The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Worldbuilding

In that general theme of Very Tired of School, I'm going to pretty much ramble about the D&D world I'm working on, which is so far unnamed. This is going to be pretty disjointed, but I need to scribble, it might be interesting to the gamers, and parts of it I think are way cool. If you see a bit you especially like, let me know.

- Unsure on cosmology. Leaning towards very living gods/immortal god-kings type of deal. This might change depending on my whims, but I kind of like the idea that if you were very very powerful, you could become a god, or kill one. Change of pace. Then again, I might change.

- Four of these thought out so far:

Sanagos: Very much in the mold of Thingal/Maldoth. Successful general in ancient lands, leads people off to found new city when entire civilization is destroyed by demons. Has multiple aspects (Watcher/Ruler/Traveller/Healer). Most developed thus far.

Ssithilos: Snake/Yuan-ti/Reptile god. Probable god-king in Empire of Great Ssithilos.

Unnamed Aasimar God: Wandering healer Ilmater/Christ type figure. Aasimar as a race will wander around the world kind of like paladins. Country-less, but may have knight orders or something. They don't much appear in Sanagos or Great Ssithilos, so not worrying about it.

Unnamed Lizardfolk God: Some sort of warrior hero for the lizardfolk fighting the yuan-ti to rally around. Seriously need a way to come up with good lizardfolk/yuan-ti names if I'm going to build an empire around this.

- A few race ideas:

Humans: Probable dominant race of world, major race in Sanagos and by implication, the ancient Kitilumian civilization, too.

Peretoi: Custom race, designed to be very Zulu/plains hunter type. Shamanistic religion, based on either druids or OA-style shamans.

Aischroi: I wonder how bad raiding Perseus Project for Greek terms made these two sound. Afraid to ask Sarah. Custom race, actually two, feral and mental (need better name there). Mentals run tribes of ferals. Corrupted by the evil magic in Kitilumia. Roam the ruined cities, minions of the demon lords, etc, etc.

Yuan-ti: Major race in Empire of Great Ssithilos. Will probably want to make a heavily modified custom race, keeping the flavor, but not the +7 ECL of purebloods, because let's be serious, here.

Lizardfolk: Other major race in Great Ssithilos. Like the yuan-ti, will want to tone them down a touch, because they're +3 ECL as it is, and a pretty beefy +3 at that.

Saurials: Could be cool to have in the marshlands at the mouth of the river that runs through Kitilumia. Again, ECL issues. Notice a trend?

Firenewts: I may be overstressing reptilian races here. Maybe. They're badass. These could be cool to have living in the volcanic mountain range in the middle of Great Ssithilos. Mine slaves of the yuan-ti or something.

Who the hell knows about races in the north, but definitely want to stay away from the usual dwarves and elves and halflings and shit. Also orcs. Orcs are so done. Maybe gnolls. Gnolls are cool. Dunno.

- Countries:

Kitilumia: Ancient human civ. Based on Sumerians, many city-states (12) along river. Got in a huge war, summoned demons, killed themselves. Sanagos and survivors got away. Now a source of buff enemies and shiny treasure. We all love shiny treasure.

Sanagos: Isolated city-state in the mountains. Theocracy ruled by church of Sanagos, headed by The Chosen of Sanagos (sort of Dalai Lama type figure, chosen at birth, etc), with the idea that Sanagos himself died and went up to the heavens to protect us from the demons. Old (Sanagos' captains) + Merchant nobility, Warrior class, large peasant class. Gets lots of its wealth from major gem and ore mines near the city.

Due to the whole "wizards summon demons" thing, arcane magic is outlawed. Sorcs gain their power from demons, not dragons, and wizards are driven underground, though there are a few... Clerical magic is the main source of power.

The Empire of Great Ssithilos: Vast jungle/swamp empire taking up the whole southern part of the continent. Either have Ssithilos himself running the show as god-king, or a bunch of satraps running things. Call these satraps the Twelve Hooded Lords, because that's a cool name, and they can have cobra hoods and be super cool. If we go that way, we can have the Twelve do a lot of backstabbing and political infighting. A big palace with a slumbering Ssithilos as token god-emperor would be neat too.

