Somehow, my PCs managed to arrange a meeting with lvl 20 wizard living on an island realm within his own floating tower.
Now this guy is exceptionally powerful (archmage caste) and an epicure of the world. He collects the best of everything and everyone. Expensive and meta-expensive items and peple/creatures he can get for his collection. Not exactly evil, but will go to exceptional lenghts to get what he wants.
What should his home be like? I want stuff that will blow my players' minds.
Pic unrelated but intriguing
>>44222784
It looks like a complete mess, because it is a complete mess. The only person that knows where everything is is the Wizard.
Everywhere the players look they find trinkets and enchanted swords, Voodoo dolls, golden statues dedicated to the god of fertility, skulls from gigantic beasts, weird pets where in your plane of existence would be a KoS, Mummies, artifacts or items that have gone missing decades ago and no one has ever found the culprit, gilded armor and crowns from civilizations long extinct
The Wizard should have things from his travels of the world. Tattoos, Piercings, a hairstyle that doesn't quite fit his race
Scrying pools set up on major cities or political figures in the setting. Possibly portals to those locations in the same room.
Caged demons/dragons/feral vampires/other extremely dangerous magical creatures being kept somewhere like it's a petting zoo.
Within this "zoo" area, have the environments in each cage change. With some being hot arid deserts, and others being frigid artic snow. Don't explain how these effects are sustained or limited to such a small area.
Flying machines (assuming things like airships don't exist yet).
The tower itself is surrounded by flying creatures that have been enslaved or trained for security... or possibly even constructs.
Lighting within the tower is all magical. Also pathways of force or "lifts" that operate off magic.
Anything from Harry Potter (living paintings, levitating candles, shifting stairwells, ect).
On the island below the tower, there is a giant crater. Don't explain why. Perhaps multiple craters if there are multiple islands and the tower kinda floats from island to island.
Alchemical lab with items of unusual properties. Literal "liquid gold" at room temperature, metal that reforms itself if dented or grows like a plant, stone or obsidian that burns as if it were made of oil, ect.
If you've ever played Elder Scrolls/Skyrim, you could rip off a few Daedric artifacts equivalents and have those around.
Slightly related to the above, the Wizzard has female clones of himself as "companions"... or servants.
The tower is larger inside than it appears from outside.
I'm just ripping off games and anime now. Point is, copy stuff from media. The Zelda games have cool dungeons. Batman and Superman have cool lairs, ect.
>>44222784
Tear a page out of the books of the Telvanni from Morrowind.
You have to be able to fly just to effectively navigate his home - where any other building would have a grand spiral staircase, his just has an open, sheer-walled atrium so he can levitate between floors.
The PC's walk through a seemingly innocuous door, only to find that they have walked through the entrance of a tavern they frequent, or in the middle of a bustling market in a city they know well, or some other familiar location. Confused, they wander around dazed for a moment, only for the wizard to pop out of nowhere, and bring them back to his tower through a similarly innocuous door. As they leave whatever room in the tower, they see a snowglobe on a desk, where within is contained a perfect model of the city they just visited.
OP here.
Nice replies, much apprecaited. Sometimes I just run out of ideas or are pretty lame.
Thanks!
Check out Maerlyn's Rainbow.
I don't know how much detail you want to go into OP, but I personally love clutter. Absolutely massive amounts of arcane items, tomes, pets and all other sorts of random shit everywhere. Every wall is a shelf or system of cubby-holes, sometimes that are opened from two separate rooms connected by a wall; there are alchemical distilleries that run across the top of each room in a long tube around the whole house, a bit like a particle accelerator for potions. There are multiple pits with grates, and stairwells besides them inconspicuously worked into the grain, secret chambers and apprentices scuttling to and fro. It's a place of what appears to be an intense chaos but every single piece and thing within that place has a story and a meaning and a use, and its all relentlessly oppressive in just how much shit there all is.
Alternatively, you could focus on a little less clutter and make the house just seemingly endlessly vast, probably dark and luxurious, with individual rooms as vaults. I like that idea too, because I like fancy dark corridors.
>>44222784
So basically this guy
The entrance hallway has suits of armor standing along the walls.
