Log X: The Primes

I like.  Laguna seems like a place that psions, especially, might visit as a sort of a resort world -- a place to relax and contemplate.  I'm guessing that the "trade" item the sponges are most interested in is information; perhaps Sensates come here sometimes to sell or trade their experiences.  (I'm guessing that some cleric, mage, or other has an industry here to supply fresh water to visitors.)

Cross-posted from my own thread.  This is the sketch page 6 of my comic, but it has a sort of panoramic view of the Ssilirian city where Qul lives, so you can get a rough idea of what Ssilirian architecture and cities are like.  The large building dominating the foreground is a temple.  Ssilirian tradition/law prohibits any building in the city from being taller than the city's main temple.  All temples also have 6 tiers, one for each of their major gods.

(Click on the thumbnail to enlarge)

Name: Awn's Landing

Access:A smaller arch in the Market Ward, only twenty feet in height, carved by tiefling monks from sandstone mined from an asteroid-sized planetoid elsewhere in the multiverse and covered in bas-reliefs of aasimon and unidentified tentacled creatures embracing. This portal - known colloquially as the Angelsquid Gate - leads to Awn's landing once every 30 days, and elsewhere in the multiverse for the rest of the month, changing its destination every night at Antipeak. Some believe the portal matches the cycle of the moon on a small, unpopulated world covered in a shallow, warm, salty sea; perhaps, they opine, the Lady of Pain finds it easier to match the cycles of portals up with arbitrary cosmic events elsewhere in the multiverse. In any case, the world whose lunar cycle is thought to be linked to the Angelsquid Gate is not Awn's Landing. Nor is Awn's Landing the nearly airless planetoid from which the sandstone was gathered.

The key to every world accessible through the Angelsquid Gate is the word "caliginous" spoken in Planar Common. The merest whisper of the word activates the portal, causing it to open to whatever world it is tuned to on that day.

On the world of Awn's Landing, the other side of the portal is a jagged hole in what appears to be an airship of some kind, shattered and turned over on its side. The hole is approximately the same size as the arch in Sigil, though very irregular in shape. Travelers once had to climb down from the hole around 15 feet to the ground, but Sigilian merchants have since built a broad, sturdy ramp out of material scavenged from the ship.

Prevailing conditions:The atmosphere is fresh and good, more humid than the Elemental Plane of Air but no less pure and dense. Strong winds are ubiquitous, sometimes enough to blow a halfling off his feet. The ground, however, roils and flexes slowly, so that hills and valleys may appear where none were before within a few hours' time. Lakes and seas may also appear with little warning, and flash floods are unfortunately common. The ground is covered in dense grass and weeds; trees understandably have trouble establishing themselves here, and what vegetation there is can survive being flooded for a time. A fast-growing bamboo-like material grows in some places, and it is from this that the locals construct their vehicles. 

The world has a small white sun, and irregular periods of near-darkness, but no stars or moon. Half the sky is a deeper azure than the other half, though this half rotates slowly throughout the day.

Inhabitants:The inhabitants of Awn's Landing are humans compatible with humanity as it exists throughout the planes, with coppery skin and red or auburn hair, generally worn long and tied in the back in both sexes. Women wear tough cotton dresses and men trousers; their garments look old-fashioned and quaint to Sigilian eyes. Their homes are large wagons with massive wheels and a distinct nautical design, complete with masts and sails. 

The people of Awn's Landing trace their history back a mere three hundred years, when their ancestor Captain Awn landed in this country aboard an airship they call the Wind-Ark along with ninety other men and women. The crew of the Wind-Ark were escaping some kind of disaster, they say, although the nature of this disaster varies in tales told in different communities. Some say a giant monster (its description matching that of the epic abomination known as the chichimec) devoured the world from which they escaped. Others say their world was about to crash into another realm. Still others report a war or religious persecution. Their calm acceptance of the fact of other populated worlds, as well as the fact that their language is clearly a dialect of Planar Common, has led some to believe their ancestors might have originally arrived on this world from Sigil or some other such cosmopolitan place.

