#it's SUCH a cool setting
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Spelljammer Campaign Concept
Since I’m space-ttrpg brained at the minute. One thing specific to spelljammer’s Astral Sea setting that I really wish they’d added more to is the idea that it’s full of dead gods. And live ones, yes, but it’s the gargantuan celestial corpses that I’m interested in. (Which sounds weird when I say it like that, but anyway). There’s a canonical city, the githyanki city of Tu’narath, built on one of these corpses, and apparently in older lore Red Wizards of Thay pulled an artefact that beat like a heart out of it. There’s an idea that some aspect of divinity or even life still resides in some of these vast remains, some spark of godhood that provides power and even some animation to a thing long dead. In whatever sense gods can die.
And. Look. That is a hell of a concept to just throw out there and dismiss in a single sentence and small sidebar in your new setting book. I’m mad about it. Anyway.
The Astral Sea is littered with the corpses of dead gods, strange and forgotten deities from thousands of worlds. Strange beings that have become strange places, islands in a silver vastness, sometimes still pulsing with the echoes of divine life and perhaps divine natures. Places big enough to build cities on. Or dungeons in. Big enough to explore. Searching for what?
So. Picture this campaign. A mysterious backer is approaching the crews of adventurous spelljammer vessels, sponsoring expeditions to strange places in the Astral Sea. Terrifying places in the Astral Sea. The remnants of what were once gods, and now are bizarre islands full of strange magic and the echoes of old divine domains. This backer is searching for something specific from these sites, these corpses, and, on top of actual payment, is willing to allow crews to keep anything else they find on these expeditions for themselves, provided they bring everything they find back and allow the backer to examine them and choose a single item for themselves. Upon receipt of this item, they will pay the crew what they owe, and allow them to keep the rest.
This is because it’s not an item they’re searching for, as such. It’s a shard. A shard of lost divinity. A fragment of celestial life, still throbbing at the hearts of vast corpses. The form it takes will be different every time. The form of the deity will be different every time, and so the seat of their last remaining fragment of divinity will be different also. It might look, and feel, like anything. But the backer will know it when they see it. And they’ll pay for it.
They’re not going to say this, of course. They’re not going to tell anyone what they’re looking for. But they’re sending crews out. Maybe they’ve been sending crews out for a while. No one ages in the Astral Sea, so maybe they’ve been on this quest for time without meaning. One shard isn’t enough. Not for their purposes. Many of them are so small and so faded, bare motes of potential after aeons of death. They don’t want a single fragment of divinity, this person, they need enough to make a whole one. A whole divinity. Necromancy of the rudest sort, a frankensteined apotheosis. If you eat the fractured souls of enough dead gods, sooner or later, won’t you become one yourself?
I’m picturing an eldritch lich, personally. One that’s been listening to whispers from the Far Realm for far too long. A puppetmaster being puppeted themselves, maybe. What forces in creation have an interest in the ascension of a frankensteined god? What would the results be of a god made of pieces, torn fragments, of so many lost and disparate and unwilling dead deities? Any and all deities. Good, evil, alien, of any and all domains, scavenged and consumed into a single, roiling whole. What sort of divinity would result from so traumatic a process? And what would that divinity then do?
But all that’s in the future. An endgame perhaps aeons or only a few remaining shards down the line. For the moment, what’s being asked is this:
Travel the Astral Sea. Find the body of a god. Venture into its depths. Bring me everything you find.
Now. I’m going to take objection to the description of the dead gods provided in Astral Adventurer’s Guide, and offer a different direction:
“The Astral Sea is also where one can find the petrified remains of gods who were slain by more powerful entities or who lost all their mortal worshipers and perished as a result. A dead god looks like a gigantic, nondescript stone statue that bears little resemblance to the divine entity it once was. Githyanki, mind flayers, psurlons, and other natives of the Astral Plane sometimes turn these drifting hulks into outposts and cities, many of which are hollowed out beneath the surface.”
