Vor Rukoth and devils in Eberron - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Vor Rukoth and devils in Eberron

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
skeptical_clown
Jul 20, 2010 18:08:47 I like the adventure sites (Hammerfast and Vor Rokuth) that Wizards has put out, and I'm trying to work them into my Eberron Campaign. Hammerfast fits into the Mror Holds without much squeezing, but I'm less certain of where to put Vor Rukoth. I know that it probably should go in Ohr Kaluun, but that's kind of remote from a campaign set primarily in Khorvaire. I'd like to put it in the Demon Wastes, maybe with the reasoning that it was a colony of Ohr Kaluun. Does that stretch plausibility?

Thinking about this raised some other questions for me too. The Dragonborn and the Tiefling have a shared background in the core setting lore, but the Dragonborn homeland appears to be in Q'barra, about as far from Ohr Kaluun as you can get. How would you manage to incorporate some of the core lore for the Arkhosian and Bael Turathian war into Eberron? Or is there another solution that satisfies both backgrounds?

And I also don't fully understand the role of devils in Eberron. The Nine Hells still exist, so I assume that devils and archdevils live in the planes, not in Khyber. It seems unlikely that archdevils would serve the Overlords. Hell seems to have played a much smaller role in Eberron's history than Xoriat, Dal Quor, and Khyber. What role do devils even have if the traditional war between Gods and Titans didn't occur? Are devils linked to Siberys, as demons are to Khyber? I haven't been able to find much information in either 3rd or 4th edition material that explains this very well.
#2
Madfox11
Jul 21, 2010 6:07:48
In regards to Vor Rokuth, it all depends on much of the fluff you want to keep. For example, with a bit of work it would fit perfectly as a city in the Mournlands (Metrol perhaps?). You could make the "gate" as the cause of the creation of the Mournlands. You will need to change some of the timeline, but then again, the timeline of Vor Rokuth is already causing me a bit of a headache. How long ago did the empire actually fall? What kind of magic kept the houses in such a good condition in centuries? Why did it remain hidden this long?

Similarly, you could make it an ancient Dhakaani city and change the gate into some kind of Daelkyr manifestation/Gatekeeper seal. Instead of normal devils, it talks about aberrations. Maybe the city fell during the troubled years during which the empire fell after the wars with the daelkyr?
#3
skeptical_clown
Jul 21, 2010 7:30:42 Those are reasonable changes, but one of my players is a tiefling, so I'd like to try to keep that angle. I've been thinking more still along the lines of a colony from Ohr Kaluun. It could fit into either Xen'drik (along the Wasting Plain) or the Demon Wastes (Probably near the outlet of the Shadowflow River), both remote enough that they would explain why the ruins are little explored.

One of the hooks in the book mentions how the tieflings had tapped into the Elemental Chaos to power a forge--maybe the seals that contained Khyber were particularly weak there, and Ohr Kaluun settled there for that particular reason. The gate then could be a gate from Khyber instead of the Hells. Or, maybe the gate to Hell was created specifically to defend against demonic incursion.

Given that this background would put Vor Rukoth outside Sarlona, I'm thinking that it may have survived the fall of Ohr Kaluun, at least for a while. If it was in the Demon Wastes could explain why so many tieflings fled there--it was a last bastion of their civilization for a while. It could have been destroyed later by Quori, rakshasa, or draconic meddlers.

I don't know if there are any major problems there. The dragonborn-tiefling conflict seems like something that's almost impossible to maintain in Eberron without major fudging, so I'll probably just drop that.
#4
AvonRekaes
Jul 21, 2010 9:41:59 I think I like your colony suggestion the best.

I'm not up to speed on my Sarlonan geography, but it might be possible to have Orh Kaluun sail west instead of east, and end up on the eastern shore of Khorvaire instead of the west. There's not a *huge* reason to put the colony in the Demon Wastes other than "thats were evil things are".

If you then put the colony in, say, the mountains north of Q'barra, you could have them arrive during the Age of Monsters, when the Dragonborn Empire existed.

Using this timeline, the Dragonborn Empire might've been repelling an invasion by Orh Kaluun. The tieflings may have been able to get a few footholds on Khorvaire and were possibly Gating in reinforcements (bargaining with Devils for passage through Baator from one Gate in Sarlona to another on Khorvaire, bringing along diabolic reinforcements as well).

Vor Rokuth may have been the strongest of these footholds.

Once the Dragonborn defeated the invasion, they were too weak to deal with whatever other threat caused their empire to collapse (most likely the Empire of Dhakaan.)