The Awnlanders, as they call themselves, live primarily by following their short-lived lakes and seas around and harvesting the fish. Sometimes they are able to find aquatic life left flopping on dry land after the water recedes and collect it before it goes bad, though most of the time the fish slide around with the water. The fish are preserved and dried and brought with them on their migrations. The Awnlanders also plant wild grains and return to harvest them later on in the season after the floods have come and gone.

Description:The mystery of the strangely flexible landscapes of Awn's Landing was solved only three months ago by a team of Guvner diviners armed with celestial ethereoscopes and communing with the local spirits and gods. In short, the "world" on the other side of the portal is a continent-sized leaf fluttering in the wind as it falls toward the ground millions of miles away. The fuzzy region of deeper azure that fills half of the sky was identified as the trunk of the tree from which the leaf fell, masked by atmospheric distortion across an unthinkable distance. The periods of darkness are thought to be times when the branches of the tree temporarily masks the sun. The ground, which remains somewhat hypothetical as even the local gods had never seen it, is completely invisible even with a powerful telescope. 

The existence of other leaf-continents must be assumed, probably hundreds of them, though none have yet fluttered close enough to be seen and no portals leading to them have yet been discovered. The Guvners stated with authority that there was only a single tree filling a crystalline sphere, though nothing in their notes backs up this claim. It seems likely that they simply found the idea of an entire forest of such trees so mind-shatteringly huge that they invented the idea of the sphere for the sake of their own peace of mind.

With contact and trade relations with several local communities secured, Awn's Landing has become a common place for Sigilian merchants looking for fresh water, soil, seafood, grains, and the bamboo-like building material. There is nothing on this world that could be called a luxury by Cager standards, but staples are important in a city like Sigil where everything has to be imported, and the reliability of the Angelsquid portal makes places like Awn's Landing important.

Although the Awnlanders arrived on their leaf via an airship, such constructions are no longer made in modern times; the secret of making them fly has been lost, and nothing in the ruins that remain has so far revealed the dark of it. For a time after the arrival of the Wind-Ark, the knowledge was preserved, and the ship that the Angelsquid Portal leads to is only one of dozens of smaller hulks built in imitation of the mothership. The location of the Wind-Ark itself is the goal of every major Awnlander faith; it is believed that within the remains of the Wind-Ark, the secret of flight can still be found, and any who doubt this or suggest that the Wind-Ark has been utterly destroyed or lost over the edge of the world are considered to be demon-tainted heretics and burnt. When Sigilian merchants suggested trading them alternate flight magics from their own city they nearly met the same fate; those who travel regularly to the world have since learned to keep their mouths shut about such thing, contenting themselves with trading pretty baubles, brightly colored fabrics, and simple tools. A few younger Awnlanders have won the secret of the portal key through charm and seduction of loose-lipped Sigilians, but thus far the knowledge has not traveled far, and those Awnlanders who have settled in Sigil have mostly turned their backs on their old world.

The variability of the origin stories among the Awnlanders has led to speculation that there were actually a number of different colonists, and thus multiple Wind-Arks. Again, this is treated as blasphemy by the close-minded elder Awnlanders. 

Contact between Sigil and Awn's Landing has existed for several years now, ever since the portal key was discovered after the Faction War and the Tempest of Doors. Relations have been generally peaceful between the merchants and the locals, who are strict about their religious beliefs but are accepting of the idea of visitors from other worlds, there have been rumblings from more distant communities jealous of the new wealth, goods, and strange ideas they're seeing in their neighbors. The merchants are trying to manage the situation carefully, but some have been hiring mercenaries, as they're beginning to suspect that an attack might soon come that might damage the portal. 

In addition, there are other more distant worries. What of the force that destroyed the Awnlanders' distant homeland? A chichimec would be horrifying enough, but perhaps stoppable by Sigilian heroes, but what happens if one continent-leaf hits another, crushing the inhabitants of one? And what happens when the leaf finally hits the ground? 

And, of course, the idea that somewhere on the "world" is a magical secret that can empower not just one massive airship, but a whole fleet of them, has many tongues in Sigil wagging. 

