Something unusual from me today, but very much a part of what I find most enjoyable
about spelljammer campaigns, presenting a traditional, fairly well-known monster
species in an entirely new, cosmic and zany way that the players will simply never expect,
but thoroughly enjoy, and exploit. So today, I present the Space
Myconids and the Unreal Market as well as some suggestions for what you can find there
and how it operates across the multiverse. Myconids, as we know, are mushroom people,
they are generally pacifists who are only really interested in making comfortable
environments where they can establish their own sorts of fungus ecosystem and live in peace to
multiply and expand their fungus world, like the Beavers of the Underdark, they secrete
organic substances into water flows and use the power of nature to carve out new caverns
or connected existing caverns to create enormous zones with their own fungus forests, shallow bogs,
deltas and sweltering chasm waterfalls chocked with teeming varieties of unique flora and fauna.
Thanks to myconids, most of the Underdark of the world of Toril is able to support just as much
life as you can find on the surface world and it's the root cause of such a massive proliferation of
unique life forms on that planet, along with magic and odd geology, massively accelerated
evolution and the influence of parallel dimensions, gods and who knows what else.
Out in the vastness of space, the myconids thrive, one of the races of beings you are liable to find
just about anywhere that they can exist, which includes a LOT of asteroid belts. In reality,
asteroid belts are not like you see in the movies, the rocks and dust of at least a planet is there,
sure, but scattered so wide its unlikely that anything is going to be flying very close together
and navigation through them is not a matter of skill, just risk assessment, you either get hit
by a space rock, or you don't. In fantasy space, asteroid belts are completely different and we
just accept this as being much more interesting. So, space myconids mostly hunt through the
churning maelstrom of the dense asteroid fields, flying in great big spaceship puff balls that
literally bounce off the asteroids until they detect any significant water or ice nearby, some
more advanced colony ships will carry their own water source, such as a magical item that links to
the elemental plane of water. They will create an air tight and hydrated chamber in a large asteroid
and from that central spot, usually the new base of their myconid sovereign, they will lash
other asteroids to the centre and build a larger and larger cavern biosphere network that they
can enrich with more and more different forms of life, all selected to work together harmoniously,
recycling everything, just harvesting minerals and growing their population, joining their minds with
the sovereign and contemplating the fact they exist and the multiverse is pretty cool. As
you can imagine, huge populations of myconids can exist undisturbed out in space for eons
and their psychic footprints in the astral plane, shadowfell and feywild can be huge, I mean, why do
you think there always seems to be unusually large fungus in fantasy settings? It's the myconids man!
Hallucinogenic spores are the other thing myconids are infamous for, and its this aspect that I am
going to have some fun with... now imagine a marketplace that, like the Matrix, exists only
to those who are plugged into it, in the case of the myconids, they somehow generate a layer of
planar existence that is only real to those who are hallucinating heavily, and it doesn't have
to be from the myconid's own spores, so random drugged folks may accidentally find themselves in
this unreal world like they just slipped through a portal into the feywild, but its even weirder,
because this is not based on fairy tales, its based on people tripping their asses off so,
you can literally run into anything in the unreal market and the myconids who generate the place
just enjoy lazing about in reality while their minds are instead drifting around and interacting
with the market and all its more or less permanent residents and constant throng of visitors.
Is you brain starting to fizz with the possibilities? Well,
grab yourself a tasty beverage, I am about to dive into it and just inspire you until I run
out of breath or your head explodes... here we go. first of all, its important to point out to your
players that they can willingly fail a saving throw at any time if they choose to do so,
then, whatever means that you have established to totally intoxicate their characters can go ahead
without much danger of splitting up the party, I mean, it can be fun to have half the players
interacting with the market while the other players are just having their characters deal with
the other half of the adventuring group seeming to be going crazy in a very specific and shared
hallucination for however long it lasts. When the characters snap out of it and suddenly all sorts
of new gear materializes out of nowhere, quite functional, but not actually real... that can be
a lot of fun for the players to roleplay and if they want that, by all means, go for it. Adding
dramatic tension by having some antagonists show up while half the party is at quite a disadvantage
can be the source of some fantastic drama. So as the hallucinations kick in,
reality always seems to distort distances, rooms once familiar now seem too large or
much too small, and stairwells can seem to be uneven, stretched or curved when they are
actually straight, at the same time, the body will not respond normally, the gasping reflex might
shut down so a drugged person can operate normally even while they hold their breath to the point of
