The Globe

Typical House Rules

Level: Start at level 5.

Races: Using the Pathfinder Advanced Race Guide is perfectly encouraged! There are races beyond the core races listed Here and here.

Class Restrictions: The following classes are not common and typically disallowed: Wizard, Druid, Cleric.

Class Allowances: Psionic classes from Psionics Unleashed are fine. Swordsage and Warblade from Tome of Battle are okay, but lower Warblade health to d10 and remove the Weapon Aptitude ability. Replace uses of Concentration for these classes with Perception instead.

Other non-pathfinder classes are allowed as long as there is a conversion I like for them. For instance: Pathfinder Converted Classes

Class Changes:

Paladins and Antipaladins: Paladins can be any non-evil and anti-paladins can be any non-good. You may only possess levels in one class or the other but you may transform all of your levels from one class into the opposing class if your alignment changes to suit. Doing so forces you to choose new Mercies/Cruelties and a new Divine/Fiendish boon. Your class abilities change to the abilities of the opposing class at the same levels.

Both classes lose Detect Good/Evil and Smite Good/Evil and instead gain the following abilities.

Detect Transgression (Sp): As Detect Evil, usable within 60 feet, except that the power detects objects and creatures that have brought harm to your people. Your people include your relatives through marriage and through blood, your personal friends, your loved ones and the members of a specific nation or social group selected at your first level of the class. (Members of a country, guild, ethnicity or demographic. Whoever you decide your ancestors favor most.) Harm always counts physical damage or attempted physical damage. It also counts social action that directly threatens the lives of your charges, such as ordering people to kill someone or including them in the area of an area of effect attack or military action or the like. A transgressor must have commited such harm willingly and be capable of understanding their choice, so unintelligent creatures and those whose minds are under control are not transgressors. A transgressor remains a transgressor until their violence and resentment towards your charges is gone and they have earnestly repented for their misdeed, which generally involves legal or personal restitution. The paladin/antipaladin is never counted as 'their people' for the purpose of detecting or punishing transgressors, they can't use their powers to take personal revenge, only retribution on behalf of others.

Smite Transgressor (Sp): Once per day, a paladin or antipaladin may strike out with the hand of their ancestors. As a swift action, the character chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target has transgressed against your people as described in the Detect Transgression power above, you add your Charisma bonus (if any) on your attack rolls and add your paladin/antipaladin level on all damage rolls made against the target of the smite. Smite Transgressor attacks always ignore any DR the target possesses.

The smite effect remains until the target of the smite is dead or until the next time the character rests and regains uses of Smite Transgressor. Only one use of Smite Transgressor can be in effect at any time, using Smite Transgressor again on a new target cancels the previous usage.

Aura of Justice/Vengeance works as normal except it grants Smite Transgressor and can be used on allies of any alignment.

The weapon bond of Divine Bond/Fiendish Boon changes slightly. Both Paladins and Antipaladins can choose from the following weapon qualities instead of the ones they normally receive for bonuses: brilliant energy, defending, flaming, flaming burst, keen, merciful, shocking, shocking burst, speed, vorpal and wounding.

Any DR the paladin or antipaladin receives is not good or evil, but rather becomes silver or cold iron, their choice.

The level 20 ability for both classes becomes the following:

Ancestor's Champion (Su): At level 20 the paladin/antipaladin becomes a host for the power of their ancestor ghosts. Their DR increases to 10/silver or cold iron. Whenever they lay on hands or channel energy they always heal or deal the maximum amount of damage possible. Using Aura of Justice/Vengeance now only costs one use of Lay on Hands. Channel Energy now only uses one use of Lay on Hands.

Abilities: 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 10. Add racial modifiers as normal.
Current Year: 1655 EM (Era Magnificent) and 1399 HE (Human Existence).

Creation

The world is not a single sphere floating about aimlessly in the void, rather the planet is a series of concentric shells, floating masses of land orbiting miles above the shell below it. It is known as The Globe, it is both a planet blessed by science and a world-sized spacecraft, hurtling through the cosmos on a mission of exploration, study and experience.

You see this world was not formed or created, rather it was built. The God known as the Tinker pieced it together himself, humming a blissful melody as he constructed his opus, piece by piece. It's said he started with brass framing and clay earth, threading in wires of every conceivable material to hold it together while it dried. He built a spark of fusion that became a little sun to warm the outside of the planet and he built a silver moon to orbit the other side and give gentle illumination to where the sun was not. He spread billions of tiny seeds on the wind that was his breath, then sprinkled topsoil and let the seeds take where they would. He watched with great interest as he began each layer revolving, wanting to see how the unique construction of his beloved world would affect the course of life upon it. His masterpiece was surely the great sphere at the center of the globe, radiating warmth and energy that would ensure the survival of his wonder no matter where in the void it would happen to drift. He chuckled a chuckle that shook every shell of the globe and settled all the soil and hardened all the earth and spun the pole that juts through the center of every shell, setting it on a course through the universe.

General Knowledge

Several miles seperate each shell from the one above it The shells are constantly revolving, each in a different direction from the ones above and below it. This revolution helps to form the field around the Globe that protects it from the dangers of space as it hurtles through the multiverse. Each shell has a week-long revolution, so the shells above and below are in the same places each monday at noon.

The shells are made of up several continental plates that float in the sky like they might the sea on another planet. Rivers, lakes and seas exist upon the continental plates. Aquifers often run under the ground in places where there is no visible water, so people dig for wells. Each shell has a regular weather system with little variation. The planet doesn't have a change of seasons throughout the year. As such, harvest festicals are irregular events and simply happen whenever the crop has come in.

Population

The Magnificent

The first sapient beings upon the planet were put there by the great Tinker himself. Beautiful creatures of metal and energy, logic and law. He put them to live and work in the sphere at the center of the world where the power radiating from it would give them limitless resources and endless life. They are called the Magnificent. Their name isn't a declaration of superiority or a point of ego, rather it comes from the first thing they heard upon activation: the voice of the Tinker declaring 'Ah, my children, you are truly magnificent.'

The actual composition of the Magnificent is a mystery to them, which is why they have no ability to reproduce. They appear to be as much solidified energy as metal and in what passes as their 'natural' state (though they much prefer to be shaped than remain in such a state) they are a computational cloud of nanomachines and packaged energy. They have the ability to shape themselves, though not totally freely as the process for breaking down and reintegrating their cloud form is both unpleasant and lengthy. During the shaping process they can form many of the things that organic races are known for, such as realistic synthetic skin and hair, though often they choose less than natural colors such as bright white synthskin, gem or lens-like eyes and hair in a positive rainbow of colors. This process also allocates their mass and energy for the use of various technological powers, setting a Magnificent to a certain set of abilities for the form they have identified with.

The Magnificent have an endless thirst for invention and lore, just like their maker. Science is their one true passion, which is a good thing because true magic is apparently out of their grasp. They use technology FAR beyond anything the shells above can dream of and do not allow it to easily fall into the hands of the fallible races, doubting their maturity in handling such sacred instruments. The Magnificent are rarely seen directly, when they are it is often either to release a gift of knowledge into the world when they think it's ready, or on the flipside to bring direct retribution to a breaker of their laws. Their presence is oft-felt, however, for the Magnificent watch the world through their many electronic eyes, fist-sized spheres that observe the shells above. They can also sometimes be seen in their great carrier airships, droning up through the shells on some mission or another.

The Magnificent are not alone on their world, however, for organic life is both a fascination to them and something that they see as terribly easy to reproduce. After all, a machine or a device must be painstakingly built, their number can not be reproduced at all for the Tinker has never produced another, the creation of their own one of the few sciences that elude them. Organic races just kind of undulate against one another and then some time later a new one pops out. Easy, yes? The Magnificent directly created some races, using templates they saw throughout the universe, other races found their way to the globe themselves.

The Magnificent have a few rules about their world. First, no one is to defame the maker or threaten his creations. Those that threaten or insult the maker, the Magnificent or the Globe are in serious trouble. They are either eliminated or detained for their crime, depending on the severity of the threat. Second, they limit their interference with the other races (the fallible races) as much as possible except for when the first rule is broken or the third rule is invoked. Third, the Magnificent may appear to release technology they have deemed appropriate for use by the organic races, however Magnificent technology that they do not release, if found in the hands of an organic, will be retrieved and the offender executed.

The feats of divine science the Magnificent are capable of seem unlimited to the other races. They have been seen independently generating huge amounts of energy and directing it as if it were nothing, changing the states of matter around them and even controlling light, heat, magnetism and gravity. They seem to also be able to teleport, as well as having extensive senses and incredible physical capabilities. They also appear able to produce effects that can influence the minds of organics and synthetics alike, though this isn't an ability they often use, if ever. It is, after all, against their code to interfere with the other races except to deal with threats to Globe. They hardly need such a power, either, since so many cultures on Globe have the authority of the Magnificent integrated with their systems of law.

