I'm looking for a desert either in the Flanaess or beyond it, that fits the following needs:
Has a long Nile-like river running through it, feeding from headwaters in a set of mountains. It should lead to the sea.
Room for a new(ish) race, a human variant - they can displace some of the native humans.
The existance of an underdark style realm with drow.
I'm working on a campaign for my friend's home grown world, and would like to post it as a Greyhawk mod here once I'm done (Going to be a ways off still - at this rate it may be up by DragonCon...maybe not even then). Its a fairly self contained campaign idea, but one I think folks would like. And besides its not often I can come up with an epic campaign seed that is actually pretty good (the Far Realm is a wonderful source of ideas and such!). So far I've managed to include drow, dragons, wyverns, mindflayers, psionics, the far realm, the city of brass, and epic gaming - while starting at non-epic (though high level).
Once I get further on, I'd like to run the outline past some of you to get your feedback, but currently I'm just looking for a place to set it.
Pretty cool concepts. I'm having trouble pegging an exact location for your needs however. The Bright Desert is a great place to use in the Flanaess but there is no river in it running to the sea, but there is one to the east that hugs the Abbor Alz. The Sea of Dust is remote enough to do anything with but it seems to be devoid of rivers unless its in the far west side (off map) and even then the Suel Empire was in a basin and I don't know if it had a sea border. Further westward if you have the Dragon Annual map http://greyhawkonline.com/mortellan/ghfiles/tsroerth.gif there is the quite obvious 'Erypt'. The mountains on that map are sketchy for your plans but otherwise it has the right feel for your Nile setting. Anyone else?
Room for a new(ish) race, a human variant - they can displace some of the native humans.
Why not borrow a literary variant of humans....the Ul of the Belgarion series by Eddings. The move through earth (slowly) as if it were thick air. The live underground that keeps with the underdark link you are thinking of also.
You can come up with a kool new name for their sub-specieis, but I would suggest keeping the Hook Knives....very nasty and would give them a leg up in combat underground that should lead to their racial dominance of a region.
A side note...I had always thought of the Suel as the "Egyptian Based" stereotype for Greyhawk. The region of deserts that are now the Sea of Dust could have a long term "Nile-like" river in it, but maybe it is under the sands in some regions only to emerge in an oasis like fashion somewhere else.
There are a lot of regions in the map tha would support such a river system.
One final note...I have the Suel building magical flying Ziggarnauts/Pyramids at the height of their power. I have created a dungeon of a crashed landed pyramid in the Yecha Hills north of the Caliphate of Ekbir. Sort of cool...I crashed landed upside down and was buried over the centuries.....Demi Lich Suelese Arch Mage an the end....quite a kill friendly zone for the DM.
Erypt (man I hate that name) is probably the most logical place for your needs. The Sea of Dust and Bright Desert are deserts, true, but are pretty much “spoken for” in terms of Greyhawk lore.
I don’t know how much of a Egyptophile you are (you may already have the knowledge to create it by scratch), but if you are looking for Ancient Egypt gaming material, Necropolis by Necromancer games is a must-buy. Not only is the book packed with large appendices for gaming in an ancient Egyptian setting, but the super-module is extraordinarily cool as well. In Gygax we trust.
By the way, can we all agree to rename Erypt (gag) and call it Khemit henceforth and forevermore?
-Jeminnab
“Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.”
Why not borrow a literary variant of humans....the Ul of the Belgarion series by Eddings. The move through earth (slowly) as if it were thick air. The live underground that keeps with the underdark link you are thinking of also.
Not a bad idea, but I already have the culture and stats for the race. Our gaming group likes to use the AEG suppliment Mercenaries. In addition to the legionaire - one of the best heavy armor fighting classes (and balanced with the fighter), it has a race of intelligent, greedy, and charismatic merchants called the Bael. We renamed them Kael, for a variety of reasons. They have quickly, because of flavor and backed up by rules, become one of my favorite races, and my friend wrote them into a large Sahara like desert on one of his world's continents. Well my idea uses their culture (as we've written it - link below) and an arabian like setting, set on a nile like river, and puts a metropolis at the center of several trade routes in a magic item creating area (natural resources are readily available, the people have a tradition of wizardry and merchantile activities, and recently came up with a way of reducing the cost of creating items to be less personally costly.
I apologize for the wiki, but it is going to be replaced soon. My friend tells me that things like the links on the main section pages are common enough happenings, and he hasn't had a chance to fix them.
The city I am using is called Ja'la'Jinn (extra points if you recognize where I stole the name from; hint: I removed a "dah" sound from it), and its ruled mostly by a caliph, though there is a large block of craftsmen and merchants in a council of guilds, and a group of humans called the Talaire (I'm still toying with changing this name) who have made themselves into two different power blocks. If you have the Complete Psionic, then you should recognize the name. If you don't, then in that book, it lists six houses of the Talaire, one for each discipline of psionics. The politics of the city are such that the Caliph rules pretty much without issue, unless the Six Houses and the Council of Trade all enter into agreement on an issue. In those cases the Caliph must deal with an open revolt or take some concession from them, and let the issue stand as they have decreed. This happens very rarely though, as the six houses rarely agree with each other, let alone with the Council of Trade.
On Caslah, psionics are rare. Only in the area surrounding the campaign are they prevalent, and there there are several epic characters with highly advanced psionics. The Talaire are refugees from another world. I have them running from the destruction of their world at the hands of the Illithid. Many other races that exist no where else in the world are here because they were slaves of the Illithid who chased the Talaire here. This way I get to use whatever races I want, without having to worry about where they came from. My players get options, and so do I.
I realize this is not as much of an issue on Greyhawk, but the flavor of the area is such that psionics are VERY prevalent, and if you don't have expanded psionics handbook, you're going to be missing out on a major component of the campaign. But then I went into the ideas for this saying I wanted to include dragons, illithid, psionics, half-giants, and kael. :)
Isn't there such a place somewhere in the Plains of the Paynims? I don't have my maps handy, so I'm not sure.
In any event, Khemit (or Erypt, if you prefer) is a likely site.
Concerning Khemit, I'm working on a gazetteer of the place for Duic. I told him I'd do it some time ago but couldn't due to work pressures. However, the idea survives and I intend to finish it someday if someone doesn't do it better before me. Stay tuned.
The Plains of the Paynims, as shown on Darlene's map, doesn't reach the sea at one end nor start in mountains at the other end. The plains are not the traditional sand desert either. The best option is to move beyond the Flanaess and construct a Khemit region there. _________________ Never say blip-blip to a kuo-tua
Isn't there such a place somewhere in the Plains of the Paynims? I don't have my maps handy, so I'm not sure.
In any event, Khemit (or Erypt, if you prefer) is a likely site.
Concerning Khemit, I'm working on a gazetteer of the place for Duic. I told him I'd do it some time ago but couldn't due to work pressures. However, the idea survives and I intend to finish it someday if someone doesn't do it better before me. Stay tuned.
If you'd like some assistance, PM me and I'll give you my email so we can collaborate. Egypt and its fantastical equivallents have always been a favorite subject of mine (except for Forgotten Realms' version - I never liked that one for some reason). In this project I've been placing arabian style citystates in the ruins of an egyptian style former empire, which itself is a colony of an atlantis style empire from prehistory.
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