Author Archives: Keith Baker

Flashback: Death and Resurrection

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A floating skull wearing a stylish hat
This image of Lady Rose Undertow was drawn by Matthew Johnson.

I’m currently working on articles about House Lyrandar for my Patreon, but having just talked about funerary customs in the previous article it feels like a good time for a flashback to this article, which I originally wrote in 2017!

Whether you’re seeking your fortune in the depths of a dungeon or trying to save the world from a dire threat, many roleplaying games incorporate an inherent threat of death. Whether you run out of hit points or fail a saving throw, any adventure could be your last. As a gamemaster, this raises a host of questions.

  • How do you build suspense without resorting to death?
  • Should you fudge results to avoid trivial deaths?
  • What do you do if access to resurrection makes death itself trivial?
  • What is the impact of resurrection on a setting?
  • If a character permanently dies, what’s the best way to introduce a new character?

IS DEATH NECESSARY? 

One question that’s worth asking from the onset: Is death necessary? Do you actually need player characters to die in your campaign? Roleplaying games are a form of collaborative storytelling. We’re making the novel we’d like to read, or the movie we want to watch. Do you actually need to the threat of permanent death in the game? Removing death doesn’t remove the threat of severe consequences for failure. Even in a system that uses hit points, you could still have something else happen when a character reaches zero hit points. Consider a few alternatives.

  • Misfortune.  The character doesn’t die – but they lose something that’s important to them. A beloved NPC could be killed or crippled. An ally could lose faith in the group. A precious object could be lost. This could be directly tied to the incident and a way to explain survival; an NPC could leap in the way of the blow, or the paladin’s holy avenger might expend all its divine power to save the paladin’s life; it’s now powerless until he can find a way to restore its energy (thus driving a story). But as long as the players know it’s coming, you could also have the consequence be misfortune that has nothing to do with the fight and it could be a while before this loss is realized; the players simply need to know that their failure will have unfortunate consequences. Another option is to have an immediate consequence tied to the story. If the PCs are repelling a bandit attack on a village, every “death” could mean the loss of an important resource or villager. This is the principle behind the Buddy System in Phoenix: Dawn Command, where it’s up to the players to keep important NPCs alive.
  • Scars. A character may not die, but every critical failure has lasting physical or psychological consequences. A character could lose an eye, or have a hand replaced with a hook. A character could come back with aggressive tendencies, translating to a bonus to Intimidation and a penalty to Diplomacy. Someone nearly killed by undead could find that they start seeing ghosts others cannot see – spirits that trouble them or beg for help. Ideally these scars should be interesting and potentially create new challenges for a character, but they shouldn’t flat-out make the character mechanically worse. If a character simply loses a point of strength every time they “die”, it means that they’ll never be as effective as a pristine character, and for a player who’s concerned about mechanics that can be worse than death. So even with something like loss of a hand, I’d primarily make it interesting – the fighter’s found a way to effectively use a shield (or even a two-handed weapon) with his hook with no penalty, and while I might give him a penalty on an action absolutely requiring two hands, I’ll also give him a superior unarmed attack with his hook. And two words to remember: magic hook. Ultimately, this is the Phoenix approach: death changes a character, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt them.
  • Group Fate. When a character “dies,” they are out of the scene. If at least some people in the group survive the scene, everyone can recover. If the entire group is defeated there will be consequences. Will they be robbed? Imprisoned? Held for ransom? This could potentially just be the bridge to the next adventure; perhaps they’re taken to the villains’ lair and actually end up closer to their goal, though they’ll have to start by breaking out of prison. Or perhaps – if the players are up for a change – this is a chance to change the direction of a campaign.

The point to me is that these sorts of effects can make defeat feel interesting – MORE interesting than death and resurrection. In one of my favorite D&D campaigns, my party was wiped out by vampires. The DM ultimately decided that a wandering cleric found us and resurrected us, and essentially erased the incident from the record. I hated this, because there was no story; we had this brutal fight, we lost, and then nothing happened. I argued that we should have our characters return as vampire spawn, forced to serve the Emerald Claw until we could find a way to break the curse. It would have COMPLETELY changed the arc of the campaign, to be sure. But it would make our defeat part of the story and make it interesting – giving us a new goal. And when we finally DID break the curse and find a way to return to true life, it would feel like an epic victory.

Generally speaking, even if I’m using another consequence for death, I will generally keep it that a character falls unconscious when “dead” – it may not be permanent, but they are out of the scene. However, even that could depend on the scene. Taking the idea of the village attack where “death” means an important element of the village is lost, I might say from the outset that any time a player drops to zero hit points something major is lost to the attack… and that the player will immediately regain 10 hit points. This is not a scene where the players can die unless the entire village is wiped out first; the question is how much of the village will be left when the battle is done. But it’s important that the characters understand these consequences from the start of the battle; you can’t build suspense if the players don’t know the consequences.