The Magnificent appear able to speak any language after listening to it for a short time, but they do have their own language. It is comprised of computer code compressed into sequences of auditory tones that play so fast and so precisely that to mortal ears it sounds like the Magnificent sing to each other to have conversations that would take hours instead take minutes.

The Magnificent have a capability that they take great pride in and laud happily, not seeing it as a weakness at all. They have the capability, as in the option, to provide themselves with programming. Unlike the mortal races they cannot be tempted and they can give themselves thresholds of power and behavior that they will not cross because they literally cannot. If they make a decision, they often mass-program themselves with the details of it so that everyone equally follows it.

A roll of the Magnificent

(Anyone should feel free to offer me ideas for your own Magnificent!)

Mortal Races

The Magnificent long ago made the decision to allow mortal races upon the world ship. They identify races they believe might fit in, send an emissary and offer them a place, wherein the emissary constructs a teleportation beacon and brings as many of their people as wishes to migrate into the Globe.

The Magnificent do not OVERTLY show that they favor any races over others, but humans and beastmen have always been first among equals, of a sort. The Magnificent seem to give humanity new tech first, humanity has the least restrictions placed upon it for migration and social movement. The attitude of favoritism translates culturally, humanity is favored and the races taken on, while not being oppressed overtly, are not afforded all of the same privilege and advantages.

Humanity: The Magnificent found through their observations of the universe as they drifted along that a very common design lay within the races known as humanity. They possessed a unique diversity and ability to survive and adapt, they didn't live terribly long, they had a drive to create and make as much of their short lives as possible. These qualities impressed the Magnificent, and so they created humans of their own, seeding them throughout every shell as the most common race alive on the globe today.

No race has more respect for the Magnificent than humans do, as such most humans belong to the religious sect known as the Hands of the Tinkerman. It is also true, though, that no race has as much disparity and internal conflict as humanity and so there are also other common religions among them, mostly ancestor cults and hero worship. Many humans have both ancestors they worship as well as the idea of the Tinker and his Magnificent Creations.

Humans seldom find development in any of the more magically inclined classes, though they can be found in almost any other class.

Tieflings, Aasimar, Vishkanya, Samsarans, Beastfolk and other half-human or transhuman folk are still considered as human. Whatever outside blood or strange genetics have gotten inside of them, they still carry the original genome crafted by the Magnificent and so are favored.

Beastfolk: Some of the races are marked as beastfolk, these races came about when the Magnificent spliced the human genome with animal DNA to create new sentient races. When a race is marked as being beastfolk, this is what that means. Beastfolk are acknowledged as equal to humans and are also favored of the Magnificent. Each strain tends to have its own culture much like Aasimar and Tieflings build their own reputations and customs (good or bad.)

Elves: The immortal Elves settle in the city-state of Telanthius in the harsh Duran Desert of Bethud, that they could live in relative peace by creating a beautiful oasis in an otherwise dangerous land. The Elves of Globe have a streak of xenophobia uncommon on the cosmopolitan planet, their long lives making them still feel like aliens despite the length of time they've been on the planet. Their society is still rich in the magic that is mostly distrusted upon the Globe, thanks to the heavy concentration of magic within the blood of Elves. Many of them are born sorcerers or oracles and many of them have enough magic in their blood to learn spells that supplements the martial arts. Telanthius produces much study on the workings of magic. They also export many crafts, traditional elven cloth and glasswork is beautiful, fine and highly sought. Elves are wealthy and high class people thanks to the money their state generates and the small families they tend to have. Their immortality, one would think, would prevent the passing of wealth from parent to child, but Elves often have inheritence contracts that kick in at a certain age for just that reason. Once an Elf reaches a certain age, around their late 700s to early 1000s, they will feel an irresistible pull on their spirit towards the west and soon after simply disappear.

Telanthian Elves are slender and fit as a matter of culture as being out of shape is seen as quite uncouth, even for young ladies. They are otherwise slight and have longer ears than other elves. Both their hair and skin tend to be light, as if in defiance of the desert sun under which they live, the canopy over their city has much to do with this as well as genetics.

Half-Elves are never and can never be considered Elves as far as the culture of Telanthius is concerned. Elves that fall in love with other races and their families are also divorced from their society. Having elven blood is not enough to make one an elf as far as Telanthians are concerned, being raised in an unorthodox manner away from their desert capital is enough to have your heritage practically revoked.

There is a strong culture of Elves on Edyll that scorn the high society of the Telanthian Elves, considering it arrogant and detached from the world. They are often called Wood Elves, or sometimes simply Edyllian Elves. It's considered very rude to mix up the two groups. Edyllian Elves live in canopy cities shaped from and around the wood of great redwood trees. The traditional martial arts of bow, sword and magic are extremely important to them and it's a mark of national pride for every wood Elf to be proficient and practiced in their uses. Edyllian Elves tend to be browner of skin and darker of hair than their Telanthian cousins.

Elves have a strong bloodline of magic among them and are often Sorcerers, Witches, Magi and Oracles.

Dwarves: The mountain-folk were brought aboard around the same time as the elves, unlike them they took right away quite naturally to the brave new land. Though there were many places the dwarves could have settled, they chose the coastal regions of shell 3. The temperate climate agreed with them, and there were many mountains rising from the ocean for them to delve into as is the preference of their people. They enjoy tight spaces, which also make them wonderfully apt as sailors. Some of the finest vessels on water are of dwarf-make. Modern dwarves enjoy a lot of factory automation, their farming towns shipping things such as olives, grain, grapes, apples and stone-fruit to be processed into oils, juices, wines and beer.

They maintain a highly industrialized state called Pikesbad Cavern within Pikesbad Mountain on the Pikesbad Sea. The mountain is surrounded by docks and is only reachable by ship. Next to Gatono, Pikesbad is probably one of the finest industrial complexes on the Globe. The steam and smoke bellowing up from the mountain make it look like a volcano, though there are no volcanos upon the Globe at all.

Dwarves favor martial classes and classes that make use of science and engineering.

Androids: Androids are either special, sapient robots or organics (usually human) who have been 'edited' with cybernetic parts. Robots for the most part are mindless constructs, working towards their programming without complaint. Some are made with more complex programming, in the image of the Magnificent, and for all intents and purposes have minds of their own. Rather than robots, they are called androids and gynoids to distinguish them from what are otherwise household appliances. Sometimes when they get too old and break down, they are discarded like any other machine and sometimes they are put back together by the scrap engineers and dusty artificers of Hakem. Such restored androids and gynoids often become protective and loyal to the ones who put them back together, as if in reverence of the Magnificent and their respect for the Tinker.

Edited organics are also known as Half-Constructs. Half-constructs replace parts of their own bodies with mechanical parts connected to the body through a combination of science and life magic. Sometimes the replacement is voluntary, sometimes it's done to replace body parts lost in an accident. Isinaya produces quite a few voluntary half-constructs who possess sleek crystalline implantations. Half-constructs aren't shunned, but they are objects of suspicion when a supernatural incident occurs because of the magic necessary in their augmentation.

Halflings: The halflings are of human descent, the product of what the Magnificent believe is a throwback gene from within the human genome they copied to create their own. Over time enough of them were born that they began to form a cultural identity and have children of their own, creating a race distinct from humanity, no longer considered just a mutation. They are a people who enjoy comfort and plenty and shy away from adventure, for the most part. They are a people that lack ambition and their lands are fairly homogenous, so a halfling that wants to adventure is both rare and pursues their chosen path with an uncommon enthusiasm and lack of trepidation.

Halflings live almost exclusively on Demetra nowadays, living in villages by rivers for the most part. They are prolific farmers and grow both food and luxury items, such as pipe-weed and grain for alcohol. Their whiskeys and beers are of great renown and the Dwarves of Pikesbad alone buy up enough to keep the Halflings living comfortably. Their villages tend to be very low-tech with all the farmwork done by hand, their homes built into little holes in the ground. Most of them have never even seen a car, leading to Halflings being generally thought of as quaint and a little strange by the other races.

Halflings that become adventurers prefer classes that can take advantage of their small size and quickness or that keep them away from the front lines of a conflict. Rogues, Gunslingers and Rangers, for instance.

