Tag Archives: Dal Quor

IFAQ: Kalashtar quest-givers, the Dreaming Dark, and Quori Minutiae

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A young kalashtar holding a magical sucker and a ball of silver flame.
The kalashtar orphan Tari by Matthew Johnson.

As time permits, I like to answer interesting questions posed by my Patreon supporters. Here’s one from this month…

In a campaign in which the Dreaming Dark is the primary villain, would the Kalashtar be the right quest-givers? How aware are the Kalashtar of the schemes of the Dreaming Dark? How would Kalashtar or other NPCs learn of Dreaming Dark plots?

So first of all, this question is sort of like saying In a campaign in which the daelkyr are the primary villains, would the orcs be the right quest-givers? To which the answer is that Gatekeepers would be the most likely quest givers. Ghaash’kala orcs, Jhorash’tar orcs, a Tharashk inquisitive working the mean streets of Sharn—they’re not going to know anything about the daelkyr. This is key here because the automatic answer is that followers of the Path of Light are an excellent option for drawing adventurers into the schemes of the Dreaming Dark. But not all kalashtar follow the Path of Light, and even among those that do there are different approaches among the faithful. A few quick points to keep in mind…

  • The kalashtar have been separated from Dal Quor for almost two thousand years. The rebel quori escaped Dal Quor before Riedra existed as a nation. So it’s not like they split off a few years ago and have lots of inside info. Especially because…
  • The kalashtar don’t dream in Dal Quor. Contrary to popular belief, kalashtar DO dream. Their dreams are formed from their own memories and subconscious and those of their linked quori spirit. But because they don’t dream in Dal Quor, they can’t be affected by dream and more important, they can’t actually spy on the Dreaming Dark in Dal Quor. Within Adar, there are human devotees of the Path of Light who are trained to serve as dream-spies, going where kalashtar can’t. So the Adaran Path of Light has access to some inside information, but that’s because of their human agents.
  • Kalashtar can’t usually talk to their quori. Kalashtar don’t have casual conversations with their guiding spirits; instead, they are guided by instincts and visions. It’s something that could happen under exceptional circumstances. The most common would be a kalashtar spellcaster framing their divination magic as communicating with their quori, but as a DM you could have a kalashtar get a direct message from its quori in a dream vision or something similar. But it’s not normal. The kalashtar feel the presence of their guiding spirit, but they can’t just say “Ashana, tell me everything you know about the Dreaming Dark“… and likewise, it’s possible for an orphan kalashtar to fail to recognize the nature of their spirit, just believing they have interesting dreams and strong hunches.
  • Kalashtar are at least latently psionic and could be sensitive to psychic disturbances. And this can be a key to the adventure hook. Kalashtar don’t have a direct backdoor into the plans of the Dreaming Dark. But the Path of Light is aware of the Dreaming Dark, and kalashtar in general may be able to sense when something is off—when quori have been manipulating emotions, mind seeding people, etc. This isn’t something concrete or reliable like a paladin’s Divine Sense. But as a story device, a DM could certainly say You feel something wrong here, Virashana… a pervasive, unnatural sense of despair. You can feel Ashana’s concern. This same concept can easily be used as a basis for kalashtar quest-givers. They don’t KNOW the plans of the Dreaming Dark, but they feel that something is wrong… can you investigate, adventurer?

So keeping that in mind, let’s revisit the question… In a campaign about fighting the Dreaming Dark, would kalashtar be the right quest givers? They COULD be, but what that would look like would depend on the individual. A key point here is that as a DM running a long term campaign I’m usually not going to start by stating on day one The Dreaming Dark are infiltrating House Cannith and planning to create an army of warforged vessels they’ll use to conquer Khorvaire! What I want is for the players to learn about the Dreaming Dark and their greater scheme organically… to interfere with a minor scheme and then slowly get pulled deeper and deeper into it. My novel series The Dreaming Dark deals with, surprise, a scheme by the Dreaming Dark. But they don’t even get MENTIONED in Book One; there’s simply an incident in which the protagonists cross paths with a kalashtar. In Book Two the character returns to help them with a problem and avoiding spoilers, the story evolves from there. So this is a case where a kalashtar drives the story… but she doesn’t just show up in Book One and say “You must come with me now to fight the Dreaming Dark!”

Taking all that in mind, let’s consider three different kalashtar, any of which could be PCs or NPC quest givers.

TARI (pictured above) is an orphan who grew up in the Shadow Marches. They’ve never met another kalashtar and didn’t know the word until someone else used it to describe them; they still don’t really know what that means. They know nothing about the Dreaming Dark or the Path of Light, and have instead found their way to the Silver Flame. Mechanically they are a divine soul sorcerer, with their powers flavored as a blend of silver fire (guiding bolt, sacred flame) and psychic influence (charm person, hold person, detect thoughts). The idea is that all of this is largely intuitive, driven by their compassionate spirit and their unrecognized link to their quori. Tari is better suited to being a PC than an NPC; part of the point of the character is that they are connected to powerful forces they don’t yet fully understand, and that they can receive guidance and visions from both the Flame and their quori. So as a PC, Tari COULD lead the other adventurers into a scenario with the Dreaming Dark, but the idea is that they wouldn’t know what they were getting into… they’d just know that something is wrong and needs to be investigated, and THEY would learn about the Dreaming Dark along with the other adventurers as they dig deeper into the adventure.

VIRASHANA is a kalashtar soulknife rogue from Breland. She was raised in the Path of Light and knows its traditions, and if she’s in Sharn she knows people in Overlook; but overall she operates alone. She’s what the Path calls a Shadow Watcher—someone who seeks to fight evil directly and forcefully. When she was young, the kalashtar coummunity she was part of was targeted by the Dreaming Dark and her father was killed by an Inspired mindstealer. Now she craves vengeance and has devoted her life to identifying and eliminating mind seeds and other agents of the Dreaming Dark in Khorvaire.

Virashana could absolutely draw adventurers into a story, but she would likely be acting alone: she’s been conducting a personal investigation and she’s identified a threat, and she needs back-up. This story is stronger if one of the player characters has a pre-existing connection to Vira, and even if they’ve never met IN THE CAMPAIGN, this is where I might draw on a character’s background and work with the player to develop a story. Perhaps a Folk Hero, Inquisitive, or former Sentinel Martial once teamed up with Virashana to catch a murderer driven by nightmares. Maybe a former Spy got an unexpected assist from Virashana after his handler mysteriously turned on him (due to a mind seed). If the player is up for it, I might ask them to tell me about the time Virashana saved their life… establishing that she’s a mysterious woman with psychic knives who helped you out with some creepy dream business.

The main point is that Virashana can get a story rolling with her investigation, and she can share general knowledge about the Dreaming Dark, but she’s never been to Adar, she’s never actually met a Riedran Inspired, and she’s not connected to a larger network of kalashtar. She’s great for getting adventurers involved in a small, targeted scenario that will later be revealed as part of something larger. She’ll show up and say Good to see you again, Daine. What’s it been—five years since that ugly business in the Cogs? Well, it’s happening again… something to do with House Deneith. You and your friends free tonight? Dress for the sewers. She’s following a lead, she doesn’t have a lot of information, and she’s going to get her hands dirty whether you join in or not.

ALARKHAD is a kalashtar monk from Adar, sent by the elders to serve as a Lightbringer—combating the Dreaming Dark and other malevolent forces by inspiring the people around him to be better and generally bringing more light into the world. While I’ve described him as a “monk”, mechanically he’s a bard; his Inspiration and bardic magic (mainly enchantment and divination spells) are presented as psionic powers. He can definitely serve as a patron for a group of adventurers. Like the character in my novel, he might just show up when the adventurers need guidance or healing, helping to remove a psychic “curse” one of the characters has been afflicted with in an encounter with quori vessel. Unlike Virashana, he is more likely to guide and advise. Coming from Adar, he has access to a deeper knowledge base and resources, but he dislikes direct, ruthless action and beyond that, he’ll need time both to come to trust the adventurers and to prepare them for the greater conflict that lies ahead.

So after helping them in a previous adventure, Alarkhad might approach the characters and say There is a malevolent force growing in Callestan. Speak to those who are suffering there, and look closely at the agents of House Tarkanan; I cannot say with certainty that they are the source of this corruption, but they may be. He isn’t coming along. He doesn’t actually have a personal stake beyond people are suffering. He’s just letting you know something is rotten in the district of Callestan and you need to check it out. It might not even BE related to the Dreaming Dark — but if you resolve the situation compassionately, he’ll conclude you have the skills and temperament to deal with the more serious scheme he’s aware of.

But what’s the Scheme?

If I’m running a campaign in which the Dreaming Dark are the major villains, I’ll start by coming up with their BIG GOAL. As I’ve said in other places, the first thing I’ll do is pick a catspaw. The Dreaming Dark established Riedra by turning all the existing powers against one another and then presenting the Inspired as unifying saviors. They convinced the people of Riedra to forge their own chains. In my campaign, if they want to conquer Khorvaire they’ll take the same approach. They’ll push the Five Nations to tear themselves apart (canonically, there’s lots of hints that they could have set the Last War in motion) and then present a savior to fill the role of the Inspired in Khorvaire… or, potentially, a different approach that still ends with a stable pacified population, such as an army of quori-possessed warforged. So, who’s the figurehead in this scheme? It could be the ruler of one of the Five Nations; a dragonmarked house; the Twelve; a new religion; an existing religion (new zeal for the Sovereign Host!); a political movement. Whatever this is, it’s going to be something I want to develop over time. I don’t want to send 1st level characters up against THE DREAMING DARK; I want them investigating something smaller. Identify a mind seed. Investigate the actions of a strange warforged that turns out to have an impossible design. Deal with a psychic plague spreading through a bad part of Sharn. Deal with a serial killer driven by dreams. These could be trial runs of something they intend to deploy later, or dominos whose impact won’t be seen until later (the serial killer causes fear in the area which makes people more willing to accept martial law when it’s proposed). This also means that when the player characters solve the problem, they aren’t actually drawing the wrath or attention of the Dreaming Dark. The psychic plague was a trial run; the warforged was a prototype; the serial killer already served his purpose. The adventurers have triumphed and done something good for their community, but the Dreaming Dark’s plan continues to unfold.

I’m creating a smol table for randomly generating Dreaming Dark schemes as a treat for my Patreon supporters (Inner Circle and above). If that sounds like fun, check out my Patreon!

This month, patrons also asked a questions about the Quori themselves…

Are there any Lluora Quori-inspired Chosen lines in Riedra? If yes, which branch of Riedra do they serve?

This is a VERY deep cut. The Lluora quori are an idea I suggest in this article, when someone asked if there could be a quori of sloth. Here’s what I said…

“Sloth” isn’t quite the right word for a quori. The general idea is that quori specialize in developing and manipulating particular emotions or moods. So the key is that this quori—which I’ll call the Lluora—doesn’t embody sloth itself; rather, it specializes in SAPPING MOTIVATION. Consider all the tools of procrastination—creating distracting tasks or options; causing the mortal to endlessly question their decisions, paralyzing them with self-doubt; causing them to question their end goal; encouraging Whataboutism and “Why bother doing anything when nothing will ever really change?” I don’t think they’d be common. One possibility is that they’d be a sort of jailor, trapping mortals in their own mental prisons and preventing them from ever building up the motivation to escape. Another is that they’d advise kalaraq, suggesting ways to undermine mortal motivation.

