Brainstorming Plot Ideas in Library City

[Malimar]

Okay, so in about 9 weeks I'll be starting a new Pathfinder game set in my existing home 3.5e setting, the main feature of which is a 500-year global flood that was only recently ended. (Because this will be both PF and 3.5e, just about anything from either system is fine.)

The problem is I only have vaguest outlines of a plot, and so I call upon the mighty powers of the Playground to brainstorm me up some more ideas!

A vote was taken on basic premise, and something pertaining to Myth Selu'Glaurach, the Elven Great Floating City of Books, was the consensus choice.

Spoiler: Here's some existing canon regarding Myth Selu'Glaurach

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When the Inundation began, there was a great political schism among the elves: many druids found the Inundation an unnatural upset of the natural balance of elements, and worked in vain to undo its effects. Others saw it as inevitable, and simply worked towards the survival of the elven species.

Knowing that natural resources such as wood would become scarce, the elves’ most triumphant success was in the twisting and warping of certain kinds of mangrove trees into a new form, living ships called mangals. The hull of a mangal consists of the tightly-sealed root systems and trunks of dozens of trees, with which it extracts nutrients directly from the seawater. A mangal usually has no sails (the copious leaf canopy of the mangal provides shade, but little resistance for the wind), and its movement (on those few occasions when movement is desired) is controlled by druids who direct the currents of the sea.

[...]

The mangals are ruled from Myth Selu’Glaurach (population 90,000) by a loose Triumvirate of old, powerful individuals: the High Librarian (currently Lònethu Fifí, called the Blind), the High Druid (currently Rìfi Rali, called the Just), and the High Ranger (currently Nelare Voma, called the Fair), each appointed by their predecessor.

Each mangal is like a nation unto itself, but they all answer to Myth Selu’Glaurach. War between mangals is almost unheard of, and when an outside force threatens any small group of elves, a vast force of elves is likely band together to crush it.

[...]

Myth Selu'Glaurach, the Great City of Books, is the oldest and largest of the mangals, where the druids shaped the first mangrove into a ship. Over the centuries, it has continued to grow, and is now many miles in size, and more like a floating city than a ship. This is where the druids study and rule and where new mangals are grown, but the most important part of the city is the grand library in the center which gives it its name. A copy of nearly every book and scroll that survived the Inundation can be found in the halls of the great library, and most of the books written since then. As the halls of the library have expanded with the mangal’s growth, so too has the library’s collection. It is by far the largest collection of books in the world; all others are private collections or the small libraries of temples and shrines, not even worthy of the comparison.

Each mangal (including Myth Selu'glaurach) is led by a captain. All captains are nominally equal in rank, and all answer to the Triumvirate, but in practice the captains of smaller mangals are also bossed around by the captains of larger ones.

Mirk, the NE god of secrets and death and magic and knowledge, has his high temple somewhere in the depths of Myth Selu'glaurach. Here's the result of a Commune With Nature spell (which doesn't normally work on towns, but I've got a houserule that lets you do a caster level or spellcraft check to tweak a spell that almost but doesn't quite do what you want it to do, and the caster succeeded at that check) previously used to search for that temple:

At first, the spell doesn't function quite properly, but [the caster] expertly coaxes and shepherds the magic into line.

He pokes the spell into querying the nature of things he doesn't already know about -- people, presence of powerful unnatural creatures, and possibly even the general state of the natural setting.

He doesn't survey all 90,000 inhabitants of the mangal in detail. He does get a sense of a cluster of powerful elves in one particular section of the Grand Library, which he gathers to be a more administrative area, from which the Triumvirate (High Druid Rìfi Rali the Just, High Librarian Lònethu Fifí the Blind, and High Ranger Nelare Voma the Fair -- the spell doesn't give their names, but a very brief asking around would, and for that matter anybody who's at all familiar with the elves (read: any ranks in Knowledge(local) or Knowledge(Nobility & Royalty)) would probably know these names anyway) oversees all elven activity. Also the Captain of Myth Selu'Glaurach (subordinate to the Triumvirate) is in there somewhere, and the mage's school (the most prestigious in the world), and various support staff for the Triumvirate and the Captain and the school. So if all else fails, he knows of an area that contains people who might know things.

