Crossroads II: I'm on a Mammoth.

[Mith]

I likely won't be around for this weekend's Skype call. I'll let you know if I can join.

[Admiral Squish]

Unfortunate to hear you two will likely be unable to attend. I do hope things work out so we can have a whole bunch o' people, I always like swapping ideas with a big group.

I'd love to see your take on African, Seckie. It's certainly proven challenging to find timeframe-appropriate information from unbiased sources thus far, but I have faith you can pull it off.

[Mith]

A note for the Artic Over-culture, I will try and see if there is a museum in my area that has an Inuit exhibit, or talk to the Native Studies Department at University to fill out the empty sections of the Over-culture.

[Steckie]

Alright, first problem: do i talk about the culture of people that come over from Africa or people born in slavery?
There's people from the Angola area, people from Subsaharan Africa and a mixed culture group that descended from the slaves already in Vespuccia. A very diverse group, and i'm not quite sure how to combine those three in an overculture.
The most complete would probably be to describe the mixed culture group as African. Sure there are still new slaves coming in from Africa, but those are going to be influenced by other cultures as soon as they step off the boat.

[Admiral Squish]

Alright, first problem: do i talk about the culture of people that come over from Africa or people born in slavery?
There's people from the Angola area, people from Subsaharan Africa and a mixed culture group that descended from the slaves already in Vespuccia. A very diverse group, and i'm not quite sure how to combine those three in an overculture.
The most complete would probably be to describe the mixed culture group as African. Sure there are still new slaves coming in from Africa, but those are going to be influenced by other cultures as soon as they step off the boat.

That's always a tricky question. In an ideal world, I'd probably want to write the subcultures first, then compare/contrast and rewrite, putting the common traits into the main culture.
I think your best bet would be to describe the mixture of cultures found in the Americas as the main culture.

You know, I'm suddenly questioning if 'slave' should be a subculture or the main culture. I mean, the vast majority of Africans in the new world would be slaves. Perhaps 'free' would be a better subculture.

[Steckie]

Ah, but freed slaves usually just take on the culture of the nation they live in. After all those ex-slaves speak the language, know the customs, have probably been born there and have their whole lives there. And it is well known that freed slaves often build a life and purchase one or more slaves for themselves. They didn't go around fighting against slavery, they participated in the system.

Maybe it makes more sense to remove the subcultures and just keep African as a whole? We're in 1750, so there's a large amount of people born in slavery in Vespuccia. There are new people coming in every year, but there's a lot more already living there.
The mixture of Subsaharan and Angolan cultures (the two regions most slaves came from) is probably the dominant culture among African people in Vespuccia and new arrivals may just adapt to that culture in an attempt to fit in with the other slaves. They've been ripped out of their lives, crammed on a boat for a few months during wich a lot of them died, unloaded on a strange land and forced to work for a bunch of people they don't understand. I'd say they'd try to adapt to the new situation just to keep their sanity.

[Admiral Squish]

I don't know, I think it would be sorta odd to have European with five subcultures and only one African culture. I could see making the mixed-culture-raised-in-slavery thing the main culture, but I do think we should probably HAVE the options available for those who'd want to play a character raised on the continent.

[Mith]

Perhaps a newly arrived slave that managed to escape from slavery? That could be interesting, perhaps an adventure that is to get South to safe haven.

It is weird thinking about the Underground Railroad being flipped in this setting.

[Admiral Squish]

Perhaps a newly arrived slave that managed to escape from slavery? That could be interesting, perhaps an adventure that is to get South to safe haven.

It is weird thinking about the Underground Railroad being flipped in this setting.

Hmm... You'd probably want to go over water, since the land route would add hundreds of miles and take you through a lot of Spanish territory. And we don't have railroads. So perhaps a new name would be in order. I could imagine the route to the freeman state being called 'the night ferry' or something. Make your way west and south to the great river, follow the flow south to Noveau Orleans, catch a ride on the night ferry, hop islands across the gulf until you make it to the free lands.

[Mith]

The Midnight Ferry?

