This is just a list of concepts I have come up with that explain some of the ways Vishteer functions.

 

 

The gods are not "real" beings. They are usually powerful outerplanar beings who for their own personal reasons have chosen to "play" with humanoids and other intelligent species. They are well aware that the power they gain from the belief of their followers is theirs only so long as their followers believe in them. They have the ability to pull power from their followers and use it to create miracles and divine magic. When a god has no followers he or she cannot continue to draw on this power. They fade back into a more "normal" existence. Saints and other semi-divine beings are often outerplanar incarnations of souls who were once mortal beings.

 

It is possible the Gods were once real. Some claim that the Gods were slain at the beginning of the Interregnum. This time period of no magic was when the Gods were lost, and gradually they found their way back to life, being gods who cannot truly be slain. In my concept of how the world works, the Gods were never really Gods. They were simply very powerful beings. When something drove them off/killed them/distracted them, the interregnum occurred. Eventually the "gods" returned, or other beings found Vishteer and discovered the role the "gods" had played. They inserted themselves into the voids the gods had left, thus taking their places and restoring to their worshippers the power that the original gods had offered; in return, they gained the ability to feed on the power of their worshippers.

 

Followers of gods are not generally aware that their gods are not real. Most folk believe wholeheartedly in the actual physical existence of their gods, and thus many stories and legends reflect their belief. Creatures such as demons and angels, which exist to serve the gods may be aware of the physical nature of their higher powers, and either this doesn't matter to them or they cynically use the name of the one they serve despite this fact. Good beings tend to believe that the service of the idea of the "god" is what is important, not the true form of the being served.

 

"The beings who are commonly worshipped by most humanoids on Miraboria and Mistland as "gods" are a group of traveling outsiders (call them Adventurers) who stumbled onto a pocket plane that had not been formed as yet. They awakened it with their careless presence, and then found themselves trapped there. They spent many bored centuries playing gods as they learned to create and destroy, shape and unshape and reshape. Eventually they grew bored of their sandbox, and left it to mature. Thus was born our world. We call it Vishteer. What the "gods" call it is unclear. Whether they are still here is debatable. Perhaps they watch and give us their power in return for our worship, or perhaps our divine abilities are a mere after-effect of their earlier play. We do not know. Even the most powerful divinatory spells do not reveal such answers. And those who die and return to our world, come back with either no memory, or so radically altered that we do not trust the answers they give."

 

 

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 The universe is a finite place. It has a closed number of planes of existence. All living beings within the universe are "souls"; whether insects or demons or outsiders or humanoids, each living thing bears a "soul-spark". Most ordinary creatures don't really understand that when they die, that soul-spark is loosed from their now unliving body and goes elsewhere (to the shadowfell?). Depending on the "balance" of the soul, it may be reincarnated as another being of the same type, or it may shift and become the soul of another type creature. Evil sparks will naturally gravitate to becoming more evil-natured creatures, and good sparks move towards the celestial side, etc... Typically the spark carries no memories or personality with it, merely an impulse to good, evil, law or chaos. Even creatures which spontaneously come into existence via abiogenesis have souls; they are simply pulled from somewhere else when the generates. In fact, it may be the availability of such souls in the form of newly dead beings that allows abiogenesis to occur at any given time. In other words, souls move to the shadowfell when their material body dies. They dwell there, memory- and form-less until they are needed elsewhere. Sometimes elsewhere is the prime, sometimes another plane.

 

I really like the new 4e draft of the planes: especially the feywild and shadowfell. I'm hereby stating that the places in my site where I refer to elves and the "ethereal" really are references to the feywild. Elves (no eladrin here) live on the feywild and visit the prime as they feel the need. Some elves have developed the ability to move freely of their own will, but others must use gates such as are found in elf-hills or similar places.

 

Both the feywild and the shadowfell can intrude into the prime, where the separating barriers wear thin. Magic is usually the cause of this thinning. Also locations where extremely powerful emotional events occured can be thin spots. Therefore places of ritual, battlefields, places where tragedies occurred, etc... all may allow bleeding over. Sometimes it is a clear, specific and obvious bleed-over, but other times it may take a very observant person to realize that the events occurring in a location may be affected by bleedover.

