D&D Players, Does your world have any anomalies?
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- čas přidán 8. 07. 2024
- Does your world have any anomalies?
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In the DnD campaign I'm playing in, I accidentally became the anomaly. My character, long ago, got shoved in his armor and shoved in a demiplane for two thousand years. He's somehow fused his soul to his armor and continues to live. He's not undead, not a construct, not a lich...I don't know what he is. The party doesn't know what he is. HE doesn't know what he is. And, given how he hasn't been turned into slag by an Inevitable, his existence is within the laws of reality.
"I always come back" fits pretty well here
I'd guess "Aberration", since that is one of the "we don't know what the hell to call this" catch-all creature types.
Sounds like Alphonse from Fullmetal Alchemist
@@DBArtsCreators Or maybe he ascended in his isolation and became his own divine avatar or a demigod of perseverance? I mean it would be a great feat worthy of divinity to keep yourself alive after being sealed away in a demi plane like that.
As i nothing really to go off for your setting and character I will just be calling my theory bagmanification. The bag man was in a magazine i think for d&d if I remember correctly. This a summary of background given for the bag man; a person fled into a bag of holding to escape from a threat that killed the rest of his party and the person has now become the bag man after living in the plane that things like bags of holding connect which has been confirmed to not be the astral plane. The bag man has the stats of troll but is about it as it more of an example for creativity than anything else. He could also travel through anything that connects to exit and enter anything else that connects to the plane. I am calling it bagmanification simply because of the fact what it boils down to is this if the body person survives in plane they are not native for too long the body and potentially the mind can be effected. For the bag man it his skin turning grey, gaining the ability to travel through the plane, and getting the stats of troll living a much longer life. But for your character what it did was what you happened to him. If you like my theory, that I know is probably wrong but I create because I am having fun, then I suggest you look more into bag man as I have given the info I said off of memory.
In my campaign, there exists a woman named Mara. Mara is a perfectly average human woman, and her tale is that she’s the last surviving member of a druid circle from the north who has recently traveled south. Despite her simple story and recent migration, she has already wormed her way into the inner circles of multiple nobles and kings/queens. If asked, Mara claims her relations with these people of power has just been recently and that she’s only doing some mercenary work for them. If the noble is asked, they won’t remember when or why their friends with Mara, but they will consider themselves to be close friends with her.
As well, whenever Mara is around an area for long enough, other anomalies such as ghost sightings and sudden lapses in memories. However many of these ghost sightings resemble people that are currently alive. And during the memory lapses, those who are suffering it will act slightly different, sometimes claiming that they have a different job than they actually do, or that they live somewhere else, or something amongst those lines. There was once a rookie priest, who during a memory lapse, claimed to be a priest of a different god and knew prayers that he doesn’t normally know.
Mara is an anomaly because she’s the only one in this world who isn’t stuck in a time loop. After a ten year period, the world resets to the starting point, with events playing out slightly differently each time. The ghosts and false memories are aspects of past timelines merging into the current one. Mara’s goal is to eventually break out of the time loop, manipulating time around her to her advantage.
She has taken an interest in the party because for the first time in the around ten thousand years she’s been stuck in this loop, they were the first ones to go off script.
Niiiice. A ten year period!
How does one keep track of all the important beats in so much time? :O
I take it Mara's blessed with a really good memory.
Quick question, when you say she is the only one that is not stuck in the time loop, those gods or divine beings that live in that world are affected too?
If she's the only one not in a 10 year time loop, wouldn't she only remember 10 years max and not 10,000? Everyone else would have experienced 10,000 years (even if they don't know it), but she doesn't loop. The way you describe it, it sounds like everyone's in a time loop and she's just the only one that truly remembers
@@TraitorousHomeworlder She isn’t affected by time. Whenever the loop resets, she remains wherever she was before it resets with full memory of what happened before
@@santiagoteruel4145 The time loop put that area of the world into a pocket dimension. The divine are immune to the effects, but they can’t directly interfere (outside giving their priests power and some vague hints on what’s going on).
Anyone who reaches the edge of the pocket dimension will make up a reason why they won’t leave the area of effect
I got a trio that are roughly connected to each other: The Pit, The Dark Sphere, and The Black Monster.
The Pit is a several miles wide crater-like pit with multiple terraces, all leading to a massive cave system at it's center, that no one has ever seen the bottom of. Warforged frequently wake up in The Pit on the upper terraces, popping out of the walls. Strange machines dot the The Pit at all levels explored, and even stranger creature that seem like hellish mutations of fantastical creatures. Radiation like malaise permeates The Pit, getting stronger the lower you go and often prompting a roll on a mutation table. Warforged seem to be the only sentience immune to the effects.
The Dark Sphere is a moon-like object in perpetual orbit over The Pit, never moving from the location and causing perpetual eclipses everyday as the sun passes over. However, despite its moon-like size, it doesn't seem to affect the flow of gravity in any way. The most notable thing though, is that every 108 years it will glow a deep crimson at around midnight. The world has come to use this peculiar trait as one of their means of telling time, mostly due to what happens during this moment of a Bloodied Dark Sphere.
Every 108 years, when the Dark Sphere turns crimson, the Black Monster descends on the world, appearing for any survivors (who are often several miles away) as a near Kaiju sized angel-like entity, dark fire outlining its otherwise amorphous shape. Wherever the Black Monster descends life ceases to exist, entire forests reduced to ashes, cities suddenly vacant, the horror stories go on. It's a completely silent destruction, known only for that gigantic visage of a wrathful angelic creature with it arms open and fire streaming off it like a cape. It strikes randomly and without care, one cycle hitting an expanse of grassland, the next taking a chunk off a mountain, the next the ancient elven capital, so on and so forth. Nothing escapes it, even a god fell to it centuries ago. And so, every new cycle holds a massive week-long festival the following days after, celebrating the fact they were still alive and remembering those the Black Monster takes.
The Stranger: a being who knows everyone and everything, especially about YOU as the character, even hinting at 4th dimensional knowledge (aware of the player ABOVE the character). The characters have no knowledge of meeting him(?), though The Stranger is intimately interested in the party, so much so as "rewarding" the heroes with powerful artifacts/powers for doing what he wants.
The Stranger only manifests for the party in a collective "dream" around a campfire. He even gets a small laugh at the mention of gods/demons, likening them to "ants before the giant".
A player who reads the wiki on an RPG basically.
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The first one is pretty interesting. To me it feels like maybe these "demons" may just be travelers in different realities that are bleeding into that world. The act of this "bleeding" is what causes the mutations not the individual itself. The gods themselves are also unable to understand this since they can only understand the rules of the realities they reside in. Which is why they can only accelerate the issue until its gone. They are essentually pushing the fabric of reality until it has recovered and stabilized.
me when the second entry is so much longer that the first one with the wizard and the town's weather is forgotten
To me, the description of the “fog” makes it sound more like “this is a simulation, the ‘demons’ are just glitches”.
There's a random voice people hear, that seems to narrating whatever someone does, but it's only heard when someone really focuses or peforms great feats of perception.
Turns out it's someone who got Wish spelled into "not being able to be alive", and someone else who wished them to coming back, so in trying to reconcile this without turning the person undead, the universe sort of made them exist in a state where they're just a voice. Not technically dead, alive or undead, but a fourth more sinster thing. Occassionally they can make some inputs but it generally bothers them to do so. But they're always delighted when someone can hear them, due to the fact it's a smidge of a lonley existance being alone forever only able to talk about what's happening
I'm schizophrenic, this is my life.
Water taken from a certain part of the sea becomes a portal. No one knows why. Its mostly used for outhouses, but 5 recorded disappearances have happened due to it
That's fantastic. Hopefully your players find an interesting use for this
The Broken Places, Spasmena Meri, are places where magic has twisted the world in strange and often sinister ways. An abandoned shopping mall which forces those who enter to meet a violent death, even if they manage to escape; a history museum which has grown both intelligent and worshipful of a great general, changing its layout to force those who stumble inside to stay and venerate the dead man via ritual combat; an apartment building where darkness has become both hypnotic and deadly, where any who step out of the light vanish. It's some spooky stuff.
In my world there is Azura, the burning city. Beyond the petrified forest and blasted wasteland at the bottom of a giant crater is Azura. The stone of the buildings has run like hot wax but the true horror of this place it's inhabitants. Burning skeletons of men and beasts roam the streets reenacting their last day over and over. Even if struck down and destroyed they reform the next dawn and resume the routine.
Azura was hit by a meteor during the mage wars around 500 years ago. The ruler, a powerful mage himself, tried to shield his city but instead created the horror of Azura.
