#bytopia

[justavulcan]

Airmark's Guide to Planar Vegetables: Shurrock Mercywood

The mobile gender of the Bytopian mercywood tree grows on Shurrock, although it will thrive anywhere it has access to rich soil with adequate drainage; it will even relocate itself to such areas if the immobile gender, dothion mercywood, is found there. Unlike its counterpart, shurrock mercywood is stout and strong, although it has the same metallic silver bark with bronze stretch marks.

Built on roughly a humanoid body plan save for their immense size, shurrock mercywood has adapted to climb mountains and roam far and wide in pursuit of good locations to release its pollen payload in spring. While so doing, they often find themselves at odds with local predators, including several forms of wood-boring beetle and a handful of moths.

Their primary defense mechanism, aside from their great strength, is the incapacitating allergic reaction that their pollen provokes in most living things. Capable of producing far more of the powdery yellow pollen than necessary for reproductive purposes, mercywood often make use of it to halt attackers in their tracks by nonlethal means and make their escape while their would-be attacker chokes.

Mercywood's name is largely indicative of its temperament; provided they demonstrate no hostile intent, shurrock mercywood trees are amenable to rescuing lost explorers, protecting them from wild beasts and natural disaster, and generally being of aid where they can. Rough of temperament and wooden of wit, they are not communicative to those they aid, but their intent is often clear by their exaggerated, slow movements in the presence of smaller creatures.

[nicthedm]

New video up on my channel covering the Adamantine dragon.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPcFsxfrenLv_Nx0oxSmBhA?view_as=subscriber

[daemons-and-deathrays]

Ramon's Guide to Realms of Goodness

Ramon’s Guide to Realms of Goodness

At long last, an expedition I can embark on without fear of certain demise at every corner!  Salvation, at last?  Perhaps.  As it is, several forces and powers would practically salivate at the chance of stopping my addle-coved quest to document taboos and forlorn places.  I’m surprised The Mists, as the denizens of Dread call them, haven’t taken me back and rubbed me out of planar existence. …

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[justavulcan]

Airmark's Guide to Planar Vegetables: Dothion Mercywood

The non-mobile gender of mercywood grows primarily on Dothion, although it can be transplanted and grow successfully on other planes provided rich soil with adequate drainage.  This tree is recognizable by its metallic silvery bark; thin trunks growing in clusters from the same root base; and green leaves that show a golden tint in direct sunlight.  Where the bark has stretched, bronze streaks can be seen below the outermost layer of bark.  Dothion mercywood is not suitable for construction, as it rarely grows taller than fifteen feet and never wider around than the average humanoid arm.  Dothion mercywood is the fruiting gender of its species, dependent on Shurrock mercywood’s success at finding a place to release its pollen across the inter-layer gap.  While the flowers of the Dothion tree are large, silvery, and appealing in their own right, the fruit they bear, if properly pollinated, is both attractive to the eye and to the tongue, being a small, rich green fruit in size between a standard humanoid fist and an eyeball.  Properly fertilized, these fruits can serve as components in the creation of all manner of healing items, most famously healing potions.

[justavulcan]

The Heavens Are Empty: Celestial Herald

The being standing before you has perfect dark skin from the shoulders down; it’s clad in loose, colorful robes and bears a trumpet in one hand and a javelin in the other.  It has four feathered wings coming out of its back, but most shocking is its total lack of a head; instead, it has a white flame, which oddly casts no light; surrounding the flame are two wheels covered in eyes, of many different colors and sorts.  Its voice is majestic and smooth.

Celestial Heralds are the ambassadors of the Upper Planes.  Tied to no particular god nor court of the realms of good, heralds instead serve as their name suggests wherever they are needed.  More than capable of protecting themselves with their trumpet and javelin, Heralds only seek to deliver messages that must be sent in person, alert mortals of the coming of greater emissaries of cosmic Good, and serve as courtiers to those same greater celestial powers.

Few things motivate Heralds to true combat; as their duties usually involve delivering a message, escape is often their higher priority if their own personage is threatened.  Typically a Horn Blast will be sufficient incentive to leave them be, but their high fly speed and returning javelin mean that if they are pursued or circumstances force them to defend themselves with more than a hasty departure, they are sufficiently equipped to do so.  Like many celestials, Celestial Heralds are well-intentioned and can be convinced to aid those truly in need, although their mandate may come first depending on the urgency of the message.  They have a special affinity for couriers, messengers, and heralds, however, and may go out of their way or even delay their own delivery if they see a like-purposed mortal in distress.

Celestial Heralds can be found throughout the Upper Planes, although they are more common on the planes further from Elysium as these planes have more contact with the forces of Law, Chaos, and ultimately, Evil.

[justavulcan]

The Heavens Are Empty Masterpost

To provide easy access to any who would want to use the celestials I made for this project.  Please let me know how it goes if you use any of these creatures, I’d love playtest notes.

