As I mentioned in another post, the characters in my Greyhawk campaign reached 18th lvl last session, and I'm looking for ways to enmesh them into the machinations of the movers and shakers of Oerth.
The party cleric, Witherwill Followjoy, is a very-Chaotic Good gnome favored soul of Baervan Wildwanderer. A long-running background plot I've been developing is that the son of Chiktikka Fastpaws (Baervan's raccoon companion) has abandoned the god and his father, dedicated himself to the "lost gnome goddess" Sheyanna Flaxenstrand, and has been actively trying to woo Witherwill into abandoning Baervan and embracing Sheyanna (who, like Witherwill, is CG).
I want to create an all role-playing encounter (no combat necessary) where Chiktikka's son tries to tempt Witherwill to Sheyanna by giving her a tour of the outer planes.
The characters in my campaign, believe it or not, at eighteenth level have never been anywhere but Oerth, so I'm trying to go for an angle of "All this can be yours if you embrace Sheyanna as your goddess . . .!"
So what I'm looking for is a lot of locations in the Great Wheel that inspire awe, partake of the sublime, or are rich with wondrous treasure or mystery, or perhaps are just breathtakingly beautiful.
I'm betting there's some folks on these boards that know their Planescape, or have run campaigns really focused on the Great Wheel.
What sights should she be shown? Where should be taken? What should she see?
(I run a Greyhawk-only sort of campaign, so I don't want to include sites specific to Forgotten Realms, Krynn, Golarion, or such--just wonders connected to deities worshipped on Oerth.)
I'm betting there's some folks on these boards that know their Planescape, or have run campaigns really focused on the Great Wheel.
I am not one of those people. Never-the-less, I will offer some suggestions.
edmundscott wrote:
So what I'm looking for is a lot of locations in the Great Wheel that inspire awe, partake of the sublime, or are rich with wondrous treasure or mystery, or perhaps are just breathtakingly beautiful.
The city of Sigil, ruled by the Lady of Pain, is designed to offer adventure and intrigue for PCs of any level. The Planescape book goes into quite a bit of detail on Sigil and you may find more information in the original Planescape boxed set.
I remember the boxed set included an adventure through Greyspace that mirrored Homer's Odessy. It took the PCs to some interesting different place within Greyspace.
I've got to stretch your "only Greyhawk gods" rule a little, since Greyhawk was on hiatus during most of Planescape's run and most of its designers weren't really Greyhawk experts. There are a lot of sites on the Outer Planes that aren't associated with a single god, being connected to multiple gods from multiple pantheons or to no gods at all, and they could be connected to Oerth's pantheons as easily as any other.
The Infinite Staircase
This is the first thing that comes to mind. Detailed originally in Planes of Chaos, this site appears in the silver halls of the Gates of the Moon once a month, during a full moon, on the plane of Ysgard where the tides of the moon draw the River Oceanus into the moonlit sea. A staircase of limitless expanse is pulled down by the moonlight and it leads to the city of your heart's desire... but if you go there, you'll never want to leave, and if you decide not to go there, you'll never find it again. The Staircase is a gigantic spiral winding through time and space; each segment is in a different architectural style, on a different gravity plane, and each landing leads to a different city. The lillends guard the stair, and one must solve their riddles and puzzles to use the doors. I thought the Infinite Staircase might be connected to the Spinning Helix of the Archmages described in From the Ashes.
Grandfather Oak
The greatest and oldest tree in Arvandor. Honestly the Planes of Chaos description of this doesn't make it as big and glorious and impressive as I think it should be. An enormous tree with elven villages in its branches is something that could exist on the Material Plane; put stars and moons in its branches, though, and rivers of silver light, covering all of the visible sky and you've got something.
The Gilded Hall
This is the great festival hall of the Society of Sensation in the valley between Olympus and Arvandor (where Alph, the sacred river, ran). It's said to have been built with the aid of Hanali Celanil and Aphrodite (but you could mention Myrhiss just as easily, or maybe even Lirr). The waters of the Fountain of Youth were used to mix its mortar. Lesser fiends have been killed by the mere sight of it, though those of greater status are enraged by it and the Hall has suffered many attacks from the Lower Planes. The elves call it Perlamia and visit it as pilgrims, speaking of it as a living creature that only exists to spread joy. Their sagas say that Perlamia sings to itself when the halls are empty or silent and that it speaks to the down-hearted, telling them how to recover what was lost. Dwarves speak of it as being constantly smelted and recast, because that's the only way they can conceptualize its ever-changing, indescribable beauty. The text speaks of melded, flowing domes and achingly beautiful spires. Its entrances are all hidden. Even the bacchae are tame within its grounds. Some who visit it never want to leave, trapped by its pleasures like flies in a web, and many are buried on its grounds.
The Grove of the Unicorns
Ehlonna's realm in the Beastlands, a cathedral made from a cluster of sequoia redwoods (perhaps these should be roanwoods) and home to many kinds of unicorns.
Tu'narath
The githyanki capital in the Astral Plane, built on the petrified corpse of an unnamed god known only as the One in the Void. Home of the lich-queen Vlaakith, who dwells in Susurrus, the obsidian Palace of Whispers.
The Harmonica
An unthinkably ancient ruin in Pandemonium, possibly an ancient amphitheater for demigods or the plane's own physical heart, driving the endless winds like blood through veins. Some say it can grant immortality or one's fondest desires, while others have attributed to it dark curses: lycanthropy, disintegration, mutation, having one's soul devoured. Its an enormous spherical cavern filled with towers, some of them tall enough to reach the cavern's center, with stairs built for giants. The cavern is pierced with holes on every side, so it's the meeting place for all the winds of Cocytus, and the towers are pierced with holes as well funneling the winds into higher pitches the higher one climbs.
The Spire
The infinite mountain in the center of Concordant Opposition, the gods themselves meet here in the one place where all are equal and divine arguments don't shatter the cosmos with their fury. The rilmani city of Sum of All is nearby, with its infinite Mirrored Library. In the 1st edition Manual of the Planes the Spire is a subjective thing that looks different depending on who observes it: it could be an infinite waterspout or a tower of books. Neither god nor mortal can approach it within 500 miles. The Powers of Creation cast the gods from the heart of the plane long ago, and no one knows what mysteries lie at the base. Both magic and biological processes seem to be impossible there.
The Hidden Wood of Obad-hai
Obad-hai's realm in the Outlands, where all four seasons exist in balance. To find it, one must become lost in the woods.
Library of Lore
This is Boccob's realm in the Outlands, a sprawling citadel atop a barren bluff accessible through a stone staircase guarded by an elder elemental of each type. The library is a convoluted maze of passages that defy logic and dimensional relationships, with both true and false libraries and a copy of every nonartifact magic item.
Sigil
The City of Doors, said to float above the top of the infinite Spire (but how can an infinite spire have a top? Another mystery.). Sigil is an impossible city shaped like a ring, or like the inside of a tire, with doors to countless worlds and planes, each locked away by a different key.
The Hall of the Valiant
Kord's realm in Ysgard, filled with never-ending feasts and places where valiant heroes wrestle.
The Den of Olidammara
Mazes, locked doors, blind hallways and secret treasures abound in Olidammara's grand hall, a haphazard structure of wood, stone, and stranger substances. Guests are greeted by rogues, bards, performers, wine, romance, and song, but Olidammara may walk about, masked, in secret and he is known for terrible pranks.
Shra'kt'lor
A city of concentric rings in Limbo ruled by the Great Githzerai, Zaerith. Anarchs stabilize the city from raw chaos with the power of their wills.
The Argent Palace
Graz'zt's palace in the Abyss sprawls across three layers, connected by a maze of shifting portals. It has sixty-six ivory towers and one hundred cold, mirrored halls.
Dis
The largest city in Hell, a seemingly endless metropolis of burning iron ruled by the archfiend Dispater. The shapeshifting Iron Tower of Dispater is somehow both in the center of the city and surrounding it; wherever one looks it's both right in front of one's field of vision and infinitely far away.