Oh I love this. Also,doesn't that mean it can end as well since you just gotta find the mage ruler and strike them down? Cuz y'know,they reenact their last days,the mage should be repeatedly casting whatever spell they casted that day.Ending the mage is the solution right? Or something else?
@@haxxmc you can find his petrified remains at the top of the tallest tower, cowering against a threat long past.
One of my planned characters is an anomaly. He's basically a wizard from the far past who got teleported to the future Samurai Jack style. I plan to have his intro be him basically shouting through a portal at another wizard "no fair, we agreed no time magic!"
I've got a similar character, one of the first tieflings, transported to the moderns day after Fae time-fuckery.
I have a small number of locations that function kinda like PMD Dungeons
They constantly rearrange themselves, monsters and loot appear in and sometimes around them out of seemingly nothing, extradimensional or magical travel will never work to go in, only out, but no one has ever ACTUALLY been to the bottom of one (At least, no one that's ever returned), but some are known to be over a hundred of floor deep, the few gods still in any kind of contact with mortals are either being tight lipped or don't even know these places exist. The places would have likely been used for business if even the entrances weren't already in such dangerous and/or out of the way places.
I have something similar in my setting. Though in mine they're relatively large locations -- in some cases with entire cities built on top of them with economies focused on their exploration. Relatively inspired by Danmachi, to be honest.
The dungeons themselves are believed to be sentient -- in themselves believed to be aspects of a goddess whose name is unknown -- but is nonetheless a valid deity of worship. Regardless, she's one of several "gods of catastrophe", and the only one still directly present on the material (which given my lore on the gods sacrificing their ability to directly intervene on the material to restrain the gods of catastrophe, is in itself an anomaly).
Anyways. Kudos to your dungeons. I have an absolute obsession with the concept of these sorts of dungeons.
I played a warlock/paladin (celestial/ancients) that worshipped the sun. Not a god of the sun or a being associated with the sun; just the sun. This is a world where gods and all sorts of patrons exist, but nobody knows how or why she gets power.
During one encounter, I managed to pull off a critical quadruple smite (green flame blade + branding smite + divine smite + eldritch smite) and the DM agreed that I struck the foe so brutally that my upward slash torched the bandit’s body into white ash as his soul was sent careening into the sun. A few seconds later, the air glowed slightly brighter and became warmer by a couple of degrees.
Does your character have a bucket helmet and makes a Y shaped body possition from time to time?
@@unnameduser5647PRAISE THE SUN
Tbf druids and sorcerers get their power from elsewhere without needing a being to channel it through.
@@TheMightyBattleSquid Could have sworn that Druids gained their power to influence nature through a powerful nature deity/spirit/fey. And most sorcerers either have some sort of magical ancestry or experienced some sort of unnatural event that gave them their powers. The only weird one that doesn’t quite make sense would be the bard. Some say it’s an innate ability, others say it’s more arcane like a wizard. It’s just weird.
But regardless, the weird thing isn’t just that she gathers power weirdly; it’s the fact that she’s a paladin/warlock, which are classes that are (traditionally) known for having their power granted by a higher being. You don’t question when someone brings a fresh baked pie when there’s a bakery nearby, but sure as hell would if you were stranded in a frozen tundra. You probably wouldn’t complain about the pie and you have no reason to distrust the person bringing the pie, but it’s just so out of place for the situation you’re in.
@estebanramirez1178 Nope, druids are said to tap directly into the weave of magic. Sorcerers have magical bloodlines but think about what that means, it means that whatever affected that bloodline also had the ability to cast magic naturally. Dragons or genies, for example, they don't get their magic from elsewhere. It is innate for them because they are born in tune with the weave of magic.
Next year, I'm gonna have the party fall thousands of feet into a hole, land on the cold hard ground, and survive. There's also a talking flower...
Edit: Oh yeah before all this there's 21 other game-like scenarios their going through
Edit2: Unless I get a ride to and from school, I wont be going ): no flower
Now THIS is a good idea
would you happen to have a custom skeleton statblock?
I did all this, it was fun...
@@SimonSaysDeath i did it once, im doing it again for next year
@@snow-cheirus I have a Fighter2/Bard4/Warlock2 and a Warlock10/Bard6/Ranger3 who are both skeletons (will probably be changed tbh)
My group as a joke agreed that the planet we play on is a cube and everythong we hated was on the that one side that was never being properly sunlit.
I got characters that would genuoinelyspend their entire lives dedicated to trying to figure out these anomalies, even the horrible ones
Not only does my world have an anomaly, it's the focus of the story. It's a survival campaign and most of the world has been explored except there's this one bit of ocean that is unexplored...because ships don't come back from there. Every now and then someone gets the big idea to head out there in the hopes of finding a mythical lost continent and striking rich. There is in fact a lost continent there (Think Chult from D&D meets Land of the Lost) where everything is sort of out of space-time. You go to the continent and if your ship is anywhere near shore it's like the ocean is trying to kill you. Sea monsters, whirlpools, freak storms out of nowhere. Pretty much with few exceptions once you're on the island you're stuck there. Even if you were to build a boat from scratch and leave something would happen either the aforemention disasters or you keep sailing straight away and somehow arrive with the island ahead of you. It also means that the continent has a lot of weird things from different places that gets stuck there, space clowns, giant cyborgs, dinosaurs, etc. The reason for this? The continent acts as a prison for Dendar the Night Serpent who will devour all of existence. The continent is literally a paradox Dendar is trapped in. There are ways off the island some harder than others but one sure way is to find a way to release Dendar (which is my failsafe if the party gets bored with a survival game. Suprise now you have to save all existence).
I've always wondered why in most high fantasy worlds there isn't a group of magic users that decide to tuck themselves away from the world and just study magic in all its forms. So, I put one in my world. They raised a part of the seabed to form an artificial island and began experimenting with magic, and I do mean all magic: Arcane, Druidic, Divine, Fiendish, Occult, nothing was off limits. They eventually realized that an artificial island wouldn't have enough resources for everything they wanted to do, so they began making rifts to the different elemental plains and used the energies from those plains to do things like grow forests, create mines that never ran out of ore, bind springs of fresh water, and even control the weather to turn the island into a perfect habitat for any and all resources they might need. Unfortunately, the veil that keeps the world safe from volatile outside forces was weakened by these rifts constantly tearing through it. Like the ozone layer, having only a few small tears would heal in time but doing it almost constantly, and eventually making some of them permanent, made the damage irreparable. This eventually led to their downfall, but not before the island had created several leaps in magical understanding. Now the island sits alone and unknown, surrounded by unnatural currents and dense fog. The only living creatures that still walk its surface are irreversibly changed by the different plainer energies, especially those from the plain of chaos.
Perhaps I should take some inspiration from you for my own setting! Not necessarily in the same way, but my homebrew pantheon certainly has a deity that would fit that mindset.
As it stands the only "hidden" group of magic users I've really sorted out in my lore is more of a joke than serious (mostly a spin on Amazons mixed with all-girls-school and magical school tropes).
The closest thing to an anomaly in my world would have to be "Blood Canyon" a strange yet fascinating landmark in my world. Basically a long time ago at the beginning of the world's creation, a massive war between the gods of the world raged that caused a similar civil war to erupted between all humanoid races. During a particularly bloody battle, a few acres of land became so soaked in blood & magic that the two fused into a blood river carving through the land, eventually forming a canyon with a blood river all the way on the bottom that still flows with magic to this day! No one knows how something like this is even possible, let alone still existing and there's a myth that the presence of death & magic is so potent that if you stand in the river of blood and meditate, you'll see the God of your faith speak to you amongst a crowd of fallen soldiers of the past
In my setting there's the Empty Wastes: A land mass connected to Althia where the magic has warped into something...worse.
On the borders, there's nothing much of note, you can see the Wastes ahead of you and normal land behind you. But once you get about half a km in, you are swallowed by the environment. You can't see where you came from, and you have a limited amount of time to trace your footsteps before the constant low wind blows away the trail. The ground beneath you is sand, tinged an abnormally red color, like sickly pale skin, but on the horizon it's blood red. Digging down into the sand, usually about a meter, reveals that the ground beneath it and all other exposed rock faces look like burnt wood with cracks and bumps, but feels like glass. Meanwhile, the sky above is hazy, like a dust storm is constantly going on around you. At odd intervals, where scholars have assumed there were once mighty trees, strange pillars arise from the sand, oozing a strange, purple substance that's similar to pine resin, but on top of being sticky it leaves a greasy sensation like tallow.
