My 5 Favourite Locations in My Homebrew D&D Setting

GRE Gamers my name is Anto and today I want to talk to you about some of my favorite locations in my Homebrew campaign setting the jewel cities of talvar this video is sponsored by cheku scenes more on them later this is a setting I've been working on for about 2 years now we spent the better part of a year building it out in live streams and then I've been playing in it about every week for close to a year now and it's pretty vast the legend keeper page for it has something like 500 60 location and point of Interest pins and after playing in this setting for about a year I'm very quickly realizing well maybe not quickly actually a year is quite a long time I'm realizing that it's unlikely that my players are actually going to get to all of these things which I knew you know intellectually from the start but I like to build my worlds from the very top I like to take that high level approach where I build out a lot of information because that helps me run my games with a lot less prep because I have a lot more work done up front and it also helps me to improvise things with a greater sense of accuracy so when my players encounter something or ask questions I've got so much contextual information about this world already I can make things up on the spot using information that I have around this world that I've already put in the leg work for and I can make improvised answers that feel like they have always existed and it improves that verisimilitude that I'm going for when I'm running the game and I really like it it's not an approach that I would recommend for everyone the way that I will build you know make make your whole world and then fill it with hundreds of locations it's time intensive much better to just start with a single location for most people but that's not what I did and my players are never going to encounter most of these loc so today I want to talk about them quick caveat to say that if you are one of my players this could still contain spoilers so skip this video so when I recently asked on the community tab what are some of the videos that people want to see more of one of the things that came up again and again was more will building stuff and more stuff about the jewel cities so I thought it'd be fun today to do this kind of fly over the whole Jewel cities region and just pick out some of my favorite locations and talk about why they're my favorite locations and what makes them interesting to get some contexts on on the jeel cities and what's going on in this region check out this video but let's dive into it so we're going to kick things off with the forest of spikes this is a forest in the country of alal which is in the southwest of the island of or and what makes this location interesting to me is the legend behind it and the falsehood of the Legend So the forest of spikes gets its name because throughout this large Forest when you're going through it you will see that a lot of the trees have iron spikes driven into the now the Legends say that somewhere deep within this Forest there is a great evil that lurks there and the by driving these spikes into the trees people are contributing to the magic that is binding this evil and keeping it from roaming the land that is somewhat true there is an evil in this Forest the evil is contained by a silver Spike but not iron and that is what keeps the evil from wandering the land and causing all kinds of Terror but to throw people off the scent those that bound this evil drove iron spikes into as many trees as possible to throw off the scent of which of the trees is the one that this evil spirit is bound into so a few hundred years ago there was a rebellion in the country of alal led by a creature known as mendax now MX was a Herald of the god of corruption and what menax was doing was physically corrupting the populist so offering them power in exchange for physical mutations and Corruptions very similar to kind of Papa nurgle in the Warhammer universe and this problem grew and grew over years it started off with small isolated Cults and eventually an entire city the city of mberg was basically quarantined because most of the people within had been corrupted by mx's influence and had taken to these flesh mutations to deal with this problem the king of alal bought in one of the free companies of taliva the order of the silver Lance and tasked them with retaking mberg and destroying the threat of this MX and his corrupting influence now during this Rebellion many terrible things happened the city of mberg became a full-on war zone with the silver lances retaking it Street by Street and having to fight for basically every inch that they reclaimed from these corrupted cultists during the height of the siege the corrupted cultists kind of sent off two pockets of corruption to try and spread it to the Wilder World they sent one by sea and one by land captain of the silver Lancers didn't have the manpower to pursue them both and chose to pursue the ones that were fleeing by land incidentally that pocket of corruption that makes it out by sea ends up halfway across the world in the city states of Ash and ends up causing the chaos phage which I've talked about in previous campaign Diaries and stuff it basically corrupts an entire city in the desert region