So sure, there could be a Lluora line. Which branch would they serve? One immediate option is THE GUIDING PATH. The Lluora essentially specialize in preventing progress and quelling resistance by dissolving the motivation to rebel. Another option is THE THOUSAND EYES, serving in the role of jailor described above. But also, it’s important to keep in mind that not every quori specializes in administering RIEDRA. This ties to theoretical quori who deal with greed or envy. There are quori who have no role in Riedra, because their role is to serve the Dreaming Dark as it plants roots in OTHER CULTURES. The lluora CAN help the Guiding Path sap motivation. But it’s going to have a far greater impact *working in the Five Nations* helping to undermine passion and drive. Riedra is a fairly stable machine at this point; it’s Khorvaire where there’s more need to actively inflame greed, doubt, envy, and more.

But there’s another point here. If you make a new type of quori and then aren’t sure how it fits into the Dreaming Dark’s activities on Eberron, remember that QUORI DON’T BELONG ON EBERRON. That’s not why they exist. They SHOULDN’T all have a role to play on Eberron, because THAT’S NOT WHERE THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE. If you can think of a useful way the Dreaming Dark could use them in its schemes, that’s great. But they are supposed to have a role to play in DAL QUOR; whether there’s something for them to do on Eberron is entirely secondary.

Could you see there being 13-1 types of Quori? I wonder if it too many and I am not sure how make one of types missing.

No, personally I wouldn’t do this. The idea of a missing quori TYPE seems forced. If I was to push a Baker’s Dozen on the quori—and I probably WOULDN’T—I’d say that there are thirteen KALARAQ, but that Taratai is missing. But on reflection I think this is an unnecessary limitation. As for quori themselves, I think thirteen is too FEW. Consider how many different times of demons or devils exist! The ones we know may be the most common types, but I don’t feel a need to completely lock down how many strains there are; I like being able to add a new rare quori type if I think of something cool.

That’s all for now! I need to stockpile firewood for Long Shadows. Oh, with that in mind: I’ll be doing a live Q&A on Saturday, December 23rd at 9 AM Pacific Time for my Threshold patrons; the session will be recorded and made available to Inner Circle patrons after the fact. So, one more reason to check out my Patreon! Patreon support is what makes it possible for me to spend time on Eberron, so thanks to all of you who make this possible!

IFAQ: Kalaraq Kalashtar

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Kalaraq Quori by Christopher Stevens from Dragon #324.

Between multiple conventions, getting sick from attending multiple conventions, and working on Wayfinder, I haven’t had time to write articles for my website this month. But I have been answering questions on my Patreon, and I thought I’d share one now…

In Exploring Eberron one of the suggested class ideas for a kalaraq kalashtar was a conjurer who summons spirits bound by your kalaraq spirit, but how did the kalaraq bind those spirits in the first place? Say my conjurer can summon a minor elemental. Do elementals dream, or did the kalaraq bind the spirit directly before Dal Quor was severed from the other plane?

Kalaraq quori are the most powerful quori spirits, and they are legitimately terrifying. Alone of the quori, an eyebinder can kill you in your sleep; if it kills you in your dream, it can bind your spirit to its wreath of eyes… Or it can twist your personality into a mirror of its own, using its mind seed ability. The strength of a kalaraq is a reflection of the number of souls that it’s bound; a powerful kalaraq could have hundreds of bound spirits.

There’s a number of interesting questions that come up with kalaraq kalashtar. If they are aspiring to be spirits of light, how do they justify the binding of souls? If we assume that there’s two or more kalaraq spirits left among the kalashtar lines (the leader of the rebel quori, Taratai, was kalaraq, but her line has been wiped out), one of them might have released all its bound spirits when it turned to the light. On the other hand, we’ve never said what sort of experience the souls have while bound. An interesting possibility is that each soul is trapped in its own eternal dream; that it continues to dream as it would in Dal Quor, just within the essence of the kalaraq itself. This helps explain the power of the kalaraq; each one is, in essence, a miniature Dal Quor, containing its own array of dreamers. So if we keep that idea in mind, one of the kalashtar kalaraq could have specifically targeted cruel and evil people who it believes deserve eternal punishment, and it keeps them experiencing endless nightmares; pretty brutal, but if we say that it targeted exceptionally horrible people, it’s interesting to imagine who it felt deserves such punishment. On the other hand, another kalashtar kalaraq could have taken the opposite approach: it bound the most compassionate and accomplished mortals it could find in order to preserve their spirits from dissolution in Dolurrh. Each one lives on in a dream paradise; essentially, this kalaraq decided to give worthy people the idyllic immortal afterlife that doesn’t exist on this side of Dolurrh (as no one knows what’s beyond Dolurrh). In either case, as a kalashtar of a kalaraq’s line, it’s interesting to think about the spirits it has bound in its eyes. Are they compassionate and accomplished mortals the kalaraq wanted to preserve? Or are they vile people it wished to punish?

This brings us back to the original question. In Exploring Eberron I suggested that you could use the nature of the kalashtar quori to add flavor to character abilities. Perhaps a conjurer is drawing on souls bound by the kalaraq! But what does that mean if the creatures you’re conjuring are elementals, or fey, or animals? Did the kalaraq dreambind a pack of wolves? Do elementals dream? Well, if you fight an elemental in Dal Quor, it’s not actually an elemental drawn from another plane; it’s a dream figment that has the abilities of an elemental. In conjuring creatures, what I’d say is that I’m not summoning the actual spirits my quori has bound; I’m summoning the nightmares of those bound spirits, made real using the energy of the spirit. This is where I’d come up with a list of nightmares at my disposal, and rename/flavor the creatures I could summon with that in mind. For example, if I can cast summon minor elemental I can summon an Azer. But with my DM’s approval, I’d say that what I actually summon is a horrifying burning clown—the persistent nightmare of a serial killer my quori bound ten thousand years ago. On the other hand, if I conjure animals, those beasts could sing softly with the voices of the bard who was bound long ago; they are part of the song he has been singing in his dream for thousands of years. While they may have the stats of elementals or beasts, cosmetically I’d highlight that they are dreams made real—the dreams of the souls preserved by my quori.

This same principle could apply to other spells or abilities. If I cast borrowed knowledge I’d say that I’m drawing that proficiency from one of the souls my quori holds bound. But I could see a non-musical bard who says that they perform “Bardic Inspiration” by temporarily gifting you with a guiding spirit (based on the kalaraq binding compassionate people). A warlock could have the kalaraq as their patron and say that each spell or invocation is the gift of a different spirit it has preserved; hellish rebuke is tied to the spirit of a furious, vengeful barbarian while charm person and suggestion draw on a charismatic bard.

But to further address the original question: A kalaraq couldn’t have bound any spirits before Dal Quor was cut off from the material plane. The breaking of the thirteenth moon occurred in a previous age of Dal Quor. When the Age turned and the Quor Tarai changed, it pulled in all the quori of that age and they were reborn as children of il-Lashtavar. This is why the Dreaming Dark is trying to stop the cycle; if il-Lashtavar becomes il-Yannah, it will again draw in and destroy all existing quori, creating a new host in the model of the Great Light. Kalaraq quori are children of il-Lashtavar; the quori of the previous age were likely entirely different in form.

And a last minor point—in all of the art I’ve seen of the kalaraq, their eyes have been very uniform in appearance. My original description emphasized that every eye is unique, reflecting the creature that’s bound within it.

Wait: a kalaraq can kill you in your sleep? Or mind seed you? How are player characters supposed to fight that?

It’s a very valid question. I’ve written before about how the initial actions of player characters aren’t likely to draw retaliation from the Dreaming Dark — that they are effectively playing hundreds of games of chess across Eberron and they EXPECT some of their plans to fail; they aren’t going to hunt down every meddling kid who interferes. But eventually you may reach a point where the Dreaming Dark definitely knows who the players are and it feels like if they could just kill them in their sleep, they would. How do you justify their survival?

One way is to consider that the kalaraq are the most important quori and have many duties. Unless the PCs are dealing with a kalaraq directly, the quori whose plans they’ve been spoiling may not want to draw the many eyes of a kalaraq to their personal failure. If they are mainly dealing with an Usvapna, they may want to personally fix the problem BEFORE the Devourer finds out, rather than risking his wrath at their seeming incompetence. Likewise, we’ve called out that the Dreaming Dark doesn’t love mind seeding especially powerful people because they don’t have absolute control over mind seeds. Mind seed replaces the personality of the victim with that of the seeding quori. But the seed ISN’T a quori and isn’t actually at any risk from the turning of the age, and there is always the chance that they may abandon the cause of the Dreaming Dark and pursue their own agenda. This is called out with Keshraa the Fallen, on page 59 of Secrets of Sarlona. Mind seed is an exceptionally powerful ability but it’s not a flawless tool — and the more powerful the seed, the greater the risk that they’ll see other opportunities.

However, ultimately, I have no problem as a DM saying that the kalaraq can’t bind the souls of the PCs. One of the basic principles of Eberron is that Player Characters are remarkable. I’ve called this out with the idea that resurrection doesn’t work for everyone; the fact that you can resurrect player characters without consequence reflects the fact that they are remarkable people with unfulfilled destinies. I’d be absolutely happy to run a terrifying scene in which a kalaraq quori slaughters a PC in their dreams, proclaiming that it will bind their soul… and then they just wake up, unbound. Why didn’t it work? I’d leave that as a mystery to both kalaraq and PC. It could be the power of the Prophecy, protecting the character with the unfulfilled destiny. It could be that an overlord is shielding the character who is destined to release them, or that a dragon has warded them for similar reasons. It could be that the turning of the age is close at hand, and the power of the kalaraq is waning. Whatever the answer, I have no problem with the idea that player characters are big damn heroes who occasionally break the rules; that’s part of the pulp inspiration.

That’s all for now! Thanks again to my Patreon supporters for making these articles possible. I’m about to do a live AMA for Threshold Patrons on things left on the cutting room floor of Eberron. If you’re reading this it’s probably too late to catch it live, but I’ll be posting the recording on Patreon.

IFAQ: Dreamspace and Flumphs

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Art by Julio Azevedo

Every month, I ask my Patreon supporters for interesting questions about Eberron. This is the first time I’ve been asked about flumphs! So let’s get to it!

What’s the role of Flumphs in Eberron, especially in Riedra or Adar?

As far as I know, flumphs have never been addressed in canon. I’ve personally never used a flumph in any campaign I’ve run, so I’m primarily familiar with them from their appearances in Order of the Stick. So, the following things are true about flumphs in 5E.

  • Flumphs are small aberrations.
  • Flumphs are telepathic. They feed on telepathic emanations and thus are thus found around other telepathic species. They can eavesdrop on telepathic communication in their vicinity and cannot be perceived by telepathy or divination.
  • Flumphs are wise and benevolent. They dislike holding on to evil thoughts, and thus when they overhear evil thoughts they will try and share them with good people—so they’re ideally suited to spilling the beans on illithid or aboleth schemes.
  • They’re traditionally found in the Underdark, and live in harmonious units known as cloisters.

