[D&Dish] The city built around the tarrasque.

[Thomas T]

I was inspired while reading about the tarrasque (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tarrasque.htm). Specificaly the bit about its regeneration.

<i>"Once apon a time a nation decided to end the threat of the tarrasque once and for all. An army was assembled, led by the greatest heroes of the age. Most importantly, a number of powerful magical weapons were created for the battle. The monster was lured into a tight canyon and the battle began.

"At terrible cost, the tarrasque was defeated. But not slain. It was impaled by fourteen Immovable Harpoons (like an immovable rod, but spikey), each attached to a thick adamantine chain sunk deep into the canyon walls by magic. The tarrasque was restrained.

"A fortress was built around the tarrasque, to watch over it. Every day it's watchers hack away at the tarrasque with powerful magic weapons to keep it weakened in case of escape. Even so, there are casualties as they misjudge its reach, or as it's angry thrashing causes rockfalls.

"Of course, being a powerful magical crearture, the tarrasque's blood, flesh and other body parts have certain useful properties. A side effect of keeping the tarrasque imprisoned like this was a neverending supply of powerful magical components. A city grew up around the fortress to house the various wizards, scholars and alchemists that came to exploit the tarrasque's bounty. Eventually, it was almost as if the neverending stream of tarrasque blood, flesh and bone was more important than imprisoning the beast itself."</i>

I'm picturing decadant nobles made immortal by their continuued consumption of tarrasque flesh. Warrior-butchers wielding vorpal greatswords to hack away at the tarrasque and channels cut into the stone underneath the beast to channel the valuable blood away. The tarrasque's distant screams and roars would be a continuous background noise for the people in the city, with "tarrasque-quakes" common. Almost an industry of ludicrously expensive magic items crafted from its body parts - tarrasquehide armour, tarrasquebone spears and potions and other alchemical miscellania of course.

You could play up the creepiness of the whole thing, maybe eating the flesh and blood of the tarrasque has unwanted side-effects. I'm thinking of tarrasque blood being analogous to the spice from dune - in this city the blood's used in just about everything and it has unusual effects on the populous.

Even with the tarrasque mostly restrained, getting close isn't a good idea and there'll be pretty frequent casualties amongst the butchers. Because of its reflective carapace, mnagic is a no go so it has to be someone getting in close with a big knife. Every now and then the chains will need to be re-planted to make sure they've not been loosened by the tarrasque's thrashing about - what fun that'll be.

And there's the whole hubris angle - maybe the pressure to cut away more and more of it lets it pull free of one or more of the immovable harpoons. And an inevitable tarrasque-worshipping cult that is covertly planning to free their god.

And if you want to play up the "tarrasque as force of nature" thing, maybe its imprisonment is throwing the natural order of things out of whack. The tarrasque is a necessary part of the ecosystem and plays "natural predator" to something really nasty. Without the tarrasque killing off the nasties every X years they've had time to grow into their adult, even nastier form.

I mean, come on; a fortress built around a chained godzilla who's constantly being butchered is dripping with adventure hooks and just plain cool.

[Dorsai]

I would soooo play in this setting.

[aprogressivist]

Very cool! :D

[Dulahan]

Whoa.

That is cool.

[Last Knight]

I would soooo play in this setting.
Likewise

[domino]

A+

[Belphanior]

I award this the Belphanior Seal of Approval. I'd play this. Hell, I'll run this.

[LeftWingPenguin]

Perhaps it's because I just saw Silent Hill last night, but I find this to be an intensely disturbing image--the idea of an entire industry grown up around the torture of an immortal being.

[Dorsai]

Perhaps it's because I just saw Silent Hill last night, but I find this to be an intensely disturbing image--the idea of an entire industry grown up around the torture of an immortal being.
Not just an industry, an entire economy.

[riotgearepsilon]

Super creepy, super awesome. I approve!

This is totally going in to the Aquarius setting.

[Moxiane]

I would soooo play in this setting.
Also.

[Thomas T]

Well, I've been a bit too negative and critical in threads lately. I felt that I should contribute something constructive.

[AmesJainchill]

Needless to say...*Epic Yoink*

This is a cool idea.

[Simple Man]

Dude. That rocks. I thought of a similar thing with an ancient red dragon once, but they don't regenerate like a tarrasque. In my version the city harnessed the dragon's breath weapon chemicals, creating flying ships, gas carriages, etc.

But I definately like the tainting part of eating the tarrasque flesh.

I'm even thinking the city should end up with a religion/cult based on tarrasque worship, while there's a faction that split off and kill it once and for all.

;)

[Nelzie]

Man oh man. That is certainly an interesting idea...

Perhaps I could slap something like this deep into my gameworld at the farthest reaches of the farthest reaches.

[damion4242]

This definatly has cool points.

I heartily approve. I would so play thing...

Although you would think eventually they would have machines or something to hack
bits off.

Like a giant grinder attacked to each limb.

What if the Tarrasque adapted to it's predicament,

Even worse...what if it liked it.

[Simple Man]

If the tarrasque loses a limb or body part, the lost portion regrows in 1d6 minutes (the detached piece dies and decays normally). The creature can reattach the severed member instantly by holding it to the stump.

Which begs the question: If you cut the tarrasque down the center, which half would live?

[MonsterMash]

pure brilliance

[Simple Man]

What if eating the flesh and/or drinking the blood of the tarrasque was a mortally addictive process? Meaning that whoever did it could never leave the city, because they would (let's say) go up one age category for every day they didn't eat the flesh until they die. They are also immune to the Fearsome Presence of the tarrasque, and while the tortured screams would be unnerving for anyone entering the town, they would be commonplace for residents.

What sort of emotional side effects would the eating/drinking of the tarrasque cause? I'd say probably more emotional outbursts (mebbe even bipolar disorder) and increased time sleeping (as the tarrasque usually hibernates for decades).

[Thomas T]

Also:

Neighbouring nations increasingly uneasy with the idea that <i>The frikkin' tarrasque!</i> is being kept in a cage next door. Since they're not benefitting from it's imprisonment - in fact they're particularly unhappy about the great advantage it gives the tarrasque's guardians - and there's the chance of it breaking free, they're unanimously in favour of putting the monster down while they have the opportunity

Eventually, they're going to decide to send an army to beseige the city and try and do the job themselves. And a seige is another great opportunity for the tarrasque's bonds to be damaged and for it to break free.

I like the idea of scholar-butchers, with this great body of lore based on vivsecting the tarrasque. Laboratories wallpapered with speculative anatomical diagrams and white-bearded sages in blood-spattered aprons debating over the tarrasque's physiology. Planning out where to take the next cuts and where the most alchemicaly useful body parts are.

[Snowblind]

A bit like Jade Empire.

[Simple Man]

A bit like Jade Empire.

Ah yes, the waters of the empire pouring forth from the souless-but-immortal Water Dragon

[Last Knight]

Not just an industry, an entire economy.
Not just an economy, but an entire way of life... a culture, dependent upon the imprisonment and vivisection of an immortal being.

[damion4242]

I like the idea of scholar-butchers, with this great body of lore based on vivsecting the tarrasque. Laboratories wallpapered with speculative anatomical diagrams and white-bearded sages in blood-spattered aprons debating over the tarrasque's physiology. Planning out where to take the next cuts and where the most alchemicaly useful body parts are.


Might as well go a step further. Use it as a power source. Maybe there is a mill that is turned by this limb getting chopped off an regrowing every d6 minutes.




Maybe....one day it stops regenerating. But it still produces blood. Do they kill it when they have a chance, or do they keep it for the blood?

[knightsky]

*swipe*

I am sooo using this in my C&C campaign...

[Last Knight]

There's a thought - tap an artery, use it to turn a wheel or a turbine. Like a hydroelectric dam...

[OldSkoolGeek]

Y'know, I remember something similar to this being posted. The bit that stuck out in my mind about that post was the machine used keep the Tarrasque down, namely huge machines with adamantine tips that regularly pierced the creature.

I believe the actual description was "imagine huge 'drinky birds' with adamantine beaks poking the Tarrasque at regular intervals".

[Thomas T]

Then there's the possibility of people involved in the original capture still being around.

Maybe the mage-smith that designed the immovable harpoons had expected the tarrasque to be killed once it was immobilised. He's apalled at what's been done and now spends most of the day drinking away his memories in cheap bars. People whisper rumours about who he used to be, but mostly they know him as the sad case that always has to be pushed out of the door at closing.

A warrior that planted one of the harpoons in the tarrasque is a celebrity - manipulated into position by some of the powers that be to put a ncie face on things. At the yearly celebration of the monster's capture, he makes a ceremonial cut in its hide - to general applause. Listening to some of the propaganda, you'd think he brought the beast down single-handedly.

Others have moved on in their lives, adventuring in far-away parts. maybe even rising to positions of power elsewhere. The return of one or more of the original heroes could create quite a stir, especially if they decide that they're not happy with what's being done with their legacy. The city's rulers would have a vested interest in making sure that <i>their</i> pet hero is the only one around.

[OldSkoolGeek]

Might as well go a step further. Use it as a power source. Maybe there is a mill that is turned by this limb getting chopped off an regrowing every d6 minutes.
More efficiently, the lopped limbs are further lopped and used as timber for furnaces.

[Last Knight]

Not very efficient - flesh doesn't produce much heat, and requires a great deal to cause it to combust.

However...

meat as a food staple for the town, bones for construction/manufacturing weapons/artifacts/&c?

[Keyes]

What if this is history repeating itself? Long, long, long ago, the tarrasque was captured, just as now, and only escaped (levelling the city in the process) after the nobles became so corrupted by the beast's blood that they got stupid and sloppy.

The former nobles, their home destroyed, became savage nomads. Over generations they've grown even more monstrous.

What they called themselves then has been lost to history.

Now, all know them as trolls :cool:

[Christopher V. Brady]

This is soooooo cool! *Absconds with it!*

[damion4242]

meat as a food staple for the town, bones for construction/manufacturing weapons/artifacts/&c?

Well, I'll underestimate and say a limb weighs 600 pounds. (About 3 people). going by the pic here.

So, 4 limbs(+1 tail) gives you 5x600 = 3000 lbs of meat every 3 minutes....

So, that's 720 tons of meat a day.

That's ALOT.

[Thomas T]

Now, all know them as trolls :cool:
Ooh - I like that. The tarrasque's regeneration is <i>contagious</i>.

What if that was the tarrasque's "natural" life-cycle and trolls are baby tarrasques? Normally it takes millenia for the tarrasque "infection" to take root in a species, but the continuous consumption of tarrasque flesh and blood has accellerated the process in some people (half-troll template).

And - as you say - trolls are actually the remains of the great race that once ruled the world, but who's civilization was destroyed by some unknown disaster *wink wink*

[Thomas T]

Well, I'll underestimate and say a limb weighs 600 pounds. (About 3 people). going by the pic here.

So, 4 limbs(+1 tail) gives you 5x600 = 3000 lbs of meat every 3 minutes....
You couldn't actually take that much meat off without letting it get loose though. You wouldn't want it to have even a single limb free. I imagine it being more long the lines of tearing off strips of hide, hunks of tail-meat, cutting away the bicep and so on. A balancing act between keeping the tarrasque critically injured and leaving its body structurally sound enough that it can't just tear itself off the immovable harpoons.

[Lighthill]

Neighbouring nations increasingly uneasy with the idea that <i>The frikkin' tarrasque!</i> is being kept in a cage next door. Since they're not benefitting from it's imprisonment - in fact they're particularly unhappy about the great advantage it gives the tarrasque's guardians - and there's the chance of it breaking free, they're unanimously in favour of putting the monster down while they have the opportunity

Eventually, they're going to decide to send an army to beseige the city and try and do the job themselves. And a seige is another great opportunity for the tarrasque's bonds to be damaged and for it to break free.

Put it down? Why would you put down the greatest economic resource in the world? Instead, maybe they try to caputure it for themselves! But moving the Tarrasque clearly isn't feasible, so instead, they try to take over the kingdom!

Also, maybe they decide war isn't the way to go: the side with all the Tarrasque-derived magic items will have a natural advantage in a head-on confrontation. A siege won't work; the beseiged city can live forever on Tarrasque kebabs. Even if they could break in, they're smart enough to realize the risk of weakening the Tarrasque's bonds. Finally, rumor has it that the Decadent and Mentally Unhinged Nobles of the city have threatened to release the frickin' Tarrasque as a scorched-earth tactic if it looks like they're losing.

No, instead, the neighboring countries decide to subvert the city from within. But how?

[Thomas T]

No, instead, the neighboring countries decide to subvert the city from within. But how?
Well, that's the PCs' job isn't it :D.

[gloomhound]

What if this is history repeating itself? Long, long, long ago, the tarrasque was captured, just as now, and only escaped (levelling the city in the process) after the nobles became so corrupted by the beast's blood that they got stupid and sloppy.

The former nobles, their home destroyed, became savage nomads. Over generations they've grown even more monstrous.

What they called themselves then has been lost to history.

Now, all know them as trolls :cool:

You have just made the coolest idea ever, even better!

[Marco]

I *like* it!!
-Marco

[Simple Man]

Subbed for when I get Eberron and convert it to True20...

;)

[Kwitchit]

Another idea for a tarrasque-based adventure:
The PCs are fairly low-level. They are summoned in front of the Duke, who tells them that he has received news that the Beast of the End of Days is awake, and heading for their city. However, he has an idea.
His court wizards have enchanted a pebble so that the tarrasque will wish to be near it at all times. They must take it to the enemy city, and drop it somewhere in the centre, preferably down a well. The tarrasque's looking for it will do the rest. When the tarrasque eats the pebble, it will act normally until it goes back to sleep- but it will be in the middle of the enemy city!

Looks like a win-win situation. Destroy your enemies, and save your city. However, there's one problem- once the PCs pick up the pebble, the tarrasque will be chasing them. It moves at an average of just over 30 feet per round, and it never stops. They have a sizeable head start, but there are obstacles...

[Desert_Ranger]

This is awesome.

[Halafax]

It's a very evocative setting. Not that every campain needs it, but there doesn't seem to be much room for typical dungeon delving. Unless, of course, there really is a link between consumption of the creature and the trolls (or even other creatures) of that world. The very ground beneath the city is slowly being riddled with the tunnels of it's spawn, called forth by the presence of their progenitor. That would provide underground warrens full of foes. Maybe the most corrupted of the nobles are already aware of the danger, but supress that knowledge because they have fallen under the sway of the Tarrasque themselves.

Shade of chaos corruption for warhammer fantasy, or even Lovecraft's "shadow over Insmouth".

[stack0v3rflow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xipe_Totec

Xipe Totec
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Aztec mythology, Xipe Totec ("our lord the flayed one") was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, the west, disease, spring, goldsmiths and the seasons. He flayed himself to give food to humanity, symbolic of the maize seed losing the outer layer of the seed before germination. Without his skin, he was depicted as a golden god.

Annually, slaves were selected as sacrifices to Xipe Totec. These slaves were carefully flayed to produce a nearly whole skin which was then worn by the priests during the fertility rituals that followed the sacrifice. Some accounts indicate that a thigh bone from the sacrifice was defleshed and used by the priest to touch spectators in a fertility blessing. Paintings and several clay figures have been found which illustrate the flaying method and the appearance of priests wearing flayed skins.

[Lord Liaden]

That is a magnificently evocative basis for a tarrasque-worshipping cult. And of course the sacrifices don't have to be symbolic as in the real world; the tarrasque's hungry maw is right nearby.

[Tog]

What if the Tarrasque adapted to it's predicament,

Even worse...what if it liked it.

There was a situation like this in that "Vile" issue of Dungeon awhile back - a case with an ogre mage who had become an extreme masochist from years of being tortured & regenerating.

Of course, a situation like this would pretty much put an evil influence over the city, which would mean a tendency towards (lawful) evil alignments among its citizens.

What if they charged admission to the "harvestings"? Special spectator boxes to watch the tarrasque get carved from... obviously that's tending off into "Book of Vile Darkness" territory

[Nelzie]

There was a situation like this in that "Vile" issue of Dungeon awhile back - a case with an ogre mage who had become an extreme masochist from years of being tortured & regenerating.

Of course, a situation like this would pretty much put an evil influence over the city, which would mean a tendency towards (lawful) evil alignments among its citizens.

What if they charged admission to the "harvestings"? Special spectator boxes to watch the tarrasque get carved from... obviously that's tending off into "Book of Vile Darkness" territory

That could work and would make sense if the city had gone for many, many, many years holding the Tarrasque down and fell into extreme decadence.

There's lots of things that could be done with that.

If the blood can change a man. What would the blood do to worms and insects? Surely they don't collect every last drop of the blood, some is spilled into the pit and later into the streets as they carve up the meat for food.

Maybe they start to get "dangerous" in their taunting of the Tarrasque. They let one arm regrow and let it be free in the stadium for "Gladiators" to do battle with. So not only is it a harvesting time, but also a bloodsport.

[Lord Liaden]

You know, one often hears criticism of various "D&Disms" that are part of the game's unique fantasy subgenre: overpowered magic, casual return from death, obsession with monsters and treasure, etc. IMO this is a sterling example of taking some of those unique elements, extending them to their logical conclusion, and turning them into a great storytelling opportunity. :)

[Chiaroscuro]

This thread is why I love RPGnet. You guys rock.

Seriously.

[Lost Demiurge]

I am so stealing this for my homebrew.

YOINK!

