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 Introducing spelljamming SUDDENLY back to Toril
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist

USA
11686 Posts

Posted - 05 Oct 2020 :  17:27:40  Show Profile Send sleyvas a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by AuldDragon


quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas

I guess maybe we should think along the same lines with spelljamming colonies being setup by Torilian countries (or groups of countries working in a small alliance, though that's harder to picture working). Also, I think I'm kind of jumping the gun with considering building a portal between worlds, because the portal SHOULD be expensive as heck and thus.... maybe they might actually WANT to spend 10 or 20 years researching a planet, sending colonists to study and find "the best place to put the expensive portal's endpoint". After all, just because they can go to ... for instance karpri... doesn't mean they're rolling in dough. Yes, there are resources there, but they do have mostly similar stuff at home. So, perhaps they create away teams of adventurers, and maybe they even create "support teams" of laborers, cooks, farmers, etc... that they also send over way before they ever consider where to finally put their end portals.


Given the distances and logistics involved, I would actually say that most of the (human) Spelljammer colonies are wholly independent and unauthorized. The aforementioned "New Waterdeep" in my view was probably set up by some adventurers who were originally from Waterdeep, gained access to a helm, adventured in space for a time, surpassed 9th level, and settled down to set up a fortress and gain followers. Most of the followers would not be from New Waterdeep, but since the adventurers were, they just decided to name it that. Even if Spelljamming is known, setting up authorized, supplied, and protected colonies would be a logistical nightmare. Instead, it would probably be a group of people from the city who just decide to travel to the stars on their own.

Jeff



That's where we're going to differe a little (and that's fine, each person's view of the world is different). The one thing that is kind of finite in the world is land, and if they can find land that's less contested, even better. Meanwhile, most adventurers don't have a lot of resources outside of their local group of friends and family. If those adventurers are going to give up their life and move to another world, I don't see it turning into a colony. I see it being a small village of a couple houses or so on some planet. Now, they may attract more people from other spelljamming worlds or somesuch, but they may just as well attract people who just come in and take their resources.

Governments though, they would have more of an ability to find people who would work together to form a colony. They might even be able to build a team for the purpose and have a second and third team in the wings to support them. They might ferry these teams back and forth between the world so that these people don't feel so isolated (and to keep them loyal to the people that support them). Governments might also have the resources to have a backup spelljammer waiting should there be issues (even if its by reaching out to an allied nation and asking for help by having them send some of their own adventurers to escort a second team from the original country to check on a colony that's sent a rescue alert or gone quiet). That's kind of how I could see things happening. For instance, if Cormyr, Tethyr, and Impiltur all somehow acquired a pair of ships each, they might be able to negotiate an agreement to send their own separate colonies up in a relatively near area to each other (relatively near might be 200 miles apart mind you). Then between the 6 total ships, they might ferry supplies near constantly for the things that "oh shoot, we forgot this or didn't think we'd use so much of that" to all 3 colonies. Meanwhile countries like Amn and Sembia (or possibly more likely trading cartels within those countries) might offer their ships specifically as "escorts" and additional carrying capacity in this caravan for the sole purpose of actual trade, scouting out the landscape for additional expansion once the other three countries invest the time and money to establish order. Thus, if most of these colony deliveries are happening with 4 or 5 ships at a time, they're less likely to be targeted by space pirate groups (even moreso if those space pirates find out that any attack will end up with 3 countries specifically hunting them down not only to get their stuff back, but also acquire the ships of the pirates).

Bear in mind, I'm trying to think this through as people come back with ideas, so please keep them coming. I think this is being a very productive and useful conversation. I may not be right, but at least I think we're building ideas.

To note, in the above ideas, the 3 countries are not near one another on Toril, but they aren't horribly dissimilar. Also, of those countries, only one of them (Tethyr) would have any chance of settling a colony in the True World (i.e. Maztica/Anchorome, etc...). Meanwhile, they've already got competitors who have gotten a headstart, and those competitors don't share anything like the same ideals. So, for Tethyr to settle in the True World might happen, but they stand less of a chance of it working. Cormyr and Impiltur are flat out of luck in expanding into the True World in a significant way without some serious work. However, in working with 3 countries that each respect an idea of sovereignty and have somewhat similar outlooks, an alliance can theoretically happen with all 3 of them being equally capable of success.

