Biological Warfare In Eberron - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Biological Warfare In Eberron

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
leliel
Jun 17, 2010 20:10:54 Well...That.

A lot of what the villain is able to do in my super robot game-in-planning (long story) is engineer new forms of life due to sufficently-analyzed magic.

Naturally, this tends to result in man-made plauges.

So what I was wondering was:

How would bio-warfare work in Eberron?
#2
hanzo187
Jun 17, 2010 20:46:21 Two words: Moon Breaker.

The Moon Breaker was a machine the giants of Xen'drik made to "eradicate" the quori. It was a combination of "man-made" know-how and magic. The mere fact Xen'drik got f'd-in-the-a all those millenia ago could be an example of bio-warfare run amok on the continent.

You could also incorporate the dragonshards to warp magic and people. It's always possible the Khyber shards could be used for more than elemental binding. Perhaps they could be used to mutate creatures? Or maybe channelling magic into all three types of shards has unknown results, depending on what kind of magic is used. I haven't read about divine magic being used on dragonshards, so who knows how that might turn?
#3
ellorin
Jun 18, 2010 6:49:18 Between the Lady of the Plague and the Children of Winter, I'm sure that biological warfare is not an unknown concept in Eberronian warfare. I suppose that the Emerald Claw, Mordaine and House Jorasco are other possible candidates.
#4
ChrisTheS
Jun 18, 2010 9:57:48 In 3e there was a prestige class for Jorasco that focused on learning about diseases and being able to either cure or inflict any that the character knew about with a touch. I can easily see Jorasco's less savory branches weaponizing and marketing that talent (on the sly, of course).
#5
Hellcow
Jun 20, 2010 5:54:18 Are you asking for specific mechanics, or just broad ideas?

Looking to the latter, biological warfare is certainly a factor in Eberron. It's a vital tool for the Children of Winter. It's not part of Jorasco's public image, but as mentioned above the Nosomantic Chiurgeons are a secret branch of the house that develops such things. Personally, I see the NC as being a joint operation between Jorasco and Vadalis facilitated by the Twelve... combining Jorasco's ability to manipulate health with Vadalis' talent for crafting new forms of life.

Mechanically, you can use the existing diseases, perhaps with modified statistics to reflect greater virulance. You can reflect a more vicious wasting disease - flesh eating bacteria, for example - either by using the old system but with a rapidly accelerated rate (make a check every ten minutes) or just flat out ongoing damage. Or you can make up new rules entirely. I could see a Vadalis/Jorasco union producing a sort of Typhoid Mary plague-spreading creature... drop sterile plague-poodles on an area, with an engineered lifespan of two weeks, so you can just pull in after the job is done. A similar approach would be a zombie uprising, a la 28 Days Later - psychotic killers that spawn new copies any time they kill a humanoid. Of course, the thing here would be that while they act like ghouls, they aren't actually undead - and will ultimately starve to death, letting you reclaim the area.

Another thought that SURELY couldn't possibly go wrong and require the help of adventurers to save Khorvaire from disaster would be to explore existing monsters that spread disease... so, say, Vadalis deciding to revive and weaponize lycanthropy.
#6
Paulon
Jun 20, 2010 10:04:11
Are you asking for specific mechanics, or just broad ideas?

Looking to the latter, biological warfare is certainly a factor in Eberron. It's a vital tool for the Children of Winter. It's not part of Jorasco's public image, but as mentioned above the Nosomantic Chiurgeons are a secret branch of the house that develops such things. Personally, I see the NC as being a joint operation between Jorasco and Vadalis facilitated by the Twelve... combining Jorasco's ability to manipulate health with Vadalis' talent for crafting new forms of life.

The Shadows over Cyre play by post we started in this forum had a Vadalis/Cannith project to create some 'useful' diseases. We took a mad scientist/Girl Genius style approach to artifice.

As it turned out in the game, the plague which forced Kaius to make a deal with Errandis D'Vol was a bio-weapon that was intended to just weaken the population in the areas Karrnath conquered. Only Erandis' people got hold of a too lethal version and set it loose in Karrnath to provide leverage...