Somehow the rats and moths of the mangal are persuaded not to eat the books, the pigeons and other birds are persuaded not to poop on them or use them for their nests. A variety of animals are allowed to freely wander in and out and throughout the library (which can lead to hazard for researchers, who may be at risk of encountering tigers in the stacks). Which leads to the notion that Shian [the party's sparrow hengeoykai] might be able to get in without permission from the librarians, should he so desire -- except that somehow the librarians have a deal with the animals not to disrupt the books, so who knows what kind of thing they've got going to detect unauthorized animals or something. Probably best to be above-board, even with Shian.

But Doldor also surveys all manner of icky things! Bugs. Strange non-animal aberrations lurking in the oldest forgotten depths of the 500-year-old library. Mummies and crypt things defending the tombs of librarians with their troves of books. A variety of dragons, laying claim to portions of the library as their hordes (the ownership of the books in the Library is... wibbly, not consistent, no one person owns the whole collection, the elves are not socialist about their books). Aboleths and illithids dwelling in the semi-flooded lowest reaches of the mangal. Swarms of snails. An alarming variety of unnature, really. (Some druidly elves are custodial about nature, some are Darwinian, but the official position, at least on this mangal, seems to be that anything is fine as long as you don't harm the books (especially if you contribute positively to the Library in some way).)

Illithids are divided four ways in terms of deity-following: most aren't big on any religion other than themselves; of the remainder, most are big on Quasxthe [LE god of evil ocean depths and bringer of the Inundation] or Mirk; and then there's Kwn [mysterious maybe-deity maybe-philosophy whose cult the party had previous dealings with], who has an unknown number of followers of unknown races that may or may not include Absterbossk's conspecifics. But it's a fair bet that any mind flayer dwelling in the Great City of Books is probably bigger on knowledge (which Mirk stands for) than on the various things Quasxthe stands for. So there's another lead.

Mirk is big on death and undeath, so the old tombs of old librarians might be another lead -- if their guardians can be persuaded that you're not out to steal knowledge, only to borrow it.

Dragons are another possibility. Again, if they can be persuaded that you're not out to steal their book hoards, they might be helpful, especially if they follow Numiel and recognize Scarecrow as blessed by the god of good dragons. (Unlikely that many dragons on this mangal follow the Burning Hate [CE god of evil dragons] -- knowledge is too creative a hoard for its followers, who tend to prefer to hoard the standard "gold" or the slightly less standard "skulls of their enemies" and whatnot -- though some may follow Mirk, who is perfectly compatible with a hoard of knowledge.)

So Doldor's spell didn't exactly narrow the quest down any, but it has presented a variety of possible leads to follow. If there's any general hint he derives from the casting, it might be "in and down" -- the elves rule only the outer and upper reaches of the Library, darker things rule the innermost depths, and Mirk is dark if he's anything.

The shelves within are not orderly stacked lines as one might expect. There is order to the system (once you figure it out, it probably makes more sense than, say, Dewey (but mostly I make fun of Dewey out of ignorance, I'm sure it's a perfectly serviceable system, or else it wouldn't be in such wide use)), but at first glance, it seems chaotic. As with everything on a mangal, the shelves are not carved or built, but grown out of the roots and branches of the trees that form the hull. The mostly hexagonal, honeycomb-like shelves are actually quite a good way to store scrolls (hexagons are a good way to approximate roundness using straightness, or to approximate straightness using roundness, both of which are at play here), not quite as good for codices, but much of the collection is scrolls.

That party soon met the copper dragon Daariv, whose hoard consists of the world's largest collection of interspecies erotica. Then they met the high priestess of Mirk, a Worm that Walks made out of snails (snails are more sacred to Mirk than worms). Then they got what they came for and left.

