Looks like my next campaign will not take place in Ouroboros. Sad, but I'll still continue to upload content for it, so not very sad for you guys.
Turns out 2 years of a renaissance setting for our Inquisition campaign (which we finished!) has burned the players on that period.
So Homeric Greece is going to space, inspired by stuff like this and the Astral Sea from this and Starry Night from this and just oh my god all of this and maybe even Dan Simmons Ilium (great concept, absolutely creepy writing about women).
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| The rage of Achilles |
Basic concept: The King of Space has stolen key locations from Homer's epic and teleported them through time and space to the Diaspora, a quarantined expanse of the Astral Sea home to the many peoples he has displaced in his reign of terror. So the Achaeans cohabit these celestial spheres with sentient oozes and cute robots and the Purrrsian Empire who are just a bunch of cats. And others. MANY others.
While the King of Space hides behind his Perimeter in his black hole-orbiting Dyson palace, the Diaspora is falling to chaos and ruin. The Purrrsians are expanding, the Imperial Dragons indolently take whole worlds as fiefs, and the Achaean newcomers just don't know how to work a complex space situation like this...
Today I'll give you a brief look into the workings of the Astral Sea and how you travel it, the key (playable) races in the Diaspora, and just who exactly the King of Space is.
The Astral Sea
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| Not quite this |
Straight from the imagination of the inimitable Arnold K (shoutout), the Astral Sea is more a spiderweb or 3D sculpture than a plane.
That spiderweb is made not of silk but flux, an underlying strata of the universe or the debris from a quantum explosion or just straight MAGIC...no one's sure. But no one (except the moravx) has tried to figure it out. Whatever the reason, gravity is local to flux streams, meaning you can sail straight toward a pillar of the stuff then glide straight up it without much naval jiu-jitsu.
And oh, you can sail.
The Achaeans put their triremes out on the flux and they work great. There's even wind to catch the sails, because the light and heat (and magic) of the flux streams has overtime accreted into atmosphere. Weather even. It's pretty balmy honestly, turns out space is nice. Just like home to the Achaeans, even if the light comes from underneath and above the clouds is void.
Void. THAT'S space the way we think of it. Pockets of airless frozen black between the spiderweb of flux. No one (except the moravx) can sail there, and only the voidborn can live there. They're pretty safe from flux sharks (which is a term for anything that eats the voidborn and sticks to the flux), and only come down to eat the flux. Too bad for the void krakens though, real tragedy.
Other ships: Meer scoops, little racing ships with flux-powered engines that dip into those streams of rainbow light to gain speed, though they still aren't void-worthy. Imperial divers, giant passenger liners (occasionally carrying a dragon and its army) that swim inside flux streams in order to stay safe from astral pirates. And of course Moravx ships, which are like real spaceships manned by those cute little robots, occasionally they ARE those cute robots, and they cut right through void like no one's business (they can cut through flux too, but that usually severs the stream).
Astral Ecology
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| One of many many kinds of sharks |
Real quick:
He brought the Achaeans across time, space, and multiple realities to the Diaspora.
Think of flux like sunlight: it's the very bottom rung of the food chain. It exists, and things eat it, and other things hunt the things that eat it.
The flux-eaters are called voidborn, or if you're racist, space devils, moth men. They're not actually moths. But they do bear a resemblance. They live in the void most of the time, descending like fishing birds to drink the light of the flux stream.
There are two broad BROAD classifications of the many incomprehensible celestial beings that eat the voidborn, who have the misfortune of being everyone's favorite food source. There are sharks, and there are krakens.
Sharks are any predator that sticks to the flux and the atmosphere it generates. They might chase the voidborn a little ways up into the icy black, but they generally just can't survive up there.
Krakens are a different story. Krakens live in the void, and they move through it as well as if not WAYYYY better than the voidborn themselves. Thankfully, they can't follow the voidborn down to the flux for feeding, but still.
The King of Space: What is Known
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| A mere servant of His Imperial Majesty |
He lives on the forbidden planet Aom, very close to the black hole inside his Dyson sphere palace.
His will maintains the Perimeter, that uncrossable boundary between him and the Diaspora.
And he has dragons.
Dragons
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| Not what you expected? |
No one knows what, precisely, the relationship of the dragons to the King of Space is.
They look human (though a dragon will always mark themselves with a mask), move like humans, and die like humans.
So why do they always rant about foolish mammals in their pocket dimension salons?
Dragons APPEAR to be humans infused with a good deal of quantum- and nano-technology. They can do a lot with this, but the things they choose to do are almost always horrid. Pyrolyzing whole cities with smokeless, heatless fire. Opening portals into the void and cackling as the people are sucked away to die a frozen death. Or just plain old Scanners-style exploding your head with a thought.
Their favorite thing to do is teleport. They do this instantaneously, at will, and with the sound of a bag of chips opening.
There is a possibility that there is just one dragon, or only a very small handful, and that they are like quantum ogres. If you're not familiar, the idea is that they exist in a semi-state in many locations, and certain triggers (or their own will, for they are powerful) collapses their wave function into one of those many locations for a time before they return to this Schrodinger's cat existence (probably mixing my quantum metaphors, whatever).
Playable Races
Though the Diaspora contains countless multitudes of sentient peoples, these are the big six.
Achaeans
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| "Toy Soldiers" |
STR+2, DEX-1
Your people are vital and resilient. Whenever you heal from any source, heal for double.
Pan
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| "Horns" |
Reproduce through their ability to impregnate any mammal (thanks Arnold).
CON+2, INT-1
You are hard as fuck to kill. When you drop to 0 HP, check CON to stay at 1 HP.
When you charge, you can use your horns as a d6 damage natural weapon.
Gestalt
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| "Skelly-jellies" |
They don't reproduce, no one knows where these guys come from.
CHA+2, WIS-1
You are amorphous, and can squeeze through any space more than an inch wide.
You can fuse with other Gestalt, forming a new character that has the best of both your stats.
Meer
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| "Purrrsians" |
DEX+2, CON-1
When you encounter something you'd like to track, check WIS and you always know it's bearing.
You can use your claws (d4) and fangs (d3) as natural weapons.
Moravx
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| "Drones" |
INT+2, CHA-1
You share a (glitchy) pan-Moravx memory archive. You have a 1/6 chance to know any random piece of lore.
You can integrate items into yourself, and interface with most machines and operating systems.
Voidborn
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| "Space Devils" |
Reproduce by laying clutches of eggs in lunar caverns.
WIS+2, STR-1
You can survive indefinitely in the vacuum of space, and fly in both gravity and zero-g.
You feed off the flux of the Astral Sea, not air food or water.
In Conclusion
What do you guys think? Is this interesting? I have a couple weeks to fine-tune before my players are in town to start the game.
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