Entire economy is set up around big Old South-style riverine plantations growing spices and such. Maybe some boar farms or something, since all these reptiles are carnivores. Super evil would be human farms, but that's too super evil, since the economy runs on trading super expensive spices to everyone else and raking in tons of cash. These plantations run on lizardfolk slaves, who are none too happy about the whole thing.

Whole thing is sort of a cross between the Aztecs and Imperial China (good chance to introduce OA stuff?), with a dash of Egypt (god-king) and Persia (satraps). Big, unwieldy, insular sort of place, which keeps to itself but fights enclaves of escaped lizardfolk because the lizardfolk belong to THEM, dammit. Maybe some kind of Confucian type social system to help keep everyone in line.

All these jungles and swamps would be a fantastic time to introduce some dinosaurs of the smaller variety. Dragon 318 has many of these. Compys and such roaming the jungles, pteranadons in the mountains, big parasaurs being hunted by the lizardfolk in the swamps. Various raptor types roaming the Peretoi plains. Could be cool.

The yuan-ti will probably be heavy-duty enchanters and transmuters, wizard favored class sort of deal. They have created a ton of races, after all, and the enchantment helps to keep the lizardfolk in line, and we want one of the dynamics of Ssithilos to be a huge escaped lizardfolk population, which lives in little bands in the swamps.

Said lizardfolk could be pretty stock, running around in little warchief-led tribes, pack hunting parasaurs and the like, dodging the occasional yuan-ti army that marches into the swamp and gets owned. They'd make good druids, too, which would help them against the otherwise overwhelming Great Ssithilos troops. May be a good idea to give them a will save negative, but no negative wisdom. They'll also have an organized swamp country, or at least semi-organized, which will hold wars with Great Ssithilos every so often.

There are some islands in the northeast that would be a good spot for some kind of sea-faring magocracy that's a bit more good-aligned. Something like Halruua. Will need to think more on this. Could make them artificers, too. Clockwork stuff everywhere. Cliche, but cool.

West of Kitilumia in the Middle Sea is a Greece-like penninsula we're calling the Seven Free Cities. Probably human, Italian mercantile/mercenary city-state sort of a deal. They trade (perilously) with Sanagos, and are the middlemen selling stuff from Great Sanagos to the world. Bands of mercenaries probably get hired out to go fight in Great Ssithilos. They're all bloody rich. They'll probably be in opposition to whatever the kingdom is north of them.

Lots of room for kingdoms in the North, but no good ideas on what to put up there. Vast armies of kobolds or something. Kenku would be an awesome race that nobody uses, and add some avian flavor to the thing, without being all generic and using aaracockra.

As if Sanagos and Great Ssithilos aren't enough.

- Unsure as to technology level. But let's take a stab (heh):

We want to keep horses, etc out of Sanagos and Great Ssithilos. Do they ride? Probably not. Will need to work out what this means for paladins, exactly. PHB II-style class ability substitution probably.

Sanagos: Ancient Greek, but probably modeled more on the heroic age than the hoplites, since you're fighting DEMONS, after all. Can see lots of longswords and longbows, that sort of thing. OTOH, fighting the Peretoi, you'd want pikes. Kitilumia was probably great pike and sling country, being so flat. One Dragon or another has good pike rules. Breastplates are probably the best armor they've got.

Aischroi: Scrounging ancient Kitil weapons for the win. Ferals have claws, mentals have spells. Ancient Kitil probably rocked the breastplate.

Peretoi: Spear users. What would be awesome here is some kind of exotic weapon, let's call it a broadspear, which has a big sword-blade style head, is throwable, and does like a d8 damage instead of a d6, and which you can one-hand and throw with the exotic WP. OTOH, they'd have crap archers and such. Armor selection sucks. Big shields, leather and hide armor, very little metal.