passing out, they can perform pretty amazing feats of strength and speed in short bursts, lifting
as though they were a size category larger, making a free dash action for a few rounds,
ignoring an exhaustion level or two, jumping half again over what they normally would be able to,
that sort of thing, but of course, also usually on an emotional and mental roller coaster that is
flying off the rails into .... what? Suddenly, appearing like
mist or emerging from turned corners as though they had always been just out of sight,
strange shop fronts and market stalls appear and start to cluster in clumps, merging together over
distorted perspectives into a random kaleidoscope of an exotic market, nothing is normal,
there will be plumes of tasty smoke and meal fumes from a floating BBQ kitchen tethered to a sleeping
astral whale, there is a crew of flumphs in chef hats, armed with razor-sharp clever spatulas,
slicing the regenerating tentacles off an arboreal Decapus, snarling and hissing from its sturdy
cage, the chefs fry the squirmy but undeniably fresh and delicious meat with a variety fungus,
insects and a light, fish egg batter. In a cloud of musty dust a forlorn and clearly undead
Holyphant flutters by with tattered golden fur now kind of rusty looking, it apologetically holds up
a little sign advertising "Smiths Portals and Walls" and an established followed by
an infinity symbol. The holyphant will hover a moment expecting to get slapped out of the way,
then its murky eyes will show a little excitement, before it attempts to spin its little sign around
in an entertaining way, only for the sudden motion to cause the end of its trunk to fall off,
causing a sad and awkward halt to the attempt as the creature just stares
at the tip of its trunk on the ground. A bustling group of loud koa-toa in Hawaiian shirts,
straw hats, sunglasses and carrying little cages with very small and incredibly angry,
red and green-skinned Grung will pass by, and now more and more of the crowd starts to appear,
walking, running, floating and slithering past each other in random directions, all of them
carrying random and weird things if one takes a moment to just stare at them, but, the crown sort
of flows in certain directions and the characters are only really staggering around in a series of
figure-eight circles, looking at stuff and being jostled by things that are not there for those not
wildly intoxicated. Pupils as wide open as a hunting cat, the player characters will find
all manner of shop fronts, from the riveted metal plates and porthole windows of a submarine
taxidermist that can create partially animated zombie skins for truly realistic creature displays
to the fumes of perfumes and delightful music coming from a huge tent of billowing silks,
inside a number of sophisticated Cloud Giant art critics are having a booming argument over
a representational art performance piece, namely, a jumbled edifice made up of many different
creatures, a medusa, a cockatrice, a basilisk, some sort of metal cow, a brass golem and various
others, all turned to stone at the exact moment they were all grappling with each other in a big
wrestlemania pile, it is for sale, as are the rest of the equally weird artworks on display, but the
prices are in huge, dinner plate-sized cloud giant coins. One might descend a curved and broad set
of steps into a chamber almost identical to jabba the hutt's palace, except its an old master Neogi,
vastly bloated with squirming offspring inside it, holding court from its throne bowl, full of slops,
partly eaten offspring and its own oozing sweat, while neogi traders and slavers cluster around
little tables, also located on the walls and ceiling, as they can climb around on these
surfaces easily with their spidery limbs. This is a very nasty place that sells cursed items,
slaves and horrible services to horrible creatures... they will not even attempt to
trade with most player characters unless it is to trade magic items and gems for other magic items,
exotic spell components and information on how to get to different places around the multiverse, the
neogi are actually pretty reasonable when it comes to prices, but asking for a refund will probably
get you horribly murdered. Normally the Neogi will deal with the mindflayers, who will then
deal with the Arcane, as the Arcane will not deal directly with the Neogi, so the Neogi are used to
deals where the player characters can go and do a deal on their behalf, just so that trade can carry
on despite the severe moral and ethical failings of the vile and evil Neogi, they really do put the
Ferengi of star trek to shame, D&D spelljammer may contain the potential to buy basically
anything from such a free and chaotic market, but just be warned, don't go down dark paths that
players will end up feeling very uncomfortable hearing about, imply that the worst kind of
things are also found here... do not SHOW those things. Evil creatures operate in the shadows,
its the bored and vastly wealthy cosmic wastrels that like to put on shocking and edgy displays
of vulgarity. The players will quickly learn to avoid the overly wealthy and stay away from
places that clearly don't suit them, such as a pathway made completely of frozen spiderwebs and
doorways that look like screaming demon maws, curtains made of actual flames and bubbling
pools of strange, burping fluids, surrounded by neon arrows promising loose slots and all
you can eat free buffets, even if it turns out the place is a casino located originally on the
elemental plane of water and run by hilarious Mud Dolphins who have the natural ability to
shapeshift their mud body into anyone the exact likeness of anyone they meet, except made of mud.
