Guildfleet Yeemo, A Psiwars City

Guildfleet Yeemo is another location for Psi-wars. It is a mobile city of Traders built into former warships. I love the Traders, and I built this fleet to explore what such a city would be like. If you don't know what psi-wars is, the best place to start is probably The Psi Wars Primer. The project is great, and if you haven't read enough of it to get its basics, you should, because it's really cool!

Guildfleet Yeemo is a collection of enormous ships transformed into the permanent home of the Yeemo Clan. They eke out a living traveling from planet to planet, peddling their wares and services as they go. 

Yeemo travels back and forth between the trader belt in the core and the nearer portions of the Umbral rim.  It tends not to vary from this route too much, and can occasionally feel a little paternalistic about the worlds it visits routinely.

This article mostly focuses on the locations to visit in Guildfleet Yeemo. This includes small shops, great industries, and places of interest a party might be led to or seek out.

Imozu, Ancient Backwater

Imozu is another worked planet for Psi-wars. Its probably a lot more integrated with psi-wars than Highlun was. Its home to both Ranathim and Mogwai, as well as other races and dusty ruins. I wanted to explore what a completely Mogwai society would be like, as well as what an alien rebellion in the core might look like.

If you don't know what psi-wars is, the best place to start is probably The Psi Wars Primer. The project is great, and if you haven't read enough of it to get its basics, you should, because its really cool!

Overview

Nestled in the Trader Band, Imozu has seen empire after empire conqueror it, and promptly forget it exists. But Imozu has accumulated lasting marks from all of these empires, accumulating ancient ruins and stubbornly resilient cultures. Once conquered, the old cultures are usually left to themselves as long as there's no signs of an uprising. Imozu is too poor and too stubborn to be worth the effort.

 Imozu has a fairly typical climate and an abundance of terrain to settle, and most empires that have conquered it have left communities on its surface. These communities are diverse but insular rather than cosmopolitan. Over the Centuries they have each grown in their own directions, distinct from both their neighbors and their mother cultures.

The Planet Crimson

The Grand Cluster has many world shrouded in mystery and laden with power. One of the most pivotal to the power structure of the cluster is Crimson, which provides unique psionic drugs to the powerful Pinnacle Empire

Crimson is covered with an insidious thick red fog that gives the planet its name. It rises two miles above the planet's surface, sends most life into a helpless stupor, and corrodes machines from the inside. Just above the fog hovers massive machines kept aloft by powerful psionic flows emanating from the planet beneath. Strange gears four hundred meters across slowly turn in the red skies, while the factories attached to them use some unfathomable process to produce the most powerful psionic drugs in the grand cluster. Bolted onto these factories centuries later are a collection of homes and structures housing the modern population, a collection of native workers who can see the psionic flows emerging from below, occupying soldiers guarding the wealth of the planet, and doomed prisoners recovering from their exposure to the mist in the mines below.

 On the surface itself, protected and isolated by the fog, is an alien ecology featuring forests of an organism shaped like coral and a host of small hardy creatures that thrive in the otherwise hostile fog. dotting this alien wilderness are the old ruins of vast cities made of smooth towers with mushroom tops, massive vents in the surface spewing out the fog, miserable mines where the enslaved criminals of the empire are forced to harvest exotic psionic drug predecessors, and the camps of the flappers, a hairless winged race with a great crests, long beaks, and a taste for human flesh.

Crimson was one of the most memorable worlds of my campaign Called From Exile, and I'm planning a campaign set entirely on it. It is visually memorable, hides immense secrets, and easily lends itself to intrigue, being isolated, hostile, and at the center of grand politics, all at the same time. 

The Grand Cluster and the Moment Drive

Back in Late 2021 I ran a game by the name of "Called from Exile". It was a high-powered game with sweeping scope, in a setting designed to accommodate homages any science fiction franchise I wanted. We had a lot of fun with that game, and I loved the resulting setting... or settings, as the case may be.