Orcs: The Orcs of the Globe live primarily on Demetra, though some more violent tribes can be found struggling to survive on Edyll. Demetran Orcs are plains nomads, a flighty and energetic people. They live life aggressively and prize strength, making them seem rough and violent to some of the other races, but beneath their aggression is a pride and honor as a people. Orcish society is very loose, their tribes held together by chieftain that are selected not by vote or bloodline, but only by deed. Orcish society is a kind of meritocracy, where feats of strength, cunning, dominance and renown are the only things that prove your worth. Young orcs go out into the world hoping to establish themselves as worthy members of their tribe and candidates for leadership, the more titles they earn, great foes they defeat and treasures they bring home, the greater their merit and their weight among their people. They are an oft-exploited people thanks to how little they understand the workings of money when they first leave home, sustaining themselves on meager earnings while they perform their honor quests. They are also notoriously bad liars because their people look down so powerfully on deceit of any kind.

Orcs pride strength and courage over all things, so often take classes that put them between anyone else and their target. Barbarians and Fighters are common. Some particularly faithful Orcs call upon their ancestors to become Paladins. Magically inclined orcs are usually witches or sorcerers.

Orcs on globe are not light-sensitive and instead of their usual racial ability modifiers have +2 Strength, +2 Constitution and -2 Wisdom.

Drow, Duergar and Svirfneblin: These intelligent underground dwelling races were brought to Globe mainly because they would be comfortable on Fethka, the sixth shell. Instead of exploring and civilizing their surroundings, however, the three races ended up knocking heads so often tyring to claim the same continent of Fethka that they are now locked in war, a triad of city-states trying to outdo each other at every turn. They're not afraid to pull or enslave other people into their war, either. They've become very xenophobic and hostile, so if one sees a member of any of the races of the dark triad wars on another shell, you can bet that they're escaping the pressures and dangers of their societies.

The Drow are militantly matriarchal, the women in their society ruling all and putting men down as often as they can. They have captured and tamed the giant spiders that infest parts of Fethka and have even used dark magic and unholy science to fuse members of their race with them, creating the half-drow half-spider driders that exist as crazed war machines for them. Drow society is vicious, opportunistic and powerful. They believe in weeding out the weak and letting them die out, or be trampled on and used by the strong. Strength of mind and body are moral imperatives to the Drow and they are disgusted by the ideas of charity and mercy, such things appear to them to create a weak society that is doomed to collapse. They are steadfast social survivalists. Much of their ways can be traced to the teachings of their goddess, Lolth, who has fallen silent since the migration but her priestesses maintain their matriarchal culture and ancient traditions.

The Duergar take a more mechanical path towards victory, their steam tanks crushing the stalagmites of the land as they roll towards their enemies, guns thundering as they build battle lines. Similar to the dwarves of the surface, but more interested in death and victory than engineering. The Duergar practice slavery and work prisoners to the death in strip-mining efforts so they can build greater and stronger war machines. Duergar mechanical cavalry has, to some shame, inspired combustion-engine vehicles on other shells.

The Svirfneblin take the most hands-off approach to the triad wars, instead fielding covert agents and infiltrators to invade enemy cities directly, backed by their more obvious army of robots and golems. They have the least invested in the war at any time but they also have the least to give as they are the smallest of the three races and do not believe in practices of slavery. Their guile and stealth have kept them alive instead, and they are not to be underestimated.

Lizardfolk: A beastfolk tribe, the lizardfolk live mainly on Bethud and Edyll. They are a tribal people who are distrustful of science, trusting in their shamanistic ways instead, fearing the harm that industry inevitably does to nature. They point to Gatono to try and show others how they kill the life that the Great Maker seeded on Globe himself, but few take any stock in their words. Those that do sometimes come to lizardfolk tribes and live with them, learning to survive off the land, casting off superstitions against magic.

Kobolds: A troublesome race of desert raiders, Kobolds are seen largely as pests. They are mostly confined to Bethud and thrive in hidden places in the desert. They make their way mainly through stealing, they adore gold and jewels above all else and the one with the nicest hoard often has the most mates. Kobolds believe that everything in existence belongs to kobolds, the other races are the thieves and they just take things back from them. No one is sure how the Kobolds ended up on Globe, it's assumed they snuck on with one of the other races.

Undead: Where there is life, there is death, and where the planes turn there will be undeath as well. Poorly understood and often feared, the undead appear infrequently but are still common staples for horror serials. Not all undead are what you'd call monstrous, though. There are those undead that rise with their minds intact, finding that they can't return to the lives they had when they were alive, that they terrify the living, remind them of what has been lost. As a people they have come to call themselves Afterwalkers. Many of these unfortunate undead lead lives of solitary sorrow, hiding on the fringes. Those that learn of Blackwarren, go there instead. Blackwarren is on Hakem, a state of the undead, of peaceful people that want to live out their second life safely. Blackwarren is hidden away in a junkyard, filled with hidden doors and harmless traps to deter scavengers.

Goblins: Goblins are… odd. That puts it mildly. If you ask the Magnificent they didn't even PUT goblins on Globe but damn if they didn't end up there anyway. Goblins have managed to wiggle their way into all sorts of places in the world. They tend to congregate in small related clusters, 'trading' goblins between each other to keep the bloodlines fresh in what are essentially marriages of convenience. Few non-goblins can really tell the difference between male and female goblins, since they themselves appear to have no real gender roles and they look so alike. They are small and weak, and their childlike, chaotic nature make them difficult to get to know, but they are quick and clever to be sure and willing to do what they must to get by. Goblins sometimes take dangerous industrial jobs that can use their deftness, intelligence and small size. Others wear outlandish assortments of clothes they consider to be high class and try their best to be businessmen or scientists. Goblin students at university are surely a STRANGE sight to see, but it happens! No one's quite sure what to make of a goblin until you get to know them individually, but they manage to squeak by doing whatever they can.

Ratfolk: Mostly known by the name Ratlings. Ratlings are a group of one of the beastfolk races. The ratlings live in tightly knit clans, congregating in large groups and mostly keeping to their own. They are friendly with other races, but they don't teach anyone that is not Ratling their language and they keep names for themselves that they don't share with anyone but their close family. Ratlings are, for the most part, merchants and peddlers. They are reknowned for being very fair and for their long memories of good customers and good allies alike. Befriending one Ratling surely means you are a friend to many more you don't yet know. Their society puts heavy emphasis on equity, fairness and always paying your debts.

Strix: Strix are birdlike beastfolk who live mostly in the mountains of the isles of Caldor. They compete and clash with the Dwarves for land, enjoying their high perches where they can swoop down on nearby settlements. Strix (and Harpies as their females are called) are a violent race, quick to anger. Many of their interpersonal problems are solved with combat until one party can no longer stand and their mating practices are aggressive and highly competitive. They keep wide territories and subsist mostly through fishing and foraging, anyone trespassing is usually cut down rather than chased out, their valuables kept and the body discarded to the sea, or used to attract sharks for the strix to butcher and make crafts from.

Catfolk: These humanlike but cat-eared, tailed and eyed beastfolk of the Demetran plains congregate in matriarchal tribes. Catfolk have almost 80% more females than males and on average the females are larger as well, doing the hunting and fighting for the tribe. Males take a more passive role as wisemen, shamans and chieftains, though the chieftain of each tribe is answerable to the elder women of the tribe and if they do a poor job they can be replaced. Catfolk make a good profit off of selling the hides of plains beasts to the local cities to be tanned into leather or made into furs. Catfolk are somewhat notorious for their streak of sexism, with some being somewhat vocal about how they think it's terrible that the women of other races do nothing but stay at home while they force their men out to work all the time! They become pretty protective of the men in their groups, even if only subtly.

Vanara: This race of monkey beastfolk lives concentrated on an island rich in tropical bamboo forest on Caldor. The Vanarans live an interesting life built on the two main pillars of freedom and discipline. One one hand they love challenge and control, producing koans and riddles for each other to solve while placing great value into knowing when to act and when to stand down. They are, though, a decentralized society without an overarching form of government at all and each Vanaran maintains a healthy sense of humor and a love of pranks. It is also the Vanaran way to balance body with mind and most of them practice martial arts, if not becoming monks altogether. They maintain a monastery in the forest where anyone may come to seek enlightenment as well as physical and mental empowerment.

Centaur: This odd beastfolk race was developed as an experiment in quadruped forms with the flexibility of humanoid arms and hands. The handsome Centaur race lives mostly on Edyll. While they fiercely defend their lands from the more aggressive tribes of the shell, they are considered a bright spot among the dark forests, as they are a cultured and thoughtful people. They revere the spirits of the forest in an animistic religion of their own and so have a great respect for life of all kinds. They honor each kill they make, whether hunting or at war, and construct memorials both for themselves and for those they have slain. Centaur have a strong tradition of theater and most of their storytelling takes place on the stage, their history in the form of scripts rather than textbooks.

Centaur on Globe are slightly different than in the advanced race guide. They lose the advanced ability traits and gain the Advanced ability score quality instead, making their ability adjustments +2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, +4 Wisdom and -2 intelligence. Their total RP is 18. The rest of their traits are unchanged.

