Under the Silt.
seriously...besides a fleeting treatment in Guistenal in the CBtSS, there hasn't been much of this. well you know the suffocation and all. but the prospect of visting Ebe, or any of the world lost to the depths. there was once a lot more water than anything else on athas, as well as the lifeshaping experiments of the rhulisti over their countless centuries, even millenia, of mastering and perpetuating life. the very state of Athas is part of their experiment to expand this. i know the brown tide is evil and all...but so was the obsidian plain (and i looking forward to that supplement very much :D)...life finds a way. err even if its undead monstrosity hatred of former existence life.
so the idea is, the surface is out (treat as un-passable terrain, kinda like we regard silt
), and the rest is the silt bottom in all its terrain glory. I'm thinking athasian reduxes of sea based monsters, as well as expansion of the unique life in the sea (things making Silt Horrors look like fish hook worms ). and well...the sea of silt can also form a quasi underdark, the old channels and pathways, trenches and terrain...a sort of giant cavern with only darkness as a roof. maybe the athasian illithid & dolphin alliance, i dunno. and of course the lost colonies of the blue age, and undersilt races that have long vexed the Lightdwellers above. Silt Elementals that would dwarf Leviathans...silt leviathans that would dwarf dragons anyway is just in idear stage. any comments or suggestions?
::gets ready to parry...:: :fight!:
Anyways, yes: detailing the "Undersilt" would certainly be a good idea. Because I usually start my players in Balic and not Tyr, I run much more "silt-centric" campaigns. Some ideas for you: Silt Tides; Greater Silt Horrors; creatures like Elephant Seals and Leopard Seals and Whales, all horribly mutated by their environment (working on these for "Far Side of the Silt Sea"); and, of course, "aquatic" elves.
That last should be especially fun: if you've ever read a book about Cthuhlu, his followers will often climb aboard ships in the night to drag unsuspecting sailors to their doom (ie. sacrifice). Is their leader a dragon? A silt elemental? Something else entirely?
I'd say it's a great idea - bust that bad boy out so I can use it!
((i ran a call of kachooloo campaign...hp is kinda my hero
)the idea of taking on ships is cool. i actually thought up a sort of revised ghost ship, a Sand Skilt, sunken crafts piloted by undead that come like sharks from teh silt (you see the broken mast and a breaking wave as they rise up
), dragging crews to the cloudy depths. as for deep ones, well sahaugin almost fill that role. a barbed/armored fish-man would be a perfect addition to a beastiary of that sort though
What more;
- a Silt horror Lord bigger than a kraken and having a lot of psionic hability.
- Ebe should be a very big city like Urik. Make it in the deep silt, like it was on an island.
- The ilithid or other race could have submarin vessel to travel in the silt and these vessel are moved by psionic.
- The lord of all Silt Vortex
- The old Greenage shipwreck could provide a lot of idea
- All sea have its abyss. So maybe some place in the silt is very deep and have an Underdark race inhabiting there.
- A race or culture of people inhabiting above the Sea of silt far away. Think the movie Waterworld except they live on big ship that have giant net filled with Floater creature in it to make the ship float.
But also, Undersilt needs your help!
In a normal world, the continents are really just fluff atop ginormous tectonic plates. where they meet on land is mountains, earthquakes and volcanoes oh my. in the *ocean*, however, they tend to have exposed areas where liquid hot magma oozes up, thus creating continental drift and more stuff on geology that is already putting ME to sleep.so the Inquiry here is...in the absense of a dense atmosphere (namely the blue stuff), the interaction & chunkiness of this underworld volcanic network becomes kind of a liability. the magma cools much less, forming seas and rivers of burning rock, and must spread more virulently. this must also superheat the silt for miles. another factor is the silt density, meaning that silt deep enough will form pressure, in the same way our own atmosphere does on us, and what that means for silt-life and its regards to the potent molten sea below.
ok is very long and scientifically winded for a fantasy fan-made expansion even...but to look at it realisitically can be as rich and fertile as well just making stuff up out of thin air.
perhaps the lava does not as much expand down below as it spreads upward in lieu of a lack of cooling, lessening continental drift (albiet over 10s of ks of years anyways) and forming spires of bubbling lava. the superheated silt must have some consequence, perhaps in a form of current (heated silt air spreads, cooler silt air contracts...forming tides and storms under the surface), which has consequences for undersilt life, any "silquatic movement(tm :D ) and erosion undersea and coastal.
anyways is kind of a lot for me (read:
) so any ideas or comments?