/tg/ - Traditional Games

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/tg/ - Traditional Games

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Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:06 No.2963651

Listen child... forget what your elders have told you. This realm does not sit on the back of some overgrown turtle. It is not the body of an ancient titan struck dead by his rebellious youth. There is no demigod cursed with the responsibility of supporting the heavens on his mighty back and there is no sacred chariot pulling our sun through the sky. The land we walk on, our earth, and the orb of flame that traverses the heavens and disappears below us – they are all simply a construct of elemental balance within the ever-spanning Border-Mists. Your first reaction may be to scoff at my ravings, and I cannot blame you if you would prefer the safe comforts of your childhood tales, but you have not seen all the edges of the world at once as I have. You have not stood upon the deck of a gateship, a thousand leagues in the sky, and seen the waters of our great oceans slowly pour from the borders into the Crushing Depth.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:07 No.2963655

>>2963651
I will not pretend to understand this all fully. Not even the Vamshian scholar, who I was blessed enough to converse with during my brief stay upon that miraculous vessel, knew exactly how such a balanced scale of elements forms. All I can do is attempt to repeat his words to the best of my ability, words he learned from the ancient scriptures of his world. Those scriptures, the Vamshian said, came from the time of the Settlers themselves, but don’t worry yourself about the tale of the Settlers yet, child… I will come to speak of that later. First, one must understand where our home, a "flatworld" as it was called by the scholar. Past the borders of our vision, or at least from what we can see from this rock of a realm, the Border-Mists stretch on into eternity. We exist in a portion of the Mists where it is possible to survive. Below us, the Border-Mists grow so dense that their milky fog-like matter is compressed to a material more compact than the mightiest of steel. The Vamshian explained that this great mass below us is what is responsible for pinning us against the ground below us, preventing us from floating off of our world – I do not understand how, but I am thankful for it, for up above the Border-Mists can grow so thin that there is barely anything existing at all, not even air. We hang here between the Crushing Depth and the Vaulting Void, aloft within the Primal Balance.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:12 No.2963678

>>2963655
The Balance… how else did our world come to float within the Border-Mists without plummeting into the Depth, child? Before I can explain it, first one must know the four elements. On our world, the mages teach them as Earth and Air, Water and Fire. I also remember hearing a gremlin call them the Solid, the Liquid, the Gas, and the Plasma… though the gremlins of the gateship babbled the tongues of alchemy so I tended to pay their confounding lingo little heed. Whatever words you prefer, within our realm thrive many existences contained by our particular gap within the Border-Mists called “planes”. There is a plane of the Ethereal – where ghosts meander before wandering into the afterlife, a plane of the Astral – where mind can walk free from body, a plane of Shadow – a dark twisted mockery of our own world that shifts directions at a whim, and four other planes flush with each of the elements. The Material (as our plane is called), the Ethereal, the Astral, and the Shadow are all bound by the Mists as it overlaps their shared borders, while the elemental planes are known to exist in a boundless continuum all of their own.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:13 No.2963686

>>2963678
Nothing would subsist on the Material world, though, if at one point the boundary between it and the elemental planes were not breached. How this breach occurred, why it occurred… it is all speculation, but if you were to imagine this hole as the lip of a bottle and the elemental planes as the contents of the bottle, then you can see our world as pouring out of the elemental container into the Material realm. This is why the earth does not plummet down into the Crushing Depth… somewhere within it, this ground we stand upon is connected to the sturdy continuum of the elemental plane of Earth. Whatever Fire escaped into the Material world now forms our sun, and it perpetually rolls around our skies, tethered to the breach into the elemental plane of flames. Air forms a layer around the Earth that protects it from the direct caress of Fire’s distant wrath, while Water slowly trickles from between the gaps of Earth to refill our oceans as they steadily flow from our flatworld’s edges down into the Depth. Thus exists the Primal Balance, our static, secure being.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:15 No.2963696

>>2963686
The reason for why realms such as ours… and yes, there exists a multitude of them… are called flatworlds is that typically the whole of our solid rock-structure takes a flat, dish-like shape a several thousand leagues across, though in my travels upon the scholar’s gateship I saw worlds shaped as single large mountains, as flat crescents, or even as stranger forms. Appearing more numerously than flatworlds are a seemingly endless number of “crossroads”. Crossroads seem to be miniaturized flatworlds all of their own, but where a flatworld can take months to traverse, the girth of a crossroad can take from a couple minutes up to a few hours to cross. Indeed, some crossroads appear as nothing more than a few oversized boulders floating in midair. These occurrences are so small they haven’t a sun of their own – in a crossroad there is only a trace of Fire that simply envelops the realm’s Air in a thin veil, making for a perpetual twilight. Quite contrary, in the case of a flatworld, the size of its Fire tends to be much, much larger than the world itself, although the Fire-sun is held at an unimaginably great distance from the Earth, Water, and Air and appears a mere glowing coin in the sky from our remote perspectives. Day takes hold when the Fire passes overhead, and during night it rolls below along the way of its perpetual circle. What causes this endless cycle I do not know, and the Vamshian scholar admitted an absence of knowledge on his own part as well.