So with all that in mind, here’s how I’ll use flumphs in Eberron…

Flumphs are natives of Xoriat, where they dwell in the Emocean—a tide of surging thoughts and emotions, deeper and more primal than Dal Quor’s Ocean of Dreams. Flumph cloisters drift along streams of consciousness, drawing sustenance from the pure psychic emanations surrounding them. This is a blissful experience, and most flumphs have no interest in traveling to the material plane. But occasionally manifest zones form maelstroms within the Emocean, especially when people within the manifest zone suffer intense emotions. Flumphs in the material plane are fish out of water, and need to quickly find a source of psychic emanations in order to survive. While flumphs can draw sustenance from any form of telepathic emanation, they are benevolent by nature. While they can survive on a diet of cruelty, it’s distressing and they will seek to expunge the evil thoughts in a psychic exchange with good creatures whenever possible.

Flumphs enter Eberron through manifest zones to Xoriat. Here’s a few places flumphs can be found in Eberron.

  • There are flumphs scattered across Sol Udar beneath the Mror Holds, pulled in by the fear and suffering of the dwarves battling Dyrrn the Corruptor. Most Mror flumphs are isolated and lost, struggling to survive. Sages of Clan Narathun have established a flumph sanctuary beneath Shadowspire and reunited a flumph cloister. A group of Narathun bards have been working with these flumphs to develop their thoughtsinging techniques, and flumphs are helping Narathun watch for Dyrrn’s forces.
  • Flumphs can be found in the swamps of the Shadow Marches. Some linger in the periphery of dangerous telepathic entities. Others have formed a symbiotic relationship with a sect known as the Uul’gaanu, the “Daughters of the Dream.” A benevolent variation of Kyrzin’s Whisperers, the Uul’gaanu build their communities around hidden flumphs. The flumphs help the Uul’gaanu develop basic telepathic abilities; an Uul’gaanu community has a very simple hive mind, with members of the community casually sharing emotions and thoughts. Community members gather together for psychic metaconcerts, generating shared emotions that feed their flumphs. Dealing with the Uul’gaanu can be unsettling for outsiders, as the Uul’gaanu respond to the thoughts and emotions of their companions without need for speech; while for their part, the peaceful Uul’gaanu are often distressed by the cruel or selfish thoughts of outsiders. As a result, the Uul’gaanu tend to remain isolated from other Marcher communities.
  • Flumphs have emerged in wild zones of Sarlona over the years. Because of their ability to eavesdrop on psychic communication, the Inspired consider them a security risk and exterminate them whenever they are found. However, a number of flumphs have found safe havens in the fortress monasteries of Adar. Adaran flumphs are valued members of their communities, engaging in thoughtsinging and presenting young Adarans with philosophical challenges. Some flumphs choose to work with Adaran security forces, watching for Inspired infiltrators and influences.

As denizens of Xoriat, flumphs perceive reality in very different ways from creatures of the material plane, and have different outlooks on the nature of time, space, matter, and individual identity. Those who can bend their brains to encompass these concepts can learn a great deal from flumphs, as shown by the nascent group mind of the Uul’gaanu and the thoughtsinging techniques of the Narathun. However, these concepts can be difficult to reconcile with everyday life in the material plane, and this can make conversations with flumphs confusing for people fully grounded in reality.

What is the Dreamspace, and how would you use it?

The Dreamspace is a concept introduced in Secrets of Sarlona, which has this to say:

Planar gateways that once linked Eberron and Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams, were sundered during the cataclysmic wars that destroyed Xen’drik and shattered the giant civilization. Since then, Dal Quor has been forever distant, and no stable manifest zones to Dal Quor exist anywhere on Eberron.

However, Dal Quor and Eberron remained inextricably linked by the state of dreaming—the process by which mortal minds travel to the Region of Dreams, and the subtle gateway through which the quori first began their conquest of Sarlona some fifteen centuries past. 

Discovered short years ago and still known only to a few, the dreamspace is an effect that appears related to this spiritual connection between planes, but one that as yet has no explanation. It appears as a kind of ripple of arcane and psionic energy—a border of sorts between the mortal world and the world of dreams… Regardless of its origin, different factions among both the kalashtar and Inspired distrust—some even say fear—the dreamspace. In particular, a good number of Inspired are said to be disturbed by the existence of a power connected to Dal Quor that they neither control nor understand.

Secrets of Sarlona, Page 18

Secrets of Sarlona includes a set of “Dreamtouched Feats” that allow people to attune themselves to the Dreamspace. Specific uses include the Dream of Contact, which allows long-distance telepathic communication (not unlike Sending) and Dream of Insight, which allows the dreamer to make a Intelligence-based skill check with a substantial bonus to the role—essentially, drawing knowledge from the collective unconscious. These techniques are crucial tools for the Unchained, a resistance movement within Riedra whose members engage un unsanctioned free dreaming.

That’s the extent of canon information. The Dreamspace was “discovered a few short years ago” and both the Inspired and kalashtar distrust it. So what IS it? A few possibilities that come to mind…

  • The Dreamspace is just part of the natural infrastructure of the planes. Think of it as the phone lines that connect mortal dreamers to Dal Quor. There’s nothing sinister about it; it’s just a (super)natural part of the world.
  • The Dreamspace is an artifact created by the quori of a previous age when they interacted with Eberron. Rather than tying this to the Giant-Quori conflict in Xen’drik, I’d tie this to an even older age of Dal Quor, potentially associated with long-forgotten civilizations in either Khorvaire or Sarlona… civilizations destroyed by the rising of the Daughter of Khyber or another Overlord. This allows for the discovery of ancient rituals or artifacts designed to manipulate the Dreamspace, and leaves the question open as to whether the quori of that past age were benevolent or if the Dreamspace itself was designed as some sort of weapon or tool of oppression.
  • People have only discovered the Dreamspace recently because it’s only recently come into existence. It’s the side effect of unforeseen damage the Inspired are inflicting on the psychosphere of Eberron through their use of the hanbalani monoliths. At the moment it’s a useful tool, but as the damage becomes more extensive it could connect unwilling minds, cause dreaming spirits to be lost in the Dreamspace instead of reaching Dal Quor, or far worse things.
  • The Dreamspace is a hoax. It’s a creation of the Dreaming Dark, a lure that’s being used to draw out rebels like the Unchained. Attuning the the Dreamspace and developing Dreamtouched techniques actually makes the user more vulnerable to quori possession.

These are all interesting possibilities. The point is that, like the Mourning, I wouldn’t WANT to present a single kanon or canon answer, because a central point of the Dreamspace is that the people using it don’t know what it is. It is a new tool that’s being latched onto by a desperate resistance—is it a blessing, or could it be a trap? Is it secretly a tool of the Dreaming Dark, or is it a the horrifying result of their messing with powers beyond even their control? Each of the four options above would form the foundation of very different stories. Using the first option, it could be a simple, reliable tool that has no other significant impact on the story. Using the second option could unveil a quori scheme from a previous age that dwarfs the ambitions of the Dreaming Dark—while the third option could end with the Dreaming Dark and the player characters working together to disassemble the hanbalani system before it tears reality apart.

So, the Dreamspace was always intended to be an idea that each DM could use in different ways; perhaps one of these ideas will inspire you!

That’s all for now! Thanks again to my Patreon supporters for posing interesting questions and for making these articles possible!

IFAQ: Fizban’s Treasury and Eberron

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As time permits, I like to answer interesting questions posed by my Patreon supporters. This month there’s been a number of questions related to Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. As always, my answers here reflect what I would do in my personal campaign and may contradict canon material! Also, check out this later article on how I’d use Gem Dragons and Gem Dragonborn.

How would you incorporate either the draconic echoes or the Elegy of the First World into Eberron?

To answer this question, you first need to answer another: Do you want your Eberron to be part of the greater Multiverse? Eberron has its own cosmology and a very different approach to deities than many of the other core D&D settings. One option—as we suggest in Rising From The Last War is the idea that Eberron is part of the multiverse, but that it was sealed off; that traffic to other settings is possible, but very difficult. On the other hand, if you don’t WANT to use elements of other settings in your Eberron campaign, it’s easy to just ignore the Multiverse and focus on Eberron as an entirely independent setting.

By canon, Eberron has its own creation myth that explains the origins of dragons. The funny thing is that it’s not entirely incompatible with the Elegy of the First World. The Elegy asserts that three dragons created reality and dragonkind (if you count Sardior). The Progenitor myth asserts that three dragons created reality and dragonkind. The Progenitor myth asserts that the first dragons were born from the drops of blood that fell on Eberron; nonetheless, this still matches the basic concept of the Elegy, in that the dragons were the first children of the Progenitors, but “were supplanted by the teeming peoples” that came after them.

Personally, I LIKE the story of dragons being formed from the blood of Siberys—the idea that they alone believe that they have a direct connection to both Siberys and Eberron, an idea that explains their innate arcane power. In MY Eberron campaign, I’m not likely to abandon this concept in favor of Eberron’s dragons being linked to other dragons across infinite settings.

If you want to add the First World to Eberron WITHOUT adding the Multiverse, a simple option is to just put it AFTER THE PROGENITORS. The Progenitors create reality. Bahamut (a native celestial who favors a draconic form) and Tiamat (the Daughter of Khyber) unite the dragons and create the First World on Eberron—an idyllic civilization that predates the Age of Demons, which was ultimately shattered BY the Age of Demons, presumably set in motion by the Daughter of Khyber. This aligns with Thir, saying that the “Dragon Gods” existed before the Age of Demons but left reality when the First World was broken; this ties to the idea I’ve suggested elsewhere that Eberron’s version of Bahamut would have sacrificed themselves in the Age of Demons and could be the core of the Silver Flame.

If you want to incorporate the Multiverse into your Eberron campaign, then you can just use the First World exactly as it stands in Fizban’s. In this case, the Progenitor myth is presumably FALSE, since it has a very specific story for the origin of dragons; but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying that the Progenitor Myth IS ONLY A MYTH… or even that the Progenitor Myth is just a garbled version of the Elegy.

As for draconic echoes, the idea that each dragon is mirrored across realities: If I wanted to use this, what I’d do is to assert that every reality has a Draconic Prophecy, and Eberron is simply the only one where people have recognized this. Draconic Echoes reflect the fact that the dragons are prophetically significant. But if I was going to do that, I’d personally want to add OTHER echoes across settings; even if they don’t manifest dragonmarks, you might have echoes of dragonmarked heirs in other worlds, and you’d definitely have echoes of especially Prophetically significant characters—IE player characters. But I personally prefer NOT to mix peanut butter with my chocolate. I’m happy to explore alternate incarnations of Eberron, as with the Gith, but I’ve never brought the rest of the multiverse into any of my personal campaigns (though I HAVE played a “far traveler” character from Eberron—a warforged cleric searching for pieces of the Becoming God—in someone else’s non-Eberron campaign).

How would you incorporate the alternative half-dragon origins from Chapter Three of Fizban’s? Would that change how you present Dragonborn?