I asked the players to each give me three to five or more things they'd particularly liked about previous campaigns, or things they'd particularly disliked about previous campaigns, or new things they want to try, or new things they dislike the idea of and want to avoid, or even broad themes they would like to explore. They didn't all get back to me, but here are the ones who did:

Spoiler

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- continuity and the sense that the world is moving outside the view of the characters. Like a character we meet at the beginning as a weakling reappearing as a potential strong ally
- a place to call our own, be it a ship or a castle or some other communal possession. I miss it when we don't have one.
- personally, I can't even act out evil characters. I don't have it in me to even pretend to be cruel.
- i like to see atypical NPCs to give things flavor. "I'm a wizard that is incredibly charitable" "I'm a meek cleric who has a double-life as a vigilante"
- I like having multiple possible solutions to problems and and at least attempting a non-obvious solution before accepting what is laid out
- in line with that I like inventions and making new things. I wish Pathfinder was kinder to crafting characters

Things I love: Tabletop banter!!! I enjoy having time for our characters to talk outside of combat. Things like when our characters were eating breakfast on the princess Cathulu, or when we're sitting around the campfire in Tyranny of Dragons during a night's rest. Everyone puts so much into the background stories of their characters and you don't get to see that in combat or in the middle of a dungeon. There is more mystery to a campaign than the campaign itself. It's so much fun trying to figure out people's characters!! I LOVE that all of the GM's in our group don't yell at us for bantering, even though it slows things down a little. I really can't stress this enough.

Things I like:
1) Like Robert said, a place of our own. In RotR, it was Thistletop. In ToD, it's the flying castle. In Spelljammer, it's the Princess Cthulu.

2) Getting to cause trouble. Chaos has been a universal theme for most of my characters. Freya, Marianna, Rosie and Hatchet were/are all notorious for pranks and causing trouble. Even Lily, while not too bad with pranks, is still chaotic. Whatever war you plan on concocting, don't expect my character to follow rules down to the letter. (it's more the spirit of the law that we're following anyway) ;D

3) I don't mind not quartermastering if someone else wants to. My character won't really have the INT to handle anyone's money.

Things I don't like: Not getting the chance to get to know other player characters. I enjoy roleplaying. If there is too much combat and not enough roleplay it makes me sad.

I second Reby in liking party banter where we really get to interact with each other as our characters. That was what I really liked about Changelings- more character building and party members forming stronger relationships with each other.

In honesty, I really want more campaigns where evil alignments aren't a big liability. Raven was meant to be a NE character, but I couldn't do that because of the setting. I like playing morally ambiguous characters, and I often have to make them a lot less ambiguous than they should be.

I like combat. It's especially fun to combine more than one person's character skills/ attacks to waste monsters.

I haven't been roleplaying enough to have strong opinions yet, because a lot of it still feels new to me, but those are the things that jump out the most.

I like dungeons and towns in weird places (like on the back of a giant creature or in an active volcano or something) and banter between characters both PC and NPC alike. I also like making discoveries (like finding lost treasures or places that were only rumored to exist). Combat can be fun, but I also like at least occasionally resolving issues without needing to turn to violence. When combat does happen, it's nice if it comes down to something more than just playing rocket tag (I like being tactical)

As long as we don't wind up being "THE CHOSEN HEROES OF PROPHECY WHO LITERALLY CAN NOT FAIL BECAUSE FATE ITSELF SAYS SO" I'm okay with whatever.

Some of my ideas so far include giving them a home base in the form of a portable hole/magnificent mansion/thing that's a door that can be peeled off the wall and rolled up and moved, which leads to a nice mansion. They'll of course have to clean out the mansion of its previous inhabitants before they can use it, but I don't know who the previous inhabitants will be.

One player's reference to not liking prophecy where the heroes are fated to succeed gave me the idea that maybe there's an ancient prophecy that says the PCs are doomed to fail and they say "bollocks to that" and decide to win anyway.

The PCs as I have a vague sense of them so far:

• oread paladin of Sequoia [NG goddess of nature]
• human dragonblooded sorceress
• goblin Living Grimoire inquisitor (goblins in this setting are not as a rule illiterate like they are in Golarion)
• some sort of barbarian maybe
• some sort of rogue maybe (the player who wants to be evil, who misses many sessions -- I interpret paladin oaths somewhat broadly, so any conflict between this character and the paladin ought to be fun instead of terrible)
• bard/war chanter (importing and modifying war chanter from 3.5)
• orc brawler

My vague initial idea is the High Druid (who is also the high priest of Sequoia) calls upon the paladin and her friends and sends them on a quest into the Library. A possible basic outline of the initial part of the quest: somebody's been killing librarians. Normally the librarians are the Library's police force as well as everything else you would expect from librarians, but when somebody's picking off the police, you call adventurers. But I don't know what's killing the librarians or how or anything. It's for sure not the cultists of Mirk, they're pretty symbiotic with the Library, but it could be just about anybody else who has stopped caring about not making enemies with the Library.

