Difference between revisions of "Power empires"

Revision as of 15:46, 5 January 2013

The world of Power Empires is a spherical planet.

Civilizations

Enthuria: Tomb-Kings

Founded by charismatic kings many centuries ago, this country continues to be led by those kings. Development of the Raise Dead spell has negated the need for hereditary rule, and essentially all major aristocrats have been dead for at least a hundred years. While this system leads to significant political stability, the occasional coup leads to the replacement of one ruling tomb-king by another. The accepted code of honor among nobles holds it as incredibly bad form to destroy the soul of another noble, so most deposed tomb-kings lie dead in sarcophagi, ready to be revived and asked to lead again.

Powak: Magocracy

When the first Powaker mages asked for political rule and significant taxation in exchange for their support developing the agricultural and transportation bases of the country, there were few dissenters: being able to grow crops with 24 hour sunlight while living downtown was too much to pass up. Now, all important offices are held by mages, while most people toil away at dead-end jobs, the hope of one day being able to pass the entrance exams and get a time share of a gem just a distant dream.

Hokern: Industrialists

Pranel: Thought Police

Greb: Demon Hunters

Flesh-eating, house burning, mind controlling mages gave the people of Greb no reason to appreciate the potential benefits of wizardry. Already tough and hardened by their lives on the edge of civilization, they were eventually reasonably successful at wiping out the casting members of their population, although spells like Time Skip mean that such people even from centuries long gone occasionally pop up here and there. Although they're not entirely happy with it, the people of Greb do use plenty of magic items in their battles with magekind.

Muil: Nomads

Living on the distant southern islands of Muil is pleasant, but the islands lack many resources necessary for proper success.

Terrains

While each terrain is described by a method for randomly generating a battlefield, after generating a few battlefields you (the DM) may be able to more quickly generate a map of much the same style without using the random generation technique.

Grassy Plateaus

The land where Unicorns prance is a land of beautiful green fields, broken up into many flat cliff layers.

Generating a 200 x 200 meter map:

1d6 cliffs, with the first cliff spanning the map, and each further cliff stretching from a previous cliff or an edge to the edge or another cliff, whichever comes first.

One side of the cliff is lowered by 2d10 meters, with another 2d10 for every 10 rolled.

Each cliff has 1d6-3 (minimum 0) 30 to 90 degree turns in it.

1d6 ramps or landslides connect higher to lower ground

1d6-4 (minimum 0) rocky bridges, connecting two regions of equal height, if any such regions are present

1d6-4 (minimum 0) chasms spanning the map. The chasms are mostly 2d10 meters wide, and 4d10 meters deep from the lowest cliff regions they cross. Each chasm has 1d6-4 (minimum 0) spots of different width, 2d10 meters wide and 2d10 meters long.

1d6 points of interest, roll 1d10 for each one and consult this table:

For inhabited plateaus, after performing the above steps, place buildings in appropriate places.

• Enthurians have castles, walled and unwalled cities, and villages. Cities and villages may spill over from one plateau to another.
• Grebines prefer to build their small villages into the sides of cliffs. When they expand more than the cliff face can handle, they extend into the cliff as well as onto mildly distant cliff faces. Grebines usually have outpost towers around their cities.
• Praneli prefer circular, conical, or spiral walled cities, so they usually build on the largest plateau available.

Powak Metropolis

Powak Metropolises may be built of bone, stone, or wood, or sometimes even deep underground but the essential structure is the same.

Generating a 100 x 100 x 100 meter map:

Determine number of building stories (Each story is 4 meters high, or 2 underground): 1d10 + 3 is the lower bound. Each individual structure is 1d6 stories taller than that, and extends 1d4-2 (minimum 0) stories underground.

Divide into blocks:

• 1d6-3 (minimum 0) major streets, 20 meters wide
• 1d6 minor streets, 8 meters wide
• 2d6 alleys, 2 meters wide. Alleys go between two streets only, or dead-end.

Now that blocks have been generated, for each block, roll 2d10 on this table to determine the structure inside:

For each story above the first, there are 1d6-4 (minimum 0) skybridges spanning from one building to another.

There are 1d6-1 spatial tunnels connecting different floors and potentially different structures; there must be a location from which it could have once been possible to see both ends of the tunnel.

There are 1d6-5 (minimum 0) (on a roll of 6, repeat) portals connecting from some well-protected or secret room to a far and distant land. Each one may be either a Portal or a portable hole.

For any given structure, the mechanism by which one travels to a different floor of that structure is determined by rolling 1d6 on the following table:

Fossil Caves

An excellent source of the fossils that many of the most powerful undead need to survive.

Generating a 100 x 100 x 100 meter map:

There are 1d10 large caves, distributed randomly. Caves are somewhat oval in shape, and 3d10 x 3d10 x 3d10 meters in size. Each large cave is filled with something, roll 1d6 on the following table to determine what:

1d6 tunnels connecting large caves to other large caves

1d6 tunnels connecting two other tunnels

1d6 dead end tunnels connected to large caves

1d6 dead end tunnels connected to tunnels

1d6 tunnels connecting large caves to the surface; unless the cave system is deeper than that, in which case it connects to higher-up tunnels.

1d6-1 tunnels connecting from large caves to outside the map, laterally or downwards

If characters frequently visit the caves for fossil harvesting, the vertical tunnels have ladders, and there's one more of each kind of tunnel except for the surface kind.

• Powaker caves have 1 fewer surface tunnel, and usually have a portable hole tunnel somewhere. If the cave structure has no surface tunnel, the portable hole is in a random large cave; otherwise, it is in either the lowest cave or on the surface.
• Hokernian caves are usually filled with poisonous gas, as mining is done by undead.
• Enthurian caves tend to be well-lit, respectfully decorated, and sometimes have stairs and paths instead of ladders.