>>	Anonymous 11/08/08(Sat)22:15 No.2963700 >>2963651 That was a damn good song.

>>	Anonymous 11/08/08(Sat)22:16 No.2963707 sage for shitty music group.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:17 No.2963709

>>2963696
Now, child, it may cross your mind “how does one travel between flatworlds or crossroads?”. Certainly by no means that I know exists in our Realm. Our wizards may planeshift between the planes within our realm, and they may teleport from one side of our flatworld to the other, but to pierce the veil of Mist and wander between worlds one requires power greater than that which can be channeled by a mere mortal. One requires the knowledge and power of the Settlers. This can either be a “worldsgate”, though I’ve heard it that most such portals have been destroyed with the Settlers’ passing, or one would require a gateship, the key to true adventure. Although a gateship’s potential greatly outweighs the capability of a worldsgate, the power the latter harnesses should not be undermined by careless words. Some worldsgates are perpetually functional, some require a password or function only under a particular condition, but they all do what no mortal man can wring with a bare spell or ritual. Worldgates connect one flatworld to the next, and going beyond into a new world is as easy as passing through an archway with their aid. However, these gates only permit travel between two flatworlds at an unchanging position on each, a true limitation considering what a daring captain and a skilled crew can accomplish should they come in possession of a gateship.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:18 No.2963717

>>2963709
A gateship… well, you’ve seen what a regular ship would look like, floating upon the waters of our city docks. A gateship’s core appears much the same, and there are many sizes one can be found in, from as small as a simple frigate to one the magnitude of a great galley. The primary difference is in that such a vessel lacks any masts or sails. Instead, at the bow and stern of the ship there is a pivot, and the whole of the vessel is positioned within a great ring. Midway across this ring, there is another pivot, and an even greater ring is set there. Such repeats itself again, until by perpendicular axes the vessel rests within three great rings, each one containing powerful magics akin to those found within a worldgate. Due to all those pivots, the rings seem almost free to twirl around the vessel in whatever manner is needed to accomplish their great task – to fold reality itself around the vessel, to pull the gateship from the realm of one flatworld to another. The rings, when attempting to pass from one world to the next, spin at such speeds that their collective form seems nothing more than a vaguely shifting translucent mass, with motes of blue energy playing about it. Then, in a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder, the ship vanishes, only to manifest itself somewhere else, bearing a great wind with it. This power is not limitless, and vast amounts of alchemical substance must be used to invigorate the rings for this task of worlds-hopping, but the results are unquestionable.

>>	Anonymous 11/08/08(Sat)22:21 No.2963735 >>2963700 >>2963707 What song is this? I'm missing the reference.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:25 No.2963757

>>2963717
How does the gateship find its way between the flatworlds, though?… Well, turn your attention to the skies, child. Do you see the moon? Do you see the innumerable stars that are scattered across the inky depths of the Vaulting Void? Those did not come about at the time when the elemental planes poured themselves out into the Material. Indeed, the moon was set into the heavens by the Settlers themselves, to act as a beacon – a lighthouse – for gateships in far-off realms. It is a great artifact, vast in size and set to orbit the flatworld in a manner much like our Fire-sun, using gate-magic to channel the light from our sun to other flatworlds, which in turn appear as specks of glimmering light in their skies. This is where crossroads come in. The veil of Fire that has settled around them serves as a great elemental mirror, passing on this interdimensional moonlight into distant depths where it could not have reached otherwise. Almost all of the stars in the sky above are caused by the reflection of original light, and if one were to guide a gateship to seize them as its beacon, the vessel would arrive at the crossroads responsible for the reflection. There, a new sky full of stars would be visible for the shipmen… which are true moons, and which are mere reflections from other crossroads? Vast skymaps have been charted to guide gateship captains, lest they become lost in an endless series of jumps between uninhabited crossroads until the alchemical fuels that gateships depend on dwindle into nonexistence. Of course, looking at that host of light-specks in the sky, you must understand how much of a gamble travel without a map may be, but there is a science behind it all. It is a science that I know not, but a star-navigator… those few skilled men are greatly sought after.

Anonymous 11/08/08(Sat)22:31 No.2963792

>>2963735
The floating island and the girl with the guitar are in two songs by the band Gorillaz. One is Feel Good Inc., the other is El Manana. The island is introduced in the video for the first, and destroyed in the video for the second. The girl's name is Noodle. She's awesome.