Mechanically, you can use the existing diseases, perhaps with modified statistics to reflect greater virulance. You can reflect a more vicious wasting disease - flesh eating bacteria, for example - either by using the old system but with a rapidly accelerated rate (make a check every ten minutes) or just flat out ongoing damage. Or you can make up new rules entirely. I could see a Vadalis/Jorasco union producing a sort of Typhoid Mary plague-spreading creature... drop sterile plague-poodles on an area, with an engineered lifespan of two weeks, so you can just pull in after the job is done. A similar approach would be a zombie uprising, a la 28 Days Later - psychotic killers that spawn new copies any time they kill a humanoid. Of course, the thing here would be that while they act like ghouls, they aren't actually undead - and will ultimately starve to death, letting you reclaim the area.

Or worse, a disease that incorporates negative energy and animates the corpses as nice controllable undead after it kills them. Just the sort of terror weapon the Emerald Claw would like...

That one got stopped by engineering two counter-plagues. One acted as a vaccination against the Emerald Claw's undead maker on the living and did nothing else, the other used positive energy to make it a plague that attacked the undead the Claw's plague produced.

Another thought that SURELY couldn't possibly go wrong and require the help of adventurers to save Khorvaire from disaster would be to explore existing monsters that spread disease... so, say, Vadalis deciding to revive and weaponize lycanthropy.

We had that too. Really deranged werewolf with Vadalis family connections working on a really contagious and incurable lycanthropy variant. It took a wish from drawing the Moons card from the Deck of Many Things to keep that from getting too far out of control.
#7
half_dragon_infernal
Jun 20, 2010 18:42:11 Feral heart could also have some implications in this though, since they like to mutate people a lot.
#8
leliel
Jun 21, 2010 19:15:03
Wow, it's suprising that I managed to forget this for so long.

To answer your question, Mr. Baker: I was thinking as to how Khovaire would react to a plauge ment for the express purpose of spreading terror while weakening infrastructure.

You see, the virus I plan to use is an expy of the Rosalia pathogen from Trauma Team.

Basically, imagine Ebola...that causes cancer...while incubating...eats organs from the inside out once it goes lethal, causing you to bleed out your eyes and mouth as your insides are turned to acid...and is incurable by almost all methods, only able to be sent into remission breifly unless an antiserum is applied.

And that's not even getting into how it spreads. *SPOILER*

White text: You see, it isn't actually an airborne pathogen, but within it's vector of fluid tramission, it's capable of almost anything. If infected fluid seeps into the ground for example, it can live within plant life, transmitting to insects such as butterflies via nector. These bugs then become natural carriers, shedding virally positive material (think scales on a monarch, or honey) throughout their migratory patterns. If it somehow gets into a person's system (and honestly, it's not at all hard), it's only a matter of time before the virus gets a foothold. Oh, and did I mention it's hardy enough to survive in bone for two years?

Yeah, it's pretty scary.
#9
Ogiwan
Jun 21, 2010 21:02:37 I have to say, I'm a fan of Paulon's idea. Mainly because I love the Emerald Claw. As villains.
#10
Hellcow
Jun 22, 2010 2:27:16
I have to say, I'm a fan of Paulon's idea. Mainly because I love the Emerald Claw. As villains.

Which is why I like the 28-Days-Later-Vadalis-Aggression-Virus idea, myself. People see crazy zombies, they will immediately jump to the conclusion "Zombies. Got it, it's the Emerald Claw." The cleric goes to turn the zombies and...

... nothing happens.

Taking something that's traditionally an undead threat and saying "But this time, they aren't undead" should throw people who are stocked up with tricks for fighting undead. And then you get that "And if they AREN'T undead, who could be behind this?", since they won't have Vadalis-Jorasco house logos stamped on their necks. Probably.
#11
Black_Egg
Jun 22, 2010 20:10:31 Xoriat stuffs and the daelkyr are the first things that spring to my mind when someone says "Eberron and Biological Warfare". Those evil masterminds surely aren't sitting around idle in Khyber, after all.

Might they really be the ones behind the Vadalis-Jorasco zombie plague?
#12
Sarlax
Jun 23, 2010 3:49:43 My campaign is about a secret organization created by the Treaty of Thronehold which works to prevent a second war. One of their adventures was focused on capturing a war criminal, Seyna Besula, a halfling who hired himself out to group who wanted to conduct biological warfare secretly.

Besula, it turned out, was actually a Siberys heir of Jorasco, and his talented manifested in the ability to cause abundance of life. His power (and something else...) drove him mad, and he used his mark to accelerate the growth of diseases.

In mechanics, there's a lot of stuff in D&D that fits the biowar bill. Think of all the spawning undead, for instance. Even in 4E, there are still monsters that can create an undead-apocalypse. Lycanthropes also work (contagious lycanthropy prompted the purge in the 800s; it might happen again).

There are also simpler things, such as the various slimes and jellies, some of which divide if damaged, or reproduce if they feed fast enough. In one adventure I ran, arcane terrorists crossed gelatinous cubes with beholders, creating flying cubes that ate magic.
#13
el_shawno
Jun 27, 2010 1:23:47 Well, depending upon your party's makeup, a nice twist to this arc could be a Kalashtar PC having to go to work for the Inspired as they're the ones who seem to have the best idea of how to combat this new/revived plague.

As to how it spreads in-game, I like the idea of Jorasco-Vadalis finding a "Typhoid Mary" or "Marys" who would be the primary means of spreading the disease. It would fall to the party to track down and stop these agents - even at the cost of their own lives. Oh, did I mention that at least one of these carriers is a Changeling? Even better, make one a Deva who keeps dying and respawning in seemingly random locations - with the diesease intact as well. That would force the characters to figure out how to stop him/her w/o killing her.

Another idea/side note: Plagues are bad enough by themselves, but they often leave political and economic chaos in their wake. For example, what if those who survived the Day of Mourning are immune to the disease? That way, even if it's contained, the disease would cause a surge in anti-Cyrean (sic?) sentiment and even semi-spontaneous pogroms emerging. What does your party do? Maybe a Dragonmarked House finds itself decimated by the plague's outbreak and vulnerable to being coopted by another house? For example, House Lyrandar could find itself being threatened with a takeover by House Orien after the latter's membership has been devestated by the plague. Which side do the PCs take?