How organized were escaping slaves at that point in history, anyway?

[Admiral Squish]

Another long, meandering talk! Lots of good stuff!

Undead
Something I'd like to do in the future is mess around with the undead type. Basically, I'd be stripping away the negative energy association from the base type,and making three subtypes of undead.

Undead would become inherently mindless, essentially puppets moving under magical power. All undead would have to have either the [-] or [+] subtype

Undead with the [-] subtype are your typical undead, negative energy associated. While not inherently evil, negative energy creatures feel the presence of positive energy as uncomfortable and even painful in large concentrations, so when they're not directly controlled the mindless or extremely dumb gravitate toward places with little life energy around and may kill living creatures that come too close.

Undead with the [+] subtype are the inverse of traditional undead, fueled by positive energy an harmed by negative energy. Much like living creatures, they feel a natural discomfort in the presence of negative energy, so they may clash with negative energy undead where they find them.

Undead with the [Souled] template are the only ones with minds. These beings have a soul attached to them, either artificially or naturally. The soul's traits may be suppressed in some cases, but you need the structures of a mind to make an undead creature intelligent. A souled undead can be corporeal, with the soul inhabiting its own artificially reanimated body or another's, or incorporeal, as with ghosts. Naturally occurring undead are almost all of this subtype, as are vampires, liches, mummies, and similar. they can be either positive or negative.

Also, we decided the skeletons made by the dead god would be their own template, both for the hive-mind sort of effect and the bone-hardening from the powerful aetheric forces involved. Not sure if they should be positive or negative, though. Probably negative.

Treastie
I'm still working on a full, comprehensive writeup of how aether, magic, the spirit world, and outsiders all fit together. However, we did come up with the idea that somebody like Newton probably wrote a big o'l book on the subject in-universe.

Dragons, horned serpents, and feathered serpents.
We talked briefly about how the different varieties of dragon and how they were related.

Basically, you have your classical legged-and-winged dragons in europe. As you travel east, the dragons get more serpentine, with shorter legs.

On vespuccia, it goes a step further, the legs disappearing entirely. While they look like snakes and we call them horned serpents, they are dragons by their nature, their new forms simply an example of convergent evolution.

Feathered serpents are a variety of horned serpent that has developed their scales into feathers. They're also more social than other horned serpents. They're still largely solitary, but they have festivals and gatherings through the year and interact with humans more frequently.

Skinwalker Prestige Class
We mulled over this idea in a couple of ways. The basic idea was simple, a character that pulls on a suit of animal hide or fuses with an animal spirit and transforms into a hybrid of man and animal.

The first idea was a sort of magic item, some kind of suit of leather or hide armor that could allow the wearer to gain the traits of the animal it was cut from, as with beast form, but while keeping one's hands.

The second idea was part of the totemic race that keeps getting tossed around, merging with the animal spirit to gain lycanthrope-like traits.

The third idea was a sort of race-template deal, like the old jaguar/eagle warrior idea.

Ultimately, I figured it would probably be best to make it into a prestige class and give the skinwalker idea another shot. But even there, the ideas are still pretty scattered. Should it be an attuned magic item, should it be just a normal hide and the spirit makes it real, should it just be human and spirit with no hide involved? Maybe the skin could act like an animal companion when you're not using it (which would also serve to limit your possible forms). Maybe you should be able to have multiple animal transformations. Maybe you should be able to go full-were and take on a totally animal form.

Southwest
This area came up a couple times, but we got some really interesting ideas.

The Hisatsinom are an urban culture, with fortified cliff cities and advanced infrastructure. Much like dwarves in many classic fantasy settings, they're perfectly content to barricade themselves in their cities and ignore the rest of the world. They have strong defensive forces, but not much active military. There was a vague suggestion of drider soldiers, and I sort of tied it back to the skinwalker idea by suggesting enchanted monstrous spider exoskeletons that a warrior could climb into to give them the ability to walk up and down the sheer cliff faces and spin webs while they could still do their normal warrior stuff with their arms.

