Anyhow, I'm trying to get an early idea on what the Sorcerer-kings will generally do *if* they're all on the battlefield when that fight comes (the early concept of the fight I have at this point is a large-scale naval battle near the shores of the sea of silt, as 'swashbuckling' came up very high on the group's want-to-do list). I was completely unfamiliar with Dark Sun prior to the release of the campaign guide for 4th edition, so everything I know about Athas I know from browsing that book.
On to the question: Is there anything that would unite the sorceror-kings? Their personalities, as I've picked up on them, makes it seem like they are equally likely to attack their rivals as they are the PCs and their allies. It's fine if there isn't any threat that would unite them; I'm just trying to guage what their personalities, as published and throughout the history of the setting, would have them behave.
So, there are a lot of reasons for the SKs to not directly oppose one another, and a lot of reasons for them to work together when a threat arrives greater than any one of them can deal with. They may not want to ask each other for direct aid, nor would they give such aid without bargains, angles, contrivances, promissories or whatnot and each one would go about their dealings with the others differently. I'm sure that generally none of them get along, but that level of disdain probably varies from distrust to complete abhorrence. They united originally as Champions of the Warbringer. They worked together collectively to betray Rajaat and imprison him. They also teamed up again to put Dregoth into a shallow grave. So, it seems to me that any threat that may effect them personally and is foreseeable would unite them: another Dragon's rampage that may interfere too much with a city's levy or even harm one of the SKs themselves, any major threat that would set even a portion of Rajaat's essence free from the Hollow, the Kreen invasion that never got underway officially, amongst other factors could unite some or all of the SKs. Try not to think of them as just BBEGs but in logical terms that fit what you would expect of someone in their situations.
In the end though, you can indeed make them flatly refuse to ever cooperate even to their own detriment if it tells the kind of story in the game that you wish.
Mach4 post is on the money as usual, can't add much to that.
Here is an idea maybe: Let your players defeat one SK first, and when the others find out about it, they decide to unite and exterminate the players before they get to them next.
At first, having all the SKs after them would be too much to handle and they would have to go "under the radar" for a while. SKs would mandate Kill Teams composed of Assassins and Warlocks to get rid of them. Some NPCs, who usually give them missions and the like, could also start betraying them (Blackmailed, Bribed, etc... ) and report their locations to SKs. This way you have a nice progression: Kill one SK first, then a bit of hide and seek / paranoia to give time for players to gather more power and items to confront more than one SK at a time or on a battlefield.
Given what Mach4 said, I imagine they would unite against this common threat. However, I can still see some of them attacking their more hated rivals, if that rival looks like he is about to die and can't contribute usefully to the rest of the fight.
The fight obviously won't be easy - each of the SK's is strong enough to be, maybe not a campaign but an adventure BBEG in their own right - but the party will have allies in the fight. The dark sun character is in the process of attracting followers - not specifically to overthrow the SK's, but because it's his personality to do so - and has managed to intimidate a dragon into surrender and forced a promise of a future favor from it. I imagine the paladin, too, will begin attempting to attract followers soon. Then another character's backstory has her as a high ranking member of house Cannith, meaning she will have significant recources to draw on when planar travel is less of a barrier to the characters. Mechanically - if the SK's are united and (mostly) not fighting amongst themselves, then the party's allies should be able to keep enough pressure on them to be able to concentrate on one at a time. If they were fighting amongst themselves, I'd consider having all but the first one the party focuses on start bloodied.
By and large, any alliance of the sorcerer-kings should look like the United Nations on a bad day. A dozen self-willed powers, some of which can throw their weight around, some of which have little reach. All of whom are looking out for themselves first and the group a distant second. (Look at how well the US, Afghanistan, and Pakistan work together against the Taliban.
)I see the PCs being able to pick off one and only one SK before the others set all kinds of stuff in motion. Not direct interference, but monkey wrenches in the PCs' gears, sand in their machines, old enemies they couldn't finish off come back to haunt them, assassin teams, status-seeking lieutenants, bounty hunters, waves of lied-to dupes.
