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![]() ![]() Down and Dirty in the Dust [
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The Burning Rocks (by Belarius) Hearsay: Rumours tell of a large chunk of matter deep in Dust which gives off a glow strong enough to see 50 feet away (through solid dust). It's warm (though not hot), and almost indestructible. Word has it some bashers have set up shop there, but it sounds like screed to me -- the place is a bad omen, for those who venture close to it are rarely seen again! |
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![]() The Castle of Sand (by Rip van Wormer) The Castle of Sand is a site the dust quasielementals return to time and again; a stern fortress crafted of compressed quasielemental matter. Though the borders of Ooze lap against it and it at times it wears away almost to nothing, the slaves of the quasielementals continually build it up again as the first bastion against an invasion of ooze sprites or mephits. ![]() Castle Staubenfest (by Jens) The Castle Staubenfest can be found in some remote part of the plane. It is the domain of a peculiar creature, presumably a dust mephit with an attitude. His castle is made of dust and sand, constantly collapsing, constantly rebuild by an army of sandlings and dust devils, but it is a hopeless struggle against the nature of the plane. ![]() The Cathedral of Cobwebs (by Jon Winter) On the Prime, rooms which are neglected long enough to be dusty are usually full of cobwebs too. Some cutters believe these cobwebs are made by spiders, who use them to catch food. Natives of Dust know better. ![]() The Centrifuge (by Rip van Wormer) The Centrifuge is a device built by some Guvner associates of mine that's supposed to filter out particularly useful dusts from the rest of the plane. So far, they haven't had much in the way of results, though we've occasionally caught an angry quasielemental or silt weird. ![]() The Choking Cloud (by Jon Winter) Users of the spell airy dust be warned! The region of Dust known as Choking Cloud, kills many travellers dead. Observable only as a thinning of the Dust and a lightening of its colour, the Choking Cloud is made of fragments of dust that are poisonous to almost all non-elemental life forms. ![]() Doom Keeper's Heart (by Lucas Berghaus) This town appears to travellers as a calm surrounded in an endless dusty storm. It is made up of dry, brown huts, drab in decoration and unspectacular. The town surrounds a great hill, atop which Jeraq has built the Crumbling Palace. Anyone in the burg for a few days suffers from depression. Save vs. spell each day (apply Magical Defences modifier or suffer -1 Wisdom when on the Plane of Dust) Many Dust Mephits live here, all serving Jeraq. The Crumbling Palace has six towers of sandstone, but the mostly abandoned towers remain a mystery to the inhabitants. ![]() Drum Murti (by Rip van Wormer) Drum Murti are twelve mysterious statues near an abandoned and crumbling city in Core Dust. They continually thrum with a vivid beat, pounding along with the dance of matter's destruction. Wild-eyed and pot-bellied, they seem to shine with the ghastly radiance of a lich. Occasionally quasielementals will come and dance along. While dancing, the spirits do not pay attention to their surroundings, and can be ambushed. The murti don't seem to mind this, and may have been built with this in mind. Perhaps they fuel themselves with the elementals' dying screams. Alternatively, maybe they are relics of a quasielemental city and are built with a purpose. Or perhaps some day, when they gain enough of Dust's essence, they will come to life, and rebuild an empire on a plane that resists empires. ![]() Dust to Dust (by Joshua Jarvis) Unlike the research done in Ashes to Ashes, this is a burg where Dustmen rebels go to indulge in dimmed, subtle (compared to non-Dustmen), emotionally subdued expressions of emotion. The burg in this building composed of fossilised sandstone is a home of Dead philosophers who dispute different ideas on the nature of being dead, artists who paint in sombre colours, and poets whose prose is that of death. Many of the Dead dislike this, claiming they are too much like Bleakers to be Dustmen, others ignore it, after all it's just a phase of they're death they are going through (or so they believe) because after all, what use are emotions to the dead? ![]() The Footprints (by Jon Winter) Imagine, if you will, a vast cavern filled with air in the far-flung regions of Dust. An elemental bubble, of sorts. Despite being many miles across, there are no permanent settlers in the whole cavern. Most bashers are surprised by this, for after all, it would see the perfect place to build a burg. However, wise bloods know to look further. Chant goes the cavern is haunted by spirits, and BIG ones too! |
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![]() Giant's Sandpit (by Jens) Watched from the distance, the part of Dust known as the Giants' Sandpit appears like another fata morgana. Shapes that rise from the wastes, shapes that change. ![]() The Glyphs of Blooddust (by Rip van Wormer) Glyphs of Blooddust are a series of runes carved on miraculously intact islands of stone throughout the plane. Those who might know better'n me say that they can act as valuable guides, if you know their dark. Those who might know better'n them claim that any meaning they might've had is long gone, dispersed into greater dust. Now they're just meaningless symbols, white noise on the informational landscape. ![]() The Library of Dust (by Jens) Deep within the waste lands of the Plane is a strange place. It is the remains of a building, dozens of storeys high, but the walls have all