Big Rock Candy Mountain/Cockaigne- A land of plenty as long as that plenty is in the form of various vices. Cigarette tress, a lake of stew, alcohol streams, all the police have wooden legs and the dogs have rubber teeth. Dominating the center of the landscape is the big Rock Candy Mountain itself, a towering edifice of multicolored crystal sugar dotted with lollipop trees and inhabited by roast suckling pigs and deep fried turkeys. The top of the mountain is occupied by the Beggar King, Emperor Norton and his faithful dog-knights Bummer and Lazarus. Here he issues decrees the people follow or don't follow at their whim, but generally speaking he's content with his kingdom. Only those travelling the rails for many years have a hope of navigating their way here unaided. This place might actually be a subset of Heaven.
Cloud Cuckoo Land- Above the Big Rock Candy Mountain is a sky of cotton candy clouds where lives the Cuckoos. This is where optimistic imaginations are are forged into Day Dreams and scattered to the Four Winds, dropping down upon the worlds as Serendipity's, Eureka's, and sleepy stares though classroom windows. The Cuckoos are a singular species, but appear individually as anything from fairy tale. The difference between a Cuckoo Elf and a true elf (or any other cuckoo version) is they appear more or less like a child's ideal, a naive platonic shape of an Elf. Rosey cheeked, long blond hair, a friendly smile, they live in trees and bake cookies. A massive castle made of clouds dominates the center of Cloud Cuckoo Land where a female giant celebrates her liberation after her cruel husband fell from a beanstalk to his death.
Cloud 9- Above Cloud Cuckoo Land, the highest cloud in the metaphysical sky, Cloud 9 is a place of perfect euphoria and is mostly inhabited by Buddhas, Enlightened Yogis, and really *really* stoned people. Jacob's Ladder pierces through Cloud 9 and some who travel it decide to get off here for a permanent visit. Sometimes called the Pure Land, all those who inhabit it live in absolute happiness without the need for pleasures of the physical or mental as found in the lands below. One who has not reached this place by their own enlightenment often finds that the Cloud cannot hold them long, their metaphysical and spiritual weight too great and they fall back down into lower lands.
The Way of the Dodo- The final home of extinct species, The Way of the Dodo appears as a glamorous multi-ecosystem space where at least two of every extinct creature now resides. Although one might expect a place that contains every dinosaur as well as Dodos would be a chaotic feeding frenzy, there is somehow always plentiful food of more common varieties. May actually be an experimental space station control by alien hyper-intelligences.
The Hard Place- At the end of Shit Creek and opposite to A Rock, The Hard Place is a sheer vertical cliff extending far into the heavens. Here, the paddle-less paddlers on Shit Creek often find themselves smashed against the rocks and drowned in problems of their own making. However the occasional desperate soul was able to cling to the rocks. The face of The Hard Place is pockmarked with caves, tunnels, pulleys, and platforms as those survivors have made a home for themselves. Living upon The Hard Place is...well hard, but it is the ultimate respite from responsibility in the rest of the world. Your past cannot catch you and you have no future.
The Den of Iniquity- Mos Eisley Cantina meets Lankhmar meets every gambling den, red light district, and opium house, The Den of Iniquity is knee deep in sin at the doorway and only gets deeper. While the Big Rock Candy Mountain might supply answers to vices, they are of a light hearted sort. The Den, on the other hand, is for those of a more...Caligulan frame of mind. The Master of the House lords over this den of dissolutes, many of whom are eternally bound and indebted to the mysterious Master. Whenever They make an appearance, they take on different but always attention grabbing form and make pronouncements in a voice that is somehow both brassy and sultry at once. Many are certain The Master is a demon cast from hell or maybe the missing Archfiend themselves. They say the backroom contains a one way escalator to Hell.
The Mine of Information- When the dEr0 dug deep enough into the earth, their drills pierced into a fleshy wall. They say that the Astral Plane is the Plane of Thought, where the collective Noosphere of conscious thought is amassed, where raw belief travels to the far horizons of imagination and form into the Outer Planes. This is only partially true. Untold trillions of minds cannot work in concert together to do such a thing. Certain underground dwelling squid-folk can tell you its hard enough to do that with a few dozen. In the depths of each world lies the World-Mind. Tectonics are merely the shifting wrinkles on a massive brain, everywhere we know is really just outer derma and skull, hell is just a migraine. The World-Minds are singular Noosphere of a Crystal Sphere/World, a fragment of the Akashic Record, it is what translates a million million thoughts into something approaching cosmic sense. But the dEr0 reached it and began to mine. They pull out our dreams and tug at our thoughts, the leave paranoia and fragmented memories in their wake. Many a madness, many a night lost in a blink of an eye, many a sudden remembrance of ancient embarrassing deeds can be attributed to the dEr0's mining activities.
