Most pocket domains, existing as they do in the crevasses between worlds, open on to many worlds. The vale opens on to the Eternal Crossroads, Highland, Fading Highland, and (at the mad Elf’s cave) to just about anywhere.
The crossroads open on to Barcelas, Iridia, and the Vale. They once opened up to Araman, but Araman is gone.
You can, of course, replace these worlds with your own (although I may be using Barcelas in the future). Time is basically the same in each of these worlds.
The cavern leads through walls of bone into a basement, up some stairs, and into a golden door. The door opens into a temple, which itself leads to a dead city.
There are no stars, and no sun or moon to light the sky, violet beyond the fluted columns and amphitheater-like stairs or benches that circle you. The light that comes is a flickering violet that seems to rise into the sky. In the center of this amphitheater is a small platform with some machinery of brass or gold upon it, and a pillar rising alongside it.
As you step beyond the door, a low voice whispers as if floating upon the strange and heavy air. “Viator, amplecti quadrivium.”
The violet light emanates from the aurora-like edge of reality that surrounds this last remnant of a once vibrant world.
Dead Rome is a parallel world where Rome continued to rule the world through the industrial and technological revolutions. That world is soon to disappear, and is dead. Only crazy crabs, buzzflies, oily moss, and scraggly twisting vines that wind through the city remain alive.
Buzzflies and crazy crabs come out every few hours. First the buzzflies swarm past above the depression, and then the crabs come clattering over the stairs.
Within the dead city there are newspapers in a form of Latin that is vaguely understandable as the Ancient tongue of Highland. Those who know the Ancient tongue can read this world’s Latin at a penalty of two.
In the streets are metal contraptions on wheels, windows with glass so fine you can see through them, and so on. These are vehicles, like our cars but perhaps slightly more advanced, but they show signs of having been lived in and unmoved for years. Tires are flat. They were used by refugees from cities and towns that are now beyond the edge of the world. They go by names of places that Rome considered exotic and conquered. There is an Ahura Mazda pickup truck, an Obelix, a Helgo, a Brittanica, and a Corinth.
The final issue of the Roman Daily Sun is provided as a player handout. The paper’s last issue was in Highland year 774, or our year 1804. This single-page paper can be found in several of the vehicles along the street. At the very end, refugees were living in their cars. Many cars never left their parking spot for years.
In some of the buildings there are timepieces that run off of perpetual energy sources. But time as well as space is dying in this world. The timepieces will stop for several minutes, and then rush forward. It will move slowly and quickly, and rarely at what the characters think is the “real” flow of time.
In this dying world, magic is more difficult. To successfully cast a spell, a Learning roll must be made at a penalty of the casting level, and a further penalty of 3.
A series of gears and wheels lie upon and in the small altar. One wheel has two small extrusions, one vertical, like a handle, and one arrow-like that points to one of the doors.
Beside the altar a four-sided basalt pillar is covered in writing, in what appears to be many languages. A larger section of writing in the center of each side reads “Viator, amplecti quadrivium” and then “Omnis viae Romam ducunt”.
The pillar in the center of the circle reads, in Ancient, “Traveler, welcome to the crossroads.” “Viator, amplecti quadrivium.” The first line is repeated in smaller lettering in several languages including Highland English, Elvish, and Kilirel. Touching a phrase will have it read in the low, fading, cracking voice that greeted them. The Elvish phrase is “elanvedo vestelerivel morilvan” and the Kilirel phrase is “andenil, arenorten reneri”. After the welcome, it will also read instructions: “Please ask the temple guards for assistance.”
Also in large letterings, but not repeated, is “Omnis viae Romam ducunt.” In English, this means “All roads lead to Rome.”
The temple has four doors leading out of it, each set on marble stairs. Clockwise from the door which leads to the Vale of the Azure Sun (Water) are doors that lead to: Barcelas (Earth), Iridia (Air), and Araman (Fire),
The temple is a place of power, though now only level 1.
The edges of Dead Rome are unraveling. An invisible, malleable field of force separates the remaining reality from the horrible scene on the other side. Cities twist into lakes that bend like rivers. It looks like a cross between Hieronymous Bosch and Salvador Dali rolled together with Escher.
There are blobs hanging in the darkness, inaccessible, and what look to be the remains of city streets inside these blobs. On these streets creatures barely visible only with enhanced vision skitter slowly like dots among the twisted streets and buildings.
Looking into the darkness, it is utterly black except for the pockets of reality bubbling off. If a person looks closely and carefully, however, there are strange, ponderous movements in the utter darkness, as if a thing of even more absolute darkness were moving at some unknown distance.
It is possible to push through the force field separating this world from the abyss. It is like moving through cold molasses. But successfully doing so will mean a cold, empty death in Health rounds.
A green and yellow sea engulfs the streets at the edge of the world. The still waters exude a faint, sweet-smelling odor, reminiscent of lilac or jasmine. Sightless things slither above and below the slimy surface. Huge iridescent green insects buzz across the surface. Strange lobster-like creatures crawl onto the shore and eat the insects and slimy things, grabbing them with their oversized claws.
The ocean on the other side of the crossroads is much contracted by the edge of reality, and its proximity to that strange abyss has not had a wholesome effect on the waters.
You can put refugees from “the Dead Eternal City” in many places. You may choose to make the traveling Romans of Great Bend refugees from Dead Rome, in search of the true Eternal Crossroads.
The years of Fading Highland, which also experienced the Cataclysm, are off by a different amount. Subtract 6 from the real year to get Fading Highland’s “Year of the Cataclysm”.
Fading Highland is closer to dying than Highland is. Crosspoint is a smaller city, and even then much of it is abandoned. Few make the journey across the mountains. Biblyon was never founded. There is a long beach between Crosspoint and the bay. There are no Elves or Dwarves, and few if any night trolls remain. There never was a Goblin War.