Name: Aluna

  Access: A crudely painted drawing of a crescent moon in an alleyway in the Lower Ward, slightly taller than a human, in silver paint. When moonlight touches the drawing (since Sigil has no moon of its own, moonlight must be bottled artificially) the space within the silver borders becomes a portal to a Prime world called Aluna. On the Alunan side, the portal is a silver archway created by an ancient race of fey, decorated with a crescent moon motif. Originally it was designed to open to a plane of Faerie during certain phases of the moon, but currently it is malfunctioning and only opens to Sigil. The area around the archway is wilderness, though a human village is within a few hours' walk, and a city within a few days' journey.

Prevailing conditions: Aluna seems a fairly typical Prime world in many respects. The first difference a planewalker'll ken to is in the night sky: the moon is shattered, barely half of it still intact, with silver shards of the former satellite hanging around it in a cloud. Occasionally massive beings made of silvery energy will dart from shard to shard, like flies feasting on carrion.

Inhabitants: Identified races include humans, elves, and gnomes, as well as exotic planetouched known as "moontouched." Some reports have suggested that the moontouched are actually 'loth-spawned tieflings, though the predominant view is that they are humans who have been affected by contact with shards of the broken moon. Also inhabiting this world are orcs (invaders from another Prime where they are the ruling race), dwarves (pitiable refugees from the orc world) and gray-skinned, hairless creatures similar to bugbears but larger and less malevolent.

Description: A thousand years ago, the moon died.A thousand years before that, skygazers across the planet reported a silvery birdlike entity, who flew from the constellation of ill omen and wrapped the moon in her wings. For three days she remained there, then she flew away again. The manifestation was duly recorded, but no one knew what to make of it.A thousand years before the present day, the moon cracked. Observers said it resembled nothing so much as an egg that had been pierced from within. Over the next three days, they watched in horror as it fell apart, its shards falling from the sky and devastating the world. Winged shapes of silver light escaped from the orb, crying out in joyous musical tones.Today, the world is a very different place than it was. The oceans have risen and remapped the world, and vast swathes of territory have been transformed into desolate and highly magical moonlands, where the touch of the lunar shards have distorted them into something alien and strange. In the sky, the remnants of the shattered moon remain as a haunting reminder of the perfect orb that once graced the heavens. On the earth, the cult of the Silvery Ones demands submission to the new gods who gestated in the moon. The system of moongates that once connected the fey empire with the otherworlds went wrong when the heavenly body they were tied to broke; the remaining moongates can lead to literally anywhere now. The very afterlife has changed: where once souls were ushered into the land of the dead by the kindly goddess of the moon, for centuries they had no way of escaping the world of flesh at all, and gathered in undead hordes until the arrival of the Pure Ones, a race of fiends with smiling masks who offered to construct a new afterlife for a price. Through the jagged holes pierced in the cosmos, the Unfettered emerged, horrifying fiends who sought nothing but destruction. From the timeless depths of the Graveyard of the Gods, elder gods awoke to find their errant children had let their creation be shattered by invaders from without; the old gods, full of rage, made new war in the heavens, and now seek to found a new divine dynasty so that the world will have new wonders to replace the old.

Primarily, this world is of interest by planewalkers for its malfunctioning moongates, which make it something of a nexus of many worlds. Besides Sigil and the orc world (which is called Bonag), moongates have been discovered leading to a far-future version of Aluna where all life has died, fled, or vanished; to various fey planes, each associated with a different phase of the moon; to an "underworld" plane where restless souls of the dead are unable to move on to the Outer Planes; to an artificial afterlife created by the Pure Ones (who are yugoloths); to a world with a green sun where fire-worshipers practice ritual human sacrifice and merchant lords buy unimaginable wealth with precious metals and spices; to a world with six moons where warring factions name themselves after the hours of the day; and to a seemingly Edenic, thinly populated world (actually a forested moon) currently being settled by Alunan refugees.

The PCs get to visit it in the adventure Roots of Evil. It isn't named, though.

Oh my god, you created a My Little Pony world.

Surprisingly plausible, though.

Name: Bridge World. Planars, for reasons explained below, also refer to the world by its variation of the dwarven tongue - "Argnos ath Uhaan" which means "Birthed by His Hammer".

