So, here comes the main question: How would this fit into the Great Ring/Planescape cosmology, with the phlogiston and so forth?
At the moment, my (rather wordy) idea goes something like this: 10,000 years ago, humans lived on your typical fantasy world. There was a mighty human empire which heavily depended on magic, of which they were skilled users. Their most powerful wizard came up with a mighty spell designed to banish eveything that was intelligent, unnatural or supernatural from the world, possibly due to imminant desrtuction by them. It succeeded, but in the process is banished magic as well. However, the spell had a weakness. It could not stand up to the mass belief in the supernatural. This means that as more people start believing in the fantastic, the spell starts weakening, and begins allowing magic to leak through. Once the belief reaches a critical level, it begins actually sucking such creatures through, but enough of it remains to disguise them. Once they die, the force that holds them here dissapates, and their bodies return to where they came from. These fluctuations have occured three times: about 5,000 years ago, during the Dark Ages to Early Middle Ages, and, most recently, now. 5,000 years ago, people were beginning to form into large groups and forming organized oral traditions, as well as various city states. During the Dark Ages, the amount of belief was large, mostly due to the church, and the untamed wilderness. Today, we have movies, computer games, and large numbers of book. We consume more fictional literature than ever before. Hence, the latest wave of Shadow.
However, I'm having trouble seeing how the denizens of the Planes would see Earth (and its inhabitants), and how this barrier would seem from the other side.
'Course, the visions of having a priest carve the word "sword" into the hilt of his rifle, and blessing the clip before unloading into a pit fiend is just damn cool in my head.
I imagine the blood war would be riddled with all sorts of infernal machines, huge monstrosities of tank-like metal, all guns and spinning blades, belching fire and black smoke across the blasted fields of the Abyss. Anything for an advantage down there, I'm sure.
'Course, most of those won't fit through portals, having to take more mundane-ish ways to get where they're going, which means they'd be a heck of a rare site outside the underworld. Solution for vehicles for PC and NPC's alike? Buggies.
Small, fast, versatile, good in rough terrain, large enough to mount a machine gun on, yet small enough to slip through many portals. Heck, maybe planewalkers have invented "instant buggies", lightweight, easy to assemble off-road vehicles that break down into telescoping reinforced aluminum rods. Put the (magically powered) engine in your bag of holding, (bag of holding costs extra) and each person in the party can carry a few pieces of the thing with their camping gear. Hop through a portal, take, say, 10 minutes to assemble it, and you're off, across the ragged peaks of Arborea.Dealer is not responsible if buggy is eaten. Monster insurance costs extra.
Communications technology is still in it's infancy though, outside a few large cities. It's hard to cover an infinite plane with cell-phone towers, after all.
Guy standing next to the Mortuary: "Can you hear me now? Good."
Guy stanging next to Mt. Olympus: "Can you hear me now? Good."
Guy standing next to Shemeska The Maurader: "Can you hear..." *sound of fireball* "..."
But, we miss the important points.
- What, if anything, would the Lady do to keep up with the times?
- Would a Dabus communicate with finely-printed legalese instead of obscure glyphs?
- Does the Rule of Threes fluctuate with market activity?
- Do the planes have websites?
- Does Unix come from Limbo?
- Is Microsoft development done by the Xaositects?
- Does Dell have an exclusive arrangement to supply PCs to Mount Celestia?
- Are there scams to sell real estate in the Astral?
- Are televangelists petitioners or proxies?
- Are the Dusties still morticians or just badly dressed goths?
- Do spawn campers plague every portal?
- Has the Styx been replaced with a webring?
- Has Mechanus gone solid-state instead of analog?
- Would the UN search the lower planes for WMDs?
- Does the multiverse run on Cadence XP and, if yes, is the slowdown noticeable?
- Does every barmy write a book of utter screed about nothing
- I'll ever care about, claiming it's the dark you just have to have?
- Would Modrons go solid state?
- Does NetHack make Modrons go Roguelike?
Nothing. She has all the power she needs already.
Nah. I like obscure glyphs.
Nope. The market value of three, however, does.
On account of the difficulty of cross-planar communication, no. In fact, no internet at all. Unless Al Gore hits the planes, that is.
Unix comes from U.C. Berkeley. (Note: "Berk"eley) A school also famous for LSD. It's not a coincidence, so yes. Unix is from limbo. And we like it that way.
The microsoft development team is currently done on the negative energy plane, on account of their obvious hatred for all life.
Dell hasn't made it off the prime.
