The Silver Heaven of Lunia [Gates of Heaven, FRUITFLAVOURED, WIP]

[Eldan]

The Silver Heaven of Lunia

I had just a second to take it all in, before I fell.
Overhead, the sky was deepest, velvet blackness, safe for a faint purple along the horizon, like early dawn creeping in from all directions at once. It was cloudless, and vast, and infinite, and a legion of stars stood there, twinkling in all colours of the rainbow, reflected in the silver waters below.
Then the ocean closed above my head.
As I flailed my arms about in desperation, I felt the weight of my backpack and armour dragging me down. The sword at my hip, the links of mithril chain, the spices I had come to sell.
Dying, inhaling water, I still heard the waves lapping overhead, making the sweetest music, like tinkling chimes, and below them, in the deep, the currents like mighty drums and silver bells the size of mountains.
But then, I heard song over the music of the water, and a dozen green hands grabbed me, swept me upwards towards the surface, even as I fell unconcious.
When I awoke, I smelt the coll night air, the wind, bearing traces of spices and flowers coming from the distance. The water all about me was sweetest nectar, as I once again stared upwards at that sky with it's myriad constellations, each and every point of light a soul, saved and remade into purest light.
Below me, mighty muscles moved as the whale on whose back I was lying carried me off towards a beach of pure white sand, and I knew: while the powers of Celestia would not let anyone drown, they also would not let them enter before tasting the holy waters first.

Lunia is a place of peace and quiet, where eternally calm winds gently blow over a slowly moving sea of silvery water. The sky above is eternally black, safe for the myriad constellations of stars and lantern archons dancing over teh waters, and the purple glow shining through the wispy clouds obscuring the summits of the mountainous islands. Here, the wind is like a faint song in the distance, the water sounds like chimes, the rustling of leaves and the lapping of waves gently calling visitors to rest for a moment from the trials of the planes they have endured in the name of good and law.
From the Silver sea rise the domains and communities of Lunia: an endless number of islands, with beaches of white sand, and silvery grey cliffs. Each island rises to a single, steep summit, obscured by clouds that glow with the layers above, each a different pathway towards englightenment.
The silver sea is Celestia's first line of defence: an entire ocean of holy water. Each being arriving here, upon first entering, is baptized in these waters, wether they arrive by magic or more mundane means. Even flyers find that their wings will not support them for a few precious seconds and boats are pushed below the waves for just a moment. For those of good and lawful alignment, the waters taste like sweet memories and the promise of victory, but the wicked burn with their own sins.
No one drowns in the waters of Celestia, though: the Zoveri, main inhabitants of these oceans, are always ready to save a traveler not able to find a shore on his own, carrying them to the nearest beach or ship.

Reflections:

It is said that, in Celestia, everyone can find their own true self: that one's reflection upon the silver sea is subtly changed to reflect one's inner self, that the music of the wind plays a different tune for every soul, that even the constellations above show shapes of a different kind to everyone who gazes upon them for long enough. It is therefore no surprise that many travel to Celestia to find out more about themselves: not just to travel the paths of the virtues, but also to merely contemplate what they see in peace.


Petitioners:

Lunia is special among the layers of Celestia in that it has a sizeable population of petitioners still in the shape of mortals. These are the souls of lawful good creatures who have not yet taken the shape of lantern archons, and perhaps never will.
The humanoid petitiones of Lunia are those souls who lead good lives, helping others in small things, but never standing up for their ideals, never trying to improve themselves or the world around them. They are those who longed for peace and order, staying content with what they have achieved instead of striving for higher ideals. Here, in Lunia's eternal twilight, they find the quiet life they have always longed for, while still seeing the archons around them and the light from the higher layers through the clouds above, a reminder of what they could become if they only tried.
As they were in life, these are calm and collected people, leading respectable, but ordinary lifes. They live in villages and small towns much like the ones they came from, as healers, judges, craftsmen or farmers. These communities are peaceful and harmonious, people respecting their neighbours and the laws, helping each other in small ways, but never striving to become more than what they already are.

Lantern Archons

The Lantern Archons are those petitioners of Celestial that have left their previous lives behind, unlike those still in human shape. Freed from their mortal desires, they take on a new form of pure light, and a personality of childlike innocence. The lanterns are everywhere in Lunia: hovering over the Silver Sea in groups of many-coloured light, flitting between the stars high up above like new constellations.

