| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| redking |
Posted - 21 Nov 2017 : 12:05:35
I have been delving deep into the udoxias of the Jhaamdathi empire, and I wanted to offer the following revision to the udoxias. The udoxias as given simply allow the trading out of powers and feats in exchange for others, but really offer nothing else. I flesh out the udoxias powers a little bit, and add a touch of lore.
-------------------------
Udoxias
The udoxias were the pinnacle achievement of the Jhaamdathi empire. The Jhaamdath empire was aware of the Netherese mythallar and Elven mythals, and these magics influenced the creation of the udoxias.
At first the Jhaamdathi attempted to research psionic mythals, seeking to implement a psionic version of the Elven mythals. However, it soon became apparent to the Psiarchs that a psionic mythal on a wide scale would be too difficult a task. Next was an attempt at a psionic mythallar. The psionic mythallar failed entirely – there was no ambient source of psionics to fuel a psionic mythallar, while the Netherese mythallar were fueled by the weave.
The research was not in vain. In reseaching psionic mythals and attempting to build a psionic mythallar, the Jhaamdathi were able to design and ultimately create the udoxias. Unlike mythals and mythallar that draw power from the weave of magic on a constant basis, the udoxias were to be powered by the individual psions and other users of psionics that stored psionic energies within the udoxia. In addition, any prospective user of the udoxia would have to learn the ability to contact the udoxia in order to access its powers.
Each udoxia is at its core an incredibly advanced cognizance crystal, with seemingly no limit to its storage capacity. In each udoxia was imprinted many powers and psionic feats. A user of an udoxia could draw on these powers and feats, but had to trade out an equivalent power or feat in exchange. Those powers traded out were effectively sequestered, and were not made available for other users of the udoxias. Most psionically capable Jhaamdathi within the functional range of an udoxia would habitually store all of their power points within the udoxia each day, for those psionic power points could be used at any time to manifest powers. Many Jhaamdathi had thousands of power points so stored.
The range of the udoxias generally covered an entire Jhaamdathi city, and extended out a few miles radius outside the city limits. The result of this was that psionically capable Jhaamdathi were loath to leave the cities beyond the range of the udoxias, so a development gap emerged between the county and the cities.
There were calls for more udoxia to be created to cover the entire Jhaamdathi empire, but with the Jhaamdathi empire in an expansionist mode there were not enough resources to accomplish it. Over time even the udoxia that were created became less ambitious. Every udoxia after the sixth contained only the powers of a single psionic subdiscipline, rather than the powers of an entire single discipline.
Udoxian Contact [PSIONIC]
Prerequisite: requires instruction in how to contact the udoxia. Instruction can be from being taught, mind reading, research, or other means (DM fiat).
Benefit: You become instantly aware when you have stepped within range of a udoxias. As a full round action, you may contact a udoxia, gaining instant knowledge of all powers and feats that it contains. This contact lasts for as long as you remain within the artifact's range, or if you choose to end such contact.
When in contact with a udoxias, you have access to many of its special abilities. As a full round action, you may temporarily acquire one feat or a power of the udoxias, however, you temporarily give up one feat, or one power of the same level. This swap lasts for as long as you remain in contact with the udoxias, or if you choose to end the swap. You cannot acquire a power that is a higher level than you could normally manifest. You do not benefit from and cannot use any udoxias-acquired feats for which you do not meet the prerequisites.
The udoxia can act as a cognizance crystal of limitless capacity. You can store power points in the udoxia which can be drawn for the purpose of manifesting powers as long as you remain within the artifact’s range. See ‘using stored power points’ on the SRD for the rules pertaining to using stored power points. You should keep track of the number of stored power points that you have stored in the udoxia. You may only draw from power points that you have personally stored.
(NOTE - A typical udoxias contains all the powers of a single discipline or subdiscipline in the XPH, a few new powers, all metapsionic feats, and 50% of the psionic feats in the XPH. This "formula" is what can be found in a typical Jhaamdathan udoxias. It could theoretically contain any number of feat and power combinations).
Download PDF version here -
https://1drv.ms/b/s!At1QqAc0yBQT3THpmS_sgTnAD0yM |
| 23 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| cpthero2 |
Posted - 14 Sep 2020 : 19:36:44
Master Rupert,
I love this. It's kind of like the Akashic Record in a way. Very cool idea. I like the idea of that combined with the items that Acolyte Gadfly was referencing as a sort of, "Rod of Seven Parts" campaign.
Best regards,
|
| Steven Schend |
Posted - 22 May 2020 : 20:20:23
quote:
Originally posted by George Krashos
quote:
Originally posted by ericlboyd
Nah, just give them a third class citizen to hate and they're good. Humans suck.
But not as much as elves. The true monsters.
-- George Krashos
Been trying to teach y'all that for decades! George learned, at least... ;)
Steven Schend |
| George Krashos |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 23:12:15
quote:
Originally posted by ericlboyd
Nah, just give them a third class citizen to hate and they're good. Humans suck.
But not as much as elves. The true monsters.
-- George Krashos |
| ericlboyd |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 22:47:20
quote:
Originally posted by Gary Dallison
true, but thats soo vanilla. I want some chocolate chips in my lore.
Try telling the second class citizens of Jhaamdath that they are not slaves because they get given a hut to live in and some money to buy a meagre amount of food, and in return they have to work menial jobs all of which is proscribed by law. I'm sure there would be some argument (although not spoken to anyone that wasnt a second class citizen - lest they incur punishment on their entire family).
Nah, just give them a third class citizen to hate and they're good. Humans suck. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 21:38:15
true, but thats soo vanilla. I want some chocolate chips in my lore.
Try telling the second class citizens of Jhaamdath that they are not slaves because they get given a hut to live in and some money to buy a meagre amount of food, and in return they have to work menial jobs all of which is proscribed by law. I'm sure there would be some argument (although not spoken to anyone that wasnt a second class citizen - lest they incur punishment on their entire family). |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 21:29:43
quote:
Originally posted by Gary Dallison
Auppensers teachings could easily evolve in interpretation.
I'm working on having jhaamdath be influenced by greater forces, one of which is the illithids of oryndoll that like to promote territorialism among humans and make them fight each other in a never ending spiral towards barbarism.
From -5000 to -4000 dr the empire of jhaamdath was very expansionist and I'm spinning it under the influence of oryndoll to give power to the military in the hope they would overthrow the psiocract.
The emancipation of the duergar nearly destroys oryndoll and ends that dream but there is no reason it cant have permanently tainted the teachings of aupp ser.
Yes auppenser preaches that slavery is bad, but the turami are annexed and "employed" as an underclass of farm hands and labourers. Sounds close to slavery to me. Maybe the jhaamdath don't call it slavery, but perhaps they force creatures to donate their life force into the udoxia and call it "persuaded donations".
Absolutely nothing at all implies that slavery was involved or that there was anything sinister about the udoxia. Second-class citizens are very much a thing that is not remotely like slavery, and the udoxias are described more akin to mythallars than anything else. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 16:21:59
Auppensers teachings could easily evolve in interpretation.
I'm working on having jhaamdath be influenced by greater forces, one of which is the illithids of oryndoll that like to promote territorialism among humans and make them fight each other in a never ending spiral towards barbarism.
From -5000 to -4000 dr the empire of jhaamdath was very expansionist and I'm spinning it under the influence of oryndoll to give power to the military in the hope they would overthrow the psiocract.
The emancipation of the duergar nearly destroys oryndoll and ends that dream but there is no reason it cant have permanently tainted the teachings of aupp ser.
Yes auppenser preaches that slavery is bad, but the turami are annexed and "employed" as an underclass of farm hands and labourers. Sounds close to slavery to me. Maybe the jhaamdath don't call it slavery, but perhaps they force creatures to donate their life force into the udoxia and call it "persuaded donations". |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 13:41:25
You know though, what I described (on a less broad scale) might make for an interesting magic item for a sorcerer. For instance some chair with a headstrap that restrains a being, while the other person wears a headband, and the known spells of the one become available to the other (put some limits on it, such as having to be activated on the being over 24 hours or some such, plus limits to the numbers or power level of spells shared). Sorcerers of a more tyrannical sort might have a dungeon and keep magical beings in it for the express purpose of leeching their powers. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 13:36:22
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
It can also be that everyone gains the ability use psionic powers (like a mythal as opposed to a mythallar mind you), such that even the non-psionic could tap powers (giving them some minimal power pool and access to certain abilities. However, I am looking at the things I proposed previously, and I still like them the most... basically seats where they trapped psionic creatures and thus said creatures "gave up" their psionic powers for others to use. Want new abilities for your Jhaamdathi enclave? Well, go find some gem dragon and imprison them with the "udoxias helm" in place.... after all, you've already got a mind flayer, a duergar, and some aboleths in place.... hopefully they don't all work together to escape.