To fill the gap outside their cities and solve the problems of banditry by hungry apachean tribes, the Hisatsinom high priest struck a treaty with the Apachean tribes of the southwest. The treaty set up a framework to grant the Apachean tribes access to Hisatsinom cities and supplies, in exchange for service as a sort of mercenary military force. Like watch dogs, the Apachean tribes patrol the areas between the cities, keep the Web Below safe from bandits, and fight off or warn of threats that come too close to the cities. The exact details of the arrangements were of course left to the negotiations of the individual cities.

In the last fifty years, though, there's been something of a wrench in the works, in the form of the Great Basin tribes, driven south when the little folk nation drove them out. Banditry returned, the Apacheans didn't like the idea of new competition for their comfortable positions, and nobody really knew what to do with the refugees. In the years hence, the Hisatsinom have struggled to assimilate them, trying to shuffle and train them into a more serious military force, to try and use them as a front line to fight the advancing Mexica. Some are reluctant to arm and train these newcomers, fearing a shift in power, but this mistrust seems to make the problem worse than arming them did.

Northeast/Southeast
In the southeast, we have a rigid caste system with sharply-defined roles and absolute rules. In the northeast, a similar arrangement collapsed during the little ice age, and, much like the russian revolution, the people decided to go the opposite direction as hard as possible, placed great importance on personal agency, independence, equality, and democracy.

Southeast culture describes the missisippian cities all up and down the mississippi.
Cahokia, being much larger in this timeline, is much like new york, new york. It's such a hub of so much commerce, so thriving and urbanized, that it and it's satellite settlements might actually be worthy of its own subculture.
East of the river out to the ocean forms a second subculture.

Most of the northeast culture is between the green mountains and the east coast, consisting of small tribes being pushed west by the colonists.
Ganonsyoni's heartland is the northern new york area but it extends further west, all the way to Lake Eerie.
The second is the Great Lakes subculture, which covers all four of the biggest lakes, and features a thriving trade of natural resources and a blending of cultures around the great bodies of water. Also otters.

The North
The north is, as always, a complex place. We did come up with a good name for the stalemate truce that holds the three major powers in check: The Frozen War. Obvious parallel to the cold war, references the environment, and implies the war is not gone, just frozen, ready to thaw.

Mammutaq shares a peaceful border with the plains, the mammut not particularly suited to life on the open fields, and the plains tribes' horses not well suited to the cold and the trees of the forests. They will venture into each other's lands, occasionally lending mammut muscle to the fight against the dead god, or swift steeds to ferry messages.
Mammutaq, now no longer needing to keep the eastern border quite so well-manned with the war frozen, slowly expands westward, the independent subarctic tribes being pushed back. However, even as their lands expand, internal tension grows, the differences and distances between the northern and southern ends of their territory beginning to cause friction.

The West
Fusang's cultural groups are getting a shuffling.

The main culture is going to describe the 'first wave' group of immigrants from the mainland. These folks were multiplying and setting up the colonies for 100 years before the Qing took over the mainlands, they laid the foundations and bred with the natives. Mostly laborers and commoners, with a handful of higher-ups. They're about 25% native overall, and make up about 50% of Fusang's population. Strongly Chinese, but notable native influences, culturally.
the 'second wave' happened when the Qing took over. Traditional, upper-class families and members of the Ming dynasty, as well as their wizards and priests, fled the Qing takeover to make up the bulk of this wave. They're very proud of their 'purity' and brought great amounts of wealth, status, authority, aas well as valuable skills and knowledge. Make up about 20% of the Fusang population, but have a great deal of influence.
The 'third wave' is actually made up of 'first wave' settlers who refused to obey the second wave and left to live among the natives on the plateau. They thoroughly mixed with their neighbors, living the native way of life until the little folk drove the mixed people back to Fusang with their heads hung low. They're strongly native influenced, about 50% native by blood and culturally blended.