The Fortress Eternal and Everlasting

Older than Celestia or time itself, or so it's inhabitants claim, the Fortress Eternal and Everlasting rises from the seas. It's stones are old and weathered, but well cared for by it's caretakers. One can feel the age of the place in every block of stone, where cracks of age appeared and where once again polished away by wind or wave over millenia.
The Fortress is home to a race of constructs calling themselves only the Caretakers, towering suits of armour twelve feet high or taller, crafted carefully from celestial alloys and precious metals. Each caretaker wears a face he shaped himself, his own ideal of beauty, wrought in metals with eyes of crystal.
The Caretakers claim that they did not build the fortress, that it was made by their nameless creator, before the multiverse began, and that their mission is to maintain it until the multiverse ends and their ruler will return and reward them for their diligence. While each Caretaker maintains himself carefully, replacing each part before it fails, they say that there were once many more of them, lost to the sea, demonic invasion or irreversible breakdown.
The Caretakers are great craftsmen: they build gigantic battle golems and siege engines to repell invasions, which always stand ready to assist the archons in that duty. Their greatest pride, however, is in crafting lesser servants and body parts: these are not the crude creation of lesser races. Instead, each creation of a Caretaker is the result of decades of careful work, beautifully crafted from the rarest metals and adorned with gems and carvings. Once crafted, the Caretakers freely give them to the needy as prostethics: any cripple can come to the Fortress and obtain a new arm, or leg, or hand that is so finely made that it's clockwork can not be seen by naked eye.
Below the Caretakers, who are numbered in the dozens now, are their servants and associates: hundreds of golden clockwork creatures, as well as dwarves, gnomes, warforged and other mechanically inclined races, studying the work of the Caretakers. They are patient masters, stating that a decade supervising a student is nothing compared to the eternity they still have to face, or the endless millenia they already endured.

Celestia

The largest island of the Silver Sea, and the one on which the largest mountain rises, is, to most, just known as Celestia. Where others have cliffs, Celestia has grassy slopes that gently fall down to flat, white beaches. As with many outer planar locations, it is difficult to say just how large this island is, but it can be said with certainty that one can travel for more than a day without seeing the sea more than once, instead encountering peaceful farming villages, connected by a well-maintained road system. The isle of Celestia is home to three cities, each formed around a large gate to another plane lying just off their coast: Nemmiron, leading to Arcadia, Heart's Faith, leading to the Outlands and Soul's Desire, leading to Bytopia.

Nemmiron, Gate to Arcadia

Nemmiron, the Gate City leading to Arcadia, the Plane of benevolent Law, lies on the banks and in the delta of a mighty river of sapphire blue water, the Nem. It's many black and golden ziggurats, dark shapes against the purple and violet sky, can be seen from far out to the sea. Each is a temple dedicated to one of the lawful good powers. The two largest Ziggurats, with seven mighty steps each, are dedicated to the Mordinsamman of the Dwarves and the Platinum Dragon, Bahamut. The lie on two low hills opposite each other, each overlooking one of the two banks.
Around and between the Ziggurats lie broad avenues planted with mighty cedar trees growing in the twilight, their mighty branches casting soft shade and their resin filling the air with their scent. The buildings are box-like in appearance, built from the same black marble as the ziggurats or from painted bricks of river clay. The entire city is full of fragrant plants, as flowering gardens have been planted on all the building roofs, and the slopes of the temple ziggurats, watered by an extensive system of irrigation, driven by beautifully crafted white-glazed clay golems working day and night driving the screws and pumps.
At the center of the city lie it's portals to Arcadia, seven arches of black marble, all leading to a corresponding city on the other side.
According to legend, the city of Nemmiron was founded more than three thousand Mechanus-cycles ago. At that time, so the tales say, a demigod daughter of Marduk, visiting from Arcadia, fell in love with a half-dragon son of Bahamut of Celestia. Marduk, since ancient times an enemy of all dragonkind, was enraged when his daughter approached him and confessed her love, and exiled her. So the two founded a new city on the river Nem, Nemmiron. To this day, the draconic and divine heritage is found in many inhabitants of Nemmiron, and many children are born with faint features of dragontouched or celestial. There is another sizeable group of inhabitants here, dwarves of Abellio who, retreating from the unstoppable march of the Formians across Arcadia, have retreated here, entering close trade relations with their Moradinic cousins higher up the mountain.
The ruler of the city, for more than three hundred years now, is queen Negivi, a half-human, half-silver dragon with celestial blood, and head of an extensive family of half-dragons who hold many important positions as high-priests and ministers, said to trace their line back to the founders of the city. The hierarchy of Nemmiron is steep, and few of the commoners and citizens ever gain positions in the government.
The town of Nemmiron enforces it's laws strictly, but not cruelly. Respect for one's elders, the priests and visiting archons is expected under all circumstances, and those who do not follow proper etiquette (or, in the case of strangers, at least make an attempt at it), are frowned upon.
Squads of guards, armed with heavy shields of golden bronze, long spears and heavy Kopesh, each accompanied by a golem, patrol the streets at all hours, and guard towers, toll booths and barracks can be found in each district. It is said that lately, the government has become suspicious of everyone passing into town from Arcadia: many expansionist power blocs from that plane, from the Harmonium over the Formian Empire to the Arcadian Avengers, are said to have designs for the city and Celestia itself and therefore, strangers passing through the gates are subject to intense scrutiny.
The economy of Nemmiron is built partially on trade with Arcadia and the other cities across the seas of Lunia, and partially on the many pilgrims arriving from all over the planes to visit it's many temples, but also on it's agriculture: the river Nem floods regularly every four months, depositing rich soil on the banks. Regularly spaced canals and pumps reach far inland from the river, dividing the land into irrigated, square fields that reach as far as one can see from the top of the great ziggurats. Raised, dry streets cut through these fields, ruler-straight.