[Tog]

Oh, there you go -

a twist on the old "Arena of Death" trope:

criminals in Tarrasque-ville are given a choice - instant painless death, or working on the tarrasque harvesting gang; possibly fatal but you get a small chance to live.

[Tog]

If the blood can change a man. What would the blood do to worms and insects? Surely they don't collect every last drop of the blood, some is spilled into the pit and later into the streets as they carve up the meat for food.

Makes me think of the "Scarred Lands" and the evil influence of the titan Kadum's blood on the flora and fauna of the Lands.

Hope the city doesn't have a wererat problem - immortal wererats could be a distraction at an inopportune moment, such as when the tarrasque starts to break loose.

[Last Knight]

Oh, there you go -

a twist on the old "Arena of Death" trope:

criminals in Tarrasque-ville are given a choice - instant painless death, or working on the tarrasque harvesting gang; possibly fatal but you get a small chance to live.
And the man power shortage has grown acute enough where this is the punishment for ALL criminals.

[Quintin Stone]

Put it down? Why would you put down the greatest economic resource in the world? Instead, maybe they try to caputure it for themselves! But moving the Tarrasque clearly isn't feasible, so instead, they try to take over the kingdom!

Also, maybe they decide war isn't the way to go: the side with all the Tarrasque-derived magic items will have a natural advantage in a head-on confrontation. A siege won't work; the beseiged city can live forever on Tarrasque kebabs. Even if they could break in, they're smart enough to realize the risk of weakening the Tarrasque's bonds. Finally, rumor has it that the Decadent and Mentally Unhinged Nobles of the city have threatened to release the frickin' Tarrasque as a scorched-earth tactic if it looks like they're losing.
It's the ultimate Doomsday Device. Mutually Assured Destruction. You'd have to be crazy to attack them!

[ShanG]

Nifty.

The idea of the Tarrasque being harvested so characters can Eat its Flesh and Drink its Blood put me in the mind of the 3.0 Malhavoc supplement Requiem for a God, which featured Godsflesh and Godsblood, and a number of rules for interacting with them which could be easily adapted to the Tarrasque. Items made from or infused with the Tarrasque's flesh and body, feats that require the character to imbibe the Tarrasque's flesh and gain special abilities, spells that require it as a component.

[Bobaloo]

One more vote for really cool and I'd like to fit it into my homebrew. (Well, if I really had an active homebrew.)

A couple more random ideas to add:

Knowing the temptation having such a beast accessible would be, Tarrasque worship is expressly outlawed in the city. The powers that be are trying to keep this situation on a scientific or academic basis, and know that a cult would lead to trouble. Of course this only keeps the cult underground. Has some deity or fiendish lord decided to grant divine spells/abilities on behalf of the Tarrasque, thus "proving the reality" of his divinity. Also, there would probably be a cadre of some sort constantly on the lookout to find and destroy these cultists.

There is also an ironic bent to illegal Tarrasque worship. All the imagery and symbolism for the city is tied to the Tarrasque. Tarrasque head shaped helmets for the city watch and guard. Tarrasque imagery on Shields/Armor and flags. A patriotism and zeal for the Tarrasque that nears worship.

[AmesJainchill]

It's the ultimate Doomsday Device. Mutually Assured Destruction. You'd have to be crazy to attack them!

Tarrasqueistan Politician: "A Doomsday Monster!

Once an enemy attacked, a cloud of Tarrasquium 2324 will surround the world, rendering it uninhabitable!"

Non-Tarrasqueistan Mage: "Of course, the point of such a monster is lost IF YOU DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT!"

TP: "...it was to be announced at the court appearance on Monday. You know how His Highness likes surprises."

[dmakovec]

That is phenomenal. My mind is currently bending in various ways to incorporate something similar into my Exalted game.

[Quintin Stone]

Mr. President, we cannot allow a Tarrasque gap!

[Bloodcat]

^^^ Dude, your avatar rocks!

This idea also sounds similar to the comic miniseries Empire, which is about a supervillain who actually WON.

The Superman equivalent was kept in a machine downstairs barely living where drugs were made out of his blood that kept the evil overlord's minions addicted and in check.

I might lift the basics of this idea for my short TMNT minicampaign that involves a world pandemic, zombies, and biomonsters. Maybe the source of the non manmade troubles is a Terrasque like creature kept in Area 51? Hmm...

[knightsky]

This thread just keeps getting better and better.

[cultureulterior]

If I was running this, I would change the (Base class, but Better PRCs) so that you could only enter them if you had eaten the flesh of the the tarrasque.

Something like:
Without Tarrasque : With ::
Ordinary Barbarian : Frenzied Berserker

Also, this is the best idea ever.

[damion4242]

What if some natural disaster threatens to engulf the city, like say a nearby volcano erupting?

It's a race to find something that will actuall kill it before it gets free. Everyone knows it will suvive the volcano easily.

What if they try to move it?. How the heck would you DO that?

Trial by Tarrasque: Criminals are fed into it's open maw. If they cut their way out, their innocent.

I must say, the technological applications are cool
Tarrasque flesh golems?
tarrasque flesh ships: If this ship is damaged, musculare action closes the hole


Maybe blood is weaker than flesh. Drinking it changes you, but not a as much. Weaker than the trolls, these are called...orcs. And, they can cross breed with humanity.

Perhaps the torment of the tarrasque has caused it to send out a psychic beacon...which causes it's troll progeny to join together into...it's replacement.

[SJE]

Wow- such a cool idea. I may even steal it for my Exalted game (Tarrasque= Behemoth)

SJE

[Aaron Peori]

Wow- such a cool idea. I may even steal it for my Exalted game (Tarrasque= Behemoth)

SJE

I know I am. But... what would you call the thing?

----------------
Epsilon

[SJE]

The Tarask?

:)

SJE

[Broken]

I know I am. But... what would you call the thing?

----------------
Epsilon

Tarramot?

[Christmas Ape]

This thread is in all ways awesome.

[damion4242]

Tarramot?


Perhaps it is a type of regenerating gemlord imprisoned under Gem. Pieces ripped off of it become gems! :)

[Pete Whalley]

Rock.


That is all.

[MadCow]

Don't forget to add clearly insane tarrasque rights activists as a major antagonist in the setting. :D

[Shane Cubis]

This idea slots neatly into the desert-y part of my campaign world, El-Nubis, which is as yet mostly undesigned. I'm looking to make it a bunch of city-states, a la Dark Sun, and a tarrasque-based one is completely fucking cool.

Throw in the desert trolls I want as a fallen race of former tarrasque-keepers, and it's perfect! (In my world, the trolls are starting to regain their intelligence thanks to a power from the Far Realm and it's proxy in trolldom, The Leader).

I reckon the tarrasque cultists would pierce themselves with tiny silver replicas of the immovable harpoons, and would probably flay themselves before bathing in it's blood. I'd give them red robes, few possessions, shaved heads and a heap of weird piercings.

Oh, and that fanatical look in the eye you see in crazy religious weirdos walking round major cities.

This forum rawks.

Shane Cubis

[Keyes]

This thread keeps inspiring me.. I love it!

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f38/keyescannon/coft.jpg

Tarrasque artwork by Claudio Prozas!

[Christopher V. Brady]

This thread keeps inspiring me.. I love it!

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f38/keyescannon/coft.jpg

Tarrasque artwork by Claudio Prozas!
DUDE! That' a great pic!!! WOW!

[Cerulean Lion]

Y'know, I remember something similar to this being posted. The bit that stuck out in my mind about that post was the machine used keep the Tarrasque down, namely huge machines with adamantine tips that regularly pierced the creature.

I believe the actual description was "imagine huge 'drinky birds' with adamantine beaks poking the Tarrasque at regular intervals".

OldSkoolGeek, I hereby award you one Creepy Image Point.

Cerulean (shudder) Lion.

[Broblawsky0]

This is a really, amazingly cool idea. Incidentally, from the AD&D 2e MM:

"Legend says that a great treasure can be extracted from the tarrasque's carapace. The upper portion, treated with acid and then heated in a furnace, is thought to yield gems (10d10 diamonds of 1,000 gp base value each). The underbelly material, mixed with the creature's blood and adamantite, is said to produce a metal that can be forged by master dwarven blacksmiths into 1d4 shields of +5 enchantment. It takes two years to manufacture each shield, and the dwarves aren't likely to do it for free."

So that's ~55,000 gp worth of gems and ~67000 gp worth of magical items per 1d6 minutes, assuming the carapace regenerates totally within 1d6 minutes.

[Shadowjack]

So that's ~55,000 gp worth of gems and ~67000 gp worth of magical items per 1d6 minutes, assuming the carapace regenerates totally within 1d6 minutes.

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus Christ! :eek:

That's... fifty million gold pieces per day. Eighteen fucking trillion gil per year. Not counting the market for bits and blood.

...hell, nobody's attacking this city. And not because the city's army is ridiculously overequipped, but because everyone else wants to know how they can get a piece of the action. Everyone.

[DarkDragonlord]

maybe you could call the people who eat the flesh and drink the blood of the ceature "tarra-humans" or men they could be the high class nobles or maybe they are used as front line soldiers. they gain the appearance of the tarrasque and gaining some little of power.

i also wonder if using tarrasque parts in spells would make the any more powerful.


just my two cents

[Archer]

"The lords of the city are blind! They cannot see that the Blessed Destroyer was sent by the gods, not as a scourge, but as a gift! A fire sweeps through the forest, and the tall and proud trees become naught but smoke. But when the smoke clears, new seeds sprout, growing into new trees, taller and prouder trees! So it is with the Destroyer! He is to sweep away the trash of the old world to make room for the new, as he has swept away worlds without number before. But the lords of the city keep the Blessed Destroyer chained like a beast! They break the cycle! Look around you! Can you not see the world is sinking into decadence and stagnation? The world thirsts for the Destroyer, but they deny it! They deny the gift! It falls to us! We must free the Blessed Destroyer from their pit of evil!"

- Last sermon of Brother Athol

[Lighthill]

That's... fifty million gold pieces per day. Eighteen fucking trillion gil per year. Not counting the market for bits and blood.

...hell, nobody's attacking this city. And not because the city's army is ridiculously overequipped, but because everyone else wants to know how they can get a piece of the action. Everyone.

Man, think what that will do to the economy! If the cartel that controls this thing doesn't put a pretty heavy cap on how many gems they actually extract and spend, they'll probably drive down local prices like you wouldn't believe. Either outcome is cool: in one case, you've got a bunch of guys who could get as many diamonds as they want to, but who keep the supply low to keep prices up.

This is depressingly like the real-world diamond market, so instead I'd go with option b: they don't restrict the supply at all. Diamonds are a regular construction material here. They're cheaper than cheese. They're considered garish. Muggers will knock you unconscious with a sock filled with diamonds.

Hm. What would be a valuable commodity in Tarrasquesville? What would the citizens get paid in? What could an enemy bribe them with?

[JDCorley]

Great idea. Once again showing that every damn thing in D&D is a plot hook if you look at it right.

[medivh]

Hm. What would be a valuable commodity in Tarrasquesville? What would the citizens get paid in? What could an enemy bribe them with?

Gold? Sell them gold for their diamonds.

Sell them your service. In return for diamonds and tarrasque blood that you can sell in your homeland, lend them your swordarm for a year and a half.

Sell them weapons powerful enough to hurt the tarrasque, or cut through the enchanted shields made from its hide.

Sell them pottery to carry the blood in.

Sell them salt or ice to keep the tarrasque-meat un-spoiled until it's to be consumed.

Sell them art. Sell them semi-precious stones, gems that aren't diamonds. Like amber, tigers eye, quartz.

Sell them grains, so they can eat something besides tarrasque-meat.

Sell them fine wines and precious silks

Sell them counter-siege equipment, so their half-immortal soldiers can sally forth against any army that lays siege against their fair city.

[egamad]

What would be a valuable commodity in Tarrasquesville? What would the citizens get paid in? What could an enemy bribe them with?

Fruits and vegetables. The staple food is Tarrasque meat, and the land is too infertile and dry to support farming. Grains can be bought cheaply, but an apple is a rare treat.

EDIT: Holy crap, what if you have crops of corn watered with frickin' Tarrasque blood!?

I love this idea so very very dearly.

[Belphanior]

This thread got even cooler when I wasn't looking! I quite like the idea of Prestige Classes requiring the blood of the Tarrasque. While the city's enemies are still mucking about with fighters and rogues, these people have proper Shadowdancers and Knight Protectors.

Man, this even explains D&D's hit points and the reason why people get better diplomats by killing people. Everybody is like a little mini-Destroyer in his or her own right by now. Impossible to kill with just a single arrow, shooting thunder from their hands, and built for the kill. Watch out goblins, the PCs are coming for you!

[Julius Sleazer]

Riffing off of what's been said already about diamonds, you could have a dwarven empire whose economy was largely based around their monopoly of the setting's largest diamond mine...until the lords of Tarrasqueville swamped the market with their own ill-gotten diamonds.

How will the dwarves seek revenge?

Will they outfit the other rivals of Tarrasqueville in the best weapons & armor that dwarvenkind can produce?

Will the dwarves, who have for centuries served as a barrier between the surface world and the monsters that lurk beneath, ally with the subterranean horrors in a desperate attempt to destroy the Tarrasque?

Will the dwarves tunnel a passage into the sewers of Tarrasqueville and then hire a party of adventurers to sneak in and slay the great beast?

[Lord Liaden]

I find it rather unsettling to visualize how royally p!ssed-off the tarrasque is going to be if and when it finally gets free.

Hiroshima will have nothing on Tarrasqueville.

BTW anyone have any better ideas on what would be an appropriate name for this burg?

[Thomas T]

BTW anyone have any better ideas on what would be an appropriate name for this burg?
I was thinking Taltasqa. That would be the name of the city as a whole, but specificaly the fortress - presumably meaning "prison of the tarrasque" in whatever the local language is. There would probably be common name for the city that didn't include the fortress.

[JohnBiles]

I know I am. But... what would you call the thing?

----------------
Epsilon

The mental image I get for putting this into Exalted is that a city manages to imprison and harvest the Kukla, given he's the closest thing to an unstoppable death machine like the Tarrasque.

[Thomas T]

Also:

Something that Taltasqa <i>really</i> needs is water. It's built on top of the canyon that the Tarrasque was defeated in - the site wasn't chosen for it's suitability for settlement. And as it happens, this means no easy sources of water nearby.

Though if you really wanted to pile the D&Disms high a corps of clerics could solve the problem. I'd be more inclined to say that there's magical public fountains created and maintained by the city's rulers, though it seems that there's never <i>quite</i> enough.

[Valfader]

Also:

Something that Taltasqa <i>really</i> needs is water. It's built on top of the canyon that the Tarrasque was defeated in - the site wasn't chosen for it's suitability for settlement. And as it happens, this means no easy sources of water nearby.

Though if you really wanted to pile the D&Disms high a corps of clerics could solve the problem. I'd be more inclined to say that there's magical public fountains created and maintained by the city's rulers, though it seems that there's never <i>quite</i> enough.
Given just how much magic they can get, I'd say it's be easy to throw a few portal to the elemental plane of water, invest in a lot of dacanters of endless water, or the like.

[gloomhound]

What if the majority of the best gems must be feed back to the Tarrasque or it sickens and it's meat no longer is edible. Might bring the amount of wealth down to a reasonable level. I think this is the best thread every posted here, even better than the nasty gamer thread.

[Nelzie]

I find it rather unsettling to visualize how royally p!ssed-off the tarrasque is going to be if and when it finally gets free.

Hiroshima will have nothing on Tarrasqueville.

BTW anyone have any better ideas on what would be an appropriate name for this burg?

The Tarrasque is naturally royally pissed off like that. There won't be a change in its natural behavior due to such imprisonment. The creature is just vile pure dang nasty soulless horrific eating and destruction machine.

[Thomas T]

Also:

The smell. This city would <i>reek</i>. As if the butchery and open-flowing blood wasn't enough, there's all the alchemical experiments going on. And just for a garnish, lets say that since the city wasn't planned, is built across two sides of a canyon with an immovable object in its centre, the sewage system is... inefficient.

If we say that the wind almost always blows from the same direction due to whatever local geography, then there can be a fun division of the city.

Breezeside (breeside?) gets the wind first. Its the high class district where all the well-to-dos live and only the most prestigious wizards and alchemists have their labs.

Stinkside suffers the worst of the smell. Since anyone that can afford it moves to breezeside, there's little incentive amongst the powers that be to improve the state of the stinkside sewers. It takes almost as long to get used to the smell as it does the sound of the tarrasque's rage.

And:

The immovable harpoons each have a different command word. The command words are considered state secrets, each recorded in different places in different ways. The people originally entrusted with these words are the ones that became the nascent city's rulers. To this day the 14 nobles in charge of the city are called word-bearers, and each seat's command word is a secret handed down from iteration to iteration.

Even given the secrecy of the harpoons' command words, there are no chances taken. Only slaves with their tongues cut out are used as workers around the tarrasque. Before each butcher is allowed to take up their enromous flensing sword, their mouths are stuffed with cotton and tight bandages wound across their mouths. Only the most trusted people will be allowed near the tarrasque without similar measures.

[Valfader]

To add to Thomas T's post, the wordbearers are constantly wearing various magical amulets against scrying, mindreading, and the like.

[Christopher V. Brady]

To add to Thomas T's post, the wordbearers are constantly wearing various magical amulets against scrying, mindreading, and the like.

It's their ring/badge of office, also IT is the object that knows the command word to the Harpoons, not the men or women who wear them. So when they're passed on to the newly sworn in, the former Wordbearers forget the commnad word.