Access: The diviners who've studied the planet believe it to be located in an alternate Prime with a slightly altered topological space - meaning it is not within the "local" Primes that serve as the usual immigration-sources of Clueless to the Wheel. This prevents any direct access via a planeshift and even makes difficult the construction of portals in cities such as Union.

There is one portal to and from Sigil in the Lady's ward, an arch of petrified wood that leads into one of the gated gardens of a local magistrate. The key is a fragment of ice taken from a Prime world's North or South Poles. The portal is the only known access point, the return key being any object or body part originating from Hell.

Prevailing conditions: The immediate feature that strikes the traveler is the lack of land. Miles high plateaus, gathered in clusters, rise up from indigo waters frosted over with several layers of ice. The largest of these plateaus is roughly twice the size of Sigil. Bridges of petrified wood extend out from these plateaus, with smaller spans connecting the clusters and gargantuan trunks arcing across the world's oceans.

Inhabitants: The world is largely populated by elves, humans, and dwarves. The world, in the last several millennia, has seen a massive upswing in all three race's populations as more and more people have found ways to survive on the bridges - either by layering soil on the surface of the fossilized wood or digging into the bark. In some places, a variety of undead tree fungus creates forests inhabited by various reptilian and amphibious creatures such as kuo-toa and gecko stags.

Description: This world has one major export, and that is the thaumaturge-science of its druids' bioengineers. It was this technology that led to the initial creation of the bridges, one the druids manage to rediscover following the first global war. The druids have also been responsible for the creation of various races in this world, though the success of this endeavor has varied in range from misshapen mongrels to the enigmatic and wise trolls. Trolls bear some resemblance to the more benevolent Ysgardian trolls, but are much larger in size and have the characteristics most of us would ascribe to albinos. These plump sages contemplate the world from igloo cities built on the ice under the larger bridges.

The druids possess many other weapons, races, and tools derived from their shaping of Life such as moss cannons and dragonfly fleshmenders, and lucky for the Multiverse the Heirophant allows for exchanges of goods so long as its done in designated tree-markets. The Heirophant believes greater secrets are buried in the burrowed tunnels of the ancient bridges and her subordinate druids have been given leave to pay and equip adventurers to sound out these fossil-caverns while she and hers get on with running the world.

While the Heirophant is the de facto but unrecognized ruler of the planet, her authority is largely that of an unseen benefactor committed to keeping the peace. Given that elven loyalty extends only to the walls of their crystalline cities and human loyalty is limited to city-states if it gets out the door of their houses, the only two major powers left to contest her status quo are the dwarves and the witch captains.

The witch captains are the seven archmagi that sail across the world in dirigible city states. Their purposes are their own, though they did present a united front against the Heirophant five hundred years after the first world war. This led to the second global conflict which, after six decades of arcanic disasters, ended in stalement. While some dirigibles were ripped from the skies all of the archmagi survived to once more sail on currents of wind. Several petrified trunks still bear the scars of that war in the jungles of moss overrunning a few barkstone civilizations.

The dwarves are as spread out as the rest of the races, but have come to see themselves as a united race following the selling of their ancestors' souls to Hell. This sacrifice was made by veterans unable to cope with the disintegration of traditional clans and the disregard for blood debts accrued in first world war. While these veterans could killed each other and attempt to at least end their personal debts, they could not accept the end of dwarven traditions in the wake of globalization. Selling their souls to Hell, they travel the planes as heroes using Evil to do Good. When they cross paths they duel and thus come to honorable ends their descendants cannot help but acknowledge given the fate of their souls.

Their transformation into hell bound warriors fighting for justice across the planes has led to all of this world's dwarven kind taking up the religion of ancestor worship in addition to veneration of Moradin and his pantheon. (More information about this in the story here - feel free to add stories about your worlds to that thread! )

Just below the surface of the ice one sees bioluminescent orbs of yellow staring up at those who dwell on the plateaus and the stonebark. Who or what those glowing eyed denizens are remains unclear to this day. If any specimens have been found beyond the usual cetaceans and arthropods the common folk do not know of it and neither trolls, the druids, nor the witch-captains will speak of it. Even the kraken fishers do not know though they claim the Watchers are to worshiped as one carves a ship through the ice.

