THE DEATH CLOUD IS PASSING OVERHEAD...
This is the second revision of a campaign I have been working on for a week now. The original post can be found here:
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2239.0Thanks to Maat Mons, Soro_Lost, Halinn, and Bastian for the amazing ideas. Keep in mind this is all still in the works, and all of your ideas and thoughts are welcome.
The world below this sky city, monks that have achieved 'true enlightenment' get raptured up into a huge temple city in the skies. In this temple city, they can enjoy the richest of fruits, the purest of air, and live among others of peace for the rest of their days.
The city is kept aloft with massively huge turbines below, and large propellers at the top of every tower. These machines, though massive in size, run very quiet, and is powered by a technology passed down by a storm giant below the seas. The city orbits around the world below aimlessly, and is never in the same spot. The city was built by the magic of a powerful dijiin, (some say he is the son of a Shiek in the air elemental plan, and others say the dijiin himself is a Shiek.) and with the the hands of a brilliant storm giant very few know about. In the city, there are many bath houses and tea houses, royal gardens of sweet and exotic fruit, large green courtyards of trees and shade to meditate in, and many glorious temples where you can train and prefect your arts. This city wasn't originally designed for monks, however. It was originally a keep for the dijiin and an army of avariels centuries beforehand.
The deal is the dijiin rebuilt a society for the avariels since their kingdom of old crumbled into the sea many years ago, and for a kingdom, the avariels must protect this dijiin, and the city against his immortal enemy, a vile and blood thirsty efreeti. The dijiin has always admired the sacrifice of the monk and their strange vows of purity. These acts of kindness and selflessness the monk devotes his entire life to should be rewarded. (and in the divine plan, taken advantage of.) So some many years later, through his magic he rewards their life decisions with a paradise to live in, knowing full well his city will be a pure, quiet, peaceful, and enjoyable one for all who lives there. (and mostly, an enjoyable one for himself.) On the flip side, when the efreeti attacks, and he has once 400 hundred years ago, the avariels will fight out of contract, and the monks will fight for survival and honoring their temples and paradise. A most ingenious plan for a dijiin who only wants to linger in the sun and smoke his hookah, and somehow be important but have little to very few priorities.
To run this city it takes a lot of work, and work that no one wants to do. The turbines spin not by magic, but from a strange technology brought up by the storm giant that he calls "Steam Power." Thousand of Decanters of Endless Water flow out in the lower floors of the city, and the water is run through miles of pipes to aqueducts above to help supply those living in the city with fresh water, and then the water is finaly run into large heated engines, which heats the water into steam which is used to power the turbines that keep the city flying. The excess water is dumped out of the sides of the city every so often, and rains down below. The Waring Avariels, through their beliefs that they are Superior to everyone below them, has come up with the twisted idea that slaves should be stoking the fires in there engine rooms, and cleaning out the water pipes when needed. So it was decided among a council, that once their city passes over the cities below, they will descend down upon the land races in night, wearing black cloaks, and porcelain masks, and snatch up slaves to work until death in the cities underground. Most go willing, not knowing their fate is to work in factories exhausted and abused by their Avariel Masters.
Some other subjects in this city are beautiful women the dijiin has run into and 'enjoyed' throughout his many years of life. He has persuaded them all to come live a life with him in a palace high up in the skies, where only him and his many wives may enter. His palace is a place of carnal lust and revelry, very different from the city he has instructed the Storm giant to build on the outside.
-(This bit of information isn't known to the monks, for all they know the 'king' of this city is a wise and old monk that has transcended above all mortal desires, like themselves, and has locked himself away to meditate for the sacred 1,000 years. The avariels know none of this either, since they keep high up in the upper levels of the city and has never even seen the inside of the dijiins great palace. In fact, all living in the city has never seen the dijiin for over 400 years, which the monks deny has ever happened, for the 'king' is on a long lasting spiritual journey through meditation.)-
Through sleeping with all of these women, the dijiin has many children, all air gensais (cross breading dijiins and humans make half air-elementals.) and their place is to take care for the palace, grow the fruit on the inside of it's corridors, cater to the dijiin and his wives, and keep the place looking divine and seducing. These children are taken care of by their mothers in a single, almost cult-like mass. The children are kept ignorant for the most part, they know little of the outside world, and haven't seen anything but the dijiins massive corridors and bedrooms. They have, however, noticed they have special powers unlike their mothers, but they know nothing of their heritage.
The world below is flooded. There is very little land, and only two continents that are on opposite sides of the globe. Knowledge that there is another continent on the other side where people also live is not known by anyone other than the dijiin, who has seen the entire world. The oceans dominate over the land unchallenged, so it would take a sailing ship years to reach and discover the other side. So travel by airship is practiced more, but to travel to the other side of the world is madness. There is "most likely" no where to land on the endless ocean, it's perils would be most dire, and the likelihood of there even being green grass on the other side isn't likely. The environment is very humid, wet and tropical, islands are almost over run by jungles and rain forests.
On the sea, communities of Darfellen gypsies float about in boat-cities. They live off the oceans, and these cities are very common to come across. The people of land call these cities "fish slums" and most view the darfellen in a negative way. The Darfellen however, know more about the floating city than the rest of the world's communities, since some of their ancestors has seen the storm giant build it, hundreds of years ago "when the sea was cradled by the earth." ~Darfellen Legend. These stories have been passed down through the gypsy tribes, and are still honored to this day.
The lands below, are full of vice and madness. Drugs, prostitutes, gambling, and worse yet gangs of rogues, mage-thieves, and pick-pockets run most of the major cities. There is little land to settle in, the jungles are always pushing into the city and the buildings take much damage from nature's advance. Jungle beasts pick off most who stray too far into the jungle canopies, and disease's like malaria and leprosy are sweeping through the southern edge of the parties home Continent and the islands to the south, because of all the placid water and higher temperatures that exist there. There are some leper colonies in the partie's known world, but very few. Most lepers, when examined and caught for having the condition are forced into large sea bound ships and are are exiled to keep far away from the land.These boats have been deemed the title of "Plague Arcs."
Not unlike the Darfellen tribes in the sea, the land bound races have their own legends of the city in the sky, since every so often it is seen overhead. The people call the city, the "Death Cloud." For when the "cloud" comes, many people vanish mysteriously, and sometimes the cloud is seen spilling hundreds of gallons of water like rain, swelling the rivers and flooding unfortunate village's. Some of the people in the known world, claim that when the death cloud passes overhead, strange Iron sky ships come in the night, with winged figures cloaked in black, and the sailors of these ships snatch people up, and take them back to the cloud. There are even some people of the land, who worship the death cloud, and these angels cloaked in black are believed to be messengers of death, carrying away the dead (literally) to a better place. Cults all across the known world worship these Angels, and the disappearance of the corpses means the worshipper has honored the God who lives in the cloud.