Here, I share the Faster-Than-Light system, which is key to making the setting work, and the broad brushstrokes of "The Grand Cluster"

Highlun: A Psi-wars Planet

Highlun is a worked planet for Psi-Wars, a minor fief of a minor Maradonian House, to see just how far a small and measly planet will take you, economically and militarily. The project also might involve space-scotsmen herding space-alpacas. 

If you don't know what psi-wars is, the best place to start is probably The Psi Wars Primer. The project is great, and if you haven't read enough of it to get its basics, you should, because its really cool!

The Refuges: Stornuso (stars in an ocean)

Miruso paddled his kayak through the ice in darkness. The last great star, Friend, had dimmed and then disapeared. The sound of the waves and his paddle in the open ocean were a strong contrast to the darkness of the long night around him. He pulled his fur parka tight -- this was a long trip, and there was no need to waste his heat reserves. He shifted his weight to balance his supplies -- mostly fishing equipment and dried fish.

Off in the distance, Miruso saw a twinkle of light on the water. The familiar light of another traveler! He strengthened the light coming from the skin of his face, hoping that the other traveler would see the increased glow and they could meet up. 

welcome to Stornuso, a dark world of water, ice, fire, and stars.  Its one of the Refuges: one world among many. Its designed for a specific setting, but the geography, cultures, magic and other aspects are free to be used where seen fit.

The World

 Stornuso is a cold world covered almost entirely by water, sheet ice, and iceburgs, and dominated by long periods of darkness. The sky is always black, lacking a proper sun, but studded with a variety of stars that wax and wane in their places. Sometimes they are bright enough to see by, but at other times they are as dark as any night. As the sky is studded with stars, the ocean is studded with volcanic islands. These flare up periodically, belching out light, smoke, and most particularly heat. A hardy folk with their own strange breed of magic ply the seas between islands, following the marine life and the heat.

Human life on Stornuso is made possible by phage magic -- the magic of storing energy for later. Phage magic focuses on Light, Heat, and Motion. The magic always happens at the skin. Light can be absorbed by the skin and released at a later time. Stornusoan mages can slow down ice burgs if only they can stand to touch them with their fingertips ... and later propel their boats with that same power. 

The Refuges: Introduction to Riask

Gravity always wins.  The world is in constant flow. Where ever you are, you are always on a hill, and there is always a slope. And it is always raining. Welcome to Riask.

The Shape of the world

Riask is neither a round world nor a flat one. Its surface is shaped something like a funnel. The closer to the center one gets, the steeper the ground is, and all water flows to the central ocean. This ocean isn't emptied by anything so mundane as evaporation -- There is some sort of portal effect that drains the ocean into the sky. Sages claim that its not actually a portal and its just the way the world is shaped, but eventually just throw up their hands and settle for people calling it a portal.

Riask's ocean dumps directly into one of its two suns. The suns are small and similar to those one would find on a flat world-- glowing balls of heat and light with no discernible source of power. The first sun vaporizes the incoming oceans, complete with its dirt, fish, and anything else that may be in it, and form Riask's cloud cover. Riask's weather is mostly about variations on constant light rain. In fact, it doesn't have a day-night cycle either: just perpetual overcast skies and temperatures that fluctuate based on cloud cover.

Riask seems to be surrounded on all sides by solid stone. Sages are not sure if this is just the way the void makes itself manifest, or if the stone actually exists. Those who deal with it, usually under a lot of silt, know that its quite hard, but can be mined, and doesn't pull any silly tricks like reforming after its dug at least not on any time scale that matters.

The funnel and the suns create five grand weather zones on Riask: Ice, Spring, Tropical, Waterfall, and Ocean.  

The Magic

Riask is the home and center of Vasic Stone Magic. The stones themselves are cut from the foundation of Riask itself -- the black substance is considered by them to be the foundation of the universe. Getting the stone is not easy: the stone is very hard, and in most places found only under a thick layer of sediment and water. Riask's water table is quite high, and the only places where it is naturally exposed are on the cliffs of the waterfall zone.