There are recorded two settlements within the Empty Wastes, though there may be more. The buildings are hollow with only the stonework remaining, anything else has rotted away, though it's notable that the stonework seems particularly sturdy, with no decay seen in the structures. The only other thing to see is etchings, written in the old Sylfanifai language, the language of a now lost empire. Some tell what buildings were, some are graffiti, with one notable case being found that seems to suggest it was a child's tantrum. Sadly, translations suggest that the tantrum was never finished, hinting that whatever fate befell the region ended the young life before they even knew what was going on.
The biggest hindrance to studying the Wastes is how it affects people who linger in the region too long. Typically a person has about 8 hours total, usually from the point they loose sight of the normal lands and sky, though individual constitutions can change this. Mages, however, are especially adversely affected, having a maximum of 4 hours. This means any explorers have a set amount of time to enter the region, navigate to the subject of their studies (if they have one) then get out safely. Upon entering, a mild sense of unease hits the person. You're not supposed to be here, your mind starts whispering, and that little voice gets louder the longer time stretches on. Then you start to feel nausea once you've hit about 3/4 of the amount of time you can spend. There's a sense of imbalance that follows after, akin to being too drunk, that can eventually make it hard to move. Exhaustion comes next, and though there's been hints that the body further shuts down by violent means, none have ever recorded it, as by now they are doomed. One last thing to note: ANY attempts to cast magic within the zone results in a mass-rebound of magic that always kills the caster, so mages are further hindered in the region.
It is important to note, this information is nearly all that has been gathered over the span of about 750 years. Though some Althian Adventurers will try to venture in for things to study, anything taken from the region degrades within an hour of leaving it, seeming to evaporate, leaving just rubbings or notes to take. The zone has expanded by a km within that 750 years, causing some alarm, but little can be done. There is belief that the land resulted from a great combat between a Menthari known as The One, and the Grand Fae Farae. Though why they fought is unknown, likely part of the history of the Lost Ages. If this is the case, it is a mystery as to why Farae has not made an attempt to repair it.
An anomaly with the world I have in my head is that there are no records or memories going back 1000 years or earlier. Structures and settlements have been around since then and there is proof of existence going that far back, but there is no written documentation or memories. Everyone just kind of "woke up" and worked with what was available 1000 years ago.
In the center of the valley there's a dead spot, devoid of color. Legend tells of 7 goblins, 1 of each color, who consumed the color of the valley and fell into a comatose slumber beneath the gray grass there. Some say the valley sacrificed itself to drown them and that they died there never to return, while others say they're going to awaken some day and once again wreak havoc on the region. Either way, no one is allowed in or out for fear of their potential return.
"Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, these are the colors of the Seven. When a rainbow catches their eye they lure and beguile it, these are the Desaturating Seven."
What a reference
@@lostlegionnaire3767 The official music is really nice, too.
Lol, just like the different colored hold goblins from RuneScape
I love making unexplained "things" that lurk in the rural area of my realm. It makes the world feel old, scarred and ineffable. I like putting echo's and remnants of other parties and monsters in the world as the setting is in an end of fantasy setting so the party are certainly not the first to be here. A specific example is the Trader, he will offer powerful magic items but will often take something of yours that HE see's as of equal value, the player is not told what he will take before hand.
There’s the brick king in the world I’m making. He’s effectively a mini boss dragon who’s breath weapon is red paving bricks and does 10 d6 bludgeoning damage
That is fun! I might add something to that.
Fucking. Sweet.
6 black metal pyramids scattered and hidden around the world. Each one containing a stone funneling energy through and out of the pyramid.
Each one of these stones controlling a different element of physical reality.
Fire, water, air, earth, space, time.
Each stone in its pyramid seems to govern that aspect and keep it functioning normally.
Removing a stone allows you to wield it and control that aspect to an extent. But over time, that element begins to experience.....abnormalities
The Shattered Lands: an ancient cataclysm caused the rocks in this wasteland area to ignore gravity. they'll float in place wherever they're put, no matter the size. people living there use the rock as floating towns, anchored together with ropes, rope bridges, etc, or as floating chariots and wagons, pulled by arial creatures. if the wind or anyone moving the rocks pushes a rock outside the affected area, it crashes to the ground as normal. you can tell where this is, because it's surrounded by splintered rocks basically everywhere.
I have multiple anomalies in my 1900s magitek inspired setting I made for my DnD campaigns:
- The Great Forest: A massive forest that travelers usually try to avoid, as people that get lost in that forest you get transported to the Feywild (and in my version the Feywild is much more sinister, so you don't want to be in there). Funnily enough it can happen the other way around to fey creatures, getting them transported to the material plane.
- Knanite: A substance used to create machines that goblins in the region of Flak Knak. However, the substance releases gases when mined that can lead to some goblins becoming crazy (and the kind that gets violent and start blowing stuff with explosives). There's no cure, and goblins of the region that aren't crazed know that they have to be really careful when mining the substance.
- Savasci: A race of people from Sahralnuwr that were cursed by a mummy long ago and now they have bandage-like skin on the arms and legs and they're considered "undead people that are still alive". They can't die from age, but if one or a couple of them decide to have a baby, the Savasci parent or parents will become dust and die, leading to most of them actively avoiding forming relationships that can lead to that.
- The Wind Islands and the Inchindo: Floating islands that appear in the morning and disappear in the night above the largest lake of the world called the Great Lake (also called sometimes as the Sweet Ocean): This has something to do with an ancient race called the Inchindo, that disappeared alongside its entire territory. Not even the oldest elves know why this civilization disappeared.
- The Winding Valleys: A region that is covered by a mist that can make monsters appear, from lovecraftian monstruosities that will kill you on sight to moth people that their most dangerous feature is that they think they're nobility when they're not. Nobody knows why this mist appeared, they only know that this mist is connected to a plane of existence where these monsters are formed.
- Nadra: A region that has its surface contaminated with magic after a magic bomb exploded. Now people live in the underground tunnels, as the surface have a chance to mutate you and, if you die while exposed to this contamination, you could become displaced, making you travel through dimensions instead of dying and making you see some wild stuff.
- The Grays: Alien humanoids that could abduct you to experiment with you. It's not known why they want to experiment with people, but it's known that some of these aliens don't want to do these experiments, as some of them can be seen in the world just trying to make a new live.
- The Meaters and Humans: Meaters are a race of people that comes from the plane of Carnus, and they appear exactly like humans, but they have the ability to open and shift their flesh and bones at will. This has lead to some to theorize that humans were originated from Carnus and they lost this ability and instead they gain the ability to be adaptable, but it's unconfirmed. Howver, it's a known fact that, if you're talking to a human, there's 1 in a 100 chances that you're actually talking to a meater, and you won't even know.
My world is beset by large scale wild magic surges. Random events happen all the time and it can even cause cities to be wiped off the map. One city got completely destroyed when a cloud in the sky turned to gold and fell to earth. Another was built around a small area where people are unable to die while inside of it. I did a oneshot in a forest next to a mine that had a wild magic surge bring all of the fossils back to life. Jurassic Park in D&D was fun.
In my homebrew campaign I had a quest up on the notice board in town that stated "5 Platinum reward for whoever kills the Goose Terrorizing my farm."
The party drools at the thought of easy money and seek out the farmer to solve his Goose problem. When the party arrives at the farm, they are met by the Farmer who explains that the Goose has been eating, trampling and crapping all over his crops and would like the party to kill it and bring back it's head. The party starts searching the area and with a 27 survival check from the Ranger it doesn't take long before they found it. The Goose looked a little larger than average but for all intents and purposes seemed like a regular Goose, the fighter walked up to it and swung his sword down on its neck and off came it's head. The party was left bewildered wondering why the farmer offered such a high reward for a simple task. They returned to him and presented the Goose's head to which he thanked them, handed them a pouch with 5 Platinum and the party went happily on their way to the Bar to celebrate their earnings. After much drinking and partying they spent the night at an Inn. The following morning the party was awoken to the sounds of Quacking in their room, the first to wake up and figure out what was going on was again the Ranger who spots a Goose sitting in the middle of their room crapping on the carpet, it had also taken random items out of the players backpacks and had scattered them around the room. The Ranger made a Nat 20 Perception check and was able to tell that this Goose was identical to the Goose they had killed yesterday, but...only a little bigger. The Fighter woke up, grabbed his sword and once again slayed the Goose, joking that "I love it when Breakfast comes to you". The following morning again they were woken up by the Goose this time it's definitely bigger than it was yesterday. This cycle continued Daily until the Goose became the size of a medium creature, at which point it started getting aggressive towards the Fighter who would kill it every day. The party realized they couldn't continue to keep killing the Goose or else they will eventually have to wake up to a Goose the size of a Tarrasque. So the party finally realized their way out of this loop, after a brief battle they managed to restrain the Goose and took it out to where they knew a Orc camp was located, they then created a distraction to lure the Orcs out the camp sonthe remaining members could Dump the Goose in the middle of their campsite and fled into the forest to observe. When the Orcs returned they found the Giant Goose tied up and praised their God for the meal, after confirming the Orcs had killed the Goose the party hightailed it out of there and we're finally free of the Unrelenting Goose's loop of chaos.