A giant nondescript statue that looks nothing like the deity once did. No. Boring. Even Tu’narath still has six arms, so there’s some resemblance happening there. And besides. It’s just cooler, more fun, more interesting, if the dead gods do resemble what they once were. If they are influenced by what domains they once held. Because then … the universe is your oyster.
They’re all different. All these island corpses. These slain gods. This is the Astral Sea. These are the deities of a thousand worlds and a thousand species and a thousand forgotten realms. They might look like anything. Shaped by the echoes of the god’s nature and its domains and its species. The dead sea god that looks like a vast alien whale, whose gut is filled with strange waters and strange creatures, and into whose belly the party must venture. A forgotten deity of knowledge whose vast skull now contains a calcified, crystalline ‘library’ with aeons of knowledge written in light onto spun fibres of crystal. A deity of madness, darkness and despair whose corpse is a labyrinthine maze of passages that leech will and soul the further you venture into them, a lingering undead malice that doesn’t want you dead so much as maddened and undone. And your sponsor won’t care, so long as at least one of you makes it back, that shard of dark power clutched in your trembling fist.
Some of the bodies might still be guarded. Some of them might be inhabited, with cities and realms nested into their bones and calcified flesh. Some might be considerably more ‘alive’ than others. Some might be just stranger than others, deities so lost and far-flung and alien that nothing about even their inert remains makes sense. You have … an infinity of options here. Let your inner dungeon designer completely off the chain. These are the corpses of dead gods made physical, floating in an infinite silver sea of possibilities. There are no rules, not even physics. You could do literally anything you wanted here.
It'd make sense if the backer was sending crews to less well-known, and therefore perhaps stranger and more dangerous, corpses, just to be sure that no one had taken or destroyed what they’re looking for already. The more alive ones, more likely to still contain lingering power and divinity. So you have an excellent excuse to get weird up in here.
Basically, if you want a vast, eldritch, apocalyptic dungeon crawl, or series of dungeon crawls, in space, then the Astral Sea is very much the perfect setting. Although, yes, this is likely a high level campaign, unless you want to guide the party in with more accessible godly dungeons first. Even then it’s probably on the high side.
There’s also the shards themselves to consider. They’ll likely be potent magic items. You’re holding a piece of a god’s divinity in your hand. With powers probably themed to what the god would have been in life. Although they don’t necessarily need to be powerful. The divinity might be faded enough, shattered and torn by death, that it doesn’t do much externally anymore. Its power is intrinsic to what it is, not what it does. And maybe that makes more sense for how crews are willing to give them up afterwards, if they’re only mildly impressive amidst other loot.
Though that could be a thing. If it’s a magic item that you know for a fact your party will want to keep, and then that could bring them into conflict with their ‘backer’ before they ever maybe twig to the greater issue going on.
And there is a question of how and if they do twig to that. How would they find out the goals here. Are there other interested parties who’ve figured out what our backer is trying for? Or simply parties who are aware that they have been desecrating dead gods and who object on purely moral and philosophical grounds? How has society in the Astral Sea evolved around the fact that there are dead gods just drifting around?
How do living gods, deities with living dominions in the Sea, deal with the idea that there is a creature going around looting the corpses of their deceased forebearers? Grave-robbing in the Astral Sea can potentially be a couple of orders of magnitude more apocalyptic than the terrestrial equivalent normally manages, and I do love that.
(Or maybe it’s not apocalyptic. Maybe there’s nothing left in the dead gods that could actually make a new one, no matter how many you eat, and those few deities who are aware of our backer’s quest, deities of knowledge, perhaps, just look at them with pity for this obsession, delusion, of theirs. They don’t want them stopped because of the danger, but just because of the disrespect, the desecration. That, and the fact that eating bits of dead gods, while it might not make you a god yourself, still won’t do anything good to you, and perhaps there is a certain amount of not goodness happening that does need to be dealt with. Dealer’s choice.
