Re: Mtal Space : NEW Sphere

----- Original Message -----
From: "George "Loki" Williams" <chaos93@?????????.net>
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Mtal Space : NEW Sphere

> MetalSpace- Revision 1.5- slightly less rough and still in need of
> expansion, but better. This one integrates some ideas Adam had (Thanks a LOT
> for those, they have set off a whole new train of thought for me) I am also
> contemplating a 3.5 style template for 'Tochian sealife....

> Metalspace is the main source of raw materials for the Arcane / Mercane here
> on the prime. An unusually large number of gates to the quasielemental plane
> of mineral and the elemental plane of earth exist within the primary world
> of Garatoch.
>
> This sphere is also very tiny by comparison to other spheres, less than half
> the "standard," size. MetalSpace Contains only three celestial bodies, and
> no asteroid belts whatsoever.

I prefer the spelling "Metalspace" to "MetalSpace". I've never been a fan of putting
capital letters in the middle of sphere names. By the way, why is it called "Metalspace"
and not "Garatochspace" or "Mineralspace"? I'm not telling you to change the name, but I
think that you have come up with a reason that you have forgotten to tell us.

> MetalSpace is a rarity in The Outer Flow, a sealed sphere. The only point on
> the sphere's surface where a portal can be created at the center of the
> sphere's "top," well above the level of the Phlogiston River it is on.

Given the size of a crystal sphere, isn't it going to be fairly hard to find the exact
top. Does anybody have calculations for the time it takes to travel a quarter of the way
around this sphere without using the phlogiston? (The diameter should be twice the
distance to the outermost planet.)

You could give visiting ships a sporting chance by having the portal stay open
indefinately. Crews could then spot the portal from a distance.

> Any
> ship entering this gate will immediately be met and boarded by Garatoch's
> Adamantium Fleet and possibly by Arcane / Mercane vessels as well.

The ships would have to keep casting "Locate Portal" spells in order to stay in the
correct place if the portal was not open all the time. An open portal would allow the
Adamantium Fleet to hang around inside the sphere waiting to board new ships.

Again you could give visiting ships (including the Scro ships that ended up on Verdigris)
a sporting chance by allowing people to shift the location of the portal when they cast a
"Create Portal" spell anywhere within 5 degrees of the exact top of the sphere.

If a "Create Portal" spell closed the existing portal and opened a new one at the location
of the incoming ship, The Adamantium Fleet (and any Arcane ships) would be warned, but
wouldn't necessarily be near to the new ship. The fleet could split up, with each captain
eager to be the first to spot the new ship and board it.

If you did decide to do this another nice touch would be to have "Create Portal" work on
the bottom of the sphere as well as the top. This could be something that nobody living in
the sphere actually knows about, *yet*. You could throw it into a campaign later on when
you need to get somebody past a blockade.

Further details on these two fleets would be nice. Who is in charge of the Adamantium
Fleet? Is it the Dwarves? As the oldest race, apart from the Arcane, I would guess that
they would have been the first race to create a fleet.

If the ships are of Dwarven design (and built out of adamantium) I'd be very interested to
see more about their design. Are they existing designs made out of adamantium or are they
designs influenced by dwarven weapons?

Special dwarven designs would be the most fun. Maybe in Metalspace the dwarves could think
they are as powerful as the IEN is elsewhere and build ships as flamboyant as elven
spelljammers (but in a dwarven way).

> Around the Sun, in an orbit 40 million miles out, are three magic-dead
> globes known as sargassos. These are 100,000-mile diameter areas that
> effectively shut down all helms, and other magic. There are also three wild
> magic areas of similar size which alternate with the sargassos in the same
> orbital plane in which the effects of arcane and divine magic are
> randomized. Neither of these areas have any effect upon The Invisible Art
> (psionics).

> Garatoch
> Planet Type: Spherical Earth Body
> Planet Size: E
> Escape Time: 4 turns
> Satellites: 1 moon
> Day Length: 24 hours
> Year Length: 365 days

I don't actually see a distance from Garatoch and Verdigris to the sun, it would be nice
to know where they are in relation to the sun the sargassos and the wild magic areas.

By the way, I actually got confused and thought that Verdigris was a planet instead of
Garatoch's moon. I think it would be worth changing the Satellites line to say:

Satellites: 1 moon (Verdigris)

So that other people don't make the same mistake if they can't add up to three when they
read your description earlier.