I actually think that, if the SKs learn about the planar breach, they'll cooperate even less. Right now, I think the only reason they stay in blasted Athas is because they simply have no choice. Once the walls break, though, why wouldn't an SK rather set up shop elsewhere? It's a chance to study more powerful magic in Faerun or conquer unprepared forces in Eberron - and to fuel epic spells with limitless forests on dozens of worlds.
Who'd stay long in a stinking, burning, hell-hole of a city for long?
I actually think that, if the SKs learn about the planar breach, they'll cooperate even less. Right now, I think the only reason they stay in blasted Athas is because they simply have no choice. Once the walls break, though, why wouldn't an SK rather set up shop elsewhere? It's a chance to study more powerful magic in Faerun or conquer unprepared forces in Eberron - and to fuel epic spells with limitless forests on dozens of worlds.
In the eyes of almost every former Champion is the thought that some day, a certain deformed little man just might track them through the planes to exact his revenge. That may cause some of them to stick it out on Athas to maintain the prison, possibly stepping up their efforts at the levy should something happen a few of the others (i.e. they leave). Some of those that leave may still return annually with their share of slaves gathered from half a dozen planes to sacrifice to the levy. In the SKs eyes, Rajaat may be viewed as a being greater than these "gods" found in other realms and his wrath once freed may know no bounds (regardless of the truth of that, it's all in how they perceive him). Of course, it has been a very, very long time since the Warbringer's imprisonment and the fear of him may have lessened in some of the SKs by now. A possibility, but one I doubt coming from highly intelligent people. If anything, time may have made Rajaat seem even more mythic and epic to them, heightening their fear of what will happen to any of them should he return.
Beyond what's been said, I'd add that the SKs suffer from classic game theory problems. No matter how big the threat, it's almost always in the interest of any particular SK not to help. Kalid-Ma's rampage is a good example: Nibenay didn't help, for instance, even though he had an interest in stopping the rampage. If the rampage has destroyed the other cities, Nibenay wouldn't have had enough slaves to ward off Borys and sustain his own city.
Well Borys can be bribed. If you see him destroying other SKs and cities, it makes sense to bribe him yourself rather than try to intervene.
Won't work with a bunch adventurers. You can't sit by and let them kill all the other SKs and when they show up pon your doorstep, offer them a bribe. They've already toppled an SK or two and their cities.
You're going to have to kill those guys, but you don't want to commit so many forces that you leave yourself open to other threats. So multiple SKs each sending a smaller contingent of forces that add up into an impressive force seems rather prudent plan- amongst many others.
Not that such a combined force won't have disagreements, logistical/command issues, or infighting, etc. But that can help balance things out for the PCs and any rag tag forces they're leading.
So multiple SKs each sending a smaller contingent of forces that add up into an impressive force seems rather prudent plan- amongst many others.
It is a prudent plan - if you can trust the other SKs, which you really can't. The trend for SKs over time is to die/go insane/attack other cities. They aren't good partners. Unlike full nation-states which can be relied on to act in their own rational self-interests, the SKs can't be relied on to do so.
Consider the big news: Kalak's death. The death of Kalak is a mixed blessing for the other SKs. That's one less rival, but it's also more responsibility for those who survive. Tyr is going to have a lot more trouble providing its share of slaves, so they other cities will have to give them up. Who will step up?
That's my point about Nibenay not helping to stop Kalid-Ma. Sure, he can bribe Borys, but only with his own people. Every city that Kalid-Ma would have destroyed would increase the burden on Nibenay, making the cost of the bribe go up, eventually to unsustainable levels in some cities.
