Re: Faeriespace

From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Faeriespace - Was: Fairyspace Expansion


> David Shepheard <david_shepheard@???????.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Lots of courts rather than the two courts that
>> Charles proposed?
>>
>> OK, then. Sell me on this.
>
> I think Edward explained it better than me.
> "Kingdoms" is probably not a good word; I'm thinking
> more like barons, at best.  A strong lord in his
> fairy-tale castle, with a "court" of family and
> servants.  That's pretty much what I had in mind;
> certainly no sprawling kingdoms and such! :)

OK. I can go with that. Especially if many of these courts are only the size 
of villages or hundreds. A castle surrounded by farms is a small enough 
entity to not be seen by me as a government.

Of course I'd want to see some sort of variety, where some races live around 
a treehouse instead of a castle and others live around an underground hill 
fortress. The more variations there are on this the better. The fey races 
should be the most fun as we could have giant mushrooms or lakes as the 
homes of their lords.

>> If worlds fall off of the tree, I'd like to see them
>> fall out of the influence of Aelivere. I would like
>> Aelivere to have a true neutral alignment and I'd
>> like him to carry out individual actions that keep
>> all other alignments in balance. So, I'd prefer to
>> see Vastdarken apples remain on the tree. However,
>> if you want to create "windfalls" on the bottom of
>> the crystal sphere* you could introduce a new bunch
>> of "invisible" societies that are not under
>> Aelivere's control.
>
> Interesting.  I sorta saw it like this: there are
> innumerable "world fruits" in the tree.  Four are
> "ripe"...that is, they're planet-sized.  The rest are
> smaller, somewhat like asteroids & moons.  As they
> grow, they get bigger.  Eventually, one gets too big
> and falls from the tree.  The process takes centuries.
> When a world falls (again, a LONG process), it falls
> into the "roots" of the tree, where it rots.  Again, a
> process that takes a LONG time.  There are innumerable
> "rotted" fruit down there; only four are still planet
> sized.  Again, the older, more rotted fruits fill the
> same role as asteroids/moons.  They slowly vanish into
> the void, absorbed by the roots of the tree,
> continuing the cycle of life.
>
> That's kinda what I had in mind :)

I like the idea of lots of unripe worlds*, and also like the long fall, and 
also like the slow rot. (Check out my other post about "Planet Seeds". Some 
of my ideas were very similar, although I didn't think of having multiple 
generations of worlds on the go at the same time.) I could also see unripe 
worlds being similar in function to Smalljammers, with one having a growth 
spurt every time a full-sized world falls off of the tree.

<poor quality joke>
* = I can imagine you writing a "Mann of the Month" article! Arf! Arf!

:-P
</poor quality joke>

However, I think I'd still prefer Vastdarken to be a layer of branches so 
that its inhabitants could move up their stalks and travel along the tree. 
(If you want Vastdarken to be different to Upgood, then maybe it could have 
a different type of fruit instead of apples. Maybe something that isn't so 
nice to eat. How about crab apples? Are they different enough?)

I'd like to see the roots of the tree surrounded by a swampy compost layer 
that has dead worlds, dead suns, dead leaves and other things scattered 
across its surface. I'd like to see those things rot, but not to vanish. I'd 
like the swampy layer to stay fairly consistent so that the tree absorbed 
material at the same rate that worlds, suns, leaves and other objects fell 
into it. I'd like these rotted regions to have safe paths between the swamps 
and bogs, where NPCs can travel across the bottom of the sphere looking for 
uninhabited castles and other buildings to loot.

I'd rather see the evil creatures living on the tree and undead creatures 
hailing from the rotting cities around the tree roots.

>> The more I look at what everyone has said, the more
>> I think that Aelivere should be a dryad - *the*
>> dryad - from within the great tree. This would
>> give him the ability to be anywhere on the tree.
>> (The smaller dryads mentioned for Upgood, should be
>> dryads who live within the normal sized
>> trees on the surface of the "apples" of Upgood.)
>
> Interest idea, I like it :)

Thanks.

>> If we tie this sort of thing in with your windfall
>> idea, we could have a "cycle of life". So far we
>> have:
>>
>> 1) The great tree (The Shrakma Tree) create
>> everything lesser plants need to live,
>> 2) Lesser plants creating food for plant eating
>> animals and
>> 3) Plant eating animals creating food for preditors.
>
> Basically, yes.

I think we are on the same page here. I basically want Faeriespace to work 
as a standalone sphere that doesn't need imports or trade to survive.

>> <Creatures as Ships>
>
> I agree that the critters should be tied to the tree,
> and can't leave the sphere! :)

I'm guessing we will be using gigantic bats for Vastdarken.

;-)

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/