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 leliel Jun 17, 2010 20:10:54	Well...That. A lot of what the villain is able to do in my super robot game-in-planning (long story) is engineer new forms of life due to sufficently-analyzed magic. Naturally, this tends to result in man-made plauges. So what I was wondering was: How would bio-warfare work in Eberron?
#2 hanzo187 Jun 17, 2010 20:46:21	Two words: Moon Breaker. The Moon Breaker was a machine the giants of Xen'drik made to "eradicate" the quori. It was a combination of "man-made" know-how and magic. The mere fact Xen'drik got f'd-in-the-a all those millenia ago could be an example of bio-warfare run amok on the continent. You could also incorporate the dragonshards to warp magic and people. It's always possible the Khyber shards could be used for more than elemental binding. Perhaps they could be used to mutate creatures? Or maybe channelling magic into all three types of shards has unknown results, depending on what kind of magic is used. I haven't read about divine magic being used on dragonshards, so who knows how that might turn?
#3 ellorin Jun 18, 2010 6:49:18	Between the Lady of the Plague and the Children of Winter, I'm sure that biological warfare is not an unknown concept in Eberronian warfare. I suppose that the Emerald Claw, Mordaine and House Jorasco are other possible candidates.
#4 ChrisTheS Jun 18, 2010 9:57:48	In 3e there was a prestige class for Jorasco that focused on learning about diseases and being able to either cure or inflict any that the character knew about with a touch. I can easily see Jorasco's less savory branches weaponizing and marketing that talent (on the sly, of course).
#5 Hellcow Jun 20, 2010 5:54:18	Are you asking for specific mechanics, or just broad ideas? Looking to the latter, biological warfare is certainly a factor in Eberron. It's a vital tool for the Children of Winter. It's not part of Jorasco's public image, but as mentioned above the Nosomantic Chiurgeons are a secret branch of the house that develops such things. Personally, I see the NC as being a joint operation between Jorasco and Vadalis facilitated by the Twelve... combining Jorasco's ability to manipulate health with Vadalis' talent for crafting new forms of life. Mechanically, you can use the existing diseases, perhaps with modified statistics to reflect greater virulance. You can reflect a more vicious wasting disease - flesh eating bacteria, for example - either by using the old system but with a rapidly accelerated rate (make a check every ten minutes) or just flat out ongoing damage. Or you can make up new rules entirely. I could see a Vadalis/Jorasco union producing a sort of Typhoid Mary plague-spreading creature... drop sterile plague-poodles on an area, with an engineered lifespan of two weeks, so you can just pull in after the job is done. A similar approach would be a zombie uprising, a la 28 Days Later - psychotic killers that spawn new copies any time they kill a humanoid. Of course, the thing here would be that while they act like ghouls, they aren't actually undead - and will ultimately starve to death, letting you reclaim the area. Another thought that SURELY couldn't possibly go wrong and require the help of adventurers to save Khorvaire from disaster would be to explore existing monsters that spread disease... so, say, Vadalis deciding to revive and weaponize lycanthropy.
#6 Paulon Jun 20, 2010 10:04:11	Are you asking for specific mechanics, or just broad ideas? Looking to the latter, biological warfare is certainly a factor in Eberron. It's a vital tool for the Children of Winter. It's not part of Jorasco's public image, but as mentioned above the Nosomantic Chiurgeons are a secret branch of the house that develops such things. Personally, I see the NC as being a joint operation between Jorasco and Vadalis facilitated by the Twelve... combining Jorasco's ability to manipulate health with Vadalis' talent for crafting new forms of life. The Shadows over Cyre play by post we started in this forum had a Vadalis/Cannith project to create some 'useful' diseases. We took a mad scientist/Girl Genius style approach to artifice. As it turned out in the game, the plague which forced Kaius to make a deal with Errandis D'Vol was a bio-weapon that was intended to just weaken the population in the areas Karrnath conquered. Only Erandis' people got hold of a too lethal version and set it loose in Karrnath to provide leverage... Mechanically, you can use the existing diseases, perhaps with modified statistics to reflect greater virulance. You can reflect a more vicious wasting disease - flesh eating bacteria, for example - either by using the old system but with a rapidly accelerated rate (make a check every ten minutes) or just flat out ongoing damage. Or you can make up new rules entirely. I could see a Vadalis/Jorasco union producing a sort of Typhoid Mary plague-spreading creature... drop sterile plague-poodles on an area, with an engineered lifespan of two weeks, so you can just pull in after the job is done. A similar approach would be a zombie uprising, a la 28 Days Later - psychotic killers that spawn new copies any time they kill a humanoid. Of course, the thing here would be that while they act like ghouls, they aren't actually undead - and will ultimately starve to death, letting you reclaim the area. Or worse, a disease that incorporates negative energy and animates the corpses as nice controllable undead after it kills them. Just the sort of terror weapon the Emerald Claw would like... That one got stopped by engineering two counter-plagues. One acted as a vaccination against the Emerald Claw's undead maker on the living and did nothing else, the other used positive energy to make it a plague that attacked the undead the Claw's plague produced. Another thought that SURELY couldn't possibly go wrong and require the help of adventurers to save Khorvaire from disaster would be to explore existing monsters that spread disease... so, say, Vadalis deciding to revive and weaponize lycanthropy. We had that too. Really deranged werewolf with Vadalis family connections working on a really contagious and incurable lycanthropy variant. It took a wish from drawing the Moons card from the Deck of Many Things to keep that from getting too far out of control.