And then at some point they discover a prophecy that something powerful terrible is fated to happen and a party vaguely matching their description is fated to fail to stop it.

And at some point they clear out and take over a secret portable mansion.

Does any of this (no need to have read it all if tl;dr) spark any grand ideas you'd like to share with me?

[Bayar]

The patch that is actually a portable hole could have been used as a bookmark, and the previous owner simply misplaced it.

[Malimar]

Problem that occurs to me is the High Druid, High Librarian, and High Ranger are all at least five levels more powerful than the PCs, and your standard-issue level 1 or 2 librarian is probably comparable to the PCs (starting at level 1), so why are they sending the PCs to do their work for them? Probably scratch that idea entirely and go more unorthodox than an NPC sending them on a mission.

The patch that is actually a portable hole could have been used as a bookmark, and the previous owner simply misplaced it.

Ooh, interesting idea. And the inhabitants could have been trapped for ages! Long enough to go mad.

[Yahzi]

somebody's been killing librarians.

Somebody hasn't returned a book. So the party (being beginner librarians) is sent to get it back.

They get to the guy's house and have to fight their way past something appropriate. He's dead and the book is gone. But there's a clue where it went.

And so on. All the way to the top...

[Ivanhoe]

This sounds like an awesome campaign!

Some ideas that this setting inspires in me:
- if this library is the biggest/last library of the pre-flood world it may be that the heroes somehow get the task/come across some lore in the library that could end the flood and restore the old world. Naturally, the current powers of the ships for the various reasons may support that - or may want to prevent that (since it ends their world and powers over the ships as they know it!)
- the library could have areas within the ship/mangals that are underwater. The major question then is how to preserve paper on the bring of dissolving that they find (or they find some magically-preserved scripts).
- the waterworld movie or mad max atmosphere can provide ideas on what kind of strange cultures may exist within the mangal
- you could also find inspiration in the Stephen Baxter flood novels. In that case, however, you would have the campaign start when the sea level keeps rising faster and faste and the pcs have to find a way to either prevent it our save people from the flood.
- people in the portable hole / mansion might indeed be survivors of the pre-flood time with no clue on what is going on outside. They could - in stead of being monsters that need to be overcome - become allies, able to provide the heroes with clues (for instance, old language mastery, knowledge on certain items). To make it more complicated, those survivors may be half-mad ghosts that only occasionally can help. When first meeting the mansion inhabitants, you could still pose a challenge for the heroes in that there is some foe that the ghosts/survivors fear and that the pcs can defeat (some horrifying undead?).
- the reason why the high level leaders of the mangal send the pcs on a quest into the library may be because all of the pc happen be true humans/elves/pre-flood genetic descendants that are the only ones able to enter certain old areas (with traps like symbols set to go off when anyone but people like the pcs approach).

Hope you have a great campaign! Your ideas certainly inspired me for something similar that one day I'd like to GM...

[Shark Uppercut]

First, how do other races exist?
You only mention elves in the campaign setting, but then the party has a standard mishmash of adventuring races. If orcs, humans and goblins exist, they had to have survived the Inundation somehow. Do they zeppelins? Did they find islands? Are they a minority on elven mangals?

Enough questions, now I offer some ideas.
-Quasxthe's Illithid followers are destroying books to weaken Myth Selu’Glaurach, because it wasn't supposed to survive the Inundation. The dead librarians are just collateral damage. This is actually a much more sensitive issue than it appears to the party, because the elves hate book burning. Librarians can be replaced, books can't.

-A sect of assassin mermen have recently developed a new method of initiation into their guild. Sneak onto the mighty mangal Myth Selu’Glaurach, infiltrate the library, kill a librarian and swim home without alerting anyone. Some use potions of Alter Self, but the most harcore killers come aboard "au naturale".

-There is something policing the animals that wander the library: other animals. Specifically, druids of Mirk in wildshape that make sure no vermin despoil the treasure trove of secrets. But something's happened to them, and it's making them go feral in animal form and unable to transform back. The librarians are the first casualties, but they won't be the last. The druids haven't told any non-Mirk-druids because, y'know, secrets.

[Malimar]

Somebody hasn't returned a book. So the party (being beginner librarians) is sent to get it back.

