Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

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Palomides's picture
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factotums
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Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

Continuing a brainstorming project I tried with Arcadia, I would like to hear some (possibly) inter-related adventures all set upon the same plane. I randomly generated a number and rather appropriately, the result pointed to Limbo [I thought it was a pretty cool coincidence]
Like my previous thread, I am not suggesting an epic quest that takes the PCs from 1st to 10th level; but I am hoping for ideas about:
-Three or more somewhat fleshed out adventure ideas
-That these adventures explore different aspects of the themes embodied by the plane (In this case: chaos, complete freedom, luck, randomness, perhaps creativity, individualism, rebels, and/or nihilism)
-That at least a few of these adventures make use of the species/locations/terrains/pantheons found on the plane
-While some adventures (and perhaps the overarching thread) can involve threats from outside the plane, at least one adventure should involve only entities from the plane itself
-Possibly a hook in the initial adventure that would draw the PCs to the plane
-Perhaps some relatively “safe” haven for the PCs between adventures
-I am not looking for NPC statistics or dungeon layouts; just enough plot points to make sense of it
I would recommend reviewing the Renovations that were done on it
/forum/planar-renovation-project-limbo
/forum/limbo-renovating-residents
Some aspects that might be used include:
-“Islands” of reality(with their own laws of physics) created by people using their minds on the chaos-stuff (this seems to be rife with possibilities. Imagine dropping the PCs into a weird dreamscape where things keep changing much more than a “typical” demiplane)
-Chaos storms
-Githzerai outposts
-Tribes of slaad
-Deific realms for gods of luck, wind/storms, seas/storms, and/or war
-Possibly the new idea of benens – seeds of new planes/crystal spheres/etc. to be

Anything else that I’m forgetting?

As for their entry into the plane, I like the idea of a random magical effect. For example, the PCs are in a climactic showdown with a powerful mage who just before he is defeated casts a Hail Mary spell that throws the PCs into Limbo (and possibly the mage too although in a different location in the plane – perhaps giving the PCs a reason to stay in the plane as they hunt him down)
-Perhaps they see their foe a distance away when they first arrive but have difficulty getting to him due to random effects (wall of fire appearing, etc.) that they might incorrectly attribute to their foe’s magic. General confusion as the PCs try to understand where they are and what’s with all the oddness
-Before reaching the foe, the PCs feel the effects of a chaos storm and have to race to the shelter of a githzerai fortification or Barnstable (a halfling pocket floating in Limbo) which might serve as their “home base” for future adventures and understanding the “rules” of the plane
-Why does the antagonist mage stay on the plane? Perhaps he is trying to harvest ingredients to create a necklace of adaptation or some other “chaotic” magic item
I have a few ideas for other adventures in Limbo but I am interested to hear other people’s ideas

Wicke's picture
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Re: Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

Sailing On Limbo

On the bird-raft, as the storm blows, as the wailing whale crowd grows, slaad traders fly by, eying what is yours and mine, looking for the best deals across the sky-oceans of earthbound Limbo.

A slaad merchant-trader has recently lost his crew and is looking to hire on replacements. His jink is good and well-maintained (ie. not prone to the usual Limbo drift), and he seems to be above the board in his dealings with others. His ship however, is a living, evershifting vessel. When the PCs hire on, it's in the form of a sailing ship with a pelican masthead, feathered sails and canvas wings. To sail the ship, checks in the form of piloting are required, as well as healing and animal handling. Maintaining the cargo from place to place requires attention and maintenance to prevent it from shifting, so various concentration checks are needed from time to time.

In this scenario, the ship becomes the safe haven for the PCs. Because the captain is always on the lookout for new deals and trades, he comes into contact with a number of different communities across the plane. Different scenarios can involve handling the ship as it passes through the realm of one of the storm-oriented powers, fighting off slaadi pirates/raiders, negotiating with the different communities for trade or contracts. Basically, take your typical nautical-themed campaign and set it against the backdrop of Limbo.