Keep in mind that all things that use the stat blocks and basic shapes of dragons and dragonborn don’t have to share the same origin. For the primary dragons of Argonnessen, I LIKE the fact that while they are imbued with arcane power—children of Eberron and Siberys—they are still ultimately MORTAL. They are an ancient and advanced species, but they aren’t multiversal echoes and they’re more grounded than the immortals. They live, learn, have jobs, pursue research. So for the dragons of Argonnessen, I wouldn’t say that they reproduce by divine origin or parthenogenesis or when someone steals their hoard… because they are are ancient, long-lived, and imbued with arcane power, but they are STILL MORTAL CREATURES OF EBERRON. This principle likewise applies to dragonborn who trace their roots to Argonnessen. It seems likely that the original dragonborn were magebred by the dragons from some sort of humanoid stock. But I don’t think those original dragonborn were formed from greed or true love. WITH THAT SAID…

As I said, NOT ALL DRAGONS AND DRAGONBORN HAVE TO HAVE THE SAME ORIGIN. Many of the options described in Fizban’s—from someone becoming a half-dragon after stealing from a dragon’s hoard, to eating forbidden fruit, to a tree on which dragon eggs grow like fruit—don’t sound like Argonnessen to me; they sound like THELANIS. First of all, you could have any number of dragons who appear as “supporting cast”—they would have the stats of dragons (though I’d likely make them fey as well as dragons) but the point is that they aren’t entirely REAL. They don’t have goals or desires beyond serving their role in the story. The dragon in a cave guarding a sword in a stone truly has nothing better to do. Beyond this, I could also imagine a dragon as one of the archfey of Thelanis. I can see two paths here. My personal impulse would be to have a single archfey dragon who encompasses all the legends of dragonkind—the greedy hoarder, the destroyer of cities. But I could also imagine there being two archfey dragons—the Bright Dragon and the Night Dragon, essentially filling the STORY role of Bahamut and Tiamat, even though they wouldn’t take direct action on Eberron. Still, it would be one of these entities who could potentially bestow Cradle Favor or have a tree that grows dragon eggs (because as archfey they wouldn’t reproduce like mortal dragons do). With that in mind, I feel it’s either in Thelanis or in a Thelanian manifest zone that you’ll have someone becoming a dragon or half-dragon due to greed or by bathing in dragon’s blood. And you could thus have dragonborn who have such origins—or heck, who spring up because you sow a field with dragon’s teeth. But they aren’t the most common forms.

Regardless of how I present dragonBORN, we had half-dragons in 3.5 Eberron. The most infamous of these is Erandis Vol. Her creation is described this as involving a program of magebreeding, so I think it’s a form of True Love’s Gift, but I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “I love you, you get to be part-dragon” (UNLESS you’re in Thelanis!); I think you’ve got to work actual magic into the picture. In the case of Vol, I think the Emerald Claw and his kind were trying to create sustainable, “true” half-dragons; I could easily see some rogue dragon using less reliable techniques to create sterile half-dragon mules.

I am fine with the idea that infusions of dragon’s blood could have a dramatic effect on other creatures, and could be a basis for sorcery; again, dragons have an innate force of arcane magic. But I am more inclined to make that essentially scientific in nature. If there’s a place where just living there causes you to become a half-dragon, I’d make that a Thelanian manifest zone, not just something that happens to anyone who hangs out in a mansion in Argonnessen.

The main thing is that many of the Fizban options present dragons as fundamentally mythic beings. The dragons of Argonnessen are legendary, but they are also VERY REAL. They have a civilization, families, politics, and so on. With all that said, the final option I’d consider if I wanted to use multiversal echoes and the like would be to have a number of dragons who are literally physical embodiments of the Draconic Prophecy. These could be essentially immortals, aware of their nature and their purpose; or they could be scattered among the mortal dragons, essentially an immortal seed reincarnated many times, and that has echoes across the multiverse.

Have there been any notable half-dragons in Khorvaire’s history that weren’t Kill On Sight? Anyone that famously claimed draconic heritage or might similar to Hassalac Chaar?

There’s a few factors here. Personally, I don’t think half-dragons ARE kill on sight. In my opinion, the issue with the line of Vol wasn’t solely half-dragons; it was the attempt to create and control apex dragonmarks through the medium of half-dragons. I also think Argonnessen disapproves of the idea of dragons trying to create any entirely new true-breeding species without approval. However, if we assume that most dragons are sterile or otherwise can’t pass on their traits, I don’t think Argonnesen will care about them, and I can personally imagine individual dragons creating half-dragons for specific purposes. Beyond this, I don’t think it’s going to be easy to identify a half-dragon AS a half-dragon. I think half-dragons with different origins could have very different physical traits. Does your sorcerer who claims dragon’s blood actually have scales and claws, or is it purely an explanation for their power in spite of their mechanically using a different ancestry? Regardless, in a world with dragonborn, blackscale lizardfolk, yuan-ti, and magebreeding in general, I think a lot of times rare oddities will just be seen as curiosities.

This ties to the point that when I say that someone becoming a dragonborn or half-dragon by bathing in dragon’s blood would be tied to Thelanis, it’s because of the idea that there are stories about it happening. So yes, I am certain that there ARE an assortment of legendary heroes and villains across all of the cultures of Eberron—the fallen kingdoms of old Sarlona, Xen’drik, even Dhakaan—of rare half-dragons, whose powers were a blessing or a curse. We have one concrete example in canon, and that’s the Draleus Tairn, the dragonslayer elves; Dragons of Eberron notes “Rumors exist that the Draleus dragon slayers can take the powers of their victims; that their blood burns like dragonfire; that they can spit lightning or breathe acid; and that their blood rituals increase their life span and even imbue them with the strength of the dragon. Perhaps these stories are mere myths. The tales could also reflect the presence of half-dragons or dragon shamans among the Draleus Tairn, with these powers derived from spilled blood instead of shared blood.” At the moment I don’t have time to make up examples of such heroes or villains, but I expect there’s a few examples in almost every culture. Following the Thelanian example ofthe half-dragon created through greed, I love the idea of a half-dragon giant lingering in a vault in a Thelanian manifest zone in Xen’drik.

How do Moonstone Dragons, which as presented in Fizban’s are tied to both the fey and to dreams, fit into your Eberron?

Personally, I see no reason to tie Moonstone dragons directly to Dal Quor. Fizban says “Moonstone dragons can project themselves into the realm of dreams to communicate with the creatures that sleep near their lairs.” Thus, they are related to dreams in the same way as a night hag or any mortal wizard who can cast Dream: they are skilled at USING and manipulating dreams, but that doesn’t mean they are natives of Dal Quor. Likewise, I personally wouldn’t make them dragons of Thelanis. In my earlier suggestions regarding Thelanian dragons, the main idea that Thelanian dragons would fill iconic draconic story archetypes which don’t really make sense for mortal dragons of Eberron—IE, when you find a dragon guarding a hoard in a cave in the woods, with no logical reason to be there other than to guard that hoard, THAT might be a Thelanian dragon and the cave may be in a manifest zone, because most Argonnessen dragons have SOMETHING BETTER TO DO than to hang out in a cave in the woods. The Moonstone dragon doesn’t fit that role either; it’s more exotic and unusual than iconic.

So WITH THAT IN MIND… The dragons of Argonnessen are the most ancient civilization on Eberron (and have seen cultures rise and fall). They have forgotten arcane secrets other species have yet to learn. In the process of their history they have surely studied the planes, manifest zones, and wild zones. I would say that Moonstone dragons trace their roots back to a flight of dragons devoted to the study of the planes and to Thelanis and Dal Quor in particular, who were changed through their long interaction with those planes—either intentionally (magebreeding themselves to strengthen their ability to operate in those planes) or by the “background radiation.” I would say that they serve as Argonnessen’s ambassadors to Thelanis and as mediators to Fey in general; Argonnessen has manifest zones tied to Thelanis just like everywhere else, and where some cultures have fey pact warlocks, Argonnessen has Moonstone dragons. The dream aspect I’d tend to use just as described—a tool they use to communicate and inspire mortals, but not reflecting a deeper connection to Dal Quor.

I think the idea that they love creativity and like to inspire mortals is fine, and I can see this bringing a lot of Moonstone dragons to the Chamber—that they actually LIKE working with the “lesser species” and giving them inspiration in ways that don’t hurt the Prophecy or carry the risk of Aureon’s Folly. But personally, I’d largely keep them on the material plane. If there are Moonstone dragons in Thelanis, I’d make them envoys or immigrants rather than natives.

That’s all for now! Thanks to my Patreon supporters for asking interesting questions and making these articles possible. And just to be clear: I’m happy to clarify my answers to the above questions, but I do not have time to answer addtional new questions about other aspects of Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons; it’s a big book and covering it in its entirety would require a longer article.

Dragonmarks: Night Hags and Nightmares

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The night hags of Eberron are mysterious and enigmatic. The Princess Aundair asserted that night hags were fallen fey cast out of Thelanis; it was likewise Aundair who popularized the idea that night hags created nightmares by ripping the wings off of pegasi. The scholars of Galifar debunked both of these ideas, and established that night hags are native fiends of Eberron that have existed since the Age of Demons. But many questions remain unanswered. If night hags are fiends, why do they seem to have no sympathy for raksashas or other native fiends? How is it that on the one hand you have Sora Kell, who’s described as tearing apart armies with her talons and laying waste to a city with a single spell… and on the other, you have stories describing night hags who seem little more powerful than a typical troll? And if the night hags are native fiends, why do they have such an affinity for dreams and a talent for traveling to other planes?

The most reliable source on the topic is the Codex of All Mysteries, written by Dorius Alyre ir’Korran. The Codex makes the following observations.

Thirteen hags emerged in the First Night, old on their first day; they were called grandmothers even before the first mortal was born. Twelve of these night hags were bound in covens of three; even then, Sora Kell made her own path. Most fiends are tied to one of the dread overlords, and it would be easy to think that the first hags were children of Sul Khatesh, given their affinity for both secrets and magic. But there is no overlord in the First Night. Rather, it seems that the twelve and one collectively embody an idea. Many fiends embody concepts that mortals fear, and the simplest answer is that the night hags embody mortal fears of the night—both specifically of nightmares, but also of the unknown forces lurking in the darkness. The accounts of Jhazaal Dhakaan add a twist to this, suggesting that the night hags embody the curiosity of Khyber itself. Jhazaal observes that the night hags should be considered evil, as they will lead mortals into despair and doom without remorse. But she notes that the hags lack the greater malevolence of the overlords, that they have no desire to dominate mortals or the world; instead, they love to watch stories unfold, especially stories that end in tragedy. In the first days to the world, the night hags served as intermediaries between mortals, fiends, and the other great powers of reality. They took no sides in the many wars of that time, finding joy in moving stories along and watching the horrors that unfolded; they had no agenda, for this story needed no finger on the scales to tilt it toward disaster. The hags simply loved being in the midst of the chaos, and reveled in turning the pages of history.

Should we accept these stories, a night hag is many things at once. She is a shaper of nightmares, who takes joy in hand-crafting nocturnal visions so terrifying that a mortal might fear to ever sleep again. She is an ancient being who may have spoken with dragons, demons, and even overlords. And above all, she is a creature who delights in watching stories unfold and in seeing what happens next—especially when those tales end in tragedy.

What of the curious spectrum between night hags? How can we reconcile the legend of Sora Kell shattering an army with the tale of Sola the Smith outwrestling Sora Tenya? How can we account for the fact that a catalogue of night hags produces more than thirteen names? The answer may be found in another Dhakaani account. The dirge singer Uula Korkala blamed the hag Sora Ghazra for the tragedy that befell her city, and rallied the greatest champions of the age to her pursuit of vengeance. She worked with the legendary hunter Ur’taarka to track the hag and to create snares that could bind even the greatest of fiends. She worked with the daashors to enchant the chain of the mighty Guul’daask, creating a weapon that would shatter the hag’s spirit even as it crushed her bones. Korkala took her vengeance, and Sora Ghazra was defeated. But it is no simple thing to kill an immortal. The shards of Ghazra’s shattered spirit embedded themselves in her killers. Ur’taarka, Guul’daask, even Korkala herself—all were haunted by nightmares. Unable to sleep, they wasted away in body and mind. Eventually the magic of this curse reshaped them into hags—lesser versions of the primal crone they’d destroyed. This created a line of night hags, each bearing this curse. When any one of them dies, the killers will be consumed by nightmares. The curse grows weaker with each generation, and there are heroes who have survived this gauntlet of nightmares; but any who are broken by these terrors will become a weaker hag. Thus, should you encounter a night hag who seems not to live up to the terrifying legend of Sora Kell, she is likely one of Ghazra’s line; the threat she poses will depend on how far removed she is from her ancestor.

