Kh'ron
The Colossal realm of Khron by Stone Gargoyle
Machine Realm
The colossal realm of Kh'ron is perfection from a mechanical standpoint. It is as if every machine ever made were gathered and joined to make the world. Every surface serves a purpose, each part of the great machine of time. It is a realm of clockwork machine spheres serving as worlds in which all creatures are clockwork machines which seem to have been made by a madman.
There are many legends related to the colossal realm of Kh'ron. Some say that it is itself an Alien Intelligence and that the Placekeepers and Timekeepers are essence fragments of that intelligence. It is by no means true, but such legends persist regardless.
The landscape of Kh'ron is unique in that it is made up of clockwork machines. Machinery is indeed an essential element of the realm.
Revisions
Kh'ron is a very strange and magical realm which is made up of floating gears, some hundreds of miles across, which turn, spin and rotate as parts of an enormous clock. The twelve points of the clock are marked by the twelve elven cities of Kh'ron. One of the floating areas is a sundial, while yet another is an enormous hourglass which flips itself when the sands of time have run down. With the many floating gears being a distance across from one another, the inhabitants who are incapable of flight on their own or some form of teleportation have developed airships to use for the purpose of travel. Due to having areas which do flip over, the gravity of Kh'ron is centered onto its surfaces and is not related to the mass of the area stood upon.
In addition to the elves, Kh'ron supports a number of sentient races (including the Hoppitti, a race of humanoid rabbits), as well as a wide variety of natural wildlife. The place is, however, overrun by clockwork tickers and wind-ups, as well as steam-driven creatures, which include clockwork bunnies and mechanical geese which eat soil and minerals to lay golden eggs.
Its ecosystem is quite magical, having natural hot springs warmed by underground lava which provide power via steam to the various machines of Kh'ron through naturally occurring copper and brass tubes. The various trees of Kh'ron are both plant and machine, appearing clockwork but having tubes which fill its fruit with various kinds of nutritional substances. The stem for a golden apple, for instance, is a small key which causes it to open and reveal the nectar inside. As you can imagine, all the steam makes the atmosphere of Kh'ron quite hot. Plants, vines and moss also abound which grow in between and along the various surfaces and machines, providing all kinds of organic fruits and vegetables to feed the inhabitants of Kh'ron. Hanging from its various machine trees are all sorts of chain watches, clocks and timepieces, which are taken and used by Kh'ron's inhabitants.
Locations
Fountain Of Youth And Vitality
Located on one of the most remote and difficult to reach of the Great Gears is a mechanical fountain/hot spring which is magically enchanted to restore youth and vitality. Drinking from it will restore Hit Points and S.D.C., but one must bathe in it for the full effects.
- Range: Touch. Must be drank or bathed in to have any effect. Fountain is 100 feet in diameter and three feet deep.
- Duration: Hit Point and S.D.C. are restored until more damage is taken. Youthfulness is maintained, however aging is normal starting from regressed point.
- Attacks: Uses one attack/action to drink/swallow water; takes a full melee round to bathe in the water for full effect.
- Damage: None, rather it heals damage, unless of course one is undead. Does 1D4X10 damage to undead creatures if drank, does 1d4X100 damage to them if they bathe in it.
- Effects: If drank, heals 4D6 point of S.D.C. and/or Hit Points per swallow/one fluid ounce serving, 1d4X100 is restored if drinking a full gallon. Bathing in it (full dunking/immersion) restores all :Hit Points and S.D.C. and eliminates any penalties suffered due to age, restoring those in it to an appearance of their late teens (19-25 years of age). Will not regress teens already of that age or less, and no structural regression takes place (fat characters will remain fat, missing limbs will stay gone, etc.).
- Value: 50 gold per fluid ounce if sold on Kh'ron, as it is fairly common, 1000 gold per fluid ounce if sold on the Palladium World.
The Great Clock Face Of Kh'ron
Most of Kh'ron forms what is basically an enormous clock, the face of which faces east and is 2000 miles in diameter. Since the hands of the clock sweep across the face, only the outer ring is inhabitable, and it has surface gravity and mineral composition similar to that of the Great Gears. On said ring, twelve cities of elves are situated at the hour points of the clock, making up the Nation of Clockhome.
The Great Gears of Kh'ron
As stated previously, most of Kh'ron forms what is basically an enormous clock. The clock is made up mostly of island-size and smaller gears which turn and come into contact with one another for brief periods of time in their rotation. It is thus possible, however dangerous, to travel from one gear to another while on foot, which the legends of the Hoppitti claim their ancestors did to go about populating every known region of the gears. The gears vary in size, a few being hundreds of miles across, many being less than 50 miles across, and most being no larger than an enormous rock. The smallest of the gears simply act as bridges between the farther apart larger gears. 365 of the large gears exist, with thousands of the smallest ones existing. If one tries to travel from one gear to the other, the trip is quite perilous, as the gears are always in perpetual motion, whether turning, spinning or flipping over. The gears are made primarily of stone and metal composition, though lava beds and water deposits come together to create areas of boiling lakes which irrigate and feed the plants and animals living on Kh'ron, as well as powering its machines. The atmosphere around the gears and throughout Kh'ron is hot and steamy, with clouds forming of extremely warm air which produces hot rain which pours down on Kh'ron at fairly regular times.
Due to the flipping and turning of the gears at irregular angles, the gears have a kind of surface gravity which holds those walking upon the surfaces down with a strong pull (Spd of characters is reduced to half when walking upon Kh'ron's surfaces). Also, due to said movement, the actual building of bridges between the gears is impossible. Walking on the sides which come into contact with one another is also possible but highly discouraged, as anyone doing so could be easily crushed or pushed off.
The Great Hourglass Of Kh'ron
The Great Hourglass forms the central pole axis of Kh'ron. The sands of time flow down from the northern pole to the southern pole, enclosed in a glass hourglass which has rounded bowl-like structures at each end which collect the sands and trigger the flipping of the hourglass when full. It is said that time itself does not flow within the hourglass and that any caught inside of it will not age but be held in stasis-like limbo (Any victims finding themselves inside the hourglass will be reduced in speed, moving at a rate of one foot per melee round, or 1% of their Spd, whichever is less, and reduced to one attack/action per melee round). The point is moot, however, since anything struck by the falling sands is ripped to shreds (Sands do 1d4X100 points of damage to S.D.C. and/or Hit Points per melee round to all targets within the hourglass, though the sands cause no damage to the hourglass itself. The hourglass ends are ringed by large structures with the same surface gravity and mineral composition as that of the Great Gears. Gravity within the hourglass pulls to the south/bottom, obviously, and the hourglass itself is made of glass which is ten feet thick though it does not break or crack from the weight of the sands rushing through it. To escape the hourglass if one were somehow placed inside and survived, one would have to travel from the center and break a hole in the glass (A.R. 12, S.D.C. of 300 per foot of the ten foot thick glass, so to break a hole big enough to escape from, one would need to do 3000 S.D.C. damage per foot of the desired hole size for escape). Any such escape would take a really long time, so I suppose it is a good thing characters do not age while inside the hourglass.
The Great Sundial Of Kh'ron
On the opposite side of Kh'ron, facing west, is the great sundial of Kh'ron. It's outer face remains uninhabited since it gets very warm, but the underside of the sundial is inhabited by the majority of the Ra'Ven population living on Kh'ron. It has surface gravity and mineral composition similar to that os the Great Gears.
