World-hopping Universe

[Mocpages]

Right. So, I had this idea for a universe which I wanted to get out there in hopes that the internet would give tips and ideas or even that it might inspire someone to make something better. Pretty sure I could format this better but not sure how.

The basic idea behind the setting is that the races evolved in different worlds (although perhaps some inhabited the same: Humans and Halflings might make a good pairing, for example. If the elves and dwarves shared the same world or bordering ones that could explain their animosity but also give them reason to pull together against a worse threat.)

Tens of thousands of years ago, a race known only as the Elders developed workable planeshifting. They saw the various races, each alone, and imagined something better. An empire with Dwarven architecture, Elven art, Human can-do, Dragonborn honor. And so they built the Cradle.
The Cradle was basically a system of portals (BIG portals, hundreds of feet across at the smallest with the big ones kilometers tall) connecting the worlds. It was not always peaceful, but civilizations grew and thrived and prospered and the Elders watched and were content.

However, the Elders faced numerous threats. Eldritch abominations, zombies, demons, and worse also prospered as they spread out across the galaxy via the Cradle. Thus, the Elders built a defense network cutting off corrupted worlds from the rest of the network if they could not be cleansed by the mighty Elder hosts. Eventually the Elder worlds were conquered and the Cradle damaged. However, the spread of the various evils was slowed almost to a halt because they didn't have access to even the damaged Cradle.

The original Cradle connected every world, with most worlds within a few dozen "hops" of the Hub from which any world could be reached. However, with the broken Cradle portals became temporary things lasting anywhere from a few days to centuries. Though the remaining civilizations could attempt to lock a portal in place, it was (and is) not fully effective. Thus, colonies can simply disappear, and age-old rivals be replaced with ancient friends thought long lost.

Thus early game the PCs could be explorers, or they could raid the ruins of ancient colonies from long-dead empires. One adventure hook might have PCs crossing a world full of dangerous beasts to deliver messages to a rediscovered ally. Or the PCs might have the world they were exploring shift, and end up far behind enemy lines struggling to get home. Most standard quests could fit here. Personally, I'm probably going to run a mystery, two dungeon crawls, a courier mission, and an exploration mission or two.

Later, the demons invade. My idea is that the demons are unable to build the portals like the Elders, but instead have crude, corrupted gates connecting their own domains sustained only via the sacrifice of thousands of slaves a day. The demons mastered interstellar warfare via sublight propulsion of entire star systems instead. They arrive in a new system, send ships reaving down, spread quickly through its portals before they shut themselves off, and then connect it via murdergate to their other planets in the system. Then they subsume the sun itself into their own huge star and begin consuming the planet.

A demon star system is dominated by the immense red giant and its perpetual solar flare, enhanced and directed via magic older and bloodier than even the gates. An entire world is dedicated to the torment required to propel the star, although it also serves as the seat of government, the hub for the in-system portals, and the home of any interstellar gates the system might have.
Other worlds trace long, elliptical orbits. These orbits are generally around a thousand years long, and for seven hundred of these the planet is relatively temperate and covered in industrial farms.
For the other three hundred, the planet is a fire-wracked hell of strip-mines as it approaches the sun. At the end of each of these mining periods a century is devoted solely to restoring the slave population so brutal is the labor.

When a planet runs out of minerals, it is converted either into a forge world, an industrial center taking the ore of other planets and turning it into weapons, equipment, and machinery, or into a slave world existing only to provide cheap thralls for other purposes, often as war-slaves. Demons are immortal, and thus care nothing for the thousands of years (Yeah, I know it should be millions) in transit. However, they tend to pass the time making war with one another.

So my big question is: how are players expected to fight major enemies (such as massive demon armies)? The only thing I can see is some sort of MacGuffin. I know everybody in my group is sick of armies and politics (which has been the topic of many previous campaigns) so I really want to it hinge on the players. I suppose they could lead a slave rebellion, but that's more of a backup plan in case they fail to prevent the initial demon invasion. Of course, other input is equally appreciated, including "I don't think that actually makes any sense". If I made a stupid mistake please tell me because it's better to catch it now than on the table.

[Mocpages]

I had an idea for how the players could eventually win: they capture a demon torturer-slave from the sun-control planet, learn the evil rituals to control the star, and have to infiltrate the dungeon-world to hijack the sun and destroy the demon star system once and for all.

[Mocpages]

I really really hate to be that guy but I really want feedback. Even if it is "you suck" or more polite words to that effect.
So... bump?
cringe

[Mocpages]

What if many worlds were populated by dragons, or similarly long lived beings? They could transport initial populations to multiple worlds, or create sapient beings with powerful magic.

Interesting.

I assume the Elders no longer exist? Personally, that doesn't seem realistic for beings capable of manipulating spacetime, though you might have an explanation that justifies their total extinction. Yes, I know it's ironic to ask for realism in a fantasy world, but it seems reasonable to think that many Elders would escape to faraway worlds to rebuild.