That really doesn't work with Auppenser's teachings, though...
quote:
Dogma: Develop the latent abilities within you for that is your power alone. Psionics is the ultimate art of magic and you are its practitioner. Through lifelong dedication, strive to unite your will with your physical form to become one. Only through the unrestrained union of one’s mind and body can the magic of psionics truly be mastered. Throw off the yoke of any who would impose tyranny upon you. Likewise, do not ever force another to submit to your will. Free your mind, free yourself and you have only just begun the path to true psionic mastery. Free others, open their minds to the Invisible Art, and you will show them way to Auppenser.
True, I guess that would fit a darker psionic gods like Deep Duerra, an illithid god, etc... I guess I was seeing how warlike Jhaamdath was and picturing them acting along a similar vein in the church. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 30 Mar 2020 : 02:54:22
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
It can also be that everyone gains the ability use psionic powers (like a mythal as opposed to a mythallar mind you), such that even the non-psionic could tap powers (giving them some minimal power pool and access to certain abilities. However, I am looking at the things I proposed previously, and I still like them the most... basically seats where they trapped psionic creatures and thus said creatures "gave up" their psionic powers for others to use. Want new abilities for your Jhaamdathi enclave? Well, go find some gem dragon and imprison them with the "udoxias helm" in place.... after all, you've already got a mind flayer, a duergar, and some aboleths in place.... hopefully they don't all work together to escape.
That really doesn't work with Auppenser's teachings, though...
quote:
Dogma: Develop the latent abilities within you for that is your power alone. Psionics is the ultimate art of magic and you are its practitioner. Through lifelong dedication, strive to unite your will with your physical form to become one. Only through the unrestrained union of one’s mind and body can the magic of psionics truly be mastered. Throw off the yoke of any who would impose tyranny upon you. Likewise, do not ever force another to submit to your will. Free your mind, free yourself and you have only just begun the path to true psionic mastery. Free others, open their minds to the Invisible Art, and you will show them way to Auppenser.
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 29 Mar 2020 : 23:43:32
It can also be that everyone gains the ability use psionic powers (like a mythal as opposed to a mythallar mind you), such that even the non-psionic could tap powers (giving them some minimal power pool and access to certain abilities. However, I am looking at the things I proposed previously, and I still like them the most... basically seats where they trapped psionic creatures and thus said creatures "gave up" their psionic powers for others to use. Want new abilities for your Jhaamdathi enclave? Well, go find some gem dragon and imprison them with the "udoxias helm" in place.... after all, you've already got a mind flayer, a duergar, and some aboleths in place.... hopefully they don't all work together to escape. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 29 Mar 2020 : 17:53:18
quote:
Originally posted by George Krashos
The only thing that I dislike about the concept of udoxias is that they come across as simply psionic mythallars. Not very original.
-- George Krashos
I don't see them as being the same thing, but it is hard to spin them as being something distinct.
If it had been up to me, I think I would have spun them as something that psionicists could willingly join their minds to, when dying, keeping them around as a sort of living library thing. The udoxias would still have the ability to let people tap into psionic powers they didn't personally possess -- but instead of being "hey, everyone can use this one set of powers, simultaneously!" it'd be more like checking out books from a library. No one in the udoxias knows the power telekinetic burp? You don't get it. Only one mind in the udoxias knows collective earworm? Only one person can tap into that power at a time, then.
It could also be done where living psionicists could temporarily lend their abilities to the udoxias -- they give up the power for a certain time, to let someone else use it. |
| George Krashos |
Posted - 29 Mar 2020 : 15:51:46
The only thing that I dislike about the concept of udoxias is that they come across as simply psionic mythallars. Not very original.
-- George Krashos |
| Gadfly |
Posted - 29 Mar 2020 : 03:52:07
One potential use for these Udoxia (to make them less bland) is you could build them into a large campaign where the PCs are looking for these items (or parts of them) and a group is planning to use them to resurrect the Jhaamdath god Auppenser by taking the psionic energy of thousands (which would kill them) to funnel it into the god, but the PCs only learn this at the end and have to stop it.
Could end up being a multi year campaign where they find the pieces (maybe working against others) and then learn that those who have them want to use them for their true purpose. |
| redking |
Posted - 08 Dec 2018 : 12:47:59
quote:
Acolyte redking,
I have to say that the udoxias was really bland. For such a psi-powerful country of folk, a device like that should have had a much greater range of powers and what not. It seems like networking of some sort or another would have been a really great aspect to it, especially the way the community is described.
Thoughts?