Soul's Desire

The gatetown to Bytopia, the plane of organized goodness, is Soul's Desire. It is, a small and peaceful town, compared to the other gate towns of Celestia, a few hundred half-timbered houses, two or three stories high, built on a low, wooded hill overlooking a wide bay sheltered from Celestia's rare storms by two outcroppings of white chalk cliffs.
The inhabitants - mostly humans, gnomes and halflings, some with celestial blood - are for the most part honest, quiet and peaceful people, crafts- and fishermen, sailors and merchants. There is a joke among Planewalkers: "If you find yourself in Soul's Desire, how do you tell a petitioner from a living inhabitant? The petitioner is more adventurous."
Soul's Desire lives from trade, and endless supply of mastercrafted goods and raw materials from Bytopia - ores and timber, mostly - passing in one direction to supply the celestial armies, blessed water, orichalcum, holy and celestial magic items passing in the other, to be passed down the River Oceanus.
The Celestial Fleet of Lunia has many of shipyards here, even if its naval bases lie elsewhere. Ships are built from exotic woods such as bytopian oak, elysian whitewood, darkwood from the deepest layers of the Beastlands, and countless others from far Arvandor and Asgard, and the Celestial Fleet always needs more ships.
The town is ruled by a council with seventy-seven seats, distributed according to a byzantine and complicated system filling several books. The richest trading families, the most important craftsman's guilds, high priests, archmages, the various mortal races, the Archons and a dozen other power groups (which, however, often overlap in the same person) all have the right to elect or appoint their own representatives into the council.
For all it's apparently quiet surface, Soul's Desire also has another side. Under the city lie extensive networks of tunnels and caverns, inhabited by a small and secretive collective of mindflayers, a mere two dozen strong, who, millennia ago, were reformed by the archons and renounced their ties to Illsensine and the elder brains. Through meditation and exercise, they have developed new psychic powers, making them more symbionts than predators. These reformed mindflayers feed on psychic energies instead of entire brains, partaking of the emotions of other sentient beings for their nourishment.
Many pilgrims, looking to ascend the mountain in their search for enlightenment, begin their pilgrimage in Soul's Desire. Among the informed, the city has a special reputation: pilgrims looking to purify themselves come here to, for the last time, indulge themselves, enjoy the many pleasures of the mind and flesh and thereby ridding themselves of their base impulses. This, too, is connected to the mindflayers living under the city: they use psionic constructs and servants to run gourmet restaurants, high-class brothels, theaters, bathing houses, and more exotic, psionically enhanced houses of pleasure of all kind in the town. None of these are large or ostentatious from the outside, fitting into the small town surface of Soul's Desire, and they all make special offers for pilgrims ascending the mountain that make them cheap enough that even the poorest can afford them.
Of course, the Mindflayers use these venues to feed themselves, which, to them, serves the double purpose of temporarily cleaning the pilgrims of the uncleaned desires thus removed and keeping them alive. They see it as a service for the community and the few archons knowing about them at least let them do their business in peace.



Things to detail:
Celestial Fortresses:
Barachiel's Citadel of Stars
The Tower of Flames
The Amber Gates

Cities of Lunia

Heart's Faith
Trader's Rest
Haven
The Realm of the Zoveri

Inhabitants of Lunia
Lanterns
Hounds
Mortals
The Order of Planes Militant
The Celestial Fleet

[Eldan]

Two short paragraphs, both inspired by Rip over on Planewalker.

[blackjack217]

Nice job. I like your take on the petitioners and the everlasting fortress is a nice touch.