Way Back When- A place where all of the remembered past is the present, all at once. As soon as a moment has passed by, it becomes a part of Way Back When, as soon as a moment has passed from living memory it becomes part of the true Past. Worlds with elves and other long lived species tend to have an amazingly complex Way Back When, but worlds dominated by humans and short lived species tend to have a Way Back When composed of a hundred or less years. The elderly have an easier time reaching Way Back When, but a wizard with a funnel, a little electricity, and a verbose old timer might be able to get a reasonably sized party there.
Easy Street, The Road to Damascus, The Garden/Primrose/Straight & Narrow Paths- A single path that forks in many near roads we often find ourselves travelling the paths unknowingly. Easy Street is where many of us want to go, where our lives are made simple by luck and good fortune and every plan works out. However more often than not we find we are actually on the Garden Path, being led astray and towards the Primrose path, where the ease we feel is actually ignorance of the dangers around us. At the end of the Primrose Path sits the Den of Inequity and beyond that Hell itself. Just shortly before the end though, a small path veers away from it. It is Straight and Narrow, and up against a high cliff face (the back side of The Hard Place), but those who can walk this path without falling eventually finds the road widens and becomes a road. The Road to Damascus leads back to the beginning of one's life's journey but allows one to make a complete 180 degree turn, a radical change in a belief and give life another try with that belief set.
The Potter's Field- The metaphysical graveyard of everyone who has died unknown, unloved, and unremembered. Ceaseless miles of rolling hills dotted with dead trees and row after row of blank gravestones. Here and there great crumbling mausoleums exist for those who did great or terrible things in life but were regardless left unsung and unremembered. It connects to every Potter's Field in the multiverse and is commonly used by powerful ghoul nobles as a means of travel.
The Closet (Where the Skeletons are)- Less a closet and more an infinite hallway of closets, this place contains every dirty hidden secret in the multiverse. Doors line both sides of the hall, each titled with a name. Some doors are grouped in families so all of the Vanderdunks will be together and all of the Buckard will be in another. Within each closet is a skeleton (or skeletons) representing the secrets of the individual named. Some sit alone in their closets, others are stuffed tighter than a clown car. When the doors are opened the skeletons pour our en masse screaming their secrets and flailing about rather threateningly. They will only attack, however, if the individual they represent is present or they are attacked first. When the secrets are unleashed in the "real" world, the skeletons burst from their closet and run towards the "End" of the hallway.
School of Hard Knocks- Sister Mary Prudence runs the School of Hard Knocks with an adamant ruler, literally. Here students are subjected to Life Lessons, skills gained through experiencing misfortune and pain rather than any sort of book learning. Classes include: Poverty 101, A Study On Parental Neglect, How to Fail Forward, Taking a Punch, Crash Course on Grief and Loss, and Home Economics. Graduates are few and far between, but those who do get through it tend to have a steel resolve and very tough knuckles.
The Ivory Tower- This altitudinous edifice towers high above the School of Hard Knocks, which it looks down upon with all the paternal conceit of a father eagle perched upon its eyrie. Its facade is garbed in only the most expensive white marble, polished to blinding brightness, so that all may see and flock to this beacon of erudition amid benighted seas of ignorance. Within its sanctified and sanctimonious halls are the greatest of the learned, astute beyond measure after long ages spent plumbing the depths of Absolute Truth without the distractions of work, differing opinions, or "reality" to bog them down. While at times it feels like a thankless, Sisyphean, and nugatory task, the wardens of this tower are tireless in the mission to share their elucidation with the whole world- such is the reach of their armchairs. (Provided by Furtive Goblin)
Next Week- Can only be reached by being punched really really hard, more than half your HP in a single punch and it has to be a punch. It is a reliable albeit dangerous form of time travel, resulting more often than not in a corpse manifesting out of nowhere. You are flung a number of yards backwards equal to the damage you took and show up exactly one week later.
Armor: As Plate + Shield, its REALLY agile!
Move: 5x Normal
Morale: 2, 12 if cornered
Damage: Peck 1 , Claw 1d6
The Way of the Dodo- The final home of extinct species, The Way of the Dodo appears as a glamorous multi-ecosystem space where at least two of every extinct creature now resides. Although one might expect a place that contains every dinosaur as well as Dodos would be a chaotic feeding frenzy, there is somehow always plentiful food of more common varieties. May actually be an experimental space station control by alien hyper-intelligences.