It's correct that total cooperation would be the best bet if the SKs all had the same interests, but they don't, and they know they can't trust each other. If there's a way out of Athas, sure, some might worry about being stalked by Rajaat - but that's not a problem so long as he stays locked up. So why would Nibenay (for instance) stick around, given that he already knows that that others like Hamanu have stepped up to stop a crisis before?
The disappearance of the planar barrier was a sudden, quiet thing. I seem to recall that one of the SKs (Dregoth maybe?) experiments 'constantly' to try to find a way into the astral sea - 'but constantly' is a relative term when you are as long lived as them. The Sorcerer Kings have not yet found out about the barriers disappearance, and their first clue will be when the party visits Athas.
When the party is first able to visit Athas in the high end of the heroic tier, they will find it impossible to keep a low profile. There's their general cluelessness, their comparitively vast quantity of gold, and their metal equipment (even the Dark Sun character switched out his obsidian scimitar for a steel one as soon as he got some coin that was accepted by merchants in the default setting. There is one other reason the party will stick out, however.
After spending time thinking about how the SKs would try to expand beyond Athas, I started thinking about those who would try and spread their influence into Athas. From their perch in the Astral Sea, the gods likely would have noticed the disappearance of the barrier immediately. I am certainly not saying that the devout are going to suddenly start popping up in Athas, nor am I saying that any native Athasians are going to start using the divine power source. I'm just saying that there are a number of people in Athas, particularly Raam (where the party will first show up), who have had inexplicably strange dreams lately, and a number of those dreams involve people that match the party's description.
They'll no doubt attract Abalach-re's attention, and it won't be hard to figure out they're from another plane - I could even picture a couple of them blurting it out. Though I imagine she would try to keep it secret, I'm pretty sure the other SKs have good enough spy networks that they'll find out at about the same time as well.
From the comment about them wanting to leave blasted Athas for greener pastures, I'm thinking that the only SKs that would do so are the ones who don't take much interest in ruling their cities anyway - probably just Abalach-re and *maybe* Nibenay (given that his recent interest in rule seems to be sparked entirely by the death of Kalak). The others seem to like being king, and I think are likely so stay where they are. That's not to say that they won't try to extend their reach.
In thinking about their options of where to set up an outpost, Eberron seems to me like it would be an impenetrable wall to them. Any initial forays to the world will wind up in Khorvaire, where it seems to me the existing political structures are too entrenched for any of the SKs to gain a foothold. While I doubt many, if any, of the dragonmarked houses would have any qualms doing business with them, there arises the issue of just what of value do the SKs have to offer in trade. Slaves are right out - they are necessary for the levy, and illegal almost everywhere in Eberron. Athas is lacking in natural resources, and I have to wonder if even the SKs don't have enough gold stockpiled for significant commerce. And I can't imagine an attempt at war being anything but a disaster for the SKs. While it is true that the five nations are still trying to rebuild from the Last War, part of that process has been preparing for the Next War, which most people believe is inevitable. While the SKs are themselves extremely powerful, the armies they could raise would, man to man, likely be outmatched by those any of the five nations could raise, given their similar access to psionics, as well as much more widespread access to magic and access to the divine at all. Finally is a matter of scale; any such war would be a technologically superior nation against a city-state. The absolute best case scenarios would have the SKs hold such a war at stalemate, until they run out of slaves and are unable to maintain Rajaat's prison.
Faerun would be significantly easier to gain a foothold in, as it is another world of city-states. That being said, none of the characters chose to be from Faerun, and if they never choose to travel there, I will just pretend it doesn't exist. Finally, the default 'Points of Light' setting is essentially a political vacuum, and I can't forsee the SKs having any difficulty setting up outposts there.