Malsheem
The monstrously large palace of Asmodeus in the Ninth Hell.
Scourgehold
Hextor's realm in Acheron, a many-walled edifice of iron and stone. His spirit legions constantly train in the miles-wide, many-leveled arena of beaten bronze and glass, the Great Coliseum.
Thuldanin
The second layer of Acheron, a cosmic junkyard filled with the remnants and ruins of every weapon and war machine ever built from ships to siege towers to advanced technological devices, steampunk juggernauts, the fragments of the Death Star, the secrets of the Invoked Devastation.
Cabal Macabre
Wee Jas's realm in the fourth layer of Acheron. A pale, glowing palace of ice.
Regulus
The realm of the modrons in the clockwork plane of Nirvana, which "makes Dis seem tiny." In the center gear Primus rises from a pool of light. Made up of 64 sectors, each of which is a single cog, and set up in tiers like a pyramid. In the central gear is the Modron Cathedral, where an Orrery acts as a scale model of all the planes of existence. The modrons can use it to scry anywhere in the planes.
Fortress of Disciplined Enlightenment
Two miles in diameter and four miles in height, this is the headquarters of the Fraternity of Order in Mechanus, where they tease forth the axioms of the cosmos in their vast libraries and research labs.
Basilica of Saint Cuthbert
This is the realm of St. Cuthbert in Arcadia. Its highest dome reaches a mile into the sky. St. Cuthbert sits with his paladins and einheriar in the Seat of Truth.
Citadels of the Storm Kings
The weather on the plane of Arcadia is controlled by the Storm Kings, four monarchs who each control one element of the weather. There's the Rain King, the Lightning King, the Wind King, and the Cloud King, and each citadel is built on the compass points surrounding the Orb of Day and Night, the heavenly body that serves the plane of Arcadia as a sun (half of it radiates light and half radiates darkness, and as it rotates the plane of Arcadia switches between day and night). The Storm Kings obey laws set down long ago by a forgotten power: an obvious idea is that the present Storm Kings inherited their roles from the Wind Dukes of Aaqa eons ago, who might have built the citadels (and perhaps even the Orb of Day and Night) and set the system into place.
Bahamut's Palace
This palace exists simultaneously on the first four of the Seven Heavens. Within, four warden archons guard the gates to the realms of the Four Winds on the Elemental Plane of Air. and a gate to the Astral Plane. "Windows of gemstones in settings of gold and silver, walls of inlaid copper and ivory, and floors of beaten mithral. It travels in a whirlwind from layer to layer, appearing and disappearing at will."
Erackinor
Moradin's realm on the fifth layer of Celestia, home of the Soul Forge, where dwarven spirits are crafted or reforged in preparation for rebirth, next to a pool of molten soulfire and a wall of pure ice.
Rempha, the City of the Sands of Time
A city in the Seven Heavens where time behaves strangely. A gateway to the Plane of Time is here, and Cyndor is associated with this realm. Home of all the archons of time and change. Ruled by the rogue modron Secondus.
Yetsirah, the Heavenly City
In the Sixth Heaven is a seven-layered ziggurat made of precious gems called Yetsirah, the highest point at the holy mountain, the source of the bridge of al-Sihal, a bridge of pure light that leads to the mysterious Seventh Heaven, guarded by the solar Xerona.
The Fortress of the Sun
This is Pelor's realm in Elysium, a gold-plated citadel that dominates the realm for a hundred miles around and glows like a beacon. In 4th edition this is Hestavar, the Bright City, and it's a much more detailed and interesting place built on islands that float in the sky. Pelor's palace there is called Aurosion.
The City of Brass
The fabulous capital of the efreet on the Plane of Fire. It hovers over the hottest regions of the Plane of Fire, built on a hemisphere of glowing brass. It's 40 miles across. The Sultan rules from the Charcoal Palace near a fountain of purple fire.