The Hard Place- At the end of Shit Creek and opposite to A Rock, The Hard Place is a sheer vertical cliff extending far into the heavens. Here, the paddle-less paddlers on Shit Creek often find themselves smashed against the rocks and drowned in problems of their own making. However the occasional desperate soul was able to cling to the rocks. The face of The Hard Place is pockmarked with caves, tunnels, pulleys, and platforms as those survivors have made a home for themselves. Living upon The Hard Place is...well hard, but it is the ultimate respite from responsibility in the rest of the world. Your past cannot catch you and you have no future.
Rock Bottom- Beneath the waters of Shit Creek is Rock Bottom, where those who have truly reached the lowest low have come to reside. There is nowhere to go but up in Rock Bottom, but you have to swim through a sea of shit to reach the other side. That's why most of Rock Bottom's inhabitants are flimsy bottom feeders, their near useless bodies flung about by the creek above them as their feet remain deeply buried in the mud. The rare Rock Bottom dweller who is able to resurface finds themselves steeled against nearly any obstacle henceforth, they've lived through the worst and pulled themselves from the bottom, little else will stop them. The secret is you must literally pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
The Den of Iniquity- Mos Eisley Cantina meets Lankhmar meets every gambling den, red light district, and opium house, The Den of Iniquity is knee deep in sin at the doorway and only gets deeper. While the Big Rock Candy Mountain might supply answers to vices, they are of a light hearted sort. The Den, on the other hand, is for those of a more...Caligulan frame of mind. The Master of the House lords over this den of dissolutes, many of whom are eternally bound and indebted to the mysterious Master. Whenever They make an appearance, they take on different but always attention grabbing form and make pronouncements in a voice that is somehow both brassy and sultry at once. Many are certain The Master is a demon cast from hell or maybe the missing Archfiend themselves. They say the backroom contains a one way escalator to Hell.
The Back Alley- Located just behind the Den of Iniquity, the Back Alley is the home of fences, black market surgeons, organ collectors, and other merchants of ill repute. Something like a black market bazaar, it is somehow infinitely massive but absolutely cramped at the same time, the shadows and people always feelings as though they are pressing into you. If you cannot find it anywhere else, you very well might find it here, but it will cost you very dearly.
The Mine of Information- When the dEr0 dug deep enough into the earth, their drills pierced into a fleshy wall. They say that the Astral Plane is the Plane of Thought, where the collective Noosphere of conscious thought is amassed, where raw belief travels to the far horizons of imagination and form into the Outer Planes. This is only partially true. Untold trillions of minds cannot work in concert together to do such a thing. Certain underground dwelling squid-folk can tell you its hard enough to do that with a few dozen. In the depths of each world lies the World-Mind. Tectonics are merely the shifting wrinkles on a massive brain, everywhere we know is really just outer derma and skull, hell is just a migraine. The World-Minds are singular Noosphere of a Crystal Sphere/World, a fragment of the Akashic Record, it is what translates a million million thoughts into something approaching cosmic sense. But the dEr0 reached it and began to mine. They pull out our dreams and tug at our thoughts, the leave paranoia and fragmented memories in their wake. Many a madness, many a night lost in a blink of an eye, many a sudden remembrance of ancient embarrassing deeds can be attributed to the dEr0's mining activities.
Way Back When- A place where all of the remembered past is the present, all at once. As soon as a moment has passed by, it becomes a part of Way Back When, as soon as a moment has passed from living memory it becomes part of the true Past. Worlds with elves and other long lived species tend to have an amazingly complex Way Back When, but worlds dominated by humans and short lived species tend to have a Way Back When composed of a hundred or less years. The elderly have an easier time reaching Way Back When, but a wizard with a funnel, a little electricity, and a verbose old timer might be able to get a reasonably sized party there.
Easy Street, The Road to Damascus, The Garden/Primrose/Straight & Narrow Paths- A single path that forks in many near roads we often find ourselves travelling the paths unknowingly. Easy Street is where many of us want to go, where our lives are made simple by luck and good fortune and every plan works out. However more often than not we find we are actually on the Garden Path, being led astray and towards the Primrose path, where the ease we feel is actually ignorance of the dangers around us. At the end of the Primrose Path sits the Den of Inequity and beyond that Hell itself. Just shortly before the end though, a small path veers away from it. It is Straight and Narrow, and up against a high cliff face (the back side of The Hard Place), but those who can walk this path without falling eventually finds the road widens and becomes a road. The Road to Damascus leads back to the beginning of one's life's journey but allows one to make a complete 180 degree turn, a radical change in a belief and give life another try with that belief set.