Adventurers prepared to engage in exploratory diving are sure to find generous employers amongst druids currying for their Heirophant's favor.

Name: Alluria

Access: The two-way portal is in The Lady's Ward, in the home of a wealthy elven merchant. The key is at least a bucket's worth of fresh water from a Prime world. The water should be poured on the ground in front of a particular section of basement wall. When a traveler steps into the puddle, the portal will open. The return key requires exactly one dozen local reeds, lashed together and used to draw a doorway in a particular section of prairie. The owner of the home in Sigil has kept the portal secret and secure for many centuries.

Prevailing Conditions: Alluria is a small, prime-normal moon of an enormous gas giant planet. Visitors fond of wetter locales will find it very pleasantly habitable. The geography is largely wetlands and shallow seas with a smattering of prairie. The climate is perennially humid and pleasantly warm, interrupted only by short but dramatic rainstorms. The portal from Sigil deposits visitors on an uneventful prairie a day's walk from what might loosely be called Allurian territory.

Inhabitants: The world's namesake inhabitants are the descendants of long-ago unions between spacefaring elven pilgrims and local nature spirits. Resembling exceptionally thin, golden-tinted elves, Allurians are typically taken by planars for aasimar. They live in a series of modest but beautiful villages scattered along the coast of the moon's largest sea. Across the sea, primitive tribes of kobolds roam the marshes, ruled by a sisterhood of squabbling naga. While the vast majority of the world appears uninhabited by intelligent life, it is actually rich with reclusive magical creatures connected to the seas and wetlands. Incorporeal nature spirits abound, along with a variety of fey creatures.

Description: Alluria exists in an isolated crystal sphere on the fringes of explored space. During the daytime its sky is gorgeously dominated by its gas giant parent; this filters sunlight into a sometimes psychedelic array of earth tones and keeps plant life, while abundant, from growing particularly large. The bulk of the moon is untouched by any sort of civilization. Though spirits and magical creatures dwell everywhere, only a small minority have had contact with other intelligent races - most spirits are as much incoherent forces as entities, and the nixies, sprites, and other beings are exceptionally wild even by fey standards. They typically will not reveal themselves to outsiders, but may react with alarming amoral savagery towards those who treat nature with particular disrespect.

Several thousands of years ago, the last survivors of a lost and dying elven fleet landed on this moon. The spirits of the water and land took pity on them and, assuming corporeal form for the first time, taught the elves the tools of survival. For several centuries spirits lived among the elves, with intermarriage becoming a prominent custom. But while the spirits capably aped emotion and reason, they remained a fundamentally alien intelligence, and one day shed their physical forms and retreated back into the wilderness as unexpectedly as they has appeared. That said, the two groups remain on familial good terms (though the spirits remain incorporeal, communicating exclusively through tides and other cryptic means). As spirit-folk, the Allurians are intimately connected with the land around them. In the past, the cascading effects of small disturbances to the ecology have turned entire villages sickly - as such, the Allurians have learned to keep their population small and sparse. And having learned from early visitors about the Sigil portal, they have worked with generations of sympathetic elves to make sure the portal is unused (aside from the rare Allurian journey). The roots of this isolationism are not tradition-fueled xenophobia so much as survival-minded pragmatism.

Allurian villages are dazzling spectacles, their buildings artful assemblages of massive, curved shards of a smooth, fogged material. These are the thin and surprisingly sturdy exoskeletons of the gargantuan jellyfish creatures that populate the gas world above. The Allurians maintain several small spelljamming vessels, not to hunt these creatures but to seasonally retrieve their moltings - the sight of a massive shell tumbling from the sky into the sea is the rapturous centerpiece of their largest religious festival. The largest of the chitin buildings in a particular village is typically a terrarium, where insects (producing silks, glues, and other useful compounds) exist alongside a variety of medicinal plants. Most food is provided through aquaculture. Allurians practice a small amount of druidic magic, primarily focused on benevolent manipulation of nature in these industries.