Northwest cultures are insulated from chinese influence, and in most cases, attack, by a barrier of sasquatch. While the coast nations were dramatically reduced, their numbers are beginning to recover, mostly on the islands off the coasts. While the Haida are the largest and most aggressive group, they are only about a third of the total population of the northwest coast natives.

[Mith]

With the Tuniitaq, I think it would work better to have the regions set up with Tuniit stone settlements that double as trading posts and meeting points for the nomadic tribes, with most of the populations roaming the tundra, following the traditional seasons. The Dorset did build stone buildings, so this does have some basis in actual history. The different outposts cooperate on a large scale, with small level competition over control of certain trade. This to makes more sense, since the concept of expansionism and large scale government doesn't really work for traditional Arctic way of life. So no central government, but perhaps a sense of Nationhood.

[Admiral Squish]

Midnight Ferry
Looking at the underground railroad wiki page, it seems there did exist a similar route leading slaves south to Spanish-controlled Florida, starting in the late 1600s until shortly after the american revolution. Further research says the Spanish had an official policy from 1690 on that said that any slave leaving protestant lands could claim religious sanctuary to be free, but they would have to convert. I could see either option being a valid route, though. Due south overland to Florida, or east, south, and across the water.

Tuniitaq
This is a tough one.
On one hand, you do have a valid point, the kind of nationalist, centralized government we've been talking about is uncharacteristic of arctic cultures.
On the other, decentralizing what we have would make a lot of the ideas we have in place impractical.
So, how can we reconcile these?

I'm thinking back to the first contact between first contact with the Tuniit and the Thule. Inuit myths say the Tuniit were huge and strong, but easily frightened off. I think we could interpret that to mean the Thule arrived aggressively, with the intent to drive off the Tuniit. In our timeline, the Tuniit aren't so easily driven off. When a newly contacted aggressive culture pushes, the Tuniit look to their neighbors who share their giant blood and band together, fending off the attackers and taking many prisoners. The fighting solidifies this view of fellow giant-blooded as an extended family of sorts. Sort of 'cousins'. When the fighting's over, they find their prisoners are small, weak, and they freeze in the cold. While there are human-sized individuals among the Tuniit culture, they were a very small minority, and with this sudden influx, their struggles really come into focus for the majority. The Tuniit decide they need to take care of their humans, as they are clearly ill-equipped to survive. Over time, this sense of family, and the idea that humans need to be given the gift of giant blood for their own good, solidifies and grows, until we get to the modern era.

Now we have a sort of sliding scale from 0 to 3.
0 is for outsiders. 0 has no rights, and can be legally killed or captured without consequence.
.25 is for those given permission to enter tuniit lands by the state. They have no capacity to act within tuniit society, but they can't be captured/killed freely.
.5 is for traders and the like. A few more protections, they can trade legally, but still can't participate in the society and they can't live there forever.
.75 is captured outsiders. Not too far beneath human citizens, but with a few more restrictions (at least until they prove their loyalty/obedience)
1 is basic citizen standard. Humans, get cared for by the state, but have to obey their higher-ups and perform labor like mining and farming.
1.25 is for humans that married into Tuniit families. More rights, usually easier tasks.
1.5 is humans who join the military. They have a specific role, more freedoms, better supplies.
1.75 is distinguished soldiers or humans who've birthed a tuniit.
2 is higher citizenship, for human officers and all tuniit. They have greater authority, they can order unoccupied humans around, and they can own property.
2.25 is tuniit soldiers, state employees, or parents, and mid-rank human officers. Higher authority, can now marry humans.
2.50 is tuniit basic officers or valuable state employees, and the highest-ranking human officers.
2.75 is tuniit mid-rank officers and local state officials.
3 is for tuniit high-ranking officers and national state officials.

For anything above 0, add .1 if female. While it's not enough to bump you up a rank, females outrank males by default.

[Murk]

Undead
Something I'd like to do in the future is mess around with the undead type. Basically, I'd be stripping away the negative energy association from the base type,and making three subtypes of undead.

