According to the elves, the Motori left because they were disappointed with this world. If not for the eleventh hour actions of the great elven hero Sarkuda Starshine, the Motori would have set this world afire after they left.

The dwarves claim that it was they who forced the Motori from these lands. The dwarves stole an experimental Motori weapon which could have obliterated the planet and used that to force their former masters to leave.

Each race’s version of the story is a bit different, but they all agree on one important detail: the Motori left voluntarily, on a journey somewhere else. Unfortunately, that is also the thing they got most incorrect. The Motori didn’t go on a journey elsewhere, but elsewhen: 10,000 years into the future to start anew after they foresaw some now-ancient cataclysm.

One day, without warning, the city of Ling’hurak enters a lock down. Many are able to escape, but many more are not, and for hours afterwards their screams can be heard as the reapers cleanse the cold metal towers of the remaining squatters.

A few days later, the city shines anew as long-dormant systems are powered on again. The Motori are back, and they intend to waste little time re-establishing their world-spanning empire.

While out chopping firewood, not far from their village, the PCs are interrupted by the sound of a horse. The man riding the horse is wearing armor and the King’s Seal is easily recognizable on him. Both he and his horse look battered and ragged and as if they’re about to collapse from fatigue.

Approaching the PCs, the man steps down from his horse and nearly falls over, but catches himself on the stirrup. He produces a thin package from his pocket. “Please,” he says, “you must get this to the city.”

If the PCs question him, he will say only that “they” will not be far behind and the PCs must hurry, for “it” cannot fall into “their” hands. When he’s convinced the PCs to do this task for him, the man takes a signet ring off his finger with a symbol of a hammer over a shield, telling them to bring that along with his package to Malleus Hall and find Gregor Teuber.

At some point, perhaps midsentence, the soldier falls to the ground. His burden transferred, he’s finally allowed himself the peace of death.

Algrecht is a sly little man, unassuming but clearly intelligent. He is courteous to a fault, though often seems to have a smirk as if something reminds him of a joke he once heard.

Algrecht befriends one of the PCs, the sneaky one who secretly fancies himself an assassin (there’s always one). He even gives that character a little trinket, a gem which destroys dead bodies without a trace. Handy for covering your tracks!

That’s not exactly what the gem does, though. In actuality, rather than destroy the body, it teleports it to a pocket dimension which only Algrecht can access. He’s given these gems to many people, and uses this steady stream of fresh corpses to create an undead horde. He’s just waiting for it to reach the necessary critical mass to begin his plans…

The towers of Ling’hurak pierce the sky like daggers of steel and stone, visible for miles and miles in every direction.

Ling’hurak was the greatest of the Motori metropolises, and the only one still functional. Though the Motori have long since left this world, their metatons still watch over and maintain Ling’hurak.

Some fools have tried to claim Ling’hurak as their own, but their folly always meets the same grisly end. The reapers, as cold and emotionless as the city itself, still enforce the laws and rule of their departed masters and will suffer no uprisings. A single reaper, it is said, can take out an entire unit of trained soldiers, and Ling’hurak has many, many reapers.

The city’s gates are open to any who wish to come, and the impossibility of setting up any sort of government has turned Ling’hurak into a city of squatters. They must obey the laws set in place by the Motori, but otherwise are left to their own devices. Depending on one’s point of view, it’s either an anarchist paradise or an anarchist hell.

The city is quite self-sufficient even without the Motori there to maintain it. Scarabs crawl up and down, fearlessly scaling the dizzying heights to make sure everything is kept in good condition. The constant presence of the reapers throughout the city ensures that order of a sort is maintained. The reapers are intelligent enough to recognize, and stop, most overt forms of crime (especially violence), but are of little use in contract disputes and the like.

The only area of Ling’hurak off limits to the squatters is the metaton hive, where scarabs, reapers and the other metatons are created and maintained. This is also the home to the most intelligent of the metatons, the Queen, which oversees all the rest. Unlike other metatons, it is a genuinely intelligent being, but it is still utterly loyal to the Motori.