 

 

 

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Abiogenesis; the spontaneous generation of life from "nothing".  In the magazine Kobold Quarterly an article by Derek Kagemann ("Dragons without Belly Buttons; Spontaneous Generation in Fantasy Campaigns" KQ Vol 4, spring 2008, p 43) caught my eye. In it he discusses abiogenesis as a method of "monster generation".

 

 

I have decided that in my campaign world, abiogenesis is very much possible. Simple to complex, there is a chance that any non-intelligent life form could generate spontaneously if conditions were correct.

Aberrations are the most common biogenerators, with oozes, vermin and animals being each more rare. Plants, magical beasts, and undead are very uncommon spontaneous generators, but it does occur. Intelligent forms of life almost never spontaneously generate (but see dragons for a reputed exception).

 

Abiogenetic Recipes

 

 

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There are five types of true dragons. When they are born, dragons are all nearly identical. Their color develops over the first few years of their lives, becoming generally apparent by the time they are about five years of age. The five colors of dragons are red-gold, black-bronze, green-copper, white-silver and blue-steel. Dragons tend to prefer to live in an environment that suits their color, but obviously since a red dragon could birth a white offspring, it will not always hold true. As a dragon matures and leaves the birth-lair, it will tend to migrate to an environment it finds most comfortable and suitable.

 

Some scholars insist that a dragon inherits his color from his parents. If his parents are of mixed color, there is a 50/50 random chance of each color occuring in each offspring. A dragon with grandparents of multiple colors has an even chance of inheriting any given color. Thus a dragon offspring with four separately colored grandparents has a 25% chance of inheriting any given color. Other scholars insist that dragons, unlike all other intelligent lifeforms, are abiogenetic. They do not inherit anything from their parents, as they have none. Each dragon egg forms spontaneously within the hoard of its parent(s), and it depends much on what the hoard contains as to what color and nature the dragon will be imbued with. No dragon has ever been known to discuss this with a non-dragon.

 

A dragon's true nature is visible in his color. A "good" dragon will predominate with metallic tones and an "evil" dragon will develop pure nonmetallic color. True dragons are the only creatures for whom this trait is true.

 

A dragon's color also reflects his breath weapon and the climate/terrain in which he prefers to dwell:

 

color	breath	terrain	climate
red-gold	fire coner	mountains and hills	temperate and cold
black-bronze	acid line	swamps, marshes and lakes	warm and temperate
green-copper	chlorine gas cone	forests, plains and hills	any
white-silver	cold cone	any, mountains	cold and temperate
blue-steel	electrical line	deserts, plains, wastes	any

Dragons can change their natures as they age - their hide color will gradually change if they do so. A dragon with a substantially neutral outlook will have a pearly sheen to his hide, which can fade or intensify even as his moods shift.

Dragons consider a metallic hide a valued status symbol and many a neutral dragon has performed acts of "altruism" to counteract otherwise "evil" acts to keep his "sheen". Truly good dragons have learned that a metallic hide is merely an outward reflection of inward spiritual purity and are not inclined to (very much) pride on the matter.

 

Dragon statistics tend to be more like the pure non-metallic dragons than their metallic counterparts, unless I decide otherwise...

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disease is created not by tiny living viruses or bacteria, but by literal "miasmas" or bad air, and by evil wishes or by evil spirits. Curses, enchantments and other magic also create disease. Only magic, whether divine or arcane, can cure disease if a person's own constitution cannot fight off the infection. Lycanthropy is an example of such a magical disease. Miasmas can be spontaneusly generated by the anger, hate, grief or other powerful negative emotions of a group of people (rarely one person of very great willpower) dwelling over time in an area. This is why areas of poverty are often filled with disease as well - those living there generate it with their very souls.

 

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technology on the level of gunpowder and steam engines simply does not function. No high tech exists. Magic completely replaces and fills this role in my world. If you want a steam engine, it will be powered by an elemental or by raw magical power. Simple mechanical devices such as water wheels, printing presses and similar devices work, but anything more complex is not possible. This may be arbitrary, but the DM's call always wins.