Undead would become inherently mindless, essentially puppets moving under magical power. All undead would have to have either the [-] or [+] subtype

Undead with the [-] subtype are your typical undead, negative energy associated. While not inherently evil, negative energy creatures feel the presence of positive energy as uncomfortable and even painful in large concentrations, so when they're not directly controlled the mindless or extremely dumb gravitate toward places with little life energy around and may kill living creatures that come too close.

Undead with the [+] subtype are the inverse of traditional undead, fueled by positive energy an harmed by negative energy. Much like living creatures, they feel a natural discomfort in the presence of negative energy, so they may clash with negative energy undead where they find them.

Undead with the [Souled] template are the only ones with minds. These beings have a soul attached to them, either artificially or naturally. The soul's traits may be suppressed in some cases, but you need the structures of a mind to make an undead creature intelligent. A souled undead can be corporeal, with the soul inhabiting its own artificially reanimated body or another's, or incorporeal, as with ghosts. Naturally occurring undead are almost all of this subtype, as are vampires, liches, mummies, and similar. they can be either positive or negative.

Also, we decided the skeletons made by the dead god would be their own template, both for the hive-mind sort of effect and the bone-hardening from the powerful aetheric forces involved. Not sure if they should be positive or negative, though. Probably negative.

While I really like the idea, I'm a bit in doubt about the [+] subtype undead. Those actually seem more dead than undead. If they are just meatbags filled with positive energy, how are they related to your normal undead?

I like the distinction, but if I'm correct, there was some uncertainty about constructs in this setting too, right? That they were not so much medieval robots (as, in all honesty, they kind of are in normal settings), but objects animated by spirits or magic? That sounds a lot like these [+]type undead.
You might make the distinction that either negative magic can be used to bring an object to life (often done with bodies), which makes it undead, while positive magic can be used to do that same thing, making it what used to be a construct (often done with, say, totems, or statues).

I very much like that undead with a soul attached have their own subtype. I'm not sure what the conclusion was about the stance of respectively Inca and Aztec on undead (there was some discussion on that too, once, I think), but I would very much like to see a culture clash in it. One using undead (without the souls), as cheap labour forces, which are absolutely not respected, while the other culture has sees them (with the souls) as immortal leaders, almost worshipping them. Makes for some great differences (and possibility for conflict).

-----

On a totally unrelated note: I see that most pieces of 'brewing done have an illustration, but some of them don't. Since I'm still looking for a way to contribute to this project, I might be able to draw some illustrations for classes, prestige classes, creatures (possibly even locations) you are otherwise unable to find (or which would eventually lead to copyright/open source problems).
I'm not a great artist, but I think most of what I draw is recognisable, which, well, is better than nothing, I hope?

[Admiral Squish]

Oh, man, I can't believe I let this sit for this long. I'm terribly sorry, everyone.

Undead
The idea of positive energy undead was sort of inspired by the 'deathless' type from Ebberon, but I felt that whole thing was poorly handled. Also, I was pretty tired of undead being inherently evildarkbad. If positive and negative energies behave the same but react in opposite ways, then it seemed like it should be just as easy to raise a creature's corpse with positive energy as it would be to raise it with negative energy.

Now that's an interesting take on the idea! I had not considered the idea of positive undead as constructs. Logically, it holds up. If animated objects are constructs, and animated objects are made with positive energy, then by the transitive property, an animated corpse, a similar object, would be a construct. However, then, it would stand to reason that animating a body with any kind of energy would be essentially making a construct from it.
If I were to have total control over the system, I would probably say that undead and constructs could be fused into a new type, like 'animate' or something. The positive, negative, and souled subtypes could all transfer over to this new type. You could have construct-like creatures made with negative energy. And there are plenty of myths out there about objects and constructs that have souls bound into them.
But then, I don't have total control over the system, and that is probably a bit too dramatic of a system change. We'd have to touch every undead and construct and fix their stats, apply the appropriate subtypes... Plus, they'd end up being rather complicated, with a bunch of new subtypes everyone would have to go look up. This is the kind of thing that tempts me to make a new system... Not gonna do it, though. We'll figure something out.

