Let's Irrigate Pelion!

Had this idea for modern PS. A lot of the planes have changed, and many for the worse... why not take modern technology and use it to make something better? The ideas here are based on the cities of the desert Southwest we see in America that embody chaos in the forms of Planescape -- luck (Vegas), art (Hollywood), and liberal notions (San Francisco). The theme is "something for nothing," or "a dream made real." A bit of luck goes your way, and suddenly a dream can happen.

Pelion, the Plane of Visions

It is the luck of the spinning coin.
It is the spiritual home of the free spirits.
It is place where wild ideals are nurtured.

Pelion had slowly decayed in the old days. The petitioners from ancient races became one with the plane, no new ones came, and slowly the sands consumed the last traces of civilization. For a long time there seemed to be nothing worth going there for, and it stood as an empty wasteland. The archaeologists came to dig; solitary creatures of the desert came to be solitary; but no one built or farmed or mined. Empty, the layer began to shrink. A hiker's path would turn back on itself, a little closer to his portal each day. Everyone supposed one day the sands would blow away completely. There was nothing there but there, and every year there was less there.

Then, with the industrial revolution, "there" suddenly became enough. It was possible to bring in enough water, and recycle it, to support a population, with permanent businesses and tourists. It was possible to haul in topsoil and keep it fertilized and irrigated, and run hydroponic farms. It was possible to generate solar power from the unblinking sun. And it was useful to do all this because cheap, safe, explored land on the Upper Planes was nigh-on impossible to get elsewhere.

So the visionaries of Arborea, many Sensates among them, came up with a plan. From the desert they brought forth Mirage, the City of Visions. Around the old portal to Pelion they started by setting up the infrastructure they would need to support a small permanent population. Building on this, they erected the tourist town to beat them all: gambling halls to rival Dwarven Mountain, amusement parks and pampering resorts that catered to the cutters of the planes with jink to spend living for a few days like the kings of old. You might not actually be a king, but Mirage sold the dream: you were treated like one, the entire city designed to swaddle you in luxury, so long as the money held out.

Mirage also sold the dream of striking it rich: sure, the gambling halls were tilted toward the house, but everyone knew that, and the lottery of the city of gamblers on the plane of Chaotic Good was one of the biggest and fairest on all the planes. People across the multiverse paid for a chance to win a jackpot that would set anyone for life, and the city's cut plus the taxes from the casinos were enough to keep the city running while the original landowners got rich.

The plane, populated, began to expand again. In the new lands, a couple of projects tried to compete, but Mirage had already established its reputation and while there are some smaller outfits in Pelion holding on, it's not a plane that appreciates copycats. What it wants is creativity, new ideas, and that's what it got.

The next big success in Pelion was Glamour. Once again, the Sensates led the way: the movie and sensie industries could pay actors, they could craft props, but one thing you can't build is sweeping vistas of mountain and enormous landscapes; and once again, there's the matter of cheap real estate to build sound stages and turn city-block-sized areas into wave pools. A few intrepid filmmakers retelling the great stories of the planes tried to film in Baator and the Abyss, sure... but they were intrepid since several of their compatriots got killed for their trouble. (And that's separate entirely from the crusading journalist expeditions, but that's neither here nor there.) Instead, try throwing up a street full of facades on top of empty sands, and your movie can go a lot more safely.

Today, Glamour turns out movies and music, full-length sensory stones and promo singles. Its lifeblood is the fantasies it captures on film and sells across the planes. Aspiring actors, writers, and directors flock to the city to follow their dreams, hoping to make it big. It's not a city built entirely on luck -- you need talent, and you need elbow grease -- but it does offer the chance at a big break.

And on a plane full of dreams like this, it's no wonder the dreamers come. Golden Portal started out as just a little settlement Pelion-side of a portal, situated roughly betwen Mirage and Glamour, making a nice waystation. It also made a good stopping point, maybe for someone who wanted to get away from the hubbub of the bigger cities for a while, maybe for someone who wanted to live on a plane where they appreciated a free spirit with a kind heart, not quite so Ysgardian in their love of a good fight or quite so primal as the Beastlands.

In Golden Portal you got the thinkers, the philosophers and the activists, the hippies and flowerchildren and free-loving, guitar-strumming idealists. They write tracts and ponder ethics, cheerfully argue the philosophy of ideals while tending their garden or writing a new song. Here the free spirits come together, for a short while under the eternal summer, to exchange ideas and build weird little communities around the latest notion of utopia. Usually nothing much comes of one of these odd enclaves, but sometimes... sometimes an idea born here works out, and the other, more cautious Upper Planes see some practice produced here they can adopt. Golden Portal, while developing a reputation for zaniness, is also becoming an important laboratory willing to give an honest try to any new ideas for honest folk of all species to live together in peace. This makes it a valuable component of progress: an R&D division in the struggle against evil in people's everyday lives.

It's not entirely sweetness and light on the layer of visions. The smell of easy money is alluring to criminals as well as gamblers, and the mafia has its fingerprints all over Mirage. They run the less-fair casinos, and invitation-only dens where imported succubi satisfy more particular requests than the legal brothels will entertain. The Children of the Vine never entirely disappeared either, and these days they have their own hydroponic farms around Golden Portal -- sure, grapes they grow, and harder fare as well. Many a writer in Glamour has tried to find his dreams in the blood of poppies, many an actor has tried to pep for that audition with a little snort of something, many an idealist has sought universal peace in the lassitude of the green smoke, and the Children of the Vine have become pretty well-off themselves supplying those hopes.

But Pelion is still an Upper Plane, and while law may not be its strength, it still agitates against those who would savage others' dreams. Good-aligned characters get a +1 luck bonus to all rolls on the plane, and evil characters a -1 penalty. It's just enough of an edge to make criminals get the short end of the stick more often than not, at least when they're the predator kind. (It also means the casinos in Mirage need to staff their gambling tables with upright folk, lest a decent gambler get the better of the house's odds!) You'd think the layer would leave neutrals alone, but no... every day they're here, a neutral has a 50-50 chance of having one kind of luck or the other.

This is Arborea, after all. You expected the place would treat anyone dispassionately?