New OOTS products from CafePress
New OOTS t-shirts, ornaments, mugs, bags, and more
Results 1 to 12 of 12
  1. - Top - End - #1
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    HalflingPirate

    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Arkansas, U.S.
    Gender
    Male

    Default What can I do with this area in my setting?

    In my setting, there is an oasis, at the heart of which stands a tower made of solid white stone- stone not found in the area, which doesn't dent or scratch easily. There are no visible entrances into the tower, and it's guarded by the only adamantine golem in existence. The golem itself is sentient, and has been guarding the tower for as long as the local lizardfolk tribes can remember.
    The lizardfolk themselves have lived here in the area since before humans evolved, and the tower, they claim, has always been there. The lizardfolk in the area treat the tower with reverence, and the golem tolerates their presence. Those wishing to enter the tower must first meet the approval of the golem, and should they succeed, the walls will admit them.
    The inside of the tower is bigger than the outside, and bursts with forms of life not found anywhere else on the planet- plants and animals nobody has ever seen before. At the heart of the tower is a positive energy vortex.

    I've not yet decided what purpose this tower serves, and I'm not yet sure how I can use it in a campaign.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Troll in the Playground
     
    HalflingPirate

    Join Date
    Nov 2011

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    The Fountain of Creation

    When the world was being forged a primordial god of Law used her fountain to bring forth life into the world. Because she exists in an infinite state, only her avatar for this world can communicate with mortals. Being tapped into the flux of Positive Energy, she does not need or want mortal worship and will not grant spells, but if a creative or artistic mortal comes along, she may reward the character with tools, such as a paint pallet or sculptor's chisel which will allow the artist's creation to come to life,(though not neccessarily under the creator's control.)

    A vial of the positive energy water will restore 1d12 hp or damage a negatively powered being such as undead a like amount.

    A potion bottle filled in the fount will heal 6d6 and injure negative energy beings a like amount.

    Bathing/immersion in the fount will heal all wounds, regenerate damaged, deformed, or amputated body parts, and reduce the character's physical age by 1-12 years.

    Bathing in the fount again before the age-reduction wears off, (the same number of years rolled to reduce age,) may result in the character transforming into a positive energy wight which can be bolstered by turning, but not turned or destroyed.

    Some of the creatures belong on other planes, while others either went extinct or were never seeded on the campaign world.

    Positive Energy Dragon
    Always Lawful
    A 9 to 21 hd creature with a positive energy breath weapon which does double damage to negative energy creatures, such as undead or beings from or powered by the Negative Energy Plane.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Flumph

    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Location
    Santa Barbara, CA
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    The plants and animals are from a different time or place of the same plane. The tower was a magical experiment in bringing a portion of another world (or same world very different time) and rendering it stable. Careful study of the interior walls gives hints to the study of space and time. (possibly target for a wizard fetch quest, a living creature or plant here produces a key material for a magic item or VERY old gateway somewhere, or the magic to be learned from the walls key to figuring out how to stop a BBEG using similar types of magic to mess things up now)

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Oct 2016
    Location
    Earth
    Gender
    Intersex

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    I'm thinking a druid lives there, a very powerful druid. who just manages to keep living using his natural magic. Over the course of his life or many lives in the case of certain spells he has gathered up all those different plants and everything else and cultivates them. since the lizard folk have lived there before humanity I don't expect him to be human. So I'm really thinking lizard folk or perhaps some even more ancient creature or maybe an elf.

    Through reincarnation he might not actually look like what he originally looked like. You could do a number of things with this guy. he can be a patron for the characters for quests. He can have the great magic McGuffin that is some way involved in the plot and is a natural item or uses natural magic. He could have the exact plan they need to make a cure for whatever illness is currently plaguing the world.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Flumph

    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Location
    Santa Barbara, CA
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    or as a slightly "darker" idea....especially if this is a really ancient desert like the Kalahari but that isn't a requirement ...perhaps an ancient civilization believed the sun was the source of all life/energy. To them the sun was more a gate to the positive energy realm than a fire realm as it is commonly seen in modern media. The concepts may even be the same in their language and minds.
    So they created a "house of the sun" not really understanding the mutagenic and overgrowth effects the place could have....in time it started to create problems and they had to figure out how to contain these problems...thus they created the tower that is seen today...it repairs and regrows itself with the energy from the portal and so has survived when almost all traces of the city that gave rise to it have faded to dust. The constant life bolstering effects have grown an mutated the small life forms that were living in and around the temple at the time it was locked away. (an so tend towards molds, simple plants gone berserk, slime-molds, giant vermin, mice, possibly even small lizards etc...they still grow reproduce and mutate at very high rates and so may any who visit. . . and that golem is at least as worried about keeping mutants in as most people out.

