[GAME] Conceive a Cross Dimensional Fantasy Milieu

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Its a possibility, but I feel that would somehow cheapen the setting. Plus that'd be weird when compared to the effects of their death and their inability to leave their divine realms. These divines feel like part of the metaphysics of the setting.

Yeah, it was just an idle thought. It'd be an interesting premise for a different setting though.

I'm not sure if the primary character point level you'd use in this setting is national level, or focused on the merchants. Right now it supports both, I suppose.

Well, we haven't focused much on merchanting yet, but having the political landscape in place first gives us a bit of an idea of what things merchants would have to navigate. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by national level- lords and archmages? That could work... but I think merchants and other adventures would get more out of the travelogue aspect of the setting. We just need to throw in a few more weird realms.

[patchwork]

Answer 52 People with low levels of magical ability tend to be cloistered during their late teens and early twenties as they learn and practice to use their abilities constructively. A typical course is seven years, but there is no firm single age to begin, so that a class will have a range of ages within it. Tuition is nominal, as the Empire sees considerable benefit in having more surgeons and engineers and even entertainers, and indeed the coursework is at least as much academic as mystical; using low levels of power effectively hinges primarily on detailed knowledge of the subject, after all. The most prestigious ones are in the Teeth but most provincial capitals will have such a school.

Students with enough power to casually hurt or kill people are isolated as soon as their power is made known. Notionally, every Mage is subordinate to a specific Archmage in an ongoing commitment something like fealty; in practice, Archmages cannot supervise 200 Mages, perhaps 15 of them teenagers, in addition to their mundane administrative and military duties, and usually only closely monitor their own children, although they might take special interest in one who appears to have archmage potential. The most common arrangement is for an archmage to have a single Master of Instruction, a senior mage of proven power and integrity responsible for the ~12 newest and youngest mages under him. The Master and students will spend most of their training years in relatively unpopulated areas for safety reasons. The occasional death during training is accepted (although patterns will be - addressed); mages are essential to the state, but as ordinary people cannot protect themselves against a mage, the rare student is assessed as being likely to cause more problems than they solve, and suffers a regrettable accident during training. There are also legitimate accidents between teenagers who can throw boulders with their minds.

Question 86 How does the Empire conceive and organize military force? Is it "every free person bring their own weapons, we're having a short campaign" or is it paid professionals? Are officers elected or appointed? How much coordination is there between military units from different provinces?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Question 75 Name three powerful individuals or agencies within Calledron that oppose the Emperor's reforms, and their reason or basis for doing so.

Janillis, The archmage of the Granite forest, opposes the emperor's reforms. His reasons for doing this are unclear, but are at least partially motivated by a personal dislike of the emperor. Janillis believes the empire should be waging wars, not reforming its populace. His views are popular among other archmages, as Emperor Martellus's reforms frequently infringe on rights traditionally given to archmages.

The High Priest of Rekmon is a rival reformer who hoped for a greater emphasis on rounded virtues and Patriotic fever. He claims the reforms do not give enough credence to courtesy and generosity, and open up opportunities for foreigners to gain influence.

The reforms broke the old merchant's guild monopoly on portal trade. The former members are known as the Old Trade Houses, and they are furious with the emperor. They are no where near as powerful and rich as they were 10 years ago, but they are more desperate, and their losses appear to have stabilized: some are bankrupt, some are still wealthy and powerful.

Question 87:
What shape is the pirate city of pit? does it ring the entire pit? is it long and vertical, all on a few levels, or just a big blob? How do people get up and down from one level to another?

Question 88:
The Empire prefers Archmages for rulers. Is there a preference for mages in middle positions, or are they shepherded into other professions?

Originally Posted by patchwork

Answer 52 The Master and students will spend most of their training years in relatively unpopulated areas for safety reasons

You make it sound so obvious. These groups feel like adventurer material. Or if you have a mage in the group, the GM can have another from his training group show up as a supporting character.

[patchwork]

Answer 58 The spice gems of the granite forest are used by the Imperials to augment the earth elementals they acquire from Mother Plains. With spice gems embedded in them, they become significantly more cunning and more aggressive. For someone who has a use for a cunning, aggressive pile of dirt. The spice gems also have a slightly upsetting mental effect on living organisms; nothing dramatic, but they make living things uncomfortable over time, so that they can be used as pest repellant. Alchemists can probably enhance that into a full-on Dread that no animal and few civilized people will abide, or limit it to affect only certain organisms. And there's always a few people who, as a display of "strength", crush them into powder and eat them on their food or drink.

Question 89 Aside from the stupendous hat, is there any reliable way to distinguish an Archmage, Mage or ordinary Imperial? Can Mages simply sense each other's power? How accurately and at what range? Is there some alchemical means of distinguishing them, and if so how involved, expensive and portable is it? Or could any Imperial be a Mage if, you know, they were wearing peasant clothes for some reason?

[(E)]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Question 89 Aside from the stupendous hat, is there any reliable way to distinguish an Archmage, Mage or ordinary Imperial? Can Mages simply sense each other's power? How accurately and at what range? Is there some alchemical means of distinguishing them, and if so how involved, expensive and portable is it? Or could any Imperial be a Mage if, you know, they were wearing peasant clothes for some reason?

Combining the scholarly fields of natural philosophy and alchemy has led to the invention of a device that can detect an individual with special abilities. A needle shaped lodestone that has been treated with a alchemical preparation can point towards a mage or archmage.