Merfolk: The beastfolk of the Caldoran seas are beautiful and hale, carefree and happy. They live in a kingdom on the seafloor of the Toscan continent, where they maintain pearl farms and live off of the bounty of the ocean around them. Merfolk pearls are in high demand on Gatono right now where rich women will gladly pay above their worth for a few stings of them. Merfolk are as gregarious as they are kind and tales of merfolk saving drowning sailors are never doubted to be true. They are also responsible for most waterbreathing items in the world, distributing them to the surface world not just on Caldor, but on most shells. The current ruler of the Merfolk is Queen Lacrima, a woman as iron-willed and dedicated as she is diplomatic and charismatic. She is sometimes asked after by rulers as far as other shells to act as a mediator.

Merfolk on Globe have slightly longer, stronger tails that let them move on land in an undulating motion without using their arms. They have a slow land movement of 20 feet and suffer a -4 racial penalty to uses of acrobatics and athletics on land. They have a swim speed of 30 and a +8 racial bonus to any swim checks they make.

Demographics

Following is a short list of the shells and the races common to them, though uncommon races are certainly present, just not in numbers enough to note. It can be assumed that a good smattering of humanity can be found on any of the well populated shells.

Some shells host states that are centers of culture and habitation for a particular sapient race, generally independent of more cosmopolitan nations.

Atal: No race lives here in abundance, it's dangerous with too much radiation for the living and sun and heat for the dead. It takes special measures to visit Atal and those measures are temporary.

Bethud: Bethud is comprised of mostly workers and nomads, all of generally low means. The Elven state of Telanthius is here, a desert empire of beautiful alabaster buildings all canopied with magically enhanced canvas. Sorcery runs thick in Elven blood so they seldom have visitors from more superstitious cultures, if there is at least one place in the world with a strong focus in the mystic arts then it is here. The deserts of Bethud have tribes of kobolds and goblins, as well as lizardfolk and ratlings.

Caldor: The beautiful coastal mountain ranges of Caldor play host to the dwarven clans and the seas teem with dwarf-made galleons. The sea of Pikesbad has an impressively large mountain, which the dwarves have hollowed and tamed and made their own state out of, Pikesbad Cavern. The isles of Caldor have towns and villages of farmers and divers and sea-farers and are fairly well mixed for the most part. The seas of Caldor exclusively host sapient aquatic races, especially the merfolk kingdom and the sahuagin league.

Demetra: This peaceful pastoral land has a good smattering of dwarves, elves and humans. Most of the Globe's halflings hail from and live here. Demetra's plains also have several nomadic Orc tribes.

Edyll: Edyll is thick with tribes of primitive humanoids, especially ogres, gnolls, savage orcs and

Fethka: Fethka is haven to many races that are sensitive to light or that thrive in darkness. The drow have a state here, as do the duergar and svirfneblin. Other than them, Fethka is not heavily populated.

Gatono: Gatono is a true melting pot, no races have a state here. The many cites of the shell are populated by every race that can be found.

Hakem: Hakem is also a sort of melting pot. The disenfranchised of the various races that do not go to Bethud for work usually end up here, scavenging in the junk. Hakem uniquely has a town built by and inhabited mostly by discarded robots and golems. There is also a warren here inhabited by peaceful sentient undead who fear persecution by the living.

Isinaya: Isinaya allows pretty much only humans, dwarves and elves. The elitism that permeates their culture also carries a hefty racism for 'barbaric' or 'simple' people.

Orbis: Only the Magnificent may live here. Those that earn a place as guests of Orbis may never leave it.

Classes

Trained Magic Classes (Cleric/Wizard/Druid): Classes that rely on their magic coming from a source of training either in ritual or formulae are exceedingly rare on the Globe. Magic as a study is largely suppressed not because the Magnificent have willed it but because those who worship the Magnificent know that the great machines can't use magic, therefore their people naturally distrust magic and try to ensure that those who try to teach it as an art are driven to the fringes. The only place that readily teaches back is the Elven city of Telanthius, and then only to Elves. Even blessed with the proper training most spellcasters will never rise above the magic level of Magi. The natural radiation and multiversal travel field of the Globe that allows for such technological wonders also stunts magic that is not directly channeled from a connection to an extradimensional entity.

Cavalier/Samurai: The chivalrous ways of the knightly orders are a dying breed nowadays. Cavalier and Samurai were once the great lance of every army, riding at the fore and inspiring their allies with the splendor of their flying banners and the cut of their figure atop their noble steeds. Now the kingdoms that produced cavaliers have mostly broken apart and the traditions of these once-great warriors are scattered, passed down through family lines rather than taught at military academies. Some of these knights can still be found here and there, dressed in modernized armor and flying banners all their own as they work in mercenary forces or as soldiers of a governmental body.

Gunslinger: Despite the tight controls over firearms technology from the industrialists of Gatono and Pikesbad, the gunslinger is quickly replacing more melee focused disciplines in many standing armies. If one is to own an advanced firearm it would mostly likely be in the hands of a gunslinger.

Monk: On the great sea of the Caldoran continent of Zuangzi there is an island of mist and bamboo where the Vanara live, a race of monkey beastman who prize balance of mind and body, of freedom and discipline. They have monasteries across the shell that offer their ancient wisdom to any who strive to find it, their old ways strange to outsiders but no less potent or mysterious. Those that complete their training here leave as monks, able to control the energies of their body and spirit. The skills of monks are renowned and their services are in high demand as personal bodyguards. This demand has caused another few dojos to open up under the tutelage of masters trained by the Vanara.

Paladins and Antipaladins: Paladins, or Holy Knights, are those who are imbued with the compassion and strength of their ancestors. When people cry out for a hero and their forebears hear them then a courageous youth will be chosen in a sudden moment of inspiration and investment and will be granted holy powers of protection and healing and retribution! These individuals must only have a heart of goodness and the will to do great and beautiful things on behalf of their people in order to maintain their holy gifts. Whether a Paladin uses their powers altruistically or withdraws into saving them to protect only those important to them is up to them.

Not all people cry out for saviors, some only cry out in rage, clamoring for revenge. Antipaladins or Dark Knights, are what happens when someone is invested with power and hatred from their ancestors. Unknowable wrath drives a people to cry out for such dark powers, empowering a young tough to become a harbinger of violence and revenge. Antipaladins are the dark side of the same coin as Paladins, granted the power to strike down those who would dare to transgress against their people.

Antipaladins are not servants of evil any more than paladins are only servants of good, but they are wielders of dark and violent emotions and intentions just as paladins are those who wield protection, light and love. Paladins guard, Blackguards hunt. Paladins stand firm, Blackguards slink into the shadows and slay their enemies. They break down and destroy those they hate, whether they be dark angels that stand before a people in danger or self-serving demons that guard their own and exploit the rest.

Both are paragons of their ancestors and people first. Their temperament and philosophy is what shapes how their ancestors come to them and what energies they are given to wield. Their alignment, therefore, is what helps them decide what ELSE to do with their blessed abilities. Paladins are likely to protect the innocent of any stripe, their people or not, and grant healing and guardianship to folk who need them most. Antipaladins are more likely to leave ruin in their wake, sowing fear and pain where they believe it will be most effective to do so to achieve their ends, for weal or for woe.

A Paladin/Antipaladin who willingly commits harm against their people or knowingly allows such harm to happen when they had clear opportunity to prevent it loses all paladin/antipaladin spells and class features (including any mounts or divine bonds, but not weapon, armor, and shield proficiencies). A paladin/antipaladin does not threaten falling for choosing between two or more difficult choices involving harm to her people as long as she chooses one. Clear opportunity includes being within a reasonable distance to reach the event in time. She regains
her abilities and advancement potential if she atones for her violations as appropriate.

Sorcerer and Oracle: Those who are born with their magic either by blood or by curse occupy an uncomfortable position in the world. They can't help being what they are, having magic as a part of them, but they will never be accepted as members of society because of it. They are shunned either literally by being chased out to the outskirts of the land or more figuratively by being snubbed and trapped under glass ceilings. Some choose to hide their gifts rather than live like that, being as discreet as possible so as to not draw any attention from the moral majority.

Swordsage and Warblade: The arts of blade magic and the path of the martial adept are elven creations. If you ask the high elves, though, they were creations of the desert. Legend has it that the first martial adepts were elven border guards that hit disaster as a sandstorm caused them to badly lose their way. They wandered the desert for three days and three nights, in a haze of water deprivation. They say they saw things, they fought things that weren't there and the spirits of the desert guided their swords back towards home and in the process, when they returned, they knew things they could not have learned. These elves studied the arts of the blade extensively for the next few decades. They went back into the desert to train and meditate under harsh conditions and eventually they were able to codify their findings and formed the Telanthian School of Sword Arts. The school originally only taught elves, but in recent decades they have expanded and now teach the arts of the sword to anyone who is welcomed into Telanthius. Another school recently opened on Isinaya.