They get to the guy's house and have to fight their way past something appropriate. He's dead and the book is gone. But there's a clue where it went.

And so on. All the way to the top...

Stolen books! Certainly something the elves would want taken care of.

This sounds like an awesome campaign!

Some ideas that this setting inspires in me:
- if this library is the biggest/last library of the pre-flood world it may be that the heroes somehow get the task/come across some lore in the library that could end the flood and restore the old world. Naturally, the current powers of the ships for the various reasons may support that - or may want to prevent that (since it ends their world and powers over the ships as they know it!)
- the library could have areas within the ship/mangals that are underwater. The major question then is how to preserve paper on the bring of dissolving that they find (or they find some magically-preserved scripts).
- the waterworld movie or mad max atmosphere can provide ideas on what kind of strange cultures may exist within the mangal
- you could also find inspiration in the Stephen Baxter flood novels. In that case, however, you would have the campaign start when the sea level keeps rising faster and faste and the pcs have to find a way to either prevent it our save people from the flood.
- people in the portable hole / mansion might indeed be survivors of the pre-flood time with no clue on what is going on outside. They could - in stead of being monsters that need to be overcome - become allies, able to provide the heroes with clues (for instance, old language mastery, knowledge on certain items). To make it more complicated, those survivors may be half-mad ghosts that only occasionally can help. When first meeting the mansion inhabitants, you could still pose a challenge for the heroes in that there is some foe that the ghosts/survivors fear and that the pcs can defeat (some horrifying undead?).
- the reason why the high level leaders of the mangal send the pcs on a quest into the library may be because all of the pc happen be true humans/elves/pre-flood genetic descendants that are the only ones able to enter certain old areas (with traps like symbols set to go off when anyone but people like the pcs approach).

Hope you have a great campaign! Your ideas certainly inspired me for something similar that one day I'd like to GM...

A couple of these won't work for existing canon reasons, but the others are definitely things I can probably use.

I don't want to get too "the portable mansion is haunted", because the last game I ran had the PCs taking over a haunted spelljammer (with some of the ghosts eventually becoming semi-helpful) as their base of operations and I don't want to repeat ideas too much, but having the mansion and its inhabitants be pre-Inundation is certainly an interesting idea. My first thought is a lich, and when the PCs first open up the door they inadvertently let the lich out and they become a long-term antagonist. (Though I don't know if I want the PCs once they take it over to run the risk of getting trapped in the mansion if somebody peels it off the wall, so I'll think on this. Maybe finding a way to prevent that will be an early goal.)

First, how do other races exist?
You only mention elves in the campaign setting, but then the party has a standard mishmash of adventuring races. If orcs, humans and goblins exist, they had to have survived the Inundation somehow. Do they zeppelins? Did they find islands? Are they a minority on elven mangals?

Most races survived on ships (and wound up intermingling there, making mongrelfolk one of the most populous races). Humans also had a giant floating island that was once a turtle's shell. The drow moved their whole civilization to the Plane of Shadow. The mind flayers discovered tritons make good hosts for an aquatic lifestyle. The dwarves and gnomes got together and built a fleet of submarines. Some pirates moored their ships together and eventually with the addition of more and more ships it became a floating city (a la Armada from China Mieville's The Scar). And so on.

Enough questions, now I offer some ideas.
-Quasxthe's Illithid followers are destroying books to weaken Myth Selu’Glaurach, because it wasn't supposed to survive the Inundation. The dead librarians are just collateral damage. This is actually a much more sensitive issue than it appears to the party, because the elves hate book burning. Librarians can be replaced, books can't.

-A sect of assassin mermen have recently developed a new method of initiation into their guild. Sneak onto the mighty mangal Myth Selu’Glaurach, infiltrate the library, kill a librarian and swim home without alerting anyone. Some use potions of Alter Self, but the most harcore killers come aboard "au naturale".

-There is something policing the animals that wander the library: other animals. Specifically, druids of Mirk in wildshape that make sure no vermin despoil the treasure trove of secrets. But something's happened to them, and it's making them go feral in animal form and unable to transform back. The librarians are the first casualties, but they won't be the last. The druids haven't told any non-Mirk-druids because, y'know, secrets.

Innnnteresting ideas. [takes notes]