Dorius Alyre ir’Korran is a legendary scholar and diviner, known for his ambition to supplant Aureon himself; the Codex is the most trusted source of information on the hags. The actual entry includes far more information than just this, providing further details on many of the original thirteen hags and their covens. However, it is as always up to the DM to decide if any of this is true, or if it is still speculation or even misinformation spread by the hags themselves.

If you trust the Codex, there are a few things to keep in mind.

  • Night hags can have a vast range of power. The Challenge 5 night hag presented in fifth edition is likely a weak descendent of Sora Ghazra. Sora Kell was the most powerful of the primal night hags—the one who always stood alone—and likely has a Challenge rating over 20. Other hags—between the other primal hags and the greater descendants of Sora Ghazra—would fall somewhere within that spectrum. Because of Ghazra’s story, there’s no absolute limit on the number of night hags in the world. There may have only been thirteen primal night hags, but the extent of Ghazra’s brood is entirely up to the DM. The lesser hags of Ghazra’s brood DO NOT retain many memories of the hag that spawned them; they have a basic foundation, but a CR 5 hag doesn’t have memories of the Age of Demons and doesn’t retain all the contacts and connections of their parent hag.
  • Night hags largely view mortals as a form of entertainment. They typically have a cruel sense of humor, and they take joy in hand-crafting nightmares for people who catch their interest. Many of them do enjoy testing virtuous heroes and seeing if they can hold to their ideals. But at the end of the day, most are driven by cruel curiosity; if a hero DOES persevere and overcome adversity, they’ll chuckle and move on, making a note to check back in a few decades. They don’t CARE about the goals of the overlords or the Chamber; they just love good stories. The night hag Jabra sells goods in both Droaam and the Immeasurable Market of Syrania. Her goods won’t necessarily bring misfortune to the buyer; among other things, she sells dreams she’s collected over the centuries. But SOME of her goods are certainly bound to bring tragedy to someone, if not necessarily the person who purchases them. And more than anything, her work as a merchant is a way to while away the immortal hours while she waits for someone interesting to cross her path—a story she can delight in following to its end.
  • Night hags wield power in Dal Quor, as measured by their ability to manipulate dreams. They have an understanding with the quori; remember, the primal night hags once served as ambassadors to all the great powers, and they can be persuasive when they choose. Night hags can smell the touch of a quori on a mortal’s dream, and they will thus avoid interfering with dreamers who play critical roles in the plans of the Dreaming Dark. Beyond this, Dal Quor is vast; night hags and quori generally do their best to stay out of each others’ way. With that said, there have been stories of friendships, rivalries, and feuds between specific quori and night hags; a particular tsucora and a child of Ghazra might take turns tormenting a particular mortal, each trying to craft the most terrifying dream.
  • Night hags have a particular affinity for dreams and Dal Quor. For a night hag, shaping a dream is like playing an instrument; it’s both art and a satisfying hobby. A night hag doesn’t HAVE to have some grand agenda in deciding to haunt a particular mortal, any more than a writer has some specific vendetta against the sheet of paper they select on which to write a story. On the other hand, they may well focus on people who draw their attention. In Droaam, Jabra has been known to buy peoples’ dreams. The simple fact is that she can haunt someone’s dreams whether they agree to it or not; but Jabra enjoys convincing a victim to agree to their torment.
  • Primal night hags are immortal and have existed since the dawn of time. If slain, they will reform in the demiplane known as the First Night. Ghazra’s brood can be killed, at which point they infect their killers with their nightmare curse. Each such generation grows weaker, and it’s possible that the CR 5 night hag of the Monster Manual is simply too far removed from the source to curse its killers… or it might be that they have only to enduring a single nightmare or a few nights to overcome the curse.
  • Primal night hags don’t require a heartstone to become ethereal. A heartstone is a focusing item that allows one of Ghazra’s brood to tap into this power, concentrating their weaker spirit.

With all that in mind, let’s consider a few specific questions.

The ECS says that Night Hags are neutral, but here you say they’re evil. Which is it?

Many ideas in the ECS have evolved over time. When I wrote that original section in the ECS, the intent was to emphasize that the night hags aren’t allied with the Lords of Dust and the overlords—that they are, ultimately, neutral. However, in retrospect, I feel that they should both be fiends and should have an evil alignment. They were born in Khyber, and on a personal level, they delight in tragedies and will unleash nightmares without remorse. We’ve called out that good people can do evil things and that evil people can do good; in the case of the night hags, they are evil beings who choose not to serve a greater good or greater evil.

The immortals of Eberron draw from a finite pool of energy and don’t reproduce. But Sora Kell has daughters, and there’s also hagblood characters. How’s this work?

Night hags can reproduce, but this doesn’t follow normal biological science and most never do. Essentially, what a night hag does in creating a child is much like how they create a nightmare; each of the Daughters of Sora Kell are, essentially, nightmares made real. It’s quite likely that the hag has to invest a certain amount of her own essence in her children, not unlike the story of Sora Ghazra. If so, Sora Kell is likely no longer as powerful as she once was, and this could explain why she’s been missing for so long.

Sora Ghazra’s children are created when a sliver of her spirit reshapes a mortal body. The weaker the are, the more mortal they are; the least of these hags might be able to have children in the normal way, though these children wouldn’t be night hags.

Night hags can trap mortal souls in soul bags. Why do they want mortal souls?

Trapping souls is hardly unheard of in Eberron. Sora Maenya isn’t a night hag, but she’s known for trapping the souls of her victims in their skulls and keeping them. She doesn’t DO anything with them; she just likes collecting them. Sora Teraza traps souls in books, cataloguing the life of the subject. This is the model for night hags. Some may bind captured souls into objects, keeping a collection of soul-bound dolls, for example. Others may weave the souls into acts of magic. For example…

What’s the origin of nightmares (the monsters) in Eberron? Do they have a connection to night hags?

Nightmares are fiends that protect their riders from fire and allow them to travel between the planes. The first nightmares were created by Sora Azhara, a primal night hag with a particular love of Fernia. She crafted the first nightmares by fusing literal nightmares with the ashes of the Demon Wastes and mortal souls. A few of her sisters admired her creations, delighting in their ability to carry mortals into dangerous places, and created nightmares of their own. Any creature capable of casting nightmare could potentially learn the ritual for creating a nightmare. This requires a bound mortal soul slain by nightmares; ashes from the Demon Waste; and a living equine creature, which serves as the physical framework. This is the origin of the tortured pegasus story—but the victim doesn’t have to be a pegasus. A creature who’s soul is bound into a nightmare can’t be raised from the dead by any means until the nightmare is destroyed; the soul is however preserved from Dolurrh while bound. Typically, the mortal spirit is unconscious and oblivious to the passage of time during this binding.

What does it mean that the primal night hags serve as ambassadors? If there were thirteen of them, did they have ties to specific planes?

“Ambassador” isn’t an official title. Night hags are capable of moving across planes, something that’s uncomfortable for most native immortals. Essentially, they spend a lot of time traveling—they are in part driven by curiosity—and they know people. The dragons and fiends of the Age of Demons found it useful to have a recognized neutral force, and the night hags enjoyed being a part of the story. This continues today. The night hag Jabra knows thousands of immortals through the time she’s spent at the Immeasurable Market. A random lesser night hag may know a number of quori—some friends, some rivals. Sora Azhara has a love of Fernia and is a regular guest at the parties of the efreet. But this is ultimately an informal role, more “I know a hag who knows a guy” than being officially appointed by the Progenitors or anything like that.

That’s all for now! Thank you to my Patreon supporters both for making these articles possible and for suggesting the topic; in my monthly call for questions, someone asked “Night Hags! Just Night Hags!“… So here we are! If you want to have a chance to shape future topics and help insure that there are more articles, pitch in at my Patreon.

Also: I am continuing to work on Frontiers of Eberron: Threshold, and TONIGHT (Wednesday September 8th) I’m kicking off a new stream to playtest the material. It’s part of the Fugue State stream, which I play in with Colin Meloy and Chris Funk of the Decemberists, Charlie Chu of Oni Press, Han Duong, and Jennifer Kretchmer. It’s going to run for about six weeks and the first episode is TONIGHT, so if you want to see it kick off, drop by the Twogether Studios Twitch channel at 7:30 PM Pacific Time! This is a very casual stream—basically just our home game in action—but I’m sure it will be fun!

IFAQ: Dreams and Quori

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As time permits, I like to answer interesting questions posed by my Patreon supporters. Here’s a few about Dal Quor and its denizens.

Do prophetic dreams occur in Dal Quor and if so do the Dreaming dark collect or research them?

Exploring Eberron has this to say about dreams in Dal Quor:

Dal Quor doesn’t have layers like other planes. Instead, it can be seen as a vast ocean. When a mortal dreams, they fall into that ocean and create an “island”: a dream pocket, shaped by their memories and desires. When they wake, this island disappears. So at any given moment, Dal Quor contains millions of islands, but none last for long. 

I’ve bolded the important piece. The key point here is that the quori don’t create or even monitor all mortal dreams. There are far more mortals then there are quori, and at any given time there a hundreds of thousands of dreams that the quori know nothing about. Most dreams are just dreams, shaped by the dreamer’s own memories and mind. Quori CAN interfere with mortal dreams, but so can other creatures—night hags, any creature using the dream spell. Mortal creatures can even create permanent islands, such as the Draconic Eidolon or the Uul Dhakaan.

The point here is that the quori aren’t omniscient or omnipresent within Dal Quor. Other forces can shape dreams, and it’s entirely possible for this to occur without the quori being aware of it. So YES, there can be prophetic dreams in Dal Quor. Such dreams could be actively shaped by powerful beings (again, all it takes is the dream spell). Looking to divine visions, the existence of prophetic dreams doesn’t necessarily prove the existence of the Sovereigns. We know that there is a divine power source that channels power to worshippers of Boldrei. It could be she’s an actual goddess who actively sends a message to her priest; or it could be that “Boldrei” is a spiritual construct that lies within the collective unconscious, and the priest’s dream is drawn from those subconscious depths. Either way, it’s possible to have a vision from Boldrei; but just because you can meet her in your dreams doesn’t mean that she exists in a form you could meet in the flesh.

