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Dannyalcatraz

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Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners. One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.

That inspired this:

No Man's Land:

5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space. At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life! He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own. He trained it in the ways of the druids.

Eventually, death found the druid, but his greatest student lived on. Eventually, the Aspen grew enough in power that it began to experiment with Awaken itself. First, it made other Aspen and a few other mighty trees as self aware as it was, forming the Green Council, each a druid, cleric or mage in its own right. They, in time and in turn, granted awareness to some of the animals of the forest...bringing them into a society ruled by the Green Council, each day's food created by powerful magics.

As decades passed, the island became a great druidic haven, but still unknown to man.

1000 years ago, Man came...and he was not ready for what he found. The animals and trees welcomed those who resembled the one who had made their haven possible, but the ignorant sailors who found the island hunted for food for their journeys, and were driven back by the island inhabitants. The sailors returned to civilization to tell tales of the mysterious island to the East, where both animals and trees thought and fought as if men.

The Council's research of the civilized world (directly and through its awakened, shapechanged agents) has brought them much information about the destructiveness of man...and also solutions as to how to fight back. Those shapechanged agents often lived lives among the so called civilized men, bringing their children, natural shapeshifters, back to the island. The Council did much the same.

Now, the island is inhabited by more than trees and awakened animals. Alongside them now live natural shapechangers and other curious hybrids of man and beast or beast and plant...all members of an insular society on the island.

And they are leery of Mankind's intent.

(In game terms, the island is inhabited by Awakened Trees of the Green Council (each with 20 levels of some combination of Druid, Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer, some with Epic levels); Awakened animals (any class, Rangers and Druids most common); Anthropomorphic Animals (see WOTC's Savage Species); Shapeshifters (see WOTC's Eberron, but instead of being linked to Lycanthropes, they are linked to Druids); and Woodlings (see WOTC's Monster Manual III).
Update: not quite a clonal tree like the aspen, this massive cashew has nonetheless become a small forest/grove unto itself.


This opens up new climates for a campaign similar to the one I posted years ago.

It also illustrates the potential for a Druidic grove to be based in an urbanized area.
 
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Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
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STARFALL

(Sort of a reverse-RIFTS setting)

A border clash of interstellar civilizations happens in a marginally important star system. Both fleets are effectively obliterated, and both empires move on and resolve their issues in different places and by different means.

But as eons pass, the wreckage from that battle periodically falls onto a habitable world still ruled by magic. And some of the falling wreckage contains materials and technology that is salvageable…or even still functional.

The annual injection of random high-tech space debris has had a profound impact on shaping the evolution of cultures, species and the environment.
 

Orius

Legend
Update: not quite a clonal tree like the aspen, this massive cashew has nonetheless become a small forest/grove unto itself.


This opens up new climates for a campaign similar to the one I posted years ago.

It also illustrates the potential for a Druidic grove to be based in an urbanized area.

Meanwhile, my twisted mind is imagining a truly epic treant based on Pando.
 




Orius

Legend
I was watching some YouTube videos on Traveller and got a few twisted ideas for sci-fi games.

The PCs get a stowaway on their ship. Yeah, not the most original plot at all, but I have the sort of players that would probably space her, especially if when I play up the extra life support she's consuming and how it's going to cut heavily into ship expenses. Of course she's the daughter of a very vindictive space noble on a world where spacing is a capital crime. If the players are more merciful, no matter what they do, he pursues them for kidnapping instead.

The space noble's daughter is kidnapped and taken to a domed world with an unbreathable atmosphere or no atmosphere at all. Once his space marines have rescued her, he orders his space dreadnought to shoot out every last dome on the planet as an object lesson. The PCs either get caught in the crossfire when the marines attack or have to deal with the aftermath of the domes being blown out. This of course can be combined with the previous idea.

Space pirates hijack ships with passengers in cryo to harvest their organs, fingerprints and faces to sell them on the black market. Just for added fun, they implant aliens like chest bursters in what's left of the meat popsicles for whoever investigates (read: the PCs) to deal with.
 

Praying for the end of time so I can end my time with you - The villain is a devil or other lawful evil fiend who seeks to bring about the end of the world in order be free of an oath or obligation that lasts "until the end of the world" or "until the end of time" or something similar

License to kill - A certain person comes to the PCs for protection because they are being hunted by a devil. The devil initially attacked them in anger but they got away. The devil now seeks to finish the victim off because while the devil has permissi0n from its superiors to murder people in this area, it has not secured permission to assault people, so it must finish its victim off or it will face punishment.

The Magnum Opus- Cultists of Nyarlathotep or Hastur - or perhaps Nyarlathotep itself in human guise - posing as pop artists or youtubers, have created an extremely catchy song that describes in detail how to build an atomic bomb, or perhaps some heretofore unimagined superscience weapon that's even worse. The PCs have to stop the song from being released, or perhaps counter it and erase it from the popular consciousness by releasing some mindbending lost tune by erich zann
 


That first one sounds like an altered version of the movie, Dogma.

(Which is a compliment.)
It's actually inspired by the last segment of the song "Paradise By the Dashboard Lights" by Meatloaf

"...Started swearing to my god and on my mother's grave
That I would love you to the end of time
I swore I would love you to the end of time!
So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive
'Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you
I don't think that I can really survive
...
...I'm praying for the end of time
It's all that I can do
Praying for the end of time
So I can end my time with you!
"
 

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