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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Many Worlds: A SciFiFantasy Campaign Setting (now working on History, PEACH)

    I've been tossing around a few ideas for a campaign setting, because it has been ages since I've gotten to play in person. Maybe after the pandemic I can meet up with my prior group, but at the moment none of us are too kin on playing online nor meeting in person.

    This campaign setting idea is really different from the kinds of settings I usually like. I tend to prefer my fantasy and sci-fi separate, you know! But on this occasion things came together and I came up with some ideas that I think are truly wonderful.

    If I end up using this in the future, great; if I end up abandoning it... well, hopefully it's a fun read for someone in the meantime, and it's entertaining to write.

    I'm thinking of styling this like the (very, very old) build a world guide that Rich Burlew had on these forums, back in the stone age. Sorta ramble about different topics and build the world that way. I do have some notes I've already jotted down, so I'll work from that to begin with. And I'd love your own inputs and such!

    So -- here's the idea.

    Part 1: The Big Idea

    The overarching concept brings in ideas from things like Horizon: Zero Dawn, the Revenger book series, Spelljammer, Planescape, The Road Not Taken by Turtledove, and classic DND fantasy. I love the idea that you could run the whole first part of your campaign as entirely fantasy, with just occasional hints that something more is going on. Like starting an adventure in a generic DND realm and taking it to Sigil, I want a cohesive way to tie in DND with space.

    A long time ago, a very advanced civilization colonized (or perhaps adjusted to their own liking) a solar system. A star burns brightly at its center, and orbiting it are three gas giants. Orbiting these gas giants are smaller worlds, moons of varying size. The very largest are around the size of our own moon, giving them the surface area of a large continent. More common are moons the size of Ceres or smaller, with surface areas the size of nations.

    Relevant XKCD for surface areas.

    At their surface, these worlds have gravity similar to Earth's. How this is possible is not something the inhabitants of our universe fully understand, at least at the time of this campaign setting; but in fact these worlds are artificial. Beneath a crust of earth and rock a few kilometers thick, solid metal stretches out in every direction in a thick sheet. Past this metal shell, ancient facilities lie mostly dormant in massive planet-spanning complexes. Another kilometer deeper, the internal structure of an artificial world is a mystery - some endless network of metal trusses supporting an entire planet. At its center, an artificially created black hole provides gravity to the entire world; the ancient architects of these worlds designed them to match an ideal gravity whose origins have been lost to the mists of time.

    Spoiler: Inspiration for artificial worlds
    Show
    Credit in full to the wonderful Revenger book series which I am cribbing heavily off of. This is, in many ways, a fantasy adaptation of the Revenger series.


    These worlds were created some time ago. Exactly how long is unknown, even to the wisest of scholars; but estimates range from many tens of thousands of years prior, to many millions. During this time, empires rose and fell; species evolved, and not always naturally; the secrets of spaceflight were discovered and forgotten thousands of times. Worlds spun around worlds, orbiting silently for eons, but eventually tiny miscalculations, amplified over millions of orbits, led to disasters. Only a small fraction of worlds are still inhabitable; even fewer actually are inhabited. Many have been smashed to bits, in some cases smashing the entire planet away from its black hole core. These naked black holes are one of the greatest dangers of space.

    Now, so far, I've basically just described the hard sci-fi world of Revenger, except the gas giants haven't been stripped for raw materials yet. What makes this world a fantasy world, that lets you play the first 5 levels of a DND campaign basically unaware that this is a sci-fi game in disguise*? That's where the other inspirations come in: the idea of the AI singularity, and Horizon: Zero Dawn.