Though it's the spirit-elves for whom this world is named, the kobolds on the other side of the sea have been here as long if not longer. Their legends tell of being chased from a great city - they quite possibly traveled through the Sigil portal long before it was controlled as it is currently. The kobolds struggled here for millennia, scarcely surviving and never ascending past barbarism. Aside from fracturing them into smaller, more manageable tribes, it can't be said that their naga mistresses have improved their circumstances terribly. The five sisters were banished from Ankhwugaht to the Prime by a minion of Set weary of their constant arguing. All the sisters are quite mad, though only four continue to rule bands of bloody kobold cultists; the fifth incited her flock to such wanton environmental destruction that the nixies and water spirits simply drowned them all. She wanders the marshes, alone.

The Allurians and kobolds are faintly aware of each other's existence, but maintain a rather remarkable distance from one another. If the sometimes-cooperating, sometimes-warring kobold tribes could work together long enough, they could probably overwhelm the gentle spirit-elves with sheer ferocity. The Allurians might seek out sympathetic adventurers in Sigil for assistance in such a predicament. Also, the naga have not been on the moon for particularly long at all by planar standards - there are certainly friends as well as enemies who would be happy to be reconnected with them.

Name: Grakixoxri

Access: No known portal from Sigil. There is a one-way portal from Gzemnid's realm in the Outlands. If a traveler falls (not flies) down a particular vertical shaft in Gzemnid's caves, he or she will be transported to a similar shaft in the interior of Grakixoxri.

Prevailing Conditions: Grakixoxri appears to be a dead prime-normal world. While the atmosphere is breathable, the surface of the small planet is cold and barren, with no water or vegetation to be found. The interior is somewhat warmer but impenetrably dark and difficult to navigate on account of its immense scale.

Inhabitants: Remnants of humanoid civilizations can be found on the surface, but the only intelligent life on the planet currently are the several thousand gigantic beholders that share a sprawling hive underneath the planet's surface.

Description: While scholars and unnaturalists have cataloged endless variation in beholder species across the Prime and the outer planes, the beholders of Grakixoxri are utterly typical in appearance but for one thing: their size. An average member of their kind is several stories high, with many growing much larger. Thankfully for primes and planars alike, the Grakix long ago put aside the psychotic malevolence that pervades their race in favor of isolation and lives of relative peace. It would be a step too far to take this for "goodness" and they continue to consider other races with typical beholder disdain, but perhaps being so transparently powerful simply tempered their impulses towards vulgar destruction and domination. Thousands of years ago, they settled on this desolate planet, extending natural caves into enormous winding tunnels deep under the ground.

The Grakix study magic and carve elaborate murals in the walls of their caves using their disintegration beams, but the great majority of their time is spent in meditation, achieving magical communion with one another and calming their naturally volatile minds. At many times during the day, the naturally reverberant caverns are overtaken by thousands of sepulchral voices repeating strange, guttural mantras. A great deal of the hive's space is devoted to cultivating large, regenerative worms (originally imported by behoider mages from somewhere on the planes) that make up the hive's food supply.

Legends of Grakixoxri flutter through the spheres and on several occasions over the centuries other beholder nations have come bearing genocide. In some cases the giants have scarcely responded, leaving the intrusion to their hive's potent magical defenses (a quartet of bound fire elementals reside in the sculptures decorating the main entrance tunnel and relish the rare opportunity to fill it with a raging inferno). On other occasions the Grakix themselves have replied in swift, overwhelming fashion.

The portal from Gzemnid's realm is understandably very seldom used, as it is incredibly difficult to find, and for those that find it on accident it is incredibly difficult to survive. Of the few that have made the trip intact, the Grakix have left most to wander the dark until they expire or determine some magical means of exit. Currently, however, there is a modron that holds the dubious status of "guest" among the beholders, who find the little creature alternately comical and deeply profound.

Name: EquoTahl (adopted from the name of the major kingdom in which the Sigil portal is located)

Access: An old "iron maiden" you step into and close it around you, making this 1 person at a time portal. The key is an actual key that opens the padlock on the maiden. The Maiden is moved around the city, being sold from person to person not every owner knows of its portal powers.

