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freyar
Learned Scribe
Canada
220 Posts |
 Posted - 10 Mar 2009 : 11:53:16
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The cruise sounds pretty nice...
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
*snickers* I'm covering every plane I've not hit yet, regardless of whether or not anyone is interested. 
Hmmm, maybe I'll let you do the heavy lifting, then.  |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2009 : 15:26:09
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Okay, so I got a bit sidetracked... But I'm done with the book, now!
The Ten Courts of Hell
A plane. Definitely. You can't do Hell without making it a plane. Well, I supposed you could, but it works best as a plane.
The first thing discussed in this section is the fact that these planes are arranged in a weird way. Usually, layers of a plane are stacked atop each other. Maybe not literally stacked, but that's the way they're always shown. Not so these planes -- they are linked in such a weird way that a diagram is needed.
These are actual courts, too. Not courts as in where Azoun IV and Vangey hung out, but courts as in places where Judge Wapner and the lawyers Khelben ran out of Waterdeep hang out. In other words, these are trial courts, set up with the express purpose of sentencing folks for various crimes.
And obviously, you're not going to have enough real criminals to keep ten (maybe more!) planes of courts in business. So each plane is run by a Yama King. And each Yama King has a whole buttload of servants, including armies of fiends who raid other planes to grab people to send to the courts.
The first court is where most of the judging is done. The second court is where slaves are sent to be broken. The third court is the food source for most of the other courts. The fourth court is for training Recruiters, the snatch-and-grab demons. The fifth court is full of mines and smithies, and a lot of torturing goes on here, too. The sixth court is full of snakes, and everyone sent here eventually becomes snake food. The seventh court is metalworks, and it's ruled by a fallen angel who is for some reason trying to create the perfect enormous bell. The eighth court is a cold place, with lots of gladiators and corpses among the ice. It's also the current location for the Treasury of Souls, which is where the souls of victims of the courts go. The ninth court is about darkness. It's ruled by a "vampire demon", and the really difficult prisoners are kept there. The tenth court is a mystery -- it's either a paradise or so incredibly hellish that it's impossible to survive. No one has ever come back from there, so it's a mystery.
There's also rumored to be an eleventh court, ruled by the Hermit Saint. It's rumored that he occasionally sends his minions to rescue people from the other courts.
While I can see the potential for adventure in the Ten Courts, the plane simply does not grab me. I can see it being quite useful for other DMs, and they could even use it as written. But on a personal note, it just doesn't float my boat. |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2009 : 15:28:23
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Tevaeral, Magic's Last Stand
This one is a world. They don't even attempt to call it a plane -- they specify that it's a world not unlike the one the PCs are from.
The gig about this one is that arcane magic is declining. There's a 5% per level chance of spell failure, and 9th level spells don't work at all. Divine magic works fine, but there's next to no divine casters in this world -- the people have gotten caught up in this movement called The Unity, and no one pays much attention to deities.
Spell-like abilities and magical items have a chance of failure, too.
Back in the day, Tevaeral was ruled by elves. Like elves seem to like doing, they warred against the local dragons. And they managed to wipe most of them out. Of course, by the time they did this, then their own magic started failing. So the elves were getting pushed around by humans, and eventually just left the world altogether.
So then the humans first warred on the magical critters of the world, and then, after wiping them out, turned against arcane spellslingers -- they had a serious mad-on going as far as magic was concerned.
Arcane spellslingers banded together and fled to a mountain stronghold. There's about 250 of them there. They've got about a couple dozen magical critters there, too, and a juvenile bronze dragon -- the last dragon alive on the world. The strongest spellcaster still around is in this valley, too -- she's a 9th level wizard.
Also in the valley is the Book of Eldritch Might, an intelligent spellbook that's also an artifact. It can talk to people and share just about any known spell . The Book (it's nickname) is happy to be the last artifact in the world, and it likes the fact that all the remaining mages are devoted to it. It actually does have a spell that would forever protect the valley, but there's no one around powerful enough to cast the spell.
The Unity is similar to a religion, except that believers believe that they shouldn't rely on outside forces -- so they rely on themselves, not gods or magic. There are no Unity clerics. The Unity was started 500 years ago by a dude that hated arcane magic, and it's because of the Unity that magic came under the axe. The guy that founded the Unity is also part of why there aren't many dragons about -- he inherited an artifact that could banish a dragon from Tevaeral forever.
And here's the real rub: dragons and magic are linked on Tevaeral. Magic is diminishing because there's only one dragon left on the planet. So if that artifact -- the Dragondoom (which the Book does not know about) is destroyed, then dragons could come back, and bring back magic with them. A bit of a potential plot hook there.