> Continents: None. The Island of Garatoch is the sole landmass of the planet.
> It is an irregular island approximately 400 miles across and rising to
> approximately three miles high. The cone of an extinct volcano whose caldera
> is ten miles across, the city itself resting within its "Barrier Wall," for
> protection from the storms.The surface of the island is barren rock, scoured
> by wave and wind until nothing lives. A single river pours forth from the
> southernmost wall of the caldera, large enough for a brave captain to sail
> upon.

Just because the Island of Garatoch is the only land visible above the surface, it doesn't
mean there are no continents. There could be plenty of underwater continental plates.
Underwater earthquakes on these hidden continents might regularly cause the edges of the
Island of Garatoch (away from the volcano) to get flooded by tidal waves.

The Island of Garatoch itself could be surrounded by a large atoll or coral reef. With the
high metal content in the water I think it would be great fun if the shallow area around
the island was slowly being built up by layers of coral and fishermen had to dodge past a
maze of razor sharp natural coral blades in order to go fishing.

Perhaps the dwarves occasionally go out and harvest the coral in order to melt it down and
extract metals.

With the volcano 10 miles across it must catch a lot of rain. I presume that you have a
lake inside the caldera up to the height of the southernmost wall. If everything outside
the caldera is totally barren it would be very hard work to travel the 195 miles to the
sea to go fishing. Do the fishermen go out in spelljammers to save time and supplies or
are their temporary camps that get washed away on a regular basis?

> Life Forms: There are three different ecosystems on Garatoch- The World
> Ocean, The Underdark, and The City of Garatoch. All lifeforms on this planet
> are completely adapted to the high metal content in the water, off worlders
> however cannot consume it without purification magics. (Fort Save DC 16; Dam
> 1d2 Con; Secondary Dam 1d2 Con). The exception to this is the race of
> Dwarves. Visiting Dwarves suffer no ill effects from the water, and in fact
> praise it as being "hearty, flavorful, and extremely refreshing).

Does the metal content not get removed by the normal process of evaporation and rain?
Surely the sea water would have lots of metals in it and the rain (and any water inside
the Volcano and the river) would be more pure. Perhaps the rain gets contaminated by
metals on the ground.

Do you have any Tinker Gnomes in the city? I'm sure that they would be able to come up
with some sort of steam-powered-water-purification-machine.

> The World Ocean: The flora and fauna of the world ocean are reminiscent of
> many water worlds; fish in all their varieties, sharks, squid, kraken,
> whales, and according to legend a wide variety of sea monsters. Various
> aquatic dinosaurs have been spotted here, and there are rumors of seagoing
> aberrations as well. For the most part this ocean, the majority of the
> planet, remains unexplored except for the fishermen who hug the coast of the
> Island of Garatoch. No sentient seagoing races have been reported.

Perhaps there are large areas out to sea which rise above the water during low tides. In
some places on the planet the "land" could be just below the surface. Maybe entire
civilisations have been on the planet in the distant past and their cities vanished below
the sea in some sort of global flood. Perhaps the titanic beings working around the stars
are working for gods that caused Garatoch to be flooded. Perhaps the Arcane are not really
interested in the crystal sphere itself but are using the dwarves as cover while they
attempt to locate artifacts in cities now buried far below the sea.

Maybe there are other volcanoes below the water waiting to become future islands. Some of
these volcanoes could be spewing out molten metals into the water.

I'd be interested to see what the minerals did to the animals. On Earth we have squids
squirt ink, but imagine what a creature on your world could do if it could use chemicals
that float in the rusty sea.

Maybe there are oysters on your world containing pearls made from gold, lead or any other
sort of metal that you fancy having in the water. Gold pearls would attract treasure
hunters but lead pearls would be fun as the giff would want to use them as bullets! Lead
would also be good as a poisonous agent in the water.

Another metal that could be poisoning the water could be mercury. This is a really nasty
substance, but it can be used to extract silver so would be popular with dwarves if they
could cook seaweed to get mercury and then mix the mercury with rocks to get silver.

An underwater relative of the rust monster could also be fun. It could spend most of its
time quietly filtering tiny quantities of metals out of the sea but would go into a
feeding frenzy if a metal coated spelljamming ship landed nearby.