The main anomaly in my world is "shards", which are the scattered remnants of the gods who got killed when the pantheon had a divine world war.
They are sub-sentient fragments containing a small part of the powers and souls of the gods from which they originated.
They manifest their powers in random and unpredictable ways, notably changing the world around them. A shard of the life goddess for example could cause a forest to sprout or induce rapid mutation, while a shard of the moon goddess might create an area of low gravity.
Two things about them are of special concern:
1. They react to the power of faith and are sometimes drawn to people who still hold a strong belief in the god which the shard belongs to.
2. When in close proximity to each other they can combine, adding and amplifying their powers and (after reaching a certain "critical mass") even regain sentience, at which point they form a godlike being called an "Ascendant" which is an amalgamation of the various gods whose shards are combined inside of it.
I have a lich in my setting that was once a wild mage.
As a result of their insanity driven campaign to dominate the whole country side, there are now pockets of wild magic all over my world setting.
And I found some other rules to emulate the laws of physics starting to decay as well.
The glich was deleted, but his shrodinger echoes and the damage he caused still remain ever more.
In my ixalan campaign, the party keeps finding strange people/npcs. Some hostile, some confused, some friendly and some scared. This is because the world is cursed by a magical maguffin that traps planeswalkers (people that could traverse the multiverse) into this realm. Some seek to destroy whatever is locking them there and as such become antagonistic. Some grow wearily and tired of living on the same plane of existance, being denied the ability they once had to explore the cosmos. To a non-planeswalker, its like finding a ninja or a turkish soldier in a pirate campaign. Additionally, due to their cultures from their home worlds gave them new spells that the party never saw before. Imagine the uncertainty of the party whenever they encounter such people. So far the party found an Old wizard that is eons old and is willing to assist the party in finding the maguffin so that the curse can finally be lift and he can stop taking a vacation and go back to work, a Giant Barbarian from a celtic world and an insane transhumanist (the belief that the flesh is weak and to be replaced/augmented with technology) techno-mancer. There are more in the world, but so far they have not encountered them.
I mentioned this before but, I had the PC I used for a Christmas one-shot. She was a Tabaxi Paladin, named Tabbi and she had an anomaly that she would always end up going north. That’s it.
Walk south? She’d somehow be going the opposite direction not too long after.
Try to go south using a compass? The compass would later be turned around itself, leading her further northward.
Be teleported to a tropical island? Immediately is back in the northern forest the second she blinks.
Life is hell for her.
for my old campaign that had to be the goddess Rageena Nehrun Geezus... (yeah, the old rng joke is the actual goddess of randomness) a deity who is mostly unknown because she chose to become a goddess on a whim and a dice roll being bored (she was originally human) and pulled it off. even being able to hear her name spoken relies on a dice roll from her (in the group only 1 person failed that roll and thus never became aware of the goddess existence in character) as a deity she was partially meant as a 'joke deity' for the pantheon but she does have her purposes although anyone gaining her blessings alone is up to such lottery-level-odds that it rarely happens and hence why is so unknown. one major reason i included her as a member of the panteon, was that part of the intended storyline was for the entire party to make it to godhood (godhood itself being post-game as flavortext, so to say, but all party members were intended to become demi-gods during the campaign and for that reason, i needed rngesus as proof it was possible.her being the anomaly mainly because she is the only being in that setting who is true-neutral. even the supposed neutral deity who made the world is technically chaotic evil (not intending evil, she just borks everything by not thinking things through)
A shotgun with 10 gold coins in the barrel. It functions like a railgun, since I use ultrakill coin shooty things. Each gold coin is +1 to hit and +2 damage. You have 2d8+20 with a +10 to hit.
10:58 Sounds a lot like SCP - 2399, minus the erasing people from existence thing.
I was thinking the same thing
scp-2399 but it just xnopyt's you
@@G-Cole-01xnopyt, ÆÆ-
My character is itself an anomaly. In a previous campaign I played as an Artificer Goblin named Junk Joblin. When our world ended, the final fight was against ourselves. Like exact copies. I realized it was pointless to fight myself and made peace, as our world ended, out of our control we all turned to nothing. Cut to our campaign now where I’m playing a Half-Orc Barbarian, after acquiring an eye that can see magic I notice that my soul looks different from my parties, it’s surrounded by wisp of green and I’m told, “As you look as your soul memories start flooding in from your previous life. You see devices that look out of this world, powerful and dangerous alike. As your old life flashes before your eyes you see your self in a white void holding hands with a Goblin. You embrace him and then fade away.” After further questioning I find out that Junk Joblin is still in this world and it didn’t fully reset. Apparently our souls are one in the same and it’s my quest to find him. My DM then tells me about the title of the Campaign: Doxoracl or as he calls it Paradox.
Gullible 😂
@@grimtygranule5125 ?
In the lore of the world that most of my campaigns and oneshot are set it, there’s a few little oddities. For one, during the Dark King’s war, about 250 years before my current campaign, the powerful mage that allied himself with the dark king somehow managed to break off an entire piece of the continent with an uber-powerful spell. This chunk formed into a completely new island some distance from the mainland, and will serve as the setting for one of my other upcoming campaigns.
Several!
My favorite might be for a setting I’m working on- The Fateless.
See, in this world all beings (and aspects of reality itself) have their fates written in the Tome of Aether, and their very existence is tied to those words. To read from it would drive all but the mightiest mortals mad instantly, and even gods cannot alter it lightly.
But one day the tome was destroyed.
In an effort to preserve itself, it scattered its power, and those touched by that sudden ripple across space and time inherited their own fates, essentially becoming living loopholes in prophecy and magically supercharged in ways that most people can’t even fathom.
Then, time ended. Remember I mentioned that aspects of reality had their own fates? Yeah, well, a goddess tried to absorb all the remaining power as the universe ended, but she went mad in the process, and, using what she had gathered from the tome, effectively turned the universe off and on again.
This SHOULD have hard reset everything, including souls.
Yet… the Fateless not only exist, but seem to be somehow increasing in number…
Jacob Emory's stick. As stated, it was the tool of one Jacob Emory. He was describing as a Jack of many, Ace of none. The stick itself appears to be a piece of magic charcoal that, when anything is drawn on a surface, that drawing comes to life.
No one knows where he got it or how he made it, but all that is known about it is now the living self portrait of Jacob Emory is in possession in it and plans to take revenge for the torture his fellow drawn creatures have been put through for the material plane's entertainment
Was this based off of a creepypasta? This sounds vaguely like a character from a creepypasta who had the same thing happen, and then the drawings turned on him.
My world has the Wild Wood, a massive forest where any spell has a chance to cause a wild magic surge and the terrain is constantly shifting, except for the ruins of an old fortress on the coast. No one is sure what caused it, and people are afraid to travel through the area after dark because of a monster that supposedly roams the forest.
What caused the anomaly is that a group of adventurers encountered some sort of horrible ancient monster (I’m thinking maybe a terrasque). In the ensuing fight, all but the wizard were killed. In a last ditch effort to stop the monster, he simultaneously activated every page in his spell book as if it were a spell scroll. The result of such an intense amount of magical energy being unleashed killed the monster, but also caused the Wild Wood and the wizard’s mutation into the Mothman, a nocturnal flying creature that can only feed by consuming the magical energy given off by spells cast in its vicinity.
I was inspired by a description of the Siberian Traps and their creation to create a setting where a massive, volcanic region, complete with lava lake, has just opened up and become associated with demons and creatures from the Plane if Fire. Such a region has not actually effected surrounding regions much… yet. The idea is that the place has to be sealed up or else in a few hundred years it will start to effect the climate from the massive amount of volcanism, and and a few hundred years after that, well, the mass extinction starts.
I have 4th dimensional mimics, they are pretty Dr. Who esque and what they mimic are regular things like corners, empty spaces and geometry, they are incredibly hard to detect without calculating the volume of every room you enter
Im my world, the whole point was that aberrations were encroaching and causing massive anomalies in the ecosystem. At one point while the party was travelling towards the main city, they came across a flame elemental charring the forest... but it wasn't just an elemental of flame... it was an elemental that was roughly 20 feet tall with an explosion for a head, letting off so much heat they could feel it from 100 feet down the road.