of Ash they get all of their majes together and turn all of their people into Undead who can't be corrupted and seal all the city off for a 100 years is but the silver Lancers give Chase to what they think is MX into the forest the forest that would become the forest of spikes during the inlan conflict the captain is infused with corruption and begins to turn into kind of a greater demon of corruption and the standard Bearer who carries the silver Lance a legendary magical artifact that carries their banner and has huge religious and kind of important significance to their free company has to kill the captain and does so basically by driving the silver Lance through the captain and pinning him to a tree the standard Bearer swears an oath to stand vigil over the captain's corpse in this Grove of trees and th the kind of legend of the forest of spikes is born rather than risk a scandal the brothers of the silver Lancers cast a mind memory spell on some of the witnesses and then start up the rumor that they need to drive spikes into the trees to ward off the evil that has been contained there now the reason I really like this is because it's got great visual elements riding through I can imagine the players riding through the forest and seeing all of these iron spikes driven into the trees it would make you want to question what's going on here just immediately but also picking it apart you would find out that the truth is different to what everyone knows it would tie into my previous campaign where they realized that this is actually connected to things that they've encountered in a previous Campaign which I always like doing and they get a nice reward for finding that information out and I just enjoy the the free company Element of it and the silver Lancers are one of the few large remaining free companies left in the duwel cities after they were basically eradicated by the subjugator the emperor of the desk Empire before his fall another location that I don't think my players will ever get to in this campaign but that I would really like to explore is the city of shadar in the desk Empire it's one of the southernmost cities and it is renowned for the ash pits that surround it so this region is Rich in coal and the entire Peninsula has been excessively mined so this whole region is basically covered in a Perpetual cloud of Ash and everything is just dusted in the evidence of industry and I think it would make for a really different visual look to how most of the campaign has gone so after spending 2 and a half years in a mono biome campaign in the desert I knew that I wanted to get more variety into the duel cities and a lot of the regions are kind of temperate by by default so a lot of grass Plains and hills and forests and there's a lot more green in this campaign whereas the city of shadah and the ash pits everything is just a gray and just covered in a layer of Ash and it is a much more kind of dark depressing oppressive place for those of you from Wales it's Blen fog one of the things I really like about this region is because the industry of this peninsula is so aggressive it's you know thrown up all of this Perpetual Ash that kind of blocks out the sun it means we get to do really interesting things with the people that live here we get to see the KnockOn effect of that in a fantasy world so creatures that would normally abhor the Sun so your Dr your damp here vampires those kind of things Shadows you'll see a lot more of those in operation in and around Shada I feel like my thunder was a little bit stolen with this idea by the shadow curs lands in balers Gate 3 because I really like the idea of there being Ash monsters in the region of the the the ash pits kind of this idea that if you go into the darkness there would be shadows and wraiths that would take you that have kind of come to live there because of this Perpetual Darkness um but that feels a little bit balers Gate 3 but my players aren't going to get there anytime soon so I'm keeping it and I like the idea that the main road that runs down this pin that connects shadar to the rest of the Empire is illuminated by magical lanterns and as long as you stick to the path you're fine but kind of at the boundaries of these lanterns you can always sort of see evidence of these Shadows or these wraiths these Ash monstrosities waiting for you to venture out into the darkness or reach a light that has gone out out so that they can swarm you and kind of consume you I also think that shadar offers an interesting opportunity to explore technology in this fantasy world so this area that's thick with Ash and this kind of toxic pollutant I like the idea of introducing kind of gas masks and getting more of a like a diesel Punky steampunky Vibe going on in and around this region and it would also probably be an immediate way to T someone's Social Status so the poorer people would probably only have strips of cloth around their faces to try and protect them from the ash whereas the upper crust and the titans of Industry would have full-on magical rebreathers and inevitably the players would want to topple capitalism because the Ultimate Enemy of every campaign is capitalism but I think it would be a really fun change of pace to our usual campaign Shenanigans with a really distinct visual style staying in the desk Empire