Alavairthae, may your skill prevail

Phillip aka Sleyvas

Edited by - sleyvas on 05 Oct 2020 17:35:50
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comradecrunk
Acolyte

USA
3 Posts

Posted - 06 Oct 2020 :  07:14:21  Show Profile Send comradecrunk a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by AuldDragon

quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas

Just like the Waterdeep book, which also has a nautiloid, the information given is more of a "this is this ship".



I don't read the text I shared as "this is a one-off." I read it as "this is standard for the line." I could certainly be wrong, but considering BG3 matches it, it is at least not a one-off, even if there are others, but there's no precedent for it in Spelljammer



Well everything in 3e+ refers to them as planar ships not spelljammers anyway. In my headcannon that reads as they lost the tech a way long time ago and the spelljamming ships are just a facsimile.

Also as of at least 5e the tentacles do move. Check out the trailer for Baulders Gate 3, which Wizards has said is cannon.
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Mirtek
Senior Scribe

595 Posts

Posted - 07 Oct 2020 :  23:29:49  Show Profile Send Mirtek a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Ayrik

There aren't any examples of "locked" spheres in Spelljammer lore.

Spheres are sometimes defended (at least in stories) by heavy military forces - extreme and excessive military forces - fleets and armadas of spelljammers, orbital fortifications, space dragon patrols, space beholder formations, gunpowder and steel and wizards guarding every approach.
It seems like a whole lot of expense and effort to me. Why would anyone install a standing military if there's easier ways to keep intruders away?

I think you can't lock a sphere any more than you can lock a plane. How could you prevent gates and portals from opening? How could you keep planeshifters and teleporters out of an entire world, an entire star system?

A god might be able to do it. Or an overgod. Though it's worth noting that we have examples like Realmspace and Kyrnnspace, the domains of two overgods who are known to be somewhat territorial and intolerant of intruders - and yet their spheres don't seem to be locked.


All that being said ...

Crystal spheres are like bubbles in the Flow. They bob and bounce and drift around, they go with the flow, they're always in motion. That's why navigators are still needed and why travel times are always variable even when jamming well-known trade circiuts in the Triad.

Spelljammer lore indirectly asserts (through lore about the kreen races) that Athas was once accessible from the spacelanes. Maybe the Triad was once the Tetrad (or some other polyad). Athas (the world of Darksun) drifted away ages ago, many millennia ago, but it was once connected the same way the Triad spheres are all caught in the same eddy within the Flow.

So perhaps Realmspace has drifted away. Or is still drifting. It may have become disconnected or entirely lost to spelljamming civilization. Or it may still be accessible but so distant, so awkwardly located in the Flow that travel to it (or travel back from it) isn't practical, profitable, or pleasant enough to bother. (And let's be honest: we know that teleporting and worldwalking and planar transport are all still viable travel methods, nobody would use spelljammers anymore if the journey is now too long, too expensive, too uncertain, or too dangerous.)

Isn't Athas locked?
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Ayrik
Great Reader

Canada
7966 Posts

Posted - 08 Oct 2020 :  00:40:35  Show Profile Send Ayrik a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Athas is not "locked" - it is unknown and unreachable.

Spelljammer lore strongly implies (but doesn't say outright) that Athas was once connected to the rest of the Spelljammer setting. But so long ago that even the kreen races who evolved there have forgotten their first origin - their Kreenspace "homeworld" is implied in 2E lore to be a colony, although their half-forgotten racial memory considers it their homeworld.

No path to Athas has ever been discovered (or at least never been recorded) in Spelljammer lore. They aren't even aware Athas exists, they have no reason to search for it and nobody has ever stumbled upon it in the uncharted reaches of the phlogiston. While Athas itself has no spelljammers, not even in their legends. Athas certainly lacks the ability to manufacture spelljamming helms, because these would be constrained by the special conditions (and rules) of the depleted magical wasteland permeating Darksun.

