u/ZTargetDance

Hello! I'm at a bit of a crossroads where the next leg of my player's adventure is probably going to involve this empire-sponsored, region-spanning rail line that I've introduced, and I'd like to just kick the prompt out into the world and see if a creative jam can get the imagination brewing. I feel like I've had my nose so close to it for so long that its a little hard to shake free of past ideas and think outside the box, if you know what I mean.

Basically: this empire - which is more ambitious than it is evil, though the actions of one can certainly bleed into the other without much energy - is building a rail line that will connect its capital to its farthest border. At the moment, hints to the players have been that they're building quickly in order to move troops for a potential invasion of a neighboring city-state.

That's a great real-world-adjacent reason for such a project, but I want to maybe inject a little more fantasy in there, maybe a bit of of a mystery as well.

My first instinct was to have them be building the rail into the shape of a giant glyph, and have a golem-driven doom train that is threatening to steamroll the countryside to make this thing happen. But I may have written myself into a corner there with the rail currently being a straight line from east to west instead of a traditional magic circle lol. Either way, I'm just interested in what surface from an internet brainstorm, and would rather have real, human ideas involved :)

Hello! I'm at a bit of a crossroads where the next leg of my player's campaign is probably going to involve this empire-sponsored, region-spanning rail line that I've introduced, and I'd like to just kick the prompt out into the world and see if a creative jam can get the imagination brewing. I feel like I've had my nose so close to it for so long that its a little hard to shake free of past ideas and think outside the box, if you know what I mean.

Basically: this empire - which is more ambitious than it is evil, though the actions of one can certainly bleed into the other without much energy - is building a rail line that will connect its capital to its farthest border. At the moment, hints to the players have been that they're building quickly in order to move troops for a potential invasion of a neighboring city-state.

That's a great real-world-adjacent reason for such a project, but I want to maybe inject a little more fantasy in there, maybe a bit of of a mystery as well.

My first instinct was to have them be building the rail into the shape of a giant glyph, and have a golem-driven doom train that is threatening to steamroll the countryside to make this thing happen. But I may have written myself into a corner there with the rail currently being a straight line from east to west instead of a traditional magic circle lol. Either way, I'm just interested in what surface from an internet brainstorm, and would rather have real, human ideas involved :)

We rent, so I can't install anything onto the house itself. I'm just looking for a good, >$50 attachment for our hose that I could control via HA. Its a pretty small back yard, so I don't think It even needs multiple zones.

I currently have Zigbee2MQTT set up, and have liked the Sonoff soil monitors that I've got in place already. Though I've encountered some skepticism on the internet about using Zigbee for something that might not reliably get the "off" signal.

I don't currently have any ESP devices, I've been interested, but don't know if I want to get started with constructing anything myself on something that could potentially damage our home if i do something wrong.

Not sure I need smart scheduling built in, just the ability to start and stop (and maybe some safety killswitch?) from HA, preferably.

Any recommendations? Thanks!