Or perhaps the gods think that, and they’re wrong, and now you have to convince incredible all-powerful entities that there is a genuine threat there, whether they believe it or not)
I just. You can’t just put that out there, that this setting you’re casually sailing around is full of dead gods, and not … do something with it. Expand on it. Play with the implications of it. The Astral Sea is a vast, infinite celestial graveyard, and the remains of dead gods are locations you can interact with. That is a concept, and you can have a bit more fun with it than ‘nondescript statue asteroids that people can build on’ over here. Lingering echoes of what those deities once were, fragments of divinity, the sheer magical and theological potential of being able to grave-rob a dead god. Come on. You have divine corpses, in a setting where necromancy exists. Somebody’s gonna do something apocalyptic with the implications of that, you just know they are.
And in the process, you can get some really cool and weird dungeons to explore. Heh.
Spelljammer has such potential as a setting. The Astral Sea allows so many possibilities. How do you open with ‘you are sailing through a setting where you can make port at a god’s house or at a rock that is a dead god’ and just … park that there and leave it? Good god. Good gods. And bad ones, and weird ones, and completely inexplicable ones too.
I’m not sure Wizards quite understood how much they jumped the scale by bringing spelljammer back and putting it in the Astral Sea. So many settings have archmages and other people spend so many resources to try and reach the realms of gods, and in spelljammer you and your dinky ship can just sail up and knock on their door. Maybe not get in, but you can totally just heave up to any deity who has a Dominion in the Sea and at least knock. You can put your smuggler’s cache in a dead god’s skull. The deities are now, in this setting, significantly more interactable. If you want to try and necromancy a god’s corpse, that is a thing you can attempt.
Which is probably why they tried to tone it down with the whole ‘nondescript statues’ thing, that dead gods in the Sea are just rocks that people build on/in, but … Honestly? It’s still a dead god. You can’t undo the raw scale of that. And maybe you shouldn’t, either.
Nah. Play into the bonkers scale and setting implications of a potentially infinite number of god corpses just littered around the place, with the astral floating kingdoms and vacation homes of living gods keeping them company, and you in your dinky little boat sailing cheerfully out among them. Because that’s amazing, it really is.
Anyway. Have fun. Moving swiftly on.
#d&d#d&d 5e#spelljammer#why am i so salty about spelljammer?#it's SUCH a cool setting#you could do so much with it#anyway#campaign ideas#deities#necromancy#dungeon crawler
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just had SO much fun with the fallout tv show... i love you missus okey dokey
#fallout#fallout tv show#my art#lucy maclean#i was not expecting it to be so good but it was!! delightful#i think i like video game adaptations better when they do their own thing with it lol#such a relief to instead of seeing something regurgitated mindlessly for profit#its actually just a completely fresh story but in a familiar setting. cool balm on my skin#i guess that's where i'm at in the remake hell we all live in rn#ella purnell has the sweetest biggest eyes i've ever god damn seen
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if your "original story/rpg" idea is rooted in the premise of "what if [existing franchise] was good?" then just start over. i am not kidding. your ego is like insulation spray foam being inserted into the cracks of the premise-- sure it fills the gaps, but it's beyond ugly and everyone can see it.
#former warcraft players are extremely guilty of this#i don't mean taking your old ocs and trying to translate them into a fresh setting btw this is Cool And Good#i mean a specific sense of spite for how someone else conveyed an idea#and insisting you can 'do better'#that's the devil talking
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44, 40, and 47
#one piece#eustass kid#luffy#trafalgar law#kid in his mid-life crisis era#dont worry. the younger gen still thinks ur cool#law actually DOES smile more. but years of frowning set this as his default face#fun fact: luffy saw zoro give sanji one of his earrings and got mad that he didnt get one too#lulawkid
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some quick jjk eye paintings
#my art#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#megumi fushiguro#yuji itadori#nobara kugisaki#yuta okkotsu#gojo satoru#geto suguru#ryoumen sukuna#fanart#jjk fanart#tagging everyone feels like it took longer than the actual painting my god#i believe ive gone on record waxing poetic about how i love lower eyelids and how i could paint them fr hours#so i put my money where my mouth is and thats what i did today . self care :)#i had a cool idea fr gojo where i wanted to do like an abberated effect to show 2 extra sets of eyes#but god it looked cluttered and awful no matter what layer mode i put it on sdgdgjsdg#settled fr chromatic abberation on th irises :')#quickish painting but i am ! happy !#very proud also of the different eye shapes i ws able to achieve while keeping them consistently sized#was worried abt geto there fr a sec#but tbh he turned out to be one of my favs ????? surprised myself#anyway this is my love letter to eye skin <3 i love u lower eyelid folds mwah <3
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What comic is the bottom left image of springtrap from? (On the post where you say why you draw him blocky)
It’s from this comic!! A very normal father son reunion
Og post here
#ask reply#I still love this comic#THE backgrounds how both Springtrap and Michael looks??? perfect peak love#I gotta do more jokes around fnaf 3#mostly because I love the setting of Fazbear frights itself!#a fnaf horror attraction in universe is just so cool#phone dude is cool#I love how Michael was probably at Fazbear frights for awhile too#seeing phone dude says ‘welcome back’#and the survival logbook just heavily implies Michael was writing in it during that game#with all the foxy drawings repping Michael and all#ITS JUST overall a cool location with many interesting details#maybe I should draw Hudson and Michael being coworkers sometime#all three phone dude Hudson and Michael being buddies pff#no promises but imagine 🩵🩵 maybe 🩵#shout out to fnaf 3 enjoyers 💚
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Summer Times
Hi! I'm finally back from my two week abroad trip!
#i hope everyone is doing well!#ive gotten quite a bit of asks these past two weeks and i apologise for being so silent with art#i didnt bring my laptop with me and didn't have the proper environment to set it up even if i did so i couldn't really draw#i want to properly answer questions and make lore posts with more than just text so i hope you can forgive me#everything is going to be answered in due time#all my art projects are also getting completed and i really hope you'll like them because i think they're pretty cool!#for one instance im learning krita to make a bad end au themed animatic#if im successful i might even get to make an actual short episode one day which would be cool i think#once again thank you for the support despite my abscence#super mario#super mario bros#smb#luigi#mario#princess peach#mareach
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there are two wolves inside you: supreme sports and sporty girl
#project sekai#prosekai#prjsk#prsk#ena shinonome#akito shinonome#my art#THIS SET WAS SO COOL#I LOVEEEE THE COLORS ESPECIALLY AKITOS CARD#i was gonna add both the set names and then i realised both gachas had the word 'sporty' in it so#when i was drawing this ena and akito i felt bad cuz ena was the only one with a different hairstyle so i gave akito his fes hairstyle#cuz its my fave oneee <3
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staff still hasn't given me polls, what should i do?
🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their moms 69%
🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their dads 31%
grace image os i get to look at her
#edit: edited the og post to what i want but to set the record straight i edited to the post to be mathematically correct right after the#first person pointed it out which was like ten mins after i posted the og post. now fuck offf !!!!! the rest of the tags r from the og post#for some reason i feel very immature making your mom jokes about tumblr staff. which i shldnt !!#bc they suck nd they still havent given me polls. but i ig i feel imature bc it a your mom joke 😭 but still i tihnk its kinda funny#EDIT: edited the post to what i want bc yall were getting annoying . but to set the record straight i edited to post to be mathematically#also its *mum* not mom okay i am NOT !! an american . but if i say mum everyone will j be like 'omg british' like i dont know i am#anyway. i want polls please. give me the rigght to force my mutuals chose between the most inane things#also i tihnk it wld b cool for the cs weekly blog. like w each episode#i cld do a poll of like. out of five stars what do u think of this ep#and it wld b a cool thing of which eps r ppls faves#also i cld have like. whose ur fave in team red whos ur fave in acme etc#id prob just have to go with vile faculty bc theres more than 10 ppl in vile. and ppl wld kill me if i didnt include nel the ell or whoever#it wld b fun !!!#oh btw csweekly thats i thing i want to start. prob on uhhh the 11th of feb ill post abt it more but its basically#a tag/blog for watching cs one ep a time watching one ep every saturday#ya !! :3#flappy rambles#inaccessible#ask to tag#(<- idk. just in case)
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winter outing featuring cross guild and company 🌨️🌨️🌨️
#one piece#cross guild#portgas d ace#monkey d. luffy#ace#roronoa zoro#perona#nefertari vivi#buggy the clown#dracule mihawk#sir crocodile#erio art#erio stuff#sort of set within impel down au but not really lol#its definitely modern au but i dont think croco would have devil fruit powers in my impel down AU LOL but i added it bc...it looks cool...#vivi is here bc she wanted to see snow ok!! so she is w/ croco during her winter break!!!
