I've run two sessions so far and it's gone very well, but haven't decided yet where to take the campaign after the current story arc is finished. Right now the players are harassing a small House Vadalis enclave in the Reaches, somewhere near Mossmantle. The sect branch's elders have tasked the druid PC (who enlisted the other PCs, his most competent allies in the sect) to investigate the enclave and bring back some of the animals Vadalis keeps there. The elders are looking for signs of magebred tampering, and once the players bring back proof, the sect elders will likely dispatch the PCs to bring the enclave down.
In order to get a few of the animals to co-operate with the trek back to the wilds to meet up with the sect elders again, the party has captured a dragonmarked overseer (N human aristocrat 4, Least mark of Handling) and are forcing him along. When they're done, they intend to release him (though how he survives the wilds and gets home is his problem. The strong are meant to survive and the weak are meant to die, after all).
The elders suspect that Vadalis is overseeing magebred developments at the enclave; the Children of Winter and the Ashbound have harassed this particular enclave before. With confirmation of the unnatural activities still going on there, the PCs will be dispatched to 'bring winter' to the enclave and to dispatch the tainted animals.
Pretty happy with all of that so far, but with that arc wrapped up, I'm not sure where to go next. Ideas?
The Eldeen Reaches also have the Twilight Demesne and The Gloaming as adventure locales. Maybe a little inter-planar shenanigans?
Hmmm... have you contemplated plant monsters? I know that's a hook and not a plot, but that's usually where I start. After dealing with magebred animals, it might be interesting to send the party up against a self-twisting force of nature, like a strange "coven" of treants. How would the Children of Winter deal with a force more uncompromising than themselves? Something without an idealogy, just an effect?
The Eldeen Reaches also have the Twilight Demesne and The Gloaming as adventure locales. Maybe a little inter-planar shenanigans?
The CoW (heh, just realized what happens when you abbreviate the Children of Winter) are based out of the Gloaming, says my Player's Guide to Eberron, so I was thinking about a little extraplanar jaunt at later levels, but not soon. I'd also thought about some Greensinger interactions. Unlike the other sects, the Greensingers don't answer to Olian (or to anyone), so I was thinking that the Children's elders might dispatch our anti-heroes to defeat some kind of outsider that the Greensingers have brought to the material world via a manifest zone to Thelanis or some other plane. An extraplanar fey would be the obvious choice, and I was also thinking of a djinn, maybe. After all, the Greensingers like to dance and drink and make merry, and a djinn can summon wine at will. As a non-native outsider, the djinn wouldn't 'belong' in Eberron, so any druidic sect could reasonably take issue with it.
My main concern with ideas like a covey of treants (which is a good one, albiet for much later levels) and this djinn thing are that I don't want to miss out on opportunities to evidence the CoW's main motivators: bringing plague and 'winter' to the weak and the infirm, so that any given species can thrive and survive the way nature intended. Now my characters aren't evil, so I won't be encouraging them to slaughter the sick and the old, but I'm drawing a blank as to how to integrate a plot in which the players might bring some kind of doom or hazard to a place cowed by the soft and shameful crutches of civilization. Druids wouldn't unleash undead or abominations in order to weed out the weak, and simply bringing disease to an urban area doesn't seem incredibly fun. Maybe opening up an elemental gate or something?
I dunno. I just don't want to over-emphasize happy-druids-killing-bad-monsters missions when so many good opportunities exist for a morally-gray-at-best Children of Winter-themed adventure.
Keep coming back to them between other arcs and let them each time come off as a little bit worse.
Eventually turn the tables, let Vadalis hunt them, once Vadalis has had enough, once they have taken enough loss of property, life, and livestock... have them retaliate. Their best hunters and trackers go out into the gloaming with their most extreme creations (go nuts with templates, the more the better) Horrid, Half Fiend, Dragonblood Stirges? Sure why not?
Let them charge into the gloaming and burn down and slaughter some of the CoW holdings.
Let it be an arms race of sorts where each side continues to come back more extreme. Ideally by the end of this both Vadalis and your anti-heroes will have both committed horrible atrocities.
Thats when the gates and night open deep in the gloaming and the horrors of Mabar spill forth.
See how your PCs like the 'oncoming winter' when its upon them.
But that's just me, tend to let non-good parties 'get what they want' only to twist the knife when they get it.
I'm not sure I want them fighting Vadalis the whole campaign, though I might have them act as recurring villains once or twice. Since you brought up the horrors of the Endless Night, though, let me ask: what kinds of druid-compatable Mabar-critters do you think might actually be communing with or manipulating the elders of the Children of Winter?
Now my characters aren't evil, so I won't be encouraging them to slaughter the sick and the old, but I'm drawing a blank as to how to integrate a plot in which the players might bring some kind of doom or hazard to a place cowed by the soft and shameful crutches of civilization...
I just don't want to over-emphasize happy-druids-killing-bad-monsters missions when so many good opportunities exist for a morally-gray-at-best Children of Winter-themed adventure.