Not at all, realism is essential. The idea was that the Elders were destroyed by a number of major threats - that kind of power is like a beacon to all sorts of unsavory characters. Demons, Lovecraftian Elder Gods - take your pick.

Are all of the worlds located in different planes? Did the Elders create some sort of network map, and does it still exist? How much of the network that wasn't completely destroyed has been reconnected through alternative transportation methods?

The worlds are for the most part in different places in the normal galaxy. Some might not be, however, especially given the breaking of the network. As mentioned below, most of the breakage made the portals unstable, not totally disconnected. Any maps which survive are completely obsolete at this point.

What do you mean by the world shifting?

The portals open and close at random, to different places.

Personally, the idea of moving an entire star system seems ridiculously powerful, and I'd suggest scaling it down to moving individual planets.

Hmm. I was originally inspired by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella...ov_thruster.29 which would let them move stars, but not have godlike power over the cosmos. That was the general idea: they can't make stars turn on a dime or anything, but they are immortal and perfectly happy to wait thousands of years. Thus, they couldn't burn out enemy worlds or anything without literally hundreds of years to prepare.

I'm not sure how a torturer-slave would ever gain access to such crucial knowledge.

Fair enough.

[Mocpages]

Yes, but systematically wiping out a group of beings capable of manipulating spacetime seems like a tall order. I'm not saying that your setting's present should have the Elders' ranks regrown by a significant amount, but at least having some of them exist sounds more likely than there not being a single member of their kind left.

Fair enough. The party could run into one or more Elders. In fact, that could be how they get a lot of the backround information.

If the majority of the worlds exist in the same plane, wouldn't it be possible to construct a realspace map that denotes their positions? Sure, there might not be vast amounts of traffic among them, given the difficulty of locating individual worlds among a tiny region containing thousands of stars, but at least knowing where they might be would make it easier to reconnect the network through different travel methods.

Interesting. I dunno if I want spaceships, but if people are starting to understand the network better, perhaps to the point of rebuilding portions... interesting.

If they can move individual stars, they could just destabilize planetary orbits in targeted systems from a distance. It would be many times easier to invade worlds with crumbling ecologies and societies, due to everything between climate and weather being thrown out of balance. Also, their ability to devour entire stars raises the question of why they don't just construct a mobile armada of them. In my opinion, limiting them to "warworlds" makes it easier to justify the vulnerability of their home system to a "starbuster". Otherwise, a functionally immortal group of beings with that capacity could eventually convert every star into a formidable base of operations.

Hmm. If they have functioning gates connecting demon-worlds that could let them send out a world as a sort of stargate. Less cool, but makes more sense. Fair enough.

[Zorku]

This sounds a lot like StarCraft's Zel'Naga, or a pretty big portion of the Stargate setting.

If you care about realism, then it's going to be a lot of work to not merely have "the mud planet" and "the forest planet."

Given the tools you've got in play, and the level of realism you want, you'd probably be a lot less interested in a Shkadov thruster and more into the notion of just positioning a gate such that the Red Giant and the local star could perform a merger. Red Giants have a lot more radiation pressure, and are thus less dense, so it would generally be more like the new star eats the red giant than the other way around... unless one end of the gate is basically near the core of the red giant. Either way results in a rather scorched Earth-and-corruption theme that's suitable for your purposes, so you'd just need a few other gates to transport the worthwhile populace and materials from one system to the other before things went full ice ball.

If they stay in the same system then they would eventually mine out those world, and they're not getting new ones, so the hundreds or scarred landscapes image is harder to get, but maybe that idea could be repurposed? Maybe all of this gate magic isn't stable without a star, and the shattered cradle doesn't have enough places to vent built up energy, so the iced over worlds in any dead system get chewed up and spat out into asteroid belts in lots of systems. With something like this the demons could still have a lot of power, but ultimately be working towards accruing enough lifespan on their dying star to get to a point where they've got really rich asteroid mining to do, in hopes of ultimately performing some even greater sacrifice that dumps them into a fresh galaxy. Either they have an incredibly rich beachhead to work with as they spread their corruption, or they get dumped out everywhere all at once and don't have to care about this messy transport business this time around.

-

From the adventure perspective, waltzing through gates for fun and profit seems easy enough, but not knowing when a gate will wink out and strand you somewhere seems antithetical to the whole planned expedition to retrieve lost riches and gain fame -thing-. They can actually make some effort to do heroic stuff if they know about how long the gate's gonna last, but actual players are going to push real close to the limit, and realistic travel is going throw enough slow down at them that they're going to get themselves stranded. Long journeys to find out what part of this PLANET might still harbor civilization might be cool once or twice, but the impression I get from the gates (and this sort of genre in general,) is that finding a gate that will actually get you home is a half-a-lifetime endeavor.