> The City of Garatoch: The City occupies the entire interior of the extinct
> volcano that comprises the island. Dwarven architecture predominates,
> although a slightly less "monolithic," style of it that on many worlds. The
> interior of the crater has been sculpted over the centuries into a
> beautifully ornate, yet functional, cityscape. The population is mostly
> dwarves, although there are a few other races that have maintained a
> prescience here such as the Giff, gnomes, and humans.

I presume that there are steep cliffs around most of the city. I've heard of places on
Earth where houses and other buildings are cut into the sides of cliffs. I wonder if the
dwarves would do this here. It would certainly provide more living space and would allow
races that like living below the ground to have underground dwellings that are also part
of the surface and the city. In fact the entrances to the Underdark might not even be
below the city, they could be within the walls of the caldera

> (For more on the City,
> see The City of Garatoch description below.)

Huh? This was written at the end of a section that was actually called "The City of
Garatoch" and I couldn't see another section with the same name. Did you swap the names of
two paragraphs and forget to change this line?

> The city itself is completely geared towards mining and smithing, and
> has the highest populations of Dwarven MageSmiths known.

Shouldn't that be "Mage-Smith" as it is two words? Your description makes me wonder where
a mage-smith lives. If a wizard normally has a tower and a smith normally has a forge,
does a powerful mage-smith live next to a giant chimney. Do they have apprentices churning
out ingots of iron ready for them? Does a mage-smith split their time between turning
ingots into masterworked weapons armour and tools and enchanting their products with
magic.

Do the fires of the mage-smiths create enough smoke to be visible from outside the
volcano? Perhaps visitors to the planet thing they are about to fly into a volcano that is
still active.

> The Underdark: The shaft of the volcano extends fro hundreds of miles into
> the core of the planet, as do the mining operations.

The word "fro" is a typo. I think it was meant to be "for".

> Over the centuries many other
> races have been encountered deep within the bowls of the planet including
> illithids, aboleth, deep gnomes, and svirfneblin. There are rumors of two
> great illithid cities, remnants of their ancient empire, existing deep in
> the chasms of the earth. There are also many creatures from the elemental
> plane of earth and the quasielemental plane of mineral here due to the many
> breaches and gates to these two planes.
>
> Guide to the Groundlings: This sphere was originally colonized by dwarves
> under Mercane sponsorship 5,000 years ago. The dwarves were given mining
> rights to the greatest treasure trove in the Outer Flow, in return they
> would never leave the sphere, and the Arcane / Mercane would be their only
> customers.

Unless the Arcane brought the illithids, deep gnomes and svirfneblin or they came via
plane travel, they must have been there before the dwarves and arcane.

Perhaps some sort of disaster killed all of the surface races but left the underdark races
alone. Maybe the illithids know who lived on the surface before the illithids arrived.
There probably would not be any evidence in the City of Garatoch, or on the island, as
volcanic activity would have destroyed it.

> The single landmass is a colossal volcano jutting up from the surface of the
> world ocean. In the centuries since colonization the cone has been sculpted
> into a baroque city, the buildings merging with the walls of the cone itself
> and extending for many miles below the surface. A harsh but extremely
> wealthy mining city, Garatoch exists solely to extract exotic metals,
> minerals, and gems from the planet. When not working in the mines or smithys
> the residents enjoy a rich cultural life including gladiatorial games,
> symphonies, and art.

Now you are back to the city again. Maybe this paragraph is what you were referring to
above. I think it would be helpful for DMs if the stuff about the city was all in one
section. Otherwise they will have to scan up and down looking for stuff in between stuff
about the other parts of the sphere.

> Verdigris

> Population Analysis: Garatoch Military (Dwarves), and stranded scro

The scro set off alarm bells in my head. What is their story? They can't be natives and I
can't imagine them getting into Metalspace by accident. The Scro usually attack elves so I
don't see why they would go out of their way to attack an isolated sphere on the edge of
the known universe.

Were they attacking the dwarves? Were they attacking the arcane? Or were they there for
another reason?

I'm sure you have an excellent reason for the scro to go to the trouble of attacking
Garatoch, but I think you have forgotten to tell us something.

> Climate: cool and dry but very dusty
> Prominent Land Features: endless plains of greenish dust.
> Resources/Trade: none

There must be *something* useful that can be done with the dust. Even if it can only be
used to make paint, I think that there would be a small demand for it. Is the whole moon
made from dust right down to its core? If not, I think that the dwarves would have tried
to build a giant reinforced tube that would hold back the dust while they dug down through
it to whatever is underneath the dust layer.