>>	Anonymous 11/08/08(Sat)22:38 No.2963839 neat stuff flatworlder i had an idea for a "flat world" myself once, only instead of it being many worlds connected by gates and gateships like yours, it was a single flat infinity of land that stretched off forever in all directions

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:44 No.2963859

>>2963757
I was told a gateship’s rings never cease working, really, for the exceptions when the ship must settle into water or some manner of pre-arranged dock scaffolding in order for repairs to be made on them. At other times, even when the rings aren’t whirling about, the vessel float in midair… or if the captain needs it to get somewhere within a flatworld itself, it can fly there at an unimaginable speed. The gremlins aboard would jump at the opportunity to correct me now, and they would instead babble on about how the ship doesn’t truly fly or float, but simply teleports itself diminutive distances at a rate so fast even the quickest eye cannot comprehend. Then they would doubtlessly begin a rant on what problems momentum would cause if a gateship truly did propel itself though the air… Really though, as far as I could tell, a gateship possesses the power of great flight, one which would even turn a proud falcon green with envy. This power is held within the rings. In comparison to traversing flatworlds, this skill is a mere afterthought, but is nevertheless prized for what it brings to the gateships.

>>	Anonymous 11/08/08(Sat)22:45 No.2963861 Pretty cool stuff. Saving to read fully later when I have time.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:47 No.2963871

>>2963859
I keep speaking of the Settlers, and you must be curious by now to hear of them. The ancient Vamshian scriptures were said to left as one of their records before the great Cataclysm, explaining the creation of the gateships. We did not just spring up out of nothing on this flatworld, child. Once, thousands upon thousands of years ago, the Settlers traversed the worlds in their gateships, and our ancient ancestors were all related to pioneers who wished to find a new life. Why come here? Nobody truly knows. Some say the Settlers were seeking escape from the Cataclysm – the mystic force that destroyed their great technologies and tore apart their magics, forcing them to rebuild from nothing where they did not simply falter and die. In time, histories were forgotten. New civilizations began on flatworlds that proved more hospitable… or simply held a more resilient strain of Settlers. Most flatworlds, much like this one, are ignorant to the possibility that they are not alone. After all, without the knowledge of the Settlers, it is impossible to travel to another such world unless you find one of the few remaining worldsgates that was not destroyed by the Cataclysm. . Like I said, however, the worldsgates are limited to only a single connection between flatworlds, whereas a gateship possesses a measureless potential. If it were not for the flatworld of Vamsh, perhaps the knowledge of crafting one would have never been discovered and all of these wondrous worlds would remain separate for all eternity.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:48 No.2963875

>>2963871
Now the flatworlds themselves… there is so much variety to be found. Like I mentioned, some come in strange terrestrial shapes. Others have numerous moons and help serve as hubs for gateship travel. Some have a Fire-sun that travels in an erratic, but repeated route around the flatworld. This causes a pattern of changes in that world’s climate – called “seasons”. Some do not have a route that Water can take to the surface of the ground and form vast deserts. Some have a distant Fire-sun and are perpetually frozen. Some have a close sun and thus a surface so hot you can fry an egg upon a common rock during the day. Others have an active breach into the elemental plane of flames that causes mountains to pour molten rock from their crests. Some even have residents that live beneath the surface of the ground itself, forming vast tunnels in the hollows of the flatworld. Cultures and creatures of the different worlds are more numerable than the stars in the sky, shaped in turn by their homes and histories, and it is a wonder to behold even a fraction of them.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)22:53 No.2963904

>>2963875
So, child, if you hear thunder on a clear day, or see a flash during a cloudless night, run to it… perhaps it came from a wayward gateship that had stumbled upon this flatworld. If so, seek passage… offer them an article of worth, offer to perform labor, offer them anything for the opportunity to behold the vastness of the worlds. You may find adventure, you may find vast prospects for success in the dimensional community, and you may find a better life for yourself which a closed world like this one may not hold. Seek knowledge. Seek enlightenment. Me? I just happened to find it here. If it were not for a chance meeting with such a wayward gateship, I would still toil to this day as a slave on the barren flatworld of Morrak under a Vlorgan whip. Over that… I must admit I prefer to work on your father’s fields as an employee in the lush world that can be found here. That is the destiny I wished. Perhaps, though, child… such a destiny is not for you.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)23:00 No.2963930

>>2963904
End. Campaign fluff writing I did for a D&D 3.5 game I'm going to be starting next Tuesday. Used as part of a handout for the players in a addition to a couple variants we're going to be using: a "Plot Armor" system a bit similar to the Vitality/Wound points D&D variant from Unearthed Arcana in addition to a Holy/Unholy variant in place of the rage-tastic alignment system. Besides that... on mah way to page 10!

>>	Amazing 11/08/08(Sat)23:06 No.2963954 >>2963930 Fukken ARCHIVED my good man. Well done.

Flatworlder !7zq8SVRH8. 11/08/08(Sat)23:17 No.2964003

>>2963954
Thanks. I realized the fluff is a bit "tl;dr" in nature, but if anyone want to use this idea or build off it, feel free: I've been reading /tg/ for ages and figured it's about time I give something back.

(And in a completely unrelated note, for some reason I have about a 25% chance of what I type actually making as a post on the board. Other times when I hit submit it simply takes a few minutes to load a blank page and the comment never goes through. Anyone else ever have this problem?)

>>	Anonymous 11/08/08(Sat)23:20 No.2964017 >>2964003 all the time.

>>	Anonymous 11/09/08(Sun)01:00 No.2964566 >>2964003 Will probably use at some future point.

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