Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 wizardmon Aug 28, 2009 0:01:23	So, I have a PC who will be playing a dragonborn in Eberron. He will be a paladin of Thir, I suspect, and as such, will probably want to know what he calls his gods, as he will be traveling in Korvaire, where they worship a very similar pantheon. The thing is, I am looking through all these Eberron books from 3.5 and 4e, but I can't find a chart or the like that shows what Thir's names for the Soverigns are.  I mean, I know their names (Io, Tiamat, Bahamut, Hlal, Lendys, etc.), but it is not clear what deity they match up with... Any help is greatly appriciated!
#2 AvonRekaes Aug 28, 2009 0:45:10	You're misinterpreting the religion of Thir slightly, conflating the draconic pantheon with the sovereigns. Thir is a religion in three tiers. The highest tier is the Progentiors: Eberron, Siberys, and Khyber, creaters of the cosmos, the land, and the darkness within it. The dragons don't pray to them because they believe that the progenitors are so incomprehensible as to be above even their worship. The next tier is the dragonic pantheon: Chronepsis, Bahamut, Tiamat, etc. etc. etc. These are purely divine beings, lesser in power than the Progenitors, but more fitting for worship. Note: The dragons consider "lesser beings" (non-dragons) worshiping the draconic pantheon to be blasphemy, and have eradicated entire populations for doing so. (A city of yuan-ti in Argonessen was wiped out when the dragons discovered them worshipping the draconic pantheon in secret.) The bottom tier in Thir is the Sovereigns. According to the religion of Thir, these are ascended mortal dragons, sort of like christian saints in the real world. The dragons believe that if one among them dedicates their life to replace a Sovereign, they will ascend into its position and take its place. The sovereigns are therefore seen as not suitable for worship among the dragons, but respect. Consequently, they also feel that the Sovereigns are suitable for worship among the humanoids. So the Sovereigns don't have an analogue in the draconic pantheon like other cultures do. Like, Vulkoor among the drow is really the Mockery, but Bahamut among the dragons is Bahamut, not really Dol Arrah. There are draconic names for the Sovereigns, however, sprinkled throughout the lore. I believe the draconic name for Aureon is Ourelonastrix, the first dragon of to discover the Prophecy (and according to Thir later ascending to the position of Sovereign of Law and Knowledge).
#3 PJammaGod Aug 28, 2009 6:39:26	So basically for your Dragonborn Paladin his objective is to serve the Sovereigns (Ascended Dragons) as best he can and even emulate them. Perhaps with enough power and faith they could ever rise to become an Exarch of Dol Arrah (given as an example of the Sorvereign of Life and Light).
#4 AvonRekaes Aug 28, 2009 9:35:12	Or he might chose to be somewhat heretical and aspired to REPLACE a Sovereign, just like the founder of the Library of Korrenberg hoped to replace Aureon as the Sovereign of Knowledge by collecting the most comprehensive collection of knowledge he could.
#5 bobiago Aug 28, 2009 13:02:49	Or, he could worship Bahamut anyway.  Just because the Dragons find this to be blasphemy doesn't mean all Dragonborn do.  They do so at great risk of course, but perhaps they feel that they are being unfairly excluded from that second tier. Assuming the Dragonborn were caught up in the purge of Io'vakas as well (and as non-dragons, why wouldn't they be?) I can see the Dragonborn as being pretty scattered.  Some communities might not even know that the purge is over.  Some will be chastened by the purge, appalled at the arrogance of their peers, and vigilant for signs of similar blasphemy.  Some might be resentful, turning to the Talons of Tiamat for revenge against what they thought was an unjust act.  Some might stick to their beliefs, that they are children of Siberys and deserve to be permitted to worship the draconic pantheon (albeit in secret for their own safety.
#6 wizardmon Aug 28, 2009 16:01:09	Thanks so much for your help, guys! I was really confused, and I am glad you guys cleared up the difference between the dragon gods and the dracon soverigns.
#7 bobiago Aug 28, 2009 19:05:56	The default background for Dragonborn in my campaign is that they are all from the Q'barran community.  However, rather than being the remnants of a Q'barran "empire" (one of the few new elements in the ECG I don't care for), they are the descendants of refugees from the Argonnessen Empire*.  IMC, the Dragonborn were caught up in the purge that levelled Io'vakas (albeit a few millenia earlier than in DoE) and fled Argonnessen.  The Q'barran dragonborn are unaware that any of their number from Io'vakas survived, or that they were protected by Arnaarlasha and lived to found the city of Io'lokar.  The last their ancestors knew was that the dragons had learned that several of their number had committed blasphemy by worshipping the Draconic Pantheon, had assumed their whole race to be corrupted by the Yuan Ti, and were one by one wiping their city-states off the face of Argonnessen, and probably the world.  They chose Q'barra to hide, since they knew the lesser races would confuse them with Lizardfolk and there would be less chance that their presence would be discovered.  They don't know the dragons stopped trying to wipe them out thousands of years ago. *The Argonnessen Empire was of course, completely beholden to their Dragon masters, and the dragonborn city-states only existed where their presence was tolerated by the dominion lord (I play my dragons a lot less interventionist than canon, and the best a non-dragon can really hope for out of a dragon IMC is his disinterest).  It was only an empire in the sense that a single caste of Dragonborn, based in Io'vakas, had dominated all of the other dragonborn city-states on the continent, and that as the only race that did not come to Argonnessen as slaves, believed themselves superior to all other non-dragon races.  The Dragonborn of Io'vakas were convinced by the Yuan-ti that the Dragons' tolerance of their empire somehow translated to friendship, and that worship of Bahamut and the rest of the pantheon might even be considered complimentary.  Such hubris was the source of their downfall, though their intentions were honorable.