It is possible that the kreen initially reached their kreenspace "homeworld" through planar magics. And Athas does have a few extremely tenuous connections to other planes. Although it is also strangely isolated from the Outer Planes and has strangely localized Inner Planes, not unlike Eberron and Abeir in some ways.

It's even possible that Athas doesn't exist within a crystal sphere at all. We assume it must, for consistency. But it is slightly contraindicated in Darksun lore.

[/Ayrik]

Edited by - Ayrik on 08 Oct 2020 00:43:00
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Mirtek
Senior Scribe

595 Posts

Posted - 09 Oct 2020 :  00:37:21  Show Profile Send Mirtek a Private Message  Reply with Quote
The undead "almost-dragon" sorcerer king actually has a quite well working planar portal and used it to go outside (and learn). And I vaguely recall references to the hull of a crashed spelljammer somewhere.


But I guess that's off topic in regard to spelljammers and Toril. Just thought it could be a canonical example of a locked sphere

Edited by - Mirtek on 09 Oct 2020 00:38:18
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Ayrik
Great Reader

Canada
7966 Posts

Posted - 09 Oct 2020 :  01:24:47  Show Profile Send Ayrik a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Where is this ruined spelljammer in Athas?

The giths in Athas are degenerates who might have originally been (already degenerate) gith pirates ... able to arrive onboard a ship they once sailed on astral seas ...

[/Ayrik]
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cpthero2
Great Reader

USA
2285 Posts

Posted - 23 Oct 2020 :  22:55:38  Show Profile  Visit cpthero2's Homepage Send cpthero2 a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Great Reader sleyvas,

Well, The Blackstaff does have a record of destroying things, including lives, so I could see him going around destroying stuff for a century straight! lol

Best regards,


Higher Atlar
Spirit Soaring
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
Moderator

USA
36779 Posts

Posted - 24 Oct 2020 :  03:41:49  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by cpthero2

Great Reader sleyvas,

Well, The Blackstaff does have a record of destroying things, including lives, so I could see him going around destroying stuff for a century straight! lol

Best regards,





*sigh* You just can't help singing that over-played song, can you?

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cpthero2
Great Reader

USA
2285 Posts

Posted - 24 Oct 2020 :  23:01:20  Show Profile  Visit cpthero2's Homepage Send cpthero2 a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Master Rupert,

quote:
*sigh* You just can't help singing that over-played song, can you?


Well, it is an evil song, I grant you that. I wish it could be a good song. ;)

Best regards,

Higher Atlar
Spirit Soaring
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
Moderator

USA
36779 Posts

Posted - 25 Oct 2020 :  04:03:15  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by cpthero2

Master Rupert,

quote:
*sigh* You just can't help singing that over-played song, can you?


Well, it is an evil song, I grant you that. I wish it could be a good song. ;)

Best regards,




Yes, the song you sing is an evil one -- it inflicts pain and suffering on others just because the singer wants to.

Candlekeep Forums Moderator

Candlekeep - The Library of Forgotten Realms Lore
http://www.candlekeep.com
-- Candlekeep Forum Code of Conduct

I am the Giant Space Hamster of Ill Omen!
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cpthero2
Great Reader

USA
2285 Posts

Posted - 25 Oct 2020 :  19:45:57  Show Profile  Visit cpthero2's Homepage Send cpthero2 a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Master Rupert,

quote:
Yes, the song you sing is an evil one -- it inflicts pain and suffering on others just because the singer wants to.


Ouch! You wound me good sir, and at the cost of what is to be the machinations of the Prince of Lies, not an albatross borne or avarice!

I proclaim most ardently that I do not intone such sorrowful tales as a bard of mayhaps, dare I utter it so, the ilk of Shekinester may; nay, I render the truths as might a herald combing for justice who unveils the shrouded behavior of a misbegotten, yet once Herculean wizard of righteousness. He who's very actions have brought dismay to the masses for their Contemptuous and injurious betrayals to the record of those innocent and pure in their assigns.

Parley! Parley! Might we seek an injunction as stewards of lore before the Seeing Eyes of Deneir, so we may right the wrongs of this unfortunate misunderstanding? I implore thee!


Higher Atlar
Spirit Soaring
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