Encounters with The City of Squatters

The PCs learn that one of their enemies has gained entrance into the metaton hive and is trying to coerce, or control, the Queen. With such power, he could rule the world.

An enemy of the PCs asks them to meet in Ling’hurak, a neutral ground, to discuss something of great import. Secretly, he hopes to goad the PCs into attacking him so that the reapers will kill them.

There are many worlds, each subtly unique, and yet perplexingly similar. These worlds exist in the Astral sea, and one might travel between them along Astral rivers.

The greatest of the Astral rivers is called Styx, and it is unique in that it touches each and every one of those worlds. Infinite in length, none have ever seen its source, but all will ultimately travel to its end. Whenever any sentient being dies, its soul flows into the Styx. These countless souls give the river a haunting blue glow.

The last world the river Styx flows through before its final destination is a realm of purity and goodness known as Celestia. Here, celestial gatekeepers monitor the waters of the Styx and help the good and deserving souls out to live in harmony for the rest of eternity.

Those not lucky enough to stop in Celestia eventually come to the final stop of the Styx… the nine layers of Hell itself. Each successive layer is almost like a finer and finer sieve, so that each damned soul is removed at the appropriate layer.

The worst of the worst make it through the first eight layers to the burning lake in the center of hell in which resides the dark lord of all devils, Asmodeus.

Encounters with The River of Souls

The Styx is an epic river, and the sorts of stories it facilitates are similarly epic in nature.

Somehow, a truly evil soul escapes the Styx in Celestia and begins wreaking havoc there. He helps other damned souls into Celestia, overthrows the powers there, and pushes the good souls down into hell. It’s up the PCs to stop him and set everything back to the way it should be.

Sometimes, souls miss their stops. The PCs need to travel to Celestia to get the aid of one of history’s greatest heroes, but they find out that he’s not there and is in fact mistakenly imprisoned on the eighth layer of hell.

The Ecclesia Fabulum, known more commonly by the moniker of The Chroniclers, is a church which teaches that life is just one big story being told by some great, unknowable being called The Storyteller. Existence as we know it is entirely within The Storyteller’s imagination, and every person is but a character in Its epic story.

Most people are just supporting characters. Even kings and entire kingdoms might rise and fall just so that one of The Storyteller’s protagonists gets the motivation they need to to continue on.

Chronicler priests are some of the greatest historians the world has known, for the church takes it upon itself to meticulously record everything in an attempt to figure out what The Storyteller’s story is all about. They each have various reasons for doing what they do; to understand, to predict the future, some might believe it’s the only meaningful thing one might do, to keep the story interesting for fear that if The Storyteller becomes bored It will stop and they’ll all cease to exist, and some actively work against The Storyteller for their own reasons.

Encounters with The Chroniclers

An monk of the Ecclesia Fabulum begins following the PCs around, believing them to be some of The Storyteller’s protagonists.

An abbot believes the PCs are not fulfilling their part in the story and tries to get them to go after what he believes is one of The Storyteller’s antagonists.

The PCs need to know something which happened long ago, and learn that the Chroniclers might have records of it. Alternatively, they may need help figuring out what’s happening now and the Chroniclers might be able to assist.

So if the creative juices ain’t flowing, I guess I’ll try waxing analytic.

This is the first of what will be a series on the theory of encounter design. In it, I will analyze what an encounter is, what makes an encounter interesting, etc. I’m going to take a half-serious, half-mocking, half-inconsistent approach to it. Also, all math will be done modulo 50, so no matter how many halves you add on to something it’s still equivalent to 100%.

The Goal of Unified Encounter Theory

The ultimate goal of Unified Encounter Theory (hereafter shortened to UET) is to produce a system for creating the framework of an enjoyable encounter. Something along the lines of “Add in equal parts dynamic landscape, unusual opponents, and a twist,” but more rigorous and scholarly. Actually, that would work well for many encounters, but then this whole series thing would be cut short and that’s no good at all.

I’ve preemptively named this not-yet-created system the UNITY system (because UNITY sounds kind of like UET), which stands for:

What is an Encounter?