The alchemical preperation includes the blood of an individual with the power being detected so not just imperial mages can be found with this method.

There are a couple of catches however, the range is limited to a dozen or so yards when detecting a typical mage and twice that when detecting the more powerful archmages. The second problem is that a mage who can move objects with their mind can control the orientation of the needle if they are aware of it...

Summoning can in theory create a link to a being who can detect abilities, but the only entities known to have the appropriate abilities are difficult to deal with.

Question 90
The pit [edit: now "The chequered Field"] is an unusual portal that rather than allowing transport to another place instead "pulls" individuals, objects and creatures to its location when certain conditions are met.
How is this portal used?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

Question 90
The pit is an unusual portal that rather than allowing transport to another place instead "pulls" individuals, objects and creatures to its location when certain conditions are met.
How is this portal used?

Is that the same "Pit" as in "The Pirate Kings of Pit", from Answer 69 and Question 87?

[(E)]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Is that the same "Pit" as in "The Pirate Kings of Pit", from Answer 69 and Question 87?

No it isn't, hmm
How about "the chequered field"?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

No it isn't, hmm
How about "the chequered field"?

A-ha! As in a chess board? I was thinking that every multiverse has a chessboard realm...

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Question 82 where is the Impossible Sea, source of stagfish leather and prawnskin, located? What is it like? Who rules it?

Answer 82- The Impossible Sea
and Answer 43c- Imperial Realms

One of the Calledron Empire's provincial realms is the Impossible Sea. This realm exists on the interior of a tetrahedron, and is almost completely covered in ocean.

The majority of landforms on the Impossible Sea consist of vertical, tapered pillars of rock, called kolonas, shaped like cigars or turnips, that float in the air with their tips just brushing the sea surface. The kolonas may be 500 yards to 2000 yards tall, and a quarter to a third of that across the diameter of the top. Usually the kolonas stand alone, but they may be tied into pairs by their inhabitants, and there are a few major settlements made of several bound together into ring or wheel structures.

The inhabitants of the kolonas live in caves dug into their vertical sides, while the lower part of their tips are covered in hoists and boats in suspension moorings. They spend their days harpooning stagfish for their hides and antlers, or tending prawning pots for the elusive comet prawn. And they have to get back out of the water to their hang moorings quickly when regular swarms of hoomrays come up from the depths for feeding frenzies that roil the sea surface with their sonic blasts.

The sides of the tetrahedron are 500 miles long each. The sea continues smoothly from one face to another, and sailing through the 70° planar angle can be quite disturbing. The whole sea, then, is around 400,000 square miles. Clouds, storms and plagues of stinging insects regularly cross the surface. And in the dead centre, 204 miles above everyone's heads, is another tetrahedron that provides the realm's daylight. A mile on each side, it has stained glass faces showing murals of god-like and angelic creatures which light up in sequence for 12 hours at a time.

In the Impossible Sea, one may also find floating coral-like atolls which slowly grow and birth kolonas from their surface before again submerging beneath the waves.


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Question 91 [IMPSEA]- Calledron Rule
What is the Calledron outpost here? How does the empire impose its rule?

Question 92 [IMPSEA]- Kolona Culture
What are the cultures of the various kolona peoples like?

Question 93 [IMPSEA]- Impossible Depths
If a Calledron mage were to go plumbing the depths of the sea, what would they find?

Question 94 [MV][Name 4]- Tetral Realms
The Impossible Sea is one of a skerry of five tetrahedral realms. What are the other four like?

[ericthered]

Question 61 We've seen that the Empire appears to have some far-flung outposts, such as near Praxis and the Granite Forest. Praxis was referred to as having an Archmage, implying it's a Province at least on paper; but how are Imperial outposts organized away from a portal? Who commands them, and who do they answer to?

Archmages are chosen for their raw power, and as such rarely make efficient administrators. Much of the actually work is handled by the parari, or agents, of the mage. Parari carry the authority of the archmage to places where he is not. Areas lacking the attention of and access to an archmage are generally under the control of an unusually independent Parari. Recently the emperor has begun moving such areas under more direct imperial control as one of his reforms. This had led to many archmages pointedly making occasional visits to outposts that would previously have not seen them for years. Archmages have traditionally chosen parai in whatever manner they thought was best, but the emperor has established a list of qualifications for them which he is imposing on the empire with more or less success.

In addition to the Parari, much of the empire is ruled by "Paper Mages": Mages who have the duties and privileges of archmages, but who lack the overwhelming abilities of the persons who can carve out provinces for the empire or duel the emperor. Paper Mages are so called for their enthusiastic embrace of paperwork and bureaucracy. Paper mages rule over lands once claimed by "Full" archmage, but which existing archmages consider a chore to administer rather than a privilege.

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The trailing unanswered questions are questions 55, 56, 61, 62, 65, and 68. I wrote all of them except #56, and I'm waiting on #62 to answer that, so I won't add any more questions. We also have a number of name 5 questions in that zone, including imperial realms (43), Rivals to humanity (47), and Merchant houses (66)

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I also had an idea for the impossible sea, and its remarkably different. I'll keep the idea: I'm sure there will be an opportunity for it sometime else.

I'm a little unsure exactly where the billboard pretending to be a sun is located in that cosm. The center of the ocean? above one of the corners? orbited around by the tetrahedron?