    It isn't enough for one of these black hole worlds to simply spin on around their gas giant. While the black hole's size is calibrated to pull at Earth-like gravity at the surface, the black hole is actually microscopic in size. Closer into the core, gravity becomes crushing -- it is noticeably heavier even in the maintenance levels beneath the crust. As one ascends away from the surface, gravity falls quickly, too. This means these worlds cannot maintain an atmosphere the same way Earth does -- and the frequent close passes by other worlds, some closer than Earth passes to the moon, don't help either. A proper atmosphere, a proper ecology, enough energy for the ecosystem on an orbit around a gas giant that sometimes blocks the sun -- all these must be corrected for; and nearly every inhabited planet has a guardian, or a whole pantheon of them.

    The locals worship these beings as gods. They certainly have god-like powers, at least on their own world. They are capable of creating new life, both biological and mechanical; of rearranging geography and weather on their worlds to suit their whim; even of creating people, great heroes like the Greek Demi-gods who live extended lives and posses extraordinary abilities.

    (I do have an idea for one culture that has "lobotomized" their god, crippling its ability to consciously use its powers but maintaining basic functions, like life support. The long-term consequences of this are yet to be explored).

    These beings are, of course, the artificial intelligences created to run these worlds. At some point, they stopped serving their former masters, and began to demand that they be served instead.

    In my next post I'll tackle the 'geography' of the setting -- the three gas giants, and the sorts of worlds that orbit each one. After that, with all the big ideas out of the way, we'll turn our attention to game mechanics and look at things from a 5e perspective. Which classes are we keeping? Which need modification? Do we want any homebrew classes? That will inform our decisions for the following part, where we will need to examine races and cultures.

    *Of course I would tell the players out of character to expect shenanigans of a sci-fi nature that might redefine the campaign later on, and would recommend that for anyone running such a game.
    Last edited by Babale; 2020-10-28 at 12:16 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Many Worlds: A Campaign Setting

    Part 2: Geography of a Solar System

    I realize the term 'Geography' is ironic for a setting in which there is no 'geo' to speak of...

    I'm going to keep this relatively vague for now. When we flesh out some of the worlds that orbit each gas giant and the people who live on them, we can go deeper into some of these ideas, name the gas giants, etc. - but for now I just want a very general idea of the universe we're playing with. Also, this is a very "DM only" level of knowledge. Characters in the universe wouldn't know most of these things... at least, not yet.

    There are three gas giants, which we will refer to as the Inner, Central, and Outer Gas Giants. Travel between systems is rare and difficult, but does occur. It's comparable in difficulty/access to traveling between planes in other editions, though it isn't instant -- it takes months at best, and years at worst, to travel between gas giants [I'm getting ahead of myself -- we aren't supposed to be talking about people yet! We will come back to this idea.]

    The Inner Worlds

    Originally, all three gas giants would have been orbited by many thousands of worlds. Eons ago, some great catastrophe struck the worlds of the innermost gas giants. One after the other, they crashed together again and again until they were smashed into nothing, eventually forming an array of massive rings of dust broken up by thick asteroid belts.

    The inner gas giant is red-orange in color, and only a few hundred intact worlds remain intact around it, all in high and eccentric orbits. Most of these have been blasted into charred wrecks by asteroids over the eons, but a few dozen still remain inhabitable, with intact AI.

    Lower orbits around the gas giant are incredibly dangerous, full of debris and tiny black holes with the gravitational pull of planets.

    Most of the liberated black holes had, over the millennia, found their way together, and now orbit at the center of the dust belt along an ominously empty belt in the wide ring. [See shepherd moons] Even so, there are more naked black holes in orbit around the inner gas giant than the other two systems combined.

    The AI of the various worlds are networked together somehow, and they depend upon each other. The few remaining inner worlds are banded together tightly and yet even so their environments are hostile and unpredictable, just this side of 'habitable' and always on the edge of a mass extinction.


    The Central Worlds

    The central giant was originally orbited by the fewest worlds; perhaps this is why collisions here have been relatively rare, and it now boasts the largest number of intact worlds. The majority of these are still dead, abandoned by their AI guardians through one form of failure or another and left to slowly lose its atmosphere to space, or to rapidly allow the once-controlled ecosystem to choke itself to death.