Warlock and Witch: Unlike sorcerers and oracles, warlocks and witches had a choice. They knew EXACTLY what they were getting into when they reached out to the mysterious powers of the universe. Whether they sup at a banquet of crumbs of universal knowledge or have bound themselves to a mysterious patron that treads where even the gods cannot track, these spellcasters WANTED power, they hunted for it and they found it. Also unlike sorcerers and oracles they often have both the will and the guile to hide what they are until it suits them to reveal themselves. They aren't victims of their power, they are masters of it. They know, as sorcerers and oracles learn eventually, that the good folk that shun their 'evil craft' will mostly likely one day furtively seek them out for a solution to a problem only magic can solve. (A warlock conversion is available in the linked pdfs on the main page.)

Religion

The Tinkerman

The driving religion on Globe is that of the Tinker who created it. He is known by several names, including the Tinkerman, the Great Maker, the Crafter of Life and The One Who Is Greater Than Us (only used by the Magnificent.) The Tinker is a god of industry, creativity, art, science and artifice. He represents building things, taking things apart, putting them back together, understanding them and creating new things. Anything that ticks, burns, flies or glows is in his purview, from items of war to simple toys. Most people pay him reverence but he is most often worshiped by alchemists, artificers, engineers and other masters of science. The only organized force of worship for the Tinker is the mostly-human church known as the Hands of the Tinkerman. They are a decentralized group of thinkers and builders who simply believe that reaching the scientific level of the Magnificent and of Globe itself is possible to achieve on their own, and the true reason the Magnificent withhold the sacred science from them is to encourage the fallible races to do that very thing.

The Magnificent do not ENFORCE worship of the Tinker but they do punish defamation of his name or destruction of shrines and temples to him. They also punish those who do any damage to Globe itself. Now this doesn't mean to the 'land' but to Globe, specifically to the Pole, to Orbis or to any ancient Magnificent artifacts or structures. There are also certain parts of each Shell, deep deep within the earth, where certain important supports are erected, damaging these in any way is also considered damage to Globe. The Magnificent protect their creator's world with single-minded zeal and execute violators on the spot.

Cult of the Great Machines

Some, rather than worshiping the Tinker first and the Magnificent as facets of his creation, instead worship that which they have actually seen. No mortal being has ever witnessed the Tinker, but the power of the Magnificent is always plain to be seen. One need only attend one of Apirka's concerts to feel their soul moved by the alien beauty of her music, one need only look up to admire the physique of the great Excellion and witness him punching down cosmic hazards to the Globe, one need only hear the whispers of Delet and the hideous shadow she carries in her wake to both fear and respect her.

Machine Cultists don't believe in direct intervention by the Magnificent in their personal affairs, even if their programming allowed such a thing the very presumption of asking for such a thing would be ridiculous! Rather they believe in the emulation of aspects of a favored Magnificent and that imitation is a path to enlightenment.

Ancestor Worship

A common human belief, ancestor worship is simply the act of venerating the honored dead of your family first and culture second. Culture heroes and beloved grandparents alike are invoked in times of need to watch over their descendants. The calls are sometimes answered, either in subtle ways through shifts of luck or overt ways such as the ordainment of a Paladin or Antipaladin.

The Tale of Owen Lightbringer

Humanity on Globe was created wholecloth based on designs the Magnificent had observed from planets they had examined in the beginning of their journey. Baseline humans were selected as the first sapient beings to begin populating the Globe. In the early days of human life on the Globe they learned directly at the feet of the Magnificent, who introduced them to many of the facets of human life they had observed, from art to agriculture, instilling these values in them from infancy. A selection of the human infants they had created were hand selected by the Magnificent once they reached their teen years to act within Orbis as assistants specifically to help them understand organic life, proxies of a sort. The selection instilled a measure of bitterness in those not chosen, who were placed mostly upon Shell 4 to begin eking out their lives in what was then wild and untamed land with few people to work with.

Owen grew up on a farm as part of the second generation of humans born. He was hardy and strong but also smart and helped his parent's farm to become much more than it could have been, negotiating better prices for them at market, helping there to BE a market in the first place as his generation was the first to work with the excess of what they had grown, as they had learned through lessons and books passed down to them from the Magnificent, who they saw as true gods. As he grew up, Owen would hear about the Whitecoats and his parent's hatred for them, how they had grown up with them, knew them and KNEW that before the Magnificent they were wanting, and yet they were selected to be proxies anyway. The humans in white coats and clothing with immaculate manners and unblemished beauty.

It all came to a head when the Proxies would come up from Orbis and look down upon those that had been their equals once, denouncing their work and systems as simple, as unfit for a world the Magnificent inhabited. At first it was merely annoying, but soon they began to use their station and their advanced technology to not only look down on and ridicule the 'dustmen' as they called other humans, they began to use the sacred science the Magnificent had given them in ways the great machines had not intended. Items meant for defending other humans and clearing land were used to destroy and control. In these days before the Magnificent had their eyes everywhere they did not see many of these crimes. Soon the dustmen and the proxies came to a head. The proxies had never HURT anyone, only intimidated them and destroyed their works when they saw them as too crude, as insults to the Tinker. Then one man stood up to them, Owen's father, who stopped one of the Proxies from using a laser device to burn his wife's straw-art. He took the beam instead, an accident, but one that resonated.

The proxies were swarmed upon, seized by the hands of the dustmen, who took their weapons and turned them on the whitecoats instead. Other Proxies began to appear, reacting to the commotion, brandishing their weapons and calling for the Magnificent. It was Owen who intervened, just a single young man one who had been seriously wronged by the Proxies and yet still called for mercy. He stepped up and calmed the crowd, stunning them by calling for mercy for the killer of his father, standing before the Proxies not as an enemy, but pleading for their understanding. He spoke at length about the life they had been building, how they had been working so hard and how the Proxies, who had never worked at life at all, had no right to talk down to the dustmen. He turned to his own people and pleaded with them that they were not simple and violent like the whitecoats supposed, that they could be more if they kept working, that they could not turn down a path of barbarism now and forsake what the Magnificent had promised them, what the Whitecoats approached but fell short of with their small-minded ways.

All of this was heard, and not just by the humans. The Magnificent appeared, having cloaked themselves in invisibility so that the boy's speech could go on uninterrupted. They could not ignore his logic or discount his passion. It was then that the Magnificent decreed that elevating some over others as they had, even in an attempt to enhance their understanding, had been a mistake. They took the high technology from the Whitecoats and bade them to make reparations, working for the people they had menaced to repay their debts. To Owen, they extended an invitation to be taken at any time to enter and live within Orbis. He embodied everything they wished to see in human society as it grew: understanding, moderation, acceptance, logic and compassion. Essential traits the Magnificent had calculated for a benevolent and productive sapient society.

He lived out the rest of his mortal life and as he became old and sick the Magnificent spirited him away into Orbis and, legend says, he still lives there today, kept alive through sacred science and looking as young as he did the day he kept war from breaking out among his people. They understood their folly, however, in creating the proxies and so while he lives there forever, they do not permit him to leave. This early mistake is what drives the Magnificent to honor their promise of non-interference. They only release their knowledge in small, sanitized, pre-packaged gifts for the Globe when they believe the mortals are ready for it.

Relic Religions

Humanity tends to scorn the religions of other races. The human folk have never known a world other than the Globe, after all, unlike the other sapient races who have histories long before they were invited onto the great worldship. Each race maintains ties to their old faiths, even if the gods are quieter for them than they once were.

The nature of the Globe, as a multiversal vessel hurtling through the multiverse, makes communicating with any divine entities exceedingly difficult. Clerics, as a result, are very rare. Those who have powerful inborn connections to the divine, such as Oracles, are the strongest links to the gods that exist.

Technology

On average, the world enjoys a level of technology equivalent to 1915-1930s earth. The Globe is a strange place, though, with some shells having more and some less technology than this. There are also some stark anachronisms as meddling from the Magnificent have made certain gifts available to the mortal races far ahead of other technology. The technology on Globe simply is what it is.

Common Conveniences: The average home on the Globe, even those in the more rural areas such as shells 3 and 4, enjoys indoor plumbing, electricity collected from the radiation put off by Orbis, electric lights, refrigeration, kitchen appliances, washing and drying machines for clothes and dishes. There are video recordings available through the Magnificent Gift of holovid. Holovid is recorded on fist-sized devices of various designs but all that fit nicely in the palm. They are recorded on small diamond-like prisms and play from any recorder or holovid-screen. Weekly holovid clubs are somewhat common, where you get a pack of crystals each week then send them back the following week for a new set!

