Ideas

The extra-planar citadel of Ansern is named after its mage-founder. Ansern discovered the means to traverse the planar gulfs and created the citadel as a haven for his disciples in the art of planar-exploration. The disciples of Ansern continue his work and explore the countless worlds opened up to them by the work of the mage. They are cataloguing everything they discover in preparation for the greatest volume ever written: the Mondopedia, a book detailing many of the worlds. But the countlessness of the planes means that their book will never be finished.

I know basilisks are immune to the gaze of other basilisks, but imagine if they weren't. Like the panda they would become ecologically unviable and endangered...



There are two large stones on the thinly wooded hillside above Tiringan. It is said that two basilisks surprised each other many years ago and fell in love at first sight. They also turned to stone at first sight. A local legend of star-crossed lizards: very moving.

The heroes have destroyed the minions, plunged through the catacombs and defeated the guardians. They slowly enter the chamber to find the dark mastermind behind the scheme. The mastermind has a request for them, however:

'You must destroy me. To destroy me is to rid the world of a great evil, that is to say, me. But before you can destroy me, you must understand what evil is, what evil must be, why evil must exist.'

There is a land far to the east that is a great, desolate, near-empty wasteland home only to barbarians, ghosts and monsters. Many nations launche expeditions to this land, seeking to find the rumored-at treasures and riches beyond it's outer fringe.

Inspired by Ria Hawk's winged mushroom picture:



The winged mushrooms (Lerreta Meia) are a species of giant insect indigenous to the leafy areas of Udnalor, Kingdom of the Gnomes. Outwardly they appear much the same as ordinary giant mushrooms, and they graze in the bulbous fungal glades. However, this is merely an elaborate camouflage: the insect beneath is a fungivore and prone to fly off when it encounters another creature. Sometimes gnome farmers mistake them for crop mushrooms. They're in for a surprise when they do.

The World is actually a number of continents surrounded by oceans, which are in turn surrounded by mountains. The oceans rush off the edge of the plateau on which the World sits into the Outside...

You come upon a ruined building in the back section of a city park (or other out of the way area of the city). The ruins are fairly overgrown. All that is really standing is a doorway and its frame. If you pass through the opened door, you travel to a different world. If the door closes, there may not be a doorway back to get you back.

An artist is commissioned to paint frescoes in a cathedral, and is imprisoned because of his unconventional style.

Five stone dead beholders encased in bronze are found in nets on the side of the road.

You find a book in the library, then when you start to read it, seems to change from pages of words to pages of images that seem to live and move. If you touch the page after the images appear, you travel into the story and now live in that world.



There is a book on that world, that leads back to this one.

After particularly intense storm, a green glowing fungi can be found on the trees and plants. Also new monsters seem to be in the region. These storm are obviously bringing these things from other places and depositing them with the wind, rain, and goop upon the land.

In a small inn (the more remote the better), a man turns up dead. There are no wounds on his body what-so-ever, and he aboslutely reeks of garlic.



The man died of a curse that forced him to eat a clove of garlic a day or suffer the penalty. This gets really interesting if the body somehow appears on top of a someone the villagers are suspcious of.

Idea from the Aeneid. Could make an intriguing encounter when searching for firewood...'Quite near there happened to be a mound of earth, at the highest part of which were growing thickets of cornel and a dense cluster of spiky myrtle-stems. I went up there and tried to wrench the green growth from the ground to provide a leafy covering for our altar. There I was confronted by a horrible and astounding miracle. For from the first bush which I tried to break off...blood oozed in dark drops, fouling the earth with its spots...A piteous moan came from the base of the mound and I heard a human voice answering me: 'Why, Aeneas, must you rend a poor sufferer? I am buried here...for I am Polydorus. Here death overpowered me in a crop of piercing iron-pointed spears. And so a crop resembling javelins has grown over me...''

Every now and again, the region encounters a dense blue fog. Every now and again, things disappear into the fog never to be seen again and things appear out of it from other places or world. It seems the fog is the material form of some minor diety charged with moving things around the universe to balance cosmic forces.

As you emerge from the shop in the alleyway, not-too-distant clanging and stamping makes you wary. Further investigation reveals a massive Balgrian protest march flooding the main street, banners roaring about the inhuman conditions in which this ethnic group is forced to live. City guards stand helplessly by, beating up the odd protestor, but unable to hold back the flow. Onlookers throw vegetables at the Balgrians, and shout abuse.

The city was cursed many years ago. Since then it has not stopped raining. The gutters are inhabited by eels and the doors are on the first floor, coated with pitch. On a bad day, you can see the water level rise above the ground floor windows. Carts have both wheels and bladders filled with air to keep them afloat. And yet everyone is surprisingly dry.

The two cathedrals in the Citadel stubbornly ring their bells two minutes apart, since each believes the other to be too early or too late respectively. This has been done for over two hundred years.

Throw in a handful of random customs - like women or men of a certain level of society being required to wear a veil or a pendant of some type.

Magic is the lifeforce of all living creatures, and it is from it that all life is made - in areas with lots of undead, magic might actually be missing or weak, which puts a whole new spin on how dangerous the undead are. Even simple zombies can be troublesome if you're relying on mages and you hit a pocket of undead making a low-magic zone...

How about a dragon how cheerfully rules over a kingdom; his people all know him for what he is, and dragons are looked upon as wise and benevolent creatures. Dragonslayers from other kingdoms coming to free it from 'tyranny' are likely to get beaten to death by peasants with cast iron skillets.