for a little while another location I really wish that my players would have spent a little bit more time in that they briefly encountered is the city of emerald which is located few hundred miles north of shadar still in the main heart of the desk Empire region and my players ended up there as a result of a magical accident so they got transported across uh time and space by going up some infinite stairs and they ended up outside the city they went into the City and immediately looked for a way home but I wish that they'd stayed there for a little while because there was a lot of really interesting stuff going on in this city especially with how it pertains to Industry so one of the things that I wanted to do with the desk Empire is set them apart from the other regions in the jewel cities through industry so while the other regions within the jewel cities typically fall into that kind of medieval stasis the desk Empire is pushing forward with industrialization they are right on the Forefront of kind of technological advancements and I wanted to show this in a couple of different cities so in Emerald whereas in shadar you have all of that coal mining you have the rebreather technology and all of that kind of stuff what we have in Emerald is these great Kaiju style monsters these Godzilla reptilian beasts that live in the nearby mountains and have reached an agreement with the empire where instead of having a war or potentially being eradicated they have joined the Empire and work in the industry of emerald which is a massive Shipyard and when you get to Emerald you can see the entire city is laid out basically to accommodate these huge Godzilla likee monsters and I was inspired by this specific piece of art with these two massive kaijus carrying the the gers and I thought that's such an interesting concept having these great beasts being able to add their unique skill sets to Industry and whereas all of the other regions of the Dual cities are still building ships out of wood Emerald is starting to build great ironide ships using the help of these Godzilla like Monsters so all the city is laid out for them the roads are incredibly wide to accommodate them there are specific kind of Highways where they will walk to get between where they live and where they work and I just think it's a really fun place to be to be able to be walking around the city and also just see Godzilla monsters towering over you but not have to be worried about fighting them so one thing I really like to do when my players arrive at a new location is describe the scene around them and today's sponsored cheku scenes makes that so much easier cheku have been making amazing looking battle maps for years now and cheku scenes offers an alternate look look at some of those battle map locations they take those locations and offer a landscape view of them which allows you to present that to your players or use it as a jumping off point for descriptions to add an extra sense of depth and level of detail that you might otherwise Miss by just having the top down map they help the players visualize the scene that they're about to play out as well as being a really useful tool for those more roleplay heavy sessions where you don't necessarily want a map but you want to show something to the players to describe the area in which they're in especially if you're playing with virtual tabletop play and you want something visual to represent the area they're in chacu scenes are a great choice for that not only that but at the $5 T patrons get access to animated visions of the scene for even more immersion and realism from these scenes the cheku scenes are designed to work with their existing gorgeous battle maps so you can pair them together and get an even greater sense of realism within your description and I'll leave a link down below to chacu scenes for you to go and check them out and thanks again to Chu for supporting the channel but it's not just big locations that I've got on the duel City's map of these 550 something pins there's a lot of small points of interest like one of my favorites is fell star staff so this is the idea that there was a wizard called felar who was trying to cast some kind of player teleportation magic it went wrong and he basically got splinched so half of his body stayed where it is and half of his body made the journey and the idea is that there are two halves of a very powerful staff located throughout the Jew cities so the players could find one half with one half of his skeleton and find the other half with the other half of his skeleton somewhere else you know using the locate spell or some other location magic and just these small little vignettes of finding half a skeleton with half a staff and it being clear that it's been Shor into by teleportation magic those little moments I think are just as important as the big plot stuff one of my favorite locations up in the Howland Badlands which is the irradiated desert up in the north of the jewel cities came as a result of one of our live streams and it is the Flaming halfling Festival this is basically burning man but the fantasy version and it was a lot of fun during the stream coming up with different fantasy versions of popular bands so for example instead of the band corn we have the band maze which is an all halfling