Get Your Kicks On Route..er...70...

If I ever do this commercially, I will have to do a Route 66 supplement. For now, however, this is a "sketch" of Route 70, specifically the part from Indiana to Pennsylvania. Why? Because the PCs are crossing it in "downtime", and I want the players to make up some Cool Stuff that happens en route. There's a lot of points here I want to detail in the future; I could drill down to do a dozen pages on a single city-ruin if I need to, but for now, this general 'sense of the place' will have to do.

And of course, in so doing, I realized I needed to do a history of Mantaros, the kingdom which occupied the Northeast region on Arith. Since I included a throwaway reference to a floating sky-palace, I then leap to the conclusion that Mantaros, already established as the oldest kingdom of the Alliance, was one of those very magic-heavy kingdoms, with cities filled with magical wonders of all sorts -- which naturally self-destructed dramatically when the Crush came. Look for some more essays soon, and sorry about the long gap.

---

For those traveling across the northern part of the former United States, the best and safest road -- and this is using very qualified definitions of 'best' and 'safest' -- is the former Route 70, which was also a series of wide, Roman-style paved roads on Arith. Today, of course, it is a cracked and broken ruin -- impassable in many parts -- but still the closest thing to a direct east-west route in the area.

It passes through many dead and ruined cities, which creates a need for long detours for those not brave or foolish enough to enter the monster haunted ruins. Indianapolis is a swirling madhouse due to the Worldhole created during the Day of Fire; Columbus escaped the nukes but remains a deadly jumble of fallen buildings and lethal lairs; the outskirts of Pittsburgh hold strange and twisted creatres which spawn from its own reality-twisting center.

Monsters native to the area include roaming bands of gnolls and orcs, as well as bullettes, ankhegs, and wild wyverns (often confused with dragons by the Earthborn; Arithians laugh at such childish errors). There are bands of hill giants in many parts of western Ohio, as well as their ogre cousins. Ragedrakes are known to dwell in the Pittsburgh region. Rogue golems, freed from the spells which bound them and filled with rage at their enslavement, are common near the old Ohio border, where an academy of magic specializing in the art of soulless constructs (all mages learned well the lesson of Skallidane!) once stood in the kingdom of Marridon. Countless dozens of other monstrosities exist in lesser numbers.

The Pittsburgh worldhole is a partial gateway to a part of the Elemental Plane of Earth, one made of every kind of hard metal. As a consequence, creatures surrounding it have become things of living metal, of lead and iron and even adamantine, though they are not constructs nor golems, but creatures of metal flesh.

Columbus is a wild zone, a tangled mess of ruined skyscrapers mixed with the remnants of high magic, as it was an old city, called Jaliath, in Mantaros. Its most spectacular feature was the Emerald Minaret, the flying palace of the Baron of Jaliath. During the crush, the Minaret shattered, the lower half falling to earth, the upper half remaining afloat. The Baron and his family are presumed dead, but the remnant of the twisted spire still defends itself, firing green beams of arcane energy at any fliers foolish enough to approach. Not a few rogues of Arith idly dream of a plot to enter the place, as the treasures of the old Baron are said to be of incaculable worth...

Once the mountains of middle Pennsylvania (or the Kraz Kar Haj) are reached, the threat of orcs and goblins becomes more dire, as these species have laid claim to much of this area, and while they are not well organized, they are numerous, and regularly raid for food and slaves. There are a few dozen faltering Dwarvish fortresses scattered along the range, most deeply paranoid and mistrustful, and so cunningly hidden an army could march over their front door and never know it. The mountains also hold dire beasts.