
    • assured neutrality by the biggest stick around;
    • granted importance through Unity of Rings and Center of All.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Tzardok View Post
    the biggest metropolis in the planes besides Dis;
    How is that possible!? It only has 250000 inhabitants!
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    How is that possible!? It only has 250000 inhabitants!
    Science fiction fantasy writers having no sense of scale.

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    But it's not just small-considering-that-it-services-an-infinite-multiverse, it's just a small city period. Even thousands of years ago there were cities in the real world that were bigger
    Last edited by Bohandas; 2020-10-23 at 01:06 PM.
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    And how come we never hear of suburbs or metroplexes or sister cities of Sigil? If it's portal network were at all reliable, we would expect it to have a sprawling network of Fort Worths, East Vegases, and Greater Londons
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Bartmanhomer View Post
    Is there a depression deity? A deity who's always sad and depressed all the time.
    Nephthys.

    Quote Originally Posted by redking View Post
    Afroakuma - where can I find a compiled list of your 3.5e crunch homebrew with links?
    I don't think there is one, anymore. Anything in particular you were looking for? A lot of the really old stuff is pretty crap...

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    Wny is Sigil seemingly so uniquiely important, given the fact that there are other planar trade/transport hubs, and sigil's portals seem to be often inconvenient to use and are generally too small to get a wagon through?
    It's neutral ground the gods can't get to, a hub for moving between countless worlds and planes, and exists at the center of the Outer Planes, making it an excellent place for those looking to shape reality with their beliefs to congregate and argue their case - which they do. You're thinking of Sigil from the standpoint of "why is it impressive as a city," which is not the reason people care about it - even if it were barren ground, it would be important. The fact that it's been urbanized only adds to its relevance.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tzardok View Post
    the biggest metropolis in the planes besides Dis
    Zelatar.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    And how come we never hear of suburbs or metroplexes or sister cities of Sigil? If it's portal network were at all reliable, we would expect it to have a sprawling network of Fort Worths, East Vegases, and Greater Londons
    Its portal network is a thing of value; people pay to learn the whereabouts and methods of portals, and while many are very consistent, no portal is 100% guaranteed forever - the Lady can create them, change them or close them as she wills. Then of course there's the other crucial fact that many of its destinations are on planes of belief, where distance and location are in part a function of the traveler themselves.
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    How much is know about the illithid prophecy of a being called The Adversary?

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by Babale View Post
    How much is know about the illithid prophecy of a being called The Adversary?
    Well, we certainly know what it is - the legend says that one day a ceremorphosis will go wrong, resulting in a being with the body and powers of an illithid, but the mind and soul of the host body. There's been at least one case of something similar happening, although the circumstances were unique - the ulitharid Redatsuul recklessly overused psionic tattoos and accidentally created a circuit that inverted the mental control in his body and allowed the human host mind to regain control. The Adversary would be a slightly different scenario in that the illithid mind would not exist at all, but the nature of their fear is basically the same - something that can move among them undetected and work to destroy them using their own powers.
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    I've read about Uchuulon (chuul/illithids) and Urophion (roper/illithids). Are there any other nontraditional illithid-kin?
    Are there limits to what kinds of things can be tadpole implanted?

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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by aj77 View Post
    I've read about Uchuulon (chuul/illithids) and Urophion (roper/illithids). Are there any other nontraditional illithid-kin?
    Are there limits to what kinds of things can be tadpole implanted?
    Well, Lords of Madness claims that normally the tadpoles are very discerning about the type of host they can survive in. Only mamalian humanoids of a certain size are valid hosts; given examples are humans, elves, githzerai, githyanki, orks, gnolls, grimlocks and Medium-sized goblionids. On the other hand, illithids are experimenting all the time with implanting tadpoles into other things. Most of the time tadpole and host die, but sometimes it works. Usually, the half-illithid template is used for those "freaks". Urophion and Uchuulon are the only examples I know of that are reliably reproducable. Besides those I only know of the brainstealer dragons, whose exact origin is not quite clear, but most likely, well... tadpole + dragon.

    Question of my own: Urbanus and Zarus from Races of Destiny, the deities of the raptorans from Races of the Wild and the pantheon of the goliaths from Races of Stone do not have any homeplanes given. Does anybody have ideas or speculations where those gods have their divine realms?

  29. - Top - End - #179
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by aj77 View Post
    I've read about Uchuulon (chuul/illithids) and Urophion (roper/illithids). Are there any other nontraditional illithid-kin?
    There certainly are. An illithid tadpole implanted into a Beholder makes a Mindwitness. 2e has the Mozgriken, which are Svirfneblin with a tadpole, but that required some sort of dark ritual because otherwise attempting ceremorphosis with a gnome kills both the gnome and the tadpole. DragMag has the Tzakandi, which are made from lizardfolk.

    Brainstealer dragons are also a Dragon Mag thing. They occasionally will rule illithid settlements that don't have an Elder Brain.

    Quote Originally Posted by aj77 View Post
    Are there limits to what kinds of things can be tadpole implanted?
    Standard targets for normal ceremorphosis (i.e. will create a standard Illithid, not a special Ceremorph like the Urophion) are humans, elves, gith, gnolls, orcs, and some goblinoids. Dwarves and halflings are basically always a no-no.

  30. - Top - End - #180
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    Default Re: afroakuma's Planar And Other Oddities Questions Thread VIII

    Quote Originally Posted by afroakuma View Post
    Well, we certainly know what it is - the legend says that one day a ceremorphosis will go wrong, resulting in a being with the body and powers of an illithid, but the mind and soul of the host body. There's been at least one case of something similar happening, although the circumstances were unique - the ulitharid Redatsuul recklessly overused psionic tattoos and accidentally created a circuit that inverted the mental control in his body and allowed the human host mind to regain control. The Adversary would be a slightly different scenario in that the illithid mind would not exist at all, but the nature of their fear is basically the same - something that can move among them undetected and work to destroy them using their own powers.
    Is there any clue as to what the source of this creature would be? Is it a failure on the tadpoles part? A particularly strong willed individual? Divine favor? Or just random chance?

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