Electricity has always been available on Globe, it was simply a matter of finding things that could take advantage of it. Orbis is, after all, a perpetual motion machine of sorts and possesses infinite energy potential. The Magnificent found ways to transmit the bountiful excess energy of Orbis into a field of benign radiation that special power cells can collect, store and turn into electric power. Originally it was done for convenience but later on they made the resource available to the rest of the world-ship. Fuel and energy are not long-term concerns on Globe as long as something can run on electricity. Devices called transformers, which can fit into a small building, condense the orbis field into useable power and that power can be either wired to an area or put into small power cells for use in other devices.

The Globe-Wide-Web is another Magnificent Gift that is a common convenience. The web is accessed through devices just called terminals, wireless machines that range in design from blocky, heavy person-sized boxes to crate-sized cubes that can fit under a desk. Poorer villages have the large old terminals that are hundreds of years old, often just one that people gather around to listen to the news or pre-decided radio broadcasts. Sometimes there will be one in a schoolhouse too, to aid in education. Terminals are voice controlled and are linked wirelessly through Orbis' energy field to terminals in libraries on Isinaya. The Magnificent did not provide any knowledge or recordings for the web when they created it, they only created the libraries on Isinaya and provided the blueprints for the receivers for what would eventually become terminals. It took centuries to actually get the designs to work, they had the receivers built but no way to translate what they were receiving! It took the knowledge of circuitry learned by building robots to do the trick. The older, huge blocky designs for terminals have slowly been refined and reduced in size as more complex and compact versions of the hardware around the receiver have been developed. Almost anyone can submit more information to the libraries on Isinaya by sending holovid crystals. Dramas, music and other forms of entertainment have found their way onto the web this way. So far, live broadcasts can only be made onto the web directly from holorecorders on Isinaya or by one of the Magnificent, who don't need such contrivances to manipulate the network.

Uncommon Conveniences: Along with the less strange items available to the common folk, there are some things that people don't look askance at but are more difficult to create and come by. One item common to people either with the wealth to buy them or the skill to make them is the household servitor robot, or Servbot. Servbots are usually economical designs, slender torsos and headcases with thin yet strong limbs. They can be programmed for household labor, as shopping companions or to porter items. Most servbots are also programmed with defensive routines for protecting their owners. Sturdier machines called Guardbots act in a more military capacity, applied as guards for a town or as personal protection. Bots aren't as strong but are more common and easy to produce than more powerful golems, which also require magical talent to create. Robots originally were a Magnificent Gift, the plans given to mortals with the simple statement "with this gift The Magnificent give you the ability to create our more simple children." It was apparently meant as their way of showing that they weren't better than organic beings just because they were synthetic. (Pessimistically they could still be saying 'but we are better, anyway.')

Transport

There are a couple of common forms of transportation. Riding animals remain popular because of the flexibility they offer, a horse can pull a plow as well as a rider, after all. Riding robots and wheeled vehicles are rarer, but available and not particularly large an expense for what you get. More expensive but more powerful are hover-vehicles, which are normally rare enough that companies own them rather than individuals, using them as caravan or public transportation.

Water-born ships are also fairly common, except for Arda every shell has some kind of rivers and seas to it.

Airships are very rare. The most reliable of them are Magnificent designed, making it heresy to ride them if you are not yourself Magnificent. Less reliable airships of mortal design, usually built on Gatono or salvaged together from Hakem, exist but are rare enough to be truly extravagant purchases. Trade princes and nobles are the only ones likely to own one. Some pirates pilot stolen ones, but a stolen airship is like a red flag to anyone of authority on the Globe to take you in.

Transport between shells isn't as difficult as one could assume. Gravity-Lifts, a Magnificent Gift, can bring you from the shell below to the one above. Gravity Chutes do the same for bringing you down. These lifts and chutes of course lead to different parts of the shells above and below based on the time of week since the shells are always revolving. Gravity-transporters are actually very large, sometimes the size of several city blocks. They clearly mark out their boundaries so people aren't accidentally caught during a transfer. They have to be this large for moving formations of land vehicles.

Related to Gravity Chutes are telepads. They are unique in that any telepad on the network can travel to any other, so travel isn't restricted only to adjacent shells. Most telepads are claimed and owned by certain travel agencies that you have to pay to use. There are, however, telepads that have been lost to time that have destinations long forgotten.

Another way to travel the shells is by taking one of the grand elevators up the Pole. Originally limited only to the Magnificent, they made them public a few hundred years ago when travel by airship became more their style.

Airships ARE a method of travel between shells, there are ferry companies that own airships and charge people fare to travel to points on different shells.

The final and most dangerous way to shell-travel, but one of the only ways for the unlawful to do so, are through Shellbridges. A Shellbridge is essentially a cavern deep enough or mountain tall enough that effort can be made to cross to points on the shell above. Shellbridges are hard to find and unreliable. They are usually jealously guarded by those who have found them, as a result. Intershell bandits and pirates keep some of these secret paths for themselves.

Weapons

Melee weapons are still the go-to category of weaponry for both practical and cultural reasons. The most prevalent practical reason for still favoring melee weapons is the long reload times of most guns, as well as the expense of buying them as well as ammunition. Guns are great in cases where you're fielding a lot of them but for personal defense they're generally noisy, difficult to upkeep and impractical against more than one assailant. Guns also have the problem of misfiring, which mechanical missile weapons and melee weapons don't have. Most common folks on Globe simply don't have the money to purchase and upkeep guns, those who are equipped with guns either have the raw cash to own one or have stolen them. Another option is to have the engineering know-how to build one yourself, which stilll requires money for the raw materials as well as extensive crafting skill.

A possible reason why guns are so expensive despite the apparent ease of their manufacture lies in a treatise on gunpowder published by one Viktor von Krupp. Proposal on the nature of gunpowder

Works of enchantment and artifice are a much simpler task to undertake with melee weapons as well, and since melee and archaic missile weapons have been around much longer than firearms one is more likely to find them around in antique stores or passed down as heirlooms. Many is the family that has a magical blade somewhere in their inheritance. As weapon enhancement is one of the few respected and lauded forms of magic, possessing an enhanced weapon is a great social boon as well as an edge in combat.

Wearing a weapon is usually allowed as long as it isn't concealed, but worn outside the clothing. Concealing a weapon without a permit is punished by fine. Brandishing a weapon unprovoked is worthy of jail time, but the law is usually fairly lenient on deciding when one is provoked enough.

Modern melee weapons are often stylized and prized for fashion as much for combat viability. An individual's choice of weaponry is often as vital in their fashion as their clothing and hair. As such all kinds and types of weapon are quite popular, with no one type particularly praised over the rest. The brand of weapon is more likely to be scrutinized.

Armor

The heavier armors of the past have fallen increasingly out of favor in the presence of guns, making most armors today medium or light in class. All armor tends to be more streamlined and modernized by uses of alchemically altered metals and cloth. Armor training is as much labor of the mind, knowing how various devices and enchantments on armor works, as well as training the body to work with it effectively. The force fields of a heavily runed suit of metal coat acting like Full Plate Mail can be just as restrictive as the full metal plate as moving too quickly or in the wrong way can accidentally trigger a field and slow your movement.

It isn't considered a social faux pas to wear armor even at social events, as long as said armor is fashionable enough. Many warriors and adventurers by trade take pride in purchasing highly stylized armor.

The unique state of armor on Globe has the following benefits for Modernized Armor: Modernized Light Armor never has an armor check penalty. Modernized Medium and Heavy armor have their total weights and armor DC halved, rounding up. Modernized Medium armor does not reduce movement speed. Modernized Heavy armor reduces movement speed as normal but does not reduce run speed multipliers. Arcane Casting Penalties for all Modernized armor are reduced by 10%.

Antiquated armor still exists but is considered strange. It is cheap to come by, however. Reduce the base costs for armor without the above benefits by 50%. There is also quite a lot of antiquated armor floating around that is enchanted, more so than modernized armor. Reduce the final cost for enchanted antiquated armor or the cost to enchant existing antiquated armor by 25%.

Common Culture

Music

Two styles of music remain very popular among mortals, first is the more modern Gatonan band music ( Example ) which has been picking up steam for about 15 years now. The second is more traditional racial tunes, or 'classical' music. ( Dwarven Example Elven Example ) There is a third popular style of music but it's not, at this time, something mortals are able to play. The Magnificent songstress Apirka practices a techno-fusion song style all her own that is beloved by the young. ( Example )

Popular Branding

When it comes to fashionable weapons and armor, the models that are currently most popular come from D'Tonda and Sax, and the always chart-topping Tildings of Gatono.

