It is run in four phases. The first phase runs until Thursday. This is where people post their entries. On Thursday, nomination phase will take place where people may nominate threads to move to the next round. The top entries (Three to five, depending on the number of entries) will be up on a poll to be voted on as Friday's phase. The votes will end Friday night.
The final entries will be put up against each other in one final poll against the top entries from the other world entries on Saturday. Woo hoo! You're not just setting up the best entry for your area, but against the other areas as well!
Here's what you'll be making:
A mace.
Not just any mace, but one that represents this world. We need to see the back story of the mace, the powers of the mace, the material it's made of, and it's current location/owner. Be as creative and descriptive as possible. The challenge is to present the mace as part of your chosen game world, but be clearly explained to folks who may or may not know anything about the world. Folks will be voting on your entry based on coolness factor and adaptability to any game world, even with the rich history. What this means is we don't need a detailed description of every war in the game world, or all the details of the game world. But enough of the flavor of the game world should be apparent in the mace's description.
The Mace of Colors is a curious weapon. Its handle is pure silver, slight wavy as though is were the tail of an aquatic beast, specifically a manta ray. The body of the manta curves so that its underbelly and wings bend gently to support the mace's head, which actually floats ever so slightly above the handle.
The head is akin to an opaque soap bubble, with black hemispheres serving as studs. In fact, these little black balls seem to swim across the head, but there are enough of them to ensure the mace is an effective weapon in combat. The mace functions as a +4 mace of disruption in addition to its other combat powers Striking someone with the mace coats them in a rainbowed phosporous substance, which immediately catches on fire. The weilder can also choose to instead to banish the person to a random crystal sphere, though a Will save negates this.
Though formidable as a weapon, the true powers of the mace are more versatile. One is the ability to create a gravity well that draws objects toward it or repelds. This functions as a telekinesis spell on anything less than or equal to a tonnage of 1+1/per weilder level. Nothing larger 10 tons is affected.
Additionally, the Mace of Colors has the capability to send the user to any crystal sphere she has been before. The weilder must sit and meditate with the mace held before her face. After 4 rounds, the person will fade away and enter the sphere of her choosing. Locations visited in the past may be used as destinations, though magic that restricts dimensional travel and teleporation will block the Mace's power.
It is unclear as to who built the mace or what its intending purpose was. Most likely an ambassador of the Spelljammer used the Mace to visit worlds before the ship arrived, or a powerful enchanter crafted the Mace to track that most fabled of ships.
(If your campaign doesn't use the Spelljammer Cosmology, the Mace can be keyed to Limbo or the Primordial Chaos which explains its connect to various destinations. Instead of setting someone on fire, you can have the effect be the equivalent to being attack by chaos matter as the white slaad does in the ELH.)
Overview
"Macespace is the place!" - a giff freebooter who is a poet yet does not know it.
Far beyond the sphere of the Syllix is a curious space thought to be the construction of eccentric gods. Wildspace there is temperate, the laws of magic and nature corresponding closely with what is thought of as the standard. The sphere has a large fire body as its primary and several earth bodies orbiting it, along with an extensive asteroid belt. The sky is filled with stars made out of sharp, jagged crystal bonded to the inner surface of the crystal shell, glowing in the light of the system's primary.
The remarkable thing about "Macespace," as it is known, is that each major world in the sphere is attatched to a stone protrusion hundreds of millions of miles in length, creating an effect not unlike a mace or other concussive weapon the size of an entire planet.
The Morning Star
Size I irregularly shaped fire body
The Morning Star is the system's primary. Most of its tremendous length is in its stone "handle," but its "head" is easily as big as most suns in and of itself, cylindrical in shape with flaming "spikes" continually flickering in and out of it, each easily large enough to swallow a world, let alone an unfortunate passing ship.
The Sap
Size C irregularly shaped earth body
The Sap, also called the Blackjack, is the first planet orbiting the Morning Star. It is usually only seen as a dark sillouette crossing the Morning Star, but it is possible to land on it. It is a sandy world with no real solidity, constantly shifting and changing shape as it moves through space. Sandlings, sandmen, and similar creatures from the Plane of Dust inhabit it. Its "handle" is more along the lines of a long strap.
The Scourge
Size A asteroid belt
The Scourge is hundreds of tiny, sharp asteroids all connected by long, whiplike earth strands (or, as followers of the Path and the Way maintain, roots of some vast tree, making the Scourge a liveworld of sorts) to its cylindrical "handle" millions of miles from the belt proper. Nothing is known to live on the Scourge, though a few of the asteroids that make it up are actually astereaters.
The Mace
Size D irregular earth body
The Mace is a world of mountains, seas, deserts, forests, and all the usual trappings of an earth body. All its seas are land-locked and fresh water. The "handle" extends from the Mace's southern pole and is covered with ice a third of the way up before melting in the temperate vacuum.
The inhabitants of the Mace, humans and dwarves and orcs, tend to be stern and uncompromising when dealing with strangers or one another. They are aware of spelljamming, and they patrol their sphere looking for troublemakers.
The Club
Size D irregular earth body
The Club is all "handle," a rough cylinder of earth somewhat larger at its top than at its bottom. Its natives, something like centaurs with the bodies of roaches, skitter across its surface, through its forests and planes. They are a simple people, close to the giant roaches they herd. The planet has a thick, perpetual cloud cover and a small, size A moon that often orbits so close it penetrates the atmosphere, causing terrible storms in its wake.
The Flail
Size F irregular earth body
The Flail is perhaps the strangest world in Macespace, connected to iron rings that wind around for some time before joining its earthen "handle." The land on the spherical part is mostly flat (as round worlds go), with a few regular mountain ridges crossing it at its latitude lines, interrupted by regular passes. The terrain is a mixture of swamps, forests, and plains. The inhabitants of the Flail - hurwaets, lutums, syllix, and a handful of reigar - tend to be more easy-going and chaotic than most cultures, though they have their share of wars (mostly started by the syllix). In peacetime, the reigar rule the planet like proud parents, continually coming up with new projects for their people to do.
The Debris Fields
Size A-C asteroid belt
The Debris Fields are a seemingly endless region of stony, watery, airy, and in some cases fiery rubble that fills the sphere beyond the orbit of the Flail to the very edge of the crystal shell, a zone that easily takes up nine tenths of the sphere's total volume. The Debris Fields are thought to be the remnants of planets inadvertantly destroyed by the Morning Star, the Mace, the Sap, the Scourge, the Club, and the Flail early in the sphere's history. They are filled with the usual array of wildspace pests, pirates, scavengers, and wanderers.
Final round