Experimental+Float


 * This is a sandbox of lore. If you would like the in-character letter/lorebook that will come later, which I think you will, then, wait.  If you just can't wait, then read.  Nothing here will really spoil anything, though it would be fun to discover it IC.**

I created this setting/idea in a time where I was intensely tired by the cliches of standard DND. It was an attempt to create something more desperate, and more urgent. My trip to Gen Con has restored my faith that DND, without something so severly modifying as this, is alive and well.
 * UPDATE 8/18/09**

Expect to see these rules make appearances in adventures, either in special areas in a new campaign, or as a plot device in the old FR campaign. But I'm canning this idea for DND for the time being, at least on a global scale.

Still Reading? Okay...
The World you have grown up in has been one collapsing since your earliest memory. Since you were a child, there were always the cities and the wild. Wander too far from your city, and the wild would consume your mind, or the monsters would get to you first.

It also seems to be a shrinking world. At least, as you remember it. There were places that seemed very real, peoples and cities and civilizations, that your grandfather knew of and had visited or known folk from, but yet, no one knew the way to their lands.

Apparently things were all much worse once, and now, at least, people understand how poor their predicament is.


 * Variable passage of time: basically, the 'wilder' the area you wander into, the more dilation will happen. Thus, if you voyaged into the wilderness for 3 months your perspective, 3 weeks might pass in the city.  Each city has its own calendar based on how many years since the cataclysm.


 * The 'Wilderness' is just that--in some places, it is quite literally plagued by very wild magic. Magic that is a twisted chaos of the weave and its shadow sister.  Different areas express different characters based on the sort of weave.


 * Most of the great magi and avatars crystallized their forms long ago to protect their peoples from the collapse. The refugees of a particular faith or persuasion formed cities around their crystallized forms (called Colossi)


 * The world is quite literally shrinking: in the wilderness, the Terrasque eats away at the world and leaves a wasteland behind. This path of destruction dissapears forever and the path becomes a fault.


 * Just as time is dilated, so is distance. Between cities lies a tenuous conduit of stability, where the world is less wild and folk can travel with less protection from the plague.  Even among cities without friendship there is this line, and where it is untraveled the fair folk will make their homes at the secret ley lines.  These paths are called the 'webway.'


 * In the wild, the mortal coil shuffles faster: without protection from the plague, one will age faster at the very least, and at the worst become tainted. There are ways, through ascetism, a delicate management of the taint, or even darker means, to avoid the wild's effects.  But all of them separate one from civilization--no-doubt-about-it.


 * Choose**
 * Navigator**--Gain Level+3 Ranks in The Profession: Navigator Skill and Level+3 Ranks in Knowledge:Geography, Atlas, and Navagation tools (chronometer). Know 3 rutters at character creation.  Party is able to follow the webway
 * Loremaster**--Gain Level+3 Ranks in Knowledge: History, Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty; Party recognizes ruins and origin in same and adjacent hexes. Learn 1 new language per level.
 * Keen-Eye** Gain Skill Focus: Spot, Party can see an additional hex to the front.
 * Standing/nobility** Gain Level+3 Ranks in Knowledge (nob/rob), Level+3 Ranks in Diplomacy, party can be recieved by notables.
 * Light Sleeper/night owl:** begin any camp battle awake and standing, skill focus: listen, quick-draw torches, sunrods, etc.
 * A sense for people**: Skill Focus: Sense Motive, Level+3 ranks in sense motive, 1/session, may designate a mundane as an 'ally' to either aid or accompany the party. More easily detect infiltrators.
 * Quartermaster:** have 'on hand' any non-equipment item (ie, special ammo, alchemy, potion, scroll, etc, up to 100gp/level. Must still Be paid for.
 * Danger Sense:** Never Surprised; 'Have a Bad Feeling about this' occasionally.

City: Time/distance Referent 1 Normal Towns and Villages, Well-traveled roads 1.1 Isolated Towns and Villages 2 Strong webway at sea: 2 Weak webway (isolate connexion): 3 Off Webway 1 hex: 3 Off Webway 2 hexes: 6 Off Webway 3+ hexes: 12

When the webway is disturbed, caravans and ships will begin to arrive at slightly 'aberrant' times. Chronocompass: This complex piece of clockwork is a set of at least 3 chronometers. When properly operated by a navigator, the direction of the webway can be determined through minute variations in the speed of each clock.