As for why Orh Kaluun invested so heavily on invading Khorvaire, that can be a pivotal plot point for a campaign. Maybe they were trying to reach Havatorvak for some reason, which may have once been the heart of the Dragonborn empire.

As for Baator not being important in Eberron, that's unfortunately due to a half-assed inclusion of it in 4e. In 3rd edition, Baator did not exist in Eberron, as Eberron was built with its own internally consistent cosmology completely seperate from the core-lore of DnD. However in 4e, for some reason they felt the needed to have a clear origin for Devils, so they stuck Baator in, without really examining at all what effect that would have on the setting. We're just told "This is where devils come from, and they're ruled by Asmodeus who claims to be a god", without any exploration of what that means for the setting.
(Note that I'm not trying to invoke "They Changed it Now it Sucks". I'm just pointing out that lackluster effort put into this change. They failed to make Baator in any way a part of the setting besides just saying it's there. It sticks out like a sore thumb.)
#5
SPQRAnarchy
Aug 09, 2010 18:55:11 I am placing the city in Q'Barra. I am putting it on the opposite shore freom the Basura Swamp just south of the border along the Ironroot Mountains.

The reason I am putting it there is to keep the Dragonborn elements alive and the black dragon encounters. I am planning on having the Mourning trigger an event that released the city from hiding. A combination of rockslides on the cliffs and the release of the forces that hid the city away. The nature of the city and the elements inside will be the driving force that has folks in the area. I plan on running it in a style I have used in the past. A coalition of the 5 Galifar nations will have the area kept secret and protecting its location and nature out from the public eye. This allows the party to be diverse and have different homelands and allows me to incorporate political stuff into the game, including world events that have implications in the field.

I will have to change the makeup of the Coyote's Refuge crowd a bit. I plan on having the same basic groups there as consulting teams. Each with a bit of autonomy and motives, running their own secret ops and such.

The nature of the gate is why I turned to the boards. The devils vs abberations thing is what plays me. I want to use some new monsters (ie. devils) but don't know the cosmology well enough to know how that affects the world and what not. I think that the Lords of Dust may want to keep this gate closed and so set me up for a "the enemy of my enemy" type of alliance.
#6
skeptical_clown
Aug 13, 2010 11:45:57 I understand why they separated devils out in 4e--devils and the 9 hells are tied pretty closely to core tiefling concepts. It's easier to stick the 9 hells in Eberron than to spend a lot of time reflavoring various Tiefling powers and concepts.

I've been thinking about the devil problem a bit. In 3rd edition it would have seemed natural to just say that devils and demons were different types of servants to different types of rajahs. Rakshasa used to be Lawful Evil, so they would have been natural fits with devils. Things are different now. The presence of the nine hells in the siberys portion of the planes may give some clues as to how to integrate devils. I think a lot of the generic 4e source material help out too.

Perhaps, like in 4e tradition, devils used to be angelic outsiders. They used to work on behalf of what they perceived as the interests of the Sovereigns. Or perhaps, many of the devils used to be soldiers who represented Siberys' animosity toward Khyber. In the dawn of time, the devils-that-were battled against the demons and rakshasa that served Khyber. Their very animosity and desire to defeat Khyber corrupted them--Asmodeus in particular began to covet the power of the Overlords, which seemed unmatched. As a result of this corruption, the devils transformed into their current states, and Asmodeus has claimed some of the power of an Overlord. In acquiring the power however, he also took on part of the Overlords' imprisoned nature, and unintentionally imprisoned himself in hell.

So now the devils play a subtle game, trying to manipulate mortals into doing their work for them. They may wish to release the rajahs, but slowly, so that they can study them and learn from them. Devils want to seize the power of Khyber and free Asmodeus--they don't want to give the world to the Lords of Dust.

I dunno, my thoughts anyway.
#7
AvonRekaes
Aug 13, 2010 15:11:42 Wow. Thats... Thats the best concept of including Asmodeus into Eberron I've ever heard. It makes perfect sense. I am going to steal that right quick. (It's better than anything I've been able to come up with).

I think it even works if you keep their angelic nature pre-corruption. Asmodeus would have been one of the brightest, most powerful of allies of the Dragons in the Demon/Dragon War. His Legion of Angels, lead by his eight beneficent angelic marshals, fought alongside the couatl and dragons. And during the war, he became corrupted by envy and greed or whatever. Then it could be that the Couatl specifically targeted his stronghold in the Sea of Siberys, Baator, and turned it into a prison at the same time they bound the Overlords in the Silver Flame.