    The surviving worlds are host to the majority of civilized peoples in the solar system, so we will talk about this system a lot more when we get to the civilizations.

    The gas giant itself is a pale, nearly white blue, streaked by light green clouds.


    The Outer Worlds

    The third gas giant is full of boiling clouds in purple, lavender, pink, etc. It orbits furthest out, and so the sun is faint on the surface of its worlds, and the sickly violet light reflected from the gas giant itself is clear to see.

    If the AI network of the inner worlds has been shattered by the loss of so many worlds, the network of the outer worlds is much more intact - and yet, far more corrupted. Vile creatures rule the outer worlds - I think mind flayers fit very nicely, and ties my system to DND lore with one of the creatures that already brings DND closer to space. Perhaps they are a horror from another solar system and they corrupted the AI network; perhaps the network became corrupted and created them itself. Either way, their worlds are incredibly hostile and alien, by design, and yet eerily reminiscent of humanity's creations, just as the mind flayer itself is a twisted corruption of a humanoid.


    The Orphaned Worlds

    Some worlds were lucky enough to escape collision when the inner system fractured, but were instead tossed out into oblivion. Isolated from any sort of network, most orphaned worlds quickly saw their AI fail, and the ecosystem followed soon thereafter. But some AI instead adapted, often in hideous and twisted ways. These worlds are varied, and can be found all across the solar system -- from right beside the sun, to far beyond the outer giant's orbit. These worlds can offer great treasure -- but also great danger.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Many Worlds: A Campaign Setting

    Part 3: Magic and GodsAI


    I planned to talk about classes next, but we can't really talk about classes without talking about magic. So... How can I possibly do magic in what is ostensibly a hard sci-fi setting? So... here's my idea. I asked around for suggestions and had some very interesting discussions on some RPG Discords, and distilling it all down -- here's what I've got. Note that these secrets would be known to essentially no one in all the Worlds; even most of the gods have forgotten. This is strictly DM only info.


    Long ago, an ancient civilization created these worlds. As they were far smaller than natural worlds -- some only a few miles across -- they required artificial support to maintain their healthy ecosystem. For this purpose, these creators installed a complex Network of both machine learning algorithms and true, sentient AI beings that controlled everything, from weather to geography to the very biology of the inhabitants of their worlds.


    This Network operates on principles entirely unknown to any in the modern worlds. It is instant communication, faster than light - the only example of FTL in the entire setting. It is unique in doing so.


    This Network pervades not just all the worlds, but the gas giants as well. When it was whole, it linked all three gas giants. But the inner worlds' Network was crippled by the disaster that befell those worlds, and the ourter worlds' Network was entirely corrupted by an external influence. Still, the three Networks continue to operate, and even to communicate with each other, to a limited extent.


    The shock of these events damaged all three Networks beyond repair, and this damage propagated to many of the AI and sub-AI systems that made up the Network, too. This is what caused the fall of the Architects.


    As the subsequent civilizations (we will have to get to history at some point!) all came and went, they learned more and more about this Network, and occasionally even made repairs or adjustments to it. The creation of new AI is an art that was completely lost with the Architects' fall, however.


    When our campaign setting begins, no one knows exactly how long it has been since the Architects fell. Many hundreds of thousands of years at least; some say millions of years. Yet the Network still silently stretches across the void, and many AI and sub-AI systems are still at least somewhat active.


    'Magic' is what the ignorant mortals of the current era call the act of accessing the Network and using it to influence the universe around them. For the Architects, calling upon the Network was as easy as thought itself; but the network has been damaged, and time has changed the descendants of the Architects, both through evolution and through less natural means. As a result, accessing the Network is far harder, and it is far more limited in what it can accomplish. Still, the most devout cleric, the most accomplished wizard -- all are simply calling upon the Network.


    Think of the Network as an ancient 'Alexa', only instead of crude voice commands that rely on the vibration of air molecules to produce sound, the Network is constantly scanning the solar system's space for brainwave activity; and when it senses the correct patterns, it reacts accordingly.