For the part of picking off the SKs, what I'm thinking is that if the party starts with those few that choose to leave Athas to pursue their own agendas, then it may be possible that the SKs that remain in Athas may look the other way - even go so far as to say that the 'deserters' got what they deserved. Sure, they'll keep a close eye on the party and maybe even try to stop them whenever they're on Athas, but the rest of the time they're likely to consider their new ambitions that planar travel have opened up to be a higher priority. And as long as the party follows the plot thread they're currently chasing with vigor, they're not going to be in much of a position to hinder the SKs advance into the PoL setting - they're going to be spending quite a bit of time in the underdark dealing with aboleths and the agents of a cult worshipping the now-insane Vecna. (Short version - the forbidden secrets of the far realm proved too tempting for a god of secrets to not try and plumb; and like *all* who attempt to comprehend the far realm, concluded the endeavor with a shattered mind. Not stupidity on his part - just a temptation too great for even a god to resist, when their obsession is secrets and forbidden knowledge.)
Once the SKs who leave Athas behind are done for, then the only option for wiping them out is to start attacking them in their lairs. It would seem the logical first target would be Tectuktitlay, being the weakest of the SKs. Now that the party has actually brought the fight to them, and demonstrated that they are adept at killing SKs, it is likely that the party will become the foremost thing on each of their minds. Then, I can see the remaining SKs (besides Dregoth) forming a shaky alliance to stop them.
Where Dregoth could fit in this picture is a bit of a mystery to me. His desire for apotheosis could very well lead him away from Athas, putting him amongst the SKs that leave and possibly cementing the 'they deserved it' attitude from the other SKs, given that the party would have just taken out one of their biggest threats. On the other hand, it also seems reasonable that he might wait until immediately after the battle, after the party has killed all the remaining SKs, in order to then try and take out the battle-weary adventurers, thereby getting his revenge on the other SKs as well as having an easier time taking out the people that pose the greatest threat to him. The general vibe I get from reading about him suggests to me that his plan is to kill them all anyway, regardless of any fear of Rajaat. Of course, it's entirely possible he could do both, given that he's a lich and so if the party kills him, he'll just reappear a couple days later anyway.
Finally, on an unrelated note, after reading that he was imprisoned outside of time and space, perhaps Rajaat should be an epic encounter in the final dungeon, which lies in the far realm. Not the final battle - that belongs to Vecna - but as a final cap to the 'Kill the Sorcerer Kings' quest.
Once the SKs who leave Athas behind are done for, then the only option for wiping them out is to start attacking them in their lairs. It would seem the logical first target would be Tectuktitlay, being the weakest of the SKs.
NO. While Tec. is certainly alone - he has made sure he has no friends or allies to bail him out of trouble - he also cannot go to anybody else's aid. It would look like an invasion, taking advantage of their weakness to stab them in the back. All Tec. can do is wait on the sidelines and hope the newcomers don't come for him first. He can prepare counter-ploys - perhaps repairing those golems he used to parade around town but doesn't any more - but he has exactly the resources of one city-state to work with, no more no less.
If the PCs are not only assassinating SKs but also empire-building, they can eventually build themselves up to the point where they can summon Tec. to publicly acknowledge his masters and overlords. I see Tec. as being in the equivalent of a game of Third Reich - the German player HAS to conquer Europe FAST or go down in the end. But Tec. doesn't have the resources to pull it off - and he knows it.
I suspect that the idea 'Tectuktitlay will be the first to fall' has more to do with the fact that he is the lowest-level SK, only L22, and a loner (future DMs get to read DSCC and DSCS) than from deep thought on Grand Strategy.
As I noted above, you only get to pick off ONE before the rest try to work together against you. Maximize your own chances by leaving survivors who don't get along. You'll be providing them with the opportunity to 'work together only under duress' soon enough.
DSCS practially offers Abalach-Re as a sacrificial lamb for the PCs to take down, but DSCC makes it clear she is the toughest of the group, and well-disguised. Unless your PCs find out Dregoth is still alive, he's not a valid target either. I still like Hamanu, but the Oba (forget her name) might be one place to start. Andropinis (sp?) would be another - if you are REALLY good, you could make him run for re-election and lose. The ramifications of such a subtle stunt would shake Athas even more than Kalak's assassination did.