#7 half_dragon_infernal Jun 20, 2010 18:42:11	Feral heart could also have some implications in this though, since they like to mutate people a lot.
#8 leliel Jun 21, 2010 19:15:03	Wow, it's suprising that I managed to forget this for so long. To answer your question, Mr. Baker: I was thinking as to how Khovaire would react to a plauge ment for the express purpose of spreading terror while weakening infrastructure. You see, the virus I plan to use is an expy of the Rosalia pathogen from Trauma Team. Basically, imagine Ebola...that causes cancer...while incubating...eats organs from the inside out once it goes lethal, causing you to bleed out your eyes and mouth as your insides are turned to acid...and is incurable by almost all methods, only able to be sent into remission breifly unless an antiserum is applied. And that's not even getting into how it spreads. SPOILER White text: You see, it isn't actually an airborne pathogen, but within it's vector of fluid tramission, it's capable of almost anything. If infected fluid seeps into the ground for example, it can live within plant life, transmitting to insects such as butterflies via nector. These bugs then become natural carriers, shedding virally positive material (think scales on a monarch, or honey) throughout their migratory patterns. If it somehow gets into a person's system (and honestly, it's not at all hard), it's only a matter of time before the virus gets a foothold. Oh, and did I mention it's hardy enough to survive in bone for two years? Yeah, it's pretty scary.
#9 Ogiwan Jun 21, 2010 21:02:37	I have to say, I'm a fan of Paulon's idea. Mainly because I love the Emerald Claw. As villains.
#10 Hellcow Jun 22, 2010 2:27:16	I have to say, I'm a fan of Paulon's idea. Mainly because I love the Emerald Claw. As villains. Which is why I like the 28-Days-Later-Vadalis-Aggression-Virus idea, myself. People see crazy zombies, they will immediately jump to the conclusion "Zombies. Got it, it's the Emerald Claw." The cleric goes to turn the zombies and... ... nothing happens. Taking something that's traditionally an undead threat and saying "But this time, they aren't undead" should throw people who are stocked up with tricks for fighting undead. And then you get that "And if they AREN'T undead, who could be behind this?", since they won't have Vadalis-Jorasco house logos stamped on their necks. Probably.
#11 Black_Egg Jun 22, 2010 20:10:31	Xoriat stuffs and the daelkyr are the first things that spring to my mind when someone says "Eberron and Biological Warfare". Those evil masterminds surely aren't sitting around idle in Khyber, after all. Might they really be the ones behind the Vadalis-Jorasco zombie plague?
#12 Sarlax Jun 23, 2010 3:49:43	My campaign is about a secret organization created by the Treaty of Thronehold which works to prevent a second war. One of their adventures was focused on capturing a war criminal, Seyna Besula, a halfling who hired himself out to group who wanted to conduct biological warfare secretly. Besula, it turned out, was actually a Siberys heir of Jorasco, and his talented manifested in the ability to cause abundance of life. His power (and something else...) drove him mad, and he used his mark to accelerate the growth of diseases. In mechanics, there's a lot of stuff in D&D that fits the biowar bill. Think of all the spawning undead, for instance. Even in 4E, there are still monsters that can create an undead-apocalypse. Lycanthropes also work (contagious lycanthropy prompted the purge in the 800s; it might happen again). There are also simpler things, such as the various slimes and jellies, some of which divide if damaged, or reproduce if they feed fast enough. In one adventure I ran, arcane terrorists crossed gelatinous cubes with beholders, creating flying cubes that ate magic.
#13 el_shawno Jun 27, 2010 1:23:47	Well, depending upon your party's makeup, a nice twist to this arc could be a Kalashtar PC having to go to work for the Inspired as they're the ones who seem to have the best idea of how to combat this new/revived plague. As to how it spreads in-game, I like the idea of Jorasco-Vadalis finding a "Typhoid Mary" or "Marys" who would be the primary means of spreading the disease. It would fall to the party to track down and stop these agents - even at the cost of their own lives. Oh, did I mention that at least one of these carriers is a Changeling? Even better, make one a Deva who keeps dying and respawning in seemingly random locations - with the diesease intact as well. That would force the characters to figure out how to stop him/her w/o killing her. Another idea/side note: Plagues are bad enough by themselves, but they often leave political and economic chaos in their wake. For example, what if those who survived the Day of Mourning are immune to the disease? That way, even if it's contained, the disease would cause a surge in anti-Cyrean (sic?) sentiment and even semi-spontaneous pogroms emerging. What does your party do? Maybe a Dragonmarked House finds itself decimated by the plague's outbreak and vulnerable to being coopted by another house? For example, House Lyrandar could find itself being threatened with a takeover by House Orien after the latter's membership has been devestated by the plague. Which side do the PCs take?