So here's how it goes.
Basically, the players, acting under the command of a luitenant to the lord of blades, stumble upon a clue to a lost forge located within the abandoned capital city within the mournlands (a city I cannot remember the name of). They are sent to find out what they can, and discover the laboratory where warforged were originally created. But the schematics they find are completely different than what they would normally expect, and the dimensions are way wrong. A giant sized warforge with insubstantial (incarnum) joints bursts out of the rubble and attacks them, and their luitenant sacrifices himself to allow their escape. They are forced to flee the city or fall victim to the strange warforges rampage.
The idea is that warforges were backward-engineered from this strange warforge which was excavated inert from Xen'drik some 45-50 years ago (oldest warforge being 33, this allows time for research to commence and warforge to be "created"). Since magic was a well-known enterprise and meldshaping very much was not, incorporating the soul energies of incarnum to construct creation took years to perfect, and meldshaping never developed as a result of the discoveries. However, magically binding a soul to a construct became possible through warforge forges, which acted as beacons to lost souls, attracting them to an area and channeling them to a point where they could be forced into a construct. The result, a warforge is born.
Further incorporation of this concept is via the nature of the mournlands, spells "coming to life". Consider this, if a huge number of souls are condensed into a very small (comparitively) location, and spells occur at different points within that location, it is very likely possible that spells will bind with souls, much like the constructs of the forges, to create living spells. To me, this fits seemlessly with the concept of "warforged". It is also possible that the whole mournlands is ravaged not so much by the overuse of magical energies during the last war, but by fallout from a forge which exploded ghost-busters style, releasing a rediculous number of souls into a small area.
Comments? Questions? I'm curious how people will respond.
Very cool. I actually use Incarnum about the same way in my campaign. The creation forges channeled huge amounts of Incarnum to help create warforged. However, this wasn't without it's bad side effects. In places where a creation forge was run, the people saw a large increase in people becoming insane as well as children being born with strange, glowing, blue eyes, however these were both mostly blamed on the war, people going insane from the war itself, and the children being the result of some enemy nation poisoning them with magic or some such. In truth, these were the Lost and the Azurin. As for meldshaping, well, that was spread by the Dusklings, they mostly taught it to druids in the Eldeen Reaches, who then passed it on. So far nobody has seen a connection between them all, should be a major plotline if any of my PC's figure it all out, huge backlash against Cannith. Haven't found a good way to incorporate Skarns or Rilkans yet though.
I like it! It incorporates houses and the world outside of the mournlands into the plot!
Very cool. I actually use Incarnum about the same way in my campaign. The creation forges channeled huge amounts of Incarnum to help create warforged. However, this wasn't without it's bad side effects. In places where a creation forge was run, the people saw a large increase in people becoming insane as well as children being born with strange, glowing, blue eyes, however these were both mostly blamed on the war, people going insane from the war itself, and the children being the result of some enemy nation poisoning them with magic or some such. In truth, these were the Lost and the Azurin. As for meldshaping, well, that was spread by the Dusklings, they mostly taught it to druids in the Eldeen Reaches, who then passed it on. So far nobody has seen a connection between them all, should be a major plotline if any of my PC's figure it all out, huge backlash against Cannith. Haven't found a good way to incorporate Skarns or Rilkans yet though.
Depends if you're using the FAW (flavour as written) of those two races or not. FAW, I can't see how you could easily incorporate the skarn and rilkans into Eberron; guess it depends on how you'd introduce any new race.
Dusklings could be classified as halflings to the common races, or they could just be omitted.
Anyways, I really do like incarnum even if it complicates things sometimes lol.
Aren't the rilkans and skarns the scaley human-looking guys? Why not have them be draconic experiments in incarnum use?
The rilkans do have scales, on their wrists, ankles, and neck. Skarn, however, have SPIKES, on their legs, arms, and back. (I'm currently playing a rilkan, and the party monk is a skarn.) But yeah, the experiment thing WOULD work. Just FAW says that both races are descended from something called the "mishtai", which was never fully explained; but feel free to ignore FAW.
The rilkans do have scales, on their wrists, ankles, and neck. Skarn, however, have SPIKES, on their legs, arms, and back. (I'm currently playing a rilkan, and the party monk is a skarn.) But yeah, the experiment thing WOULD work. Just FAW says that both races are descended from something called the "mishtai", which was never fully explained; but feel free to ignore FAW.
And mishtai could easily be the predecessors (or successors, possibly) to the giants. The dragons realized their flaw and moved on but did not annihilate them, thinking they would simply die off. Instead they turned into two separate races that lost the "greatness" of their progenitors. Or something along those lines.
And mishtai could easily be the predecessors (or successors, possibly) to the giants. The dragons realized their flaw and moved on but did not annihilate them, thinking they would simply die off. Instead they turned into two separate races that lost the "greatness" of their progenitors. Or something along those lines.
I like! Have a
I like! Have a
Thanks. I've always wanted to write up a creative explanation to the mishtai but never got around to it. I may do it now that I actually wrote something down.