Arriving at the Abode of Departure

If you haven't seen it already, you might like what John Till did with that simple architect builder I posted the other day. He's developed his desert fortress-town - the remote Abode of Departure.

The introduction is here, the fuller overview here.

It's an eerily evocative location and I realise now that with the deep cistern network, hidden structures and gate, and stomach-churning fate that could well be waiting, it's potentially a campaign setting in itself. I don't know if I'd rather run it or be run through it, which is a possible measure of something just right.

_

A simple architect builder

The machineries didn't get going so I missed the deadline for that Hill Cantons stronghold contest.

As a form of compensation, and an outlet for my interest in it, here's an architect builder, for when your character needs to know who's available to build a stronghold, or who they've gone and hired.

It's aimed at rules-light roleplaying, but it could also be used to inspire modelled terrain pieces for wargaming: did battle ruin all those buildings?

Ten wizard's towers

Greg Gorgonmilk's last post reminded me just how unwizardly wizard towers can be. For now, warming up for a possible community project, here's a table with some ideas. They might not be easy to model as wargames terrain, but for tactical roleplaying they're fine.

The wizard's tower is... (1d10)

1. anchored along sunbeams in a shaft of unusually vivid light and accessible only by means of a reconfigured spell for illumination adjusted to the given wavelength.
2. zipped up in a dimensional hollow; the hollow and/or the owner may be a braner.
3. strung taut up into the heavens, space elevator-like; the wizard may import/export offworld and/or keep a personal space fleet, or be luring someone else's from afar.
4. inside an exceptionally dense orbital introid (a large mass orbiting within a world's atmosphere), accessible using convection currents, maybe Mary Poppins-style.
5. tightly woven from thick silver cord and suspended somewhere on an astral plane.
6. built upside down into the ground, the foundations showing flush with the surface.
7. compressed into a pointed hat (I thought Jason had done this, but I can't find it..).
8. one fractal scale further down, easily mistaken for the wizard's intricately carven staff - just as the wizard in turn is easily mistaken for a woodworm while inside it.
9. the original inspiration for the old British police box; often imitated, never bettered.
10. sewn of the outer skins of gas giants, bobbing like a cork on a lost sea of stars.

There's a chance ambition got the better of the wizard and it's unfinished. If so, roll here.