Palomides's picture
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Re: Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

That would make an interesting home base while its mobility (without considering its own inherent chaotic nature) would allow a more free-wheeling atmosphere that would fit thematically with the plane rather than a "stationary" home base (I know that in Limbo, its argueable if anything is stationary; but with a ship it would be less jarring to come across new sites in Limbo each week)

Side note: This wouldn't affect anything but it might be a little trippy if the captain insists that the ship is stationary and that he can just sense the way the chaos is flowing around the ship and thus knows which part of the chaos will be washing up against them next (the equivalent relatively speaking as setting sail to a new destination)

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Re: Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

You could kick up the weirdness by having the place shift from mobile to stationary and then back again. The ship sails into and docks at a city, and the PCs go out to do whatever. When they go back to the docks, they find that the place has been changed and set up as a stone building/market (but still keeps the masthead figure for its signage). Stuff happens, cargo is sold and bought and one day the captain decides that its time to move on and suddenly the whole place is lifted off the ground by a number of balloons (a la the movie Up). All of the PCs personal effects would stay the same between changes, but their personal quarters would be changed around to reflect the new building/vessel/whatever. In this way, you could really change things up between episodes/adventures.

Imagine getting into a fight with a pack of slaadi, crash landing and then being tasked with finding a team of mason-shipwrights to patch up the captain's ship-turned-small-tower. Or maybe the ship's not been sleeping well lately, so you need to find a a silver voiced vocalist to sing it a lullaby as well as finding a bed large enough to accommodate it.

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Re: Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

Vroomfondle's Errant Spell

The Great Mage Vroomfondle, Planewalker Extraordinaire and Master of the Seven Thundering Mountains of Kain'Tuk, plying his craft across these many planes, entered into mortal combat with one of the Twelve Hated Wildmages of the prime world of Yon-Thorro. After he tracked his nemesis to the plane of Limbo and engaged him, he spoke his final spell of unmaking, throwing his entire being behind his spell and upon speaking its final syllable, the spell manifested as a trio of spell motes and sped off into the depths of Limbo. While Vroomfondle tried in vain to gather up his errant spell, his enemy, wounded though he was, escaped in the confusion.

Now Vroomfondle has found this he can no longer speak any words of magic. He's certain that his enemy is out there licking his wounds and will be back to finish the fight. He would go out himself to retrieve his lost spell and magical ability, but all the magics that he used to maintain his estate on Limbo ceased to work, forcing him to devote his efforts toward ensuring that everything that he's worked so hard to create here isn't lost to Limbo's chaos. While he isn't rich with material goods, he's ready to pay in terms of services rendered and knowledge, provided he gets his magic back and wins the upcoming battle with his wildmage opponent.

Though the spell motes have scattered, they're still relatively close to the wizard's estate (within a few days travel at most, assuming no time shenanigans). They're prone to changing shape to whatever form catches their fancy. One could favor running through the wilds of Limbo, shaping the chaos stuff into physical obstacles for the PCs to overcome. Another could favor finding centers of civilization, causing all sorts of havoc therein. Another still could suddenly become aware of itself as an individual and not want to return. Maybe there was a fourth mote, one that's been captured by a slaad tribe and they've started venerating it as their personal savior/god/leader/whatever (only to later discover that they're planning on sacrificing/eating the mote). The possibilites here are countless, really.

You'd have a sort of central safe haven in the form of the wizard's estate. The PCs could be brought in from just about anywhere. The power level of the campaign could be scaled up or down as needed. You hit on the rebelliousness embodied by the plane with the opening scenario, and you could touch on other issues by exploring how each mote deals with its new found freedom. One mote running amok through a githzerai city could show the hazards of unbounded freedom and/or expression. Maybe the motes are better off on their own. All sorts of interesting questions arise from dealing with these questions.

Palomides's picture
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Re: Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

I find the islands of relative stability created by the thoughts of visitors to be one of the more promising aspects of Limbo as they provide little unstable demiplanes available to almost anyone; but demiplanes that can interact with each other more than the traditional demiplanes do.Nonethess, I haven’t been able to put this together into a coherent idea for a (series of) adventures.

So the PCs need to visit a pocket of a creative individualist for knowledge or his assistance in some task. This “island” has some distinctive visual aspect and its own physical laws (nothing deadly but maybe something that causes their ability scores or class skills to shift around and forces them to adapt. Perhaps the more chaotic individuals have increased luck or skills here).
The PCs soon sense a lurking danger in this reality bubble, something that causes threats to the PCs if they try to interact with the individualist or to entice him away.
The threat could be any number of things:
-It could be manifestations of the creator’s dark subconscious (maybe he is secretly shy or he fears the PCs being dismissive of his creative work or perhaps it is his sublimated anger at the outside world) This dark force tries to keep the PCs away to “protect” the person who created the reality bubble
-The threat could be some shape-shifting creatures native to Limbo that feed off the creativity of others. Perhaps all the “secondary characters” in the reality pocket are really these intruders watching and manipulating things while hiding in plain sight. They stir up problems to either force the creator to come up with new creative solutions or they just become malicious once they get bored with the created reality. They might not take kindly to the PCs trying to take away their creative plaything

I also like the idea of the reality pocket the PCs are on colliding with another reality pocket (perhaps the PCs were too busy to notice the danger until it was too late and now the surrounding “soup” is churning too violently for them to just jump off). How would the two pockets interact? Would one consume the other? Would they both shatter/dissolve? Would they merge into something new? What would the PCs need to do to survive this event?