Celestial Herald; CR 7; a messenger for when Sending won’t do it.  Excels at ranged and skirmish combat with a magical returning javelin.

Apiarian Worker; CR 1; a bee-like celestial with a healing death burst ability.  Skilled at both ranged and melee combat, particularly in groups.

Apiarian Queen; CR 5; a bee-like celestial civic leader.  Ranged combatant, deadliest when her workers are with her to allow the use of her legendary actions.

Prism Heron; CR 2; a bird with a radiant tail, native to the shores of Mt. Celestia.  Skirmish attacker with a blinding tail attack.

Kinderwachter; CR 1; a child’s guardian taking the form of a stuffed animal.  Good at protecting a target, alone would rather flee than fight.

Bariaur and Bariaur Defender; CR 2 and 4; ram-centaur celestial nomads.  Both skilled charge-attackers with ranged options and many attack types.

Celestial Witness; CR 3; spy, observer, and sometime defender for the heavens.  Flying battlefield controller and debuffer.

Guiding Beetle; CR 4; beetle-like travelers who seek and aid the lost.  Slow but equipped with good defenses and many ranged attack and control spells.

Brux Lightstalker; CR 5; forest warden and hunter in the Beastlands.  Ambush and skirmish attacker with a light-blend ability.

Pax Pollinator; CR 4; conflict-averse heavenly field lurker.  Multiple ways to nonlethally discourage or end combat, a radiant pollen attack for when the enemy won’t take the hint.

Mudsinger; CR 6; salamander-like patron of the arts and mountain wanderer.  Likes to either mix it up in melee or stick to long-range combat, depending on how deadly it wants the fight to be.

Celestial Introspector; CR 7; heavenly therapist and advisor on mortal affairs.  Can actually make you fight yourself, has touch attacks that prevent movement.

Belieren Warden; CR 6; steward of the Upper Planes’ prison on Elysium.  Skirmish attackers specializing in isolating single enemies and locking down their foes.

Winterbird; CR 9; icy stormbird that rescues those in frozen reaches.  Skirmisher with a protective aura of heavy obscuring winter weather.

Tarn Steward; CR 25; elephantine guardian of the Glass Tarn and its prophetic powers.  Powerful charger and melee combatant with many options to shape the battlefield and move enemies around.

[justavulcan]

The Heavens Are Empty: Winterbird

This colossal avian figure is a study in contradictions: colored icy bluish-white underneath and a deeper, more piercing sapphire blue on top, it’s surrounded by a howling gale of snow, sleet, and wind.  However, as it draws closer, you feel warm, as it lowers itself to permit you to climb on its back.  In your mind, you hear, “Best not to die here in the mountains.  Let me take you back to your hearth.”

Winterbirds are formed from not one mortal soul after death, but many: specifically, those who perished trying to save others from the cold, be they mountain guides or sailors on a rescue mission in the icy extremes of their oceans.  This instinct drives them still, as they travel the planes seeking those trapped or in dire need of rescue from an icy death.

Winterbirds are ill-equipped to handle any foe resistant to winter’s chill, but they are more than willing to serve a support role by healing allies, bogging foes down in their Touch of the Blizzard, or providing life-saving Endure Elements at opportune times.  When these measures fail, they content themselves snatching up their prey and dropping them from a great height.  Under other circumstances, against foes not inured to the cold, they dive and shriek like the hunting birds they so resemble, skirmishing like a furious storm on the wing.

Winterbirds are most at home in the snowy upper reaches of Ysgard, Mt. Celestia, and Shurrock in Bytopia, but can be found wandering any of the planes, always in their preferred icy mountain or tundra climate.

[justavulcan]

The Heavens Are Empty: Kinderwachter

This small child’s stuffed animal somehow radiates protectiveness from the arms of the small dragonborn child that holds it.

Kinderwachter protect children in dire circumstances.  Fashioned by celestial powers in a form comforting to those they’re meant to protect, these guardian spirits are sent to children who live in unsafe circumstances and take steps to see their charges to a place of both emotional and physical safety.  Capable of shielding their charges from violence, providing shelter, and even easing injuries and feeding their charge, Kinderwachter are some of the Upper Planes’ best agents in combating cruelty to children.

Kinderwachter’s sole form of self-defense or active discouragement to attackers is a warding thought, a low-level psychic warning that carries the possibility of serious harm for those who cannot be discouraged by demonstrating the doll’s willingness to take the child’s punishment.  They rarely use this attack other than in defense of their charges; if attacked while on their own, kinderwachter seek to flee their attackers or convince them violence is unnecessary rather than fight.  Only if cornered will a kinderwachter without a charge to defend make use of their Warding Thought.

Kinderwachter are usually created on Bytopia, where they take care of kids whose petitioner-families seek out the challenges of Shurrock.  However, they are often sent on missions throughout the multiverse, and can be found in almost any environment.