Death Matters

This about covers it all.

The stars are right

The dragons of my worlds are the manifestations of stars. The "dragon's breath" is actually being exposed to the stellar matter of this star.

Black Zigurats are dragons of black holes. An organic, growing, interconnected megadungeon exists within the BZs.

E=mcv^2, or Einstein was part right

The First World

The first world is essentially ours, except substituting magic for technology. Mostly it's a shortcut to allow my players their modern thoughts and mannerisms to be sensible. This world is known as the Alpha world.

Portals & Passage to the Second World

Anything magical which passes through a portal is completely ineffective on the other side; It isn't damaged, and will even function again if brought back through the same portal (actually, the sequence reversed is more accurate). That means guns don't work (each bullet is a Magic Missile), flashlights go dark (though they do still use up their batteries if left on), and Laptops with glossy screens are only usable as poor mirrors. Thus I short-circuit the contamination of technology into the other worlds.

Players enter the second world as exiled convicts through the Sidney, Australia portal. They've been "chipped" with a pain inducer (Alpha based magic) which kicks in if they get more than one mile from the Alpha::Sydney portal; As mentioned above, if they get back to Alpha via another portal this won't kick in, but nobody (NPC or PC) knows this yet.

The Second World

The Beta world is high magic, low technology. Beta::Sydney (know locally as Sydneytown) is the starting safe zone for the PCs. From there out it is a West Marches style sandbox. I'll be hitting Sydneytown with a major attack of goblinoids which will hopefully (so I'll need other stuff ready too) lead to the PCs into going out to find the source of these attacks, which I'm basing on a heavily modified B2 plus some other homage modules (for instance, the "Cave of the Unknown" bit in BF1:Morgansfort); I'm thinking of putting Tower of the Stargazer in somewhere (though someone said something about having it randomly transport), later the Hammers of the God (which I loved the underlying premise of, and it fit so well with what I had already decided to do with the goblinoid races, that I knew I had to include somehow). I want to work in the GDQ series (with the dragonsfoot underdark project), though I'm trying to figure a good way to change up the Drow (suggestions are always welcome).

Common is actually a magical effect granted by the deities involved in communication, which allows disparate peoples (read as the humanoid/playable species: humans, elves, dwarfs, hobbits, etc.) to speak to each other freely, and even sometimes with other intelligent species (read as the monster/unplayable species: lizard-men, goblinoids, drow, giants, etc.).

The Goblinoids

The goblinoids are infected with a magical disease which causes them to have an ever increasing irrational violent hatred of mammalian life. It increases until a berserker rage takes control and they attack and attempt to rape and kill any mammal near them; Consummation or unconsciousness are the only sure fire remedies. This serves the disease as it's two vectors for transmission are blood transference, and congenital; The disease also allows cross-species interbreeding, but only with a single non-intelligent species in a given lineage. All of the goblinoids (except hobgoblins) are another intelligent species combined with another mammal. Kobolds: Elves plus their green dogs; Orcs: Humans plus wild boars; Gnolls: Elves plus hyenas; Bugbears: Dwarfs plus bears; Goblins: Hobbits plus giant rats; etc. Hobgoblins are the "pure" form, and this disease is part of the consequences of their dark deal (as discussed in HotG). The other benefit's of the disease to it's sufferers are that it will magically create and cleanse its victims blood; Thus a bleeding but unconscious victim will not bleed out, and they get a +4 to save against all poisons and other physical toxins. The bleeding thing leads to some unusual battleground tactics, like stabbing ones fellows who are down so as to get the blood flowing.

The enmity towards mammals is why my orcs ride dinosaurs.

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Random spell checks:

Lordship fjord DST sue biosphere

Campaign Intro

To my players: Spoiler Alert

Alpha:
'Near' Earth; technology replaced with magic.
Timeline:

• 2011.Nov Satellite imagery shows hazy glowing space, collapsing into spherical outlines at twenty, roughly evenly distributed, locations around the globe.
• 2012.Oct Collapse of spheres makes for significant devastation in a number of locations. These created portals to another world (Beta).
• 2014.Aug Campaign begins through the Sydney Portal. All PCs are convicts who have been given the option of exile in the Beta world, or standard punishments in the Alpha world; Naturally they're choosing exile or the campaign doesn't get very far.

12 of the 20 portals are controlled, 2 are uncontrolled due to location (deep ocean floor), but monitored, 1 is believed to be another deep ocean point, but search continues. Remaining 5 are unaccounted for, at least publicly.

Land-based Portals:

1. Antarctica (unfound) (1)
2. Antarctica (2)
3. Hawaii (4)
4. Alcatraz (5)
5. Peru (6)
6. Brazil (9)
7. New Jersey (10)
8. Japan (hidden) (11)
9. Indonesia (12)
10. Sydney (primary campaign portal) (13)
11. Arctic Russia (14)
12. Kazahkstan (hidden) (15)
13. Sri Lanka (16)
14. Mauritania (18)
15. Egypt (19)
16. Zambia (hidden) (20)

Deep Ocean portals:

1. South Pacific (Sea2) (3)
2. South Pacific (unfound) (7)
3. Southern Atlantic (searching) (8)
4. Indian Ocean (Sea1) (17)

Welcome

Okay, obligatory welcome message.

So...

I'm essentially unfamiliar with blogging from the posting side, reading I've got down, and don't think too much of my writing skills, but maybe you will.

I'll be trying to keep regular entries here, but I've got a strong tendency to drift off of my projects.

I'm looking for a decent piece of art to illustrate my blog title, so if anyone out there has a suggestion let me know.