I like the idea of a cultural clash between a culture using undead as labor and a culture that has a more physical form of ancestor worship. However, the Mexica wouldn't fit that particular bill. I believe, in the end, we came to the decision that the Mexica didn't so much use undead labor in the physical world, due to the logistical and health concerns of decaying corpses handling food, rather, they bound the souls of their sacrifices to serve on spirit-world farms for a period before they moved Beyond. But now we're getting rid of the Beyond, so I'm not sure how all that's gonna shake out.

Illustration
Hey, if you're willing to draw for the setting for free, we'd be glad to have your doodling on our side. I have no idea how the legality of that will shake out, in the long run. There may be forms at some point in the future. But for now, have at it! I would be extremely grateful to have your aid.

[Admiral Squish]

Okay, that lull's on me being lazy.

But It's the start of a new month which means this weekend will be the skype call. I'd love to see people there, let me know somehow if I should add you to the call list.

[Mith]

I should be able to make this one. I will also hopefully be able to make progress with the Arctic Overculture by Friday, depending how fruitful my chat with my University's Department of Native Studies goes.

[Admiral Squish]

Hey, that'd be awesome! And that's quite the source! I imagine anyone who works in the native studies department has to be pretty interested in the subject, and I bet they'd love the chance to talk about it.

[Steckie]

I should be available on saturday.
Same Mammut-time, same Mammut-channel?

[Admiral Squish]

I should be available on saturday.
Same Mammut-time, same Mammut-channel?

Now I'm imagining a super-campy mammut-themed batman ripoff. Batarangs, tusk-velins. Grappling hook, grappling tusk. Batmobile, mammutmobile (it's actually just a mammut).
Rich merchant-prince of yellowtusk by day, cloaked defender of justice by night.

...Well, that was an odd diversion.

Yes, same time, same place. 2 PM EST, daylight savings time in effect, on skype. Anyone new who wants to get involved, just let me know and I'll get your contact info.

[Mith]

Hey, that'd be awesome! And that's quite the source! I imagine anyone who works in the native studies department has to be pretty interested in the subject, and I bet they'd love the chance to talk about it.

So long as there is someone with knowledge on Inuit culture, then yes it should be good.

Just a thought on sources: Should we be looking at tracking sources to compile a reference list at the end of any published works?

[Admiral Squish]

So long as there is someone with knowledge on Inuit culture, then yes it should be good.

Just a thought on sources: Should we be looking at tracking sources to compile a reference list at the end of any published works?

One can always hope, no?

I don't think tracking the sources of info is strictly necessary, unless we're like copy-pasting from something published.

[Mith]

So not much luck yet with The Department of Native Studies. I'll have to wait a bit to see if I can get in contact with someone who is willing/able to discuss this with me.

[Admiral Squish]

Skype Summary
Another productive skype call! We covered some good stuff, and made things a little less hand-wavy.

Spirals
Everything always seems to come back to this topic. I think we came to a pretty good understanding of the spirals, though.
Spirals are essentially the interaction zone between the mortal plane and the endless spirit world. Wherever the two come close, which is everywhere, there's a reaction on the surface of our plane. Like the Leidenfrost effect, there's a force generated, so the two never quite touch. The spirals are that force. Think of the spirals as a skin, a semi-permeable barrier that keeps the world as we know it separate from the spirit world. Links occur when and where the reaction is stronger for whatever reason. They're categorized based on the strength of the reaction and the regularity of it.

Fey
I found a great description that I think could be applied to fey here. I'm paraphrasing here, a little.
(referring to a kitsune stuck in her fox form) "She's been a fox from the day she was born. Humans can only see things from certain angles. Things with multiple appearances make them uncomfortable. It's like arguing which side of a die, from the first to the sixth eye, is its true self. Whether one sees one eye or six, it doesn't change the die's nature. If I had to explain it, she simply can't turn her human face to the angle that humans are looking."
Basically, I proposed that fey work on a similar principle. They're like outsiders in that they're 4th-dimensional in nature, but they're creatures native to the mortal plane (or possibly the spirals), and not shaped by human beliefs. If a human is a piece of paper, then fey are varying thicknesses of cardboard. They've sort of always got one foot in the spiral. This is why they so often have teleportation abilities. Those with shapeshifting abilities are just sort of sliding along the fourth dimension to make it so a different facet of their being is interacting with the mortal plane.