band but they would all look like halfling versions of the band corn but instead of playing sort of Rocky metal music they would all play country versions of popular songs so I would go and I would look for Country versions of popular music and have that playing in the background ground as maze is playing on the stage uh there's also the rapper slim scaly who is a lizard folk inspired by Emin there is the uzi oorn who is an oo character that is Aussie Osborne and it was just a lot of fun to go through and try and find puny names and fantasy versions of the kinds of folks that you'd expect to be at a burning man style festival this weird music festival in the middle of the desert and that's the kind of thing that I'd want my players to find have a one shot there a nice break between two heavier arcs maybe give them a nice change of pace low stakes they just get to speak to some folks maybe make a little money carouse enjoy the the atmosphere of the session between kind of fighting for their lives then the last place I want to talk to you about today is a location known as deep storage this is one of the most kept SE secrets in the jewel cities so up until a few years ago before the present day in my campaign setting the dusk Empire was ruled by a powerful spellcaster known as the subjugator he had spent 200 years basically conquering almost all of talvar he'd made it from the cut which is the channel that runs between the mainland and the island of O and he' made it almost all the way over to the Western shores of taliva conquering all but one of the nations of taliva and unifying them under his Banner he said he'd done this because he'd foreseen a great Evil coming to ishar which is my home world and he wanted a United taliva to be able to stand against it now during the end of that campaign he was betrayed by his wife the lady of desk he was killed as far as everyone is aware and the subjugation his kind of campaign of domination was broken and now the desk EMP Empire is ruled by the lady of desk his former wife but while the subjugator is still ruled he had a number of lieutenants called the hollowed the hollowed are each incredibly powerful spellcasters who have had their souls removed by the subjugator and their souls get placed into kind of these crystalline statues that the subjugator would either keep on his person or hide away and one of these hollowed known as The Collector is responsible for a location known as deep storage this is a vault underground in one of the islands of the jewel cities and its entire purpose is to keep the most dangerous enemies of the Empire imprisoned what I like the most about deep storage was thinking about how would you imprison someone in a world where magic is super prevent and you've got hundreds of years to set this process up and an incredibly powerful spellcaster to kind of oversee the process in the form of The Collector I decided it doesn't make any sense to keep the creatures that you are imprison here in a humanoid living state it makes much more sense to transfigure them into something that's much more easily managed so in the Deep storage facility prisoners using the true polymorph spell are transfigured into small stones or statues or other small inanimate objects and then placed on shelves and it's basically a big Warehouse when necessary they are taken off the shelves and they are taken to special cells that exist Within an anti-magic field then the collector will throw their object whatever they were Stone whatever into this anti-magic field cell which suppresses their true polymorph form turns them back into their original state where they can be questioned and then when they leave that anti-magic field the true polymorph kind of takes back over and they turn back into the stone or whatever they've been turned into and I thought that was a really fun idea of keeping prisoners for a long time without also having to maintain a prison population like they can't escape because the only time they have thought of mind is when they're in an anti-magic field that as soon as they leave they turn back into inanimate objects and anyone that didn't already know what the purpose of this facility is would enter it and all they would see would be a bunch of junk on shelves they there's no reason to think because it's a true polymorph spell that these things are anything other than inanimate OB so those are some of my favorite random locations from the CH cities of talar I'd love to know what you think of them down in the comments below and if you have any questions and want to know more specific things about this campaign setting let me know down in the comments below so we can make more videos diving into the law of this world because it's really fun to do if you haven't already make sure to check out this video where I go into the process of how I made this setting but until next time happy gaming

Channel: Icarus Games

Views: 1,441

Keywords: rpg, “Icarus Games”, tabletop, dmtips, OneNote DM, DM Bible, onenote dm bible, dungeon master tips, be a better game master, best dnd, how to play dnd, game master tips, dungeon master, DM Tips, DM advice, how to D&D, homebrew dnd, homebrew, #pathfinder, pathfinder 2e, pathfinder2e, pathfinder second edtiion

Id: JamkWtZE0sg

Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2024