Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Rake 08-13-06, 08:43 AM	Hiya. I'm getting ready to host an Eberron Campaign that I hope to see reach 20th level and beyond. My players are familiar with most of the Eberronian basics, and while they are no experts, they have played in two or three short-lived Eberronian adventures before. The crew have all finished their character concepts, and will, they promise, be finished with their character sheets by the weekend. I'm curious to know what you all think of the campaign, what you'd change or what ideas you'd add, and what you'd think of my take on some of Eberron's great mysteries if you were a player in my game. The characters do not yet have names, but the cast is as follows: Luis - playing a human cleric of the Silver Flame 3. Luis' goal is to root out the corruption within the church, and to hunt down and expose those outside forces that would use his church for their pawn. Victor - playing a human knight 3. Luis' character is Victor's charge, though his alignment is different (LN to Luis' LG). Victor's character is a Cyran native, a soldier and vereran of the Last War who moved to Thrane (seeking the order and structure to which he is accustomed and by which he is comforted) after the Mourning. Andrew - playing a Poison Dusk Lizardfolk ranger 2. Sort of a missionary-project for Luis' character, Andrew's character is fascinated by the human world, and respects and acknowledges the Silver Flame's long tradition in archery. Archery, you see, is almost a form of spiritual expression to the lizardfolk of his tribe. Justin - playing a kalashtar psion 3. Justin's character has been instructed by his mentors in Sarlona to investigate the influence of the Dreaming Dark on Khorvaire. Justin's mentors divined that he would meet three travellers important to his journey, all of them loosely tied to the nation called Thrane, if he travelled upon a path of light. The path of light, however, turns out to be more literal than Justin expected - a path of lightning rail conductor stones. The players meet on a train, and the campaign will begin upon entering the lightning rail station... just in time to stop a warforged terrorist attack.... General Campaign Plot Summary Chapter 1 – The Enemy of My Enemy (Levels 3-6): In this first chapter, the party will deal primarily with the minions of the Lord of Blades, who has begun to produce warforged in greater number. Justin’s superiors have recently discovered evidence that suggests that the Lord of Blades has achieved an increased ability to fabricate his army with the assistance of The Aurum, that of the Great House Tharashk (or at least a shady handful of their number), a small number of corrupted Thranish priests, and the buying power of the these groups combined (the darkwood, mithral, and adamantine components certainly don’t come cheaply), who in turn are all being manipulated by agents of the Dreaming Dark. Justin has been tasked with the job of investigating the influence of the Dreaming Dark over these factions, and over the Lord of Blades, and has also been tasked with the job of righting any wrongs that the Dreaming Dark may have wrought as a result of their meddling in Khorvaire. During this chapter, Andrew should find that the Inspired are responsible for manipulating the human settlers of Q’barra to defile the ancient lizardfolk sites of power, thus causing hostility between the settlers and the lizardfolk and enabling the Dreaming Dark to gain a foot in the door in Khorvaire by offering the Q’barran settlers Riedran military support in exchange for a Riedran embassy in Q’barra. The party should have eliminated the Dreaming Dark’s secondhand influence within the Lord of Blades’ territory by the end of this chapter. Chapter 2 – Inspiration Strikes (Levels 7-10): Through their actions in chapter one, he party makes a (powerful) enemy of an agent of the Inspired of Riedra. In this chapter, the party interacts with an Inspired plot to unmake a seal in the Shadow Marches for long enough to let a handful of powerful evil entities, contained since the invasion from Xoriat, pass through it. The Inspired villain of this chapter should be fairly self-contained within the Inspired hierarchy, perhaps even acting independently of his superiors. The party should not make an enemy of all of Riedra in foiling his plans, as the campaign will have less to do with the Inspired and more to do with the Far Realm Xoriat and other non-psionic evils after the conclusion of this chapter. This chapter’s villain seeks to manipulate the denizens sealed behind the portal into laying low the capitol of Karrnath, as King Kaius III firmly refuses to permit a Riedran embassy within Karrnath so long as the Riedran people refuse to allow any of the Five Nations a foothold in Riedra itself. During their dealings with Kaius, the party should learn his secret. Said Inspired villain should manage to weaken one of the Xoriat seals beyond immediate repair before the party can defeat him, thus introducing the primary threat of chapter three – the cults of the Dragon Below, the denizens of the Far Realm, and the Lords of Madness behind even these. Chapter 3 – The Lords of Madness (Levels 11-14): When a handful of the denizens of Xoriat escape the seal and retreat into Khyber, the various cults of the Dragon Below rush to meet and protect their new ‘allies’. In this chapter, the party combats these cults and the aberrant natives of Xoriat within Khyber itself. This entire chapter should feel like something of a race against time, as the more time the Far Realm natives have to organize and unite, the more impossibly difficult they will be to stand against. Fortunately, unity isn’t