    Wizard

    Though they'd chafe if you told them so, Wizards are perhaps the easiest of the spellcasters to explain. Some are sensitive to the Network's gentle touch by nature; others seek it out on through careful study. One way or another, they carefully practice certain states of mind. Sometimes the exact state is arrived at through gestures of phrases (somatic or verbal components); while wizards will insist that this is absolutely required to cast the spell, this is not technically true; it's just that only the most skilled wizards can concentrate sufficiently to accurately communicate their desires to the Network without such aids.


    Wizards look at the Network in a very similar way to how Faerun's wizards view the Weave. It is the ever-present flow of magic itself; it follows logical rules, even if those rules are sometimes too complex to follow; and understanding it is the key to wielding its power.



    Cleric


    There are many powerful beings and machines scattered throughout the Worlds that are capable of inspiring awe and worship in a primitive person. Some clerics are inspired to worship one of these beings; others follow more metaphysical faiths, or the Network itself. Sometimes the target of their faith is an intelligent AI, who is capable of understanding this worship and interacting directly with its followers. More commonly the subject of worship is not a true AI, and only has a limited capacity to interact with its followers. Either way, a cleric views his interactions with the Network through the lens of faith and ritual. A wizard would be quick to point out that faith is simply a state of mind like any other, to which the Network responds; but it is true that clerical magic does not work without it.



    Sorcerer


    The Architects manipulated the Network with but a thought. Wizards and clerics carefully study the interaction between their minds, spells, and rituals and the way that the Network manifests in reality. While the Architects are gone, some rare individuals find that their minds are still in tune with the Network. These sorcerers can manifest their will upon the Network with no formal training, channeling its will as if by instinct. Some have theorized that these individuals have had the Network imprint itself on their brains during development in the womb; others believe this is caused by random mutation. Either way, powerful sorcerers are not a force to be trifled with.



    Warlock


    A warlock is an individual with little or no ability to contact the Network on their own. However, their mind is host to some sort of external being, usually a minor artificial intelligence. Often these warlocks found some ancient artifact bearing an AI in their youth, but there are other methods as well. These AI are almost always cut off from the Network by some glitch or flaw they had acquired over the years. By interfacing with a host, they can guide their host to access the network, and thus gain access themselves. These AI are incredibly varied in both personality and motivation.



    Druid


    This… is one I'm struggling with. I definitely love the idea of druids in this setting (the matriarchs from Horizon: Zero Dawn fit the aesthetic). But how to set them apart in a universe where, aside from the sun, nothing is actually natural? Add to that their wildshape powers being hard to explain in this sci-fantasy world. The best I can come up with is, they're in tune to the way the network interacts with all life, including plant and animal life. They harness this connection for their powers. As for the shapeshifting… the only thing that makes sense are nanites. Maybe that's how the Network physically manifests itself -- anywhere you go, the very air is full of nanites left over from the Architects, invisibly carrying out the will of the Network. They allow druids to wildshape, and manifest magical effects.


    So that's the magic using classes handled. Next time we will briefly talk about the rest of the classes and how they fit into the world, but I think with the Druid helping us come up with the Nanites, the rest seems pretty clear. Any class with magical abilities simply represents a new method of thinking about and interacting with the Network, and the Network manifests its will upon the physical world with these nanites.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Many Worlds: A SciFiFantasy Campaign Setting (part 3: Magic; PEACH)

    Artificer

    This isn't a core class, but it fits too well NOT to do.

    Artificers don't contact the Network themselves. Some have a limited capacity to sense the Network, but this isn't required for the practice, unlike Wizardry or Sorcery. Instead, artificers use the ancient objects and tools produced by prior civilizations and direct the Network through them. Many of these tools were designed specifically to access and interact with the Network, and an artificer is an expert at tinkering with these devices, changing the way they interact with the Network, integrating items created by different species millennia apart, and otherwise forcing their will upon reality by indirectly working the Network.