Best regards,
I don't know. You would have to ask the creator of the Udoxias, Ed Bonny. |
| cpthero2 |
Posted - 02 Oct 2018 : 00:09:51
Acolyte redking,
I have to say that the udoxias was really bland. For such a psi powerful country of folk, a device like that should have had a much greater range of powers and what not. It seems like networking of some sort or another would have been a really great aspect to it, especially the way the community is described.
Thoughts?
Best regards,
quote:
Originally posted by redking
I have been delving deep into the udoxias of the Jhaamdathi empire, and I wanted to offer the following revision to the udoxias. The udoxias as given simply allow the trading out of powers and feats in exchange for others, but really offer nothing else. I flesh out the udoxias powers a little bit, and add a touch of lore.
-------------------------
Udoxias
The udoxias were the pinnacle achievement of the Jhaamdathi empire. The Jhaamdath empire was aware of the Netherese mythallar and Elven mythals, and these magics influenced the creation of the udoxias.
At first the Jhaamdathi attempted to research psionic mythals, seeking to implement a psionic version of the Elven mythals. However, it soon became apparent to the Psiarchs that a psionic mythal on a wide scale would be too difficult a task. Next was an attempt at a psionic mythallar. The psionic mythallar failed entirely – there was no ambient source of psionics to fuel a psionic mythallar, while the Netherese mythallar were fueled by the weave.
The research was not in vain. In reseaching psionic mythals and attempting to build a psionic mythallar, the Jhaamdathi were able to design and ultimately create the udoxias. Unlike mythals and mythallar that draw power from the weave of magic on a constant basis, the udoxias were to be powered by the individual psions and other users of psionics that stored psionic energies within the udoxia. In addition, any prospective user of the udoxia would have to learn the ability to contact the udoxia in order to access its powers.
Each udoxia is at its core an incredibly advanced cognizance crystal, with seemingly no limit to its storage capacity. In each udoxia was imprinted many powers and psionic feats. A user of an udoxia could draw on these powers and feats, but had to trade out an equivalent power or feat in exchange. Those powers traded out were effectively sequestered, and were not made available for other users of the udoxias. Most psionically capable Jhaamdathi within the functional range of an udoxia would habitually store all of their power points within the udoxia each day, for those psionic power points could be used at any time to manifest powers. Many Jhaamdathi had thousands of power points so stored.
The range of the udoxias generally covered an entire Jhaamdathi city, and extended out a few miles radius outside the city limits. The result of this was that psionically capable Jhaamdathi were loath to leave the cities beyond the range of the udoxias, so a development gap emerged between the county and the cities.
There were calls for more udoxia to be created to cover the entire Jhaamdathi empire, but with the Jhaamdathi empire in an expansionist mode there were not enough resources to accomplish it. Over time even the udoxia that were created became less ambitious. Every udoxia after the sixth contained only the powers of a single psionic subdiscipline, rather than the powers of an entire single discipline.
Udoxian Contact [PSIONIC]
Prerequisite: requires instruction in how to contact the udoxia. Instruction can be from being taught, mind reading, research, or other means (DM fiat).
Benefit: You become instantly aware when you have stepped within range of a udoxias. As a full round action, you may contact a udoxia, gaining instant knowledge of all powers and feats that it contains. This contact lasts for as long as you remain within the artifact's range, or if you choose to end such contact.
When in contact with a udoxias, you have access to many of its special abilities. As a full round action, you may temporarily acquire one feat or a power of the udoxias, however, you temporarily give up one feat, or one power of the same level. This swap lasts for as long as you remain in contact with the udoxias, or if you choose to end the swap. You cannot acquire a power that is a higher level than you could normally manifest. You do not benefit from and cannot use any udoxias-acquired feats for which you do not meet the prerequisites.
The udoxia can act as a cognizance crystal of limitless capacity. You can store power points in the udoxia which can be drawn for the purpose of manifesting powers as long as you remain within the artifact’s range. See ‘using stored power points’ on the SRD for the rules pertaining to using stored power points. You should keep track of the number of stored power points that you have stored in the udoxia. You may only draw from power points that you have personally stored.
(NOTE - A typical udoxias contains all the powers of a single discipline or subdiscipline in the XPH, a few new powers, all metapsionic feats, and 50% of the psionic feats in the XPH. This "formula" is what can be found in a typical Jhaamdathan udoxias. It could theoretically contain any number of feat and power combinations).
Download PDF version here -
https://1drv.ms/b/s!At1QqAc0yBQT3THpmS_sgTnAD0yM
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 26 Sep 2018 : 13:39:40
quote:
Originally posted by TBeholder
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
By the way, I like your idea of having a "battery" of sorts that stores psi points.
