Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 rekko Dec 16, 2009 16:08:34	Hi guys, it's been a few months since I last played Eberron. My personal group didn't go that well and I played in another campaign in my group at work ( I DM a group for teens in a community center). However, I want to bring Eberron to my teens in order to solve the ''I'm bored of my character problem'' First, I really enjoy Eberron and I think my DMing will be positively affected by the setting switch, which will affect in turn the players. Second, I want to run a Matrix (sort of) campaing in which players will have 2 characters. A low-level Eberron character and a higher leveled Dal Quor character. The Dal Quor character being a dream reprensentation of the real world character (that is the link with the Matrix) Here's where I need your help. It's been a while since I played with Eberron and I'm a bit rusted around the edge. I don't really have a story to play with and throw at my players. They mainly love hack 'n slash, but I'm slowly laying more traps, skills and RP encounters which they kind of like (except for the pit trapin the dark alley.... ha ha ha). Back on topic, I would like to start simple and slow since I might welcome new players (age around 12-13) in the coming games. I don't know if I make the start in the real world or in Dal Quor yet since I have no plot yet. So, I'll be thinking about it, go back to the reading table and on your side, I'm expecting some bits of ideas and plots. Thanks a lot Rekko
#2 ellorin Dec 17, 2009 3:52:49	Here are some random thoughts: Low Level: Let them be Cyrans. They could be searching for a home or protecting their adoptive home( New Cyre? Hope? A once again colonised Desolate?), perhaps searching for relics of old Cyre when they are ready. The archaeologist angle always seems to work, especially if they unleash something deadly to the unsuspecting world. Mean Streets might also work, be it Sharn, Stormreach or the Principalities(Mean Seas). Have them work for a specific dragonmarked house(you can have them choose-I prefer the broader houses like Tharashk). High Level:  At first let them explore and find enemies and a few allies in the fringes.  Later they might be after a Quori that has been plaguing one of their friends or even their Eberron selves. Trying to thwart an invasion from the inside(perhaps collaborating with their low level selves), searching for an important person whose mind was lost in Dal Quor or even the dream of a specific dreamer might also work. I hope you might find them a bit useful.
#3 rekko Dec 17, 2009 9:35:24	Thanks for the reply Ellorin. I must say I'm currently using the first module of the Scales of War Adventure path. Maybe Brindol and Rivenroar could be at the frontier of Breland/Zilargo/Darguun, near NewCyre? Sinruth, an hobgoblin leader of the Red Hand of Doom (could be an anciant Dhakanni tribe) is planning something big. Is Dal Quor manipulating the Hobs and giving them delusions of grandeur? The adventure path makes use of necromantic magic, maybe the Hobs had a hand in the Mourning (you know a Red Hand.... yeah that was bad...). Yes, I think this could be great. I could switch Brindol's name for New Cyre, or make it a Cyre town near the Mournland for salvage parties, but the town would be built over Dhakanni ruins, the Dreaming Dark could have some interests in the area, what I need to figure it out. Rekko
#4 naturax Dec 18, 2009 15:09:38	I just read this and thought it might give you some ideas: www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t... What if all of the PCs are elven slaves of the giants 40k years ago?
#5 rekko Dec 19, 2009 10:57:14	Moreover, they haven't seen the Matrix (facepalm, curse them...) and don't really understand the meaning of the duality of worlds. You found people who haven't seen the Matrix? Crazy. I'd go with it. Especially because they haven't seen it. Half the awesomeness of the original Matrix movie was realizing the duality of the worlds, not understanding it from the start. Although personally, I wouldn't have the players play two different sets of characters. I would create something like a template that applied to the dream-version. Maybe something as simple as extra levels. In real life, you might be a 3rd level ranger, but in your dreams, you might be 20th level! Or even cooler (and more likely in my dream experiences) you could have abilities you don't normally have, ala switching out class abilities for equal level ones from another class, like multiclassing. Perhaps you manifest the same way in Dal Quor each time...or perhaps you never know how things will be. Dal Quor isn't all about having dreams where you're all-powerful though. In at least half the nightmares I can remembers, my frustration has come from not being able to do something that would otherwise be easy for me when awake. It makes my above suggestion even more potent if whatever troubles face the party in Dal Quor could be easily solved with abilities traded out due to the dream-multiclassing! If I ran a campaign based around accomplishing things in Dal Quor and on Eberron, I think that whatever the quori plot is, it would be coming to a head. For some reason (perhaps something that they stumble on into during early adventure), the PCs are uniquely capable of lucid dreaming and so are the only ones capable of battling the quori. At first, their dream abilities are surprising but useful. The players get to choose what abilities to switch out. As the rituals to control the dreams of mortals are completed, Dal Quor and visits there become more and more nightmarish. With each visit, the DM takes control of one more power exchange, perhaps even substituting abilities not normally available to PCs and ultimately introducing vulnerabilities. Of course, in between all this dreaming, the PCs have things to deal with in the real world, such as tracking down people and things they've learned about in the Dal Quor...while being hunted by agents of the dream world who have been sent to stop the sleepers. I like the Eberron/Dal Quor duality since it's not exactly a copy of the Matrix/Zyon. In D&D, Agent Smiths aren't in Dal Quor, they are on Eberron where every dreaming person is a potential Dreaming Dark agent. The fun thing would be to create a strong personnality to the Quori NPC, maybe he can control more than one body at the time, maybe his form in Dal Quor is some sort of a Thousand Head Hydra Quori, or a Beholder with many Eyes (the Beholder would be cool, since the Machine 'Wizards of Oz' Head at the end of the trilogy is a spiked ball with a face) Adar could be a parrallel to Zyon. Maybe a Morpheous Kalashtar character is seeking the Ones on Khorvaire? How to explain the fissure between Eberron and Dal Quor in the Age of Giants is still something I'm working on. Rekko
#6 naturax Dec 21, 2009 20:41:51	How to explain the fissure between Eberron and Dal Quor in the Age of Giants is still something I'm working on. Rekko Wait, didn't the giants perform a huge ritual that ended the Quori invasion? Or do you mean explain why the fissure occurred in the first place?