At one point, they came across a bandit kid. The kid seemed to have some really strong, volatile magic that harmed him when he used it. They didn't want to take him along, so they gave him to one of the orphanages... and then one of the party members begins to see pairs of blue and orange glowing eyes, holding their arms out at an apparition of this kid. As they run to the orphanage to find him, the figures follow them by standing atop rooftops, moving every time they blink, and slowly become more solid as they run- first just eyes, then simple masks, then shadow figures with bodies like black sand... and then just when they reach the orphanage, the figures surround the building and it's covered in a bubble of darkness...
Then it just disappears.
God i love how it turned out. I wish we had finished that campaign.
Two examples, the first from a friends campaign, the second from my current one.
In my friends campaign there was an area called The Wildlands. No one knows how it was created, and theories ranged from crazy mages, a magic war twisting the rules of reality, to an area affected by the death of a God. People tried to avoid it because it was incredibly deadly. What you perceive has little bearing on what's actually there. It could seem to be a clear sunny day, but in reality it's snowing or hailing or whatever. You could pick a flower and stick it in a vase, but in reality some plant monster has picked you up and is draining your blood. Needless to say, after one encounter in the place we stayed the hell away like everyone else. :P
In my current campaign (a simulated reality type of thing) all the different realities are walled away from each other. It's supposed to be absolutely impossible for anything, even the gods, to pierce or cross these barriers. Somehow some semi-insane wizard managed to momentarily not only pierce the barrier, but pull a person from one of these other realities to the reality the campaign is set in. The person pulled through is one of the players. She looks human enough that most people barely notice she isn't, but shes the only one of her kind in this world, and is a class from her home reality and doesn't exist in this one.
In my campaign world there are pockets of magic that doesn't boost spells rather it boosts a PCs physical stats in a magical way. I.E. Increased strength,dexterity, and constitution. Mechanical it means any creature within the pocket has a strength of 20, dex of 20, and con of 20 BUUUUUT if a PC or NPC already have a 20 in any of these they instead gain 20 temporary Hit Points. These pocks tend to be found in areas where wild magic and dead magic zones collide
In the campaign I'm playing in has so many anomalies, but the primary one is that long ago a God of Life died on the mortal plane, and as a result, his blood soaked into the ground and the red seeped into the trees and ground and other plants causing it to become hungry and sentient. These plants and the forest it became is known as the Crimson Forest, and its life is known as the Crimson Rot. It is spreading across the world, infecting people and creatures, mutating them and making them mad and frenzied.
My character, a druid, went mad learning everything about it. After dying, being reincarnated and then almost aiding the resurrection of the old dead God by becoming its heart, became the sole and only individual in the world who is able to manipulate this dangerous blighted nature. Making her a bit of an anomaly herself.
After investigating, it turns out the vines of the Rot are actually veins, this leads to a central point in the forest where the body of the old God still lies, now reduced to remains constructed entirely from the Rot and nature. It is still "alive(?)" and breathing, waiting for the next necromancy cult to try to resurrect it.
We have other things too, minor the the current main plot. like a sinkhole with and ancient city. a cthulhu zomboid-esque alien invasion to the south, a magical wizard school that floats in the sky, 2D flat earth style world connected by dangerous water portals, migrating astral plane whales and so much more its crazy 😂
6:35 poor Will, he's always just standing around, then people start shooting at him, now they're manipulating quicksteel at him.
What did Will do to deserve all this punishment?!? How can we end this?!?
JUSTICE FOR WILL
JUSTICE FOR WILL
JUSTICE FOR WILL
I once convinced the dm to let me play as a sentient pickle.
I joined in late but the dm had already set the events for my introduction. In an alchemist's lab the rogue stole a pickle in a jar, for a few sessions he started talking to the pickle, and everyone assumed he was crazy. Until we arrived a town where no one speaked common, fortunately the pickle could speak draconic (he was a sorcerer, because the alchemist injected dragon blood to it). Since I wasn't able to move until the jar was opened or broken, I had to use the message spell to communicate with the rogue, the party started to suspect my existance after the rogue had full conversations with the npcs, but only talking to the pickle. Eventually the jar broke mid battle and a 2 meter humanoid pickle sorcerer joined the team.
In my dnd world there are people called tourists who come from other realities they adapt quickly to the conditions of the world and become part of it overtime but they eventually go back to their own world and then come back to the main realm this was my idea to add many diferent characters from other series and settings aswell as adding other characters from other games
11:45 Now I’m imagining the late Duke of Edinburgh having scientists make an extra earth
Yes, brothels are places for public therapy and not paid sex in our DM's world. Also, geese can talk and serve as knights, but that's not as important.
There’s a guy who occasionally gives a small box to the party that has a note like “hang in there” or “if at first you don’t succeed…” written on them. Inside is a small multifaceted stone with numbers on it.
The entire fictional city of Yharnam appeared for about a week in my in-game world. Gherman still relaxes in the party's old home to this day
The mountain of faith is the tallest mountain in my setting, part of the larger mountain range of Stonekeep,. Stonekeep being the largest dwarven settlement in my setting. One particular city in stonekeep, the one built directly under the aforementioned mountain of faith is well known for one thing, being the only city in the world where smiths can forge Orichalcum. This draws many people to the city, adventurer's, soldiers and anyone else who would fancy having a weapon or tool made from the strongest metal in the world. However, people who make the trip there will never find a single forge that makes the stuff.. several armories will sell you things and you can place an order at a few of them, but you can search every square inch of the city, and you'll never find a forge that actually produces the stuff. The locals only speak about the supplier in hushed whispers in the town like it's some sort of big government secret everyone knows exists, but no one knows the answer to.
The few who learn the truth are however left with more questions than answers. The mountain of faith is actually an active volcano, the magma of which is always boiling at the time The heat from which is so great that just being near it will give you an awful sunburn and the light from the glowing hot lava will leave you blinded. But if you for some reason jump into the lava... you won't die from it. You'll burn, you'll be deformed by the heat, but you'll never perish. and while your flesh and bone will bend, it'll never break or burn away.
No one, not even the dwarves' who operate the forge understand why the lava behaves this way. They simply know they can use the super hot lava to melt and forge Orichalcum, or any other metal they might need to. The problem is, it melts EVERYTHING! that isn't living flesh. In order to make a pipe for the magma, a chamber to hold it, You have to use flesh. LIVING flesh that's been burned and molded into something usable these pipes and chambers need to be replaced regularly because the people making them up die after about a month of being used in this way. You *could* use animals, but their bodies only live for a few hours.
Yep: Razaka Station. In my character, Grimdark of New Blacksand's background, in order to get to the pocket dimension of New Blacksand, you first have to go through Razaka Station. Entering through a portal, you find yourself on a black beach under a dark sky with two full moons. Going up a hill, you see an endless highway and a dessert that looks like the Navada dessert. Next to the highway is a gas station, the entrance to Razaka station (however, since this is a mideval setting, nobody knows what a gad station is). The station itself is guarded by an oc of mine named Holder. He looks like a 1950's gas station attendant, but is actually a disgraced and disguised slidikin. The inside of Razaka station is like the tardis in that is HUGE on the inside, and acts as a mix of grandcental station and ellis island.
To be honest, I'd be more surprised if fantasy worlds *lacked* anomalies. It's anomalies existing in a world that really make a fantasy world feel like fantasy (obviously in bigger ways for high fantasy than low fantasy). And even anomalies among anomalies feel important to set a given world apart from others.
Admittedly, in my world, most anomalies I've written so far are either a god, an act of a god (typically something involved in their ascension), or just odd effects of major leylines.
We have a multi dimensional NPC called the Curator which lives within the second hell of Pathfinder. He dwells within an library that holds every book and any form of information ever created. Reading any has a very steep/near impossible will save which may break your mind as all the information about a single topic floods into your mind. (Used it to become a litch and read 3 books, one being the necronomicon). Theres also an hourglass structure which contains its own universe made from the Golarions collective dreams and thoughts called a Jarl, which we had to purge (commit genocide) to save multiple universes from collapsing. Spending 1 year in there is akin to 3hrs outside; your body goes limp when your mind enters it. If you die within it, the brain of your real body basically gets Alzheimer’s on steroids.