Or you could just geas them to die if they ever try to say the command word...

[JoshShaw]

Given just how much magic they can get, I'd say it's be easy to throw a few portal to the elemental plane of water, invest in a lot of dacanters of endless water, or the like.

Yes, but various emanations of the tarasque affect the magical fountains, not making it undrinkable, mind you, just enough to give it that slightly reddish color and unmistakeable tang.

[Lord Kelvin]

The reason the command words are remembered at all is because they need to be re-set occasionally, right?

Some of the harpoons have never had to be re-set, being set in stronger rock than the rest, or because the the tarrasque's thrashing mainly works at the others. So what happens when the day comes that these "stable" harpoons do have to be re-set...and it turns out the command word has been jumbled by the passage of time and the game of Telephone ("The secret word is aardvark!" "Hard bark, right."), or someone died without passing it on (in this case it could be either a dark family secret, or even the family might be in the dark).

And if one of the cults finds out, they can plan a grand scheme that causes the harpoon whose word was lost to become the unexpected lynchpin. Can the PCs figure out what's going on with the unexplained mining and strange patterns the flensers have been using?

[Thomas T]

To add to Thomas T's post, the wordbearers are constantly wearing various magical amulets against scrying, mindreading, and the like.
Nice, but you're not thinking like a paranoid decadent in charge of the most dangerous and lucrative monster in the world :).

The <i>entire city</i> is warded against scrying and telepathic magics for extra security. Only the wordbearers and their trusted agents are able to use such magic, since they carry special talismans that counteract the warding.

Very tight security, without nullifying the powers of those that would use them responsibility. And as an unavoidable side effect, giving the wordbearers that additional level of <i>personal</i> power and security.

[Valfader]

Nice, but you're not thinking like a paranoid decadent in charge of the most dangerous and lucrative monster in the world :).

The <i>entire city</i> is warded against scrying and telepathic magics for extra security. Only the wordbearers and their trusted agents are able to use such magic, since they carry special talismans that counteract the warding.

Very tight security, without nullifying the powers of those that would use them responsibility. And as an unavoidable side effect, giving the wordbearers that additional level of <i>personal</i> power and security.
Well, why not create golems, or other mindless creatures, to serve the ones working with the beast, instead of using slaves, whose memories might be tapped magically? Then again, sneaking out slaves who know stuff about it, can make for exciting adventures.

The creature could also be freed by someone digging under, and collapsing, rooms down there. That could be a neat assault plan. Release the monster in your enemy's city, and remove their resource of wealth.

A wizard might 'accidently' clone the creature, when working in a lab, so only licenced magicians have access to the bits. I think this has been mentioned before, though.

Slaves breed for combat through mind-control and a Tarrasque diet.

[theCimmerian]

For the money problem: in order to get the 10d100 gems, you need to kill it completely. Maybe the 14 harpoons (or whatever imprisons it) can't kill it. So a particularly good Tarrasque-Butcher's attack might liberate a gem here or there, but never in the history of the city have they been able to kill it completely.

Maybe the power and corruption you get from drinking its blood/wearing its skin/implanting bone shards in your body depends upon how deep into its flesh the parts came from. Scratch a paw, drink, and get fast healing 1 for a minute with a mild tendency to violence. Cut off a limb and have a steak, and you get regeneration 2 for a week and a temporary switch two steps down on the morality scale.

Send 50 mind-controlled/drugged/blackmailed slaves in a suicide attack to bring you a piece of its heart, and if they succeed gain a troll's physical attributes, a hunger for raw flesh from members of your own original species, and the ability to shapeshift into a troll as a free action.

And maybe 1 in 100 people that wears Tarrasque-scale armor eventually goes insane and rejoins himself or herself to the Tarrasque by jumping down its maw or even just running up to the Tarrasque and fusing directly with its skin.

[OldSkoolGeek]

OldSkoolGeek, I hereby award you one Creepy Image Point.

Cerulean (shudder) Lion.
Cool! My first point! Thanx!

[Tog]

Well, why not create golems, or other mindless creatures, to serve the ones working with the beast, instead of using slaves, whose memories might be tapped magically? Then again, sneaking out slaves who know stuff about it, can make for exciting adventures.

Back to my idea of the "Death or Tarrasque" option - those criminals sent in to harvest the "T" get mindwiped afterwards so as to hide the evidence.

Plot hook: One of the PCs is such a person whose memories are starting to come back, starting with horrible nightmares set in a deep cavern...

[Cerulean Lion]

The "wordbearers" know the command words needed to reset the Harpoons.
The Tqrrasque cultists know that the wordbearers know this. If they can kill all the wordbearers, then nobody can reset the Harpoons, and maybe the Blessed Destroyer can break free.
Even if they can't get them all, maybe they can make all their heirs afraid to take up the title.

[CaffeineBoy]

Freaking brilliant. My head literally exploded! My fingers are typing on pure muscle memory.

[Dragon_Blooded]

BTW anyone have any better ideas on what would be an appropriate name for this burg?

You could always use Tarascon (or Tarrascon), which is the name of the real-life city where the legend of the Tarasque (D&D Tarrasque) comes from. More info here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasque).

Eduardo Penna

[Shadowjack]

Nice. Taking from that link:

The king of Nerluc had attacked the Tarasque with knights and catapults to no avail. But Saint Martha found the beast and charmed it with hymns and prayers, and led back the tamed Tarasque to the city. The people, terrified by the monster, attacked it when it drew nigh. The monster offered no resistance and died there. Martha then preached a sermon to the people and converted many of them to Christianity. Sorry for what they had done to the tamed monster, the newly-Christianized townspeople changed the town's name to Tarascon.

If mythic parallels, religion, and politics are to your taste, we've got plenty to play with here. Imagine if a pacifistic sect - with some appropriate food and animal-treatment taboos - sets up in this city. Preferably with miracle-working messiah figure. On one hand, many in the city government will want these interlopers gone - the entire economy depends on "animal" cruelty, damn it! On the other hand, a saint that can tame horrible beasts may be a handy addition to the containment protocols. Add to that the appeal of the new religion to the oppressed underclass of the city (and many in the bored upper class), bickering with the other local cults, and arguments over taxation, and you've got a strong Biblical Rome vibe going.

(Though one might not want to play too much with New Testament parallels, here. If the common death penalty is "feeding the condemned to the Beast", and one carries the parallels to extremes, you could end up with some really fucking creepy twists on the Christ stories. "Eat of my flesh" indeed. Brrrrrr.)

[Thomas T]

Now I have a problem. I like minimalist approaches to fantasy and the more cosmopolitan D&D elements get tied into it, the more I feel that the idea is diluted. But a large proportion of the coolness <i>depends</i> on the fact that it's exploiting D&Disms.

Is it cheap to selectively ignore D&Disms that are irrelevant or that just aren't as cool as the alternatives? Maybe just say "X, Y and Z aren't available locally. They're the kind of stuff the PCs might bring onto the scene." - things like the decanters of endless water, golems and so on?

[clockworkjoe]

A few other variations:

Perhaps The tarrasque cannot be held by chains connected to the ground. Instead, the harpoons are carefully arranged so that it is paralyzed (advanced jujitsu type placement). However, if held to the ground, the beast will eventually break free.

So they place it in water.

A vast lake or reservoir, the tarrasque tethered to shore by various chains connected to the harpoons but unable to gain leverage to free itself. Specialized teams of butchers figure out how to fly or swim or use special platforms to cut the monster but the water becomes contaminated and seeps into a nearby river or ocean.

Hell, place it on the open ocean. A fleet of ships follow the flesh-berg, harpooning pieces of it out through steampowered cannons.


Other option

The Tarrasque was held in place by another civilization long ago. It was recently re-discovered by a team of adventurers at the bottom of a dungeon. They are awed by it but don't think to exploit it. When they get back to the surface, they part and tell their families and friends about it. The legend spreads and soon rival teams from different nations descend on the dungeon. Instead of a monopoly, it becomes a gold/flesh rush as shanty towns appear overnight near the dungeon and adventurers fight each other for a piece of the action. Great battles are fought near the Tarrasque on a daily basis. Will the fighting eventually free the monster or will some order arise? What happens when towns are built in a dungeon?

[Tog]

What happens when towns are built in a dungeon?

Pshaw, I remember when we used to do that kind of thing ALL THE TIME. :)

(Admit it - if you RPG'd back in the late 70s you had a dungeon with a level with either a town or shops or both. Why? How? Who knows? That was just the way we did stuff back then.)

[Chiaroscuro]

The Tarrasque is naturally royally pissed off like that. There won't be a change in its natural behavior due to such imprisonment. The creature is just vile pure dang nasty soulless horrific eating and destruction machine.
"What we are dealing with is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. "

Anyway, the devaluing of currency got me thinking: the amounts of spell components are given in GP values. Would it happen that you could cast stoneskin more cheaply if diamonds were plentiful... or would you just need more diamonds? If the spell kept up with the commodity market then you'd never know how much diamond dust you'd need from moment to moment. You could end up needing a cart full of precious stones to make the spell work.

OTOH, the amount produced by the Big T is given in GP value, too, so as you devalued diamonds, the amount its carapace yeilded would have to increase. That is, the diamonds would get bigger and bigger. That's a little harder to explain than spells, I guess. Probably not worth pursuing.

-C.

[Julius Sleazer]

Is it cheap to selectively ignore D&Disms that are irrelevant or that just aren't as cool as the alternatives? Maybe just say "X, Y and Z aren't available locally. They're the kind of stuff the PCs might bring onto the scene." - things like the decanters of endless water, golems and so on?


Go for it! It's your campaign, and besides this idea is way too cool to pass up on.

[Tim Gray]

*reads first post* This is pretty cool. The style made me think of the Scarred Lands setting.

[ShanG]

OTOH, the amount produced by the Big T is given in GP value, too, so as you devalued diamonds, the amount its carapace yeilded would have to increase. That is, the diamonds would get bigger and bigger. That's a little harder to explain than spells, I guess. Probably not worth pursuing.
-C.

Oh, come now. That's all very true, but you're not thinking in the right mindset.

It's not that these Tarragems are just worth a certain amount. Oh, no. In Tarrascon, these jewels are the currency. As stones are mined out of the beast, jewelers take them and work them into smaller jewels which are the most commonly accepted form of trade - making the citizens of Tarrascon fabulously wealthy compared to other petty civilizations which use such mundane currency as gold.

The fact that they're constantly renewing simply means that you've got a steady but controllable rate of inflation - no different from the value of gold in a mining town, really.

Oh, ho ho ho.

That causes me to wonder - what effect has this constant torture had on the quality of the stones it's producing? In a similar vein to the comment about quality of meat - I'm imagining that the first stones cut forth would have been clear, flawless diamonds, but over the years the stones began to have a slight pink cast or bloody stripes running through them, and today - today the gems being cut forth are a bright, angry blood red.

[Lord Liaden]

Now I have a problem. I like minimalist approaches to fantasy and the more cosmopolitan D&D elements get tied into it, the more I feel that the idea is diluted. But a large proportion of the coolness <i>depends</i> on the fact that it's exploiting D&Disms.

Is it cheap to selectively ignore D&Disms that are irrelevant or that just aren't as cool as the alternatives? Maybe just say "X, Y and Z aren't available locally. They're the kind of stuff the PCs might bring onto the scene." - things like the decanters of endless water, golems and so on?
Hey, D&D has produced no few worlds where the "ground rules" of magic vary from the the norm for various reasons: the Hollow Word, Dark Sun, Ravenloft etc. Selected things (that would be inconvenient to the setting) just don't function there, or function differently.

For that matter, such local conditions could have been particularly supportive for defeating the Tarrasque, which was why this site was chosen in the first place.

[Cerulean Lion]

Would (Tarrasque)-Blood Diamonds have new magical properties?
Which properties? Would those properties increase if an enchanted Blood Stone is fed fresh blood?

[Lord Liaden]

Also:

The smell. This city would <i>reek</i>. As if the butchery and open-flowing blood wasn't enough, there's all the alchemical experiments going on. And just for a garnish, lets say that since the city wasn't planned, is built across two sides of a canyon with an immovable object in its centre, the sewage system is... inefficient.

If we say that the wind almost always blows from the same direction due to whatever local geography, then there can be a fun division of the city.

Breezeside (breeside?) gets the wind first. Its the high class district where all the well-to-dos live and only the most prestigious wizards and alchemists have their labs.

Stinkside suffers the worst of the smell. Since anyone that can afford it moves to breezeside, there's little incentive amongst the powers that be to improve the state of the stinkside sewers. It takes almost as long to get used to the smell as it does the sound of the tarrasque's rage.
I think you've hit on something that outsiders could trade with the city for: waste disposal. Let their merchants cart off bodily and alchemical wastes for landfill. Lots of modern real-world cities have such an arrangement.

They also have concerns about contaminated waste among citizens, who protest the arrangement even if it is lucrative. Of course in this case you have to wonder what that magically contaminated waste is breeding in that landfill...

[Cortani]

Best idea I've heard all week (It's been a Very good week for the idea-department).

The existence of a second Tarrasque has been confirmed by sages and scryers. Nations pour vast resources into tracking it down and claiming it for their own use.

Through the limited telepathic bond the two god-beasts share, the second has learned that not hiding will lead to agony beyond meaning. However, a godzilla-sized omnivore can only remain concealed for so long.

What happens if another nation acquires a Tarrasque? Will they follow the same model and try to break the first monopoly? Will the two fight each other for control of both? How will the cultists interpret this?

Heck, will someone try to breed them?

[damion4242]

Is it cheap to selectively ignore D&Disms that are irrelevant or that just aren't as cool as the alternatives? Maybe just say "X, Y and Z aren't available locally. They're the kind of stuff the PCs might bring onto the scene." - things like the decanters of endless water, golems and so on?

Me, I kinda like making the explotation more mechanical. I dont' really see a problem with things like decanters of endless water, etc. It's not like these would benefit the Stinkside at all. :p

(Especially if you ignore the part about the jewels, or just you can't extract pieces of the creaters carapace THAT effectivly).

[KreenWarrior]

So, what's a tarrasque Flesh Golem going to look like? I imagine the city's Mage Guild makes quite a few of them... lessee, how about the older they are, the more they morph to look like a miniature tarrasque? And that no matter what you do to disguise it, no matter how much the mages assure the citizens that the creatures are perfectly safe, you can't shake the feeling that these things are intelligent, linked to the great beast itself, and ANGRY. Good thing that golems almost never break their bindings... of course, the old ones seem to always dissapear. Are the mages hiding something about their servants?

[Gizmit]

Flesh Pits - Everybody is Tarrascon has had a taste of The Beasts flesh, be it the gristle thrown to the peasants on Feast Days, or the tenderest cuts consumed by the slowly-mutating nobility. What none but the alchemists, flesh-renders, and flesh-tenders know is that a sufficient quantity of Tarrasque flesh, bathed in it's own blood will begin to grow. The Cult of the Magnificient Beast recently learned this and stole a man-sized hunk. They have diverted a minor blood fountain, and have managed to create a sizeable pool for the flesh to sit in. Within a day, all of the rot that had begun to eat at it was gone. By the next day, small limbs had sprouted all over it.

The nobles are, of course, alarmed that such a large mass of meat was stolen. While they don't know what happened to it, they'll hire the PCs within the week to find out. Where did it go? Who took it? What's it growing into?

[Bill_Coffin]

Also:

Something that Taltasqa <i>really</i> needs is water. It's built on top of the canyon that the Tarrasque was defeated in - the site wasn't chosen for it's suitability for settlement. And as it happens, this means no easy sources of water nearby.

Though if you really wanted to pile the D&Disms high a corps of clerics could solve the problem. I'd be more inclined to say that there's magical public fountains created and maintained by the city's rulers, though it seems that there's never <i>quite</i> enough.

Apologies if what i'm about to say has been mentioned previously, but this thread has gotten me too fired up to withhold from posting to it any longer.

I really like the idea of Taralsqa needing water in a bad way. The location of the city was chosen on how well it could trap the tarrasque, not how well it could sustain a permanent population. I would imagine this place would be not only without immediate sources of water,but it might be way the heck out in the middle of a vast wasteland so that the "final battle" with the creature might be done someplace where the collateral damage to local settlements could be mitigated or even eliminated altogether. For Taralsqa to have been built in the middle of Hell's Furnace (or whatever the major desert of your campaign world might be) means that yeah, it will need enormous amounts of water. And even if there are plentiful magical sources of it within the town,water is the sort of thing you really can't get enough of, so I could see it even becoming a commodity good or even a form of currency. Nobles will squander it or put it on display with massive pools and baths, to show their rank.

Speaking of the nobility, something that might drive their greed and vanity is, as always, having things the commoners don't have and making sure they know it. If Tarrasque meat is so incredibly plentiful, it's also incredibly boring. When everybody can eat it, it has no high value anymore. Real world example: in colonial America, lobster used to be what you fed your servants because it was so incredibly plentiful. Now that they have been so heavily harvested, they have value once more, and they have changed from the cheap food you pay minimum-wagers to the kind of thing only the well-heeled can expect to eat with any serious frequency. Same thing with tarrasque meat, which means that damn near anything else will be a luxury food. Pomegranates, beef, garden greens...anything but tarrasque. Besides, if you eat it all day long,it's going to get old, fast, so other foods will carry a premium. For that matter, so will spices. I can see the common folk paying through the nose to have extensive spice collections to make their daily ration of tarrasque taste differently enough to stave off boredom.

