Fractal Meadows of Reality

This is part 2 of my ongoing struggle with the Gygax 75. You can check out part 1 here. Week 2 of the Gygax 75 challenge requires making a map. I am not very good at maps. This is the best I could manage with the hexkit bundle I bought impulsively six months ago. The map shows the Plains of Eyes and Hands (also known as the Plains of Salt, or just the Plains), a sea of yellow grass and sparse, hard-leafed trees, where ancient beasts graze under the custodianship of Salt, the satellite-god which preserves and purifies. To the northeast lies a wetter lowland of moss and ferns, and at its center, the Ascendancy of Teal, an arcology.     Hexes are assumed to be ~24 km, or about half of what you can walk in a day if you're reasonably fit and the terrain is decent. The landscape is mostly yellow-ish grass and the occasional tree or bush, some of them bearing edible fruit. It's not terribly exciting. I might add a random terrain feature table at some point. Points of Interest To the...

 What passes for creativity in my case needed direction, and thus I elected to take on the Gygax 75 challenge and give form to a setting that's been buzzing around in my brain for a while. It is unlikely I'll ever use it, but at least my regrets will have a material form.    Sources of Inspiration: Caves of Qud , by Freehold Games, for the general aesthetic of a future so distant it becomes mythical. More specifically, I'll be borrowing the strange and diverse sapient population and the concept of arcologies as ancient city states. I'm an unusual CoQ player, in that I prefer playing True Kin (pure-strain humans still compatible with ancient cybernetics) and pursuing an ascenscion to chrome, one augmentation at a time. I will try to make that experience replicable in this setting. Endless Legend , by Amplitude Studios. The game takes place on a planet used as a biological testing laboratory by an ancient precursor, thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of years af...

I really like Pact. It's a great novel, and possibly my favourite piece of urban fantasy I know. So far, I was inspired by Pact. Today, I steal outright. The below is based almost entirely on the novel, with changes made only to fill in the gaps where explanations in the source material are unclear, or to make it more usable at the table. The Abyss There are two places where forgotten things go. One is the Tunnels of Mist where things that softly lost their grip on reality dissolve gently into the gray. The Abyss is the other. It's a strong contender for the worst place you could ever end up in. Whereas the Tunnels dissolve, the Abyss grinds down. It is cruel, malicious. It has a form, and that form is specifically design to chip away at you. Things and people only end up in the Abyss when they are cut away from the world too quickly and violently for any other half-reality or afterlife to lay claim to them. Temples razed, people shunned and murdered, secluded villages utterly ...

 I choose to be untethered from the main timestream and thus I pick topics from GLOGtober like a gluttonous child devours chocolates from an advent calendar. Except for the gluttonous part, I suppose. My creative output isn't that great. Anyway here's some weird maps, a few of them magical. A map of your own body, in 1:4 scale. All systems are tracked. It's enchanted to constantly change along with the condition of your body. You could probably use it to diagnose your injuries and diseases, once you're used to reading it. It also shows if you're possessed or cursed. These spiritual parasites are usually represented by dark circles around your head. A mind map of some vast, g_d(-like) being in charge of a significant chunk of reality. It's a slab of rock the size of a bed, with words in an ancient language inscribed upon it in tiny letters. Words flash constantly with bright light, representing the flow of the g_d's consciousness. It's obviously nothing b...

 I was going to participate in GLOGtober , but then I didn't and now I'm three days late. Ah, well. I probably won't catch up but I will write something that can be tenuously considered GLOGtober appropriate to the prompt. Here are some weapons that can be used as +1/+2 weapon substitutes. If you don't care about balance or quality, that is. Also none of them are swords because swords are overrepresented.   Spear of Chaos Evocation This spear has its head made out of an unidentified iridescent metal. The shaft is sturdily built and good quality, but it's not magical. You could probably use the head itself as a makeshift dagger, or attach a magical staff in place of the shaft. Who knows what will happen? This spear has a direct connection to the primordial chaos that preceded creation as we know it and still lurks beneath its skin. When an enemy is hit with it chaos manifests itself where the wound should be, in the form of a swirling rainbowy vortex. (There, this is...