The Citadel of Ten Thousand Pearls
This is the capital of the marid, ruled by the Padisha Kalbari al-Durrat el-Amwaj ibn Jari. It's made of coral, copper, and mother-of-pearl. Some of the domes look like clamshells or snailshells. The palace is lit by strings of golden orbs. There's a library/theater complex shaped like a giant sea urchin filled with storytellers and entertainers, most there by choice.
The City of Glass
A city built by marids, but now ruled by a coalition of creatures, half-filled with water, half supported by ice, and protected by a dome of steel-hard glass on the Elemental Plane of Water. Many portals here lead to other planes.
The Great Dismal Delve
This is the homeland of the dao on the Plane of Earth. Their capital is the Sevenfold Mazework, a maze of three-dimensional convolutions and magical distortions. There are seven sections of maze, each more fiendish and complex than the last, until you reach the palace of the Great Khan of the Dao.
The Court of Ice and Steel
This is the flying palace of the djinn, sculpted from elemental ice and earth.
The Bastion of Unborn Souls
In the Positive Energy Plane is a snowflake-like crystal of solid positive energy, bigger than worlds. Crystalline trees sprout unborn souls; this is the source of all the souls in the multiverse, and the Ban of the Unborn is a divine pact forbidding any gods from interfering with it. The soul trees are tended to by soulscaper energons. See the adventure Bastion of Broken Souls.
The Fortress of Conclusion
Acererak's citadel on the Negative Energy Plane, created from a tower from Moil, the City That Waits.
Moil, the City That Waits
A city cursed by Orcus long ago and pulled into a demiplane so that all its inhabitants would perish in the eternal darkness, resembling thin towers rising from a bottomless pit.
The Fields of Nevermore
On the Plane of Magma is a city of towers, possible because a cursed sword similar to the one in the Coldwood in the Adri Forest provides an aura of cold that cancels out the heat of the plane. Mortals dwell around the sword in a cluster of densely-packed towers and charge exorbitant fees for the breathing apparatus that lets visitors inhale the toxic fumes of the plane.
The Monolith
Also on the Plane of Magma, this is a mysterious 90-foot-tall black object seemingly immune to all harm, thought to have been the creation of the draedens, vast monstrous entities who preceded the gods.
The Sleeping Ones
The Sleeping Ones, or draedens, are said to dwell frozen and insensate within the ice of the Paraelemental Plane of Ice. Viewing them inspires a sort of brain-shattering awe. Each is many, many miles long.
The Tower of Storms
An electric blue structure on the border of the Quasielemental Plane of Lightning and the Positive Energy Plane. No one knows how to get in, or what might be there.
The Tower of Lead
A gray tower on the border of the Quasielemental Plane of Mineral and the Positive Energy Plane. Inside is the best forge in the multiverse, second only to Moradin's Soul Forge. It's the site of many mysterious disappearances and tools created to work materials no one knows anything about.
The Heart of Light
Also called the Tower of Healing, this is a structure made from blue light on the border of the Quasielemental Plane of Radiance and the Positive Energy Plane. Healing occurs ten times faster within the tower, and those who stay a week are purged of any disease or affliction.
Adrift
A city on the Quasielemental Plane of Steam, a ring of floating buildings spinning endlessly around stone statues of men and women, each 1,000 feet tall at least.
The Tower of Ice
On the border of the Plane of Steam and the Positive Energy Plane is a tower made entirely of ice. It contains arcane laboratories where the creation of potions and poisons is much easier than anywhere else.
Citadel Cavitius
Vecna's prison on the Quasielemental Plane of Ash where it borders the Negative Energy Plane. It resembles a titanic human skull with its cranium sliced off to reveal a jumble of streets and buildings filled with living prisoners and undead. Everything seems to be made of literal bone.
The faerie Court of Rings
A Fading Land with a portal leading to the Welkwood. Avatars of the Seelie Court hunt there and the Cat Lord has his bowers.
I remember the boxed set included an adventure through Greyspace that mirrored Homer's Odessy. It took the PCs to some interesting different place within Greyspace.