"Today's ingredient...TARRASQUE."
"Um, Chairman? That was the ingredient for the last 192 shows in a row. You think...?"
"SILENCE!"

[Bill_Coffin]

Something else...even if you can produce a mountain of gems from a tarrasque carapace, that doesn't mean the local authorities have to allow their expenditure in the city. Lots of African diamond camps never allowed people to trade in their finds for anything but barter goods, or they had to cash them out at what the camp/syndicate was paying for them and then spend their money locally. but buying with local stones was strictly verboten. Same thing here. The nobility, made fabulously wealthy off their tarrasque monopoly, and with the legion of guardsmen and magic items and culture of fear in their favor, simply make it a capital offense for anybody to use tarraque gems (or any precious stone, for that matter) as currency or for barter in the city. You have to buy and sell in gold, which can be obtained through city-sanction currency exchanges (they run a local mint, so even neighboring gold gets exchanged, for even more profit to the bosses) or wholesale of the gems to specially licensed gem brokers who kick 90% of their take upstairs. The whole thing is hugely corrupt,though, and there is a healthy blakc market in gemstones, something that the local guards, noble police forces,and freelance bounty hunters all go after. Even in acity as fabulously wealthy as this one, there is still rich and poor, and under the right circumstances, the poor will break the law so they can be like the rich. This could be one of those pressure cooker situations that enemies of the city might seek to exploit to overthrow it. Not to release the tarrasque, but to affect the kind of "regime change" that would place them in power instead of the old, debauched lords who used to run the place.

Oon another topic altogether, let's not forget about powerful demon lords,undead masters and other such villains who would love to see the tarrasque set free just to wreak havoc. The destruction of the city and its social/political/economic impact would all be side effects.

Likewise, what if the players find themselves with the opportunity to set the tarrasque free? One one hand, it would destroy this evil, evil city and the hundreds of other cities and nations that are growing increasingly dark-hearted as a result of their complicity with the savagery on display here. (But is it savage to be so cruel to a creature that will only destroy whatever is in its path?) But on the other hand, they owuld be unleashing an otherwise unstoppable horror that will eventually destroy innocent lives. What to do?

And finally, I see any psionics in the vicinity getting lots of disturbing dreams broadcast to them by the tarrasque, which is in constant pain. Even if the creature is incredibly dumb,its suffering must be something psionics would pick up whether they want to or not -- like having an Emergency Broadcast System alert constantly in the background. Psionics can actually sympathize with the creature, perhaps enough, even,to bring its misery to an end. Maybe not to let it go -- they know how dangerous it is -- but to bring the industrial butchery and vivisection of the creature to a standstill.

And finally, this is indeed one of the greatest campaign ideas I have ever come across. I won't even try to qualify it with some witty remark. It's just an incredible, incredible concept that can be extrapolated in a hundred different ways to a hundred different degrees. Professionals in the audience, take note! This is the real deal, right here. A great idea for a great idea's sake. We could all use plenty more of them, though honestly, you could write an entire sourcebook off of the initial post of this thread alone. Bravo.

[Mossy Mole]

The Tarrasque was held in place by another civilization long ago. It was recently re-discovered by a team of adventurers at the bottom of a dungeon.

Sounds like the ultimate how-to-get the treasure home challenge :D

[Archer]

Is it cheap to selectively ignore D&Disms that are irrelevant or that just aren't as cool as the alternatives? Maybe just say "X, Y and Z aren't available locally. They're the kind of stuff the PCs might bring onto the scene." - things like the decanters of endless water, golems and so on?

If you don't want golem tarrasque butcherers, you can simply say that human labor is cheaper. Even without tarrasquegems, the city is going to be one of the wealthiest places in the world. There's going to be a constant stream of migrants looking for a piece of that wealth swelling the labor pool. Every time a butcher falls, there are ten more waiting for his job. If they have scryers to filter out the spies and cultists, there would be no incentive to spend time and gold on an all-construct workforce.

[Bookwrack]

Another complication might be that because of the Tarrasque industry, the whole region has become very magicaly poor. Pardon me for injecting science into fantasy, but to do all that regenerating, the Tarrasque is either burning large amounts of stored energy, and shifting flesh around (which it's obviously not) or drawing on ambient magic in order to regenerate all that loss mass. So every time the Tarrasque is harvested, the ambient level of magic takes another hit as the Godbeast sucks it in to regrow lost flesh.

This could be the reason for the current water shortage, in that many of the magical water fountains have started drying up, there is no longer remaining enough ambient magic to sustain them (coupled with all the alchemists, wizards, and everything else that will be drawing on the same now limited resource as well).

Nevermind the fact that the majority bindings holding the Tarrasque in place are either magicaly powered, or magial as well...

As for the currency issue, there could be the fact that harvesting enough of the carapace of hide to get good jems is EXTRAORDINARILY dangerous. It requires getting butchers in close enough, long enough, to flense a good sized portion of the monsters back...

Last, in Dragon Magazine a good few years back, I remember there being an article, either about monstrous templates, or prestige classes, on of which was linked to the Tarrasque (I think the article was about Cults of Monsters, and it was a prestige class in as much as applied to dedicated members of the cults). The one for the Tarrasque had cultists becoming, bigger, dumber, tougher (and tarrasquer looking) as well as suffering the rising urge to seek out their 'god' and awaken it.

[Thomas T]

And finally, this is indeed one of the greatest campaign ideas I have ever come across. I won't even try to qualify it with some witty remark. It's just an incredible, incredible concept that can be extrapolated in a hundred different ways to a hundred different degrees. Professionals in the audience, take note! This is the real deal, right here. A great idea for a great idea's sake. We could all use plenty more of them, though honestly, you could write an entire sourcebook off of the initial post of this thread alone. Bravo.
...
Wow - thanks very much. That's some serious head-bloating material there, I ought to be careful :).

[Tog]

And finally, I see any psionics in the vicinity getting lots of disturbing dreams broadcast to them by the tarrasque, which is in constant pain. Even if the creature is incredibly dumb,its suffering must be something psionics would pick up whether they want to or not -- like having an Emergency Broadcast System alert constantly in the background. Psionics can actually sympathize with the creature, perhaps enough, even,to bring its misery to an end. Maybe not to let it go -- they know how dangerous it is -- but to bring the industrial butchery and vivisection of the creature to a standstill.


Well, THAT'S why psionics/scrying don't work in T-ville. All they get is a "blinding" message of pain/anger/fright, so overwhelming that it's unintelligible.

[medivh]

Well, THAT'S why psionics/scrying don't work in T-ville. All they get is a "blinding" message of pain/anger/fright, so overwhelming that it's unintelligible.

Like "detect evil" doesn't work in Ravenloft? Yeah, that could work.

[Loup Du Noir]

This is an excellent idea. I think I might modify if somewhat for use in my upcoming D&D game.

As it stands, this serves as an excellent set piece to highlight the evil that men do. Upon Crucis (the campaign world), this is already served by the gradual fall into Necromantic practices and undeath that the nation of Embre is experiencing with its war against the Srax. Instead of having this as a human thing, I will apply it to another old D&D standby - the Orc.

In the northeastern regions of Crucis, the endless frozen Wastes lie. Here, for centuries dwelt the Wazlad, nomad human tribes eking out an existence upon the ice. Isolated by distance and environment from the rest of the peoples of Crucis. Amongst their tribes they spoke of the Destroyer, a terrible beast, nature's wrath made flesh. The Destroyer was held responsible for the avalanches, for floods and for the death of tribes, yet no human had ever lain eyes upon it. But there were more than just humans upon the Waste.

Orcs are hunters and conquerors, fractious, feral and brutal. They waged war upon one another, and upon the Wazlad, even bringing down the great white drakes of the north. In their legends they spoke of the Ravager, a wyrm like no other, so vast and powerful that time had no hold over it, the bitter cold of the Waste could not touch, and even death feared to cast its shadow upon it. The Destroyer was as a second God to the Waste Orcs, an expression of their own desire to destroy.

But amongst the fierce, hateful Orcs of the bitter north, worship was always tainted with jealousy, and desire. So long as the Destroyer yet lived, they could not proclaim themselves supreme, for there would always be one foe against whom whole warbands would scatter and flee. And so, with the aid of their dark clerics, the greatest of the Orcs discovered the resting place of the beast. Marshalling their armies, thirteen clans mustered their forces, the strongest and savagest of warriors, their greatest dragon slaves, tortured ice bears and broken Wazladi in their legion. And each of the chiefs of the thirteen tribes wielded a bitter cold spear of bone, crafted from the broken spine of a White wyrm, imbued with the dark magic of their jealous, hateful god Gruumsh.

They found it in a lonely cave in the coldest, bleakest stretch of the Wastes, before the true earth gave way to sheets of endless ice. Their intention was to kill the beast, to take its skull and blood and bones and cast them to the winds so that all would know of the power of the Orc, but mighty as they were, they lacked the resources to kill the beast. For a full week the battles raged, as the Destroyer slaughtered Orc, slave and beast with animal ferocity. But mighty as it was, even the Destroyer could tire and grow weak, and the chains of cold and magic woven into the fabric of the chieftain's spears brought the beast to its knees. Broken, the monster fell.

As was the custom of their people, the greatest of the remaining chieftains strode boldly to the weakened titan, and drank deep of the monster's hearts blood, and then each of the lesser on down the tribes, until each Orc had his fill. The blood made the Orcs strong, and the wounds they had taken during the battle healed. The bounty did not abate. Though beaten, the monster did not die. This troubled the remaining chieftains, and they confronted the clerics of Gruumsh, asking for meaning.

The clerics proclaimed the undying beast a gift from He Who Never Sleeps, a reward for those strong enough to take it. They worked their black magic upon the creature, setting chains imbued by their dark god across it to bind the creature. This done, the Clerics proclaimed another sign from Gruumsh, that with this great work, the time was come for the Orcs to extend their reach, to wipe out the hated Wazlad, and head south into the fertile lands of men. With the power of the Destroyer, the destiny of the Orcs was at hand.

This takes away most of the moral ambiguity of the original version, putting it much more firmly in the camp of "horrible monsters, poor Tarrasque", but it works well for the game I am running.

[The Horror]

So who is going to write up the sourcebook then? Because I'd not only totally buy it, I'd probably pick up the D&D corebooks as well! Very very cool idea.

[Orsino]

This could be one of those pressure cooker situations that enemies of the city might seek to exploit to overthrow it. Not to release the tarrasque, but to affect the kind of "regime change" that would place them in power instead of the old, debauched lords who used to run the place.


"We will only torture and butcher the Tarrasque for Good!"

[Bill_Coffin]

"We will only torture and butcher the Tarrasque for Good!"

I think an easy way for people to rationalize the treatment of the tarrasque is by judging how they live off of the beast. If they overthrow this decadent regime with something that at least feels a little less sinister, that might be all a new set of lords might need to sleep at night. That, and the knowledge that this monster would eat them all if it had the chance, so I can see hard-bitten champions simply not caring about this creature. Maybe they consider it too stupid to feel anything. Or maybe they feel charged by their god to punish this avatar of wickedness. One way or another, people will find a way to justify their treatment of the tarrasque, especially if the creature is the source of a very lucrative industry and an extraordinary standard of living.

[DarkDragonlord]

i have a question if they sell the flesh and blood of the tarrasque then whats stopping a wizard from cloning it and doing this all over again somewhere else or wrose yet making variant tarrasques (via templates). what about the ceatures surronding the city what if trolls starting getting their hand on the flesh or wrose yet vampires what would be the effect of the blood of the tarrasque on them?

[Cerulean Lion]

Based on DarkDragonlord's idea:

Tarrasque-flesh smugglers.
Bottles of Tarrasque blood sold on the open market.
A black-market trade in bits of bone and fragments of carapace and pieces of glands.
City nobles trying to stop this, or taking part in it.
The Cult of the Destroyer interfering, to stop the "blasphemy" or to get these items for themselves.

[JibbaJabbaWocky]

Consider this idea Yoinked.

:)

If awesomeness were ice cream, this D&D setting would be Pistachio. (The greatest ice cream ever)

[Rolzup]

I can easily see a cult that believes that, because the Tarrasque, the very incarnation of evil, is imprisoned that there is no longer any such thing as damnation.

So long as Satan is trapped, there is no sin...or at least no punishment for it. So do as you will, take what pleasure you like. You'll never have to pay for for your sins.

[Cerulean Lion]

This cult would react very badly to anyone trying to free the Tarrasque, or to anyone arguing that it ought not to be tormented.

Edit: And what about those who believed that, as long as Satan was imprisoned, evil is weakened?
They'd fight to prevent its escape, even against others who want to free it because of the evil things being done to it.
Warfare of Good vs Good, each determined to oppose Evil.

[Thomas T]

i have a question if they sell the flesh and blood of the tarrasque then whats stopping a wizard from cloning it and doing this all over again somewhere else or wrose yet making variant tarrasques (via templates).
Well for starters, they'd have to invent/rediscover cloning magic. Hell, maybe that's a holy grail for some of the wizards experimenting on the tarrasque's flesh.

[damion4242]

Well for starters, they'd have to invent/rediscover cloning magic. Hell, maybe that's a holy grail for some of the wizards experimenting on the tarrasque's flesh.

That would be one of those experiments that it would SUCK if it got loose. :p

I'm picturing this cute little medium size Tarrasque. Sure, it's not all THAT dangerous, but how do you kill it?

[Tog]

And what about those who believed that, as long as Satan was imprisoned, evil is weakened?
They'd fight to prevent its escape, even against others who want to free it because of the evil things being done to it.
Warfare of Good vs Good, each determined to oppose Evil.

Arguably what they're doing to the Tarrasque is "torture", and therefore evil. Which I why I argue that there would be a large corrupting influence on Taltasqa causing the population to tend towards Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil (not Chaotic as that would be counter to the existence of a city in the first place).

Not that justifying evil by arguing it prevents a greater evil (?) has ever stopped anyone, much less in the Real World.

And something nobody's addressed so far, I think - what's the impact on the various local dieties? Are they encouraging the captivity? Plotting against it? Unless they're Chaotic Evil, it might be in their best interest to have the thing under control, one way or another.

[Cerulean Lion]

Arguably what they're doing to the Tarrasque is "torture", and therefore evil. Which I why I argue that there would be a large corrupting influence on Taltasqa causing the population to tend towards Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil (not Chaotic as that would be counter to the existence of a city in the first place).

Not that justifying evil by arguing it prevents a greater evil (?) has ever stopped anyone, much less in the Real World.

And something nobody's addressed so far, I think - what's the impact on the various local dieties? Are they encouraging the captivity? Plotting against it? Unless they're Chaotic Evil, it might be in their best interest to have the thing under control, one way or another.
I'd think pretty much all the good dieties will be horrified.
Evil dieties might be indifferent: some might actually approve.
Neutral ones? [shrug] Anyone's guess.

[Jerrythehun]

Arguably what they're doing to the Tarrasque is "torture", and therefore evil. Which I why I argue that there would be a large corrupting influence on Taltasqa causing the population to tend towards Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil (not Chaotic as that would be counter to the existence of a city in the first place).

Not that justifying evil by arguing it prevents a greater evil (?) has ever stopped anyone, much less in the Real World.

And something nobody's addressed so far, I think - what's the impact on the various local dieties? Are they encouraging the captivity? Plotting against it? Unless they're Chaotic Evil, it might be in their best interest to have the thing under control, one way or another.

If I was a resident of a place where an indestructible beast the size of a village rampages periodically through the land killing every living thing, I'd have serious doubts as to what the fuck the gods would have to say about it.

Especially as a commoner, if a god or pantheon can't or won't stop this thing, why should I care at all about them? Yeah, yeah, big scary dood, ya going to throw lightning bolts at me, that's really scary. Because my village, my fields, my flocks and the lord's army were all EATEN BY A GIANT TARRASQUE, so what could a god do to or for me?

I think the religious implications alone make this a great setting idea. This is a fantastic thread!!!

[Valfader]

Hmm... What if it was a God that had been captured, instead of the Tarrasque?

Of course, it'd need far more magic to hold it in place than a bunch of immovable harpoons will do.

[Tog]

I'd think pretty much all the good dieties will be horrified.
Evil dieties might be indifferent: some might actually approve.
Neutral ones? [shrug] Anyone's guess.

Here's my take on the diety question, per D&D alignments:

LG, NG, CG: totally horrified and offended. BUT the Tarrasque running loose would also mean a hideous amount of death and destruction. I'd say the NG gods would be the most inclined to keep the beast where it is - LG would object but be unwilling to risk the destruction, CG similar.

LN: The fact that the beast is controlled outweighs the suffering caused to it.

CN: Ambivalent?

True N: Waiting for a karmic balance to assert itself? Possibly also ambivalent.

LE: Supportive of keeping the beast under control AND in pain. The one must suffer that the many benefit from it.

NE: Ambivalent? If the citizens of Taltasqa benefit from the beast's suffering, all the more power to them. Possibly in favor of releasing the beast IF it was in some way beneficial to the interests of the NE god(s).

CE: Tentatively supportive of the city, only in the sense that they had proved themselves the more powerful by bringing the tarrasque into bondage. If the tarrasque gets loose, though, it's obviously proved itself more fit than the city's inhabitants and should be encouraged to take vengance on them.

Far as I'm concered (and again, this is opinion) the city would be dominated by Law and opposed by Chaos, with adherents of Chaotic Neutral being the biggest threat.

[Tog]

If I was a resident of a place where an indestructible beast the size of a village rampages periodically through the land killing every living thing, I'd have serious doubts as to what the fuck the gods would have to say about it.