(And seeing the power of many souls acting in gestalt, Asmodeus learned from their example and began scheming diabolically to capture, steal, and tempt souls into his service. Que Orh Kaluun millenia later.)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 skeptical_clown Jul 20, 2010 18:08:47	I like the adventure sites (Hammerfast and Vor Rokuth) that Wizards has put out, and I'm trying to work them into my Eberron Campaign. Hammerfast fits into the Mror Holds without much squeezing, but I'm less certain of where to put Vor Rukoth. I know that it probably should go in Ohr Kaluun, but that's kind of remote from a campaign set primarily in Khorvaire. I'd like to put it in the Demon Wastes, maybe with the reasoning that it was a colony of Ohr Kaluun. Does that stretch plausibility? Thinking about this raised some other questions for me too. The Dragonborn and the Tiefling have a shared background in the core setting lore, but the Dragonborn homeland appears to be in Q'barra, about as far from Ohr Kaluun as you can get. How would you manage to incorporate some of the core lore for the Arkhosian and Bael Turathian war into Eberron? Or is there another solution that satisfies both backgrounds? And I also don't fully understand the role of devils in Eberron. The Nine Hells still exist, so I assume that devils and archdevils live in the planes, not in Khyber. It seems unlikely that archdevils would serve the Overlords. Hell seems to have played a much smaller role in Eberron's history than Xoriat, Dal Quor, and Khyber. What role do devils even have if the traditional war between Gods and Titans didn't occur? Are devils linked to Siberys, as demons are to Khyber? I haven't been able to find much information in either 3rd or 4th edition material that explains this very well.
#2 Madfox11 Jul 21, 2010 6:07:48	In regards to Vor Rokuth, it all depends on much of the fluff you want to keep. For example, with a bit of work it would fit perfectly as a city in the Mournlands (Metrol perhaps?). You could make the "gate" as the cause of the creation of the Mournlands. You will need to change some of the timeline, but then again, the timeline of Vor Rokuth is already causing me a bit of a headache. How long ago did the empire actually fall? What kind of magic kept the houses in such a good condition in centuries? Why did it remain hidden this long? Similarly, you could make it an ancient Dhakaani city and change the gate into some kind of Daelkyr manifestation/Gatekeeper seal. Instead of normal devils, it talks about aberrations. Maybe the city fell during the troubled years during which the empire fell after the wars with the daelkyr?
#3 skeptical_clown Jul 21, 2010 7:30:42	Those are reasonable changes, but one of my players is a tiefling, so I'd like to try to keep that angle. I've been thinking more still along the lines of a colony from Ohr Kaluun. It could fit into either Xen'drik (along the Wasting Plain) or the Demon Wastes (Probably near the outlet of the Shadowflow River), both remote enough that they would explain why the ruins are little explored. One of the hooks in the book mentions how the tieflings had tapped into the Elemental Chaos to power a forge--maybe the seals that contained Khyber were particularly weak there, and Ohr Kaluun settled there for that particular reason. The gate then could be a gate from Khyber instead of the Hells. Or, maybe the gate to Hell was created specifically to defend against demonic incursion. Given that this background would put Vor Rukoth outside Sarlona, I'm thinking that it may have survived the fall of Ohr Kaluun, at least for a while. If it was in the Demon Wastes could explain why so many tieflings fled there--it was a last bastion of their civilization for a while. It could have been destroyed later by Quori, rakshasa, or draconic meddlers. I don't know if there are any major problems there. The dragonborn-tiefling conflict seems like something that's almost impossible to maintain in Eberron without major fudging, so I'll probably just drop that.
#4 AvonRekaes Jul 21, 2010 9:41:59	I think I like your colony suggestion the best. I'm not up to speed on my Sarlonan geography, but it might be possible to have Orh Kaluun sail west instead of east, and end up on the eastern shore of Khorvaire instead of the west. There's not a huge reason to put the colony in the Demon Wastes other than "thats were evil things are". If you then put the colony in, say, the mountains north of Q'barra, you could have them arrive during the Age of Monsters, when the Dragonborn Empire existed. Using this timeline, the Dragonborn Empire might've been repelling an invasion by Orh Kaluun. The tieflings may have been able to get a few footholds on Khorvaire and were possibly Gating in reinforcements (bargaining with Devils for passage through Baator from one Gate in Sarlona to another on Khorvaire, bringing along diabolic reinforcements as well). Vor Rokuth may have been the strongest of these footholds. Once the Dragonborn defeated the invasion, they were too weak to deal with whatever other threat caused their empire to collapse (most likely the Empire of Dhakaan.) As for why Orh Kaluun invested so heavily on invading Khorvaire, that can be a pivotal plot point for a campaign. Maybe they were trying to reach Havatorvak for some reason, which may have once been the