[Mocpages]

This sounds a lot like StarCraft's Zel'Naga, or a pretty big portion of the Stargate setting.

If you care about realism, then it's going to be a lot of work to not merely have "the mud planet" and "the forest planet."

Given the tools you've got in play, and the level of realism you want, you'd probably be a lot less interested in a Shkadov thruster and more into the notion of just positioning a gate such that the Red Giant and the local star could perform a merger. Red Giants have a lot more radiation pressure, and are thus less dense, so it would generally be more like the new star eats the red giant than the other way around... unless one end of the gate is basically near the core of the red giant. Either way results in a rather scorched Earth-and-corruption theme that's suitable for your purposes, so you'd just need a few other gates to transport the worthwhile populace and materials from one system to the other before things went full ice ball.

If they stay in the same system then they would eventually mine out those world, and they're not getting new ones, so the hundreds or scarred landscapes image is harder to get, but maybe that idea could be repurposed? Maybe all of this gate magic isn't stable without a star, and the shattered cradle doesn't have enough places to vent built up energy, so the iced over worlds in any dead system get chewed up and spat out into asteroid belts in lots of systems. With something like this the demons could still have a lot of power, but ultimately be working towards accruing enough lifespan on their dying star to get to a point where they've got really rich asteroid mining to do, in hopes of ultimately performing some even greater sacrifice that dumps them into a fresh galaxy. Either they have an incredibly rich beachhead to work with as they spread their corruption, or they get dumped out everywhere all at once and don't have to care about this messy transport business this time around.

-

I like that. I kinda want to make the star itself sentient because the idea of a literal vampire star is awesome, but then I would have to figure out how to let the party kill a star. Gate might do it if you put the other end in a black hole or something? Except the duration would probably not be long enough. I'll think about it.

From the adventure perspective, waltzing through gates for fun and profit seems easy enough, but not knowing when a gate will wink out and strand you somewhere seems antithetical to the whole planned expedition to retrieve lost riches and gain fame -thing-. They can actually make some effort to do heroic stuff if they know about how long the gate's gonna last, but actual players are going to push real close to the limit, and realistic travel is going throw enough slow down at them that they're going to get themselves stranded. Long journeys to find out what part of this PLANET might still harbor civilization might be cool once or twice, but the impression I get from the gates (and this sort of genre in general,) is that finding a gate that will actually get you home is a half-a-lifetime endeavor.

I'll probably kill gates as plot demands. That way I can keep the flavor without stranding the party every other session.

[Zorku]

I like that. I kinda want to make the star itself sentient because the idea of a literal vampire star is awesome, but then I would have to figure out how to let the party kill a star. Gate might do it if you put the other end in a black hole or something? Except the duration would probably not be long enough. I'll think about it.

Well, if the vampire star sucks up other stars, then a scifi option would just be to mess with the relative positions of gates. If you had one (or several) gates out near the surface of the red giant, that opened up close enough to some other star such that the pull of gravity was mostly in the other direction, then you could shrink or kill the star.

Now, you're probably familiar enough with stellar evolution to know what happens when you starve a big red dwarf star (which is gonna happen at some point if the outer layers no longer compress the core sufficiently.) You might require some very careful gate finagling to shut the process down after the party has dealt a mortal blow to the star, but before the nova can actually kick off... or you'll just accept a planet killing event where the neutron degeneracy pressure rebounds through the gate and pops the other star. There's probably some limit where backlash through a small enough gate wouldn't wreck a star, but I don't really have the time for the (slightly more involved than) napkin math it would take to figure that out.

If the party can put together a sufficiently powerful portal-McGuffin then they could just use a huge number of tiny portals, so decide what kind of stakes you want and how easy you want this teleportation business to be when you've got the right tools for it.

And little narrative knife to the gut: if they disperse the vampire star into a lot of other stars then maybe that creates a background level of taint such that this setting always has a little demonic activity all over the place in the future- just never again at the scale in this campaign.

I'll probably kill gates as plot demands. That way I can keep the flavor without stranding the party every other session.

Doing it purely as a plot thing is ok if you're confident in your ability to hook your players, but from the PC perspective there is no such thing as plot demands, so the characters need some assurance that they're not cutting themselves off from ever seeing their friends and family again... or to all be real tough sons of bitches that don't care if they're cut off... or at least, don't care other than the fact that they don't complete whatever job and get paid.

-

Approximately how many gates do you expect them to hop through before they find out about the demon threat, how many before they find out what they can do about it, and how many to actually put their final plan into motion?

Going by Chrono Trigger pacing you'd want the 3rd planet to be scarred and abandoned, but with records of what happened, have them find out about cradle (either go there or arrive at some orbital relay or w/e,) and have some naive goals, then a plot twist a jump or three away that shows they were on the wrong track, and then finally three or five more away from there.

Chrono Trigger had lots of gates that went to places the party had already been but like on a different continent though, and this may not be the pacing you're looking for in a pen and paper campaign...