    ...

    It was made to be a prison to house undead. The surge of life and weirdly mutated creatures? Mostly a side effect. Maybe it was originally made by and for the undead and the vortex was their opponents way of AOE attacking them or perhaps the vortex was always part of the plan as a jail to lock the dead away out of our own space and time where they could not bother anyone else....and when placed inside undead are locked away...no lich regen, a vampire's ashes don't reform, ghosts and incorporeal undead that are bound to objects can not push into the plane while any such object is within the halls of the tower.

    ohh and while there are still quite a few undead still sealed away inside, there are not as many as you might think. A large number of "internment caskets" litter the place....but many are now empty....there also were three golems once.

    as an example of how to use: A very old undead that the PC's are fighting were interred here for a time before being busted out (good reason to have undead from any very ancient culture anywhere else on your map involved) and figuring out who they are is best done by finding the box they were once sealed in (as it has a funeral like inscription that tells of its history/crimes/and capture(which may reveal weaknesses))

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    Zombie

    Join Date
    Jan 2021

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by MonkeySage View Post
    In my setting, there is an oasis, at the heart of which stands a tower made of solid white stone- stone not found in the area, which doesn't dent or scratch easily. There are no visible entrances into the tower, and it's guarded by the only adamantine golem in existence. The golem itself is sentient, and has been guarding the tower for as long as the local lizardfolk tribes can remember.
    The lizardfolk themselves have lived here in the area since before humans evolved, and the tower, they claim, has always been there. The lizardfolk in the area treat the tower with reverence, and the golem tolerates their presence. Those wishing to enter the tower must first meet the approval of the golem, and should they succeed, the walls will admit them.
    The inside of the tower is bigger than the outside, and bursts with forms of life not found anywhere else on the planet- plants and animals nobody has ever seen before. At the heart of the tower is a positive energy vortex.

    I've not yet decided what purpose this tower serves, and I'm not yet sure how I can use it in a campaign.
    I'm getting thoughts of like a Seed-Vault? Or possibly a Seed-Vault gone broken.

    An old wizard or druid gathered seeds/seedlings from all manner of plants and even some animals to maintain a stable ecosystem inside the tower.
    To fuel and keep it all alive he manifested a positive energy vortex.

    So if the players need a rare herb or plant for a quest they can go there, or maybe some diviner tells them to gather a plant not from this world?

    -optional part-
    The Vortex has then grown or destabilized so the ecosystem isn't the same anymore.
    Worse (?) still it has become a sort of extraplanar oasis around the vortex where creatures come to rest before traveling again.

    How about it :D?
    Last edited by Pandamonium; 2021-01-13 at 07:32 AM.

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    Deepbluediver's Avatar

    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Location
    The US of A

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    Entrance to a MEGAdungeon, possibly a world-inside-the world. Like a prehistoric, savage land.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rater202 View Post
    It's not called common because the sense is common, it's called common because it's about common things.
    Homebrew Extended Signature!

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    ClericGuy

    Join Date
    Oct 2020

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    Why would the tower serve a purpose comprehensible to the party? It's just there. It always has been and always will be. Kings, Empires, entire races have risen and fallen and still the tower stands. The makers of the tower do not care what goes on around it. They and their creation are entirely apathetic towards the world and it's inhabitants. Feel free to take a look around but it's best to just carry on after. Not all things are meant to be understood and even your quest to save the multiverse is only a small part of the larger world.