Unless the tarrasque was serving the gods in some way, possibly as a judgement on the land?

Or as a pet?

Skavon the Flame Lord is still waiting for Fluffy to come home, and he's getting VERY worried... ;)

[Jerrythehun]

Hmm... What if it was a God that had been captured, instead of the Tarrasque?

Of course, it'd need far more magic to hold it in place than a bunch of immovable harpoons will do.

There's the Githyanki city (Core setting) in the Astral Plane built in the corpse of a gawd.

My guess is that a gawd might be "caught" in some mythical way. Maybe bound with the Golden Chains of Blank made from the Feathers of the Blank, etc, etc.

[Rasmus Wagner]

Actually, in D&D, diamonds tend to be spent rather than accumulated. They are used for Stoneskin and other spells, and probaly play a large role in the construction of magic weapons.

Man, think what that will do to the economy! If the cartel that controls this thing doesn't put a pretty heavy cap on how many gems they actually extract and spend, they'll probably drive down local prices like you wouldn't believe. Either outcome is cool: in one case, you've got a bunch of guys who could get as many diamonds as they want to, but who keep the supply low to keep prices up.

This is depressingly like the real-world diamond market, so instead I'd go with option b: they don't restrict the supply at all. Diamonds are a regular construction material here. They're cheaper than cheese. They're considered garish. Muggers will knock you unconscious with a sock filled with diamonds.

Hm. What would be a valuable commodity in Tarrasquesville? What would the citizens get paid in? What could an enemy bribe them with?

[Albert]

Y'know, seems that this kind of situation is what Paladins are for. To go in and slay the monster, despite all the rationalizations and temptations.

Or, if the surrounding lands make Soddom and Gommorrah look like a good place to raise a family, set it free.

-Albert

[Quintin Stone]

The tarrasque is the personification of neutral and chaos. It is neither good nor evil. It simply exists to satisfy its voracious appetite. Therefore, I can see the gods of chaos and neutrality none too happy with its situation.

Speaking of appetite, the tarrasque eats to survive and survives to eat. During its active cycles, the tarrasque normally "eats everything for miles around, including all animals and vegetation." Clearly the city cannot (and probably would not want to) feed the beast its normal amount of sustenance. How does this affect it?

Unable to satisfy its hunger, the tarrasque can never enter its natural dormant cycle. It is awake constantly, in pain, starving. I can see its unsated hunger negatively affecting its regeneration rate. And can you imagine the sound of a tarrasque screaming 24 hours a day? If they harpoon its mouth shut, they cannot feed it at all (no famous tarrasque executions). Instead, they'd have to keep a continuous silence spell over the entire prison. This also keeps the harpoons safe from being removed, until the spell is canceled or dispelled.

[Jerrythehun]

The tarrasque is the personification of neutral and chaos. It is neither good nor evil. It simply exists to satisfy its voracious appetite. Therefore, I can see the gods of chaos and neutrality none too happy with its situation.

Speaking of appetite, the tarrasque eats to survive and survives to eat. During its active cycles, the tarrasque normally "eats everything for miles around, including all animals and vegetation." Clearly the city cannot (and probably would not want to) feed the beast its normal amount of sustenance. How does this affect it?

Unable to satisfy its hunger, the tarrasque can never enter its natural dormant cycle. It is awake constantly, in pain, starving. I can see its unsated hunger negatively affecting its regeneration rate. And can you imagine the sound of a tarrasque screaming 24 hours a day? If they harpoon its mouth shut, they cannot feed it at all (no famous tarrasque executions). Instead, they'd have to keep a continuous silence spell over the entire prison. This also keeps the harpoons safe from being removed, until the spell is canceled or dispelled.


Perhaps it is fed? Perhaps the agricultural products of a nation go into it's maw....perhaps Tarrasqueville must conquer other places to steal the food?

[LordAsteroth]

Regarding the question of cloning, consider that there is one Tarrasque, and only ever one. Perhaps the quality that makes the Tarrasque the immortal god-beast is entirely unique, not carried on in pieces of it's body. Split it in half, and one half will regenerate, the other becoming either dead (but potent) flesh and bone, or becoming reabsorbed if allowed. This removes the problem of having to worry about controling availability. Tarrasque meat for all!

[Lethe]

I have nothing to add except you guys have made D&D cool.

[Hia]

I imagine that just about every Druid in the world would hate this city for doing something like that.

[Jerrythehun]

I imagine that just about every Druid in the world would hate this city for doing something like that.

Oh, I don't know about that. It depends on whether the beast has a role in nature.

[Fringe Worthy]

The mortal races are doomed, their older sins shall come back and destroy them.

A greater power has seen this, it knows this. It has sent it's only child, a sacrifice of flesh and blood, who in it's torment, shall provide a chance for safety and redemptions.

Disciples shall form around, they shall partate of him, of his lessons, of his power, his pain, and they shall bring survival and redemption.

You play some of the human children of the tarrasque. Doubting, fearful, exstatic... Tis your duty to save the world, despite it's fear of you. You must provide meaning for the tarasque's pain and the power that sacrificed it.

(This realm wasn't the first realm of the mortal races. This was a dimensions where the few escapes of an earlier, more brutal time, escaped too. Pity the past has caught up with them. Have fun with an epic level/exhalted style campain)

Or more bluntly, the Tarrasque is a christ life figure, sent, to save the world by the consumption of its flesh and blood, it's pain bringing redemption.

[The Lord of Nothings]

This is the PERFECT setting for the group I game with. I haven't played much D&D with them, but I know they like stuff with characterization and depth and all that jazz...and its hard to get them to do a straight dungeon crawl. Or to get them to work together.
I've got this great vision of creating a party of moderate to high level characters. They're all really competant and they've all been hired by different people to get to the Tarrasque and kill it/set it free/sacrifice it to their God/talk to it/whatever. After a whole campaign's worth of politicking and dungeon-crawling, they finally get to the thing. Until this point, they've all had to work together-- due to the various dungeons and factions they have to navigate.
Once they all reach the Tarrasque, knives come out, plots come to fruition, hands are played and whatever happens is ultimitly up to the players....
As people pointed out, there are so many ways to see this situation. Maybe the party splits along Lawful lines. Maybe it splits along Evil lines. Maybe the Blackguard and the Paladin kill everyone else rather then see the thing go. Maybe all the Chaotic characters set it free... FOR FREEDOM!
etc
This also postpones the inevitable backstabbing for the end of the game, since you all need to work together to get to the damn thing....

[The Lord of Nothings]

The mortal races are doomed, their older sins shall come back and destroy them.


Or more bluntly, the Tarrasque is a christ life figure, sent, to save the world by the consumption of its flesh and blood, it's pain bringing redemption.

The eating of a god is a very old mythological motif.
Which is another thing the guys I game with like to play with.
I need to get somebody to run this NOW

[ShanG]

Perhaps it is fed? Perhaps the agricultural products of a nation go into it's maw....perhaps Tarrasqueville must conquer other places to steal the food?

Mmm. No, not just the food. Everything.

The Tarrasque normally 'eats everything for miles around, including all animals and vegetation.' In order to keep it satieted and regenerating, the armies of Tarrascon are going to be wiping out large swaths of the landscape. Forests. Herds of cattle. Villages. Maybe they can only feed it enough to keep it alive, but sooner or later they're going to want to give it a more substantial meal.

I imagine their army as it crosses the land, each soldier painted with inhuman blood, bulging with muscles and strange growths, covered in scars that no human could survive, girded in armor of reflective carapace, and wielding swords of bone set with diamond teeth.
I picture them returning after the conquest, bringing their spoils with them. Animals, crowded into cages or driven in herds.. Whole harvests mowed down, entire forests felled, villages razed to the ground, all of it piled upon creaking carts to bring along. Then come the people, bound together in rows, forming a line that fills the road and stretches back to the horizon.
The procession moves slowly down the street, as gloating fanfare sounds and the citiizens line the street in their splended clothes, cheering. The ancient, gnarled wordbearers speak a solemn ritual as the gates are opened and the procession leads up the broad steps. The tarrasque screams and gnashes his teeth, drowning out the cheering, chanting, sobbing, wailing. And then, one by one, the carts are thrown into its gaping mouth.

[Jerrythehun]

Mmm. No, not just the food. Everything.

The Tarrasque normally 'eats everything for miles around, including all animals and vegetation.' In order to keep it satieted and regenerating, the armies of Tarrascon are going to be wiping out large swaths of the landscape. Forests. Herds of cattle. Villages. Maybe they can only feed it enough to keep it alive, but sooner or later they're going to want to give it a more substantial meal.

I imagine their army as it crosses the land, each soldier painted with inhuman blood, bulging with muscles and strange growths, covered in scars that no human could survive, girded in armor of reflective carapace, and wielding swords of bone set with diamond teeth.
I picture them returning after the conquest, bringing their spoils with them. Animals, crowded into cages or driven in herds.. Whole harvests mowed down, entire forests felled, villages razed to the ground, all of it piled upon creaking carts to bring along. Then come the people, bound together in rows, forming a line that fills the road and stretches back to the horizon.
The procession moves slowly down the street, as gloating fanfare sounds and the citiizens line the street in their splended clothes, cheering. The ancient, gnarled wordbearers speak a solemn ritual as the gates are opened and the procession leads up the broad steps. The tarrasque screams and gnashes his teeth, drowning out the cheering, chanting, sobbing, wailing. And then, one by one, the carts are thrown into its gaping mouth.

Oh, hells yeah!!!!

See ya suckers, this concept is MINE!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[Cosmic Philosopher]

Wow, there's a lot of pretty cool ideas here. Am I the only one that imagined China Mieville coming up with a similar idea?

[SPrintF]

After years and years of this, the subsonic distress cries of the imprisoned tarrasque finally call its brethren across the planes of existence. Gigantic forms, like and yet unlike the tortured beast, emerge from the subtle realms and advance towards the city. Do they intend to free the beast? Or to destroy it utterly, and silence its maddening cries?

And in the city, a young warrior climbs into a monstrous suit of armor, crafted from the flesh, scale and bone of the tarrasque. This is not his fight by choice. He was called to it as surely as the beasts that now stride towards the city, driven by the relentless demands of his father, the King, and his necromancer servants who fashioned this hideous armor. He sees the creatures approaching, and knows his heart is not in this fight.

But he also knows: he musn't run away.

[SPrintF]

Am I the only one that imagined China Mieville coming up with a similar idea?

You're probably thinking of The Scar, which has a city chained to a different beast for a different purpose.

[Last Knight]

Am I the only one that imagined China Mieville coming up with a similar idea?

You're probably thinking of The Scar, which has a city chained to a different beast for a different purpose.
I could see New Crobuzon doing this, though. Hell, think of the bones in the middle of the city - maybe they already did.

[Melle]

Someone mentioned contractors to haul away waste from the city to landfill some distance away. Prime breeding ground for creepy mutated scavengers. But also a resource. A skilled alchemist-smuggler can extract almost an ounce of tarrasque blood from a each load of garbage, to be sold on the black market. Then, even the landfill becomes a vast guarded compound as the tarrasque lords try to keep their monopoly absolute, with the smugglers trying bribery, secret tunnels, hijacking garbage wagons, etc.

Also, the most secret experiment of them all, that not even all the Wordbearers know about? Some of the highest ranks of the mages are trying to devise a way to burrow into the tarrasques brain, hollow it out and keep it from regenerating. And then install a control center. Not only would it solve the problem of kepping the beast pinned, you would also get the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Unless something goes wrong...

[Valfader]

Landfill???

They'd just use the Tarrasque :D

[damion4242]

Landfill???

They'd just use the Tarrasque :D



Acording to legend, if the Tarrasque eats enough of it's own flesh, it will lose the power to regenerate. This is the only way it can be killed.

Of course, the nobles don't want THAT to happen, so garbage shipments are somewhat regulated.

[Valfader]

Acording to legend, if the Tarrasque eats enough of it's own flesh, it will lose the power to regenerate. This is the only way it can be killed.

Of course, the nobles don't want THAT to happen, so garbage shipments are somewhat regulated.
I never heard that part.

I did hear about it needing a Wish spell, though. In any case; why let it go to waste, when you can get some really mean guard dogs, by feeding them that flesh? :D

[damion4242]

I never heard that part.

I did hear about it needing a Wish spell, though. In any case; why let it go to waste, when you can get some really mean guard dogs, by feeding them that flesh? :D

well, I made it up, so that's probably why. :)

[GregStolze]

Okay, I read the first five pages of this then skipped around, so if I repeat anything anyone else has said, I apologize, except for chiming in with another "Neat idea!"

Someone mentioned the lack of dungeon krawl opportunities here, but (in addition to any critters, poachers and sinister cults burrowing up from underneath) that neglects the idea of roaming through the Tarrasque itself. (Again, if someone thought of this, sorry to repeat.) You go in through the lungs or through some other aperture, or under the shell (since there may be a gap there or some kind of network of cooling airways) and look for more baroque ingredients for magical experiments. What do you suppose the Tarrasque has as white blood cells?

I took a somewhat similar tack in part of the setting for REIGN. Since the game is built around the actions of groups, I decided to put in a couple creatures that exist on the level of armies -- things no individual, no matter how mighty, could ever put down alone. I was thinking that there would be one version of these megafauna that's sort of like a flea on the landscape. It jumps into a location (causing hellish earthquakes) burrows into the soil and sits there like a mountain for decades, sucking all the value out of the soil and creating a barren wasteland around it. Then it jumps again. When one of these beasties shows up somewhere civilized, you either have to mobilize a big army and go after it through brute force, or you have a smaller group climb inside and try go get to the brain and kill it like a virus would (if anyone knew what a virus was). I was also thinking of a water-dwelling version with a human settlement on its back, like those stories of towns on giant whales. This thread has given me some food for thought with that -- what if the dwellers start mining? Can they guide their floating island by raising food in front of it? Interesting ideas...

-G.

[Mark Krawec]

A couple of random ideas to toss into the mix:

Suppose the tarrasque really were entirely mindless - not just daft as a brush but extremely ravenous, but really mindless. It's aware of pain as a sign of damage, a cue to avoid or destroy something, but other than that all it knows is hunger. No matter how much it eats, it's never sated, so it can never be said to be starving - it feels the same whether its last meal was a year ago or ten minutes ago. Thoughtless as a flood, a lightning strike, an earthquake, a brushfire, it doesn't cry out in fear, or pain, or frustration. This behemoth simply voicelessly struggles without cease to free itself from the immoveable harpoons. At first Taltasqa was wracked by constant tremors as it clawed away at the rock surrounding it, until all within its reach was ground to dust. Now it hovers unsupported like a grotesque levitating urchin. All that breaks the terrible silence in the canyon is the wet slither of its impaled limbs sliding back and forth along the harpoons that hold it and the occasional slap of its tail against a shaft. Its blood pools in the bowl it ground beneath itself with its own feet. The flensers must be lowered down onto the beast by chains that descend from a gantry just out of reach overhead.

But then suppose it isn't entirely mindless. Trapped animals have been known to gnaw off limbs to escape a trap. What happens if the tarrasque starts tearing itself to pieces to free itself from the harpoons?

Just a thought.

[Thomas T]

So who is going to write up the sourcebook then?
...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.

[Christopher V. Brady]

...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.
Dude, personally, some of the BEST sourcebooks in my mind ARE pure fluff. Most of us here have our favourite systems that we'd adapt this wonderful bit too.

(Myself I'm using a HEAVILY modified version of the basic d20 system, part of which I've detailed in a Vancian Magic thread discussion.)

[Bill_Coffin]

...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a pure fluff book. Half the time people will buy your book to convert it to some other system anyway. Hell, some of my favorite "RPG sourcebooks" are various "Art of..." books because they are pure idea fodder.

[damion4242]

...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.

Yeah, go for it dude. (Heck, I know your image abilitys rock. )

[The Lord of Nothings]

...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.

Go for it!

If you're doing Crunch, i reckon just give stats for the various Tarrasque-based materials, like bone and meat and drugs and potions made from its bodily fluids, etc. MAYBE a PrC, but i have no idea how hard those are to write and such.

For some reason i'm thinking of a Tarresque baesd Weapon of Legacy, but I don't know why

[LucitasBastardChilde]

I think you just made me gamegasm all over myself. This is the coolest thing ever. And it could work in a World of Darkness too - except there isn't an entire mortal industry built around it, but perhaps a cult of vampires dedicated to it, whatever IT is. And maybe this immortal being provides its servitors with an endless supply of blood, so they don't have to take blood from humans. So maybe the cult is, at first, very humane. But slowly but surely, this entire group of vampires is enslaved to this great immortal beast. And in the WoD, we know that this is a Very Bad Thing.

So then this group of vampires end up obeying the psychic orders of this great dark god....

And thus VII was born.

And for Werewolf the Forsaken:

What if it's a great passion / creation spirit chained up in the Shadow? Several packs of werewolves wanted to exploit and control this amazingly powerful spirit. Loci pop up around the spirit's body because it's just THAT powerful.

Because it's a passion / creation spirit, a mortal city grows up around the corresponding site in the material world. But what if this great spirit were to get loose? And how does this chaining affect the spirit world's delicate yet brutal ecology? What would happen if this thing got loose in the material world? What if, god forbid, it CLAIMED someone? Could it claim an entire city's population? What would they become?

As for Mage, it would probably mirror the D&D scenario, except for a few setting related bits.