Wicke's picture
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Re: Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

Palomides wrote:
So the PCs need to visit a pocket of a creative individualist for knowledge or his assistance in some task. This “island” has some distinctive visual aspect and its own physical laws (nothing deadly but maybe something that causes their ability scores or class skills to shift around and forces them to adapt. Perhaps the more chaotic individuals have increased luck or skills here). The PCs soon sense a lurking danger in this reality bubble, something that causes threats to the PCs if they try to interact with the individualist or to entice him away. The threat could be any number of things: -It could be manifestations of the creator’s dark subconscious (maybe he is secretly shy or he fears the PCs being dismissive of his creative work or perhaps it is his sublimated anger at the outside world) This dark force tries to keep the PCs away to “protect” the person who created the reality bubble -The threat could be some shape-shifting creatures native to Limbo that feed off the creativity of others. Perhaps all the “secondary characters” in the reality pocket are really these intruders watching and manipulating things while hiding in plain sight. They stir up problems to either force the creator to come up with new creative solutions or they just become malicious once they get bored with the created reality. They might not take kindly to the PCs trying to take away their creative plaything

Make the person in question a kidnapped child, and you could include both foes. The first is the literal manifestation of all the child's terrors, the second would be the kidnappers. The three groups - the PCs, the terrors and the kidnappers - would all be hostile to one another. And, for whatever reason (or for no reason in particular) it's only the child who is able to manifest the terrain/environment, so the PCs would have to navigate through whatever locations are imagined up by the kid. The terror would be hunting the child, so whoever had them would become targeted by the terror. A possible end solution to escaping would be to have the child stand up to the terror and slide the entire location to Ysgard. Or maybe the child succumbs, and the whole place slides into Pandemonium. Or possibly, the child is encouraged to grow out of their fear and everybody finds themselves on the Outlands.

Palomides's picture
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Re: Single Plane Mini-Campaign: Limbo

This definitely won’t be to everyone’s tastes but I have been playing around with one idea for an epic adventure in Limbo

My starting point was the Egyptian gods known as the Ogdoad. In one origin story, these eight beings created the universe out of the chaos-stuff that filled the cosmos at the time but after the other gods were created and began ruling, the Ogdoad became passive gods playing little to no part in the activities of the universe
Most intriguing to my imagination, the Ogdoad typically took the forms of snakes and frogs
Based on our early discussions, since they are some of the greatest creator gods; the Ogdoad might be the gods that created the greatest of benbens out of the soup of elemental chaos and they might have been banished/suppressed when the lawful successor gods wanted the current manifestation of the multiverse to last (and not be replaced by a powerful new benben that would be created the next time these gods felt creative. The now the imprisoned/slumbering Ogdoad can only passively create “smaller” things like new crystal spheres)

I then started thinking of Spawning Stone that draws and then spews forth the various incarnations of the slaad. What if this wasn’t a typical monolith (and really, how could it be)? What if the “Stone” was the petrified/solidified bodies of the largely inactive Ogdoad?
What if the slaad are just physical manifestations of the thoughts of these semi-dormant chaotic creator gods – spreading out, falling back, merging together and taking new forms in an endless recursion like the dream cycle of some massive celestial power?

Thus things stood for eons; but in all things, there is a balance of power. When this balance was disrupted (specifically, when a certain someone killed and replaced Primus in Mechanus) perhaps the Ogdoad were able to stir ever so slightly and exert more force.
What does this mean for the average planewalker (there’s an oxymoron)?
Firstly, there is an unexpected surge of slaad through the planes and they seem much more focused on undoing the forces of law. (A focused Slaad Surge to offset the unplanned Modron March)
Secondly, the Ogdoad have managed to create a proto-benben capable of growing to a size and power unseen since the dawn of time. Suddenly, all the gods and other forces of the planes are interested in imprinting, manipulating, controlling or destroying this embryonic demiplane/plane/multiverse(?) Can the PCs help their patrons (and if so, what would the ramifications be)? Or can the PCs help put the Ogdoad back to sleep and curtail this unbalancing creation?
The setup and execution would be pretty complex and I obviously haven’t worked out that level of detail yet; but I like the general idea

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