Travelers on a wooden tower wizardship inspect the dead eyes of a supergiant face transplanted onto an asteroid. Dead supergiant eyes were used as telescopes by the Xylbocx Starcult.
At Orccon (L.A., Feb 19) and North Texas RPG Con (Dallas, June 5) I'll be running Original Dungeons & Dragons set in space. CLICK HERE for convention details. My little con blurb is:
ASTEROID CRYPTS OF THE XYLBOCX STARCULT. Your party has uncovered a lost text originating from the ancient Xylbocx Starcult. This document contains remarkable instructions for constructing a spacefaring wizard tower and for navigating the tower wizardship to a mysterious asteroid. As the first adventurers in centuries to voyage between worlds, what deeper secrets will you learn about traversing the stars? Will whatever starry disaster that befell the Starcult aeons ago also threaten your own expedition?I'll be applying some basic starfaring core rules from Spelljammer to guide elements of gaming in freefall. I will not, however, be using most of the Spelljammer campaign background. A few initial setting notes for curious readers:
1. These adventures will be set very early in the history of wizardly starfaring. Discovery will be a key theme. Although a few wizards associated with the Starcult ventured off-planet a century before the games occur, what floats in the void is completely unknown to the adventurers.
2. Wizardships tend to be small, light, and made of wood or glass. It simply takes too much magical energy to move large ships. Most wizards prefer to fly in small wooden towers, although some also travel in gas-filled glass spheres or flashing clouds.
3. Starflight is easy, but navigation is difficult and requires the composition and/or consultation of navigation scrolls. Xylbocx found it convenient to use the dead eyes of supergiants as telescopes (see picture) in order to identify specks in the void to travel to.
Deeply, deeply cool.
ReplyDeletesupergiant eyescopes? creepy. I like it!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there are some deposits of IOUN stones inside that asteroid. What's the going market-value of a functional supergiant eyescope?
ReplyDeleteHow cool the word "starcult" is??
ReplyDeleteThis might be in my aethership's wheelhouse...
ReplyDeleteWay cool! I'd love to hear more.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the going market-value of a functional supergiant eyescope?
ReplyDeleteOh. A lot. It is highly problematic to subdue a supergiant long enough to remove its face and eyes. It turns out you need much of the face and both eyes with the optic nerves attached. To "see" the astronomer must endure a nerve graft.
Man, that sounds like a hell of a good time!
ReplyDeleteAnd here I am, stuck in Indiana....
ReplyDeleteAn interesting site and good post, but the wrinkly face on the asteroid is kind of freaking me out.
ReplyDeleteI'll add my comment to this chorus of praise. Gloriously good!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the interest, everyone! I'll soon post some more general background information and illustrations, but, for the benefit of the players in the upcoming games, I won't go into too much specific detail about the adventure.
ReplyDeleteNice! I hope you have an awesome game!
ReplyDeleteOnce you're done running this, do you have plans on making it available? I could use this as some thought provokers...
Once you're done running this, do you have plans on making it available?
ReplyDeleteIn principle I'd like to make something available, but in reality I'm pretty lazy when it comes to formally writing stuff up. I have a lot of material I should write up for both D&D and Gamma World... I'll see what I can do...
Like chocolate and peanut butter, also goes D&D and shrooms.
ReplyDelete