What if the sacrifice of this beast could open the way for a new Celestial Ladder to be built? The Supernal World would finally be reconnected to the real world! But if that mage economy is built around this beast, would they be so willing to sacrifice it? And what if that mage economy was one of Seers? They would have NO interest in reconnecting the Supernal and the Fallen worlds. So they task for the Atlantean mages would be to take control of the city and find a way to destroy the beast.

What if the damn thing was an Exarch or Oracle that didn't want to rise to the Supernal world?!

What if this beast is "mercy killed" by a symapthetic group of mages, but then all magic in a five hundred mile radius CEASES TO FUNCTION? Does the death of this beast create a dead magic zone? Why? How? Did its death throes destroy the power of magic? Or was its life the SOURCE of magic? And if this beast was responsible of the functioning of magic, does that mean that there are MORE of them, all across the world??! What if this thing was just an extension of an even greater beast?


Hope you WW heads enjoy this little spin! :)

[The Lord of Nothings]

alright.... let's see if i can port this to my favorite setting:

Ya ever wonder what happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Yeah, they tossed him in the East River. And he drifted down to Jersey... and a bunch of guys found him. Alive, but barely. So they got a few Clockworkers and Bobdybags to rig something up, ya know? Keep alive that spark of life. But that spark was so powerful it began to attract... THINGS. Clumps. Algae. Sewage. And these guys.. they started to worship him. The Working Man's Hero. But he couldn't Ascend, right? So he kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger... aw hell. Basically, New Jersey is built around the corpse of a dead union leader. Thats why it stinks so much, and thats why things will never, ever get better... unless he awakes. And if he awakes, New York won't be the only dead magic zone

Eh. Not the best UA bit ever.

[Ithaeur]

After years and years of this, the subsonic distress cries of the imprisoned tarrasque finally call its brethren across the planes of existence. Gigantic forms, like and yet unlike the tortured beast, emerge from the subtle realms and advance towards the city. Do they intend to free the beast? Or to destroy it utterly, and silence its maddening cries?

And in the city, a young warrior climbs into a monstrous suit of armor, crafted from the flesh, scale and bone of the tarrasque. This is not his fight by choice. He was called to it as surely as the beasts that now stride towards the city, driven by the relentless demands of his father, the King, and his necromancer servants who fashioned this hideous armor. He sees the creatures approaching, and knows his heart is not in this fight.

But he also knows: he musn't run away.

OMG. Neon Genesis Tarrasque!

Overall, this has been one of the coolest threads I've read for ages; wonderful ideas, all around!

[Archer]

Mmm. No, not just the food. Everything.

The Tarrasque normally 'eats everything for miles around, including all animals and vegetation.' In order to keep it satieted and regenerating, the armies of Tarrascon are going to be wiping out large swaths of the landscape. Forests. Herds of cattle. Villages. Maybe they can only feed it enough to keep it alive, but sooner or later they're going to want to give it a more substantial meal.

I imagine their army as it crosses the land, each soldier painted with inhuman blood, bulging with muscles and strange growths, covered in scars that no human could survive, girded in armor of reflective carapace, and wielding swords of bone set with diamond teeth.
I picture them returning after the conquest, bringing their spoils with them. Animals, crowded into cages or driven in herds.. Whole harvests mowed down, entire forests felled, villages razed to the ground, all of it piled upon creaking carts to bring along. Then come the people, bound together in rows, forming a line that fills the road and stretches back to the horizon.
The procession moves slowly down the street, as gloating fanfare sounds and the citiizens line the street in their splended clothes, cheering. The ancient, gnarled wordbearers speak a solemn ritual as the gates are opened and the procession leads up the broad steps. The tarrasque screams and gnashes his teeth, drowning out the cheering, chanting, sobbing, wailing. And then, one by one, the carts are thrown into its gaping mouth.

I imagine the lords of Taralsqua started out using their immense wealth to buy the food they needed. Then, when their armies grew mighty enough, they began to demand it, turning their neighbors into tributary states. Recently, one of those tributaries rebelled, and Taralsqua made an example of it, razing the kingdom to the ground and feeding everything and everyone to the tarrasque. And they discovered the tarrasque liked it. Fed the products of violence and plunder, it regenerated faster, with blood and meat of better quality. It even thrashed around less, killed fewer butchers.

When the last remains of that kingdom was devourered, it was clear what had to be done. The armies marched again...

[C. Chapman]

Damn, this thread is stunning.

Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but the other obvious thing to feed the Tarrasque... is itself. Hell, the thing regenerates so rapidly it makes sense, and it's not like we humans haven't made something of a habit of feeding animals bits of themselves, after all. Any unused/not useful bits o' Tarrasque? Into the Tarrasque's maw they go.

Me, I think Tarrasque mining would be interesting, what with constantly having to cut, drill, etc. to keep a flesh tunnel open as it tries to regenerate.

cheers!
Colin

[C. Chapman]

...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.

I'd buy it, *especially* if it was practically all fluff and nothing else.

cheers!
Colin

[Chiaroscuro]

...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.
It really depends on how much you want to charge and how much money per hour you want in exchange for the time writing and laying out your pdf. At this point you've already given us one stunning idea, and others are spinning off from it. If you could develop it in a new exciting way I'm sure a fair number of us would buy your product. But others probably wouldn't. Some folks never buy pdfs. Some don't buy fluff. Some will be put off by your announced desire to ignore some D&Disms while embracing others. And some might expect the way you'd develop the rest of the setting wouldn't go where they'd like to go from your original kernel.

Knowing next to nothing about the pdf market I can't advise you one way or the other. If you'd just like to share your ideas with your adoring public, I rather think a lot of us would DL and read your pdf were it free. I don't know if it's worth writing as a pdf or just putting your other ideas in the thread, though. Might save you server space, bandwidth and the like.

Good luck! It really is a great idea, and you've presented it well.
-C.

[Thomas T]

I never said anything about <i>selling</i> it. This would just be something put up on a site for free.

[Christopher V. Brady]

I never said anything about <i>selling</i> it. This would just be something put up on a site for free.
Dude! Please put it on 'paper', PLEASE!

Also:

Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but the other obvious thing to feed the Tarrasque... is itself. Hell, the thing regenerates so rapidly it makes sense, and it's not like we humans haven't made something of a habit of feeding animals bits of themselves, after all. Any unused/not useful bits o' Tarrasque? Into the Tarrasque's maw they go.

Is pure genius.

[Chiaroscuro]

I never said anything about <i>selling</i> it. This would just be something put up on a site for free.
Oh, then yeah, I expect lots of folks would love to see it. :o I know I would.

If you asked, d20 gurus might be willing to do the heavy lifting on the crunch for you.

-C.

[Thomas T]

By the way - huge thanks to everybody that's popped in to say "that's cool" or weighed in with ideas or 5-starred the thread. The reception this random idea has received has been a <i>really</i> pleasant surprise (I'm still kind of in shock at all the praise) and a nice ol' ego boost.

[Christopher V. Brady]

By the way - huge thanks to everybody that's popped in to say "that's cool" or weighed in with ideas or 5-starred the thread. The reception this random idea has received has been a <i>really</i> pleasant surprise (I'm still kind of in shock at all the praise) and a nice ol' ego boost.
Dude, not speaking for anyone else, but I calls it as I see it. If I have issues, I try and bring up criticisms that are constructive, but I can't find anything wrong with this premise.

[Random Nerd]

One thing that I would add to this premise is to slightly change the Terrasque's death condition.

Specifically, make it so that there no longer is one. That you can't even use the Wish after beating it down, but rather, there is absolutely no way to kill the Terrasque.

That heightens the dilemma, and makes it into even more of a slippery slope.

[damion4242]

One thing that I would add to this premise is to slightly change the Terrasque's death condition.

Specifically, make it so that there no longer is one. That you can't even use the Wish after beating it down, but rather, there is absolutely no way to kill the Terrasque.

That heightens the dilemma, and makes it into even more of a slippery slope.

Having it be unkillable seems less interesting to me. But just using a wish is kinda dull.

I would stick in a sidebar with "interesting" death conditions like:

1)Feed it some amount of it's own flesh, or maybe some other interesting substance

2)You have to go inside it and fight it's heart or something

3)You have to go to whatever plane it gets regen energy from and do something.

4)Maybe it can only be killed with a weapon made from it's own carapace

Or something like that. Basicly, some things that are interesting if your trying to kill it and some that are interesting if your trying to protect it.

[Bill_Coffin]

Dude, not speaking for anyone else, but I calls it as I see it. If I have issues, I try and bring up criticisms that are constructive, but I can't find anything wrong with this premise.

What he said. When i read the first post of this thread, I felt as if i was reading the back cover teaser text or the introduction of a sourcebook. It just had that feel, the gravity of a core concept you knew in your gut had the "wow factor" and sheer novelty of being something worth following no matter where it went.

I mean, for me, I've played AD&D for nearly 30 years. I have known about the tarrasque ever since it was first published for this game. And never once did something like this occur to me. The moment I read it, I was bowled over by the freshness of the concept and by the intelligence of the follow-up in this thread. All of that just makes this an indea worth developing.

As for selling this idea, frankly...why not? The PDF market is such that you could probably make a few bucks selling this were it done right. It doesn't need to be anything extravagant. Go to the forums here to see if any artists are looking to get starte and partner with them. Contact my buddy Steve Conan Trustrum of Misfit Games and see if he's interested. Bottom line is of course people will read this if it's free. They'll probably also read it if its not. The worst that happens is you don't sell it. No big deal. At least you can say you've been published, which would separate you from 99.999% of the rest of the people out there who only wish they had been. Go for it! I am a magazine editor by trade and I've done my share of RPG freelancing. If you need an editor, I'll do it for free. Just don't let an opportunity like this pass you by. The idea has passed the initial test of viability. Now make this thing a reality, man.

[Last Knight]

I agree wholeheartedly - I would buy this sourcebook in a heartbeat, especially if it had details for the city/nation itself.

[JasonK]

Does Tarrasque flesh, like troll flesh, keep growing if severed from the main thing? Would people who consume enough of its flesh or drink enough of its blood transform, themselves, into tarrasquelettes over time?

Add me in with the last 20 pages of proclaiming this idea awesome. :) A pdf writeup of the city would rock. I'd pay cash money for that.

- jason

[LurkingTroll]

I'm LurkingTroll, and I approve of this idea.

[The Horror]

...

Should I give it a go? Seriously, would people go "ooh, ooh!" if I tried to write up a tarrasque-city pdf, bundling up as many of the nifties as possible into a coherent setting? It'd be almost entirely fluff, since my d20 fu is seriously lacking.


Most definately. Get a couple of people to proof read it, somebody to do up some art for it, and you are set. I'll pay good money for this setting. The only question is, how big do you want to make it? I reckon you should plan out a book structure, then start writing and see where it all takes you.

[The Horror]

Does Tarrasque flesh, like troll flesh, keep growing if severed from the main thing? Would people who consume enough of its flesh or drink enough of its blood transform, themselves, into tarrasquelettes over time?


Uhm. Would small settlements far away from the city be attempting to copy it by harvesting Trolls?

[JasonK]

Uhm. Would small settlements far away from the city be attempting to copy it by harvesting Trolls?
If there is any justice in the world, the answer is "yes." :)

- jason

[wokuma]

Very cool idea...

So PM or email who's ideas you want to use or not...

Here's my six...

One week of eating that and you get the addiction and these strange abilities. Cured with only a regeneration spell.

1) Flesh of the Tarrasque: Flaw, must continue eating the flesh. Each day without one dose of flesh you lose one point of constitution that can be only restored by eating that flesh or a regeneration spell. Gift: You stop aging and get +2 to your Con.
2) Blood of the Tarrasque: Flaw, you must continue drinking the blood of the Tarrasque. Each day without one dose of blood, you lose one point of strength. Gift: You get +4 Strength.
3) Marrow of the Tarrasque: Flaw, you must continue eating the marrow of the Tarrasque. Each day without one dose of marrow, you require one extra hour of sleep per day. This can be only restored by eating that flesh or a regeneration spell. Gift: You get fast heal 1.
4) Nerves of the Terrasque: Flaw: Each day without one dose of meat containing nerves or nerves, you lose one point of Intelligence that can be only restored by eating that flesh or a regeneration spell. Gift: You get three feats.
5) Skin of the Tarrasque: Flaw: Each day without eating one dose of skin, you lose one point of Charisma that can only be restored by eating processed Tarrasque skin. Gift: You get natural armor 2.
6) Bones of the Tarrasque: Flaw: Each day without eating one dose of ground bones, you lose one point of wisdom that can only be restored by eating ground Tarrasque bones. Gift: +4 Fortitude save.

It is said that being addicted to all six them and dying from cold turkey results in making a troll... or worse.
If one stat goes to zero, or if you must sleep for 25 hours a day... well... we don't talk about it. The orcs, goblins, gnolls, and hobgoblins is produced depending on the combination. Animals get mutated, plants get mutated.

Well, we got a mission for you. Gakali has turned. We want you to terminate him. He fled to the under construction. Don't worry he's gone feral.

Here's six rumors...

1) For each ton of flesh we take from the tarrasque, we need to feed it ten, maybe fifty tons.... where are other stuff going?
2) Ferals are fleeing into the undercity and are expanding it.
3) Something in the undercity's heart helped imprison the Tarrasque that's why the heroes could have trapped it here.
4) It's not just a tarrasque, but becoming an advanced paragon tarrasque.
5) Whatever doesn't kill it makes it stronger. It was not harpooned. It was asleep, now it's waking up. And it's waking up in a very strange way... the cults are feeding it worship.
6) The city is taking to much from the tarrasque. The only way they can step up production is if the city leaders put a ring of sustenance on that monster... heh heh, and how likely is that?
7) The Tarrasque is the father of all monsters... yet again.
8) If you eat just a piece of the tarrasque you can gain levels. You have the potential to be a hero, and some of your descendents as well.

[The Horror]

If there is any justice in the world, the answer is "yes." :)



I like the way you think. :D

[Christopher V. Brady]

Uhm. Would small settlements far away from the city be attempting to copy it by harvesting Trolls?
I don't like this on the account of that people 'know' that they are the children of the Tarrasque, I prefer hiding that fact for some intrepid PC's to find out.

[The Horror]

I don't like this on the account of that people 'know' that they are the children of the Tarrasque, I prefer hiding that fact for some intrepid PC's to find out.

Definately. I was thinking more like: Trolls are captured and kept alive for food much like the Tarrasque is in the main city. A poor mans Tarrasque if you will. Later when the investigators find out Trolls are humans changed by the Tarrasque flesh, the true horror of the situation can dawn upon them.



Det. Thorn: It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!
Hatcher: I promise, Tiger. I promise. I'll tell the exchange.
Det. Thorn: You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You've gotta tell them! Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!

[MonsterMash]

Does Tarrasque flesh, like troll flesh, keep growing if severed from the main thing? Would people who consume enough of its flesh or drink enough of its blood transform, themselves, into tarrasquelettes over time?

Add me in with the last 20 pages of proclaiming this idea awesome. :) A pdf writeup of the city would rock. I'd pay cash money for that.

- jason
Not according to the 3.5 edition Monster Manual and SRD

If the tarrasque loses a limb or body part, the lost portion regrows in 1d6 minutes (the detached piece dies and decays normally). The creature can reattach the severed member instantly by holding it to the stump

Partly because it is the Tarrasque - there is only meant to be one.

[Alistair Hutton]

Water, it's an interesting problem in the setting. For some reason I'm imagining this city in a semi-desert, due to the epicness of the battle with the tarrasque and so forth, the land was so devestated that it takes hard work to get anything to grow.

Now lets say a river runs through the canyon, flowing directly underneath the Tarrasque, being used to wash the Tarrasque, and carry away noisome waste products too foul even to use in magical experiments. This splits the city into two distinct areas, up-Tarrasque where the nobility, merchants and wizards live with the pure clean water and prevaling wind, and down-Tarrasque where the desperate huddled poor trying to make it in the "big city" live, with the fetid, slithering stream that constitutes the river by then.

Or maybe water is got from underground aquifers but years of butchering the tarrasque and the constant, never ending, poring blood is permeating the ground and slowly poisoning the wells.

Or maybe there's no water problem. Instead the Tarrasque blood that permates all (TM) is causing a super ecology, it's a city in the middle of a ultra-robust jungle. Houses overgrown with creepers and bushes, vastly stong, partially mutated lepards and panthers stalk the streets at night. City patrols spend thier time cutting routes out the city through a jungle that regenerates almost as fast as the Tarrasque.

[Dirigible]

Regarding the fact that a Wish is required to silence the beast permanently, perhaps the city has a standing order utterly forbidding the entry of the highest-level archmages. The determination is based on their reputations, perhaps, which is why the city employs one of the widest-ranging and largest bardic colleges and spy network within various wizard's guilds - got to keep abreast of who is dabbling in Ninth Circle sorcery.

I imagine their army as it crosses the land, each soldier painted with inhuman blood, bulging with muscles and strange growths, covered in scars that no human could survive, girded in armor of reflective carapace, and wielding swords of bone set with diamond teeth.
I picture them returning after the conquest, bringing their spoils with them. Animals, crowded into cages or driven in herds.. Whole harvests mowed down, entire forests felled, villages razed to the ground, all of it piled upon creaking carts to bring along. Then come the people, bound together in rows, forming a line that fills the road and stretches back to the horizon.
The procession moves slowly down the street, as gloating fanfare sounds and the citiizens line the street in their splended clothes, cheering. The ancient, gnarled wordbearers speak a solemn ritual as the gates are opened and the procession leads up the broad steps. The tarrasque screams and gnashes his teeth, drowning out the cheering, chanting, sobbing, wailing. And then, one by one, the carts are thrown into its gaping mouth.