[Eldan]

Both not actually my creation

[blackjack217]

ummm... then excellent discription

[Eldan]

Guess so. Well, the Caretakers are my creation. Rip just mentioned that it's an age-themed fortress inhabited by constructs. The petioners are entirely someone else's creation, though.

[blackjack217]

Guess so. Well, the Caretakers are my creation. Rip just mentioned that it's an age-themed fortress inhabited by constructs. The petioners are entirely someone else's creation, though.

Well the fact that I cannot tell the difference between the professionally made bits and your original work is to your credit.

[Eldan]

I have no idea which part is official or not, really. I got it from Rip van wormer, Planewalker's official walking encyclopaedia of all things ever written in D&D.

In the official material, I could only find the name of the fortress eternal.

[Eldan]

Bit o'detail on Nemmiron, with thanks once again to Rip on Planewalker, and to LotRfan for his ideas.

[LOTRfan]

The Zoveri are the descendants of Corellon Larethian and repentant undersea creatures, right?

[Eldan]

I don't think that was ever mentioned anywhere in the books I've read. Where did you get it? Sounds interesting.

They are remotely elf-like sea creatures, though, and usually save those who arrive in Lunia from drowning.

[LOTRfan]

I actually just looked it up. It seems to be homebrew, but I wasn't sure if it was a conversion from earlier books or not. Judging by your surprise, I'll take it as purely homebrew, but if you want to take a look at it anyway, i found it on google as the first result.

EDIT: Upon further exploration of the website, yes, it is all homebrew for a specific setting.

[Eldan]

Well, they were originally in Planes of Law as creatures of Lunia. But having a bit more fluff on them to steal from to be inspired by is always nice.

Edit: though those Zoveri are Chaotic Good, not lawful, so I doubt they'd really fit.

[LOTRfan]

Yeah, that is an issue. Oh well, I'll see if I can find anything a little more appropriate for the plane of pure law and good.

I wonder if the creator intentionally named the race after the one mentioned in Planes of Law...

[Eldan]

I'd say they are the same, reflavoured. There can't be that many Octopus-sea elves.

[LOTRfan]

Hey, I was checking Planewalker, and someone had the idea of Celestial Mindflayers ruling Heart's Desire.

A realm of sapient dinosaurs was also mentioned.

[Eldan]

The Mindflayers were mentioned somewhere, yeah. I think it was in the books, even. They are reformed, lawful good, and peacefully feed on psychic energy instead of brains.

No idea how they procreate, though, without implanting their larvae.

[LOTRfan]

Perhaps they have found immortality? Personally, I'd go with a Deathless template or the petitioner route.

And I found more information of the zoveri. In this version, they either imperfect ex-archons or celestials that will never have the opportunity to become true archons.

EDIT: I just realized that you created this thread, so you probably know this already. Whoops.

[LOTRfan]

Are you planning on statting out the Caregivers?

[Eldan]

I don't stat things if I can avoid it.

[drakir_nosslin]

Very nice work. I especially like the Fortress Eternal, and I might steal that for my own campaign.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the material!

[LOTRfan]

Well, if you're not going to, may I do it? Even if it is not used for the project, it'd be very fun to do.

[Eldan]

Sure, go for it. Creating a few masterwork construct grafts for htem would also be nice.

[Eldan]

Another paragraph or two on Nemmiron, a few basics on Soul's Desire. I'm not entirely sure on what to do with that town, but I have one or two other things to include.

[LOTRfan]

Soul's Desire is looking good so far. I especially like the addition of the Mind Flayers.

[Eldan]

Not my addition, they are canon. Well. They have about two sentences. I just gave them an actual purpose.

[LOTRfan]

I realize that. It's interesting. Just a couple of things to consider: you mention psionic constructs. Are mindless, or do they have some sort of intelligence? Are they servitors, or do they have some free will?

I ask because it couple create an interesting political situation with the Quesars.

EDIT: Never mind, the Quesars are Neutral Good inhabitants of Elysium...

[Eldan]

Eh, I haven't thought about it, really. Probably something that looks humanoid enough not to be too suspicious to a planewalker who has seen a few hundred variations on the "humanoid" theme, and convincing enough in the social department. I'd assume they only have a handful, to work as intermediates between them and humanoid hirelings. An additional level of hierarchy between them and a crusade against "that great evil underneath our town".

[LOTRfan]

What would the main religion be in Soul's Desire? The Lords of the Golden Hills?

[Eldan]

Uhm... never heard of them. Halfling pantheon?

From the way I describe it, it sounds like it might have a few trader and craftsman dieties, perhaps a sea god or two. Mostly, I'd imagine that religion is very relaxed here, as opposed to Nemmiron, which is basically a theocracy with a ruling class determined by race added on top.