Intershell Entities

The Krupp Consortium is a widespread organization arrayed behind the Trade Princess Krupp and is known for reliability and a wealth of in-house testing before anything hits market. Rather than acting as a centralized body it takes a stance as a financial and economic body around which clusters of subsidiaries gather. Several other Trade Princes are wondering if this subsidization model might not work better than the current company by company sponsorship.

D'Tonda and Sax is a fashion company that was started by the odd-couple partnership between a half-orc mercantile exporter and a brilliant halfling accountant. Now it is always on the very cusp of couture, coming up with whatever becomes the newest trend and striving for a hypermodern 'Magnificent-esque' aesthetic. A lot of their armor is cut and sculpted to show a lot of skin, yet still offers a great deal of protection, as if mocking the primitive cover-all style of antiquated armor.

Zepp Incorporated is run by The One And Only Zepp, an android that was once a clerk and calculator but was set loose when his owner bought a newer model. Zepp runs an efficient and cost-effective business, meaning his general goods and arms are both well priced and reliable.

The Redgrave Limited is a maritime company headquartered on Caldor where it maintains strong water shipping lanes. It is responsible for trading with the merfolk but also produces original accessories and trinkets and has a stranglehold on pearl jewelry. A lot of their items have a nautical theme, to capitalize on the culture of their work.

Tildings of Gatono is sometimes called The Original Company because it was one of the first bands of merchant guilds to come together behind a stronger guild as a single corporate entity. It is arrayed behind the insanely wealthy and always beloved Tildings family, a human dynasty. Tildings releases a wide array of products but all are known for their elegance, glamour and strength.

Magic

There are no organized studies for magic on Globe. Magic is and always has been a fringe element, no one's going to say it doesn't exist but it's seen as a far less reliable force than science, and less controllable as well. The underlying principles of magic are applied in a less direct way than wizardry in works of artifice and alchemy, or in the animating arts of golemancy. These uses of magic are considered natural and legal as they can be evoked through scientific processes, no matter the source of the energies involved.

A practical concern for doing magic is that Globe lacks something that allows the more complex formulae of Wizard spells to work. Trying them out just fizzles every time. One must have a natural connection to magic, a bound connection to magic or put up with less complex magic, like the spells that Magi use.

Outright sorcery, especially works of necromancy, illusion and enchantment, are highly distrusted and even considered to be immoral. Raising the dead and messing with people's minds with magic is outright illegal, with the degree of magic involved and the invasiveness of its use being paid for with fines to the wronged party as well as jail time. Cases of violence are always more heavily scrutinized when magic is involved and are certain to be more heavily prosecuted.

Those who are known to possess magic, either by blood or by deed, are looked upon with suspicion by most folks. They get furtive glances but polite looks, given fear and respect in equal measure. Behind their backs people whisper about what sorts of unnatural deeds they could be up to and when something bad without a ready explanation occurs, some of the more superstitious will immediately call out for the sorcerers to fess up about what they did.

Another fact about magic is that eventually many people will need it. Magical talents are wonderfully useful for those of the adventuring bent, after all, and since such people tend to be more open minded anyway it turns out that many magicians turn to exploration and hunting for their livelihoods. Others live on the outskirts of society, the cliche sorcerer's tower or witch's hut or oracle's secluded alley. They pass out fortunes and ancient knowledge, spells of beauty and health, magic that does what science cannot. (Or at least, cannot YET.)

Shells

Shell One: Atal, The Skin of the World

Atal, as the outer shell, was once a place heavily populated by the Magnificent as they worked from great observatories to watch the skies, learning all about the universe as they passed through it, constructing laboratories and arcologies dedicated to studying the stars and planets. Over the years, however, it became clear that however much protection the globe was afforded by the sphere at its heart it was not afforded quite enough at its very outer shell. Atal was scoured over and over again by cosmic radiation and the heat of passing suns. The Magnificent left it, finding it too harsh even for them to inhabit for long periods and have since developed probes and remotes that they can send up to Arda to continue their work.

Despite being very inhospitable, Atal is not impassable and there is the odd story of someone who ventured there in search of some of the treasures the Magnificent left behind when they moved back to Orbis. Most of them don't come back, but a few glittering metal toys speak much to say there there is a gem of truth to some of the tales.

Shell Two: Bethud, the desert of sand and metal.

Atal alone works to shield much of the harshness of the universe away from the inner shells of the globe, but Bethud, as the second shell, is more exposed than most. It has become an arid landscape, thirsty for rain that rarely comes seeping up from the lower shells. It is not heavily inhabited, but there are many who live there. Bethud is a rich source of metal and oil, veins of both pulsing through the earth of the shell.

It has a somewhat bad reputation as well, the cities of Bethud are known to be places that criminals can run to in order to disappear among the rough and beaten masses of metalworkers and oilminers that live there. Crews known as sand pirates make nests on Bethud and raid the work of honest folk to make their way.

Continent of Firewind

Telanthius: The city-state of the Elves is an alabaster city of splendors, with tall minarets from which are hung massive white canvases that protect the streets below from the blazing heat of the sun filtered down from Atal. The Telanthian Elves live leisurely, unhurried lives, enjoying the moments that comes to them without much fear for the future, they have so many years ahead of them, after all. Each Elf can go for a century before even leaving Telanthius for the first time! When they do, it's usually on exploratory tours of the Globe, dressed in their finery with a group and hired guards. Elves, to the last, live comfortable, high class lives and can afford such frivolities easily. Telanthius itself is saturated with more magic than other cities, with summoned servants rather than robots and where sorcerers and witches are respected instead of feared. The main exports are wondrous enchanted items, high quality fabrics, academic writings and desert spices.

Continent of Thrax

Silk: The terribly misnamed city of Silk is really little more than a conglomeration of mining companies that grouped together for safety then ended up building. Silk is riled by a selection of oil and metal barons of the type that are only found on Bethud, men who are not wealthy when compared with the rich men of Gatono or the elves of Telanthius, but are richer than anyone else around them. Oil and Metal are dual industries on Bethud, for when mining metal the workers will sometimes come upon oil wells and their employers are the ones that get to keep them. Silk is loud, dirty and overcrowded with music and voices blaring at all hours and the bazaars are always far too busy, not to mention the extremely healthy and lucrative red light district (which perhaps is what gives the city its name…).

Shell Three: Caldor, land of many seas.

The rain that doesn't make it to Bethud ends up trapped in the jetstreams above the lands of Caldor. This shell is rife with freshwater seas full of fish and wonder as well as temperate coastal plains. Many sailors make their livings on these seas, diving for pearls and luxury items or hauling up bounties of shrimp, fish and crabs.

There are many islands in the seas of Caldor, many of which have been unexplored for centuries. Finding out what has become of these lost lands is something that has recently garnered heavy interest.

Continent of Zuangzi

Pikesbad Island

Continent of Toscan

Shell Four: Demetra, the verdant band.

Demetra is the breadbasket of the globe, with some of the richest soil and large stretches of open plainsland to plant upon. The people of Demetra, as such, mostly make their livings as exporters, earning money from their farming and mercantile and trading for luxury goods from other shells. It is a land of rolling hills, woods and pastoral farmlands, beautiful and simple. While most of the cities of Demetra are at least somewhat modernized with at least one terminal and paved streets and vehicles, there are still some villages, especially halfling ones, that don't even have electricity!

Shell Four is also home to wandering herds of beasts, both mundane and magical in nature. These beasts are prized for their meat and hides, but are also quite dangerous.

Demetra is a very tempting target for thieves and bandits. It's a peaceful land with little in the way of military presence and some of the woods have become host to enclaves of bandits or barbarians who have come up from Edyll. The Orc tribes are a deterrent for such people and are usually willing to help their neighbors, but this peaceful shell has more hazards than one would guess and is always in need of extra help.

Great Continent of Meath

Shell Five: Edyll, the sylvan dark.

Edyll is a land of contrasts. Heavily forested with only small stretches of civilization between long swaths of unexplored wild, it is a beautiful place but rife with danger. The forests hold many, many valuable things from the pelts of exotic beasts to rare herbs and luxury spices to vast orchards of tropical fruit. It is a primitive land, one where the Magnificent rarely, if ever, left their gifts. Those Magnificent structures that are there are likely hidden away deep in the forests and jungles, now either home to primitives or

Despite Edyll's hidden prizes it is also home to often violent barbarians. The tribes of Edyll skirmish with each other over land, sacred sites and slaves. They do not limit their skirmishes to each other, though, posing a threat to explorers to their lands as well. Though they are primitive it would be a great mistake to call the tribes simple or savage, they are complex people with complex ways, but they are dangerous and largely unknown.

The tribals of Edyll, not to be confused with the more benign tribes of other societies, take great pride in the ways they have chosen to live and violently reject technology in favor of magic. A few tribes don't welcome magic either, living only by their strength and wit. Attempts to modernize Edyllians has usually ended in disaster. There are some societies on Edyll that are at least somewhat modernized but they live in hostile territory because of it.