Vasic Stone Magic includes teleportation. This is core to what Riask is, and prevents transportation from bogging down in the pouring rain and perpetual slopes.Vasic magic touches every part of the civilization of Riask.

Other kinds of magic don't work as well in Riask, though 

The People

Riask is fairly densely populated, at least in its center -- its a relatively small world with not that much living space. The great cities of Riask are almost all located in the waterfall zone, where the foundation stone is exposed and transportation via Vasic magic (both in world and off world) is cheap. The summer zone is also densely populated with food growers (especially rice), though civilization trails off in the spring zone. Goverment types also vary by zone: the great cities tend to have councils elected by those above a certain wealth line, while the summer and spring zones have a more feudal build. Riask is not politically unified, but it does have a certain cultural cohesion.

Riask is mostly inhabited by humans. They've come to riask in several waves, and have made themselves at home. Other species can be found in its great cities, but the country side is overwhelmingly inhabited by humans and the local Mugraggle. The Mugraggle are thin, spindly humanoids at home wading in water. They don't handle dim or bright lights well at all

Mugraggle [0]:  terrain adaptation (Mud, halved effect-50%) [3], Night Blindness (Mugraggle +0%) [-10], breath holding x2 [2], +1 swimming move [5], night vision 1 (brightness penalties) [0]

Murgraggle night blindness doubles the -1 from full day light as well as darkness penalties. On Riask, this is a much smaller problem, as the amount of daylight is constant. Campaigns set solely on riask may halve the cost of this disadvantage. Mugraggle form approximately 30% of the population of Riask. They are generally lower class, though some have risen to high rank, particularly among their own people.

Fauna

Riask is an ideal home for amphibians, and they abound, from giant crocodilian forms to  near-fish to grazers and burrowers. Its also home to a number of aquatic mammals, and a abundance of freshwater crustaceans and snails -- the moist climate is friendly to gilled invertebrates. Flying creatures are rare, at least on the floor of riask -- the ceiling (watered by dew rather than rain) is said to have an abundance of creatures.

More is coming

I hope you've enjoyed Riask so far -- but this is just the start. Riask is the 'default homeworld' for the refuges setting, as it has fairly cheap transportation to other worlds. You'll see a good deal more of this world. Also, this was the original setting Vasic magic was designed for, so all of that information is already out there.  Welcome to Riask!

The Refuges: Worlds of Safety, Worlds of Terror

Every race has a home, every home has a master, and every master is terrible...

The refuges is an inter-dimensional fantasy setting with no main world. Its emphasis is on a wide variety of exotic settings -- and on keeping those settings exotic even to those who have previously seen a lot of other settings.  It achieves this through custom magic systems, alternate physics and world topology, and through flora and fauna. It also achieves this goal through keeping the various exotic elements of the game mostly separate -- magic can do anything if you find the right world... but its likely to not be able to do the other things that you want. Each world will have a distinct feel.

Campaigns in the refuges are about exploration, politics, and facing down the odds. On every world is a new environment that may or may not include magic, and natives much more experienced than you. Its should also be possible to play a campaign based on a single world.

The Refugees

The most common races in this setting are referred to as the refugees. They should be pretty familiar to you: Humans, Goblins, Dwarves, and Elves. These races can be found on many worlds, and form the basis of the societies adventurers are mostly likely to encounter. They also form a class of 'arcane-weak' individuals. While individuals may have magic talents, these races generally excel in spite of magic, not because of it.

While the refugees think of each other as 'common races', they don't have a sense of camaraderie. In fact, they don't tend to have a sense of camaraderie with their larger race as a whole: loyalties are much more likely to be cultural.

The Worlds

Each world in this setting will be unique, with its own geography, fauna, races, and magic. Some worlds will be flat, some round, and some completely new shapes. The biggest division between different worlds will be how strong the local magic is. In worlds with powerful magic, there will be a ruling species that establishes a caste system and rules over the less gifted with varying levels of an iron fist.

Racial Templates:

Human[0]

Humans are one of the most populous and successful races in existence. It is not known how they have done so well or why they are so populous, though many theories abound. Humans are quite diverse, and though they are called “exiles” no one is sure exactly where their homeworld is. Theories abound, however.

Goblin [-7]:

ST -2 [-20], Night Vision 2 [2], High Pain Threshold [10], Reduced consumption 1 (cast iron stomache) [1] 

Goblins are also extremely common throughout the refuges. Goblins are small, green, and hardy. They have a reputation for being able to live anywhere. They hail from the perpetual twilight of Ternog, a harsh world with harsher masters.

Dwarf [1]

Move -1 [-5],  Night Vision -2 [0], DR 1 (from fire) [3],  +1 lifting ST [3]

Dwarves short, bearded, and prefer to live in tunnels. They seem to have a natural gift for working with metals, their primary job on their homeworld. In fact, dwarves seem to be poor farmers, and tend to thrive only when they can get someone to grow their food. Fortunately, craftsmen are appreciated by most folks, and once magic is out of the picture, dwarves are pretty good fighters. Their homeworld of Handak is an underground labyrinth of darkness.

Elves [10]

ST -1 [-10] Perfect Balance [15] Magery 0 [5]

Elves come from Slythana, but have spread out over the worlds. Elves are famous for changing themselves into different forms, and the version given here is an elf without access to magic. Most elves are quite old and have a number of permanent enchantments on themselves. Elves are unusual in that on their homeworld of Slythania, they are the rulers ... at least a few of them are. The elves who do not rule often flee their tyrants of the mind. They don't have the magical power of back home, but they are also no longer at the bottom of the mystic food chain.

More Is Coming

This is the beginning of a variety of worlds I will be creating, a fantasy multiverse with a range of fantastic worlds. I hope you enjoy it!

Invasion of the Hawfax: Hawfax City

The capital of Hawfax civilization, Hawfax City is a shining paradise where about half of all Hawfax live, as well as a substantial number of humans. Hawfax is among the most alien places on earth. Its also one of the most important: the decisions made in the city affect the rest of the world just as much as those in London or Paris. Adventurers in the Hawfax universe hoping to make a difference will eventually make their way to the capital!

Invasion of the Hawfax

In 1894, An alien civilization arrived at earth, ready to colonize it. They didn't blast humanity off of the globe. They didn't ask us to surrender. And they didn't go about terraforming the planet. They merely settled down in the most attractive place on the planet (to them): the Amazon rain forest. They've displaced very few people. They have an incredible disdain for the 'carnivorous savages' that cover the less attractive parts of the planet. But between their technology and the shock of their existence, they've turned the human world upside down.

Aotearoa and its Spirit Walkers

The current Year of Aotearoa is unknown, but likely around 3,000 BC. Mankind is either in the stone age or in the bronze age, with one small exception: the islands of the pacific. A few of the islanders have had the ability to skip across the worlds for ages unremembered. For most of their history, however, there has been nothing other than other versions of New Zealand to travel to, and even now, when there are other worlds to visit, the inhabitants of Aotearoa mostly live as they have for centuries.

Collaborative Gamer's World Building Generator

The Collaborative Gamer is currently on a project to build a series of tables that let you play without a game master. I'm a fan of tables, and one of his projects caught my eye, and I decided to automate it. Its a fantasy map generator, and I think its a strong idea.

This is totally his idea, so I'm going to suggest that you read his site before playing with this tool. Then come and play with the automated version of the tool after you understand the system. In several cases you'll need to fiddle with the drop-downs to get appropriate behavior.

Have fun building a word!







Central North South Upstream Downstream Polar Alpine Temperate Coastal Humid Arid Oceanic Blank Desert Plains Hills Mountains River Lake Arctic Beach Island Swamp Ocean Forest Jungle

Awan: World of Floating Islands

Land of Floating Islands, Awan is lit by one sun and two moons, though the light almost never penetrates to the surface. Most of the vegetation on Awan floats through supernatural means, each at a different height. The native life of Awan consists mostly of giant insects and 6-limbed vertebrates -- hippogriffs and dragons should be considered to have the classic body plan.