Does the Dreaming Dark collect or research these dreams? I’m sure it does, IF IT OBSERVES THEM. Again, there are more mortals than quori, and at any given moment a third of the world is asleep; there’s no way for the quori to monitor them all. And personally, I don’t WANT the quori to monitor them all. I like the fact that I can say that the group’s cleric has a divine vision and that the quori don’t know about it. With that said, part of the role of the hashalaq quori is to monitor mortal dreams and dreams and to keep notes. The hashalaq are the loremasters of Dal Quor, and when the Dreaming Dark wants to perform an act of manipulation, it turns to the hashalaq to identify the most effective targets to carry out those goals. So the hashalaq do monitor the dreams fo people the quori have identified as significant, and they maintain a broad “map” of the Ocean of Dreams. Thus, they COULD have observed and recorded any prophetic dream and could well have a vault filled with accounts of thousands of “Dreams of Interest” they’re studying. But it’s ultimately up to the DM to decide if any given dream has been noted and recorded, or if it escaped the many eyes of the Dreaming Dark.

Are there any limits to the Quori ability to shape dreams?

Yes and no. If you’re familiar with Star Trek, think of Dal Quor as a holodeck. Normally, the dreamer shows up and runs their own program. When a creature uses dream, they are overriding that and placing the dreamer in a program of their own design. And that can be ANYTHING. A quori has an even greater degree of control than a wizard using dream. They can control every detail and they’ve had tens of thousands of years to hone their talents at creating dreams.

WITH THAT SAID… This is a game. It’s fun to have adventures in dreams where adventurers can potentially overcome challenges, and with that in mind I wouldn’t want to make quori omnipotent when shaping a dream. So personally, I’d go back to the holodeck analogy. The quori can PROGRAM the dream. They can personally take the place of any creature in the dream, intervening directly. But adventurers can defeat the challenges a quori places in their path. The quori can make you dream about a terrifying dragon, but you and your fellow adventurers could DEFEAT THAT DRAGON; this reflects your will and heroic drive overcoming the quori manipulation.

WITH THAT SAID… That primarily only applies to LUCID dreams. Most dreams don’t get played out as adventures. And with that in mind, that’s why the dream spell has a saving throw! You could look at a successful saving throw as meaning that the caster can’t shape the dream at all; or you could look at it as the caster creating a nightmare but the dreamer defeats the nightmare. So if the quori gives you a dream of a dragon ravaging your village, if you fail your saving throw the dragon destroys your village, kills everyone you love, and then kills you, and you wake up horrified (taking psychic damage and failing the long rest)—while if you MAKE the saving throw, you still dream about a dragon, but in the dream you DEFEAT the dragon. Your subconscious overrides the quori manipulation, and your self-image is so strong that you reject the vision the quori tries to impose.

Do Quori create figments or enlist drifters for the Dreaming Dark?

Let’s look back at Exploring Eberron.

A figment can be anything—a friend of yours, a zombie version of that friend, a demon, a dragon—but the catch is that it’s drawn from the mind of the local dreamer. When you dream about your old drill sergeant, they can’t tell you a secret you don’t already know, because they’re part of you. On the other hand, if you’re in someone else’s dream—or if a quori has taken control of your dream—then the figments can surprise you, because their capabilities and knowledge are drawn from someone else’s mind.

Figments are just part of the basic mechanics of Dal Quor. Any time a dream is created, it’s populated with figments. Look back to the holodeck example: figments are all the NPCs in a holodeck scenario. So yes, the quori create figments that last for the duration of the dream and then dissipate.

DRIFTERS are a different story. Per ExE, “Occasionally, a remarkable figment develops the ability to persist beyond the dream that created it—becoming a truly sentient spirit instead of a simple manifestation… Such free-willed figments are called drifters.” Generally speaking, the Dreaming Dark doesn’t employ drifters and most drifters will do their best to avoid the quori, because DRIFTERS ARE A FLAW IN THE SYSTEM. Why SHOULD a quori deal with a free-willed, unpredictable drifter when it could just use a figment that will do exactly what it’s supposed to do? This is one reason drifters may help adventurers; they themselves aren’t part of the system and have no loyalty to the quori; quori will typically destroy drifters as they ARE flaws in the system. Having said that, it’s possible an unusual drifter could make a deal with the Dreaming Dark and gain greater power through such service. But most drifters won’t take that risk.

The dominator Tirashana is a powerful Inspired mentioned in multiple sources. What kind of quori is she? Sharn: City of Towers doesn’t say, Secrets of Sarlona says she’s usvapna, and the ECG says she’s a kalaraq.

This is what happens when you are dealing with an evolving setting and multiple editions. When Sharn: City of Towers was written, the tsucora quori were the only quori that had been defined. We knew that there WERE others, but we hadn’t solidified any of the details. SECOND: When Tirashana was created, mind seed was a high-level power any psion telepath could potentially manifest. As such, we established Tirashana as a 17th level psion—she had the power to mind seed, but she did it in the same way any other creature could do it, if they happened to be a 17th level telepath.

By the time Secrets of Sarlona came around, we’d introduced more types of quori. The kalaraq quori, in particular, had the innate ability to perform mind seed by binding the essence of a victim. But we’d already defined Tirashana as a 17th-level telepath, so we chose to make her an usvapna—a powerful and respected quori caste, but not kalaraq.

Then fourth edition came around. Fourth edition had no player-facing form of mind seed. We had a version of it associated with the kalaraq, but it was a unique thing. So: the usvapna didn’t exist in fourth edition, and even if they had, we could say Tirashana was an usvapna with enough telepath levels to manifest mind seed, because it didn’t exist in fourth edition. So, in fourth edition we made Tirashana a kalaraq because it meant that DMs would ahve a stat block they could use for her and because it was the only way she could do what she was supposed to do — create mind seeds.

The key point here is that the lore isn’t consistent because the RULES weren’t consistent. We changed the lore to meet the needs of the story. Ultimately, the most important thing was that Tirashana is a quori who can mind seed people. Given that she’s unlikely to ever appear in the flesh, it doesn’t really MATTER is she’s usvapna or kalaraq; what matters most is that she can mind seed people and the DM knows how mind seed works.

So: in fifth edition, I’d personally make Tirashana a kalaraq quori for the same reasons we did it in fourth edition: we have a stat block for kalaraq quori and we don’t have an usvapna block, and a kalaraq quori has a way to plant mind seeds.

In general, however, this ties to the general point that canon isn’t ironclad or infallible, because it wasn’t created in a vacuum. Tirashana couldn’t be an usvapna in the Sharn sourcebook, because usvapna didn’t exist when we wrote it. Canon is a place to start, but it does have contradictions and errors, and it’s up to each DM to decide how to reconcile those in their campaigns.

What are some other types of quori?

I don’t have time to stat out additional quori in this space, but what I will say is that the general idea of quori is that they generally manipulate and feed on certain types of emotion or aspects of the mortal psyche. Tsucora specialize in fear. Du’ulora manipulate rage and hatred. Hashalaq understand pleasure. Kalaraq twist pride and ambition. I didn’t create the tsoreva or usvapna, so they aren’t designed with that in mind; I’d personally probably make the weak tsoreva tied to spite, and the usvapna—described as the judges and inquisitors of Dal Quor—as manipulating concepts of duty and tradition, albeit in the focused path of tyranny and persecution.

With that in mind, what are some other types of quori? I could imagine quori that inspire greed and avarice; quori that sap motivation and thrive on sloth and indolence; quori that thrive on misery; quori that inspire envy. Quori are children of the Dreaming Dark, so they are generally tied to NEGATIVE aspects of the psyche. Kalashtar quori still have this heritage, but turn it around; a tsucora kalashtar understands fear, but can use that knowledge to help people overcome their fears and find their courage.

I don’t understand quori possession. Rising From The Last War says the Quori must be within five feet of the creature it wants to possess, and if it is expelled it appears next to them? I thought quori couldn’t manifest physically?

That’s because quori have access to TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FORMS OF POSSESSION. The form of possession that is presented in the stat block is something the quori can do IF it is physically present. An important detail is that it can use this form of possession on an unwilling target! It would be extremely difficult for a quori TO physically manifest on Eberron—it would involve some sort of unprecedented story hook—but IF IT DID it would be capable of forcibly possessing any humanoid using this technique.

But the catch is that this isn’t the form of possession the Dreaming Dark generally employs, because the quori CAN’T physically manifest in Eberron. So instead, the quori normally possess humanoids through their dreams. The quori crafts a dream (essentially, casting dream) and within that dream, has to convince the target to voluntarily allow the quori to possess them. The victim may not understand exactly what they are agreeing to—the quori could present itself as an angel, as the ghost of an ancestor, etc—but they know that they are agreeing to let an outside spirit temporarily assume control of their body. If they agree, the quori takes possession and maintains control until either it chooses to depart or until it is driven out by magical means; in either case, it returns to Dal Quor. Once the quori leaves, it can’t possess the victim again unless the victim AGREES to the possession again. In some cases, the quori may manage to cultivate its relationship with the victim such that the victim will allow this; again, they may believe the quori to be a guardian angel or an ancestor, as long as the actions the quori takes don’t disprove this. On the other hand, if the quori isn’t trying to maintain a relationship with the host, it may not bother to maintain such a masquerade.

The Inspired are possessed using this second form of possession, but the catch is that each Inspired is bound to a particular quori spirit and they have no choice when that spirit chooses to possess them. However, an Inspired could also voluntarily allow a different quori to possess it, if it served a useful purpose.

This raises a key point, which is that per Rising, forcible possession doesn’t allow the quori to use the proficiencies or class features of the target. The idea of the cooperative possession (or the Inspired) is that the possessed individual DOES have the proficiencies and abilities of both quori and host. This is how the quori can maintain a disguise and why it’s useful to the Inspired quori to have vessels with different skill sets; a particular quori could have one vessel that’s a tough fighter and another that’s a sly assassin, and choose the host that serves its current needs. Likewise, the reason an Inspired might allow a different quori to possess it would be because it needs the particular skills of THAT quori to accomplish its mission. So part of the idea has always been that when dealing with Inspired or with voluntary hosts you’re dealing with a gestalt entity. The quori is in CONTROL, but it gets to draw on the skills and knowledge of its host.

As this second form of possession is different from what’s described in the book, it raises a number of questions. Can a quori possess one of their specially-bred Chosen/Inspired link at any moment, even while that Chosen/Inspired is awake?

Yes, a quori can possess a Chosen vessel at any time. The quori has a direct spiritual connection to its Chosen and this doesn’t require the victim to be asleep.

Does the Protection from Evil and Good spell stop a Chosen/Inspired from being possessed by their linked quori?

An empty vessel who is protected by protection from evil and good can’t be possessed by their quori, and this is something we’ve previously called out as a way that fugitive Chosen could remain free. However, the spell specifies that the target has to be a willing creature, so you couldn’t cast it on an unwilling Inspired to break their connection to their spirit.

Does the Magic Circle spell stop a Chosen/Inspired from being possessed by their linked quori?

If the unpossessed empty vessel is protected by the circle, they can’t be possessed. However, I would again say that this wouldn’t BREAK an existing case of possession; you can’t create a magic circle and then push someone into it to exorcise them. It prevents a possessing spirit from attaching itself to a mortal host, but it doesn’t drive out the spirit once it’s present. At least, that’s the ruling I’d make at MY table (and if your DM disagrees, that’s fine—but this is MY ruling).

Can the Dispel Evil and Good spell drive out a quori from their linked Chosen/Inspired? If so, what stops the quori from immediately repossessing the Chosen/Inspired?

This is addressed in the 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting entry on Inspired, and the rule seems sound here.