#7 rekko Dec 22, 2009 9:53:17	Yeah, I meant why did the Quori invaded Xen'drik before the fissure. Finding the answer as a DM will help me portrait the DD and build plots for my PCs. However, I would like something more than "well their Turning of Age came to be and they decided to fled to Xen'drik" I would prefer something along one these lines "Quoris knew what Titans and Giants of Xen'drik dreamt of. They also knew what Dragons dreamt of. Giants on their part, became power thirsty and wanted to take control over the Dragons who ruled the world. On the other part, Dragons were the protectors of Eberron, slaying and binding demons and overlords. Moreover, the Giant strategy was to use big charming spells, via dream manipulation, against the Dragons. The Quori couldn't let that happen (for some reason), and manipulating the dreams of the Giant Empire would have taken too long, so they took the fight to Eberron.The Fissure cause a Turning of Age, and since it was the Dark Dreams of the Giants that caused it, the heart of Dal Quor became the Dreaming Dark" In truth, the Turning of Age is not about to happen. However, the Dreaming Dark are the remnants of the Giant's Dreams. As such, they are intrigued with Xen'drik, not to figure out what the past Quoris did, but to figure a way to Inspire the Giants with their anciant selves, taking them out of their primitive state. However, the Traveller's Curse makes it difficult for them to do so. The Mourning, they knew it was caused by Dragons, both on Cyre and on Xen'drik. As such, the Mournland is also cursed with curses similar to those in Xen'drik and is a testing ground for the Dreaming Dark before they go in the final stage of their plans. So, now, why would they need the Hobs from the Red Hand of Doom? Did the seat of power of the anciant Dhakanni Empire lay in Cyre? Maybe by spreading delusions of grandeur in the leaders they will convince enough Hobs to establish themselves in the Mournlands. Why not use Warforged? or are they using both? What you think? Rekko
#8 naturax Dec 22, 2009 13:08:18	In my campaign, I messed with canon somewhat and came up with my own reason for why the Quori destroyed the giants. In the height of hubris (equivalent to the speech in the Matrix about humanity creating AI) the giants decided they wanted their elven slaves to become immortal, and thus invented the technology that would allow the elves to be transferred into warforged bodies when they die. Each elf was given an attuned Siberys shard which, kind of like an opposite to Khyber shards, would "store" an elven mind/soul in Dal Quor when the elf died. Dal Quor was an easy plane to use since minds go there when we sleep, so it was a natural decision for the giants to make, but they didn't realize that the Quori lived there. So the giants invent this technology that lets them store souls in Dal Quor, but what's more, the creation forge is a planar junction that lets you rip a soul out of Dal Quor and put it into a physical body (using a Khyber shard - so every warforged has a Khyber shard and a Siberys shard in it). When they started using this technology, the only thing the Quori understood was that the giants had the ability to rip them out of their native plane and put them in bodies that would make them mortal, and so they freaked out and decimated the giant civilization. Though the surviving elves have some traditions that relate to, say, wearing chokers with Siberys shards on them, the knowledge of these events have been lost to time, even to the Undying Court. During the Last War, House Cannith discovered the ruins of the creation forges and copied them, though they claimed to have "invented" the warforged. They missed a step or didn't get the technology right, so when the warforged walk out of the creation forge with an elven soul in them, their memories are totally lost and the warforged is a blank slate, albeit one with the capacity for further learning. (Cannith did not create life, they stole it.) I'm running the last encounter now of a two-year campaign arc that brings a group of warforged PCs to Xen'drik to discover this very truth and gain their lost memories. Now they are going to have to figure out what to do from here, and how Aerenal is going to react, and recover Cannith's cache of unused Siberys shards in the Mournland, etc. etc.
#9 rekko Feb 21, 2010 18:30:09	bump