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THE DOCTOR We had a pact, him and me. Every star in the universe, we were going to see them all.
My version of The Master and The Doctor in their Academy days 😊
A speedpaint video of this will be available at my Patreon on april 1st!
#doctor who#thoschei#doctor x master#academy era#my art#My thought process for their appearances here was sort of an average between their incarnations#the doctor is mostly taller and has messier and usually lighter hair while the master is shown to have had black hair in a flashback#also since Hartnell had white hair as an old man and we are not sure what color his hair was I thought what if it was always white#I've seen most draw him as blond but couldn't find any sources for it so I just went with this instead because it looks cool#I had fun making Prydonian robes designs!! I would love to design a bunch of Gallifreyan fashion for each Chapter and House it seems so fun#I also wanted to draw a Gallifreyan night!! since I never see any depictions of it even tho the planet should have nights#even if it's a binary system since the orbits would have to be very large for gravitational stability both suns would set at similar times#anyway I'll stop talking lmao 🫡
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is anyone else really fucking normal about the fact that we are essentially mosaics of what we love. about how we pick up mannerisms like pretty rocks on the beach. i have my favourite books in the way i write and i have my favourite cartoons in the way i draw. i have my best friend in the way i speak and i have my parents in what i speak about. is anyone else really fucking normal about that. is anyo
#spoop speaks#alexa search how to be a normal functioning person#idk how to like. articulate it properly i dunno its so cool#SORRY FOR CRINGEPOSTING ON MAIN im having Thoughrs#might delete this if the ‘why did i post that’ clarity sets in#i swear someone’s probably said smth similar before but im rrrgggaaaahhh
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I really enjoy tracking down self-portraits from retro sci-fi artists.
#self-portraits#artists credited in alt text#photo set#subscribe to my newsletter to get more cool photosets like this
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misremembered the original a little but you get the idea!! (it's a bicycle horn btw)
#obey me#art#you could probably make some really cool grungy art with this brush pack but i do not have the skill set for that#i'm having fun though#obey me solomon#obey me beelzebub#jtta ik
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This one goes out to @a-dauntless-daffodil. They infected me with the hilarious idea that Charlie is jealous of an inanimate object.
#hazbin hotel#charlie x vaggie#vaggie#vaggatha#me jumping on someone else's headcanon#hazbin charlie#chaggie#angel#hazbin art#comic#demon charlie#fan comic#jelous#demon#Charlie is 100% super secure in her relationship when it comes to real people.#That spear however#just sets her off like no other#to be fair#it is really cool spear#oh yeah i married them off in this comic#chaggie marrige
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brosweek2024: day 5 - AU
bring in the pinch hitter 🐹⚡️
(written by @sunkitty143)
#brosweek2024#pkmn ken au#persona#persona 3#p3#pokemon#ken amada#junpei iori#makoto yuki#eevee#dedenne#charizard#cat collab#comics#my art#this is set in a pokémon AU cat and i are currently working on! the plot is incredibly vaguely based on P3 and ken is the protagonist#junpei is one of ken's hometown friends and a gym leader who specializes in speed and looking very cool 😎
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