Cosmos
Abeir is shrinking. Now, the frontiers at its edge are only some one or two thousand miles from its center. As the wilderness grows deeper at the edge of the world, anyone who sets out searching for the world's edge or lost civilizations that have disappeared are never heard from...the time dilation of the wilderness ensures this.

There are no stars in the sky, no moons. Each night is only illuminated by the pale aurora that light up the sky in a cerulean tracery. On any night, there may be brilliant or subtle aurora, or none at all. As the story goes, they are the tendrils that suspend the world to the heavens, and when they break the world falls away. Some consistency is lent to this myth, as in the wilderness the aurora are rare indeed...

The aurora are another tool of the navigators, and with careful observation one can tell the distance to a given city, which can be spotted as a column of aurora.

Travellers
To move within the wild is to live a life on, quite literally, a different schedule than the civilized peoples of the cities. Travellers can grow old and die in half the lifetime of a city man. Generations in the towns and villages progress at twice the speed of those in the cities.

The Plague.
Depending on the influence of the corrupt magic, different symptoms will manifest. Being unprotected from the plague has the following effects: While on the webway, characters must save vs. the first level even while on a rutter. If they make the save then they can survive away from their navigator for 1 minute, then they must save at the second level. This phenomenon is called 'websickness' 1 round unprotected: save or 1 ability damage, d6 physical (depends on 'school' of plauge) 1 minute unprotected: save or 2 ability, 2d6 physical damage 1 hour unprotected: save or 3 ability damage, 4d6 physical 1 day unprotected: save or 4 ability damage, 8d6 physical 1 week unprotected: save or 5 ability damage, 10d6 physical 1 month save or 6, 10d6 physical 1 year save or 7, 20d6 physical So long as a character remains in the wild this damage acts as drain. Along the Webway, the plague is three steps weaker, ie, one hour away from civilization one must save, etc. There are areas of 'sinister plague' where the plague is 1 increment higher.

Ways to stem the plauge's symptoms:
 * Accepting the Wild** by casting a level 1 spell, a character can transmute a given level of plague damage, (e.g, the 4th level of damage and all below) into taint. This taint is depravity if a mental score is affected, or corruption if a physical.  This taint cannot be cured while within the plague, and is difficult to remove in civilization.  Hereafter, the character is immune to the given level of plague.


 * Those immunne:** Anyone with the humanoid type is affected by the plague. Certain types of humanoid (ie, the chaotic-aligned ones) are more resistant to the plague.  The time intervals for them are less severe, by their plague resistance rating.  Thus, elves (plague resistant 3) can survive unprotected on the webway for one year, and in the wilderness for one day.


 * Weavecrystal:** this protects a wearer from a given level of plague, for one of its periods. Thus, a level 1 weave crystal (AKA a 'carat') will protect a user for 1 round, after a second round, the plague remanifests.

A level 2 crystal for 1 minute; a level 3 for an hour, etc.

Along the webway the crystal's protection is three steps higher: thus, a tiny 'carat' level 1 stone will protect against the first day's plague.

Crystals are terribly rare, and each level of crystal is about ten times rarer than the next.

A level 3 or higher crystal will protect people in a radius around it, 10 ft for a level 3, 30ft for a level 4, 90ft for a level 5, 270 ft for a level 6, etc.

Once a crystal has protected for its duration, it is 'decharged' and loses its luminesence. an intelligent weavecrystal becomes dormant upon this event.

Weavecrystals of level 3 or higher are intelligent magic items with an ego score an personality. The crystals can withhold their protection from those nearby, and sometimes manifest other powers beyond their protection.

Crystals only recharge in civilization, and take the same amount of time to recharge as their rating. Thus a level three crystal recharges in one hour.

A crystal can recharge within the field of a crystal two ratings higher. This will take two time orders longer than normal. Thus, a level 3 crystal can recharge in a level 5 crystal's field, but only after a week.

Crystals are rare, and overwhelmingly disposed towards those of good heart. The darker peoples of the world have worse means of surviving the plague, by stealing the souls of each other, and the civilized peoples.
 * Reavers**

Elves, Druids, Monks can spend time in contemplation to stave off the plague, equal to rating-1. Thus, an elf along the webway (protected 1 year), can spend 1 month in contemplation to stave off the plague. This is accomplished successfully on a DC 20 Survival or knowledge (nature) check. The DC escalates by 2 for each staving.
 * Naturalism/ascetictism**

Monks and other ascetics can do the same with a Concentration Check.