Hmmm... I dunno. The way my campaign runs, we don't have a lot of time to be subtle, so I shoot for the melodrama every time. If I were running a Children of Winter campaign, I'd have every other session end with the party hurling a Dickensian villain (representing the corruption of civilization) into a pit of plague-infected dire rats, or having to track and put down a unicorn (a political traditionalist standing in their way). Flat-out biological warfare against peasants is squidgy, but convincing the serfs that the self-sufficiency is better than economic slavery in a back-to-the-forest movement could be fun. I tend to think in terms of antagonists and scenes, but then we only manage a game once every six weeks or so...
For your other idea: without resorting to the dragonmarked houses again and again, what kinds of Dickenesian villians would be suitably frustrating or challenging? Maybe the Aurum or the Cabinet?
For your other idea: without resorting to the dragonmarked houses again and again, what kinds of Dickenesian villians would be suitably frustrating or challenging? Maybe the Aurum or the Cabinet?
The Aurum are certainly a good source of civilized foes (the tyranny of the coin!). Have you ever seen Mononke Hime/Princess Mononoke? Imagine Lady Eboshi if she were only in it for the money.
The Lords of Dust would be neat, too-- like the Children they want Winter; unlike the Children, they want no more Spring forever. Interesting options there for temporary alliances followed by backstabbing.
My first instinct is Barghests. With their wolf shape, and their 'consume everything' mentality it could be believed that they are the real force behind the Children of Winter, thematically their ability to consume every part of a dead creature could be tied into the CoW's favoring decomposer insects and carrion eating creatures.
The Barghests are somewhat limiting in scope however, rarely reaching the level of world threat...
Yogoloths on the other hand... an army of them marching out of the Gloaming would make even the most cynical non-heroic adventurer needing a new pair of pants.
Still they are quite terrifying and unnatural in their own right... hardly the type that the CoW would consort with... however... Ultroloths being the smartest and most devious of the yogoloths might pull it off. Their natural form... a black humanoid with an elongated head and large bulbous eyes is 'alien' but not automatically a terrifying sight. In addition they can alter self and have a library of spell like abilities that couls sway weak minds.
An Ultroloth could well be the driving force behind the Children of Winter, presenting himself as almost an angel or personification of the season and what it means. Of course its all just a means to an end.
An Ultroloth could well be the driving force behind the Children of Winter, presenting himself as almost an angel or personification of the season and what it means. Of course its all just a means to an end.
What if the CoW are pawns there core beliefs manipulated by an alien race (from another star - similar to the Gith). the Aliens home planet have falling to a Daelkyr invasion and they wish Khorvaire as there new home.
The reference to a cleanse, disease,Dark Winter,end of the current age could be a terraform attempt to make Khorvaire compatible to the alien race needs.
Because of the vast distance between the alien star and Eberron the alien population will shadowtravel and enter Khorvaire via Mabar in the "great spring" (when the terraform process is complete).
A meteor shower rains down on the Eldeen Reaches. The shower ignites a "Gold Rush": dragonmarked houses, private prospectors and bandit groups arrive to the Eldeen Reaches and swarm its forests looking for Siberys dragonshards (or anyone that holds one) . The CoW decides to end the nuisance.
As a follow up -
Some of this meteors are actually not dragonshards but pieces of an alien planet in which a war waged between its native race and the Daelkyr invading force. the war ended with the planet crumbling in a cataclysmic event similar to the Mourning (but on a larger planetary scale) and some of its surface now rains on Eberron. A few miles around each meteor impact zone the forest will be terraformed into a strange alien landscape full of twisted Xoriat creatures which still fight the undead spirits of the aliens.
Chaositech in Eberron can be controlled by House Cannith members who've gone completely wrong. Chaositech is presented as something that is like technology, but unlike technology. Something that could unravel Eberron. I.e. the Cults of the Dragon Below control this technology. The Children of Winter opposes Chaositech worse than the other sects.
For all the adventures, do you plan on keeping them in the Eldeen, or will they venture out? An idea would be like they go to Sharn in order to find aberrant relics that belonged to the Lady of Plague.
Powerful shadow elementals?
Oh and that dragonmarked shower / natural resource boom idea is great. Might have to make a story arc for that one, it's a good way to introduce lots of factions at once.
As for 'keeping it in the reaches', I intend to give the players opportunities to 'bring the winter' to other regions eventually, but I'd like their motivations to be better than 'just because'. These players aren't evil, just... sorta close. They tend to give NPCs and creatures a chance to prove worthwhile or useful to the world as a whole before passing judgement. Not everyone from outside the forest is possessed by sloth and civilized luxury. Someone has to survive the Winter, and these players recognize that those to do so will be more than the Children themselves.
How do the PCs want to bring about the coming winter? Are they fine with unleashing madness creatures from Xoriat upon an unsuspecting world, or do they want to harness the elements and literally encompass the world in winter? Finding the means to the rebirth may just help you find the way to the end.