A little bland, perhaps, but full of potential. I think this one needs to be spiced up a bit, but it's otherwise pretty good as written. I like it, but not as much as some of the other ones.  |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2009 : 15:29:47
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Venomheart, Haven of the Sleep Pirates
This is a world in a plane, but most of the description is about the very small group of inhabitants, their means of travel, and what they do.
Venomheart is a empty world. And by empty, I mean totally devoid of any animal life. Plant life isn't mentioned, but I'm thinking that with no bugs or any other critters, there's not going to be a huge amount of plants.
The main pirate is a guy named Harvock. Harvock's main gig is that he wields a magical blade that steals sleep. If it's used against a sleeping person (and this apparently can be done without wounding them), they wake up and can't sleep or rest for 24 hours. The sleep is then stuck in bottles of sleep. If you open one of these bottles, you have the full effects of eight hours of sleep.
Harvock and his buddies get around on a ship called the Neverest. This ship is the corpse of a black dragon. The ship can fly, though not well. It uses an intelligent (and sometimes uncooperative) artifact to jump around the planes. The crew is a mixed bunch, with a couple of them described.
When not stealing sleep from rich folks (Harvock prefers doing it that way), they hang out in Venomheart. There's a single manor house there; no one knows where it came from. They store unsold bottles of sleep there. The house is also home to an abstract painting (from which the name Venomheart originated) and some busts that bear nifty magical masks.
There's a brief description of the favored ports of the Neverest. There's also a blurb about a night hag that's trying to steal the stolen sleep for her own purposes.
I like this one. There's a lot of potential, here... That said, I'm not sure that I'd keep the Neverest as it is. With plane-hopping, sleep-stealing pirates, I'm not sure that having them sail about on a dead dragon isn't overkill. I'd likely change the ship to a standard spelljammer or voidjammer. It might also be fun to make the pirates an organization, not just one small group built around a guy with a sword. |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2009 : 15:32:27
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The Violet
This one could be a planet -- more specifically, the interior of one -- but the nature of it makes it work better as a plane, thinks I.
So the Violet is the interior of a rocky sphere. Everything has a violet tinge, so that's where the name comes from. There's a lot of violet plants here, mostly vines that start on the ground looking like redwoods, and then get thinner as they reach upward into infinity.
There's no gravity here. If you let go of something, it (or you!) are just going to hang there. This can be problematic, in some situations.
And magic doesn't work well, either. Any spell over 1st level won't work. This even affects magical items and artifacts! Constructs and intelligent magical items are screwed, too. The only way around this is to make a difficult spellcraft check, and cast antimagic field. This gives you an area where magic functions normally -- which is likely the only way you'll be able to get out.
Time is broken here, too. Every now and again, it rewinds by a few seconds or a few minutes. Everything that happened the first time is undone, as if it never happened -- though you still remember it.
The whole place is messed up because of some divine war. The gods tried to fix what they broke, but they didn't do a good enough job. The Violet is basically a hole in space and time.
There's a bunch of snakes living here. There are other critters, too, including a small group of couatls.
The nature of the plane makes it a good place to stash magical nastybads and artifacts. One such artifact is the anvil of hate, an artifact that makes people want to kill their loved ones. There's a planetar trapped there, too. He had made a deal with a pit fiend, so the fiend couldn't kill him -- he instead stuck him in a prison originally intended for himself. There's an empty storehouse with an inverted antimagic field, so it's a place you could go to try to get out. And there's a group of native couatls, too, as mentioned earlier. They have a small sanctuary there. They've never been outside of the Violet, and aren't interested in leaving.
This one works as written. I can't see using it for much more than a couple of adventures, though, maybe a linked arc. It's cool, I just think it's not something that can have a lot of use. |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2009 : 15:33:41
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The Primal Gardens of Yragon
This is the last place described in the book. It's called a plane, but it's basically a jungle-covered continent on some larger world.
Yragon used to be a paradise with only one intelligent group on it -- a virus called the alipatur. The alipatur could telepathically communicate, and lived inside other animals, from which they got their sustenance. Eventually, a group of them discovered that they could control these termite-like critters, and built themselves a city.
Then a group of alipatur decided this wasn't enough, and hopped into some jungle apes. They basically forced evolution on the apes, making them become intelligent -- and losing some of their control over them. The alipatur could still do some control on a racial or cultural level, but that's it.
By that point, they'd made the apes -- the grahlus -- into a warlike, expansionist society. The grahlus have taken over Yragon, and forced the native trolls and medusae (they assumably evolved later) into slavery or hiding. They also discovered that there was this one kind of tree, that if cut open just right and treated with a special alchemical mix, could create a short-lived portal to a random plane. They use these portals to raid for slaves.
It was on these raids that the alipatur realized they could be killed with a simple remove disease. This was not a welcome discovery. So they don't like spellcasters, at all.