something these creatures achieve easily, and the party should have time to organize and execute strike-force type operations, targeting and destroying different creatures and the cults that worship and defend them before they coalesce into an aberrant army. In the background of this chapter, attempting to harness the powers of the escaped aberrations is one of the six Daelkyr, the Lords of Madness, remaining within Eberron. At the close of this chapter, the party discovers the remains of a very old dragon, an object of worship for the cults. Among the treasures in his hoard there is a map that points to a Xen’drik ruin. Inside the ruin waits a physical piece of the Draconic Prophesy describing the entity of the Silver Flame and the impurity within it, an ancient child of the Progenitor Wyrm that is called Khyber. This will certainly peak Luis’ interest, to put it very mildly. Chapter 4 – Though Hell Should Bar The Way (Levels 15-18): In this endgame-level chapter, the party explores deepest Khyber, and confronts the demon inside the Flame. Inside the chamber whereupon a piece of the Draconic Prophesy is writ, a series of hieroglyphs describe the origins of the Silver Flame. The Prophesy describes the Flame as being the physical result of the sacrifice of the coautl and the binding of the great demon. Also revealed is the fact that over time, the demon within can only gain strength, and will eventually grow powerful enough to break free of it’s bindings. Tira Miron, the Voice of the Flame, was never intended to defeat the demon – though the chosen of the Sovereign Host and strongest in the faith, she simply hadn’t the power necessary to destroy such a mighty and ancient offspring of Khyber. Instead, she was called to martyrdom in order to bind it until such a time as it could be destroyed… and writ upon the walls of this chamber is the formula for the creation of an item of power that can only be translated as ‘The Artifact’: a weapon strong enough to defeat the demon-in-the-Flame. Forging such a weapon is no task any single mortal could hope to achieve. So many talents, tools, and trades are required for its creation that only the combined efforts of the Dragonmarked Houses could produce it (though the houses need not actually know or realize that they are doing so). The hieroglyphs suggest, in fact, that the Prophesy chose to empower and set apart the mortal bloodlines in which the key talents necessary for the forging of The Artifact ran for just such an occasion, and that perhaps the Dragonmarked houses came to be for this reason. And so, the party sets out to put the Dragonmarked Houses to the tasks to which they were made and fated to complete. During this phase, the party may even discover Merrix d’Cannith’s dark and sordid secret (see below). Chapter 5 – As Above, So Below (Levels 19+): In this final chapter, the party attempts to complete The Artifact. The twelfth house, however, the House of Vol, is no more – and only Lady Vol herself might be able to complete the sad and sacrificial the final step of the forging, the eternal demise of her own corrupted bloodline. Death, after all, is the lonesome trade and talent of that once-great house. If the party can overcome these obstacles and is able to enlist the ruined House of Vol, willing or unwilling, in the forging of The Artifact, then the time to face the demon-within-the-Flame is upon them. The demon, of course, is nothing short of the mightiest of the Lords of Dust, a being so powerful as to be divine. Also important to note is that unbinding the demon, so as to destroy it, means unbinding the Silver Flame itself, freeing the Flame from its age-long duty and permitting the noble spirits of the coautl a final rest. With the destruction of the Silver Flame, the rakshasa can no longer recycle their immortal souls. Striking so terrible a blow to what is likely the single greatest evil upon the face of the Material Plane, the demon-within-the-Flame and the Lords of Dust – Eberron becomes free of an old and terrible taint. Rest assured, of course, that such a change will draw the attention of The Traveler – for good or for ill. Notes Summarized below are my versions of some of the great mysteries of Eberron. The players may explore and discover any number of these during their adventures, depending on what they seem to take an interest in, and go after. The Draconic Prophesy: The secret that the dragons keep is simple – the gods are fated to return. The events described by the Prophesy follow the paths of those individuals and organizations that are destined to play a part (no matter how small) in the revival of Eberron’s true gods. So many events fall under that category because of one divine clause: for gods above to have influence, the mortals below must have faith. Eberron is a weak vessel, its people are low on hope and high on despair. In ‘outliving’ his Progenitor brothers, Khyber made it so from the moment of the great creation. Because of Eberron’s ill-fated divine creation, countless evils pervade the planet, unbalancing the energies of the cosmos. What Eberron needs is faith. That, and every goodly hero it can muster. Ironically, the kalashtar, the only non-draconic entities even close to understanding this principle, aren’t even Eberronian natives. The Mournlands: The fact is, Patron Merrix d’Cannith is more or less responsible for the loss of Cyre. One of the exceptionally few Eberronian mortals ever to meet a god in person, Merrix made a bargain with the Traveler – a font of souls with which to craft the object of his obsession and his one true love, the warforged race… in exchange for Cyre itself. Ordinarily, Merrix would have had no right to bargain Cyre – the nation was