 

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South of Greenvale, between that kingdom and Laigladen, I would like to insert another nation. The reasons for this are multifold -

1) to provide a more closely positioned political "enemy" for Greenvale - so they have someone to feud with

2) to provide an economic trade partner for Greenvale - so they have someone to trade with

3) to provide a slightly different political/social atmosphere - so they have someone to admire/look down on

4) I'm sure there are other reasons that will come up!

 

Greenvale is a pretty stable, self-satisfied place. It has grown virtually unchallenged from a small town that survived the 2nd Empire's collapse into a self-sufficient kingdom of many counties. It is flanked by a few independent Baronies which hve never been strong enough to challenge it. It has a feeling of medieval feudalism in the sense that the folks in power are the protectors who fend off evil monsters and humanoid invaders while the farmers and peasants provide the food and other resources needed to make that possible.

 

But they are surrounded by wild forests and high hills that shelter all sorts of aggressive evils. Greenvale may be strong, but the folk know they must remain vigilant and ready to apply force to survive. They're essentially defense-minded but understand instinctively that the best defense is a good offense.

 

The new kingdom/nation/culture I want to create needs to have a different feel, but I'm not sure what. I already have a "remains of empire" nation that feels it is the true ruler of all (not that anyone else thinks so...) and a couple of "young explorer" lands. I have a "reclusive fae realm" in Laigladen and a "hidden dwarf city" in Koruzd. My elvish lands are also fairly "fae" in that elves have retreated to a sort of ethereal-like plane where they hide from the evils of the material world (not that it really works). I'm thinking that perhaps this new nation will be fairly small, be a mix of humans and another race (could be a standard one, or a new race, possibly anthropomorphic like the cat-folk), but will have some kind of power base that challenges or could challenge Greenvale. Perhaps they should be an innately more magical race than humans, but not in the way of elves and fae, nor in the magitech sense.

 

Note that there's no reason this nation could not be a substantially "deepearth" connected realm. I've always wanted one!

 

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Airships:

To have or not to have:

Shalani controlled; one source of liftgas (dwarves?); possibly requires particular spell or such to control; limited number; shalani-dwarf bond of friendship; dwarven paranoia.

All militaries want; hidden landing bases; anti-scrying technology?;

Dragons hate them, destroy on sight; storms particularly dangerous over the ocean;

Rapid transit; expensive and rigidly controlled;

 

Some teleportation devices exist, but they're rare and ancient, from a previous empire, which also had flying ships, castles and cities!

So there is "grounds" for adding airships, but they'd be ancient magitech. The group that would likely control them are the Shalani - a people who once ruled a magical kingdom, but had it destroyed because of their hubris - which left them roving, homeless wanderers. Having them be the only keepers of the secret of flight somehow seems appropriate.

The ships would be powered by something like a magical fuel or gas. The ships themselves would not be lighter than air, but their fuel source could easily be. I'm thinking that the fuel only works when properly "charged" in some way, which only the Shalani know how to do.

Likely, the fuel comes from the dwarves - a very reclusive and slightly paranoid people who rely on the Shalani as their trade outlet to the rest of the world.

The Shalani would thus do their best to keep their airships close under their own control, but even if they got taken by others, the magic (fuel source) would soon expire, leaving the ships worthless. It would be hard for someone to apply leverage to both the shalani to acquire a ship, and the dwarves to get access to fuel.

The ships would be fast, but unable to carry a great deal, and fragile. Dragons would, as many people mentioned, greatly dislike them and try to destroy them, making their use somewhat problematic. The Shalani can build more, but the process is slow and expensive. They might lease one or two out to a given nation, but not often and not for warlike purposes (war does disrupt trade!).

Kingdoms are spread fairly wide apart IMC (mostly because they've grown up around isolated surivors of the Empire-destroying war 400 years earlier), so travel has always been difficult. I don't want to do away with that, but to add one way to minimize the difficulty if all cards are played properly.