Little magic is left in Fading Highland. The last practioners of magic are the Celts in the north. Using magic requires a Learning roll at a penalty of the casting level, with a bonus of 1.
The storms of Fading Highland mark the edge of this world: beyond is only the malleable darkness seen at the edges of Dead Rome.
As you open the door, you smell fresh air and see sunlight filtering through the widening crack in the door.
Beyond the open door you see trees, bushes, ferns, and tall grass, all green and lush. The trees are set in a circle of which you are the center. A few yards ahead of you is a small stone bench. Around the grove, partially in and out of the trees, statues of odd persons or creatures stare back at you with elongated snouts, perched strangely forward.
A small animal, perhaps a squirrel, crawls over one of the statues and into the trees.
Pillars of stone stand between the statues, and the ruins of something, perhaps arches, lie around the pillars and the statues.
The door to Barcelas opens in the side of a small mountain, in a grove outside of Barcelas in the world of Barcelas. There are seven statues of Barcelasians: Saurians wearing robes, some holding scrolls, some swords, some tools. There were once arches surrounding the grove. They have fallen to the ground, though the pillars mostly remain.
Some two hundred yards east of the grove, the forest opens up on a plateau overlooking the Celara.
The forest opens up and you are standing atop a high mountain, looking down upon a great blue sea. To your right, a river pours into the sea, and to your left a great city some miles wide lies on the shore of the sea.
The vista resembles the painting in the foyer of the Blue Sun, except that the city is not as vibrant. The world of Barcelas is another land in decline. Though they have not seen the effects of the cataclysm, the energy is still draining from their world. The Barcelasian empire has fallen and nothing has risen to take its place. Barcelas, long abandoned by anything resembling civilization, remains a war-torn city of factions of barbarians: Usilar, Saulabar, and saurians competing for the now meaningless Aquali throne.
The city is a long day’s walk from the grove, about twelve miles down a mountain path and across first thin forest and then fields. The fields were once farmed, but now stand fallow.
It is currently Barcelasian Year 3465. Political bickering dominates the last remaining Barcelasian city, Hamokera in the north, though Hamokera at least remains civilization. A succession of petty foreign kings has “ruled” the royal section of the city of Barcelas since the final sack of that great city. The ruler does not even control the entire city.
For over three thousand years the Barcelasian Empire ruled the known world. Starting from the small town of Barcelas on the shores of Celara, the bipedal lizard-like Barcelasians expanded to conquer or ally with first their near neighbors, then their less-near neighbors, until the Barcelasian Empire covered parts of three continents and several large islands off the coasts of those continents. Until Barcelasian Year 2285, the Empire was a republic of nearly free client states. The only requirements were that each client state provide troops for the armed forces, and that each client state grant Barcelasian citizens a franchise in electing local officials.
The backbone of the Barcelasian Empire were their citizen-soldiers, first composed only of true Barcelas, and later of all races under Barcelasian rule. They were well-trained, ruthless in battle, obedient in war, and learned in peace.
In their early years, the chief Barcelasian rival was the great spider-race of Carathax on the opposite shore of the Celara. Several wars were fought between Barcelas and Carathax before Carathax was finally razed to the ground and forcibly depopulated. Many were taken into slavery. Others fled into the Rathac mountains where they skulk in cavern and shadow to this day.
In BY 2285, a civil war began that ended in military rule. Military rule grew to emperor rule. The Prelins, or supreme rulers, of Barcelas claimed divine power.
Towards the end of the second millennia, the edges of the empire began to see Usilar, pale bipedal creatures (humans) from the north, who began to chip away at Barcelasian conquest. At first they were mere gnats on the Barcelasian elephant. But as the military state grew more autocratic, as civil wars inside grew more bloody, the borders began to grow weaker. Finally, in BY3065, after their own lands were invaded by wolf-riding Saulabar (goblins) to the north, a massive wave of Usilar invasions caused Markesh Prelin to recall all Barcelasian troops back to Barcelas. Even this was not enough: Barcelas was sacked, its power destroyed and an Usilar Prelin placed on the Aquali Throne.
But this emperor barely ruled Barcelas itself, let alone the rest of the empire. Cites, long walled, became states of their own. Some banded together. Many fell empty. More and more Usilar arrived and created their own villages, towns, and cities. Except for one outpost of civilization, the cities of Barcelas fell into ruin.
Fell into ruin except in one city, in the mountain pass between west and east, the city-state of Hamokera, recently converted to the worship of Na-el, grew in power in that small region of the world. Hamokera rarely knows peace: with the Usilar to their west and the growing Fictates of Elelba on their east, this mountain empire must continually defend itself. But it is well situated, and defend itself it has, to this day.
Na-el is a minor deity from a once minor religion in the Elelban desert. Once a simple, communal sect of an already small religion, over its centuries in Hamokera it has been caught up in Hamokeran factionalism and political maneuvering. It now more closely resembles Hamokeran culture than its Elelban roots.
Beyond even Elelba is rumored the great kingdom of Venethtlas, home of the ruddy, tall Elves who are known only for the Elvencord (Venetia) that comes to Hamokera through Elelba. Their Barcelas-given name, prosaic as all things Barcelasian, means simply “land of cord”.
A great rainbow circles a monstrous one-eyed orb staring unblinkingly at you from a near-empty void. The orb is banded with all of the colors of the rainbow and more. Beyond the orb, ulticolored lights shine like pinpricks upon a velvet darkness. In the grey darkness beneath the orb and rainbow, a desolate surface filled with a jagged landscape stretches out before you.
The door to Iridia looks out upon the moon of great, ringed planet.
This is where the hoop lizards and bouncing lizards came from. This world has unraveled completely. The door opens onto bare rock.