I am doing hardcore sci-fi campaign in an underground cave environment. There are supernatural crystals that have special properties (emits electromagnetic field when specific vibration frequency is present; emits light based on ambient ionizing radiation; a crystal that has extremly high specific heat capacity (100x more than hydrogen) together with slow thermal conductivity etc.) and are actually sort of living silicon based organism. This is basicly the anomaly. These effects are partially explained (with structure, molecular chemistry...) but still goes against basic thermodynamic laws in many ways.
Bootes in Bootes void is like boo-et-ty. scientists are weird man
In my campaign robots one day gainer the ability to consume food, drink, alcohol, and more, because some greater entity has ripped a hole in the universe, *in order to get inside*
not as anomalous but still pretty strange. In my world their is a place called the “sea spring monument” ( great name I know) it is located in a Druid city high up in the mountains away from any ocean. the monument is looks like stone hedge but their is a moat of sea water around it and in the center their is a upside down petrified tree trunk with depictions of various water gods, and a unknown language. The moat has no tunnel and or portal to the ocean, but you can find sea life or the occasional sea monster. also any water or water adjacent magic is greatly amplify. I base this partly on Seahenge a prehistoric monument. 🐠
For Strings of Fate; that would be the ruins and the twin moons. As this is on going and I have no idea if any of them match this; that is all I can say but there is also the mural that dates back 5.6 million years and the fossil record is just... weird.
In my campaign world, there's a type of creature known as "Tulpa", main inspiration coming from the Greylock Analog Horror series.
The Tulpas are incorporeal, ethereal beings of pure mana, virtually indistinguishable from natural flowing mana, the only difference being that Tulpas retain a shadow of sentience. They cling onto certain places or individuals at random, and once clung into a place or a person, they begin to slowly manifest depending on the way their hosts either think, imagine or are given attributes. A place might become truly a holy site, or a person might begin truly seeing images of their fantasies.
At first, only those affected by the Tulpa can see and feel the effects of its presence, but this ultimately begins to attract their attention to those effects, strengthening the hold of the Tulpa upon their hosts. Once the grip is strong enough, a Tulpa will be truly able to affect the world around it in a way that everyone can see... And every individual that sees the effects of a Tulpa now becomes a new host for it, while if their presence or effects are mentioned to others, there is a chance that the Tulpa might turn those who hear it into hosts as well.
Once a Tulpa has enough of a physical presence, it will shift its goals. The hosts affected by it will begin receiving ever increasingly real visions of past events forgotten by the world, as well as increasingly confusion inducing voices shouting disparate orders, pleas and cries at them. A great majority of the hosts go mad at those visions and messages.
The government can't do anything but terminate the hosts of Tulpas to prevent the spread. Some higher ups of the government even fear that maybe... Just maybe, what people believe to be gods are just powerful enough Tulpas. And they can't do anything against them, after all, what can you do about a creature that did not exist, but now is ingrained so deep in societal culture that it has become part of their identity?
the problem with this prompt is that the nature of DnD means the world has anomalies. mind flayers for example wouldn't traditionally fit into a general fantasy setting. same with psionics, warforged, and artificers. all things that don't normally fit a fantasy aesthetic but are in the actual rules for DnD. the question is less "does your world have anomalies" and more "how many does your world have?"
-in the feywild, there are no cardinal directions. to get from place to place, you need to pass various landmarks in specific ways. because of this, the feywild is impossible to map. all fey residents have the ability to steal another's name if it is given, but most would never do so because it is considered the highest offence in fey court.
-in the shadowfell, time isn't linear. you can meet yourself from the future, from the past, from alternate timelines. there are creatures that during combat can attack you at a point in time earlier or later in the campaign, but the wounds break open in the present the cause damage. you can find and fight physical manifestations of negative emotions. the Raven Queen herself is a huge anomaly.
-the ethereal plane is stitched and held together by billions of ghost spiders that have their own society in basically the same space humaniods do, only being unseen do to a single dimension of separation
-Thri-Kreen are bug people who are older then the material plane itself. several of them run a prison under a mountain at the center of the world where old gods and upstart immortals are imprisoned. they are forced to do this because they lost an ancient battle and got the short end of the stick while "the painted ones" got to move on and keep their freedom for themselves. who are the painted ones? good question and good luck finding out because apparently, they're not around anymore.
-extensive research has revealed that there are older generations of gods. several of them in fact, who are all very different from the current gods.
all of this stuff is part of my DnD world, some of which was borrowed from official sources and the rest was inspired by things I have interest in. point is every world is going to have anomalies. it's part of the DnD experience.
My setting has a land locked in eternal winter. No one remembers why, but it is magical in nature. It has been this way for so long that the wood in the land has absorbed the magic and thus has an ice affinity. This makes the wood prized for ship-building, since it doesn't burn as easily.
this is more of an inside joke then anything but a black obelisk. It is a small obelisk about 1 to 2 feet tall that has some writing on it in a language that cannot be read, the material that makes the obelisk is undefined (for one player it might be obsidian, another it might be plastic). Any time someone finds one paranoia and bad luck seems to follow them, the moment someone tries to get rid of it they find that instead of the obelisk they have a container with a large amount of money. Now why this is an anomaly is that I tend to play different ttrpg games, like cyberpunk, twilight 2000, savage worlds, and most importantly Call of Cthulhu. Effectively in one Call of Cthulhu game I ran some players found a massive black obelisk and broke it, that obelisk dispersed into different worlds, so it is like a weird Easter egg for games I run.
Not my story, but one I've heard of from somewhere and it just stuck into my head.
In this story the world is splitted into the realms (not dimensions), of which there are five. Four of them had been conquered by a BBEG just before the gods could react.
So, they put together quickly pulled together party of different people from different dimensions (not realms). This people were on their deathbeds, and their souls were just about to begin their journey to the underworld, when they were pulled by the gods, who gave them basically identical bodies and skills as the ones they had when they were dying and out them in the fifth realm.
Now, I just wanted to say, that they are here on their own will, and lore-wise were given alternative of going to the underworld immediately, OR helping to stop the BBEG and then going to the underworld, as if nothing happened.
The party was pretty standard - the leader was an elf, his right hand man was fighter dwarf, there was even a rouge gnome that could get into the places everyone thought impossible... You know what I mean.
But it was the human spearman that stood out. He always wore strange looking, dark green armour, that didn't even look like armour. And his spear wasn't even shaped like one, just some bulky piece of metal, less than a meter long, and it had to touch the thing he wanted to attack with it's front- then it would launch a small blade out of it's end and retract, making a loud noise. It was so powerfull it could shredd the enemy - or the thing that the human aimed it at, no matter what it was made of.
It always happened so fast, that nobody could see the blade, but that's how it's wielder described it. And there always was a hole in the thing he targeted, so nobody questioned it.
Now why am I talking about this here? The spear had attacked a small lamp at the front, which the Human could turn on and off at his will, as long as he was holding the weapon in the correct way.
That lamp didn't use any magic tho, and it didn't use fire to light everything up. Combine that with non-magic wielder, and every mage thought it was impossible for it to work. But it did...
It was just a lamp tho, and nothing more, so usually people tended to forget after five seconds, or just assumed it was so efficient that they couldn't sense any magic flowing because there was too little of it.
And it wasn't like the owner had bragged right and left what he could do with this lamp. He himself didn't ever show using any magic, and usually was just playing on the defensive positions, covering spellcasters, or healers.
Anyway, the BBEG wasn't going to just give up the fifth realm, and when he did conquer it, he would be powerful enough to challange gods themselves.
But he was smart, and he liked outplanning his opponents.
So he manipulated everyone inside the realm against the heroes, and turned every success of the party against them.
After escaping from another city that wanted to imprison them, and/or bring them defenceless and cuffed before the BBEG, they realised that they've lost. So, they decided to put everything on their last card.
They challanged necromancer to a duel. If he had won, they would go away and will never return. If he'd won, he'd have to step back and give up all five of the realms. Everybody knew he's not going to keep his promise, but they didn't have any alternatives. They pulled straws to see who would fight.
And it was a spearman that got the short straw.
*OOC: From what I know, irl everyone was just tired of the campaign they had been playing for the past few months, and it didn't seem it would end any time soon.
It was the first campaign that was this long, and it turned out they'd just bitten more that they could chew, and decided to end it.
Now, before you reveal the twist, I want to see what you think it really was.*
I don't think the plot twist was invented on the spot, I'm more into the theory that the player and DM had coordinated this beforehand, and both knew what was coming.
The duel was quick. They were both seen as melee fighters, so naturally they were set apart, about twenty meters (sixty feet I think). The human rolled a lower initiative, but the necro was so sure of the win that he allowed his rival to make the first move.