Each suit of armor is the original armor of every hero in the known world (plus many more).
Wizard makes offhand comment about one day maybe your armor will be lined up here.
Essentially, every suit is a full level 20 minmaxed set of equipment.They are all animated.
Why is a level 20 wizard NOT living in a demiplane?
Find a list of legendary weapons.
Then just describe weapons lying in heaps.
A barrel with 30 swords sticking out.
Ten battle-axes lying in a row.
A wall with shields.
Then pick a random item from the list if they ask what it is.
Also, what is your plan when your party tries to steal something? Because they will.
>>44224020
The tower is his "office", in which he keeps a clone of himself for interacting with the regular denizens of prime material while he's off looting new shit from outer planes.
The tower houses the shit from the plane it's on. He has many more of them across the others.
>>44224020
That's what all the other level 20 wizards are doing.
>>44224020
>>44224062
This Wizard is a divination specialist and has a hunch that within the next few centuries someone may very well peel away the layers of the universe and cut the planes off from each other. He doesn't want to be trapped in a demiplane during that time, so he didn't build there.
He's not 100% sure but its just a hunch.
>>44222784
Titan butler.
>>44224020
>implying the whole planet the PCs are on isn't just a part of his demiplane
A BIG ass globe or a map of the known world. He has everywhere he's ever been to on the map labeled.
He has some sort of marker he can place on the map or globe. The port/gate to it via some other item he has bound to the marker. A ring or something. Or he can scry it.
Also extensive ass library.
If he doesn't know something he knows someone who does. Or maybe he won't give all information and just nudges them in the right direction. Then watches for his own arch mage amusement.
Or maybe makes wagers with powerful outsiders on the outcome of the players adventures. Or with the cranky Imp that chills in his tower.
>>44224973
Or all of the above. Go big or go home is the motto of level 20 wizards
>>44224038
They're all items so exceptionally powerful wielding them would literally blow their minds
>>44224992
exactly.
Or some greater Djinn.
The Arch Mage and the Djinn make odd bets from time to time.
The Djinn has to fork over a wish or something to the Archmage.
The prize doesn't matter to the Archmage. He could easily do it himself. He just likes to get the Djinn all buttflustered.
But the mage plays legit and doesn't help the PCs via his magic.
Archmage with a gambling problem
>>44225088
>that one time he gambled away the heart of the planet on if it would snow in the plane of fire on christmas eve
>he won it back later though when he challenged the same guy to a dance-off with this weird flashy dancing machine he found in his travels
>>44222784
My suggestion? Comfy couches, a quaint fireplace, neutral colors. The floor should be ever-so-slightly tilted to force the players to look up at him. There should be a coffee table, with some books that were popular last time he left the island. Enough to say 'I am trying to aim for the right appearances, but I am not trying all that damn hard.'
Does it sound impersonal and innocuous? Maybe a bit bland? It should. Because only an idiot wizard is going to let someone he doesn't absolutely trust, who he doesn't have some sort of power over beyond his own badassery, into his sanctum sanctorum. They should get at best a quaint parlor and at worst an impersonal office.
Have a box that summons a demon. This demon's sole desire in life is to help you fulfill a single basic task. Once it's completed, it kills itself.
Not being able to complete a task, whether it's too abstract or plain impossible, will start to drive it insane. The longer the demon is alive, the quicker it's sanity drains.
>>44222784
just have legendary items being used for mudane tasks such as an orb of infinite knowledge being used as a doorstop, or excalibers scabbard being used to prop a window open because the shutter broke.
The most insane card catalog system.
>>44226371
Adding the that, the library should be room after room of books getting older and older the farther back you go. Then it turns into scrolls, then clay tablets, and so on until it's just scratches on bones and rocks.
>>44223765
I am irrationally turned on right now.
>>44222965
>Tattoos, Piercings
I'd agree with certain markings but a lv 20 wizard would have high int which conflicts with having tattoos or piercings desu senpai imho.
>>44226935
This is the most pathetic /r9k cross post on 4chan
>>44224020
What's so great about demiplanes anyway? No one ever comes to visit, it's not as easy to see what's going on, you need to go farther afield to get the things you need...