The first step in this whole process, of course, is making sure that we’re all on the same base. Thus, we need to define what exactly an encounter is. I’ve thought long and hard on this question, and I’ve come up with the following all-encompassing definition, at least in the framework of a typical RPG with a GM running the game for several players. All you elitist indie gaming snobs who play games where everyone is the GM can come up with your own theory.

Encounter: An encounter is when something happens in the vicinity of at least one PC which is notable enough to be described by the GM.

What is notable about that definition is what it does not say. It does not say an encounter happens to the PCs, it says it happens near them. It also does not say that an encounter affects the PCs. It may, it may not. By this definition, witnessing an explosion kill your father, a strange beggar asking for your cape, and an arrow lodging itself in your throat are all encounters. A distant king hiring an assassin to track down and kill your PCs is not an encounter, unless a PC happens to be scrying on the king at that particular moment.

Wrapping Up

Well, that’s it for the introduction to UET. I welcome all feedback, and hope that people will have suggestions and comments which I might incorporate into future installments.

Next time: Classifying encounters

Since I’m not actually encounters on a regular basis for the time being, I’ve removed the bit on the sidebar about updating every weekday.

Yax of Dungeon Mastering fame produced the first application which validates the insipid “Web 2.0″ buzzword– Cuddle Monsters, where you some of the nastiest monsters of the D&D world duke it out mano a mano to see who’s the most cuddly.

Muses are unusual creatures, spirits which live symbiotically with others. Everyone is born with many muses, perhaps an unlimited number of muses, but as you age and grow and your tastes and skills develop, most of them disappear. The ones which are left, however, only become stronger and finer. Most people, in their adult lives, have but a handful of fully matured muses. For example, a warrior might have one muse dedicated to swordsmanship, another dedicated to love-making, and a third dedicated to his proclivity for ales.

Most people are completely unaware of their muses. Indeed, the spirits are, for the most part, completely fused with their host’s soul. There are some things which can see muses, though, and even interact with them. There are even some who can make their muses manifest. Manifested muses can take on almost any form or temperament. Going back to the hypothetical warrior from the last example, his muse of swordsmanship might take the form of a floating, glowing longsword and his muse of ales might be a short, boisterous, pot-bellied caricature of himself.

Encounters with Muses

The PCs find a mirror in a treasure trove in which muses can be seen.

One day, the PCs wake to find something completely and utterly bizarre: their muses have been switched. The fighter finds himself well-versed in magic, the cleric has a silver tongue, the rogue develops a sudden case of piety, and a sword has never before felt so comfortable in the mage’s hands.

In the matter of the Forces of Creation v. Dorian Gray, we the members of the jury find the defendant, Dorian Gray, not wicked. -Verdict given at the trial of the great hedonist Dorian Gray

On the cusp between this world and the next there is a great, sprawling city known as Mourngate. It is here where all souls go to be judged and sent off to their final rest, and sometimes loved ones come here to be with their recently departed.

Most of the time, the cases are swift. A being called The Arbiter judges the soul as wicked, pure or conflicted. The wicked are sent off to the hells, the pure to paradise, and the conflicted to purgatory, where they will not have the fruits of paradise but nor will they suffer the tortures of damnation. Though this process is swift, the sheer bulk of souls waiting to be judged means that it can take a long time for your turn.

The Arbiter’s judgment is not final, though; any may appeal for a trial, with all the trappings. If the appealer can convince an angel of their plight, the angel will represent him in court. Otherwise, they’ll usually have to work out a deal with a demon to represent them. In return for getting them off of an eternity of punishment under someone else, the appealer might agree to only a few thousand years of punishment under the demon representing him before going to purgatory.

Encounters with Mourngate

A celestial messenger contacts the PCs, asking them to come testify against a villain who they killed.

The PCs must help a recently-deceased friend find counsel for his trial.

A PC cannot be raised because he’s been deemed wicked. He has been granted an appeal, and he and the rest of the PCs must work to clear his name.