Jacob's Ladder- A literal ladder to heaven. Might also be an ancient abandoned Space Elevator. It takes many life times to reach the top under your own power, and you'll probably encounter some pretty annoyed angels along the way. Angels who've not earned their wings yet use this as their primary means to get between Heaven and Earth, luckily being immortal the long climb isn't nearly as troublesome for them. Various stopping points exist along the way, from various other heavens to ladder crossroads to other planets.
The Potter's Field- The metaphysical graveyard of everyone who has died unknown, unloved, and unremembered. Ceaseless miles of rolling hills dotted with dead trees and row after row of blank gravestones. Here and there great crumbling mausoleums exist for those who did great or terrible things in life but were regardless left unsung and unremembered. It connects to every Potter's Field in the multiverse and is commonly used by powerful ghoul nobles as a means of travel.
The Closet (Where the Skeletons are)- Less a closet and more an infinite hallway of closets, this place contains every dirty hidden secret in the multiverse. Doors line both sides of the hall, each titled with a name. Some doors are grouped in families so all of the Vanderdunks will be together and all of the Buckard will be in another. Within each closet is a skeleton (or skeletons) representing the secrets of the individual named. Some sit alone in their closets, others are stuffed tighter than a clown car. When the doors are opened the skeletons pour our en masse screaming their secrets and flailing about rather threateningly. They will only attack, however, if the individual they represent is present or they are attacked first. When the secrets are unleashed in the "real" world, the skeletons burst from their closet and run towards the "End" of the hallway.
School of Hard Knocks- Sister Mary Prudence runs the School of Hard Knocks with an adamant ruler, literally. Here students are subjected to Life Lessons, skills gained through experiencing misfortune and pain rather than any sort of book learning. Classes include: Poverty 101, A Study On Parental Neglect, How to Fail Forward, Taking a Punch, Crash Course on Grief and Loss, and Home Economics. Graduates are few and far between, but those who do get through it tend to have a steel resolve and very tough knuckles.
The Ivory Tower- This altitudinous edifice towers high above the School of Hard Knocks, which it looks down upon with all the paternal conceit of a father eagle perched upon its eyrie. Its facade is garbed in only the most expensive white marble, polished to blinding brightness, so that all may see and flock to this beacon of erudition amid benighted seas of ignorance. Within its sanctified and sanctimonious halls are the greatest of the learned, astute beyond measure after long ages spent plumbing the depths of Absolute Truth without the distractions of work, differing opinions, or "reality" to bog them down. While at times it feels like a thankless, Sisyphean, and nugatory task, the wardens of this tower are tireless in the mission to share their elucidation with the whole world- such is the reach of their armchairs. (Provided by Furtive Goblin)
Off the Map- There are the Cities of the Map and there are places Off The Map. These places cannot be found unless you are wholly lost, and once you find your way there they are difficult to escape. While some of these places are wilderness filled with all sorts of fantastical monsters (imagined by and accidentally created by cartographers) there are many that have been settled by generations of the lost. These are the Dark Towns where weird folkways are kept, strange guilds run the show, and nothing is as it may seem.
Around the Bush- There is this bush you see that is well...unpleasant. We don't really like to talk about it. There are folks there with cricket bats and sheers, they keep it pruned and they beat back anything that tries to escape from it. It is important that they keep beating around the bush, else unpleasant things might get through...
Over the Moon- Right immediately below Cloud 9, you can normally only reach Over the Moon in moments of intense joy and you can only stay for a breath's length. Cows, however, know the secret to being able to jump there and some daring individuals have attempted to ride their bovine steeds here and leap off, hoping for a short cut onto Jacob's Ladder.
The Right Place- There is a time and place for everything, and this is the right place for everything. You just have to wait for the right time. The Right Place is mobile and only has room for one person at a time, so you better be ready to fight someone for it.
A Port in a Storm- A port that appears only in the direst of storms to hopelessly lost crews, Port-in-a-Storm is a friendly bustling seaside town always ready to greet its seagoing visitors. The plentiful land that it calls home is called Fiddler's Green, made of rolling green hills and picturesque farmsteads. It seems to always have room for more while still feeling like a small community where you know everyone's names. The bay below Port in the Storm, however, is the home of Davey Jones' Locker, and many a ship approaching Port-in-a-Storm finds themselves wrecked upon the rocks and dragged below...
