Alright, I'm familar with most of the basic tenants, Vulkoor, small independent tribes, etc. What I'm looking for is good ideas on why 3 drow, a Invoker, a Assassin, and a Shaman, would be doing in Sharn working as/for an assassin/assassin's guild. A Black and Grey morality game set in Sharn, and me, my girlfriend, and my roommate were all interested in using drow for it. Suggestions?
Alright, I'm familar with most of the basic tenants, Vulkoor, small independent tribes, etc. What I'm looking for is good ideas on why 3 drow, a Invoker, a Assassin, and a Shaman, would be doing in Sharn working as/for an assassin/assassin's guild. A Black and Grey morality game set in Sharn, and me, my girlfriend, and my roommate were all interested in using drow for it. Suggestions?
Not really. Your ideas are not really congruous. Why would an invoker and a shaman work for an assassins guild? I could see an assassin working for a religious order, but I see no reason why religious affiliated characters would work for a mercantile organization of killers.
Fitting the drow into it is even harder. Seeing drow off xen'drik is a super rare phenomenon.
But, lets be constructive. So, playing devils advocate against my own claims, perhaps all three of you belong to a vulkoori tribe? Perhaps the shaman of that tribe saw some sort of prophesy? Perhaps the shaman sent two holy men, and one hunter (the assassin), to a different continent in order to fulfill some edicts of that prophesy? Perhaps, in the process, your tribal skill sets have landed you working for a branch of House Tarkanan? Perhaps the prophesy seen by your tribal shaman has something to do with an aberrant dragonmark, which is why you ended up working for house Tarkanan? Perhaps the assassin might have an aberrant dragonmark, and the assassins magical capabilities are re-fluffed as an aspect of its aberrant dragonmarked power? This is just some brainstorming. I hope it helps.
I like your ideas, actually. I'm playing the assassin, and originally I was going to be simply an assassin who accompanied back a group of adventurers from Xen'drik because I was looking for someone else (to be figured out at the DM's plot hook convienence) who had done X against/to my tribe or person. Then my girlfriend wanted to be a drow shaman, so she was coming along and when we're sitting in the living room chatting with said roommate, he reveals that he had decided to be a drow invoker.
Strictly speaking a shaman isn't the same thing as a priest. A shaman is more like the spiritual expert of tribe and usually had other jobs aside form offering spiritual advise to the other members of the tribe. Unless the drow have some taboo against killing non-drow and unless the shaman himself has a personal moral reason to to work as an assassin then I don't see what the problem could be. A job's a job after all.
I'd say tie the characters' pasts together. Perhaps they were all from the same tribe, either banished for some crime (real, imagined, or prophesized) or sent on a particular quest by the tribe leader(s). Their subsequent wandering/questing eventually leading them to leave Xen'drik via a ship from Stormreach bound for Sharn.
As for hiring on with an assassins guild, perhaps it was simply for survival: gotta pay the bills somehow and while that upbringing in a tribe of "savages" doesn't lend itself to a normal big city lifestyle, the Vulkoori have hunting and guerrilla-style warfare down pat, making them perfect for assassination and shadow wars between Sharn's crime syndicates.
This, of course, presumes you're all Vulkoori... Being all Sulatar or Umbragen (or a mix of the three) complicates matters.
The part that I'm having a hard time with is figuring out how we got FROM Xen'drik to Sharn, the explaining why we're assassins once there was pretty much as said, our lifestyle growing up makes well for the trade. Also why we want to stay on Khorvaire and not go back to Xen'drik (discarded idea was that we had been captured by a slaving raid, eventually escaped and killed our captors, and made our way to Sharn, but failed to explain why we didn't just take a boat home when we could easily afford it at L7).
Very likely, my girlfriend's character and I will be from the same tribe, and I imagine the invoker's player will be up for it. The setup can't exclude non-tribe or non-drow though, as there is a (3.5 mode, not 4.0 crystalface) air genasi and a 5th player who hasn't chosen his race or class yet.
I think Prophecy might be the easiest answer for you there. For whatever reason, you know you have to go to "The Land of Demons" to the north. (This is the same thing the sphynx Flamewind, a Prophecy oracle, said to the Morgrave researchers who found her. She said "Take me to the Land of Demons" and when they brought her to Sharn, she was satisfied.)
Your drow might've just traveled north and north, looking for a "land of demons" and until you found the general pit that is Stormreach. And when inquiring about where all these crazy people came from, the most frequent answer your drow got was "Sharn". So you booked passage. When you landed there in Cliffside and started trying to make a living in the Lower Wards, it was such a catastrophic shithole that you decided it must be the Land of Demons and stayed, because the Prophecy said your three tribal representatives had to be there for some reason.