Spirit World Travel
The idea was put forth that traveling to the spirit world should always be a purely spiritual matter. Lower-level abilities allow you to just send your soul to the spirit world, leaving your body vulnerable on the mortal world. Higher-level abilties don't leave your body vulnerable, but you just can't bring it with you to the spirit world. Instead, you just sort of tow it with your soul into the spiral, where it remains, tethered to you and moving as your soul moves, until you step back into it as you return to the mortal world, emerging from the spiral in a new location.
One effect this has it that your physical appearance on the spirit world may change subtly, depending on your mental and emotional self-image. Like, a proud character may be a little more handsome, an orderly character may appear a little more more angular and linear, a unbalanced character may be indistinct or jagged around the edges, a secretive one may seems shadowy... And so on, and so forth. It'd be either purely fluff-based or maybe offer some sort of circumstance bonus/penalty to interacting with spirits of similar/opposing nature.

Link Travel
Quite possibly the biggest topic we talked about. Basically, we decided that link travel as 'set point one-way to set point' didn't really make a lot of sense. What we came up with still limits access points, but it makes travel both a little more free and a little more tricky at the same time.
Basically, we'll have 3rd level spell that still allows travel from the nexus to a first-ring link or vice-versa. After that, it gets a directional.
Using a directional link spell is kinda like making a long jump to land on a target, but with magic. You cast the spell, pick a direction and a distance, and roll a caster level check to land roughly where you aimed (let's say, anywhere within a mile of the target). The DC is based on how far you're traveling and possibly the tier of link you're using. Higher-ring links let you make longer jumps with greater accuracy. If you fail the check, you roll 1d8 to determine a random cardinal direction from your destination (N, NE, E, SE...) and roll to see how far off you landed. I'm debating if it should be a simple d100 or something like 1d10/x you missed the check by.

Outsider Subtype Powers
Running low on time here, so this one's gonna be a bit short. Spirits with various subtypes will have broad power on the spirit world and on other spirits.
Life spirits ([Ancestor], [Aetheric], [Beast] and [Wood]) will have the power to sort of 'rebuke' other spirits of the same subtype and command them. Law of the jungle kind of thing.
Elemental spirits ([Air] [Earth] [Fire] and [Water]) will have the power to manipulate their elemental material freely while on the spirit world, unless it's under the control of another elemental spirit or used to directly affect a creature, in which case there's an HD check involved.
Morality spirits ([Chaos], [Evil], [Good], and [Law]) will have the power to sort of 'turn' spirits of the opposing morality subtype. A good spirit can turn evil, and an evil spirit can turn good.
As they're empowered by the spirits, Chosen will be treated as though they have the subtype matching their calling, and may be able to do something similar on the spirit world.

[Steckie]

Spirals

We could add magic to this whole setup.
The Mortal and Spirit world push against each other and the Spirals keep these two worlds apart. Maybe kinda like the magnetic field between two positive magnetic poles (or two negative), you can push them together but the field just keeps pushing them away from each other.
Anyway, all the magic in the world is a byproduct of the two worlds pushing against each other, excess energy that can accessed by the inhabitants of both worlds. Magic that doesn't get used seeps into the land.
This fits with the Vesuvius disaster: when the Romans tampered with the Spiral and they accidentally srewed up, the Spirals used the excess energy to keep themselves powered and they sucked up a large percentage of the ambient magic that had seeped into the Eurasian land as well. Then the Phoenixes sacrificed themselves in Mount Vesuvius to seal the hole in the Spiral, breaking transatlantic, transsaharan and transpacific Links.
Several centuries later Newton succeeds at reastablishing a transatlantic Link, and the surge of energy that flowed through reastablished the transsaharan and transpacific Links as well.
With the whole world Linked together again, magic started seeping into the land again and for more than 50 years the world has been trying to find the old balance again.