Everyone expected human to close the distance, but instead he just raised his spear (he wasn't in melee range I mind you) like he was about to attack him. Then, a series of loud explosions was heard, and the necromancer had fallen into his feet, defeated, and his body full of small holes that were just about everywhere on his body.
He wasn't a spearman, but a soldier.
And it wasn't a spear.
It was a rifle.
Ps if anyone wonders the anomaly in question was the lamp.
Or should I say; flashlight.
Yeah. A volcano called Mount Anomaly that acts as my way of saying “look not everything in this setting is gonna make sense, and blame it on the big, fuck-off, mystery volcano that no one has gone to and come back from.”
I came up with a pretty good one that I've yet to use. I call it the Venator. A shadowy humanoid mass with flames outlining its featureless body. Atop its head are several horns that form a crown-like shape holding a small flame where the points converge. It always appears to be 2 to 3 feet taller than whoever is viewing it by their own perception, making its true height unknowable. Scholars debate as to its origins, initially thinking it to be from an infernal realm due to its appearance. Said theory was discarded after Holy attacks and weapons proved to be ineffective against it. As for what it does, it is very simple. The Venator is summoned into the world from wherever it comes from out of pure force of will by feelings of intense hatred towards someone by its Summoner, henceforth dubbed "The Consigner." The Consigner does not know that they have summoned The Venator, as when it first appears, it manifests in a flash of light in front of its target, the individual who The Consigner's hate is directed at. From that point, The Venator has one goal. Kill its target. Its primary weapon is a Katar it pulls from the flame on its head, but that's not the worst of it. If its target tries to flee, they will find their path suddenly plagued by obstacles and tripping hazards. Scholars debate if this is caused by panic, or if The Venator wills such inconvenience into existence. Additionally, if its target escapes, or manages too incapacitate The Venator, it will reappear some time later, and can appear from anywhere, even if it should be impossible for it to appear from where it does. Such as breaking through a wall of floor with no space on the other side for it to have been, on the other side of doors that were just closed and reopened, treasure chests and other containers far too small to realistically contain it, and other such places. It will not stop until it kills its target, and will progressively become more aggressive as the hunt goes on. The only way to stop the Venator is to figure out who The Consigner is, and deal with them. Eliminate the Hate. Basically, I wanted to make a horror game pursuer type enemy in a similar vein to Pyramid Head, or Nemesis. I think The Venator fits that bill, as well as that of an Anomaly.
3:53 Why do these sound suspiciously like Endermen to me?? 😂
For my campaign, my anomaly is a man who goes by Traveler. He's lived so long due to his absolute immortality he had forgotten his name. He jumps through dimensions and alternate realities, collecting memories he creates with his memory book. He is also the only version of himself throughout all the time-lines due to time-lines trying to turn into parallel worlds break in his presence. A cursed version of his alternative-timeline self before he obtained immortality is also the "final boss", with his own type of immortality. Only with the anomalous power of the Traveler can the final boss be defeated.
My dnd character's IS the anomaly. Or, rather, his magic is. He's a wild magic sorcerer, which can be common, but after getting the magic, things were just slightly off.
There's a sword hung on the mantle, which was a normal sword prior. Just bought for decoration. But as soon as he got his wild magic, the sword was changed too, and he could feel memories of how the sword was passed down from generations, and that he was to be trained on how to wield it. But he never experienced those memories himself. He never made those.
Almost as if its not from this timeline.
In my Starfinder game, I have Mr. Johnson. He runs the economy of Elysium Station - to the point where any money you spend on the station is Mr. Johnson's money. He has a seat on the station council, and only ever appears to people through digital mediums like screens. What's really strange is that some have reported talking to Mr. Johnson at the same time, despite all accounts saying this should be impossible. After all, one man can't be everywhere at once... right?
The bad news is, his control of the station's economy runs so deep that if he were to be stopped, all projections indicate that the station would collapse under the strain of the void.
The Forgotten Tunnels: this is a sub-layer of reality that resembles a seemingly endless maze of dark, twisting tunnels. These passages resemble a network of maintenance corridors and subway tunnels. It technically exists outside of all normal space-time, in the interstitial space between dimensions. None come by choice, those who end up here do so by interplanar travel going wrong. The only truly safe way to navigate these tunnels is to board a train and keep moving. with luck, you might eventually find a way out. Those traveling here might occasionally encounter other lost travelers, or of the are unlucky, they might encounter the creatures that guard these tunnels, so far no one has spoken on that exactly these things are, as they have proven undefinable thus far, At the heart of these tunnels, there is a grand station, possibly the only truly safe spaces here. Long ago, a Void Dragon arrived here, and discovered that the madness that usually plagues his kind and drive them to become true monsters could not touch him here. Because of this, here he stays, having claimed the station as his lair, and seeking to guide had help any who become lost in this place.
So basically the fantasy backrooms?
It's actually a homebrew concept I made and gave to a DM, who then put it in one of our campaigns, which we only encountered once. It was inspired by SCP-2086.
The Router (name derived from a bus route) is basically a large insectoid mimic-like creature that always assumes the guise of some kind of transportation. It will stalk in the woods trying to find someone alone with some other kind of transport, upon which it will mimic the transport, (for example, a merchant’s cart) dispose of said transport and kill the person. The Router will position the corpse in a sitting position at the front of the cart. At which point, small thread-like feelers will imbed into it all across the back; head, torso, legs and arms and move it around, making it look like the person is driving. It will go along trails until it comes across either 1 person or a small group of people to prey upon. It will stop and wait for them to come closer, upon which it will attack. Not necessarily difficult if you have a decent sized adventuring group, as long as you stay out of its reach since it only has a scorpion tail attack, two possible claw attack and one bite attack, no ranged attack. Meant more as a mini boss encounter than as a fully fledged out boss.
If that's not your cup of tea, how about the ritual that caused the moon to basically hatch like an egge unleashing THOUSANDS of dragons across the world, which caused an apocalypse. Our campaign took place 1,000 years after, and it's still a post-apocalyptic wasteland, only refuges being in hidden or fully magically cloaked locations. The base me and the party had decided to stake for our own was an old fort with a large clocktower, thus causing us to call it Castle Clockwork. Oddly enough, the clock tower itself was ALSO an anomaly, which could open portals to other worlds at random and just kinda... yank people from those worlds into ours. The only time we saw it happen, it brought, bear with me here, five Early Empire Clone Troopers into the tower, closing the portal behind them. After a quick fight where we incapacitated tthem and some talking, they acted as guards to the castle and used their rifles sparingly as we had NO IDEA how to replicate tibana gas. Eventually, it was wittled down to just one, but that's a story for another time.
In my setting, one of the main planes is just a massive ocean filled with supernatural beings. Despite this, there is an anomaly in it. At any place analogous to a normal ocean’s hadalpelagic zone, there is occasionally a feeling of a crushing, utterly wrong presence. It only lasts for a moment, but no-one knows what causes it and even the gods of the setting get nervous when it happens.
I have a fantastic high sci-fi setting based in D&D 5e. The widespread use of FTL travel during the Android Wars and extensive genetic engineering during that time cause the Awakening. This was when magic was effectively introduced into the setting as psionics.
There's also a wandering multiversal uber-android called "Themis". Nobody knows what it is or where it's from, just that when it shows up, it's a massive problem.
My Fantasy worldbuilding setting has Cursed lands caused by ancient Dragon boneyards that behave like the Arcane Magic analog to "The Zone" from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Strange magical phenomena, dangerous abnormal weather patterns, magically altered Flora and Fuana, Dangerous cursed artifacts, places where the laws of Time and Physics don't apply, the works. And all because a few Draconic factions wanted to fight each other territorial claims, and, in their shame over the conflict, didn't properly dispose of their dead like they normally would have.
I got a tiny abandoned town where everything seems strange, instead of the classic wood and stone constructions, the buildings are made of cal and a strange fragile stone, some walls are filled with treasure but are protected by some kind of barrier that damages you if you try to take the metals inside, in one of the buildings with a cristal door, this magically opens itself and inside is some king of tavern, but there is no ale, beer or alcohol, but some strange drinks that grants you energy for hours but the inability to sleep for days, the explorers sent to this place sometimes report about people with strange clothes and hair coming out from these buidings, they appear confused but they turn back into the buildings, close the doors and disappear, the dukedom where this place is located has banned everyone from entering after an altercate where a party of adventurers disappeared for days only to return telling stories about huge metal golems thay swallow human sacrifices and wizards and bards with no need for chanting to cast spells and melodies that pierced one mind, a group of these shoot them with powerful projectiles after a member of the party stabbed a woman dressed as a succubus, they were rendered mad and the area was sealed with orientation distortion magic to prevent anyone accidentally stumble across this place
The Bag of Holding, in the Forgotten Realms they're weird in general, an extremely easy to make portable pocket dimension just for storage? A small demiplane or something similar is usually so much higher on the scale of magic to make something like the bag of holding. Dungeon Dad goes over it pretty well in his Bagman video on how those items are strange and probably another full plane of existence that connects all bags together.