Deep cracks in the ground will contain an entire market for flying tiny creatures of all kinds,
all buzzing around amid crisscrossing ropes with brightly coloured paper lanterns and stalls
hanging off the sheer walls as far as the eye can see. A Beerfest of some kind may slowly and
loudly crawl by, literally riding a huge bed of sentient moss, the honking of the pipes and horns,
clinking of tankards and smell of roasted meals will be like a slowly moving landmark as the
player characters race around trying to find something good before whatever drugs they are on
wear off, typically this will be about an hour of real-time, but for two to four hours after
they visit the market, they will still be pretty wacked, suffering the poisoned condition for that
time and not wanting to do much of anything other than ride out the lingering effects,
drink, eat something and try to rest. To those who are not drugged or enchanted to be able to
see the Unreal market, it will seem like suddenly the intoxicated folks will have whatever items
they got hold of in the market to materialize on their person as they lose the ability to
see it or interact with it any more. These items are functional, but they are not made of actual
matter, if cut in half, they will appear to be made of some blank, plastic-like substance that
is completely inert and slowly dissolves away when exposed to normal reality, so, unreal items can
never be repaired or replaced and make no physical sense, they just do what they do and vanish when
spent or broken, leaving nothing behind, because they were not actually real, they just acted real.
It doesn't make any sense, it's not supposed to, but your players will absolutely love it.
Now, here is the fun part, on the comment section below this video, I would greatly
appreciate you dreaming up any weirdo sort of venue you can think of, as something that could
be encountered and interacted with in the Unreal Market, think about the venue as an environment,
think of the beings that made or run it, think of the goods, the customers and the impact anything
found there could have on a game world... so, workably insane is what we are aiming for. This
is the most exotic marketplace one can possibly encounter, lets's make it epic shall we? Build
a real resource for anyone visiting this video in the future, put your mark on it, become part
of something really internet legendary, take your time, this video isn't going anywhere,
play test some ideas with your group, and share the best anecdotes with us back here.
If you want to really kick things up a notch, you can turn the unreal market
into a transitive plane, sort of the border zone between the feywild and the far realm,
it exists both nowhere and everywhere, so it's possible to hallucinate wildly,
enter the market, and step out again on literally another world entirely from where and perhaps
even when you started, and it may be possible to encounter future or past versions of your
own player characters in the market from other points in their adventuring career,
but they can't talk to each other without hurling each other back out of the market,
the experience somehow always killing their buzz and bringing them crashing back into reality.
The possibilities are endless. Another spin on this sort of environment is purely
illusionary terrain and creatures created to live within those illusions, or places that
exist only in a semi-real state, one concept I recently used was an ethereal deep freeze,
that contained and preserved objects taken from the border ethereal plane, these objects
are memory echoes of objects in the real world the ethereal plane is overlapping, often these
are objects that once existed but got removed and destroyed and now only exist as memory, so, ghost
terrain essentially. Now, if you imagine a market attraction that contains the last of their kind,
a collection from across the multiverse of the etheric echos of creatures that no longer exist,
monuments of lost civilisations, also, very well contained and controlled undead examples of such
creatures, no living examples of them exist any more, everything is unique, never to be
seen anywhere else, the last of their kind. I have some working plans around wizards who deliberately
stalk around the border ethereal plane nearby the most ancient and powerful creatures, hunting for
the oldest and most rare etheric echoes, they may capture ghosts for people as a quick bit of
side income, or even cause hauntings in order to scam a bit of income out of folks who don't have
their set of special skills. Also, you may encounter these ghost hunters as they
make emergency exists back into reality, followed by a vicious pack of ethereal marauders, stalkers
or philchers, neogi slavers, hungry mind flayers, an agitated phase spider colony or some such.
Oh yes, Smith's Portals and Walls, established infinity symbol, this is a multiverse wide chain
of outlets that provide planar travel experts who deal with getting from one place to another,
and also in stopping things from other places entering where they are not welcome,
they don't hire themselves out as treasure seekers or rescue teams, but individual outlet staff are
free to take on any work that interests them, it's a pretty well-established outfit with tons
of mysteries in the companies own history, for example, the reason it has an infinite
established date is that the universe the company was originally founded in, no longer exists,
thanks to time travellers rewriting reality several times and somehow stranding the company
in a self-sustaining temporal loop where no matter what, there is always a branch open somewhere,
everywhere, all the time, from the beginning to the end of time, everywhere. This means that the
staff employed by the company numbers somewhere in the trillions, the entire human species from the
dawn of our time could all currently be employed by the company, and they would still be hiring.
It's like the MacDonalds burger-flipping entry-level job of the multiverse, and yet,
also the most deadly, highly-skilled, resource-heavy organisations in the multiverse
that nobody really thinks too much about because the outlets are just so damned handy, if they
didn't exist, someone would have to invent them. And that is all this is folks, me inventing stuff
as I run my spelljammer campaign, it's far more than just flying ships and space hampsters,
welcome to a month of mayhem, my name is AJ Pickett, I make videos about existing roleplaying
game lore usually, as always, thanks for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon.