I'm playing a Serraine based campaign now, and my (2) players are a gnomish pilot and a gnomish gunner in a blue triplane (air speed 480'; MF 3), living in a town protected by powerful Ack-Ack guns. It is obvious this is a war oriented town, well defended against... against who?
I was just wondering who the real aerial enemy is...
Here I have some ideas, but none of them is fully likeable to me.
Heldannic warbirds, Thyatian Retebius Air Fleet, Alphatian Man-of-War...yes, they are all true sky lords, but...
I see a wonderful picture in PC2 Top Ballista. Page 56.
Are them goblins? They can't be greemlins (the airplane would crash in minutes). They are small, gnome sized. And they own bombs!!!!!!!
Playing WarCraf3 I see goblins in the WC3 fantasy world build zeppelins, like Oostdock Airships...
So, here is my idea.
Some Alphatian wizards choosed to build an isolated flying island, somewere out of nowere.A big island, capable of hosting a dozen towers. A dozen isolated towers.
They build their great island, somethink as big as an HW continent (they was 12, a big working team!). They build their towers, and bring some goblins with them (as magic users from Filtot - Ierendi know, goblins may be very good servants for wizards).
Goblins began to spread in the island. Wizards passed out (for age, maybe some one perished in some strange experiment, others simply leaved having found new interest... I don't know why, but they no longer live here... maybe also a conjuritis epidemic...)
Now the island is only for goblins. Goblins vaguely instructed in magic art. Goblins more civilized than other goblins.
Goblins that stole an airplane to gnomes, tinkered with it, used some shamanic magic to call fire elementals to be put in the engine...
And now... at war! Snoopy is ready to fight with his Red Baron!
I don't see how the goblins could ever master a large-scale production of such machines and become a viable threat to Seraine. And even if they could, I wouldn't like to have both the flying city of Serain and its evil twin in my campaign. It would spoil some of the sense of a flying city IMHO.
Nevertheless, I like the idea of evil critters with triplanes and weapons. Perhaps I'll introduce a clan of goblins who live in Seraine? After all, many other manor of chaotic creatures live there in harmony with the more neutral and even a few lawful ones. Perhaps these goblins have formed their own rival school of flying and are trying to outmaneuvre the gnomes as the best pilots of the skies?
I'll have to play around some more with this idea...
:-) Jesper
I'm kind of partial to the idea that the goblin city, obviously on the verge of collapse, gets saved by the Immortals and preserved in the hollow world. It wouldn't even draw particularly much attention there too, as it'd be just another floating island. Unfortunately, that limits interaction with Serraine.
Why? It was a simple flying island as many from Alphatia. Not the last one of an ending civilization. The wizards disappeared and a techno-goblin civilization arised...
I don't see how the goblins could ever master a large-scale production of such machines and become a viable threat to Seraine. And even if they could, I wouldn't like to have both the flying city of Serain and its evil twin in my campaign. It would spoil some of the sense of a flying city IMHO.
But I need some "foreinger" flying power as an enemy... and I need it with flying machines, not the magic ones from Alphatia and Heldans, not the biologic ones from Thyatis...
I need triplanes! I has a wonderful world war taste...
By the way, I'm not at all sure of creating a flying island full of goblins...
Of course we have 50 kobolds, 20 orcs and 6 ogres living in Serraine (page 50). And an undercity full of monsters. With undeads, planar spiders, koblods, orcs, carrion crawlers, molds, rats, gelatinous cubes... but no goblins! And why aren't there goblins?
I think, becouse goblins are the best gnome enemies. So, where does the goblins in the picture came from?
Are them goblins? They can't be greemlins (the airplane would crash in minutes).
They're gremlins; they have the same design as the gremlins on page 17. And yes, the airplane is probably going to crash in minutes.
They're gremlins; they have the same design as the gremlins on page 17. And yes, the airplane is probably going to crash in minutes.
Or not. Remember the Warner Brothers cartoon with Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin? (The plane ran out of gas before it crashed. Sounds like Murphy's Law to me.
)They're gremlins; they have the same design as the gremlins on page 17. And yes, the airplane is probably going to crash in minutes.
I'd be not so sure...
They have different ears, they lack some baby traits (like big eyes).
I read somewere (maybe in TopBallista itself) that some sage thinks of greemlins as immature form of greemlins. So, page 17 shows kids, page 56 shows adults. And there are no adult grimlins.
Edit: and the ones on page 17 are too... large. Greemlins should be smaller... pixie sized. They could not fill the airplan seater!
I'd be not so sure...
They have different ears, they lack some baby traits (like big eyes).
The ears and noses are a little different; their eyes, mouths, head shape, teeth, grins, brow structure, crow's feet, and spots all look exactly the same to me. I'd expect some variation, especially in a race as chaotic as gremlins are.
that some sage thinks of greemlins as immature form of greemlins.
I'm not sure what that means. Did you mean to say, "that some sage thinks of gremlins as an immature form of goblins?"
I don't see any indication in Top Ballista that gremlins aren't the adult form of their species. Young gremlins are those with -3000 to 0 XP; anything higher level than that is an adult.
Edit: and the ones on page 17 are too... large. Greemlins should be smaller... pixie sized. They could not fill the airplan seater!
No, gremlins are 3' tall - approximately the same size as goblins, kobolds, gnomes, and halflings. See their monster description in the Companion Set. They can easily fit into anything designed for a gnome.
The most obvious bad guys would be flying monsters like dragons, but you said you want to have bad guys with access to their own planes, right?
Well, why not make up your own nemesis for Serraine's gnomish airforce? The air is a rather undeveloped area of Mystara, so I think there is plenty of room to add whatever you like. You mentioned goblins. Considering the level of whimsy and fantasy technology already present in a Serraine campaign, you can probably get off with putting them on a technological level with the gnomes.
Why not give them a different design of plane, and make it powered by something else - shamanic magic is a good start. Who knows, maybe there is a story behind the shaman of the tribe, where his Immortal patron gave him and his tribe strange (gnome-like) abilities specifically in order to try to take over Serraine for his own nefarious purposes.
I guess what I'm saying is don't be too worried what anyone else says, and just make up the things you need. Running a Serraine campaign is a different kind of thing from most other Mystara campaigns, but it can be an awful lot of fun.
My Mystara campaign is wholly based on the wonderful gazeteer serie, but I use AD&D 2ed rules.
So, my greemlins are 18'' tall, as Monstrous Manual wants.
And, reading in MM, I see greemlins as a golinoid race.
So, I added the non-canon goblins from Warcraft3 (very tecnological) and that's all.
But I'm still thinking about it.
Now, my players are landwrecked. They started to a city patrol with their airplane and... "greemlins in your meddlingbox!", they found a greemlin inside the engine. They made an emergency landfall, thanks to the pilot extreme ability.
So, they find themselves lost in the ground, in the wilderness, with no hope to fix the flying machine. The pilot, the gunner and... the greemlin! Yes, the poor greemlin, with all the innocence of the world, exited the airplane and immediately searched protection crying on the pilot shoulder! The furious pilot could not do nothing looking at the innocuos baby crying and asking only somethink to play with.
Oh, but I forgot to say that they were flying over the Alasiyan Basin...and now, lost in the desert, they see 3 statues from the top of a strange building...
And, searching for some shadow, food, cloth to build new wings...
You already understood it, I bet: they started the greatest of all adventures, the lost city.
And I'm amousing sooooooo much playing a greemlin NPC, exercising with lots of "Oooohhhhhh". He is really a child!