Resist Exorcism: The quori spirit inhabiting an Inspired is subject to a dismissal spell, an exorcism, or a similar effect. Use the total of the human vessel’s character level and the quori’s Hit Dice for the purpose of determining whether the spirit resists dismissal or exorcism. If the effect is successful, the quori spirit is temporarily driven back to Dal Quor. This effect lasts for 10 minutes per caster level of the character who cast the spell or performed the exorcism, after which point the quori spirit can return and possess the human vessel again.

Combining hit dice doesn’t quite work in Fifth Edition, but the point is you can do it but it’s supposed to be hard—I’d probably give the Inspired advantage on their saving throw.

If an Inspired currently possessed by their linked quori is reduced to 0 hit points and knocked unconscious, but not killed, is the quori driven out? Or does the quori stay?

No. The “Brute Force” possession in the quori stat block can be broken by dropping a creature to zero hit points, but rendering a creature unconscious has no effect on either an Inspired or on a creature that has voluntarily allowed a quori to possess it.

Can a possessing quori allow the victim to retain control of their actions—to play the role of an “advising spirit”? Or is it always in full control while possessing a victim?

A possessing quori can always choose not to exercise the full power it has over its victim, but it CAN exercise that full control at any time. So the victim may not REALIZE that they are fully possessed; they may believe it’s some sort of symbiosis or partnership. Which is great, until the quori has a reason to take full control, and which point it will take full control. With that said, the person agreeing to possession is aware that they are allowing possession—that they are allowing the spirit to reside within them. In a situation where the quori doesn’t plan to assume control it may present this as guidance, partnership, etc — but the victim still knows I am allowing a spirit to reside in my body.

How much awareness does a quori have over the status, thoughts, emotions, location, current activities, etc. of its linked Chosen/Inspired, while those Chosen/Inspired are awake and uninhabited?

Very little. For example, we’ve never suggested that if you get into a fight with an empty vessel that its connected quori would somehow be instantly aware of the threat and pop in. Keep in mind that a quori could have HUNDREDS of empty vessels. I’d be inclined to say that the quori would notice the death of a vessel—because it would feel the sudden severing of their link—but even then, if the quori has a lot of vessels I might have them make a Perception check to see if they notice it right away.

When a quori possesses someone, how much access to the host’s memories does the quori have? Does this change based on the possession method: brute force, voluntary possession, linked Chosen/Inspired possession, etc.?

It depends entirely on the form of possession. The brute force possession provides no access to memories whatsoever, which is why the quori “doesn’t gain access to the victim’s knowledge, class features, or proficiencies.” Voluntary possession does grant access to the host’s memories and skills, as specifically called out in the 3.5 ECS: “A possessing quori has immediate access to all of the vessel’s thoughts and memories… The quori spirit combines its skill ranks with those of its vessel.” With that said, while voluntary possession grants full ACCESS to the host’s memories, I’d see this as a human gaining access to a library. You can read any book you want, and when you NEED a specific piece of information you can immediately acquire it, but you most likely don’t have time to read every book in the library. So it’s not like a quori knows every one of your secrets the instant it possesses you; it has to have a reason to dig for a specific piece of information, and it’s quite possible it never bothers to look back to your childhood and find that moment you made a deal with a dragon.

What’s your opinion of the tsoreva and dream master quori from Magic of Eberron? Would you redesign them if you converted them to fifth edition?

I didn’t work on Magic of Eberron. The tsoreva is fine; it’s useful to have a low-CR quori and I can see them as spirits that feed on spite—essentially, lesser tsucora. But I don’t like the dream master. First, it doesn’t follow the naming pattern. We retconned this for Secrets of Sarlona, naming it the usvapna. But beyond that, its basic design doesn’t follow the model used by other quori. The original idea of the quori is that they manipulate and feed upon a particular emotion. This is concretely reflected by their abilities. At a quick glance…

  • A tsucora (fear) has Terrifying Sting, which mimics the effects of phantasmal killer, and it regains hit points when it kills someone with this power. When it stings you, it afflicts you with a nightmare so intense it can kill you, and if it does, it feeds on that fear.
  • A du’ulora (rage) has Fury Aura—which induces rage in creatures around it—and Burning Rage, which kills a creature with its own anger… and which heals the quori when it kills a creature in this way.
  • Hashalaq (pleasure and pain) has Intimate Knowledge (it knows your desires), Empathic Feedback (the attack shares its pain), and Idyllic Touch (which overwhelms with pleasure)… and when it kills a creature with Idyllic Touch, it regains hit points.

The tsoreva is such a minor spirit that it doesn’t have space to follow this pattern. But the dream master is a POWERFUL quori, but it doesn’t have a clear associated emotion or unique powers; it’s a powerful psion, but there’s nothing that reflects a theme. So yes, I might keep the broad concept and form of the usvapna, but if i converted it to 5E I’d want to give it a more defined theme.

That’s all for now! Thanks again to my Patreon supporters for making these articles possible.

Bakery News & Eberron Q&A!

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What can I say? I enjoy my poutine.

You might be wondering where I’ve been for the last few weeks. Well, Calgary, for one… I had a fine time sampling poutine, playing games and acquiring fine dice bags at the Calgary Expo. Beyond that, I’ve been very busy. I have a number of projects in the works at the moment – my level for Paizo’s Emerald Spire superdungeon, a new expansion for Gloom, ongoing work on Codex, and two entirely new games—and as a result I’ve had to take a little time off from Dragonmarks and Six Questions. But they will return!

Before I get to the questions, a few other bits of news:

  • Gloom was featured in this week’s episode of The Escapist’s The Wishlist!
  • I’m an Industry Insider Guest of Honor at Gen Con 2013. I’ll be bringing all sorts of things to playtest to the convention, though at the moment I haven’t figured out my gaming schedule. If you’re going to GC, watch this space for more news!
  • I’m also scheduled to be a guest at GenreCon in October. What can I say – I can’t stay away from Canada!

Now on with the questions! First, two in a similar vein…

Since the inception of D&D Next, do you feel Eberron will still have prominence in this new system? Will it still be playable?

Currently WotC hasn’t decided what they are going to do for Eberron support in D&D Next. It’s been said that they will at least convert the races and perhaps the artificer. If you want to see more support, the best thing to do is to let WotC know it. Post on forums! Ask Customer Service if it will be supported! If it’s clear there is an audience that wants support, then it’s more likely that the support will come to pass.

 

With 4E not receiving a lot of support and D&D Next still some time away, is Eberron sticking with the D&D system, or able to branch as it’s own?

Eberron is the property of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, so legally I can’t create new content for it on my own, in any system. I hope that Eberron will be supported in D&D Next and that I will be a part of that, but since it’s currently unknown I’m also developing a new setting, under the working title (and only a working title) Codex. That’s an ongoing, long-term project and I don’t want to discuss it in detail until I have a clear path to release, so expect to hear more about it later in the year.

 

I was wondering what people called ‘The Last War’ before it ended, and when they started using that name.  I know IRL a very small number of people called WWI ‘the first world war’ when it was just starting, but there were a bunch of other names used at the time.

For most of the people of the Five Nations, it was simply known as “the war.” However, if they were talking about it to a Riedran or Aereni, they’d generally refer to it as “The War of Succession” or “The Succession War.” Cyrans would be more likely to call it “The Insurrection” or “The Traitor’s War.”
Is there any story behind who first called it ‘The Last War’?

I don’t think it’s been stated in canon. I believe that the term is first formally used in the preamble of the Treaty of Thronehold, which essentially states that all signatories have seen the horrors wrought in this grievous conflict, and vow to make this the last time that these nations shall take arms against one another – the last war that Khorvaire will know. The Treaty of Thronehold is as well-known across the Five Nations as the Gettysburg Address is in the USA, and everyone knows the preamble. The Brelish claim that it was Boranel who coined the phrase; the Thranes insist it was Keeper Jaela; and so on.

 

If we corelate the Last War to WWI, what would be your take on WWII?

While there are many keystones in WWI that relate to the Last War, the end of the war is much closer to that of WWII: the appearance of a weapon that completely changes the face of modern warfare. While few nations believe the peace will last, and all are jockeying for power, no nation would dare to start a new war until the mystery of the Mourning is revealed. How could Aundair dare to employ wide-scale war magics in the field when it’s possible the widespread use of such magics is what destroyed Cyre? How can they dare attack another nation until they are certain that nation hasn’t harnessed the power of the Mourning? Beyond this, there is the fact that if any nation COULD harness the power of the Mourning and weaponize it, who would dare to challenge them? Until you answer the question of the Mourning, it’s impossible to define the shape of the Next War. Will it be fought with almost no magic to prevent another war? Will it be much like the Last War, once it is revealed that the Mourning was a fluke? Or will the Mourning be weaponized, making the new conflict take a completely different form from the last?

 

What does Eberron look like a thousand years after the era of the printed setting?

What will it look like? A warped wasteland enshrouded by dead-gray mists. Of course, the way things are going it will look like that in just five years.

 

The “facts” about Eberron are “just what is believed.” How far from those “facts” has the truth gotten in your games? And what drove that departure?

I always tell people not to be bound by canon, and to use the books as inspiration rather than limitation. So, how does MY version of Eberron vary from canon? It would take a lot of time to compile an exhaustive list, but here’s a few things.

  • In 4E, I limit many key magical rituals to characters with Dragonmarks; this helps explain why the dragonmarked houses have the economic power that they do, because they are the only source of these critical magics.
  • Related to this, I’ve always put a lot of restrictions on resurrection magic. Casual resurrection simply doesn’t work for most people, and resurrection spells are often dangerous—you might just bring in random hostile ghosts, or get the wrong spirit in the body, etc. I want resurrection to be one of the rare and impressive magics that people are still amazed by, not a reliable service you can purchase from Jorasco. Reliable resurrection is something that would have a tremendous impact on a society, and I don’t feel that Eberron has that taken into account.
  • I’ve always emphasized the idea that dragonshards are an integral part of any sort of industrial magic, from the creation of magic items to common spells. In 4E this is easily accomplished by saying that residuum is processed dragonshards. The point is to emphasize the importance of dragonshards to modern civilization, which helps people understand the power of House Tharashk and the importance of dragonshard-rich regions such as Q’barra and Xen’drik.
  • I hold to the 3E canon idea that Dragonmarks are bound by bloodline. I might allow a PC to have a dragonmark that doesn’t belong, but if I did it would be a historic, campaign-defining event.
  • I never added Baator to the cosmology, as was done in 4th Edition. I like the existing balance of the cosmology and didn’t see a need to change it. With that said, I like the version of Baator I developed for DDI, in which it is a demiplane (so it doesn’t contradict the original material) and in which Asmodeus’ rise to power only occurred around the Mourning—playing up the idea that the Mourning had reverberations across the planes. This also presents the devils of Baator as an entirely new force in the world. Rather than saying that they’ve always been around and figuring out how they have interacted with the Lords of Dust, Quori, etc, this presents them as an entirely new planar faction that is a concern and potential threat to all the long-term power players.
  • I have a very different vision of Thrane than that presented in The Forge of War, but I’ve spoken about this at some length elsewhere.
  • Likewise, I have a very different vision of the Blood of Vol: the tone and practices of the faith, its history in Karrnath, etc. Again, I’ve written about this at length elsewhere. Looking to the “Why,” the point to me is that a successful religion offers some form of comfort to its followers. It is a way to make sense of the universe. The Blood of Vol is a very GRIM religion, but it is nonetheless a faith that seeks to answer questions (first and foremost, what benevolent god would allow death and suffering to exist?) and build strong communities; it is a faith that ultimately seeks to destroy death and create a paradise on Eberron.
  • I’ve done more with sahuagin civilization than has been covered in canon; this is hinted at in The Shattered Land, and comes out a little in the Xen’drik sourcebooks.
  • I don’t use subraces, and don’t feel obliged to find a place for every new monster or race that comes along. I COULD if I wanted, but I generally see no reason to do so. I feel that intelligent races should have a history and sense of place in the world, so I don’t want to add new ones in without good reason.