And now you know why armies of zealous villains (orcs, githanki, drow, whatever) act as they do :D

[JasonK]

Definately. I was thinking more like: Trolls are captured and kept alive for food much like the Tarrasque is in the main city. A poor mans Tarrasque if you will. Later when the investigators find out Trolls are humans changed by the Tarrasque flesh, the true horror of the situation can dawn upon them.
I like the way you think. :D

- jason

[Jeffrey Moore]

This is an outstanding idea. I'm going to try merging some of the wonderfulness and see what I get.

What's known: Centuries ago the empire of Tariston waged war on all surrounding kingdoms. It's soldiers were unstoppable juggernauts, clad in blood-stained chitinous armor wielding bone swords that cut through anything. Every village, city, town they captured all the residents were carted off as slaves. Everything that could be carted off was taken. Food, furniture, everything. And noone was ever seen again. Tariston did not offer political alliances, truces, it didn't even send ambassadors, it just sent out it's unstoppable armies and plundered every last bit of the surrounding kingdoms, powered by some dark god.

That was centuries ago. The area around where Tariston once was is now a wasteland. Nothing grows and no one knows what happened to this once terrifying empire. There might still be great treasure in its ruins, but no one survives going out into the wastes. The only sign that something remains is a roaring that echos across the wastes. Is it the dark god, mourning the loss of it's empire?

What's true: The Tarrasque was captured, and the city of Tariston was founded. The citizens soon found 2 things. 1) The blood and flesh of the Tarrasque makes them strong, able to heal any wound quickly and perhaps even immortal. 2) If the Tarrasque is not fed the meat and blood become only barely edible, and those that eat it begin to change into something else. And this began the Tariston war machine. For decades it's super-powered soldiers raped the surrounding lands to feed the appetite of the Tarrasque. Their empire sprang up from heroism, but what started with a few compromises became a terrible plague on the land.

The people of Tariston thought this could go on forever, the other empires would be broken certainly but crops would regro and the Tarrasque would feed them. However, the land became barren, the magic from the Tarrasque's blood slowly seeping into the earth and spreading over time. Nothing more could be reached, everyone had fled the region, and they couldn't go too far from the Tarrasque, since they now needed it's flesh to live. So now the Tarrasque starves, but the former empire of Tariston still feeds on its flesh because without it they would die.

Now Tariston is a degenerate dirty reflection of its former glory. It's undying citizens remember what they were, but have no way to go back. What's more, eating the unfed flesh and drinking the blood of the Tarrasque is changing them from humans into monsters. I do like trolls, but they would be somewhere in between, slowly degenerating mentally but still intelligent enough to realize what they've lost.


Results: Hmmm, I'm not sure if I have something workable here. It seems interesting and evocative, but without the volume of adventure hooks of the original idea. Possible hooks would include druids seeing the expanding wasteland and sending characters in to cure the lands, though not knowing what the real problem is. Or a simple quest to get the loot of a supposedly fallen kingdom. And Tariston wouldn't immediately throw them in the Tarrasque's maw, since just a few people wouldn't begin to quench the Tarrasque's hunger. They'd probably try to lie, ally, anything with the characters to try and improve their situation. But they certainly wouldn't want to let the Tarraque go, since it keeps them alive.

[Bookwrack]

I never said anything about <i>selling</i> it. This would just be something put up on a site for free.
I'd still buy it.
:D

[Alistair Hutton]

More random ideas to help make up for the lack of dungeonm crawling.

The adamantium chains and spikes that pin the Tarrasque had to be mined from somewhere, why not the very walls of the canyon that the chains are now anchored to. Miles and miles of now abandoned mineworkings. Dungeon crawl woo!

[Krieg]

What if this is history repeating itself? Long, long, long ago, the tarrasque was captured, just as now, and only escaped (levelling the city in the process) after the nobles became so corrupted by the beast's blood that they got stupid and sloppy.

The former nobles, their home destroyed, became savage nomads. Over generations they've grown even more monstrous.

What they called themselves then has been lost to history.

Now, all know them as trolls :cool:

Nice!

That brings to The Legacy of Heorot (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671695320/qid=1147195401/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5062020-5816702?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) by Niven, Pournelle & Barnes.

In the book the Grendels are the top of the food chain. The humans find a way to remove the adult Grendels but fail to account for the "baby" Grendels which are in fact a type of fish that are quite numerous.

Without the adult Grendels to keep the population in check the babies rapidly mature & become an army of small adult Grendels that sweep across the landscape eating everything in sight (and each other).

Taking out the Tarrasque leaves a void in the ecosystem that will inevitably be filled. Will you inevitably have masses of Trolls growing into small Tarrasques competing with one another (and everything) else until a balance is reached and the void is filled?

Fun stuff. :)

[Canis Major]

So many pounds of awesome.

Perhaps the Tarresque is an emobodyment of lust, hunger and famine...or at least broadcasts that around the city.

People are filled with urges that can never be satisfied...unless the beast sleeps.

The monster's 'natural' ecology was one of feasting then sleeping for decades. What is the result of it being awake all this time? The psychic miasma the surrounds the city?

What gods would be worshipped in the city?

Gods of pain, wealth, slavery, binding?

It has to be constantly fed...at least once a year...otherwise it begins to starve and shrivel. It would never die this way, but less could be harvested, and it could slide off the harpoons.

Alchemists and mages experiment in feeding it different things, to see what effect it has on it's flesh and waste...perhaps certain things produce specific results.

Adamantine and acid are needed to produce things from its body...these could be major imports and/or industries in the city.

Experiments are always being done to find out other uses for the beast's parts. What can be done with an eye? Teeth? Vocal chords?

Ghouls are a problem, always wanting to feed on it.

[Epengar]

more ideas for the (Tarrasqueblood) stew:

If the Tarrasque is trapped on land, by mightily enchanted harpoons and chains, then think how attractive the site would be to creatures in tune with the Elemental Plane of Earth. Metal eaters would crave the anchors of the harpoons like nothing else. And the earth and bedrock beneath the Tarrasque, impregnated with the blood and body fluids over the centuries, might also be of special interest... Umber hulks, earth elementals, etc. could be attracted to the place, might be vermin gnawing at the restraints.

Also, flies. Flies that feed on Tarrasque blood, generation after generation.

For that matter, stirges. :eek:

[Aaron Peori]

Ghouls are a problem, always wanting to feed on it.

OR... every single person that dies in the city rises as a ghoul.

This leads to a fairly complex industry of morticians with the purpose of disposing of bodies before they rise and terrorize the populace. Some of the more wealthy (and insane) nobles have elaborate tombs designed for themselves, tombs which keep their risen ghouls locked away far beneath the city, buried with all their wealth and treasure so they can enjoy it forever. The persons slaves are also buried with them, to serve as both servants and food. The process of feeding on the Tarrasque's blood has made the ghouls stronger (regeneration? damage reduction?) and the wealthiest nobles get small fountains of Tarrasque blood diverted into their tomb, leading to some truly powerful things down there.

The catch with these tombs is they are designed to keep the inhabitants IN. Getting INTO a tomb is easy. In fact, every year or two some poor fool band of graverobbers wanders down into the undercity looking for treasure. Authorities make no attempt to stop them, because getting OUT of the tombs is virtually impossible. Nobody has every returned.

It is said the morticians know secret routes of escape from the undercity, but that could just be rumor and wishful thinking.

-------------------
Epsilon

[Canis Major]

Working off of this further....vampires. Drinking enough of the Tarrasque's blood makes one into the undead.

[Aaron Peori]

Working off of this further....vampires. Drinking enough of the Tarrasque's blood makes one into the undead.

I think vampires are too... civilized for this. Since the assumption is that too much Tarrasque blood turns the drinker into Trolls, and the Tarrasque is a savage beast I was thinking of something more mindless and inhuman then the traditional vampire (and how it appears in D&D).

One twist on the ghoul idea is that the risen creatures are NOT undead. They're lving things with the same properties and appearance as ghouls, but they aren't undead creatures and thus not subject to Turning or Positive Energy damage...

-----------------
Epsilon

[Canis Major]

:nods: Just working on different ideas.

Vampires could just be the aristocrats of the city. Purer blood makes them so....or they have found if they drink other blood besides the Tarrasque's, they won't degenerate into trolls, but become something else....something immortal...

Of course this is a bit stereotypical, placing vamps in that position.

On the other hand, one could posit that the Tarrasque's power comes from an inherrant link to the positive materiel plane, which could explain its amazing regenerative ablities.

[Pseudoephedrine]

Heck, what if there's an evil vampire lord trying to kill the Tarrasque - so that he can turn it into a vampire spawn under his control?

Also, the feeding of the Tarrasque that people have described puts me in mind of Warriors of Plasm.

[Cerulean Lion]

A cleric summons an Outsider, either Celestial or Fiend, or an Elemental.
Imprisons it, force-feeds it Tarrasque flesh.
What will be the effect?
Might a Fiend willingly comsume Tarrasque flesh, in hopes of gaining increased power?
Might evil Outsiders scheme to be summoned by the city's clerics and wizards, because they desire Tarrasque flesh or blood?
Perhaps Tarelsca's rulers receive offers of aliance from demon cultists, including the names of their patron Fiends?

[Ant]

An idea for Tarrasque flesh armour (NOTE: this got a bit more gruesome than I first imagined. Enjoy!):

It's incredibly strong, flexible, light - very, very good armour.

But there's a drawback. When Tarrasque armour gets close enough (within a mile? 10 miles?) to the still living Godbeast, the Tarrasque flesh..... awakens, in preparation for being rejoined with the main body of the beast.

Except it can't get to the Godbeast, because it's been hammered and riveted together and wrapped around something else. You, in fact. Cue tales of dead soldiers found fused to their armour after a battle; of old veterans who torn off their armour after a protracted seige, only to be left with hideous scars (or fatal wounds) as the new bond is sundered (yuk!).

The ruling classes forbid any soldier from wearing Tarrasque armour for more than 3 days without at least a 16 hour break. No-one is told why.


Some ideas about what happens:

7 - 14 days: The awakened Tarrasque flesh has formed a superficial bond with it's owners/hosts body. Pain tollerance of the host is greatly increased. Removing the armour results in major fleshwounds, more debilitating than fatal.

15 - 21 days: The awakened flesh has sent tendrils into the host, feeding a small but stead supply of Tarrasque Goodness directly into the body. Host no longer needs to eat. Hosts strength and constitution is increased along with a high degree of bloodlust, but the armour cannot be removed without risking serious physical injuries. The host has started to become a bit unhinged, moreso if he/she is aware that they have bits of Tarrasque growing into them.

22 days onward: Host no longer feels pain in any noticable sense. Strength and Con are further increased, as is bloodlust. Host is a bloodcrazed looney. Removal of armour at this point is fatal - there are bits of T Flesh in major organs, and the host has become *highly* dependant on Tarrasque juices in their veins.


The cities ruler might have a number of people who have - either by accident or by design - worn T armour whilst within range of the Beast. They might be kept alive and imprisoned, mostly out of curiosity over how far the human/Tarrasque bonding can go.

Ant.

[johnnype]

I haven't had a chance to read every post so forgive me if this has been brought up before.

Let's not forget that the Tarrasque is the only known reliable way to destroy relics. What does the party who just killed Kyuss (Age of Worms) do with the Cowl of the Wormgod and the Mace of Kyuss?

For a not so modest fee, the city will help in the disposal of the item.

Allow me to illustrate:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/dmg2_gallery/90120.jpg

In case you can't place the item falling into the Tarrasque's mouth, it's the Wand of Orcus.

[Bill_Coffin]

I like the thought of the tarrasque attracting all kinds of bloodsuckers and carrion feeders. I also dig the whole vampirism, though I find myself gravitating towards the Count Dracula-type, noble sophisticate vamps integrating themselves into the human power structure so they can spike their vintage with tarrasque blood for a particularly high-octane kick. But I also see there being savage, feral vamps who dwell in the undercity and routinely make raids to drink tarrasque blood because they have acquired a taste for it. These evil bastards have been compating with humans corrupted and transformed by lifetimes of exposure to tarraqsue blood -- the neo-trolls, and somewhere, deep within the undercity, the vamps and trolls have become (im)mortal enemies, killing each other where they stand in an endless cycle of bloodshed from which all the fallen rise again to fight the next day.

This is why the undercity is such a dangerous place to explore, despite the fabulous riches and enticing mysteries said to be stored there. But in recent months, there have been those who have delved deep once more, and now they are coming back with more than the usual horror stories. Now, it seems, the feral vampires and the devolved trolls have made their peace. And what's more, they have contrived a way to breed their disprate kinds into a third, hybrid people neither living nor dead, but something in between...

[damion4242]

It has long been thought that the Tarrasque has it's own plane or demi-plane. This is where the relics go, and where it draws the power it needs to regenerate from.

Now that it has been captured, brave explorers will venture into the creatures maw to explore this strange place. (And get stuff from everything it's eaten! We hope.)

[Thomas T]

(snippage)
Go for it! I am a magazine editor by trade and I've done my share of RPG freelancing. If you need an editor, I'll do it for free. Just don't let an opportunity like this pass you by. The idea has passed the initial test of viability. Now make this thing a reality, man.
Holy crap.

I wasn't sure what to say when I read that and, having tried to put some appropriate words together, I'm still not sure. Thankyou, obviously, but mostly "holy crap".

That's an incredible offer. I don't think I'd be able to look myself in the face if I didn't make a real effort now. I guess I'd better see what I can whip up.

[Jerrythehun]

Holy crap.

I wasn't sure what to say when I read that and, having tried to put some appropriate words together, I'm still not sure. Thankyou, obviously, but mostly "holy crap".

That's an incredible offer. I don't think I'd be able to look myself in the face if I didn't make a real effort now. I guess I'd better see what I can whip up.

I'd buy it. PDF or dino-media. Consider this a pre-order. PM me for my email addy when yer ready.

I'll buy it in pieces too. Whatever.

But I WANT A MAP. And I WANT TO PAY YOU FOR IT!!!!!

:)

[ShanG]

Perhaps the Tarresque is an emobodyment of lust, hunger and famine...or at least broadcasts that around the city.

People are filled with urges that can never be satisfied...unless the beast sleeps.

The monster's 'natural' ecology was one of feasting then sleeping for decades. What is the result of it being awake all this time? The psychic miasma the surrounds the city?

...

It has to be constantly fed...at least once a year...otherwise it begins to starve and shrivel. It would never die this way, but less could be harvested, and it could slide off the harpoons.

...

Ghouls are a problem, always wanting to feed on it.

Oh, definitely. Besides the fact that everyone in the city is eating its flesh and drinking its blood, the sheer presence of the beast is going to influence people.

I'm thinking you could tie the mental influence together with the sleep/eat cycle the Tarassque naturally undergoes. Sure, it's going to be forcibly kept awake, and that's going to mess with the cycle, but it doesn't have to be entirely awake, either. It might drift in and out of consciousness, creating an ebb and tide of the mental influence. Normally, it's barely awake, and the citizens are merely a bit more gluttonous, angry, and lustful than normal people. But as the year progresses they become steadily hungrier, until when the Tarrasque is roused for its yearly feeding the urges become unbearable - as the steady succession of prisoners is marched down its throat, the entire city devolves into chaos. Citizens gorge themselves on whatever is at hand, killing and rutting in the streets like animals. When the feeding frezny is done, they lapse back into unconsiousness, waking the next day to go about their business as normal.

As for Ghouls, Vampires, Trolls... what we really need is a Flesh-Warped template that can be applied to creatures who have been saturated with its flesh and blood. That way you can slap it onto any creature you want and have a grotesque monnster.

[Broblawsky0]

Oh, definitely. Besides the fact that everyone in the city is eating its flesh and drinking its blood, the sheer presence of the beast is going to influence people.

I'm thinking you could tie the mental influence together with the sleep/eat cycle the Tarassque naturally undergoes. Sure, it's going to be forcibly kept awake, and that's going to mess with the cycle, but it doesn't have to be entirely awake, either. It might drift in and out of consciousness, creating an ebb and tide of the mental influence. Normally, it's barely awake, and the citizens are merely a bit more gluttonous, angry, and lustful than normal people. But as the year progresses they become steadily hungrier, until when the Tarrasque is roused for its yearly feeding the urges become unbearable - as the steady succession of prisoners is marched down its throat, the entire city devolves into chaos. Citizens gorge themselves on whatever is at hand, killing and rutting in the streets like animals. When the feeding frezny is done, they lapse back into unconsiousness, waking the next day to go about their business as normal.

As for Ghouls, Vampires, Trolls... what we really need is a Flesh-Warped template that can be applied to creatures who have been saturated with its flesh and blood. That way you can slap it onto any creature you want and have a grotesque monnster.The Corrupted (BoVD) or Feral (SavSpe) templates? Both of them give Fast Healing.

Edit: There's also the Half-Troll template from the Fiend Folio.

[Bill_Coffin]

Holy crap.

I wasn't sure what to say when I read that and, having tried to put some appropriate words together, I'm still not sure. Thankyou, obviously, but mostly "holy crap".

That's an incredible offer. I don't think I'd be able to look myself in the face if I didn't make a real effort now. I guess I'd better see what I can whip up.

Well, I wouldn't have made the offer if the original premise wasn't something I would readily slap $25 on the counter for right this moment. It really is that good, Thomas.