Great Ssithilos: Good question. If we're modeling them on the Aztecs or China, armor is probably super light, for the simple reason that it's enormously hot and wet. You'd have your conscripts in padded or leather, and you probably only get as heavy as chain shirts or chainmail. Some of the bamboo-type OA armors would also be cool. Your lizardfolk of course wear dino hide armor, because if you're a lizardfolk barbarian war chief and you've got a raptor head as a helmet, you'll win all day. Favored weaponry is iffy. The katana/wakizashi combo could be cool, but doesn't really fit. Falchions WOULD fit, however, and would be cool. There are a few non-ridiculous OA weapons that could be good, too. Archers are probably going to suck, but blowguns and other short-ranged weapons are always fun.

Some sort of dinos-with-howdahs thing would be frigging awesome as hell if workable. Elite units of stegosaur archers or something.

Lizardfolk: As mentioned, dino hide all day long. Falchions, axes and the like. You don't go hunting dinos with blowguns, so the lizardfolk might use bows and suchlike.

Crossbows are probably Sir Not Appearing In This Setting.

Seven Free Cities: I can see these guys being a lot more traditional. Not good horse country, so not so much on the plate-armored heavy cavalry, but banded mail is a possibility. There are a couple ways to run weaponry. These guys would be a good candidate for Roman style cohorts, and the gladius/pilum combo would work pretty well both in the hilly home country, and in Great Ssithilos where all the mercs go. On the other hand, pikes and crossbows could be neat. But maybe that's best left for the Unnamed Northern Kingdom.

- Classes:

Probably stick fairly close to the PHB norm, here, with relatively tight control on what's allowed or not.

Bards are somewhat problematic, as they don't really fit into Sanagos. OTOH, you could have a tradition of magic-wielding court bards in Great Ssithilos.

Druids and rangers are probably restricted to lizardfolk, at least in a cultural sense. Some kind of non-spellcasting ranger class would then be useful for everyone else.

Clerics could be made back into semi-2e specialty priests fairly easily, by replacing turn undead with different granted powers. Probably also mess with weapon and armor restrictions. OTOH, armor is less of a problem.

Paladins will of course need modifying to get rid of the mount. This is probably ok. Nobody uses the things anyway.

Sorcerers rely on demons for power, instead of draconic blood, as it's probable there won't be any dragons in the world. This leads to several interesting PrC ideas, but makes them pretty rare outside of Sanagos and Kitilumia, which isn't a bad thing.

Wizards are probably the dominant form of magic user everywhere else in the world. It might be interesting if Great Ssithilos had no clerics (goes well with the "Ssithilos is sleeping and can't grant spells" idea) and only wizards, but you would then need to create some sort of alchemical healing salve in an Iron Kingdoms-like manner. All those spices and such, you understand. Probably very expensive outside of Great Ssithilos, and expensive enough even inside. Larloch's Minor Drain and Vampiric Touch are probably quite popular.

Would be a very strange dichotomy here between Ssithilos and Sanagos. Life is pretty expensive in Sanagos, but there's lots of clerics, so medical care (and life expectancy) is really good. In Great Ssithilos, healing is hard to come by, so life expectancy is lower. On the other hand, you've got all kinds of slaves and conscripts and things. And hey, who cares if you lose a lizard or five? They're JUST lizards.

The Seven Free Cities are probably beneficiaries of the Aasimar Medical Service, though they might get some sort of mythic hero god in any case. Or maybe not. Maybe they're a total polyglot of this and that. Few aasimar guys, some folks what went to Sanagos and brought back that faith, some mercenaries who brought back the faith of Great Ssithilos. Add in some northern stuff as we like it.

I guess you could have monks in Great Ssithilos, but I'll probably outlaw them for the usual reasons. Also because having a monk in Sanagos would be retarded. I can just see it...

Sanagosi Monk: A demon! Hi-ya! *hand bounces off demon*

Demon: HA. HA. HA. FOOLISH MORTAL. I CATCH YOU ON FIRE. BURN.

Sanagosi Monk: *becomes tasty demon snack*

Yeah.

...if you have a god who's set up as a god-king, but is sleeping and grants no spells, what do the priests of the god, and there must be priests because there's a huge state religion, class as? Clerics would be dumb. Druids are nonsensical. OTOH, if you pitch wizards and their spellbooks as reading the divine writings of the god...

Not that this needs to be true, but you know.

I think I'm done now. Did anybody read all this?

Posted by Dwip at November 18, 2007 9:21 PM