> Ports of Call: Mithril Base (only for ships of the Adamantium Fleet)

Why is it called Mithril Base? Is it a fortress made out of Mithril or is it just a
metaphorical name?

> Climate and Weather: There are no open bodies of water on the surface of
> Verdigris. The moon seems endlessly flat and featureless, a vista of
> flatlands covered with greenish dust. The temperature never rises above 70 °
> or drops below 50 °. It is calm, monotonous, and dreary.

I think that you need to have some small deposits of water and wildlife somewhere.
Otherwise what are the Scro going to eat to stay alive. Even desserts have stuff in them
that local people can live off of. Perhaps there are underground plants send out roots to
suck up all the water around them. There could even be an underground plant similar to an
infinity vine that has soaked up almost all of the water and killed off almost everything
on the surface.

> Appearance from Space: A featureless coppery green sphere.
>
> Continents: N/A
>
> Life Forms: There are no known lifeforms native to Verdigris. Dwarves,
> humans and giff occupy the naval base, and there are renegade scro (castaway
> survivors of a mission to raid the City below) eking out an existence in the
> barren environment of the moon. There is a minimal amount of flora and
> fauna, all to rare and small to prove a threat.

I'm confused. First you say "there are no known lifeforms", but then you say "there is a
minimal amount of flora and fauna". As I said before there must be something for the Scro
to eat if they are going to survive and there must be water for the rest of the of the
eco-system to survive.

> Guide to the Groundlings: Verdigris is populated almost entirely by members
> of the Adamantium Fleet. (racial proportions are the same as the City, with
> one exception. Giff comprise 25% of the total residents). The giff are the
> descendants of mercenary squads hired by the Arcane to help defend the
> sphere. They have had a good thing going here for generations, and they know
> it. High pay, exotic weapons, and a hereditary commission make this their
> ideal contract. The lack of outright conflict most of the time is
> ameliorated by guard duty at the Arcane Portal and the hunting down of those
> few who manage to escape it and 'jam for the planet and its riches.

I love this sphere but I see a bit of a problem with it.

You have a lot of defence for this sphere, maybe too much. Lets look at this from the
point of view of an invader:

1) For a start most people are not even going to find the sphere as it is in the outer
flow and is protected from scrying,
2) After they find it most people are not going to be able to find their way in,
3) Most of those that do find the portal will have their ships boarded as soon as they
enter,
4) Those that manage to get past the fleet waiting at the single entrance will be hunted
down by an entire navy of Giff mercenaries,
5) Ships that evade the Adamantium Fleet will not be able to find the Island of Garatoch
as the do not have a crystal,
6) Ships that somehow manage to find the island can not land anywhere else and make a
stealth approach so will be forced to make a head on attack,
7) There are no asteroids that invaders can use to hide in and
8) Anyone that hides on Verdigris has nothing to eat or drink.

That is eight reasons why somebody would probably think that an attack or raid couldn't
succeed. I think that you need to give them a bit of a hand if you want them to come in
and give players something to fight against:

1) You could make this sphere feature in some sort of legend that would attract a lot of
people to it,
2) You could make it slightly easier to get into the sphere by letting the portal move
slightly,
3) Making the portal work for both poles and have a larger area will let people bypass the
fleet and make a run for safety,
4) See number 3,
5) Stick enough dwarven forges into the city and a trail of smoke will be seen floating
across the globe. This could be followed back to the source by anyone with a spyglass or a
good roll on a spot check,
6) Let people fly down the eye and use the Underdark to cross the inside of the planet and
put lots of caves and rocky valleys onto the island so that people can hide outside the
volcano and sneak in during the night,
7) Maybe the urdrukar forged by the titanic beings stops the Adamantium Fleet and the
arcane from scrying on ships that evade their blockade,
8) Add more lizards and other edible desert wildlife and cacti, and other plants that
contain water to Verdigris, perhaps throw in an underdark with large freshwater lakes that
are free of that minerals that contaminate Garatoch.

Another idea is to have the illithids pass on information to anyone that they think will
attack Garatoch. If the community in the city doesn't have enough food. Then perhaps they
have been taking food from the underdark and causing food shortages underground. Perhaps
dwarven mines have pushed entire communities out of their native lands. There might even
have been wars fought over underground resources. Any of the underground races could be
willing to work with outsiders to get rid of the surface dwellers.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/