Genius Loci: Difference between revisions
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** Atropos, the undead afterbirth of a long forgotten god, takes the form of a sentient, [[Omnicidal Maniac]] [[That's No Moon|planetoid]].
** Nimicri is a floating trade city in the Chamada layer of Gehenna where all the citizens and the place itself secretly form a single organism with ambiguous intentions.
** The 92nd layer of the Abyss is a foul and disgusting place resembling [[Womb Level|the inside of an organic creature called Ulgurshek]]. Some people call it "the living layer" due to its apparent sentience. Only Lolth, the goddess of the drow, and some of her most powerful servants know the truth about it: It is very intelligent, and it's actually an ancient being, [[Time Abyss| older than the Abyss itself]], called a draedan. The Abyss literally grew around this creature at the beginning of time, trapping it here. It usually devours anything that enters it, but it has a bargain of sorts with Lolth, seeing as it borders the Demonweb: she searches for information about other members of its species, and in return, it shares the ancient and terrible secrets that its race was privy to.
** And in 4th edition, the Warlock spell "Vestige of Land's Soul"' allows the Warlock to wake up the spirit of the land around them and order it to kill one of their enemies.
** The land of Rashemen in Forgotten Realms is implied to be a living being.
** Module [[wikipedia:Master of the Desert Nomads|X4: ''Master of the Desert Nomads'']], for original [[Dungeons & Dragons]], features a swamp with a sentient area called the Malakaz: "It is not a monster, but an evil force. The hut was once the home of a particularly evil female wizard. When she died, the hut and the area around it became filled with the essence of all her evil."
* In ''[[Shadowrun]]'' the fact that the earth has a presence on the astral plane is seen by some as evidence that the planet itself is alive.▼
** Shamans can also summon a ''Hearth Spirit'', literally the Genius Loci of wherever they happen to be: in a nightclub you might get a spiritual bouncer or barman (depending on the kind of nightclub you are in), for instance.▼
** ''Shadowrun'' also has a phenomenon called "background count," in which the mana of a place can be warped by events that take place there. This doesn't exactly make the area alive, but it has an impact on anyone who visits.▼
** If a living planet or living star seems farfetched, ''[[Spelljammer]]'' had constellates, which are ''living constellations''. These colossal entities are (or were) [[Eldritch Abomination]]s imprisoned by the gods for unspecified crimes. Capable of crushing planets and uncomfortably common in all known Crystal Spheres, these beings ''are'' given gameplay statistics and it ''is'' possible to try to fight them. This may be a symptom of the massive scale that made Spelljammer so... problematic as a setting.
** [[I Don't Like the Sound of That Place| Bonecloud]], mentioned in ''Guide to the Astral Plane'', combines this Trope with [[The Worm That Walks]]. Supposedly, there used to be a Prime Material world named Terras whose population was decimated in a genocidal conflict called the War of Lies. An ancient lich named Koras animated ''every'' victim of this atrocity as zombies and skeletons. He was eventually opposed by three unnamed heroes who used powerful magic to banish him this entire army to the Astral, resulting in a mass of ''millions'' of undead about a quarter mile across. (Think Legion from the ''[[Castlevania]]'' games but much bigger.) Naturally, this is a very dangerous place, not just because of the mindless undead but because of many intelligent undead who reside there, like specters, vampires, and - maybe - Koras himself, and because of the strong aura of negative energy created by so many undead being in one place. Though, many adventurers risk exploring it anyway due to the many [[Portal Network|rare color pools]] it has.
* ''[[Shadowrun]]''
▲**
▲** Shamans can also summon a ''Hearth Spirit'', literally the Genius Loci of wherever they happen to be: in a nightclub you might get a spiritual bouncer or barman (depending on the kind of nightclub you are in), for instance.
▲** ''Shadowrun'' also has a phenomenon called "background count," in which the mana of a place can be warped by events that take place there. This doesn't exactly make the area alive, but it has an impact on anyone who visits.
* ''[[Rifts]]'' has quite a few. Millennium Trees are huge thousand-foot tall trees that form living cities, nurtured and protected by the Trees' own latent psychic field. And there's at least two living planets, one (Wormwood) is inhabited and in the middle of a demon invasion, and the other (Eylor) kept hidden by transdimensional slavers who have a monopoly on giant magical eyes [[Eye Scream|harvested from its surface]].
* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' has "man-lands", lands that can turn into creatures. The most recent of these are the five dual-color man-lands and the "construct-land" from ''Worldwake''.
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