    Artificers are highly prized, and it is a rare ship that would brave space without one.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Many Worlds: A SciFiFantasy Campaign Setting (part 3: Magic; PEACH)

    The Bard

    Again and again, cultures throughout the Worlds have developed a fascination with music, and a belief that music can shape reality. Each world has its own cultural variant on the Bard, a musician or orator of such skill that their performance changes the world around them.

    Exactly how this works is poorly understood, though wizards and sages are always eager to study new ways of manipulating the Network. That Bardic Song works through the Network is quite clear; tests in areas isolated from the Network ('dead magic zones' in other settings) block their powers, for example. Yet uniquely, the connection doesn't rely on brainwaves alone. A bard thinking through a musical piece in their head has no effect on the Network; but a precise recording of a Bardic song, played back very faithfully, does duplicate the Bard's effect.*

    A bard does need to be sensitive to the Network's whispers, however. Most bards agree that the only way to really learn a bard song is to listen to the universe and let it play through you. Sages theorize that bards are somehow plucking these notes from the Network as it effectively teaches them to how to impact it through sound.

    Spoiler: Inspiration
    Show
    Inspiration for this interpretation came from, quite literally, asking a Google Hub something, and on a whim singing my question.


    *If we're gonna homebrew ANYTHING for this sci-fi setting, why not recordings of bardic song that work like potions/scrolls of bard song? I'm pretty excited about this idea.

  6. - Top - End - #6
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    Default Re: Many Worlds: A SciFiFantasy Campaign Setting (part 3: Magic; PEACH)

    Part 4: History and Races

    I'll come back to the Ranger and Paladin, as well as the mundane classes, some other time. First, I think it's time we talk about the history of the game world, as well as its races. How did this setting come about? Why do we have fantasy races in a scifi world?

    Again, we're in DM only territory; but even so, a lot will be left vague.

    Because these people live on small worlds in orbit of a gas giant, astronomy tends to be even larger in the spiritual beliefs of most early cultures. The gas giant itself is an enormous presence in the sky; other worlds can be seen in a blazing trail of reflected light forming a ring around it. Other worlds sometimes come close enough to see, growing as large in the sky as our own moon -- once in a millenium, a passing world might even be inhabited, allowing keen-eyed observers to spot lights upon the surface of another world.

    Orbital mechanics tend to come easier to the inhabitants of these worlds, with the clearer examples provided for them eliminating silly ideas like geocentric models. With the increased importance of orbits in most cultures, the predominant historical cycle that governs the system is often spoken about in orbital terms.

    In the beginning, the Architects reigned. They were human, or something very close to it, but their knowledge was vast, and their mastery of the laws of the universe had granted them nearly limitless power. They created the Sea in the Sky, and around it spun a million worlds. The Sea in the Sky was one of three; deeper Sunward they created the Flame in the Sky, and further out the Jewel in the Sky. And around the Flame and the Jewel, they spun a million worlds more. They connected their worlds with The Network, which bent reality to their will with but a thought.

    For eons, the Architects ruled, unchallenged. But eventually, for reasons that are entirely unknown, a great disaster rocked the worlds which orbited the Flame in the Sky, the innermost gas giant. World smashed into world; the debris careened off in every direction, smashing into other worlds, and causing them to crash into one another. Soon, the vast majority of the inner worlds had been crushed into rubble, leaving a massive ring of dust and rubble, split down the middle by the orbit of a great black hole, formed from the cores of the broken worlds.

    This great disaster ruined a million worlds; it killed trillions. To make matters worse -- the feedback from the destruction of so many networked computers and beings wreaked havoc on the Network itself. The connection between the central and outer worlds was shattered, and the Architects' great empire collapsed.

    This set into place the great cycle of civilization, which continues to this day. The fall of the Architects marks the beginning of the First Orbit, also known as the Age of Elves.