Continent of Blackwood

Blackwood is cool and misty, with dense evergreen and temperate forests.

The Wood Elf Federation: The Edyllian elves live in a decentralized anarchy in opposition to the classed monarchy of Bethudan elves. Their federation sustains itself on free trade and barter, they only use money when trading with other peoples, not domestically. Each elven community is expected to be able to pull together and support each other and themselves, greed and apathy are signs of weakness in an individual and not tolerated. Those who don't give to the community can't be expected to get any support back, unless they are simply unable to give in which case they get the support they need.

Continent of Dunando

Warmer and wetter than Blackwood, Dunando is made up mostly of jungle land.

Shell Six: Fethka, the glittering deep.

Fethka is known as the darkest of the layers, far enough from both the outer layer and the core to lack most light. It's somewhat like a massie cave with stalactites hanging from the shells above and stalagmites rising up like mountains from the earth. Luminescent fungus and moss give off the majority of light, with periods of brighter illumination rarely coming when there are breaks in all the shells above na area of Fethka. Fethka is a home for those who would rather not be exposed to the light for some reason . It is also a mineral-rich land, with great wires of metals of many kinds threaded through its soil.

Fethka is largely unknown, much like Edyll. It is a dark, dangerous place to explore with equal parts riches and monsters.

The Continent of Everdark

Shell Seven: Gatono, the nation of industry.

Gatono receives a little light from Orbis, but it hardly needs it. Unlike Fethka, Gatono has been heavily populated for centuries and has an uncommon level of technology, some engineered from gifts by the Magnificent but most wrought from the hard work and ingenuity of everyday people. Nearly every mass of land on the shell is covered in city! The sky is brightened by the glow of lamplight that is never snuffed, so the feeble light reflected from the bottom of Fethka has been supplanted entirely by a sort of twilight-colored glow.

Gatono is highly cosmopolitan, every race on the globe can be found there and it is, in fact, the place where race matters far less than your social status. Surely yoru race has an impact on what social stratum you can inhabit, but there is little distinction between an upper-class dwarf and an upper class elf, but more between them and a middle-class halfling.

Lower-class folks are the people on the street, the teeming masses of workers, the cooks and the cleaners and the cops and the robbers. They are construction workers and low-brow entertainers and every other blue-collar working job you can thing of. It's not hard to make a livable wage as a member of the lower class in Gatono, there's almost always work available for them and you need very little in the way of experience or education to get your start. Most of the lower class live in apartment blocks but some also live on the fringes of civilization in smaller towns in the boonies of Gatono.

Middle-class citizens are those with the education and training to make it in a more specialized field. Merchants, designers, factory managers, small business owners, clerks, teachers and the like are all middle class. They live comfortably, usually in their own townhouses with their families.

Upper-class members of society got to where they are most likely by riding on the coattails of their ancestors. They are the scions of industry, owning chains of factories, merchant guilds, tenement blocks or a lot of rentable land. The Upper-class mostly pass their wealth down through sponsorships, paying for the education, room and board of up and coming artists or scientists.

Despite all its glitz, glamor and civilization, Gatono has a thick underbelly of crime and corruption. The government of the shell is run by a council of trade princes and all it takes to sway them to nearly any course of option is the right amount of bribery, schmoozing and nepotism. The criminals here are of a high class indeed, organized and effective, running rackets of protection, extortion and press-ganging.

The Archipelago of Dreams

Continent of Spalder

Continent of Central Gatono

New Gatono City: New Gatono City is built over the ruins of old Gatono city, ruined back when Anomaly defied her people and wished to be a goddess, leveling the city in the battle that it took to finally take her down. New Gatono has an impressive network of underground that is officially unused but actually is quite heavily populated, mostly with criminals and the destitute who do not make the trip down to Hakem to try and start a new life. Gatono City is the largest city in the world, even dwarfing Telanthius, and takes up nearly a full half of the continent of Central Gatono. Eventually, it is said, Gatono City will continue expanding, turning the cities it passes around into boroughs, until it takes up the whole continental plate! New Gatono is a cosmopolitan melting pot, absolutely exemplifying the rest of the shell in its modernity, glitz and filth all at the same time.

Shell Eight: Hakem, the isles of junk.

Hakem, as if to massively contrast the shells above and below it, is the most pitiful and impoverished place on the globe. It's mostly garbage, literally. Gatono's junk has to end up somewhere, and so it ends up on Hakem. This junk is both trash and some very unfortunate people. Hakem has little to no government except for local mayors and petty bandit kings who divide up the rusted warrens amongst themselves. Most cities are still lit by gaslight at times when Orbis' radiance wanes and the underside of Gatono isn't brightly lit enough for them to see by. Salvage is Hakem's biggest industry, through all that junk some treasure ends up flowing down to this shell and there are junker guilds that exist just to piece together some of the broken devices they find. Children collect scrap metal for spare coppers and that metal is cleaned up and smelted down and sold.

Hakem is also known as a home of freedom and anarchy. Despite the lack of wealth it isn't uncommon to see repaired machines given new purpose and puttering about. The robots of Hakem have more than just programmed duty to their owners, they have the sort of loyalty that can only be found in something that was unwanted but put new and loved again.

Hakem is a place of the humblest, poorest origins, but the sort of ingenuity and will it takes to survive there surely lends itself to the ability to survive an even harder life ahead.

Hakem is one of the lest geograpically centralized shells, called the islands of junk because it is mostly large sky-islands that have, over the centuries, been linked to one another by long rusty metal bridges or tunnels.

Island of the Broken

Island of the Dead

Rust-Town Island

Island of Glorious Dawn

Shell Nine: Isinaya, Beloved of the Core

Isinaya, the golden land. The land of light. The bright place. The place closest to divinity. The grunge of Hakem is forgotten once you reach here. The glow from Orbis creates a golden, dawn-like light that glistens across the bottom of the shell above and creates just the perfect levels of illumination whether it's the dim glow of the evening or the beautiful brilliance of the afternoon. Isinaya is a place for the nobility of the globe, the people who live there allowed to be near the home of the Magnificent and blessed with more of their high technology than anywhere else.

Isinaya is as close to a utopia as one is likely to find on the globe. It is a peaceful, civilized place with beautiful metallic cities and deep green pastures and rolling forests. It is also heavily defended by golems and war machines and automated defenses, gifts from the Magnificent to protect the libraries, universities and temples of this golden shell. It takes both hard work and a heavy dose of luck to be seen as worthy of setting foot there, but for those who can make it Isinaya is a haven of higher learning and untold lore. The art and science that comes from Isinaya is prized everywhere else on the globe, even the Magnificent themselves can be seen visiting to sit in on symposiums, operas, plays and symphonies in the vaulted amphitheaters that dot the green hills. If most engineering is bought from Gatono, then most books are bought from Isinaya.

It is a highly regulated place, despite the liberal veneer upon it. The Magnificent themselves do not interfere in the lives of sapients here, as is their way, but the citizens of Isinaya hold themselves and others to a higher standard. They feel blessed by the many gifts the Magnificent placed upon the ninth shell, though they realize it is most likely done to protect the stores of knowledge there rather than any particular favoritism for them. The Magnificent learned against that sort of behavior back during the days of Owen Lightbringer. The Isinayans hoard the gifts, however, and jealously keep them from higher Shells as a result, persecuting anyone who speaks out about sharing their gifts and hunting down those who are accepted as Isinayans but steal their treasures. They want and need very little to do with the higher shells other than sending up their literature and philosophy.

Continent of Gracia

Continent of Venta

Shell Ten: Orbis, The Heart of the World

Orbis is the sacred home of the Magnificent. It is a massive sphere that all of the shells of the globe revolve around. A pole juts from the top and bottom of the sphere, penetrating every shell until it emerges through Arda, acting as a central axis upon which everything turns, as well as acting as the only reliable static elevator to each shell. No mortal being has been allowed inside Orbis for over 800 years since the human ancestor known as Owen Lightbringer was permitted to enter the home of his progenitors as the prime example of his species. It is said he still lives there to this day, kept alive by the sacred science of the Magnificent.

The outer shell of Orbis constantly pulses with light on an approximately 24 hour cycle, offering light where the sun and moon cannot reach. The light from Orbis bounces off of the bottom of the shells above it, giving illumination to the shells below them.

Orbis is a great mystery as so few have been there and the Magnificent are not quick to divulge any secrets of their homeland. One common belief of Orbis is that the Tinker placed a small spark of the Core itself at the heart of it, and that spark is what provides the limitless energy the Magnificent draw their power from and that generates the atmospheric field that protects the globe from the ravages of naked space. It is also, legend has it, the reason so many Ark-mages are born.

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