turned to dust long ago. Shelves is all that remained, large, endless shelves full of parchments, books, and journals. This must have been a very famous library, and it still contains the knowledge of an ancient civilisation. However, the pages are brittle and delicate, and any touch will destroy a whole book instantly, turning it to a pile of fine, useless dust. Other books are protected by magic, such as explosive runes and glyphs, and the destruction of those books may trigger the spells. ![]() Mote (by Jon Winter) Near the borders of Dust and Vacuum, Mote is a place of sparkling fragments of stuff, from shattered crystals to chunks of rock. Rare on the Lower Inner Planes, Mote is a place of great beauty. But berk, don't think that means it ain't just as deadly as the uglier parts of the plane! ![]() Psionic Dust (by Rip van Wormer) Psionic dust echoes in regions of Core Dust near the Storm of Annihilation, where even the borders between minds begin to break down. In such areas, it's impossible to keep one's thoughts private; they leak at varying volumes to everyone in the vicinity. Psionic attacks in the regions affect everyone, including their originators. Psionic defences benefit everyone, too, so that can be a benefit. ![]() Red Dust (by Rip van Wormer) Red Dust is vivid oxidised dust near the Tumbling Rocks. Red Dust is stinging and painful, inflicting 1d2 damage per unprotected turn. The quasielementals here are infused with the essence of war and raid neighbouring regions in parties as large as practical. Local sandmen carry iron swords that they get from the corpses of pech, and they are fairly famed in their proficiency (+1 to attack). ![]() The Rock (by Philippe McFadden) Now everybody knows that the plane of Dust is one place the Dustmen like. It's the accumulation of their philosophy. So of course they try to use this place as a berg. Now not even a dustman is dumb enough to settle close to the powers of the realms. So they found the best way to do that. The rock. It's main function is a place for retired dustmen to sit down watch the world as it will eventually be until they in their own time turn to dust also. Now the berg is a special place it resembles some sort of asteroid in the middle of dust usually the only way to find it is to find first the trail behind it. The trail is about a mile long and it's composed of chunks of the asteroid that falls of because of the enveloping dust. Only small pebbles at first but then rocks the size of a fist are seen floating in the dust. The asteroid is moving at a steady pace. The rumours say it orbits around some powerful entity but no one who has investigated these rumours have found anything or never came back. Frankly the dustmen don't care. The burg is a quality resort, for dustman that is. The asteroid has many conduits leading to the inner cavern where the dustmen live and the undead continue. The conduits keep air in and dust out with some sort of invisible field placed there aeons ago by some mage or power unknown who probably is dust that surrounds this place. Water is provided by a well with a decanter of endless water. Food is brought from Sigil through the only portal that leads there from the mortuary which opens once every week at anti-peak. Every other time it leads to the negative energy plane. The cutter who runs the place is Artemius Rundus a planar dustman who keeps the food coming and the undead out of the city proper. There are not many services on The Rock except that sometimes old folks are prone to know something about the past or have some key knowledge that might be helpful to the person who needs it. ![]() Sirocco
(by Andrew
Wyatt) Several centuries ago, in a Prime land known as Zakhara, there lived a sorcerer named Avojim. Little is known of him, save what can be inferred from the legacy he left behind. Though he was ostensibly a student of elemental earth and fire, Avojim was evidently also a kindred spirit of the Doomguard. He was obsessed with understanding and harnessing the forces of entropy, and eventually became as comfortable with the undead as he was among elementals. ![]() Thanat-am-Suel, home of refugees (by Rip van Wormer) Okies are poverty-stricken bands of refugees driven from their homelands. The Plane of Dust has an inordinate amount of Okies, mainly from the Plane of Earth, caught too near the Tumbling Rocks region and falling in. Occasionally whole elemental kingdoms have crumbled to Dust, leaving their inhabitants stranded. Okie Suel are refugees from the Rain of Colourless Fire on the world of Oerth, over a thousand years ago. The majority of witnesses to this world-shattering calamity were lucky and died as the vast Suloise Imperium crumbled to dust and ash. A few unfortunates were caught in desperate countermagicks or mythal-like magic fluctuations and transformed into okie genasi in the quasielemental planes. To this day, travellers in the Wasting Place are accosted and normally executed by the xenophobic Suel descendants, paranoid peoples certain that their ancient Baklunish foes are still plotting to finish them off. These Okies prove their man- or womanhood by long solo walkabouts through the planes of Dust or Ash, coming back with the still-pulsing hearts of powerful quasielemental creatures, preserved in specially treated skins. The two genders are treated fairly equally, and anyone of the appropriate bloodlines can become a shaman. ![]() The Tower of Bable
(by John
Hanson) Down in the plane of Dust, there's a massive structure. Legend calls it the Tower of Bable. And berk, it's big. ![]() [ Main | The Basics | Locations | Creatures | Genasi ] [ Magic | Powers | Stories | TSR's Inner Planes ]
graphics by Jon Winter and Jeremiah Golden |