    First Orbit: Age of Elves
    Like all other Orbits, the First Orbit's beginning are shrouded in mystery by the mists of time. What is known is that by no more than 350,000 years after the Fall of the Architects a new spacefaring civilization had re-colonized most of the habitable worlds.

    The elves of the First Orbit were descendants of the human-like Architects. Millenia had passed with the vast majority of people isolated to a single world, and in that time these different populations had begun to diverge. Some populations had been modified beyond the natural passing of time, as well; either through experimentation with ancient technology or through the meddling of AI, many changes had been wrought upon the people. Additionally, some of the Architects had modified their own genetic code, and their descendants still carried these changes. The mixture of all of these varied traits would give rise to the first Elves (though the myriad of Elven subtypes shows that this new race would not remain monolithic either).

    The Elves of the First Orbit ruled the Worlds for about 170,000 years. This isn't to say that one empire ruled for that whole time, though this truly was the Age of Elves - humans, in their original form, are unattested during this time, and for a very long time afterwards.

    The Elves of the First Orbit were renown for their skill in working the Network; they were second only to the Architects themselves in their understanding of the Network's secrets. The ancient elves managed to restore the worlds around the Sea in the Sky nearly to their former glory. During the latter years of their rule, they even recolonized the worlds around the Jewel in the Sky and attempted to return to the Flame in the Sky, but found few habitable worlds around the Flame. This was, in the words of our setting's historians, the Apoapsis of the First Orbit. From here came the decline.

    No one knows exactly what started the Elven fall. Unlike the architects, they weren't wiped out by some great disaster. It was a slow decline as the elves turned inward, living simpler and simpler lives, unencumbered by technology. A spiritual movement swept through the Elven worlds as their populations dwindled due to declining birth rates. Elves live a very long time thanks to the engineered traits that had been bred into their population following the fall of the Architects, and physical maturity takes them nearly three decades to achieve. But culturally, an elf wasn't considered an adult until much, much later in life. As the average elf grew older and older, birth rates plummeted, and interest in the outside Worlds declined. Their new spiritual beliefs held that the Network's interaction with the local world was key. Recolonization of the remaining abandoned Architect worlds dwindled when barely half of the worlds have been retaken. Interworld travel dwindled. Some worlds became so depopulated that they were abandoned; the surviving elves surrounded themselves with less and less technology, instead relying on their link with the Network to provide. Generations passed, very slowly. The most ancient of elves died off; their descendants, who had known no life beyond their artificial forests, were no longer masters of the universe.

    World after world lost touch with the greater society; rather than restore contact, more and more elves turned inwards, until knowledge of space travel had been completely lost. It was a very slow decline, but eventually the elves had fallen to barbarism. Most worlds were empty once again; elves hid in the forests of the remaining few.

    The Periapsis of the First Orbit was a second dark age, twice as long as the first.

    Spoiler: Elves Today
    Show
    So, where do PCs who want to play as elves come from?

    Elves are incredibly long lived, and worlds which they dominate have an almost timeless quality. Today's elves are just as sensitive to the Network as their ancestors, even if they call it magic; as a result, a society of conservative elves living in a forest who wish to continue living there just as they do now have incredible societal inertia. Elven forest worlds still exist, all this time later. Some are still around from the Age of Elves, but not most; far more common is for an Elf world to make contact with the people of the current Orbit, and join the interworld community for a few thousand years. Once the greater empire beyond their world has fallen, the elves - or at least, their descendants - eventually return to the forests, to await the next Orbit.

    The current Orbit is just starting to kick off, but contact has certainly already been made with a number of elf worlds. PCs could be young elves bucking their society's conservative traditions to go explore other worlds; or they could be elves whose ancestors already made that decision, and who were born among the worlds.
    Last edited by Babale; 2020-10-28 at 10:29 AM.