Plus, you've got over 4,500 posts on RPGnet, I see. You're no stranger to the keyboard, so I know you can do this thing. Most of us here can, we just don't know that we can, or we somehow trick ourselves into thinking that we can't. But we can. And you've got a leg up because you've got a bulletproof starting concept. PM me at any time with questions, concerns, whatever. I'm on this like white on rice.
:D

[tj333]

One possiblility ofr adventuring is having other cities sending adventurers to find other godbeasts to compete with the tarrasque in terms of "harvest". Deals with devils and demons, raiding far off plains or existence, just anything that can provide but has a chance of laying waste to all around it when it gets loose.
Keeping these things at a starting stage would fit best with the feel of the setting so far.

I can see a number of cities going for econemies built on, well some kind of smaller (Then a tarrasque) creature that lays eggs in humans and grows from them. DO slaadi do this?

I especialy like the troll ideas that have been going around. Hmmm, super trolls! Bigger, faster regen, and tarrasque like armor plateing.

[CIZIN]

Mr. Thomas T, I have been following this thread as well, and I would also like to volunteer my services to the project. I have done freelance writing for gaming, and write a lot of gaming stuff for my friends groups and my own. I have some idea for the pdf that I would willingly give you, if you'd like. feel free to email me at cizin@tmail.com. I would be more than happy to send you writing samples, either of past work, or of my suggestions. I would also work for free, just to work on a project so unbelievably cool. Hopefully, I'll hear from you.

Nick

[Broblawsky0]

I'd be happy to help with some of the crunch. I'm bjh39@cornell.edu.

[Broblawsky0]

Incidentally, there are a number of devils that have regeneration; since devil's hearts (and similar bits) can be used as spell components, a devil might make a good poor-man's Tarrasque.

[Canis Major]

Kytons, the chain devils, might have some influence in the city, being used as spiritual re-enforcements of the Tarrasque's imprisonment.

With a caputed and 'tame' Tarrasque, there might be a slowly but steady influx of beings that need to destroy artifacts relics and creatures that cannot otherwise be destroyed except by the beast.

A possible plot: The constant pain and awakened state start to give the god-beast intelligence, This intelligence starts to give it great and subtle powers. Perhaps it no longer wishes to be freed, as it realizes the power around it. If it can subsume that power it might become a god....with the power to eat whole worlds...

A few of the recent D&D supplements introduce the item creation feat of Flesh Grafting, used with fiends, undead, aboeths, and illithids. This might be the way to go with making super-soldiers.

What if some of the other races wish to control the city? Drow, illithid, etc?

[Cerulean Lion]

Xaos.... Drow, illithid, etc?

The Drow control the Underdark: they could invade from below.
They could have many new powers just from harvesting what
they can from underneath, before anyone realizes their presence.

[Lord Liaden]

Xaos.... Drow, illithid, etc?

The Drow control the Underdark: they could invade from below.
They could have many new powers just from harvesting what
they can from underneath, before anyone realizes their presence.
That's an interesting thought: Drow stealing from the "runoff" of the tarrasque's ongoing slaughter. They might have cut secret drainage channels to catch some of the blood or bits of flesh. Their digging under the tarrasque could also be undermining the rods that hold it, threatening to set it free.

That could be the basis for a fine PC adventure to find the Drow and stop their thievery.

(We already have at least a year's worth of plot ideas on this thread.) :D

[Canis Major]

Or the drow (or duegar, or something else) have tunneled beneath it where it lies on the canyon floor, and are burrowing into it.

[CleverName]

Holy crap.

I wasn't sure what to say when I read that and, having tried to put some appropriate words together, I'm still not sure. Thankyou, obviously, but mostly "holy crap".

That's an incredible offer. I don't think I'd be able to look myself in the face if I didn't make a real effort now. I guess I'd better see what I can whip up.

CARPE FRiKKiN DEUM!!!!!!!!!

[wokuma]

Put a counterspell wish ring on the Tarrasque. Two. Coupla epic spell resisting items... in the chains. (They are not stupid all the time).

Four shades of...

Tarrasqueville: The large town is a young, growing, and vibrant decadent.

Tarraston: It becomes a massive growing violent and decadent city that terrorizes it's neighbors, but still trades with them. A vibrant verdant jungle in the middle of the dessert. The desert plants twisted by the blood taint and fed on the wastes of magic and Tarrasque, fed by fountains of endless water (mostly for the haves) are growing out of control.

Tarelsca City of Blood and demons: It is said that there are more demons and devils here than in hell... and hell isn't pleased. It is just a place of horrific decadence. The empire is very unstable and prone to civil wars, madness, and internal strife. Surrounded by a vile mutated flora moving and glowing, in a miasma of blood and fetid waste.

Tarraka the Red Desert: The vitality has been drained from the area by the Tarrasque. Nobody goes there.

Six more rumors...
1) You don't want to feed it artifacts. Well, more than one per century anyway.
2) The mages of this city are becoming Troll Magi.
3) This is the first age. Twenty centuries from now, we humans will wonder why the Orcs and other fell creatures attack us. They will know why... even if they just dimly suspect, and try to kill us humans, because they do not want this happening again. And deep down, way down, they will know, maybe on the faintest most ephemeral way that they were once human, or demi-human, and that angers them..
4) Stirges were once mosquitoes that fed on the Tarrasque.
5) Wearing Tarraque armor will make you sleepy, violent, and voraciously hungry.
6) A wish kills it, but it will return. Like the Phoenix.

So, when's the playtest?

[Cerulean Lion]

The capture of the Tarrasque wasn't really an accomplishment of the army that fought it, or at least not fully theirs.
They were secretly helped by certain gods.
(I'd suggest gods of slaughter, such as Hextor, or cruelty, such as Talona, or a god of corruption or chaos.)
They wanted the capture to succeed, for two reasons:
1) They foresaw the decadence and corruption.
2) They foresaw that, the longer the Tarrasque remains a prisoner, the more ferocious its frenzy when it does get free--and the longer that frenzy will last.
They plan to set it free, at the right time...

This means there can be scheming among the gods and their mortal servants, as some try to set the beast free, while others want to delay the moment. Still others want to prepare mortals for the inevitable, to reduce the slaughter when it comes--or they want to use it to their own advantage.

[ShanG]

The Corrupted (BoVD) or Feral (SavSpe) templates? Both of them give Fast Healing.

Edit: There's also the Half-Troll template from the Fiend Folio.

All of which are probably good places to start. :D

One possiblility ofr adventuring is having other cities sending adventurers to find other godbeasts to compete with the tarrasque in terms of "harvest". Deals with devils and demons, raiding far off plains or existence, just anything that can provide but has a chance of laying waste to all around it when it gets loose.
Keeping these things at a starting stage would fit best with the feel of the setting so far.

I can see a number of cities going for econemies built on, well some kind of smaller (Then a tarrasque) creature that lays eggs in humans and grows from them. DO slaadi do this?


Slaadi do, from what I recall, have the ability to implant eggs in other beings. Some colors, at least.

But now you've got me thinking about the world-wide implications of this sort of thing, and I very much agree with you. The city of Tarascon might be the centerpiece, as it were, of the setting - the embodiment of what it's about - but you've got kind of an over-arching theme of... parisitism. It opens up the possibility for worldwide, everyday binding of monsters and so forth - maybe the tarrasque isn't even the first, maybe it's simply a logical extension of pre-existing trends.

Like you say - it's an arms race, each city-state tries to compete with the others. Tarrascon has bound the Tarrasque, which feeds the multitudes with its flesh and blood. The city reflects that, and is dominated by growth, hunger, and the baser urges. Los Diablos is built around a small army of bound Devils, and ruled by an upper-class of Mages who are the only ones who can keep the devils in check. Lucia is the city of lights, almost indescribably beautiful as long as you ignore the fact that it's all powered by draining the power from a group of Solars imprisoned in the central cathedral.

Even in the lesser settlements that can't maintain such a monster, human slavery and sacrifice are probably going to be the order of the day.


A few of the recent D&D supplements introduce the item creation feat of Flesh Grafting, used with fiends, undead, aboeths, and illithids. This might be the way to go with making super-soldiers.


Tarrasque-Flesh grafts are an absolute necessity.

Speaking of which, let me quickly run down all the different stuff:

Tarrasque Flesh & Blood, consumed.
Tarrasque bits as Spell Components.
Tarrasque Jewels extracted from the Carapace.
Tarrasque-Infusion Feats.
Tarrasque Carapace, Bone, & Flesh as Armor.
Tarrasque Bone & Carapace weapons.
Tarrasque Flesh Grafts
Tarrasque-Warped Template.

Anything else? Man, that's quite a bit of possible crunch. :D

Hmm... I seem to remember reading a Prc called the 'Waker of the Beast' that was based around the Tarrasque. That's a possibility as well.

That's an interesting thought: Drow stealing from the "runoff" of the tarrasque's ongoing slaughter. They might have cut secret drainage channels to catch some of the blood or bits of flesh. Their digging under the tarrasque could also be undermining the rods that hold it, threatening to set it free.

On a similar vein: What is happening to all the runoff from the Tarrasque? Clearly it can't be processed with 100% efficiency, so what happens when tarrasque blood and flesh start floating downstream and being ingested by the folks in the next city?

[Cerulean Lion]

what happens when tarrasque blood and flesh start floating downstream and being ingested by the folks in the next city?

Never mind the folks...what about the fish?
Maybe the downstream towns specialize in capturing and selling tarrasque-enhanced fish and other water creatures.
Or maybe the less powerful mages/alchemists will find homes downstream from the city, to make what they can of the diluted blood/meat that drifts downstream.
Maybe diluted materials cause less corruption, so are preferred by more cautious people.

Edit: What about people who don't want the Taint? What's it worth to provide immunity, or at least resistance, to those who fear the corruption but can't get away from the city?

[Jerrythehun]

Halfway down the page? Oh hell no....


Bump

[Bill_Coffin]

Never mind the folks...what about the fish?

Well, that tears it. The sourcebook now needs an entire chapter devoted to the local ecology and how it is has been mutated by its exposure to the tarrasque runoff. Super-stirges, pirahan goldfish, bloodsucking, regenerative scorpions, snakes that spit blood (why? why not?) and such. And that's just the regular animal-type stuff. Never mind what the local monster population will have been turned into. And of course, there will have to be plenty of new critters that either have been transformed or awakened by the tarrasque runoff, or were alchemical creations by mad wizards using high-octane tarrasque parts to fuel their own version of the Island of Dr. Moreau...

Edit: What about people who don't want the Taint? What's it worth to provide immunity, or at least resistance, to those who fear the corruption but can't get away from the city?

For starters, we can't call it the Taint, because that brings to mind that hilarious Daily Show bit about people's level of "taint" and where it can best be rooted out.

The Corruption, maybe? People who don't want it will either leave or they will stick around to bring the system down. But you know that old saying: take care when fighting monsters lest you become one yourself...

[Bill_Coffin]

What if some of the other races wish to control the city? Drow, illithid, etc?

Illithids aren't going to go anywhere near the city if it's got a psionic blackout. Without their psionics, Illithids are just a bunch of squid-faced braineaters. Although...

You have to wonder about a super-Illithid boss whose main goal in life is to chomp on the tarrasque's brain. For sake of adventure, I'm guessing that were he to pull this off, he'd probably undergo a rapid, severe transformation. A regenerating, heavily carapaced, super-strong Illithid warlord would make for a hell of a fun villain to throw down against, especially once he gets away from the city. But even if not, if the thing was driven half-mad from the magical equivalent of 'roid rage because of the tarrasque effect, would you want to tangle with him? Here it comes...a creature with the size and strength of an ogre, an armored body as tough as a bulette's, and the ability to bite through your skull and eat your freaking brain. You know as soon as he lays his claws on you, he's going to break you in half and start having lunch.

[Thornhammer]

You have to wonder about a super-Illithid boss whose main goal in life is to chomp on the tarrasque's brain. For sake of adventure, I'm guessing that were he to pull this off, he'd probably undergo a rapid, severe transformation.

...the Illithirrasque!

Man, you want to talk about brown trousers time. There's a new tarrasque in town (*tching...tching*). And this one can read your mind.

-Thornhammer

[ShanG]

Edit: What about people who don't want the Taint? What's it worth to provide immunity, or at least resistance, to those who fear the corruption but can't get away from the city?

And since it's the Freaking Tarrasque here, at what level is it even possible? I'd be inclined to put the effects of tarrasque-mutation as requiring something on the level of Regenerate to reverse. Or maybe anti-regenerate, since regenerating is basically what the Tarrasque does. And that is assuming anybody but a privlidged few even know why this is happening.

Which would mean you're going to have a whole lot of peasants who are being effected and can't do anything to cure it.

[wokuma]

Tarrasque-Flesh grafts are an absolute necessity.

Speaking of which, let me quickly run down all the different stuff:

Tarrasque Flesh & Blood, consumed.
Tarrasque bits as Spell Components.
Tarrasque Jewels extracted from the Carapace.
Tarrasque-Infusion Feats.
Tarrasque Carapace, Bone, & Flesh as Armor.
Tarrasque Bone & Carapace weapons.
Tarrasque Flesh Grafts
Tarrasque-Warped Template.

Anything else? Man, that's quite a bit of possible crunch.

Ground bone, marrow, easily accessible organs (eyes, horn, tail), maybe setting up adamantine braces to support a tunnel into the tarrasque to get to the good organs... Each thing gets it's own special ability.

[Broblawsky0]

Speaking of which, let me quickly run down all the different stuff:

Tarrasque Flesh & Blood, consumed.
Tarrasque bits as Spell Components.
Tarrasque Jewels extracted from the Carapace.
Tarrasque-Infusion Feats.
Tarrasque Carapace, Bone, & Flesh as Armor.
Tarrasque Bone & Carapace weapons.
Tarrasque Flesh Grafts
Tarrasque-Warped Template.

Anything else? Man, that's quite a bit of possible crunch. :D

Hmm... I seem to remember reading a Prc called the 'Waker of the Beast' that was based around the Tarrasque. That's a possibility as well.Tarrasque Flesh & Blood could act as potions, and give you access to a set of tarrasque-related feats (Blooded, Infused, Transfigured, etc.) once you've consumed them - of course, every time you take some of the stuff, you have to make a Fort save, and if you fail, you receive not only the feat, but an appropriate flaw to avoid giving an unfair advantage.

Tarrasque bits could act as Power Components - they can substitute for the XP cost of a spell or item if you purchase enough of them, probably at 10x the XP cost in gold - or more. Of course, using them comes with a price all its own - using them for spells risks corruption just as consuming flesh and blood does, and using them for items subtly alters the item, effectively giving it a minor curse (or maybe not so minor).

Tarrasque Flesh Grafts wouldn't be too hard, and the Beast's body parts used as components in armor and weapons could be treated as a kind of special material.

Tarrasque-Warped Template could be based on the half-troll template, with some extra Tarrasque-y flavor (like spell resistance). Possibly it could be in multiple levels, like the Evolved Undead template. Or a monster class, maybe.

And I'm thinking three prestige classes for the Cult of the Tarrasque:

Waker of the Beast - For fighters, barbarians, etc.
Liberator of the Beast - A more rogue-y prestige class oriented towards sneaking around, with the ability to transform into a raging monstrosity (liberating the beast within)
Speaker for the Beast - A caster prestige class designed as a Tarrasque Shaman.

[Canis Major]

A different spin on the idea.

The city is part of a larger empire, which has grown to immense power due to the imprisoned Tarrasque.

The city is back in a wastleand, and is used as a punishment posting, a prison and exile area. The dregs are sent there. However it is a vitally important part of the empire, and other lands constantly try to capture it, or free the Tarrasque, or sabotage the magic factories.

The Emperor is perhaps the only surviving member of group that captured the beast in the first place, and is now nigh immortal from infusion from it.

[Emperor Norton II]

Xaos.... Drow, illithid, etc?

The Drow control the Underdark: they could invade from below.
They could have many new powers just from harvesting what
they can from underneath, before anyone realizes their presence.

... what if the Tarrasque's run-off was what made elves into drow... if there was a colony that lived downstream, that was somehow warped by it, and is now looking for answers, no longer able to walk about freely in the light...

[Bill_Coffin]

A different spin on the idea.

The city is part of a larger empire, which has grown to immense power due to the imprisoned Tarrasque.

The city is back in a wastleand, and is used as a punishment posting, a prison and exile area. The dregs are sent there. However it is a vitally important part of the empire, and other lands constantly try to capture it, or free the Tarrasque, or sabotage the magic factories.

The Emperor is perhaps the only surviving member of group that captured the beast in the first place, and is now nigh immortal from infusion from it.

I could only buy this if for some reason, the tarrasque was still imprisoned (and needed to be monitored) but the vast industry from the creature itself had gone away. If the tarrasque is still providing a huge fortune, it'll be the heart of whatever empire it spawns.

Still, if you really extrapolated this concept of the tarrasque city, you could develop different eras to play in. What you described could be an "end of the era" setting, where the empire has run its course, its corruptions have taken a huge toll on it, and the city that started it all is a lonely, barren wasteland.

[stephen_dean]

The Tarrasque is basically the industrial revolution, only embodied in the form of a howling beast. Makes me think of William Blake. Steampunk Tarrasque, not thats an unpleasant thought.

[Cerulean Lion]

Steampunk.....If Tarrasque-style enchantments proved to be much more powerful the more mechanical components they had, there would be a motive for artificers to design and build such things.
A dichotomy could develop....traditional style enchanters/wizards against steampunk-style, with the latter bolstered by Tarrasque components.