This moon appears like a great, gray coin flipping through the void. Flat lands at the edges rise to high mountains at the center, on both sides of the coin. A thin ring of mist surrounds the planet’s flat edge, as well as cloaking much of the highlands.
Grey Coin is a flat earth world with a high metal content that gives it is color. The land at the edges of the “coin” is rolling hills and plains, which rise in height to stark, imposing mountains and plateaus at the center. The overall diameter is 120 miles and 10 miles thick at the center.
The moon is the home of a band of wayward Fraal, beings from another time and plane. Wild, chaotic magic transformed their coin-shaped spelljammer into a moon, leaving them marooned with no way of contacting their home.
Seasons are very mild, almost unnoticeable on Grey Coin. The lowlands are dry and hot, receiving little rainfall. The highlands are shrouded in thick clouds that produce dew and sometimes rain. Rivers flow from the mountains to the gravity plane, where they vanish in a series of cascades into the mists that surround the moon.
The Crack: This two-mile-deep canyon drops right into the metallic underdark of Grey Coin. The Crack is about 2,000’ wide at the top and narrows to barely 10’ wide at the bottom. Numerous outcroppings make maneuvering in the Crack all but impossible. Despite this, the Crack is the easiest way to reach Grey Coin’s underdark.
The Pod Tree: This enormous, silvery tree is over 1000’ tall and has branches that radiate out for over 2,000’. Fruit-like pods hang from its branches. Once a pod ripens, it bursts open, spewing forth a new monster. Though the Fraal find this remarkable tree fascinating, the abundance of nearby monsters keeps them from studying it.
Signaling Desert: This desert is so named because of numerous drawings on the desert’s floor that are visible only from wildspace. The Fraal created these drawings years ago as an SOS. They imparted the drawings with psionic qualities, possibly to make them detectable across planar boundaries.
Gray Coin is inhabited by a number of unique creatures, gathered from across several planes. Most of these creatures are one of a kinds, so thus when they die, they are forever gone from Gray Coin. A few have bred true and menace all travelers. Vegetation ranges from similar to open plains to jungle, but all plants have a gray tinge to their coloration. Other than this odd color and sometimes unusual shapes, the plants are no different than standard (or monstrous) plants.
Gray Coin is an excellent place to introduce strange monsters, such as those from the Far Realm. Examples include bloodsippers, dharculus, gibberlings, neh-thalggu, and wystes. The Fraal collected a number of creatures for their experiments from a number of worlds. The creatures escaped, of course, not long after the Fraal were stranded. Use of templates to create variations on standard creatures would be appropriate in the environs of this moon.
The mysterious Fraal rule Grey Coin from cities in the highest peaks. They are visitors from another plane of existence, stranded here by accident. That accident left them without access to most of their mystical devices and left them in a barbaric state. Things have improved since that dark day. Tribes of minotaurs worship them as gods, doing manual labor the Fraal cannot and protecting them from harm.
The Fraal occupy about a dozen major cities. A Fraal city is a cluster of disc-shaped, silvery buildings toped by domes. Fraal are minimalists and own few possessions, so thus their homes appear stark and barren. They use psionics to fulfill many daily tasks, eliminating the need for many tools. The youngest Fraal has the abilities of a 1st level psion, while their eldest sages are as strong as 15th level psions. Fraal heavily favor the psion class over other psionic classes, and have no abilities in any magical class.
Some younger Fraal are psionic warriors, forming ‘guilds’ to protect their society. The guilds commonly conduct raids to clean out local dungeons to keep monsters away from the cities. These guilds are very good at dungeon-delving, surprising those that view Fraal as frail, weak, and utterly lacking in any combat abilities.
The other major race on Grey Coin is the minotaurs. The same accident that stranded the Fraal here changed some of their specimens, hundreds of bovines, into minotaurs. When the two races met, the minotaurs remembered the Fraal as vivisecting demons, and feared them greatly. They worship the Fraal, doing their bidding much like how umber hulks serve their neogi masters unquestionably. The minotaurs are treated well, much like favored servants and slaves, and the two races have entered into a symbiotic relationship.