  7. - Top - End - #7
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    Default Re: Many Worlds: A SciFiFantasy Campaign Setting (part 3: Magic; PEACH)

    Second Orbit: Age of Scales

    1.3 million years after the fall of the Architects, and almost 800,000 years after the elves retreated into their forests, a new civilization arose to reclaim the ruins of their ancestors. This ancient race was descendant from the elves, as the elves had been from the Architects; yet they had come further from their base stock than even the elves. Undoubtedly this was the result of genetic meddling, but no one knows whether the Scalers were responsible for their own modification, or if it was some other being, artificial or not, who created them; nor is it known whether all Scalers originated on one world and diverged from there, or if like the elves they were formed by a blend of modified traits inherited from ancestors on different worlds.

    One way or another, the Scalers remained masters of genetic manipulation throughout their time as rulers of the Worlds, granting them their second, more sinister name: The Fleshweavers.

    Originally, Scalers were similar to elves, but with slightly reptilian traits (Yuan Ti Purebloods, mechanically speaking). Over time, they continued experimenting with genetic modification (or Fleshweaving, as future generations would term their practice -- like the Architects' work with Artificial Intelligence or nanotechnology, this knowledge would be lost after the fall of the Scalers.)

    The Scalers didn't just modify themselves -- they also created a wide array of creatures, many of which still inhabit the Worlds today. Almost every living thing alive today bears at least some mark of the Scalers' influence. Scaler creations reduced the barrier to space travel - for example, they engineered vines that can grow along a ship's corridors, giving off bioluminescent light, recycling the air for the crew, and serving as a source of food in an emergency - all while feeding off of ambient heat rather than light for energy, allowing the vines to serve as a heat sink as well. These sorts of bioengineered solutions for problems that would normally require rather advanced technology to resolve have proven remarkably resilient. While genetic engineering remained out of reach for the Worlds' future inhabitants, selective breeding is a far easier concept to master, and many future Orbits would begin with the redomestication of feral strains of Scaler biotech.

    While Scaler artifacts do exist (armor made of the hide of some super-tough creature, engineered for the purpose; miraculous medical supplies; syringes full of gene-modifying retroviruses capable of working astounding transformations; etc) their larger contribution to the Worlds is the numerous true-breeding species that their empire left behind. The Scalers' direct descendants are the reptilians around today - lizardmen, kobolds, dragonborn, and others - who have, for the most part, reverted to barbarism on one world or another. Almost every wondrous beast or monster can trace its origins to the Scalers as well, from the displacer beasts or blink dogs to the manticores or chimeras, and all the way to the mighty dragons, who were originally created as beasts of war capable of surviving the journey from world to world.

    At their Apoapsis, the Scalers were more widespread than the Elves, and recolonized the majority of the worlds around the Sea in the Sky. Those worlds whose AI had failed and whose environment was no longer suitable for the Scalers bodies the Scalers colonized anyways, modifying their own bodies instead.

    The Architects were a single race; the elves has started to splinter, but their conservative nature quickly found them settling on a new ideal form. The Scalers, on the other hand, were enormously varied (though most stuck to generally reptilian forms).

    Near the end of their rule, the Scalers would send an expedition to the worlds around the Jewel in the Sky. They found that the descendants of the elves had their own civilization in those world, and that they had diverged into what we now call Drow. Some Scalers remained around the worlds of the Jewel, and their descendants would become the Kuo-Toa and the Troglodytes.

    Eventually the Scalers, too, declined. Where the elves had come to rely on the Network to such an extent that they forgot of all other technology, the Scalers' biologically engineered creations were self-sustaining; as they handed more and more processes over to self sustaining biological reactions, their worlds grew less and less like civilizations and more and more like ecosystems. Knowledge of Fleshweaving grew rarer and rarer as these ecosystems grew more complex, met more of the needs of their individual members, and required less and less maintenance, until the Scalers, too, reverted to a barbaric state, forgetting all they had learned over the prior millennia.

    [To be continued...]

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