Spirit World Travel

I'd give non-fey a bonus when they're on the spirit world. Maybe some sort of penalty as well.
Hmm, how about this: when entering the spirit world a PC can react in two ways. Either the PC has a strong sense who he/she is and is able to create a realistic projection (no bonus or penalty). Or the PC both overestimates and underestimates himself and this has an effect on the spirit world resulting in a less realistic but potentially more powerfull projection but with some downsides.
Maybe the player can choose 1 or more attributes that get a +2 bonus, but an equal amount of attributes must receive a -2 penalty while projecting onto the Spirit World? Or maybe the player believes that he/she is great at conjuration (+1CL), but less good at transmutation (-1CL)
Basically the player can choose on or more bonuses, but these must all be balanced out by a roughly equal penalty.

[Admiral Squish]

Okay, so, since my time has become so occupied by my floundering self-employment, I'm not going to be as active in the thread as I'd like to be. I'll still be around, and I'll be reading everything, but taking time to write up responses does not appear to be in the cards on weekdays. So, I'll be making sure I reply to the thread at least once each weekend from here out. I'll keep trying to get something up during the week, too.

Spirals
Hmm, interesting. I'm not sure about magic being a distinct force, though, something that can seep into the land. My thought was that magic is basically mental force, the same kind of force that shapes the spirit world, just focused and directed. Like... you focus, and your mental force goes out, shaped by your will to have different attributes. You direct it along the spiral toward your target, then bring it back to the mortal plane, where that shaped force translates into a tangible effect.
The Vesuvius disaster could have tapped the spiral's energy to the point that links became too weak to allow accuracy at the distances required for trans-atlantic/saharan/pacific travel. And with lengths like that, a lack of accuracy is insanely dangerous. If the severity of a miss increases with distance, then a traveler to new york could arrive hundreds of miles out to sea, or in the middle of the Greenland ice sheet, or even... Florida... *shudder*.


Spirit World Travel
Oooh... This definitely has some potential.
I really like the idea, but one would have to be cautious, it seems like min-maxing could be a bit problematic. Perhaps it could be DM-determined? Or, like, the PC picks the positive and the DM the negative?
I'm imagining a list divided into sections of similarly important things to give a bonus/penalty to. Like, if you pick one thing off this section of the list, you get a penalty to another thing from this portion of the list. So you can't have a +2 str and a -1 to transmutation spells, since that's not particularly balanced.

[Mith]

How would people feel about that "strong sense of self" being translated into a Wis stat? Since Wisdom determines Will, I would say that someone with a high Will save (High Wisdom), would be able to understand themselves better, and as such have a more realistic projection then someone with a low Wisdom score.

[Admiral Squish]

How would people feel about that "strong sense of self" being translated into a Wis stat? Since Wisdom determines Will, I would say that someone with a high Will save (High Wisdom), would be able to understand themselves better, and as such have a more realistic projection then someone with a low Wisdom score.

I vaguely thought about that, but I'm not sure how it would work. Would you save to avoid getting a bonus/penalty? If they're balanced, there'd be no payoff. If you got more unrealistic the lower your wisdom, it could be rewarding for a lower stat, if you stick to your strengths.
Maybe high wisdom could give you greater control over your spirit form. Maybe like a feat with a high wisdom prereq that lets you improve your bonuses, or just shed penalties while on the spirit world.

[Mith]

How about Wisdom determines length of visit in the spirit world, or makes some things sasier in the spirit world, at least.

[Admiral Squish]

How about Wisdom determines length of visit in the spirit world, or makes some things sasier in the spirit world, at least.

No, length of time in the spirit world is HD-limited, like with bein' dead.
I could see using Wis to do some things on the spirit world, though. Maybe something like with limbo, how you could use checks to stabilize areas of chaos.