Prevailing conditions: you avarage normal prime conditions

Inhabitants: The kingdom in which you arrieve is dominated by humans and fire elementals or semi-elementals. But only a small percentage of the humans are dominators, a special caste that has heritage passed down pacts with the elementals who are the true rulers of the kingdom and plauge most of the world surrounding that kingdom.

Description: The kingdom of EquoTahl is a huge one and a very dominat kingdom on the entire prime world, given their elemental rulers and worshippers. Eons ago a duke of flame managed to open a permanent connection to the plane of fire onto this prime world allowing his kin to invade and usurp and in the end govern and rule. This has culminated in a society where humans/humanoids live side by side with fire elementals and many variations of semi/demi/quasi/half -breeds.

Mages/wizards/sorcerers who practice elemental magic are hunted, only the ruling caste humans and the elementals themselves are allowed to meddle with elemental magic.

The first fire elementals who conquored the kingdom has a disdain for elves, these were hunted and enslaved. Later on planars were viewed as meddlesome and annoying as they often tried to upset the new order so they become outlawed.

The general attitude of the governing bodies is agressive, hot tempered and malicious.

Awesome locations bahne and atomicb!

I really like the elementals taking a more proactive role in conquering a prime world, and the inclusion of steam genasi and the Unhuman War on Grost.

heh, you could make the giant beasts part of a new world or a parallel wheel.

Supercool - this looks like the right place for it to me.

Name: Skraxus (for the main kingdom/continent)

Access: In a dank alley in the Hive, a portal can be drawn on a section of stone wall using organic ash no more than a day old. The Hezbanh end of the two-way portal is a crumbling stone wall around which a heavily fortified government building has been erected. Travelers will find themselves deposited in a bleak and well-attended holding cell. The return key is the same.

Prevailing Conditions: Prime normal.

Inhabitants: The planet's namesake continent is populated primarily by humans, united in a single empire under a beholder god-king. Mountain communities of dwarves exist in perpetual guerrilla conflict with the Skraxus empire and loosely connected orc kingdoms dominate the continent to the south. Immense oceans leave the remainder of the world unexplored.

Description: Skraxus occupies the same crystal sphere as the beholder monastery Grakixoxri. While a number of the colossal Grakix beholders have grown weary of their nation's quiet, meditative existence, most have taken their wanderlust to the planes. Approximately 1,000 years ago, a restless young beholder called Skrax'arak chose a different path, spelljamming under his own power away from Grakixoxri and out into the depths of wildspace. He traveled for months, the distant sun his only landmark, and finally came to rest, near-death, on the modest, uneventful world that now bears his name. The human tribes he encountered naturally identified him as some being or another from their various mythologies and, his mind muddled by his great journey, the once thoughtful Skrax'arak refashioned the local shamanic religions into bloody, fanatical cults.

Today the continent is dominated by a massive totalitarian empire, where impoverished peasants live in a constant state of fear punctuated only by elaborate public rituals of bleak fealty to their ruler. The seat of the empire is an imposing city-fortress of brutal stone architecture - his powers of flight severely impaired by his travels, Skrax'arak is primarily confined to the city's main temple, attended to by a hierarchy of mage-priests (the highest ranked of whom are all missing an eye, a self-inflicted demonstration of devotion to their master). The paranoia and ruthlessness natural to beholder-kind permeate the society here; while secret police and death squads are a standard tool of governance, the fear they inspire pales in comparison to the dreaded 'eye golems', magical constructs that are the real enforcers of the malevolent regime. Eye golems are perfectly smooth black spheres with a madly-blinking eye set flush against the surface - the smaller variety, as large as a man's head, are the eyes and ears of the empire, capable of flying quickly and silently, passing through most physical barriers, and replaying anything that they observe as illusions. The larger golems are as big as a typical beholder and, at the minimum, act as relentless, lightning-fast battering rams invulnerable to non-magical attacks. Many a clandestine meeting of nascent revolutionaries has been turned to bloody paste by one of these mindless marauders. Terrifyingly, some newer models appear to possess one of the traditional beholder eye stalk attacks.