Happy Hour- The Eternal 5 O'Clock, Happy Hour is a travelling location where the alcohol always flows and it flows cheap. Dionysus and other deities of wine and revelry live in the Happy Hour and parade around the world to keep it moving, leading with a great entourage of satyrs and maenads and living behind them a swath of stale beer, vomit and hangovers.
Next Week- Can only be reached by being punched really really hard, more than half your HP in a single punch and it has to be a punch. It is a reliable albeit dangerous form of time travel, resulting more often than not in a corpse manifesting out of nowhere. You are flung a number of yards backwards equal to the damage you took and show up exactly one week later.
EXTRAS
Rose Colored Glasses- A pair of spectacles whose lens have been made of pink quartz. When anything is viewed through these glasses, they appear as their most positive ideal state. While wearing these glasses any effects that might cause fear or disgust from appearance alone is nullified for the wearer. However save effects that are related to beauty (such as a Nymph's appearance) are automatically failed.
Beer Goggles- A cursed pair of spectacles with brown lenses. Once worn, they cannot be taken off without either swearing off alcohol for a year and day, drinking a cup of Liquid Sobriety, or a Remove Curse effect. While wearing the Beer Goggles, all creatures you encounter are considered to have to have at least 18 Charisma and you reroll and take the worse result on all Charm saves. On the plus side, you are unable to pass out from alcohol ingestion.
Flying Pigs- Literally pigs with wings, Flying Pigs are no different that domestic swine in temperament or ability (other than the flying) however their existence causes minor side affects in reality. Minor miracles pop up wherever they go. A single Flying Pig unintentionally causes any random first level (or 1 MD) spell effect any time it is spotted, with the effects narrowing to fit a circumstance if the words "When pigs fly" is uttered shortly before it is encountered. For every extra Flying Pig, additional effects occur or singular effects of greater magnitude. A flock of 30-50 wild Flying Pigs is enough to cause Wish-like effects.
Lost Marbles- Small glass beads filled with memories, these baubles are naturally created by the human mind when it forgets something. They usually end up under couches or down drains or up on high shelves, places inconvenient and little explored. As one losing one's marbles one becomes more forgetful and less stable, often leading to permanent insanity. Some wizards know the formula for creating Marbles from scratch, but one must sacrifice one's own memories to make them. You can learn a lot about someone by looking through their lost marbles or one can restore those otherwise deemed irreparably mad by giving them back their marbles.
The Spring Chicken
HD 1
Appearance: A minuscule green feathered bantam with tightly coiled springs for legs
Wants: Chicken things, to not be eatenArmor: As Plate + Shield, its REALLY agile!
Move: 5x Normal
Morale: 2, 12 if cornered
Damage: Peck 1 , Claw 1d6
Spring Cannon- If the Spring Chicken spends a round coiling up, it may unleash at extreme force. It may move 20x its normal speed in a single direction. Any targets in its way must Save vs. Dex or be impaled 4d6 damage. A target with Chainmail or better armor takes damage less their armor bonus. A shield may be sacrificed to negate the attack.
What happens when a chicken egg is incubated by a grasshopper, the Spring Chicken is a rare sight bounding at high speeds across the plains. It has few natural predators due to its high speed and tendency to torpedo through wolves, though the occasional peregrine falcon is lucky. The Spring Chicken is, however, highly sought after as even the least experienced alchemist can distill its blood into a single dose of Liquid Youth. An experienced chef, however, can cook this poussin into a meal that completely halts the consumer's aging process, albeit doesn't extend their total lifespan.
I'm not totally sure what it would be like to run a campaign in this place, but you've got a great variety of sublocations there!
ReplyDeleteIts kinda like Pilgram's Progress if John Bunyan completely lost track of what he was doing about five pages in.
DeleteThat's absolutely the feel I got! I mean, the straight and narrow path is pretty much a copy-paste (not that I fault you, you gotta have the classics)
DeleteThese are great - thank you. I especially like the way Jacob's Ladder is imagined here.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I've always been a fan of infinite roadways ala the Infinite Staircase and The Great Road of Planescape. Jacob's Ladder is just another weird and brutal method of getting around the multiverse haha.
DeleteIf this was a really long working elevator, can you imagine the level of torture that its elevator jingle music could have been? But now it is just the longest possible staircase marathon location.
Delete