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Titan in the Playground
     
    Lizardfolk

    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    Quote Originally Posted by MonkeySage View Post
    In my setting, there is an oasis, at the heart of which stands a tower made of solid white stone- stone not found in the area, which doesn't dent or scratch easily. There are no visible entrances into the tower, and it's guarded by the only adamantine golem in existence. The golem itself is sentient, and has been guarding the tower for as long as the local lizardfolk tribes can remember.
    The lizardfolk themselves have lived here in the area since before humans evolved, and the tower, they claim, has always been there. The lizardfolk in the area treat the tower with reverence, and the golem tolerates their presence. Those wishing to enter the tower must first meet the approval of the golem, and should they succeed, the walls will admit them.
    The inside of the tower is bigger than the outside, and bursts with forms of life not found anywhere else on the planet- plants and animals nobody has ever seen before. At the heart of the tower is a positive energy vortex.

    I've not yet decided what purpose this tower serves, and I'm not yet sure how I can use it in a campaign.
    The tower is actually a life harvester that creates the desert around it by eating the animus of everything that dies within a set radius. Life from other areas wanders in and continues to feed it, slowly starving the world of life as it collects in one spot. Then you can choose who made it and whether they remember it or are even still alive. Maybe extinct Ethergaunts made towers like this across the cosmos in their deicide wars, and having long since drowned out of existence in a storm of angels and devils the remaining towers simply sit there.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Glyphstone View Post
    Vibranium: If it was on the periodic table, its chemical symbol would be "Bs".

  10. - Top - End - #10
    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Location
    Florida
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    The tower seems to be a of smooth flawless stone. No seems or mortar are visible. The tower does not tapper or end.

    Quote Originally Posted by MonkeySage View Post
    Those wishing to enter the tower must first meet the approval of the golem, and should they succeed, the walls will admit them.
    What are the criteria for entry?

    Must you be strong enough to survive inside?
    Must you be good?
    Must you be natural?
    Must you be born on in a leap month? (There are about 12 1/6 lunar months in a solar year, so many calendar systems have leap months)
    Must you have a goal you would die for?
    Must you agree (with a resolute heart) to abide by certain bizarre rules while inside?

  11. - Top - End - #11
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Beholder

    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Location
    KCMO metro area
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    Twist: the tower actually isn't that old, and it's basically just a monument to hubris.

    It was created quite recently as part of a cutting-edge experiment by a handful of "smarter-than-thou" wizards to create a demiplane that would grant its residents eternal life; the exotic species inside are transplants chosen by the wizards to spice the place up, kind of like putting palm trees in a New York hotel. The location was chosen because of the relative ease of access to the Positive Plane, and the lizardfolk were none too happy with this giant human structure being built on their land. They gathered to attack, forcing the wizards to rush their experiment, and they fortified their only entrance - which they kept to make sure they could visit the world if it becomes interesting again - with adamantine.

    The experiment was a qualified success: everything in the tower is now immortal. But in the process of conjuring and harnessing the vortex, the wizards caused a one-time spike of positive energy output. The wizards, being the closest, were obliterated; the plants and creatures in the tower were all horribly mangled, but the positive energy flow gradually restored them. The lizardfolk experienced the same thing - though they're not immortal now, they were briefly overwhelmed by positive energy before being restored by the same. Their minds weren't restored with their bodies; they had no memory, but their attempts to make sense of the world quickly filled in the gaps. They've become convinced that the tower has just "always been there," because as far as they can remember, it has. And of course, the adamantine door was hit by a wave of animating energy and became a golem - the magic used to create the walls sealed off the exit after the exit got up and walked away.

    As for what happened to the wizards - could be anything. They would've been closest to the vortex when it burst, so it's possible they just popped and couldn't be restored. Maybe they got what they'd always wanted and genuinely become "higher beings," but now they're trapped in the core of this tower - if they get too far from the vortex and its energy output, they'll wither and die, but they aren't sufficiently infused to be able to survive the Positive Plane at length.



    Some of this probably doesn't make sense with the preexisting lore about the Positive Plane and such, but this setup was such a good creative prompt that I felt compelled to logic it out to the best of my ability. Thanks for the post!

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    RedWizardGuy

    Join Date
    Dec 2018
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: What can I do with this area in my setting?

    The tower is a relic of the ancient world. The golem is the last one that guards it and even he has forgotten its purpose.
    The tower was build to seal off a portal to the abyss. In ancient times there was a massive invasion and the deities themselves had to intervene to save the world.

    Once inside temptations will begin. open the portal to a realm of glory and peace. great treasures await the brave. etc..

    the players could accidentally trigger the end of the world.

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •