Community Worldbuilding Project [Ishka: Urban and Urbane]

[DragonOfUndeath]

i think the flag is a great idea. the 3 animals signify Ishka completely.

[Silverscale]

Point of Interest: The Flag of Ishka
Location: Floating above Mithral Heights
Description: Held magically aloft near Mithral Tower is a massive flag half a mile long and a quarter mile high. Centered in the middle of the flag is an animated version the Ishka National Seal, in the top third of the circle is a Soarwhale flying lazily through the air, in the bottom left third is an Ishkan Salmon shown chasing the Leviathan in the bottom right third which is in turn chasing the Soarwhale. The background of the flag changes with the seasons from white in winter, green in spring, honeydew yellow in summer, and burnished orange in the fall, always shimmering as if woven of thousands of jewels.

[DragonOfUndeath]

District: Mutant Place

this area is full of mutants as there is an abnormal number of gates to Limbo.

Government: (i dont know the name of this type of government) every 2 years a tournament is held. every person living there enters. the winner is the ruler until the next tournament. 2nd place becomes ambassador and 1-100 become Elites (read: nobles)

Police: The Mutant Response Division (MRD) is peaceful almost to the point of pacifism but if you get them angry they go bezerk. the current leader of the MRD is known to have single-handedly wiped out 3 gate raiding parties in one shift without a single potion or spell to heal him.

(have i missed anything? can someone do somemore fluff?)

Mutant: i don't have time to make a race. can someone do it for me? thank you.

[Silverscale]

you've got the beginnings of an interesting idea.....I'm not sure how this is different from Deepmire, please explain your Mutants, are we talking X-men, slime creatures, freakishly deformed humanoids........?

[BLiZme.2]

Plus from a cosmology perspective were writing for more or less stander E3 not E4 try Limbo or the Far Realm

[DragonOfUndeath]

@ Silverscale: the mutants are similar to mutants in x-men. Deepmire ATTRACTS mutants. mutant place mutates it's inhabitants. also its closer to the surface (i imagined it somewhere between Necropolis and Temple district.). also deepmire is run by the alliance while Mutant place is a talent-based society. deepmire is a black-market with a large abeloth pop and Mutant Place is a very Lawful Good district.

@ Blizme2: ok ill edit that.

[Silverscale]

I'm not sure about having X-men style, and certainly not an entire district of them. Perhaps this could get turned into a P.O.I in the form of a "Mutant University". Although when you think about it what's the difference between an X-men and any other D&D character with psionic or magic powers?

On a different note I came up with an interesting idea last night that was actually inspired by something newD&Dfan proposed about the Stations.

Point of Interest: The Back Doors
Location: See Text
Description: At every Station location there is a guarded doorway. These doorways open into a massive pocket dimension full of hallway after hallway of doors. Each hallway represents a different Station line with tertiary lines represented by stairways. In this way one can travel to any stop in the entire Station system as quickly as they can walk down a hallway and open a door. Access to the doorways is granted only to those who have had a thorough background check by M.I.. The Back Doors were first put in place as a means for the I.T.A. to quickly get between stations as they maintain and repair the System. Other city officials such as M.I. use the doors as a way to get around quickly. There is also a sizable population of Ishkans who have enough money to get the background check for clearance but not enough to regularly use teleportation spells to move instantly around all the time, so they get a Back Door pass to shorten their commute time. The hallways are patrolled by Mithral Golems and monitored by L.E.N.S's similar to the ones found around The Collected Colleges, to discourage people using them as a way to carry out illicit activity.

[BLiZme.2]

I really have to agree with Silvescale on this the mutant district just doesn’t seem like it would fly as wrote maybe make it some sort of Psionic district would be the best bet but I am in general against making Psionic key to any setting as it is something many many people don’t like and is fundamentally hard to hide unlike say vesages(they are obscure as wrote and if need be you can file off the serial numbers and make them cultists), truenaming (could just be other mages), shadow magic (could just be other casters), tome of battle stuff (just other combat classes), legacy items(just intelligent items). For psy you ether say PCs can’t have it and can’t find it or you basically make them all sorcerers with different fluff

@ Silverscale as to The Back Doors I like the idea but I’m not sure that they should be open to the public if this was a WOD setting id say you would need transit 5 berocracy or political 5 and resources 4 at least to get a pass as a civilian but that’s just my impression and I’m sure they wouldn’t allow cargo in any event maybe if we attached an absurd knowledge Nobility and or Local plus a huge fee and your ok for example Nobility DC 40 or Local DC 40 or Nobility DC 30 and Local DC 30 each attempt costs 25000 gp retries alloyed (each try costs 25000) can must chose an option before you attempt the role (some one else can make the check for you, you must specify the applicant before you make the check)

One last thing besides the shops carriages ticket counter and gate to the primordium is there anything else in PCS? I have maps of all the other stations normal layouts but I think I’m missing something in PCS so I’m not calling that one done. I will post the station maps soon

[Owrtho]

Mutants might be those with the augmented subtype rather than Psionic. Could just be a district for people who used to be something else and are trying to get used to what they are now.

Owrtho

[Silverscale]

@BLiZme.2: I completely agree that The Back Doors should not be readily available to the public which is why I put in the requirement for an M.I. background check which itself would be cost prohibitive for 90% of Ishkans. As to being off limits to cargo, yes absolutely. The doorways are only standard 3.5x7ft doors to begin with so at best you're limited to what you can fit on a hand truck which would limit you to only a couple of boxes so given the high price of a back door pass (Which is in addition to the Background check cost) it's simply not worth it as a means to move cargo around.

Looking at the Wiki for reference, a year pass for The Stations is 4 Ponce or 4 gp. Lets say that the Background check costs 5 Gold Pillars or 500 gp, and a year pass for The Back Doors costs 5 Kings or 50 gp.

As to P.C.S. other than the shops, carriages, ticket counter, and Gate to the Primordium, there is the huge 4-face clock hanging from the center of the ceiling suspended over The Great Map that shows the location of all Primary and Secondary Stations denoted by colored circles connected by colored lines to indicate order. Central Stations would therefore be indicated by concentric circles of different colors depending on which lines stop at that station. Also I think we stated somewhere that there is also a Gate to CnI (for the same reason there is a dedicated line that runs between Grand Central Station an Times Square in NYC). And there should also be an Information Desk seeing as how this is basically the gateway to Ishka

[Silverscale]

Ok so we have the Skyport in Mithral Heights, and we've established that there are about 450 Soarwhales probably about 90% of which have been domesticated, and we have a number of Airships. My questions are how many? How are they powered? How big are they? Are there all different kinds/sizes or is air travel mostly for cargo transport?

We've already said that other nations have build small Skyports of their own to be able to trade with Ishka so we know that for every nation there is probably at least 2 Airships that travel back and forth ti Ishka

[DragonOfUndeath]

@silverscale: i think there are ~50. magic powered. the size of a small house. same size. i think they are like planes: some for cargo some for pasengers.

[Silverscale]

So are we basically talking about a fleet of House Lysander Airships? What about personal yachts for the super wealthy?

[DragonOfUndeath]

where would the super wealthy go? they are more likely to teleport to their destination or go to an exotic plane rather then stay on this one. would YOU rather go to some tiny island on you own world or go to an exotic beach plane that stretches forever with no-one except you for miles.

[TheLonelyScribe]

I, personally, love airships, and can't get enough of them. I imagine that they would be the main way of trading with foreign countries, other than the port. I think that there ought to be at least a few hundred of them.

On a related note, do we want elemental airships, like in Eberron, or can we think of some other cool way of explaining their existence?

[Silverscale]

@newD&Dfan: The point of a yacht is not necessarily to travel to some distant island, it's to sail around lazily and show off how much money you have. Yes they probably take vacations on distant exotic resort planets but they also hold week long parties for their buddies aboard their yacht.

@TheLonelyScribe: We already have a very clear connection to all of the elemental planes so I think a fair number of them are similar to Eberron Airships. We also have a lot of steam powered stuff so there are probably a good number of steam powered vessels. Don't forget we also have the magic/technology of the Multiverse at our disposal so there are probably several airships of some exotic design that run on [insert whatever here]

[Silverscale]

[Shameless Bump] If this tread makes it to page 3 of the Forum, then I'm going to assume people have lost interest in Ishka. [/Shameless Bump]

[BLiZme.2]

50 ships seems like it may be too few ships for cargo duty alone. We have implied if not outright stated all of the airships are owned and operated by Ishkans meaning two things 1 the other nations have few if any air ships and most likely use theirs eater in their military or less likely in there shipping. Non Ishkan air ships are likely used to trade with other nations not Ishka. This is because Ishkan ships are certainly much better as most others would either be copies of Ishkan air ships or outdated modules, probably in poor repair (I would think sale of air ship “technology” would be limited for strategic reasons just like most high technology is in the US and I assume Europe ).
So you know we have 50*30=1500 tons of cargo lift for the entire city(if all are air ships are like the ones in Eberon) not counting the soar whales each can lift 22 tons. In addition, I assume the soar whales are only used in the city proper. I also want to point out an Eberon air ship is much longer than a normal house so the 30 ton lode seems too much
Similarly are we using dragon marks and refluffing them to just be spell like abilities feats we could also remove the requirements needed to run Eberon stile air ships
Also shining south the Forgotten Realms supplement has rules for a flying ship as well I don’t have a copy of that book though I just remember that.
Also in one of the plans books has rules for a hot air balloon with plain x times a day.
I leave for a couple days and people call this dead? What gives?
I would think Ishka would also be a spell jamming port if the dm has it at all though Ishkans world just see one more kind of air ship.
The lonely scribe has a point it seems like the sky port would be mainly ishkan and the seaport would mainly be for foreigners coming to Ishka. So we probably need hundreds of such ships.

[Owrtho]

[Shameless Bump] If this tread makes it to page 3 of the Forum, then I'm going to assume people have lost interest in Ishka. [/Shameless Bump]

I don't know about that. I mean I'm interested but don't always have something to say on the topic at hand. Also given something can end up page two in less than a day sometimes page 3 isn't that that far back particularly if it is only because no one managed to post for a day or two.

Also, a somewhat related note to Air Ships, a place of interest.

Point of Interest: The Derelict
Location: Floating above Ishka and outside it
Description: The Derelict was a massive prototype air ship built some time in Ishka's past. It was originally known as the Salvager.
The Salvager was an airship powered mainly by magic designed to retrieve air ships that had floundered, been deserted, or damaged beyond ability to return. It was made completely from metal and about twice the size of the average air ship at the time. It had numerous arms that could grab other air ships and retrieve them. In order to facilitate it's job, it was given the ability to sense a radius of about 20 miles around it to search for damaged air ships and a simple intelligence to navigate to them and retrieve them on its own. The ship even had defences in case hostile people attempted to raid it.

The crew's main job would be to take care of crew that might be on the ships retrieved, make sure the enchantments on the Salvager were in repair, repair the Salvager, and pilot it back to Mythral Heights when needed.

Things went wrong about a year after the ship was made. The crew had begun growing lazy up keeping the ship and managed to convince the spellcaster in charge of monitoring the enchantments to add some more to make things easier. First they made the Salvager able to repair itself. Then they made it able to properly store salvaged goods. Then they made it able to return on its own. There were other minor ones added as well. These changes caused little trouble at first, but when it returned to Ishka after the last one, the excess magic caused unexpected changes.

The ship became hostile and considered anyone on it to be raiders. It began attacking the crew who was ill prepared for the sudden assault. It decided not to return to Mythral Tower but just fly across Ishka. It started not just repairing itself but also upgrading and adding onto itself, often using parts scavenged from other ships or their holds. While it continued to do its initial job, it also began attacking ships that were simply stopped for the time being on occasion.

While these changes were less than ideal, it was eventually decide after debate to leave the ship as it is. Despite being a slight hazard, it manages to gather resources that might otherwise be lost and on occasion save the lives of those that might otherwise die (if they can stay hidden from its defences).

As such whenever it is sighted flying over Ishka (usually every few months but it is rather erratic), people are recruited to go retrieve resources from it. It is a dangerous job, but usually quite profitable. Particularly as it isn't difficult to pocket some of the loot for yourself and is rarely complained about. A raid on the Derelict usually consists of two groups. Those that explore the Derelict and bring back the salvage, and those that protect the ship from the Derelict. The former job tends to be more dangerous but can provide an earlier pick of loot, while the latter job is usually safer.

Due to the salvage from the Derelict being first come first serve, there is often a race to reach it first as well as some competition between the raiding groups.

It should be noted that the layout usually changes some each time the Derelict shows up as does its defences as it attempts to improve them to better protect itself.

Owrtho

[Silverscale]

I had a much longer response to post but them my computer went dumb....it's doing that a lot lately.....when I get it working again I'll post it since I had the forethought to save it......The jist of it was that I like The Derelict, and I had several interesting points about Airships....it was rather long and I can't remember all of it.

I'm also glad to see that Ishka has not died as I feared it might have.

[Silverscale]

Haven't gotten my computer working just yet but I've got my hard drive shoved into another computer for the moment so I was able to pull the response from earlier off of it.

I like The Derelict it seems like a great mid-level adventure.

I agree that the Soarwhales would be used for in city transport while the Airships would be more for international trade. Actually I can see a case for some nearby trade, particularly to the Elven Nation (needs actual name) to the south east, being conducted by Soarwhale as the Elves refused to allow such technical monstrosities as Airships into their lands.

Lets see here Ishka is about 550 miles long including the lake, and about 50 miles wide including Galdren, that gives us roughly 27500 square miles of air space. If we assume that the airspace is no more dense than 1 airship for every 5 square miles, then that gives us roughly 5500 Airships/Soarwhales

So far the break down is
450 Soarwhales
1 Derelick
5049 Other airships

Let's assume there are 9 other Mega-ships of one sort or another. It's safe to assume that though Ishka doesn't have as large and organized a military that it could have given it's sheer size, the Council probably does maintain an Armada, and one of those mega-ships would be it's Flagship. The rest of the Armada probably consists of about 50 ships of various descriptions, frigates, gunships, etc.

Then of course there are the Trade Ships and there are a lot of those, say about 2000.

That leave 2910 for personal yachts, sky pirates, etc. This seems like a lot of Airships maybe some of them are smaller more personal craft.

As to using re-fluffed Dragon Marks, I think we've already usurped some of them with other things like the Mailboxes. I don't see any reason not to use them but I also don't want to seem like Ishka is turning into Ebberon. There's nothing saying we can't re-fluff the airships to be powered by some other sort of magic. Don't forget we have all the knowledge of the Multiverse here so if someone wants to have a ship powered by a bunch of hamsters running for all their worth on their hamster wheels, then I see no problem with that either. Also let's not forget all those beautiful Airships from Final Fantasy 12.

Sorry about the wall of text I just had a lot of things to say.

[BRC]

Man, the sky above Ishka must be positively buzzing.

However, considering that most Ishkans live their lives in a cramped city, perhaps never seeing the sky at all, I imagine there would be a severe dichotomy between standard Ishkans and these "Sky Folk". I can't imagine that most Ishkans would willingly go onboard an Airship considering where they've lived all their lives.

[Owrtho]

Well, some might just for the novelty of it. For one thing they might not have any particular fear of heights due to not encountering them often. The open sky might be a bigger issue then the lack of ground, and the sky can be solved by going inside the cabin.

Also, forgot to mention it in the description, but the Derelict would be around 3 to 4 times the size of the average modern airship due to its upgrading of itself (even though airships were smaller when it was built). Also, given the size of things, it might have a bigger radius for detecting other airships. It also may not have quite been clear, but it spends most of its time outside Ishka's airspace (due to salvaging trade ships and the like that had problems mid route).

The various numbers seem good for Ishka's airships though. Might even be able to increase the number of trader ships as many of them would be travelling outside Ishka at any given time, and the 2000 would just be the average number that is currently in Ishka.

Owrtho

[Silverscale]

Man, the sky above Ishka must be positively buzzing.

Well yes and no.....don't forget that a large portion of the Airships represented by that 5500 number are only 50ft long or less and even the 2000 or so Trade-ships are probably not much longer than 250ft maybe some of the bigger ones are 350ft. That would make the Derelict about 1200ft long. Actually the area that would be the most a-buzz with airship activity is around Mithral Heights, with a fair amount above The Market District and The Port District, particularly near the warehouses.

However, considering that most Ishkans live their lives in a cramped city, perhaps never seeing the sky at all, I imagine there would be a severe dichotomy between standard Ishkans and these "Sky Folk". I can't imagine that most Ishkans would willingly go onboard an Airship considering where they've lived all their lives.

Well when you take into account Galdren, The Canal District, The Lake District, Mithral Heights, and the surrounding mountains, not to mention the entire top layer of the canyon, there is actually a fairly sizable portion of the population that can regularly see the sky above Ishka. At least 5% possibly as high as 10%. And, the people who live on the top 3-4 layers probably see the sky reasonably often....if not every day, then at least once a week. But yes I agree there are probably plenty of Ishkan's who would be wary of spending much time on an Airship.


have more to post but i need to go charge my cell phone......

[Silverscale]

Ok got my phone charged.....here's another one of those Mega-Ships

Point of Interest: The Queen of the Skies Skyliner
Location: The skies above Ishka
Description: Built by the same company that runs Sunset Isle, this massive luxury skyliner was built to give vacationers a world-class tour of the major vacation destinations and breath taking vistas as they travel in style and luxury. Leaving port from it's own private dock in Mithral Heights it travels to several different locations including Sunset Isle, affording magnificent views along the way. The Queen of the Skies is over 1000 feet long with 10 decks including 250 state-rooms, restaurants, a casino, and 2 observation lounges, one fore and one aft.



Also I did an image search of some interesting Airships unfortunately I can't put them up here without their URL......darn. Anyway a google-image search for Airships brings up some interesting pictures

[BLiZme.2]

Here are my tier 3 and 4 station floor plans I plan to post the main line and tier two standard flour plans later I am having trouble with PCS.
Also I think a back door pass should be a "key" as in a portal key that is locked to its owner and allows them to ether walk in to the station or the back doors when they go through the stations main door?

[Silverscale]

Here are my tier 3 and 4 station floor plans I plan to post the main line and tier two standard flour plans later I am having trouble with PCS.
Also I think a back door pass should be a "key" as in a portal key that is locked to its owner and allows them to either walk in to the station or the back doors when they go through the stations main door?

That's an interesting idea. I like what you've done with the station designs by the way.


I know we've touched a couple of times on the world outside Ishka, you know all those nations it trades with. One of the points that has been contested is wither or not Ishka is the economic center of it's world, which given the size is entirely likely. However, on a world big enough to support a massive city/state like Ishka, I think it is possible that there is more than one mega city. Even if there is only one more mega city the size of Ishka, that would give a clear rival in the world market for goods. I'm not proposing we try to flesh out another city/state like Ishka because Ishka is the primary location for the Campaign World, but perhaps if we could give it a bit more definition then "that other nation over there"

I'd say there are roughly 50 major nations around the world, at least major enough to trade with Ishka and/or "That other Nation over there". We've already decided that one of them is a nearby "Elven Nation" that has loose trade agreements with Ishka but has forbidden Airships in their air-space. There is another nearby nation across the Western Mountains that supplies a lot of refined ore (iron, silver, gold, copper, etc) to Ishka in exchange for military protection.

[Owrtho]

Not so sure about having another mega city on the same planet as Ishka. Might however have another one on a different plane that is rivals with Ishka. If so, I suggest giving it a name, basic description of it's layout, and then if more infor is desired, a separate thread to expand it in.

Owrtho

[DragonOfUndeath]

name: Buther A.K.A that city over there.
Location: either the other side of the continent or on another plane.
Basic layout: built into a Mountain.

[ForzaFiori]

name: Buther A.K.A that city over there.
Location: either the other side of the continent or on another plane.
Basic layout: built into a Mountain.

Interesting. Perhaps the original inhabitants, rather than humans, were dwarves or kobalds, or so other form of tunneling race. It can have many of the same characteristics of Ishka (the huge number of layers, lack of sun, underdark caverns, even an underground river) only inside a mountain rather than canyon, so the layers will be more circular rather than long and skinny.