#8 lorsvek Oct 19, 2009 4:05:37	the Dragonborn are aloud to worship the draconic gods, it actually says that they do in the "Players Guide to Eberron" (the 4th edition one mind you) where you read about the core races in Eberron. And yes there is a correlation between the sovereigns and the Draconic Gods, else the ascenion path wouldn't make any real sense. The Blasphemy is when a "non dragon" follows one of the paths of ascenion, thus booting a "more worthy" dragon out of his rightful place. As for how the two pantheons relate, I am not sure. I do know: Dol Arrah(LG) = Bahamut(LG) I think: Aureon(N) ~ Io(N) The Devourer(CE) ~ Tiamat(CE) The Keeper(E) ~ Chronepsis(N) (this one is kinda hazy, with the different alignments) I'm running a Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut in Eberron right now, "Lawful Good doesn't mean Lawful Nice". =D They dont line up perfectly, But the correlation is there, Look at their domains. I'm working on a list that gives a basic idea of how they relate to each other.
#9 Hellcow Oct 19, 2009 13:50:31	the Dragonborn are aloud to worship the draconic gods, it actually says that they do in the "Players Guide to Eberron" (the 4th edition one mind you) where you read about the core races in Eberron. I didn't work on the EPG, but personally this doesn't make much sense to me. The dragonborn are not dragons... being reptilian didn't help the yuan-ti any. I think the Sovereigns are more than good enough for them in the eyes of the dragons... and when I played my dragonborn character in 4E Eberron, it's the path I followed. But hey, that's me. As for correlation, they aren't intended to correlate directly. There's certainly some obvious overlap - Dol Arrah and Bahamut are certainly close - because hey, they are both pantheons of deities designed to encompass all aspects of life, which means there will be overlap. However, the ultimate theory of Thir is that the current draconic pantheon will become the progenitors of the next age and the greatest of the sovereigns will ascend to become the dragon gods of the next age. That's not a one to one map; Ourelonastrix won't change his name to Io. It's that in the NEXT age of creation, Io will be the name of a progenitor... Ourelonastrix will be the dragon god of law and lore... and there will be an entirely new Sovereign Host. And yes, as a result of this, the key to the whole dislike of lesser creatures following Thir is the fear that they will supplant the dragons in this - ascend and boot a dragon out of a sovereign position and ultimately a position as one of the true gods. Seems unlikely (and hey, they didn't destroy Zilargo when the library founder tried it)... but then again, things like humans getting dragonmarks has to worry them. And I wouldn't equate the Devourer with Tiamat in Eberron. In Eberron, Tiamat is the darkness in the hearts of dragons - the potential for evil within them. If she mapped to a Sovereign, I'd say it would be the Shadow - the dark side of Aureon. Still not a particular perfect match... but the Devourer is about nature's fury, which doesn't have much of a tie to Tiamat, in Eberron at least.
#10 lorsvek Oct 19, 2009 21:45:43	I never expected to get the attention of a creator. Ya I spent last night trying to match them up, your right, they dont really match up perfectly or at all in some cases. Though, if you look at their domains and Tenets, many of them acctually do correlate very well, like Dol Arrah and Bahamut, Kol Korran and Astilaber. I would really like to know more about the draconic gods in Eberron, yall never really went into much detail in any of the books I've read.
#11 lorsvek Oct 19, 2009 22:24:05	I double checked my info about Dragonborn worshiping the dragon gods, it is indeed in the "Eberron Players Guide" (got my book title wrong, sorry about). The arcticle is on pg.34, it says that dragonborn worship the Dragon Sovereigns, the Draconic incarnations of the Sovereign Host. I always thought that would include the Dark Six, though it doesn't mention anything about it.
#12 Hellcow Oct 19, 2009 22:39:47	I double checked my info about Dragonborn worshiping the dragon gods, it is indeed in the "Eberron Players Guide" (got my book title wrong, sorry about). The arcticle is on pg.34, it says that dragonborn worship the Dragon Sovereigns, the Draconic incarnations of the Sovereign Host. I always thought that would include the Dark Six, though it doesn't mention anything about it. Right. Which means that they worship Ourelonastryx as opposed to Aureon. The point is that they still worship the dragon Sovereigns, not the draconic Gods. This is still in line with the description of THir in Dragons of Eberron.
#13 lorsvek Oct 21, 2009 17:09:16	Do you have a link to a dragon magazine article about this subject that would be awsome? Or simply which issue?
#14 Hellcow Oct 23, 2009 13:36:50	I'm not sure I follow. I don't know of a Dragon article on the subject, but Thir is discussed in the sourcebook Dragons of Eberron. To look to the basic question, I'll note that when I played a Q'barran dragonborn in a year-long 4E campaign, I worshipped a Draconic variation of the Sovereign Host. However, I didn't use names. Rather than Aureon, Ourelon, or Ourelonastrix, I worshipped the great Blue. The Silver Lord guided my blade in battle, and the Red Lady inspired me with her wisdom and courage. So basically, I looked to the draconic forms of the Sovereigns mentioned in their descriptions and worshipped them in these forms, setting names aside.