There's a description of grahlus, including how to use them as characters. The slave raids are also covered. There's a description of some of the settlements on Yragon, but nothing exciting.
And that's about it for this one... Though there is a blurb about the moral aspects of this one. Is it wrong to wipe out the alipatur? Are the grahlus slaves or beneficiaries of the virus? I'm not sure that's one I really want to get into, myself.
I see potential here, but I'm not sure where to take it. It's not a bad write-up... I can see doing something with it, but I'm just not sure what. It can be pretty much used as written, but that whole morality card makes me unsure of how I'd use it. I like the plane, but that angle makes me unsure I could use it. |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2009 : 15:34:16
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The last section of the book covers making various different flavors of parallel worlds. It's nothing overly original, but it could prove useful for some DMs.
Overall, I like this book. I'm glad, though, that I got it on the cheap -- I'm not sure if I find it useful enough to justify the $35 price tag. Other DMs might find it a lot more useful than I, of course -- I'm beginning to think I'm a bit picky with this stuff. |
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 19 Mar 2009 : 16:11:38
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Tevaeral is obviously a campaign-arc, or even the basis for an entire campaign.
Venom Heart and the Primal Gardens sound more like adventure ideas then entire worlds. Both usable - I agree about the pirate ship. Also, it could grow into an entire story-arc by broadening the organization as you've said (maybe even have the Nightmare court of Ravenloft or some dream-god hire the adventurers to put a stop to them). The grahlus sound too much like the Grahluk from the Melnibonean Mythos, which was included in the 1st printing 1e DD. They gave them a twist with the disease thing, but still, a blatant rip-off.
The Ten Courts of Hell sound too much like the Oriental version of the afterlife. Not sure if I could ever use it as anything more then fluff - I don't do planet-leaving adventures.
The Violet is just odd... methinks it would be the final scene of a three-part adventure-arc, where PCs have to go and retrieve something. Thats about it - I can't think of any other use for such a boring place. |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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Edited by - Markustay on 19 Mar 2009 16:12:44 |
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freyar
Learned Scribe
Canada
220 Posts |
Posted - 21 Mar 2009 : 20:02:41
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Now that Wooly's done most of the typing, I'll chime in.
Tevaeral, Magic's Last Stand: I liked this one as a campaign or short arc, like Markustay has said. It would be an interesting place to start a campaign since the character perspectives would probably be different than standard D&D assumptions. I like this better, though, as a place to visit from a more normal campaign world (like Toril, for example). I think the hook of meeting a dragon that wants to go home to Tevaeral is pretty good, actually.
Venomheart, Haven of the Sleep Pirates: I quite liked this one on a read-through, actually. The dragon-ship didn't bother me at all, just seemed to give it an over-the-top Jack-Sparrowish kind of feel (really, can't you imagine Johnny Depp as Harvock?). It's really the characters that stood out, I think, even if they're only good for an adventure or two. I particularly like the idea of an adventure where Harvock hires the PCs to go after the night hag, and they later find out that they're working for a bad guy.
The Violet: My general feelings on this are pretty much the same, mostly useful for a particular type of "retrieval" adventure.
The Primal Gardens of Yragon: I'm also a bit ambivalent about this one. Might be useful for a search-and-rescue but probably not a long-term campaign.
And that's basically it.  |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 22 Mar 2009 : 00:58:22
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I kind of enjoying doing this review, but it's not something I can see myself doing all that oft... This book just lent itself to being reviewed like this.
I'm reading Doom Striders right now, which not only wasn't what I expected when I got it, it's proving to be quite underwhelming. I also find it irksome that the power source that sounded most interesting in the book isn't described anywhere that I can see.  |
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freyar
Learned Scribe
Canada
220 Posts |
Posted - 22 Mar 2009 : 16:16:40
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| Yeah, the discrete nature of the chapters really made it easy to review. ATM, I'm reading Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous and a PDF on d20 sailing and ship combat rules, both pretty good, but I don't know about reviewing... I will say that the Book of the Righteous will probably inspire me to read my PDFs of Faiths and Avatars (and its sequels), which have always seemed a little intimidating to read on a computer screen. |
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Ayrik
Great Reader
Canada
7966 Posts |
Posted - 27 Sep 2017 : 04:16:50
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How could I never haved encountered this excellent book on my planar journeys, lol.
Sold! This scroll was enough. Had to transfer funds to paypal, but soon enough I will possess this tome, mwoohaha! |
[/Ayrik] |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 27 Sep 2017 : 04:28:42
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quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik
How could I never haved encountered this excellent book on my planar journeys, lol.
Sold! This scroll was enough. Had to transfer funds to paypal, but soon enough I will possess this tome, mwoohaha!
I'm glad my reviews proved useful to you. I thought this was a nifty book, and as noted, the structure made it really easy to review. |
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Beyond Countless Doorways
