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The World and the Tower; Throwing out ideas for comment or opposition
Topic Started: Aug 29 2012, 10:45 PM (389 Views)
Merior
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I've been trying to imagine what this world is like beyond the introduction already given and a few ideas have come to mind so far. These are just what I'm throwing out as possibilities so comments, or alternatives, would be welcome.
"Biigoh wrote:"
 
There are relics, ruins... and a single transcendent tower that is, as the D&D players say 'Dungeon Time'... dimensionally transcendent... ie the tower is the only way to other realities the only problem lies in that there are monsters and such in said tower that don't leave it. And not every one will end up as a 'super character'... think of those who ended up as absolutely normal people.

Think a tower that is several miles wide, and an uncalculatable height (literally, it keeps shifting... within a set amount... but it changes
Bomb wrote that in one of the messages and it looks like a good place to start. In my minds eye I'm imagining people waking up scattered far and wide, sometimes in groups and sometimes not, with often significant distances from them to the Tower. Yet the tower is something which stands out while still being obscured, which divinations, psychic powers, or sensors would determine is doing 'odd things' but the details are nigh impossible to determine. People, knowingly or not, are often drawn towards the tower and various forms of determining direct will generally point towards it.

Generally things wander into the Tower through doors to other worlds within it, ones which open and close erratically, but at other times the Tower draws things in a less controlled fashion. Items, beasts, plants, or people can be found appearing in the Tower or even in the regions close to it. Setting up a lasting residence too close to the Tower risks waking up one day to find, say, hell wasps have appeared in your bedroom.

In the larger world there signs of previous habitation, but bar the tower the most recent is ruins at best. The land is untouched by human, or unhuman, hand and the wildlife varies from almost normal to somewhat monstrous due to things which came from the tower managing to find a niche for themselves. It would be a lush and dangerous place, something which is not going to help the more normal people who appeared in this world.


Anyone else got a view on this?
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Merior
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In regards to being influenced by the persona I think that it could work as a spectrum rather than a 'Limit track'. Perhaps the more that you use the memories/skills, the more that you're influenced with them (although learning how to do them 'yourself' would limit that degree of influence).

Additionally the mindset of various types could be easier to fall into especially if something about your new body is 'unacceptable'. By that I mean that if you wake up as a 'monster' then rejecting that could give the underlying persona more influence. Add in that there might be some baseline 'habits' which your new mind and form are used to...


Regardless of that, here are a few thoughts/ideas about the Tower and in terms of making it a useful, but dangerous, mystery to explore:

  • Size : Being "several miles wide, and an uncalculatable height" leaves a lot of room for multiple groups to explore the Tower at the same time. cooperation in exploring it would be nessisary especially when concidering the next point on this list.

  • Shifting Floor Plan : The interior of the tower may seem to shift over time. There could be rooms or sections being 'commonly' around, but their connections often differing. Some features, such as stairways, might be far more stable than others and a few might seem effectively immutable.

  • Things Appear : Mostly in the Tower itself but also for a fair distance around it base. When a room comes back after such a disappearance (even if it's elsewhere in the Tower) it can have things from another world inside.

  • Keep Your Distance : The way in which things appear around the Tower makes it just a matter of time before any building which is too close has something show up inside. Even a tiny chance of having a berserk combat boomer appear in your bedroom is a good reason to stay back.
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biigoh
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Merior, that... that was pretty much what I had in mind for the persona effect... @_@

Tower stuff

  • Size - Exploration of the tower, with "guilds" and "raids" would be something that I was envisioning...

  • Shifting Floor Plans - That part was a given, given that if height and 'shape' can change... that would mean that the floor plans can change. I was sort of thinking that there would be certain areas that remain consistent. Mainly in the form of where the connections between levels are, ie stairs, which would be near the core/heart of the tower, for a given value of 'near'.

    The doors to other worlds, would stay on the floor they are on, as well as relative positions. But the rooms and environments around them would shift occassionally.

  • Things appearing - sounds reasonable. And likely is more that things just walk into the room and it moved on them. Now I'm thinking HyperCube. One hopes it's NOT as lethal as things were in that movie.

  • Safe distances are reasonable and I think would be something people would measure out and add a 'safety margin' just in case.
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Merior
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As a slight diversion from discussion on the world at large, I should mention that 'IC' I was considering that I would set up something of a 'home base' with others who could contribute welcome to stay for at least a while. This would be focused on having shelter and crops/plants/vegetables 'force grown' with magic, but would expand over time and could perhaps form a core for people to dwell near by (if not becoming a 'tenant'). This would be at least a half day away from the tower, close enough for being a base but not so close as to be in danger.

OOCly, this was intended to provide a way for people to manage to get by without the writer having to jump through hoops about having all the skills and ability to farm plus have a reason for people to at least meet and be close enough to interact.
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biigoh
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I was thinking that there would be various NPC types who would be skilled at such... with certain skillsets just working well together... even the fighter-tans. And not just because of wild animals and monsters...
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Glorfindel
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True, people would want company too. That is also true from a writer's perspective; this is a joint project after all and I'd like characters to join up on occasion at least.

I intend to contribute to Merior's settlement, by providing healing skills according to my current plans. Healing as in D&D instant cures and later even resurrection, possibly. (Quick and easily raising the dead is an unusual occurrence even in fantasy fiction. It might make an interesting plot-device in various ways.)

Bombii, about how many people are going to pop up in that world in the first few months? Tens, hundreds, thousands?
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biigoh
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scattered around... all over the place... let's say high hundreds to a thousand or two? It's unknown? But I am positing that there are... those who just have bad luck and don't survive.
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Glorfindel
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biigoh
Sep 6 2012, 07:02 PM
Biichan says, "generic fantasy terrain... nice climate as they say"
Biichan says, "Mountain range to the west, and northwest... plains stretch forth from their feet while the tower sits in a massive in-land sea/large lake, with forests to the east... and small rivers leading away from the tower"
Biichan says, "While to the south... in the distance is a seaside"
Quoting your earlier comments on the muck re. the environs around the Tower for future reference.

Just one little comment, it's almost never the case that multiple rivers empty out of one lake (barring magic or engineering).

The above sounds like two thousand would scatter rather easily across a fair distance, with some eventually grouping together in four or five villages of maybe one or two hundred each, and maybe up to a dozen much smaller hamlets (extended family-sized). And then there are scattered, sometimes hidden lonely houses and huts (not defensible, often the home of the insular and persona-addled) and many more suspect individuals dwelling in the wild, a ruin or a cave.
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biigoh
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*smiles* It's magic or something... but I was thinking the tower rising out of ring of water that has sink-holes here and there going straight down with water coming out.

EDIT - This isn't counting the small waterfalls here and there from various levels of the tower, flooded rooms emptying from planes of elemental water to use D&D terms.
Edited by biigoh, Sep 6 2012, 07:56 PM.
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biigoh
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One of the things I ended up talking with Nathan about was that it might be possible that those "spaceship" wreckages might not be as bad as it seemed on the outside.

That is to say that the tech is build and designed around absolute durability; such as that of the zentradi from Macross/Robototech fame.
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Dakkan Sall
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Of course, not all shipwrecks would be like that. Some would likely be just the hull or otherwise, gutted from either time or previous scavengers. Some may actually be resistant (actively or not) to any attempts to get inside. And some may be composed of some sort of tech base that, while long-lasting, is totally alien to anyone present and so more or less worthless as no one knows how to turn it on/convert it/use it for parts.
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