Yes. There's also ***** enlargement cream scams from Arborea, where everything is huge.
Proxies first, then after my PC's meet them, petitioners.
Both. The Bleakers are kind of positively oriented goths anyways. Heck, the doomgaurd are somewhat goth too. There's an awful lot of goth in planescape isn't there. Time for a prestige class.
Yes, most of them from a little known sect called "Teh l33t!!!11!". They have a variant on scramblespeak.
Nope. The lower planes are facing economic sanctions if they refuse to cooperate with the environmental standards act of year 426 in the reign of Hashkar though.
It does not.
Yes. Some things haven't changed.
That depends. Do they have good transistors?
Always.
Anyway, it looks like I might be working this out sooner than I'd planned on, perhaps in the next week or so. If I do, I'll post here about it and see what y'all think. My initial thoughts are: Get a damage rating for guns, make rules for vehicles, (fairly easy, just add a few "Drive" skills and require checks for manuvers, Alternity or possibly Shadowrun style), and then of course, update the entire setting. Yeah, that won't take long at all.
umm, the mondrons would be truly masters of computers and the hackers would be the new psionics
Primus's wet dream.
*Center-Of-All looks at the gigantic nuke arsenal he has stashed away near the Spire and rubs his chin thoughtfully*
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
-Charles Edward Montague
The Githyanki/Githzerai conflict has reached new levels, having perfected terrorist bombings, suicide attacks, and underhanded techniques. A spate of terrorism on the prime could eventually be traced to their hiding amongst warring ethnic groups, playing up conflicts to strike at each other.
"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."
- Richard P. Feynman
As quantum mechanics becomes better understood, mechaus and limbo start to blend into a single plane. This is helped along by the increasing belief that chaos can be channeled for lawful ends (evolution, open source, file-sharing networks, democracy etc) Will the loss of chaos and law as seperate ideals forever hobble the great ring? Or worse, bring about united evil in the end of the blood war.
And Li Po's guide to the Planes has a a little section on each plane that might help you out:
For example, Archeron
In keeping with the flexibility of the Third Edition and the backgrounds of many players, perhaps Acheron is essentially a world where like-minded spirits meet. It looks and works like our own world, except that it is on a permanent war footing with identity-group politics even nastier than in our world. NPC attitudes are typically "unfriendly" unless the visitors are likely recruits or allies. If there is a spiritual race native to Acheron, it is devoted to promoting the community's ideals among the living by encouragement and subtlety, rather than by force. The dead find communities matching their own ideals and interests, and continue to live much as they did on earth, though no longer able to visit the Prime Plane.
You could get another bit of crazy fun in a world where c was about 50 miles per hour. You could appreciably slow the passage of time for yourself by riding a horse as fast as it would go (~30 mph).
Not only that, but there'd be an appreciable time delay in seeing things. And if you accept that nothing can truly physically travel faster than c, animals wander around mostly in a daze, since their neural systems wouldn't be able to keep up with real time. Different parts of creatures would age at different rates, but fortunately, everything would be on the same playing field, since no part of anythings biology would be able to operate fast enough.
Originally posted by Infidel1
And Li Po's guide to the Planes[/url]
Is it just me, or is there a fair bit of sniping a Muslims in there?
Imagine if you will a silicon mechanus. Millions of Modrons, mortals and petitioners all hooked up in matrix style vats, only cleaner and shinier. Small bots moving about making sure not a speck of dust is out of place as the cooling exaust pumps a constant jet all the way acrost the ring into limbo.
Imagine if you will a silicon mechanus. Millions of Modrons, mortals and petitioners all hooked up in matrix style vats, only cleaner and shinier. Small bots moving about making sure not a speck of dust is out of place as the cooling exaust pumps a constant jet all the way acrost the ring into limbo.
Originally posted by Center of All
"I can only imagine the horrors -- or Balance -- that a nuclear bomb would bring to the Blood War."
*Center-Of-All looks at the gigantic nuke arsenal he has stashed away near the Spire and rubs his chin thoughtfully*
Correct me if I'm wrong (since I sometimes am) but nuke's wouldn't matter THAT much in the blood war, because of the nearly endless supply of fiends.
Even if it did, It seems more like something the devils would do. Which acctually might even things out, since I beleve the demons technically outnumber the devils.
Is it just me, or is there a fair bit of sniping a Muslims in there?
I've seen him snipe at muslims, jews, fundimentalist of all sorts, and fanatics of both right and left. I think it's his temperment. Plus, he runs a cool site. A little slanted towards law though.
Elemental plane of physics headaches.