The Alura Flower: The alura flower is known for two things. One: if you eat its blossom you gain one divine live. Basically that is an extra live as you'd know them from video games. You can be killed once and will return to live after some seconds and be restored. Also you will return to young adult age after eating the blossom and all ailments, disabilities or other health problems will disappear. Obviously this flower is extremely valuable and the first big bad overused that flower to a point where she basically became a Lich. She also made sure that she owned all the blossom she could find in order to being able to heal herself once she had any healt issue and eat blossom if for some reason she would die so the prevention of death would be up asap.
two: the alura flower is created and belongs to the child goddes sprig, who is also the goddes of spring. She created the flower to give one of them to each of her sipplings, Aurelia, the beautifull goddess of summer, Jacarell, the artist and god of autumn and Arturus, the wise god of winter. When sprig was giving the flowers to her sipplings Arturus told her to instead plant the Alura flowers on earth and tell the people to give him just one blossom each winter solstice. That way the humans would have a way for healing themselves when injured or sick and by giving the sacrifice they would remember all 4 gods of the seasons.
Well, guess what happens if a lich controlls all the flowers and wants them for themselves? Nope, they don' sacrifice to the gods, which lead to a one year long winter and only after the heroes sacrificed the blossom, Arturus allowed the seasons to move on normally again.
My entire setting is an anomaly. There is an edge, not flat. The sun does not rise but grows from a faint speck in the sky. Growing to a noon day disk. Then fading as the night takes the sky. So, ya it's all an anomaly.
A giant planet where even the atmosphere is acidic jello, and is completely indistinguishable from air to the natives of the planet, or an outside observer.
In my campaign there's a new magic ore that can increase the users magic ability but causes scarring based on the spells used along with also causing wild magic surges.
In my dnd group, we have a recurring entity know as 'betty'. It appears commonly as an old women, however, it is in fact the father of the king of hell; has existed since before the universe; can teleport, manipulate matter, and rapidly approach a location.
I was playing a regular campaign, during the first battle things went south so my character prayed to Azuth for assistance. I got a Panzerfaust.
One of the plot elements my old forever DM used and we tended to carry over to even some of the guest DMs we had was the space between worlds and plains of existence. At one point we encountered a college of casters of various types doing research on the different plains and how they were even divided from each other. Long story short, we accidentally opened a rift to that space of division. It was supposed to be an utter void. Nothing, not even time existed there. So of course we chained someone to secure them and convinced them to venture in to try to experiment with what it even was or could be. Sure it was empty and not even time existed there but unfortunately SOMETHING was there and we attracted its attention. The player who elected to stick part of themselves in experienced a minute in the space feeling literally like an eternity but was aware of that thing in there just WATCHING them. They couldn't describe what it was as they couldn't see but they could feel its proverbial eyes on them. After that, various rifts opened to the space around the world and those who encountered them also described them as feeling like they were being watched by something inside regardless if they entered the rift or not. Understandably nothing wanted anything to do with the things and avoided them like they were the plague.
I put a few of those in my space dnd setting.
Hammerspace is another dimension where every conceivable thing both does and does not exist. A play on hyperspace, and the explanation of where things that are summoned or disappeared go to and from.
Heaven and hell are also different realities, the inhabitants of which can only reproduce by turning mortals into more of themselves.
In my Homebrew British Isle Folklore (~1600’s) in the Otherworld (Folklore Feywild) there are rips in the fabric reality that causes a whole multitude of issues in the past and present. Literally opening holes into my WIP campaigns such as one which leads into the trenches of WW1, spitting out cars from the 1910’s or 70’s. They’ve already encountered the HMS Titanic off the coast of the Cornish sea side. Before it fell back through a rip. These rips are the causes of a immensely ancient war against the Gods of monotheism and Paganism that determined history for their future. Faefolk decided they were tired of taking the Angles shit so by ripping holes in the fabric of time they jumped Quintillions of years forwards or backwards. They are soon going to encounter a Victorian faerie in their next trip to the Otherworld.
These are not folklore these are things I have made off of some scraps of ancient Brythonic folklore that I twisted to be like this.
One of the oceans of my world has a maelstrom since forever, noone knows what it is, how it began or what is in there.
The thing is, that maelstrom has, at it's very eye, a forgotten library, and guarding it, a sleeping tarrasque.
Nobody in my world has been able to understand the maelstrom, or even investigate it.
There's a crazy dangerous area I call "the rabid desert" where there's no such thing as a food chain. Anything that moves in there hunts everything else, and whichever gets torn to shreds first becomes lunch. Obviously that goes for plants, too. Every part of the native ecosystem could claim to be an apex predator, and every part constantly and violently asserts said claim on anything that bleeds and most things that don't.
There's a skeleton of a literal god that lies in the biggest city in my campaign, which actually dwarfs the city in sheer size. His skeleton provided a boost in the magic in the city from his still dying corpse.
Object 213 sounds like a goddamn scp
In the Yugioh themed campaign a DM ran, there is one NPC who constantly wonders why everything is decided by a children's cardgame to such ludicrous degrees.
Like he'll go "Just (insert form of violance or illegal activity here) the f***er, so we can be done with this. Don't duel him!!!"
I think I would just be playing that guy, NGL, if I had to have a deck I'd probably have some horrible stall fest everyone would loathe to play against, or an IRL favorite
The biggest anomaly are the Riven, a subset of people fall from mysterious rifts that rip open in the material plane without any known origin. Their memories are scattered, having little recollection of who they were before appearing in the world with the memories they do have being conflicting
This just makes me think of Myst 2: Riven
I was was using an NPC character from a different game, I don't remember which, who was building futuristic firearms and had 3 robot bodyguards. She was a meant to be part of a Telsa/Eddison type of plot which never came about.
The Boneyards: combined the underworld and the Astral into a Escheresque place, with pockets of demons, devils, angels, and mortals from elsewhere forming small communities in this miserable place. you can be walking on what is, for you, a level surface, and 30 feet away there's another strip of land 60 degrees off kilter above you, and if you jump high enough towards it, you'll switch to the other land's subjective gravity and land 30 feet 'up' from where you were, but leaned sharply to the left (to anyone watching from where you started).
My world has "Fissures" or "cracks" in the sky, this due to the separation of wheel of planes. That leaved the material plane. Feywild and shadowfell separated from extraplanar travel (a deal with gods for safety and some more lore)
If you dare to fly and touch or try plane travel to the outside wheel, you might (by a very high percentage) die, and this is true death, as the damage is incompatible with existance. You can still travel as many say "there is morenthan one way" but seems to be a very well kept secret.
One of my worlds has a lake that always reflects the night sky, regardless of actual weather conditions. I don't know why it does that.
There's also a region where all of the plant life is actually made of crystals. Don't step on the grass.
Oh god the last sentence is a horror story
In the multiverse of the books I'm writing, the biggest anomaly is a sector of the multiverse called Stillness. Stillness worlds look like regular worlds, but they don't move at all. Animals, plants, air, water, stars, planets, all of it is perfectly still; not like it's frozen in time, but like if everything in the world was artificial and powered down. Yet somehow it's possible to breathe there. Also, if people get too close to the animals, they begin to move for a little bit, very suddenly and alarmingly. Nothing native to Stillness can be harmed or killed in any way, but prolonged exposure to Stillness will drive you insane because it's all too quiet and too still. Stillness is also an active pneumahazard, that is to say that every moment you're there, it's eating your soul. Your soul can regenerate if you get out in time, but if you don't, then you're worse than dead. Nobody knows what happens after death apart from the options of being a ghost or reincarnating, but if your soul is fully devoured, you have no afterlife. Plus you'd be insane.
In the lore of the story, nobody knows how Stillness can possibly exist, nor how anyone could possibly breathe there, and yet they do. Being able to see there should also be impossible since the light can't be moving either, and yet sight is possible there. But if you don't take your own food and water, you'll die because the local matter can't be damaged or destroyed.
The creepiest part is if you find a Stillness world with local people on it. Getting too close to them will make them move for minutes at a time, walking and talking like animatronics. You can even have simple conversations with them. But doing all that will make the pneumahazard level go up.