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mahavira 06-11-06, 12:18 AM

This thread is collaterally related to the RHOD thread, but sufficiently separate that I'm starting a new thread. I am going to be starting a campaign, which will eventually involve RHOD, in which the heroes' task is to thwart the draconic prophecy at every turn. The idea is that in the beginning, Siberys tried to enslave the universe by creating the Akashyk Record, a prophecy dictating every action taken by every living thing on the prime material plane, creating a 'perfect order', with Siberys and his favored children at the top. Khyber, for less than altruistic reasons, opposed this plan and attacked Siberys during the creation. He was a moment too late: though he struck a mortal blow before losing his free will, the Akashyk Record was sufficiently complete that Siberys was able to use its power to force Eberron to imprison Khyber and set into motion a chain of events leading to his glorious ressurrection and the future imposition of his perfect order, aka the Draconic Prophecy. The prophecy was somewhat less durable than Siberys originally intended, so it can be delayed or even conceivably derailed altogether (though the Rajahs failed to do so wiht the entire age of demons to work with), and only the ascendant wyrms (long since gone) and the rajahs really understood the prophecy enough to be sure of the effects of their actions, so the Rakshasa and dragons don't take drastic measures very often for fear of advancing the other side. Fast forward to the present day: a large group of dragons has concluded that the Last War should have raged for another century or so, obliterating the royal houses of Galifar and completely discrediting the notion of Galifar as a kingdom. Into this chaos a messiah was to bring about a new order, a dracocentric theocracy under the Sovreign Host (the church of the silver flame, while a useful foil against the Rajahs, is ultimately an obstacle) and Dragonmarked Houses. The Mourning put this on hiatus, however, and Breland, the strongest remaining kingdom is too firmly on the side of the relatively peaceful status quo for the dragons' taste. Enter the Red Hand Horde: the young dragons in RHOD command Azar Khul to raise an army and aid him in this. King Oubould is too busy dealing with his own followers to really care about some upstart warlord on the fringes, particularly since the Red Hand Horde are drawn especially from the Dahakani who don't follow Oubould anyway. The plan is to have the Red Hand Horde destroy New Cyre in a glorious massacare, then march on rural Breland. With a sufficiently ghastly campaign, the Brelish will be easily manipulated into a full scale war against Darguun (there are probably hawk factions in Breland who want such a war anyway). Breland is forced into a drawn out war with Darguun, both weakening and distracting it, the Royal Family of Cyre is finished off, and future plans to start further wars can proceed without much interference from Boranel. I already know what I'm doing with the RHOD, but was looking for ideas for before and after. Initially I was going to have the PCs scuffle with low ranking draconic minions (kobolds siezing and observatory and torturing the astronomers for information about recent celestial phenomena, a dragon cult kidnapping a pregnant dragonmarked woman so that her child can be born at an auspicious time and place for the prophecy). I thought about giving a few human cultists the draconic template from Draconomicon (the dragon masters 'uplifting' their minions as a reward (or degeneration, depending on how you look at it)), but as I don't have Races of the Dragon, there might be somethign appropriate there. I also thought about having a Rakshasa go around killing fortune tellers (telling the future more than a few minutes in advance can only be done through accessing the prophecy, and doing so makes the prophecy more likely to succeed) as another way of introducing the free will vs predestination theme. I'm mainly looking for monsters or adventure seeds that would be good for the before and after RHOD section. Any suggestions/criticism welcome!