Minotaurs are the muscle of the Fraal. Most are fighters or barbarians of some skill (1-6 levels of either class). Martial-class minotaurs often “tank” for guilds, soaking up attacks from monsters to spare weaker Fraal psions from harm. Some minotaurs display a spark of psionic ability (1-4 levels of wilder). Like the Fraal, the minotaurs of Grey Coin have no arcane or divine magical talents.
A smattering of other races can be found as well, although they are generally guests of the Fraal. A few mind flayers have met privately with Fraal elders, to see what they can gain from them in exchange for passage home. The mind flayers likely do not have the means of getting the Fraal home, but are instead trying to exploit their situation for gain. Recently, a group of flump has arrived and genuinely wants to help the Fraal get home. The flump have clerical abilities the Fraal have never seen before, and are proving an invaluable asset in regards to healing.
Grey Coin has abundant sources of strange metals and alloys, much of which lies under a mile of rock and soil. It even has an entire underdark of metallic chambers and caverns, all have since been abandoned to roaming monsters from other planes. Additionally, the Fraal have countless crystals and gemstones, unidentifiable but have remarkable beauty and properties. Though utterly non-magical, some crystals can perform seemingly magical feats, such as projecting illusions, exploding into fireballs when crushed, or allowing special Fraal carriages to fly. The Fraal do not give these crystals out freely, only trading them away when they must.
Rosewell (Small City, 6,000): Named for its well that draws water that smells of roses, Rosewell is the finest psionic university in the sphere. It was established by the Fraal after they encountered spelljammers. They sought a trade of psionic talents to learn plane-hopping techniques that might lead them home. Though their efforts have not yet proved fruitful, they have learned many psionic techniques that were unknown to them, and have caused an explosion in the number of psions throughout the sphere.
Horn de Diablo (Small City, 8,000): The largest Fraal community is found on top of this high plateau. The mountain is perfectly circular and rises almost straight up to a flat top, over 1,500 above the surrounding land. The walls are so steep and smooth that the only practical means of reaching the city is via flying. It also sees the largest number of spelljammers, and thus has numerous docks to handle ships up to the size of a hammership.
On a world far removed from the Known Spheres, an ancient race known as the Fraal were grappling with a most pressing crisis: their youth were enthralled in games of illusion. Such was the extent of their addiction that some even perished from malnutrition and exhaustion. Concerned elders feared time-honored Fraal traditions, such as leaving cryptic runes in the crops of primitive worlds, mutilating large bovines, or even the vivisection of primitives would be lost. After much contemplation, the elders came upon an idea: use one of their moon-sized flying discus ships to take the young on a nice, long, character-building voyage into one of the more primitive planes. By the time they got back, they would be free of the addiction and mature enough to rejoin proper Fraal society. At least, that was the plan.
From the start, the voyage was beset with problems. Some adolescents smuggled small, portable illusion devices. Others constantly complained or bickered with siblings. The ship was stranded on more than one plane when the drives failed and required repairs. The worst, however, happened with the ship entered the sphere it is currently located at. It struck a wild magic zone. The strange energies of the Fraal mixed with that of the wild magic, causing the ship to not only cease functioning, but much of their metallic devices were turned to stone, dirt, and other primitive materials, permanently stranding the Fraal with no way to contact their homeworld for assistance.
After the accident, the innumerable living experiments escaped their cages, running rampant through the corridors of their ship. The Fraal were forced to run for their lives, taking shelter in the mountains, where they eked out a miserable existence. Their first bit of luck came when they managed to gain the services of minotaur bands. The minotaurs had been ordinary cows and bulls prior to the accident, which transformed them into minotaurs. The superstitious minotaurs were easily convinced the Fraal were their masters, and the Fraal gained an important source of labor and body guards.
Third: A small city of crystalline towers has been built upon a hemispherical grey stone slab that is just under 2,000’ in diameter. At one time it served as a scout vessel for the Fraal, but it too was altered by the magic and rendered inert. It was abandoned as useless, although recently the Fraal have considered reclaiming it and putting a spelljamming port there. Third is haunted by monsters and needs to be cleared before any such efforts can begin.