his homeland, but it was not his to give. To begin with, therefore, the Traveler traded the masteries of life and soul energy for the mere promise of Cyre. Eventually it came time to pay, Merrix of the great House Cannith requested an audience with King Mishann ir’Wynarn, the ruler of Cyre, and murdered him. Taking up his crown, his throne, and his scepter, Merrix called out to the Traveler, as the Traveler had instructed him to do, and that mysterious entity responded. Merrix was allowed to keep his forges, and moments later Cyre was no more. Most of House Cannith had conveniently evacuated the land by that time, as per Merrix’s orders. Most – but not all, of course – the exodus of the entire House would have raised far too many eyebrows. Today, therefore, House Cannith survives while Cyre does not. Ironically, the loss of the Mournlands triggered the chain of events that resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Thronehold, the document that declared the war over – and the creation forges for which Cyre was bartered were shut down. Beware the gifts of the Traveler, indeed. The Silver Flame: The Silver Flame is not a deity at all, but a prison (see above). With the sacrifice of the noble coautl, Tira Miron martyred her life to bind a great demon – one of Khyber’s eldest children – to a prison of faith and goodness. Tira speaks from within the Flame from time to time, but she spends most of her time in agony, bound intimately to the torturously cruel shadow within the Flame. The spirits of Tira, and the coautl, are every bit as jailed as the demon within. Perhaps one day a mortal will rise with the strength and desire to unbind the flame and destroy the demon, allowing the spirits of light bound within to find a final resting place. The Traveler: Ever wonder why Artifice is a domain of the Traveler? Look no further than The Mournlands entry (see above). Somehow, the Traveler – not a true and living deity, but more of a vestige – survives the apparent disappearance of his Eberronian god-kin. Ever patient, the Traveler sows chaos on a grand scale. Change can be a good thing, however. The living god of Eberron is just as likely to bless a deserving sufferer with relief (albeit always in an unexpected way) than to curse an undeserving victim with an unhappy twist of fate. The Traveler seems to live for the simple thrill of shaking things up, and observing the human(oid) condition as it reacts and adjusts. The Traveler is also obsessed with the number thirteen, and takes a special pleasure in creating ‘mock thirteens’. The Traveler is not responsible for the tragic fall of the House of Death, but he is responsible for the sundering of the House of Shadow. Likewise, the Traveler is not responsible for the existence of the thirteenth moon, or the erratic path of the Dal Quor, but he is responsible for passing the mightiest knowledge of planar binding onto the ancient dragons that taught the Gatekeepers how to seal Xoriat away. The Warforged: In a sense, the giants of ancient Xen’drik first built the warforged, and in those days crystals and gemstones were as likely to adorn the warforged body as mithral or adamantine. The giants originally saw the warforged as servants and playthings – and as works of art. In truth, however, the giants were inspired to create the warforged by the dream-whisperings of the Dreaming Dark. The Dreaming Dark intended the warforged to be the perfect host vessels for their quori spirits, but after the giants drove the quori away and sealed the gates to Dal Quor with the Annulus, the warforged were left free-willed, and most actually willingly assisted their giant masters in driving away the remaining quori invaders in the aftermath of the incursion. Some resented their creators, however, and helped the elves (which the giants kept as slaves and bondsman) to escape their masters. More recently, of course, Merrix d’Cannith of House Cannith discovered the warforged schema in a Xen’drik ruin, and made something of a deal with the devil (see above).
Eled_the_Worm_Tamer 08-13-06, 09:03 AM	It all looks good, just a few points Id like to mention. Klashitar don't tend to refer to themselves as comming from Sarlona, there nation is called Adar, it would be like a Kranathi describing himself as a Khavoran, broadly acurate, but basicly incorect. Also be carefull about rail roading, having a detaled plot is good, but dont get too atached to it. Only other potental problem I see is between the Knight and the Silverflame prest, is the Knight player hapy being a subordinate? is the Prests player mature enough to handle things without abusinh is power down the road? Personaly I think a band of adventurers should all be equals, as it causes less conflict out of game. Oh and rember that as Gm your entitled to enjoy yourself too.
Alarius 08-13-06, 10:11 AM	It's a greatly detailed and organized campaign you have envisioned there. The reason I would caution against this stems from the obvious pitfall of rail-roading the characters into a certain cause of action and a certain - predetermined storyline. I say this without a clue as to how you go about creating and telling stories, but always lures the danger of having spend countless hours creating a fabulous story only to wake up realizing the players are bored to death from having no choices but to go along. Whenever I create a storyarc I do so with notes of having it open-ended with many ways in which the arc can come true. And in many ways, I do not plan for an end, I plan for continuation of the story if the group and the campaign can hold one such. As such I find that it's often better to just have a generel idea of what stories you want told and then respond to the player's