You might be thinking of module M1, Into the Maelstrom, which mirrored Homer's Odyssey and was set in space. Maybe your DM adapted it for Greyspace.
So what I'm looking for is a lot of locations in the Great Wheel that inspire awe, partake of the sublime, or are rich with wondrous treasure or mystery, or perhaps are just breathtakingly beautiful.
If you're looking for other planar sources that you can leverage in your campaign by adapting them to Greyhawk, you might find some of these sources useful (pulled from my planar/gates bilbliography in Knockspell #3):
==
Gaming Bibliography
Ed Greenwood’s “The Theory and Use of Gates” provides an excellent overview of gates-related fiction released through the late 1970s. Other than Greenwood’s piece and Sepulchrave’s works, I do not reference fiction otherwise in this bibliography. Instead, I focus narrowly on useful sources about planar architecture and gates, rather than on content describing the people, places, and things found within any specific plane: this is one reason why I don’t list most Planescape titles in the bibliography, for example (that I can’t stand Planescape’s cant is another…). The Dragon Archive details a cornucopia of such content specific to various planes, including the Astral Plane (issue #67 and #71), Nine Hells (#75, #76, #91), Gladsheim (#90), Hades (#113), and the Demiplane of Shadow (#213), in addition to two planar adventures in issues #67 and #90. Furthermore, a wide variety of Planescape and d20 products have provided support content detailing specific planes as well, such as Necromancer Games’ City of Brass, most of Mongoose’s line of planar books, and Monte Cook’s Beyond Countless Doorways. If I’ve missed any interesting or worthwhile books about gates and the structure of the planes, do please let me know---I’m always on the lookout for these kinds of resources!
Without further ado, here is my list of preferred sources about gates and planar theory, including many formative articles about the origins of D&D’s “great wheel” multiverse from The Dragon:
Peter Adkison, The Primal Order, Wizards of the Coast (1992)
Bruce Cordell, A Guide to the Ethereal Plane, Wizards of the Coast (1998)
Bruce Cordell and Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel, Planar Handbook, Wizards of the Coast (2004)
Jameson Ferris, “Tales of Wyre” (Story Hour) and “Eadric et. al. (The Paladin and his Friends)” (Rogues Gallery) in Sepulchrave’s “Wyre” threads on EN World at http://www.enworld.org/forum/tags/wyre.html (2002 to date)
Ed Greenwood, “From the City of Brass… …to Dead Orc Pass… In One Small Step: The Theory and Use of Gates” in The Dragon #37 (May 1980)
Gary Gygax, "The Inner Planes " in Dragon #73 (May 1983)
"Planes" in The Dragon #8 (July 1977)
"Playing On the Other Planes of Existence" in The Dragon #32 (December 1979)
"Protection Circles and the Like..." in Dragon #56 (December 1981)
Jeff Grubb, Bruce R. Cordell, and David Noonan , Manual of the Planes, Wizards of the Coast (2001)
Gareth Hanrahan, Classic Play: Book of the Planes, Mongoose Publishing (2004)
Dave Howell, Chessboards: The Planes of Possibility, Wizards of the Coast (1994)
Steven Kienle with Gary Gygax, "Elementary Ideas for Elemental Adventuring" in Dragon #47 (March 1981)
Lenard Lakofka, “The Inner Planes” in Dragon #42 (October 1980)
Mike Mearls, Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes, Fantasy Flights Games (2003)
Phil Reed, “A Dozen Planar Traits”
Roger E. Moore with Gary Gygax, “The Astral Plane” in Dragon #67 (November 1982)
Carl Schnurr, Mythic Places and More Mythic Places for Ars Magica, White Wolf (1991)
David C. Sutherland III with Gary Gygax, Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, TSR (1980)
Other likely sources for planar inspiration include the rpgs Stormbringer/Elric, Everway, Amber Diceless Roleplaying, and Ars Magica.
==
You might also want to explore some of the various Fading Lands, too?: http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_sites.html _________________ Allan Grohe<br />https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html<br />https://grodog.blogspot.com/
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