I could probably go on for pages. As you can see, most of these aren’t huge changes; they’re just little things. But the short form is I do what makes sense to me for the stories I want to run.

 

What if the kalashtar rebellion fuels up quori hatred & empowers Il-Lashtavar preventing a change in Dal Quor?

Quori don’t experience emotion the way most mortals do. They aren’t mercurial beings. They don’t go from love to hate in a single day, or even a year. Like most immortals, they are incarnations of ideas; a tsucora quori is an incarnation of fear, a du’ulora an embodiment of fury, and so on. Essentially, a quori who hates can never STOP hating, or hate any more than it already does; hatred is its nature. The kalashtar quori are an anomaly that must be eradicated so they can be returned to the fold—so the rebellious spirit can be eradicated and restored to its proper nature. So first off, the actions of the kalashtar haven’t actually created MORE hatred among the quori; the quori hate exactly as much as they always have, according to their nature. Mortal dreams can affect Dal Quor—but the quori are part of Dal Quor, and their emotions don’t influence it.

With that said, this is largely while the Adaran kalashtar don’t advocate violence. They believe that the turn of the age will occur; it is inevitable. By meditating on il-Yannah they help strengthen her vision and move towards that new age. But they don’t feel a need to try to hurry the change—and certainly not by a spread of violence and hatred.

If anything will empower il-Lashtavar, it’s not the spread of hatred among the quori that will do it… it’s the spread of hatred through humanity and other mortal dreamers.

 

Dragonmarks 1/30: Dreams, Werewolves, and DM Etiquette

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The last post generated quite a few interesting questions, so I decided to push ahead with another round. As always, these are purely my opinions and may contradict canon material.

In general, how much is it worth correcting players who, during play, misremember aspects of a setting?

This depends on a number of different factors.

  • Is the element directly important to the current adventure? Will the flawed recollection interfere with players’ ability to enjoy the story?
  • How will your players respond to being corrected? Will it be a welcome clarification, or cause irritation?
  • Is the misremembered element something that is especially important to you or your interpretation of Eberron? Is it something fundamental (the Last War was fought between the Five Nations, not between Galifar and Riedra) or a point of trivia that actual people in Eberron might not know (according to Faiths of Eberron, House Medani helped end the lycanthropic purge by creating a focus item that identified lycanthropes).

As someone who travels the world running Eberron games, I often have players who aren’t familiar with the setting. Perhaps I’ve got a player in a one-shot who is treating his warforged like a robot. I know that there’s lots of differences between warforged and robots. But his interpretation isn’t going to interfere with the one-shot adventure, and my explaining the differences will frustrate him rather than improve his enjoyment of things. On the other hand, if I had that same player in a campaign that was going to last for a year and involve interactions with other warforged, House Cannith, and the Lord of Blades, I probably would explain the differences so he’d have the proper context for his interactions with these forces. And if someone said “This ‘Last War’ was fought against the goblins, right?” I’d explain it right away.

Codex sounds very interesting. When will we be able to know more about it? I’d like to know if you’ll create it entirely on your own or if supporters will somehow participate, as happened with the Midgard campaign setting.

I will be writing a longer post about it sometime within the next week; I have a few deadlines I need to deal with first. I’ll address the design process in that post.

Concerning colonization… wasn’t Stormreach originally a colonial post of Galifar?

No. This is discussed in more detail in City of Stormreach. It was established as an outpost by pirates and legitimized by a compact with Galifar, but it was never subject to Galifar’s laws or authority, and it wasn’t settled according to any sort of royal plan.

Secondly, is there room for unknown continents in Eberron?

There’s room for anything in Eberron if you want to come up with a story for it. But a mystery continent is a big add, because Eberron has been well-explored. From dragons to gnomes to elves, you’ve had a host of intelligent, sophisticated races exploring the world. How did this continent go undiscovered? Was it hidden by magic? Has it just risen from the ocean floor? Or have people known about it but never gone there, and if so, why has that changed?

By contrast, Codex is set during a period of exploration, and the potential to discover new lands is one opportunity for people to add their own flavor to the setting.

Are there concepts or facets of Eberron that seem intrinsically influenced or tied to certain editions, such as 3E where it was debuted and 4E where it got its (arguably) first big makeover? As a DM I feel pretty confident in my ability to fit rules, story and player expectations into a package everyone will have fun with, but I’m curious if the issue’s ever come up with the mighty Hellcow.

Not big ones, but sure, there’s a lot of little things. A few examples:

  • Eberron was originally designed for D&D 3E, but by the time it was released D&D was up to 3.5. The changes might seem fairly minor, but they can still have an impact. Notably, in 3E, any lycanthrope can spread the curse; if you’re bitten by a werewolf and turned, you can bite me and turn me. This was the impetus for the Lycanthropic Purge: lycanthropy is a dangerous contagious curse that could easily spread out of control if not contained. But 3.5 changed this so that only natural-born lycanthropes could spread the curse; a true werewolf could bite you and turn you, but you couldn’t pass it to me. This completely changes the exponential threat potential and makes the Purge seem like overkill. Hence we shifted the story to say that back in the time of the Purge, the curse was stronger and all ‘thropes were infectious; the Purge weakened it, so it’s no longer the threat it once was.
  • The first Thorn of Breland novel was written during the 3.5 era. In 3.5, dragons possess blindsight, and this plays a role in the story. Likewise, Thorn is very much a 3.5 Assassin; if she gets a little while to watch you, she can do a sudden death strike, and she knows a handful of spells (disguise self, spider climb, etc). In 4E, dragons DON’T possess blindsight, and at the time of the second novel, there were no rules for assassins. I ended up simply ignoring most of these things… though I did address the Eladrin in the third Thorn novel.

Races would probably be the biggest change; with 4E, we wanted a place for the new core PHB races – dragonborn and eladrin. I feel we did a reasonably good job of fitting these in without dramatically changing the world, and I like the role of the Eladrin. But it did take some thought.

In general, Eberron was designed with 3E D&D in mind – but it can certainly be adapted to any system.

All this time I thought it was the Silver Flame Church who started the anti-Lycanthrope purge, not the Flame itself/Tira!

If you haven’t read it, I’d take a look at this Dragonshard article about the Purge. A lot of people have the wrong idea about the Purge, and think that the Keeper got up one day and said “You know what I feel like doing? Hunting down lycanthropes who are minding their own business.” In fact, the Purge began as a war of defense and containment after there was an exponential surge in lycanthropy in what is now the Eldeen Reaches. Waves of lycanthropes were raiding Aundair, and at that time the curse was highly contagious. I like to describe it as “28 Days Later with werewolves instead of zombies.” The first days of the “Purge” were much like the marines versus the xenomorphs in Aliens: brutal and terrifying. One to one, very few templars were a match for a lycanthrope, and one bite is all it takes to turn an ally into an enemy. After years of bloody conflict the tide turned in favor of the Silver Flame, but it was no easy battle. The decades of persecution that followed were fueled by a hunger for revenge, especially on the part of the Aundairians who had lost homes, friends, and family to the lycanthrope plague. This is why the Aundairian Pure Flame are the most zealous and aggressive followers of the Silver Flame; their branch of the faith was born in war and vengeance.

And lastly, it says in Faiths of Eberron that the Lycanthropic Purge ended shortly after House Medani invented a dragonshard focus that could detect lycanthropes. Do you have any thoughts on how this item would function?

I didn’t work on Faiths of Eberron, so I don’t know what the author had in mind. As a dragonshard focus item, it would require an heir of the house to operate it. Other than that, I’d have it function as best fits your story. It could be a tracker a la Aliens, which notes general position and distance, but not complete details; this would allow you to maintain some mystery. “There’s definitely a werewolf in this room… but which of us is it?” If you want to kill that mystery, it could be a monocle that reveals the lycanthrope’s true shape, but thus only works with line of sight.

It says in the Eberron Campaign Setting that “when mortals dream, they psychically project their minds to Dal Quor.” What about immortals? Could a bound rakshasa rajah in suspended animation find a way to project his mind to Dal Quor?

The basic idea is that mortal spirits are influenced by all of the planes, and pulled between them. We slip into Dal Quor when we dream. We’re pulled to Dolurrh when we die. Beyond this, we are creatures of body and soul; it’s the spirit that visits Dal Quor when you dream, leaving your body behind.

Meanwhile, immortals are physical embodiments of ideas. This has two aspects. First, the immortal doesn’t dream the way mortals do. Its body isn’t mere flesh: it’s a physical representation of its spirit. The two don’t separate. If it wants to go to Dal Quor, it goes there in one piece. So it doesn’t “dream”, but it could planar travel. This ties to the second point. The mortals of Eberron are touched by all planes. War and peace, light and darkness, madness and dream; all of these things shape mortal minds. An immortal is a creature of one shade. It is PURE war, unadulterated madness or dream. It is a physical embodiment of the core ideas of its plane. A rakshasa or a Fernian balor has no innate connection to Dal Quor; dreams aren’t part of their core identity.

Having said that, could a Khyberian Overlord find a way to project itself into Dal Quor? Sure. If that’s the story you want to have happen, make an explanation. Perhaps Bel Shalor’s connection to the Silver Flame lets it ride mortal spirits into Dal Quor. Perhaps the followers of the Voice In The Darkness have created an eldritch machine that lets her push into the realm of dreams. If you want it to happen, decide what it takes. But it’s not normal, and it would be a significant event.

Furthermore, it also states that “the only way to reach Dal Quor from the Material Plane is through the psychic projection of dreaming.” Does this mean that only mortals on the material plane dream? What about mortals on other planes? What about mortals from the material plane traveling to other planes?

As noted above, creatures of Eberron are inherently shaped by all of the planes, and it its this connection to Dal Quor that lets us go there when we dream. Many of the planes don’t HAVE mortal inhabitants… or their mortal inhabitants are immigrants (or descendants of immigrants) from the material plane. I would say that most native mortals don’t go to Dal Quor when they sleep; in this I’ll point to the Eladrin, who don’t dream. Do traveling mortals dream? I’d say it depends on the plane. In Fernia, you might dream in Dal Quor; however, planes such as Baator (well, demiplanes) or Dolurrh might have a spiritual gravity that prevents you from escaping through dreams.

Do some noble lords have their own armies, as in feudal societies?

Yes and no. If you look to Karrnath, while the army has a national command structure, individual forces are raised and maintained by the noble families; the leaders of each family are known as warlords. So while the army typically serves the coordinated vision of the king, every soldier is personally loyal to a specific warlord, and any warlord could choose to remove his support from the king – something Kaius has to keep in mind. While this has been specifically called out in Karrnath, I imagine it’s the basic model for most of the nations: nobles are charged to raise and maintain elements of the national armies. Beyond this, there’s nothing stopping nobles from having their own private forces. The only restriction that’s ever been mentioned is the Korth Edicts, which prevent Dragonmarked Houses from having armies. If a noble of Galifar wants an army and can afford to maintain it, that’s their business.