Like... Receptacle power from CPsiHB? 
quote:
It should have a bit of darkness to it. What I'd recommend is that perhaps the Jhaamdathi setup some kind of "psi-draining" system in which they have seats with "head sets" that they strap to creatures and drain away their psionic potential daily
So, less convenient than Receptacle?
A few problems with that (which I admit to having to look up receptacle in the 2e resource). The receptacle is made using a gem and can only hold 1 PSP per 100 gp of the gem, and it appears to only be usable by the person who stored the power and who already has to know receptacle. The concept here would be something which is holding a large scale amount of power points (whatever they were called in 3.5e) and making them freely available to everyone in range of the Udoxias. Also, the power points need to come from something, as the people of Jhaamdath who used the Udoxias weren't necessarily psions. So again, the idea of having a place where psionic creatures are kept to feed the Udoxias power points still comes into play. In fact, this "prison" may even be somewhere extraplanar in nature. I once wrote up something where the red wizards were keeping demons and devils entrapped in the Astral and using spell engines to draw on their use of magic (this was when the astral used to make magic using people addicted such that there was a chance they'd just continually cast for the rush). The energies obtained by the entrapped demons and devils (who were continually using their at will spells) was then used to empower certain effects to protect Thay. A similar but different type effect may be in place on the astral, but possibly confining psionic creatures. In fact, it could be interesting if they were imprisoned in the body of a dead god of psionics... just a thought. It could also be somewhere else other than the astral, such as some place in the underdark, in the shadowfell, in orbit, the plane of dreams, or somewhere else entirely. |
| TBeholder |
Posted - 26 Sep 2018 : 11:30:42
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
By the way, I like your idea of having a "battery" of sorts that stores psi points.
Like... Receptacle power from CPsiHB?
quote:
It should have a bit of darkness to it. What I'd recommend is that perhaps the Jhaamdathi setup some kind of "psi-draining" system in which they have seats with "head sets" that they strap to creatures and drain away their psionic potential daily
So, less convenient than Receptacle? |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 20 Jul 2018 : 01:59:24
By the way, I like your idea of having a "battery" of sorts that stores psi points. It should have a bit of darkness to it. What I'd recommend is that perhaps the Jhaamdathi setup some kind of "psi-draining" system in which they have seats with "head sets" that they strap to creatures and drain away their psionic potential daily (similar somewhat to how a spelljammer helm makes a spellcaster lose all spell slots). It could be interesting if they used to capture thri-kreen, mind flayers, aboleths, grell, cerebrilith demons, etc... and subject them to draining to allow the citizenry to use powers. In fact, they may be able to use the abilities OF these captured creatures.
Also, this doesn't have to be a thing where said creatures need to remain alive. Perhaps they extract the sentience of these beings and place it into crystals that help form the Udoxias, and this is where the abilities and power points come from. Thus, the "soul" of the being becomes entrapped in the undoxias and it cannot go onto the afterlife. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 20 Jul 2018 : 01:47:32
You've got your idea for dates out of order. Mythallars didn't come about until 2700 years AFTER Undoxias were created. The first age of Netheril doesn't even START until nearly 2000 years after Jhaamdath had already established. Actually, Jhaamdath and Imaskar were happening more around the same time than Jhaamdath and Netheril. Basically, Jhaamdath was more "magical" than Netheril LONG before Netheril.
–5725 DR Laszik crafts the first udoxias, a powerful psionic artifact. Psionic beings in mental contact with the udoxias are granted access to one of many powers contained within. The range of the udoxias extends for miles beyond Naarkolyth, and many citizens throughout the region flock to the city to acquire this mysterious mind-magic.
–3859 DR to –3534 DR The First Age of the Netheril civilization.
–3014 DR Ioulaum [–3145, –2954] creates the first mythallar. |
| redking |
Posted - 19 Jul 2018 : 14:55:18
quote:
Originally posted by Fellfire
Can someone please tell me the source of the udoxia lore?
Ed Bonny, who didn't get to include udoxias in Lost Empires of Faerûn. He has a write up of the udoxias somewhere on this website. What I wrote is a revision to that. |
| Fellfire |
Posted - 19 Jul 2018 : 02:42:37
Can someone please tell me the source of the udoxia lore? |
| TBeholder |
Posted - 29 Dec 2017 : 04:45:43
Udoxias still could be powered by Weave, however - via divine magic. Since this seems to be exactly the sort of thing clergy of Auppenser would try to do.  |
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