DEEP TIME Generator

Roll on this table to determine the past era or civilization, which fell eons ago. Every time you roll, the new roll is even further back in time, and acts as the past for that civilization, only the smallest signs appearing to the ones after it in hints and writing. It keeps going back every time you roll, essentially creating super deep time.

DEEP TIME Table - d20

[1] An ancient starship from another world, the long necked and long fingered blue alien beings aboard the vessel taught ancient secrets to the civilization after them. They also taught them how to hate, and how to fear, and how to scheme and put themselves before others.

[2] Each drop of sand fell here by chance, the long circling pattern on the floor of the cavern enlightened the primitives who lived within it, seeing the first piece of art and from it created the first magic spell.

[3] Calenders built into each other, each one a record of a day, month, year, decade, and century of production. Clear indicators show the loss and gain throughout the years, with a solid downward trend that led to the final collapse of this empire after hundreds of thousands of wheels on this massive stone calendar.

[4] Biosphere of the planet, carefully cultivated but wild and unforgiving. Entire ecosystem with wild creatures and megafauna from a biogone era were all just experiments and carefully constructed living tools to sculpt ancient precursor world. They killed themselves with harmless but cunning small parasite that eventually broke through their safety measures and killed them all, going extinct in the process.

[5] The week has 8 days. The 8^th day is named Friend, at least in the most ancient of tablets that mentioned it. Every single 8^th day was taken away by this ancient race, who lived them all out to give them more time. They devolved into something lesser, and at the end of all the 8 days that would ever be time resumed as normal, 1/8^th of it, gone.

[6] Standing stone that collected magical energies. Over millennium it became self aware, and used its power to create all your see before for, before it slipped back out of unreality when it found no more purpose to live. It's mundane rock body is all that remains.

[7] Plane of Psionic being. Entire world or area was wrapped in psychic energy, entire empire built around manipulation of emotions and astral space-time. Lived a glorious existence for uncountable years of time dilated luxury, but when winked out all their works were lost- the creatures deleted along with the psychic fields that sustained them, only the tiny anchors to the physical reality remain anymore. But in the realm of ideas? Many signs remain.

[8] Ancient society of faux-lizards, clammy skin with prongs of gross proto-feathers. Utterly reliant on a super syrup- bright green nectar packed with energy and supernatural properties. They ran out, but decided to seal the last of it in a massive cavern deep beneath the earth, the trickle of this sugar stuff has fed the entire underground world and all of the following civilizations that live there.

[9] Once ruled by the sloth people; slow and cautious. Had absolute mastery of the world with incredible bio-technology, until a small climate change killed them all off. Undone by a few degrees difference. May be the creators of the strange chimera races, or maybe entire species were once made wholecloth.

[10] Massive carved cavernous wall or cliff, each inch engraved with many details, slowly etched by a single being with its long and prehensile tongue. It labored for centuries to tell its story, but is cut off near the bottom when the creatures tongue rotted away; causing the immortal being to starve to death. Each word is a glyph with layers of meaning and abstraction, and the wall is covered with so very many.

[11] The Great First-Men. Huge, imposing, wielding two stone swords that a man of this lesser age would struggle to lift one. The warriors that carved out this place for humanity; or were defeated and drove mankind into hiding if this was rolled second or later in this last.

[12] Before emotion, all creatures big and small simply deduced every single action they should take. As the world became more vast and complex, it took longer and longer, standing still until they would starve to death in thought. Eventually they reasoned that being inefficient was better and created emotions, pain, desire, and magic.

[13] Immortal flying beasts flew through endless skies. They decided to build a machine that would take the clouds and fogs and make them into solid rock, stone, and tree- so they could lay their eggs and finally die. This is why burning things with fire puts them back as they were once, but the immortal fliers are gone now.

[14] The crystal-spheres are the planets and stars in the sky. Their orbit around our world influences events and changes fate and time. They were not always up there; each was carved by hand by the oldest dwarves. At least, that's what the dwarves say.

[15] The Great-Doubling spell. When the first being was granted but a single grain of sand for its world from the jealous elder-ones; it did the most clever thing it could. It cast a spell so every century, the world would double in size. One grain became two, then many grains became a great pile, and then a mountain, and many years on the oceans still stretch to the horizon. If you sail fast enough, and are lucky enough to be born near the edge, you may get there before the world expands yet again.

[16] An ancient council of elves ended a war between their people. So cruel and vast was this war that they decided it would be best to bury all traces of its happening; the world had started again in a new age and not until ever last immortal veteran of that war was dead could it finally be forgotten.

[17] All of life was held in the belly of an immaculate leviathan. It's ivory skin stained with the scars of battles it fought to reach its destination on the cool waters of the planet. With no friends and no enemies, it had nothing left. It beached itself on the desolate sands, gasping for breath, so that its stomach would split open and let life crawl onto the world.

[18] Picking through the corpses of the cycle before this one; vulture men eat the brains and memories of the dead and gone. They remake the timeline of events, stained by their own idiotic ideals and carnivorous ulcers that babble half truths from their sides and bellies. They make all the same mistakes, but improve by doing a much better job of eradicating as many traces of their disgusting civilization as they can.

[19] The previous beings created a massive generator. Turning on the power, the energetic not-men thought to teach their descendants how to master reality with spells and enchantments. The machines they build did not act as guides, but instead as prisons. The leaking machines let forth the last children of this race, slowly devolving into bolts of lightning, trapped in the sky, seeking hard rock to dash themselves upon, the last bit of instinct left in their being.