heart of the Dragonborn empire. As for Baator not being important in Eberron, that's unfortunately due to a half-assed inclusion of it in 4e. In 3rd edition, Baator did not exist in Eberron, as Eberron was built with its own internally consistent cosmology completely seperate from the core-lore of DnD. However in 4e, for some reason they felt the needed to have a clear origin for Devils, so they stuck Baator in, without really examining at all what effect that would have on the setting. We're just told "This is where devils come from, and they're ruled by Asmodeus who claims to be a god", without any exploration of what that means for the setting. (Note that I'm not trying to invoke "They Changed it Now it Sucks". I'm just pointing out that lackluster effort put into this change. They failed to make Baator in any way a part of the setting besides just saying it's there. It sticks out like a sore thumb.)
#5 SPQRAnarchy Aug 09, 2010 18:55:11	I am placing the city in Q'Barra. I am putting it on the opposite shore freom the Basura Swamp just south of the border along the Ironroot Mountains. The reason I am putting it there is to keep the Dragonborn elements alive and the black dragon encounters. I am planning on having the Mourning trigger an event that released the city from hiding. A combination of rockslides on the cliffs and the release of the forces that hid the city away. The nature of the city and the elements inside will be the driving force that has folks in the area. I plan on running it in a style I have used in the past. A coalition of the 5 Galifar nations will have the area kept secret and protecting its location and nature out from the public eye. This allows the party to be diverse and have different homelands and allows me to incorporate political stuff into the game, including world events that have implications in the field. I will have to change the makeup of the Coyote's Refuge crowd a bit. I plan on having the same basic groups there as consulting teams. Each with a bit of autonomy and motives, running their own secret ops and such. The nature of the gate is why I turned to the boards. The devils vs abberations thing is what plays me. I want to use some new monsters (ie. devils) but don't know the cosmology well enough to know how that affects the world and what not. I think that the Lords of Dust may want to keep this gate closed and so set me up for a "the enemy of my enemy" type of alliance.
#6 skeptical_clown Aug 13, 2010 11:45:57	I understand why they separated devils out in 4e--devils and the 9 hells are tied pretty closely to core tiefling concepts. It's easier to stick the 9 hells in Eberron than to spend a lot of time reflavoring various Tiefling powers and concepts. I've been thinking about the devil problem a bit. In 3rd edition it would have seemed natural to just say that devils and demons were different types of servants to different types of rajahs. Rakshasa used to be Lawful Evil, so they would have been natural fits with devils. Things are different now. The presence of the nine hells in the siberys portion of the planes may give some clues as to how to integrate devils. I think a lot of the generic 4e source material help out too. Perhaps, like in 4e tradition, devils used to be angelic outsiders. They used to work on behalf of what they perceived as the interests of the Sovereigns. Or perhaps, many of the devils used to be soldiers who represented Siberys' animosity toward Khyber. In the dawn of time, the devils-that-were battled against the demons and rakshasa that served Khyber. Their very animosity and desire to defeat Khyber corrupted them--Asmodeus in particular began to covet the power of the Overlords, which seemed unmatched. As a result of this corruption, the devils transformed into their current states, and Asmodeus has claimed some of the power of an Overlord. In acquiring the power however, he also took on part of the Overlords' imprisoned nature, and unintentionally imprisoned himself in hell. So now the devils play a subtle game, trying to manipulate mortals into doing their work for them. They may wish to release the rajahs, but slowly, so that they can study them and learn from them. Devils want to seize the power of Khyber and free Asmodeus--they don't want to give the world to the Lords of Dust. I dunno, my thoughts anyway.
#7 AvonRekaes Aug 13, 2010 15:11:42	Wow. Thats... Thats the *best* concept of including Asmodeus into Eberron I've *ever heard*. It makes perfect sense. I am going to steal that right quick. (It's better than anything I've been able to come up with). I think it even works if you keep their angelic nature pre-corruption. Asmodeus would have been one of the brightest, most powerful of allies of the Dragons in the Demon/Dragon War. His Legion of Angels, lead by his eight beneficent angelic marshals, fought alongside the couatl and dragons. And during the war, he became corrupted by envy and greed or whatever. Then it could be that the Couatl specifically targeted his stronghold in the Sea of Siberys, Baator, and turned it into a prison at the same time they bound the Overlords in the Silver Flame. (And seeing the power of many souls acting in gestalt, Asmodeus learned from their example and began scheming diabolically to capture, steal, and tempt souls into his service. Que Orh Kaluun millenia later.)