feedback; many new and great storylines can come from player theories. Easily the best and most interesting campaigns I have DM'ed has sprung from this symbiose between storyteller and audience. With that said, though, I find your story interesting even if it clashes with Eberron canon. However, those exact same clashes almost has me wondering whether or not you'll regret introducing the idea of True Gods. What if those True Gods where just a lure, a promise whispered in the ears of some powerful dragons by the long imprisoned Rakshasa Rajahs? What if your players caught wind of this and had to fight a Dragon Maddened by the fought of the discovery of the "existance" of Gods (something that could rival the power of Great Wyrms) to discover the true meaning. What if the "True Gods" instead were the Rajahs? What if the True Gods covered over something else and instead it led to another conclusion that opened up even more questions (like why do the Sulatar believe the world will end in Fire?). One thing that is really Eberronish is that nothing is the way it seems to be at first glance. In the spirit of positive criticism I think you should revision your idea of the Cyre Catastrophy and the Traveller. In the spirit of all that is Eberron let a mystery be a mystery, a definite answer is not only boring, it's also incredibly limiting. First of all, how would Merrix come about power to destroy an entire nation? What would Merrix gain by destroying Cyre? The ability to create Warforged was already his. He was able to spit out warforged at an ever increasing speed, he was already able to create really advanced and capable warforged that even have a resemblance of a soul. Your logic behind his motives for destroying Cyre is weak in my eyes. Also the idea behind the Traveller's motives seems unfinished. What were he standing to get? A vast amount of souls? Well most souls seemed to depart or maybe was eaten by the mist as it rolled out encompassing everything. The Traveller doesn't strike me as a "soul-eater" but more like a "soul-corrupter". Last, why the need to explain the Day of Mourning? It would be far more open-ended and keeping the shroud of mystery by giving conflicting hints to the cause of the disaster. Maybe the Becoming God's cult was already started at that point as a secret underground movement, so they willingly sabotaged a great magical experiment to shield the borders of stretched out Cyre. Maybe a Khyber demon whispered into the cult's ears, steering them on this cause? Maybe the Dreaming Dark had a hand in destroying Cyre because Cannith had discovered a way to make even better Dream Prisons? Maybe both had a hand; Dreaming Dark in inspiring fragile mortal minds and Khyber in sabotaging. It might also be the Lords of Dust that wanted to strike a devastating blow to the Silver Flame (which in turn might be sustained by mortal dreams of freedom, love and spiritual healthness - which would explain Thrane's undying hatred of Karrnath, at least one part of it) by obliterating an entire nation and create a festering wound that weakens the strength of the Silver Flame much like cancer. There are always a number of ways to view things on Eberron, and to lock oneself so narrowly on one explanation is, to me at least, very un-Ebberon-like. About the Traveller, I feel an unsettling ire. The introduction of gods on Eberron is to me everything that Eberron is not. A god limits the choices of mortals, it basically tells the players there are greater forces at work that controls their actions and that they can't do anything against it. A living God is so unsettling and unraveling to the very idea of Eberron that everything in me revolts against that idea. Gods belong on Faerûn (Forgotten Realms) and not on Eberron. Maybe the Traveller is the echoes or the whispers of a Rajah, maybe it's an incredible old Green Dragon with many spell-casting class levels that have prolonged its life and now maybe exists ethereally as a spirit possessing people at random. A dragon that has seen the Age of Giants, that has experienced the war against the Quori, a dragon that had a hand in destroying the Giants, but for the love of all that is sacred - not a god (or a vestige)! Whatever your plans are for the warforged is your own. That story is already open-ended and so vague anything goes. Myself, I like the idea of Quoris stealing the Warforged from the Giants' dreams and creating their own to stalk the land killing Giants. I like the idea of Quori docents, and maybe the very existance of those docents is what threatens to keep the Age from Turning (an event that could greatly unbalance the structure of the world). Finally, as I understand it, the Silver Flame isn't renewing the Rajahs, instead its one force that holds them imprisoned. Or maybe the Silver Flame and the Rajahs are tied to one another so that without one the other can't exist. The Coutls might have foreseen this, and that caused them to sacrifice themselves. They knew, that without the Silver Flame some future disaster may not have been avoided, perhaps the Giants depended on the Silver Flame to banish Dal Quor? Maybe the Xoriat invasion would never have been defeated if not the Hobgoblin Clerics of Yore had been able to work together with the Orc Gatekeepers. Maybe all mortal Faith Magic stems from the Silver Flame (a theory only, of course - the Coutls weren't omniscient and could easily have been wrong sustaining a festering wound wrongly, a practice kept live by the (insane?) Sullassars)? Ah well, those were just my comments in the end it's your campaign. And the final thing I want to advice you is to keep the player's interested in the campaign, and the best way to do that is to involve them.