Huh. Maybe you were looking for Flamewind herself. Perhaps she was a mythic consul for your tribe. Perhaps you think the Morgrave researchers stole her. And when you finally got there and found her, she told you that your destinies lay in Sharn so you stayed.
As for the genasi, you might've picked him up on the journey through the Thunder Sea between Stormreach and Sharn. That body of water is wracked by violent storms and free-roaming elementals. Not sure what your genasi buddy's backstory will be, but he could either have emerged into the world from the ambient elemental energy of the Thunder Sea, or merely been drawn to it.
Alright, I'm familar with most of the basic tenants
Tenets.
A tenet is an article of a belief system.
A tenant is someone paying rent on where they live.
Alright, I'm familar with most of the basic tenants
Tenets.A tenet is an article of a belief system.
A tenant is someone paying rent on where they live.
I failed English forever.
The part that I'm having a hard time with is figuring out how we got FROM Xen'drik to Sharn, the explaining why we're assassins once there was pretty much as said, our lifestyle growing up makes well for the trade. Also why we want to stay on Khorvaire and not go back to Xen'drik (discarded idea was that we had been captured by a slaving raid, eventually escaped and killed our captors, and made our way to Sharn, but failed to explain why we didn't just take a boat home when we could easily afford it at L7).
Very likely, my girlfriend's character and I will be from the same tribe, and I imagine the invoker's player will be up for it. The setup can't exclude non-tribe or non-drow though, as there is a (3.5 mode, not 4.0 crystalface) air genasi and a 5th player who hasn't chosen his race or class yet.
For all it's problems Khorvaire is still a nice place to live. Maybe they just don't want to go back to the crazed, mosquito ravaged, giant having, scorpion ridden, curse putting, plague hole that is Xen'drik. Hell, I'd stay for the toilet paper alone! Have them hire a native guide (read: terroized gnome) and adventure in Khorvaire for any of the same reasons the pale folk from the north wander around Xen'drik.
A gnome? I thought that we didn't want the characters dead...you can never be safe with those Zil around 
.
Actually, one "Drow in Khorvaire" reasoning I've always enjoyed toying with is based in real world history.
Whenever certain nations *coughBritaincough* would explore a new continent, the explorers would often kidnap/export the natives. Usually as slaves, sometimes only as pseudo-slaves, almost always as 'exotic oddities'.
So in my game, the players just encountered a member of the Aurum who enjoyed exotic oddities--so amongst his possessions was a Vulkoori drow woman who didn't speak Common, and was imported against her will from Xen'drik.
I don't know if this plays much relevance to you, but there's that.
The only real problem I have with that is that it doesn't explain why, once they became a L7 PC-character in an assassins guild they still are hanging around in Sharn. Unless the player was interested in playing something like Jet Li's character in Unleashed, which while I want to be actually evil (in the sense of ruthless, efficent, and no concern for others, not in the "kick the baby down the stairs and **** his beggar mother" sense), I don't really want to be his leash handler, if for no other reason than sooner or later that'll end in one of us dead.
Vengeance? If you were kidnapped, and managed to escape, joining an asassins guild is not a bad step in taking vengeance. Of course, once you joined the house, you might feel gratitude towards their aide (even if that gratitude is somewhat misplaced) and have to repay your debt to said house. Over time you might decide that staying in Khorvaire is ultimately a better idea then returning to Xendrik since you have no idea what the fate is of your tribe or how you will be received back (you have changed after all).
I think we have a winner. I'm going to discuss it with the other players before we play tommrow, and see if they like it too.
This is not really in line with the OP, but have all you other Eberron Drow fans read the Seeker yet? I can't shake the image of a Vulkoori drow Seeker slinging his boomerang all over the place. Maybe show your room mate the Seeker? Cause its a way cooler controller than the invoker for drow IMHO.
The invoker was actually thinking of changing to Seeker because it was more in line with the flavor he wanted, but he's reluctant to play the class with so few options available at this time.
I'd say tie the characters' pasts together. Perhaps they were all from the same tribe, either banished for some crime (real, imagined, or prophesized) or sent on a particular quest by the tribe leader(s). Their subsequent wandering/questing eventually leading them to leave Xen'drik via a ship from Stormreach bound for Sharn.
As for hiring on with an assassins guild, perhaps it was simply for survival: gotta pay the bills somehow and while that upbringing in a tribe of "savages" doesn't lend itself to a normal big city lifestyle, the Vulkoori have hunting and guerrilla-style warfare down pat, making them perfect for assassination and shadow wars between Sharn's crime syndicates.
This, of course, presumes you're all Vulkoori... Being all Sulatar or Umbragen (or a mix of the three) complicates matters.
Sulatar would require a rather complex explanation. Umbragen are easy, you can just use the basic schtick where they have come to Khorvaire looking for something to help them defeat the attack on their homeland.