[20] The Ninth Era ended with the first sword being made. All weapons were fought with fist and spell, tooth and claw as animals do. War existed, but was a much different affair. Only with the accord and allowance of the Gods was man and elf and dwarf allowed to fight with weapons made of iron. Swords are still held as the most prestigious weapon because they were the first to be made, the first claw not made of bone.

PONDEROUS PRISONS – 1d8

[1] There is a planet made of brass. Every day, a bird flies past. It drops a feather, settles with no weather. When the planet is covered, the prisoner will mutter. “One day in confinement is gone, here's to another.”

[2] You are trapped in a snowy field. The flakes come down in regular intervals, and the cold is not so bad as to hurt. The exit is right up there, you just need to wait for the snow to come down. Trying to move at all heats up the snow and melts it, meaning piling it up to escape faster only sinks you down deeper. The punishment is boredom.

[3] Every living thing you've ever killed lives again; this time through you. You experience their entire life up until the moment where you cut them down. Everything from a lonely old tortoise to a tiny mayfly. You will be each and every one, until your taken time is repaid in full.

[4] This God of war was turned not to steel, but ore. Stone spread across the world, slowly being mined, turning to a weapon, its influence starting battles and murder, before rotting away to dust and being used once again. Slowly, its being is reformed in the fires of the forge, the tricks of the smith slowly restoring that old power. One day, the steel will form into a sword that will render the peace of the world and cleave it in twain.

[5] You're trapped in a maze. The maze stretches onwards and builds on itself. It randomly generates new paths, and each time you cross over it rolls on its list to get you closer. Each time you die, you are revived and go again. The chance to find the exit is small, but you've got plenty of chances. It's only a matter of time.

[6] Fate divines to keep you in place. Day after day, the same things happens, the same people arrive- their names and faces change, but the inside is the same. Luck and fortune are its playthings, keeping you from leaving your valley or castle. It isn't the same moment in time, but you don't age either. To everyone else, you are a peaceful immortal, untouched by the harsh world outside. To yourself, you are trapped in what feels like eternity.

[7] This seed is left alone in a cavern chamber. The reincarnated form of a punished mortal. Each time it grows to a plant, it learns to bend a leaf towards the light a little more. It stretches for the ceiling, wiping the dust off just enough for it to gather another pinch of mineral for its roots. Each time it dies, it passes off what it “knows” to its seedling. It grows a little taller, learns the sunlight a little better. The villagers above its chambers have spoken enough times that it will one day learn what a word is, and then, what they mean.

[8] The Mermaids shred your being. Every bit of it, torn to shreds by sharks too old and jaded to even grow back their teeth. Once you are torn to pieces, the pieces are cast to ocean currents, and eaten by things so small you cannot see them. They filter down to earth, turning to coral, becoming a reef with only a tiny fraction of your soul in each living, growing rock. You feel stretched and sagging, but alive, and unable to put yourself back together again. Fish swim through parts of your body too small to have names for them, and they aren't in the right places anyway.

ETERNAL CREATURES – 1d8

[1] The hermit-crab of the universe. Existing within this plane of reality as its shell, it grew and grew. Eventually, it outgrew us and left. The hole is left in space, our physical laws and mysteries remaining as its byproducts. Even the elder beings from outside our dimension may be little more then skin mites from the great crustacean's passing.

[2] The girl who flies. She has no equal, her powers let her create raw force from her hands and hair- which flows behind her as a rainbow does a storm. She left our world because she was sad, and had no man to give her a child. So far, all we know is that we see her as a comet in the sky, alone.

[3] He owns the shop. It's a long limbed, orange furred being with many spindly arms and legs, twining its way around it's store. It's touched almost every single artifact of history, collected and created many, or financed their creation. This being, usually just called the Keeper or Clerk, was here long before the Gods even devised of the concepts it would later to sell to them. It still gets a cut of every prayer.

[4] The pitiful thing. It's a goblin like creature, stunted and worthless, half its face is dominated by its leaky nose. It's a coward, and nothing ever seems determined enough to put it out of its misery- it certainly doesn't age, and cultures have always depicted it in some shadowy corner or beneath the heels of some marching God, always beneath notice but still present. Sometimes, it writes things down in a little notebook it keeps. It seems to be writing down names.

[5] Butterflies within Butterflies. It's a being that glows with spectral light, humble and fragile and very beautiful. Whenever it is killed, or after supping the nectar from 400 wonderful flowers, it will rest on a tree and molt, becoming a new butterfly, wandering the world from the very first of days. It remembers all of its past lives, and flutters around all living things; it remembers the protoplasm which spawned you and knows you are its child, from some ancient and passed down scent you still possess.

[6] The Motherbeast. It births all creatures too pathetic and too strange to come from any other bosom. Its thick body is shaped as one would expect, but with the face of a sphinx cat. Flowers bloom from its milk that pours as rivers, but these flowers mutate the flesh and curve the mind to think of thoughts beyond natural purity. You cannot kill the Motherbeast, but neither can it kill you. Only change, or only give birth anew.

[7] The Apex Predator. It eats everything; it is prey to nothing. Arrogant humans may believe themselves to be “the” apex predator, but they are wrong. Even Gods find their end in the belly of this beast. It's as long as it needs to be to digest what it eats, and is always able to reach your neck. It's colors are black, green, blue, and orange- but it only shows the ones it needs to blend in with the grass around your home. It shits the darkness between the stars.

[8] The Egg. Some say it holds the spirit of a thing greater then the Gods- waiting to hatch. Others think it may be a universe within itself, and still others think it is nothing more then an enchanted stone. The Egg radiates energy of a living thing, it is warm, and it clearly has a spirit within it; it just isn't privy of revealing what it is. Nobody can place what species or family the creature may belong to, and nobody knows what it will grow up to be when it finally hatches- if it ever does.