Skrax'arak feeds seasonally, devouring hundreds of the elderly and infirm in gruesome festivals lasting for many days and nights. To be sacrificed in this manner not only promises paradise in the afterlife but brings some measure of honor and favor to the families as well. In this culture of mistrust and fear, many of the sacrificed are not so close to death's door after all.

Periodically Skrax'arak will launch offenses against the mountain dwarves at the edge of his empire or the orcs on the continent to the south, but both of these avenues remain fruitless thus far. Entire armies have been lost to cold, starvation, and relentless guerrilla attacks in the treacherous mountains. The orcs have scarcely lifted a finger against invaders thus far, as disease and the natural dangers of their jungles deal with outsiders quite capably.

Skrax'arak's madness has more than rekindled his genocidal racial bloodlust and, believing himself to be a unique creature, this animosity is squarely focused on the beholders of Grakixoxri. Skrax'arak understands that it would be utter foolishness to mount an assault with any sort of spelljamming fleet (which he doesn't have, for that matter); instead, his mage-priests are busily working on a number of potentially planet-destroying artifacts. Projects such as these sometimes require planar errand-running, for which adventurers in Sigil are often hired. Skrax'arak enjoys boasting of his world to planars and can be a surprisingly gracious host to those who do not evince repulsion at the world he has created.

I just picked up Paizo's Distant Worlds book, a gazetteer of the Golarian solar system. It's quite cool, featuring some interesting spots that immediately called this thread to mind; that the planets are based on our own provides a pleasantly solid foundation for it all.

This one is very much based on a world where the Zombie Apocalypse happened like in Walking Dead, a bit of Crossed and some other things.

Name: Akonis

Access: A ruined and abandoned hovel located near the Slags.

Prevailing Conditions: Formerly a highly advanced world, now a very ruined world inhabited mostly by hordes of mindless undead. A very dangerous place to be.

Inhabitants: Akonis was a completely human inhabited world with some beasts like Owlbears and Griffins, but it lacked much in the way of magic only which was only practiced by highly secretive individuals, and as a result there was more of a push for advanced technology. This has mostly ended now as the rotting plague came to this world, infected most of the humans of this world. The vast majority of the infectees all became ravenous zombies who could spread their condition with bites, never falling after rising from the dead unless exposed to a massive head trauma.

A very small minority of the infectees didn't become undead, and retained their intelligence becoming something far worse. They became bands of vicious cannibalistic marauders who's very blood is infected. They can be identified by the constantly seeping blood from their eyes, the marauders have lost all remorse, morality and anything holding them back as a result of the rotting plague. They seek to ravage, torture, rape and kill any of the non-infected they see in the most gruesome ways possible.

As a result there are very little non-infected survivors on this world left, as they exist in small isolated bands fighting a losing battle for survival against the hordes of zombies and marauder bands.

Description: Before the rotting plague came to Akonis, this world enjoyed technology more advanced than many other worlds. Aircraft would transport people great distances, massive citadels of glass and steel marked most of their cities, and electricity powered almost everything in this world. It was said that the scientists of this world were working on various projects to improve the lives of it's people more. One of their projects were a bunch of tiny thinking machines that would greatly improve health attacking anything that infected a living person. Also their were many theoretical studies in the existence of other worlds.

Utilizing their study of advanced particles and energies the scientist actually created a portal to another world. A dead place known as Moil, were malevolent supernatural forces existed. They were unprepared to handle what lay within Moil, and soon it's presence took control of their experimental self-replicating thinking machines becoming the Rotting Plague.

It only took one month for their highly advanced civilization to fall to ruin, as most of its metropoli became infested with the infested with the undead. Their powerful military forces became scattered after destroying many of their cities to stop the plague, and soon they were overrun and infected with the rotting plague.

It's said now that some of the ruined metropoli of this world are ruled by Lich Kings, and that incursions from portals into Akonis have become more common as a result of the plague. Some of the isolated survivors are aware of visitors from other worlds, as more than a few of the bands of survivors contain the rare few practitioners of magic that ever existed in this world.