All of this comes back to that question should I fudge the dice to avoid a player dying a lame death? If death is truly the end of the story, it IS lame to lose your character to a random crappy saving throw or a wandering monster that scored a critical hit. But if you don’t have death in the game, and players know that, you don’t HAVE to avoid that death – you can just scale the consequences of the “death” to fit the circumstances. If it truly is a trivial thing, then have a trivial scar or minor misfortune as the consequence – the character literally has a minor scar to remember it by, and they’re back on their feet. And in my experience, scars and misfortune can actually generate more suspense than simple death. Character death is binary. It’s boring. You’re dead or you’re not. But the potential for loss or a lingering scar – you never know what you might be about to lose when you drop to zero HP, and that’s much more disturbing.

2025 Update—DAGGERHEART. I wrote this article in 2017 with D&D in mind, but here in 2025 the RPG Daggerheart has an interesting approach as part of its core rules. In Daggerheart, when a character loses their last hit point, they choose a Death Move. This can be Blaze of Glory, allowing the character to take one action that critically succeeds before they die; to Avoid Death, falling unconscious and potentially gaining a scar much as I suggest above; or Risk it All, giving them a chance to roll the dice and either regain some hit points or drop dead. I love that this gives the choice to the player: that they can design to survive but with a scar, or instead to go out accomplishing something memorable… and it’s a system that could easily be adapted to D&D.

SOMETHING TO LOSE

The critical thing about the idea of misfortune or scars is that the character needs to have something to lose. They need to care about SOMETHING beyond themselves – something that can be threatened by misfortune. If your campaign is based in a single location, it could be about the place: a favorite bar, a beloved NPC. It could be something useful you have given to them, whether it’s a useful object or a powerful ally or patron. It could be something the player has created themselves: family, a loved one, a reputation that’s important to them. Following the principle that this isn’t about punishment but rather about driving an interesting story, misfortune that results in loss of character ability could be temporary. Take the earlier example of the paladin’s holy avenger expending its energy to save him; this isn’t simply punishment, it’s now the drive for a new branch of the story.

In Phoenix: Dawn Command this is actually part of character creation. In making your character you need to answer a number of questions. As a Phoenix, you’re someone who died and returned to life. What gave you the strength to fight your way back from the darkness? Who are you fighting for? What do you still care about? And what are you afraid of? All of these things are hooks that give me as the gamemaster things that I can threaten to generate suspense. But you can ask these sorts of questions in any campaign.

Now, sometimes players will have a negative reaction to this: I’m not giving you something you can use against me! The critical thing to establish here is that it’s not aboutusing things against them. As a GM you and the players aren’t enemies; you’re partners. You’re all making a story together, and you’re asking them if I want to generate suspense, what can I threaten? You’re giving them a chance to shape the story – to decide what’s important to their character and what they’d fight to protect. I don’t want to read a story about a set of numbers; I want to read a story about a character who has ties to the world, who cares about something and who could lose something.

This ties to a second important point: failure can make a compelling story. Take Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. His defeat within the first ten minutes of the film creates tension that builds to the final resolution. Inigo Montaya’s story in The Princess Bride begins with defeat and is driven by his quest to avenge that loss. This is why I wanted to become a vampire spawn in the example I gave above – because embracing that defeat and following the story it created would be more interesting than simply being resurrected and continuing as though nothing happened.

Which brings us to the next topic…

WHAT ABOUT RESURRECTION?

In many D&D settings, resurrection is a reliable service available to anyone who can pay a price. This also becomes the case once the party has a caster who can perform the ritual. I hate resurrection without consequence. I’d rather have a character not die at all than have them just casually return to life with no story attached to it. The original Eberron Campaign Setting includes the Altar of Resurrection, a focus item that lets a Jorasco heir raise the dead (and it’s specifically resurrection, not just the more limited raise dead). Confession time: I hate that altar. I didn’t create it, and in many subsequent sourcebooks (Sharn, Stormreach) I pushed explanations for why it wasn’t a reliable service. Essentially, resurrection is a useful tool for player characters if you’re running a system where death can easily and casually happen. But not only is it a boring way to resolve a loss, it’s something that should have a tremendous impact on a society – and Eberron as it stands doesn’t account for that impact. If Jorasco can reliably resurrect, then they hold the keys to life and death. They’d presumably offer insurance policies, where nobles and the wealthy (criminal masterminds, members of the Aurum) can be assured of resurrection should they unexpectedly die. And someone else holds those keys as well… because resurrection, even via altar, specifically requires diamonds. So whichever nation is sitting on the largest diamond reserves suddenly has a new source of power and influence. Beyond this, casual resurrection kills a lot of stories. Murder mysteries aren’t as compelling if it’s just a matter of shelling out 10K GP to get the victim back on their feet. It’s hard to explain the death of a noble by any means other than old age. The Last War began when King Jarot died – so, why wasn’t he resurrected?

There’s lots of ways to explain this without removing resurrection.

  • The Keeper’s Fang weapon quality specifically exists as a way to counter resurrection. Jarot could have been killed with a Keeper’s Fang.
  • A victim has to WANT to be resurrected. Perhaps the paranoid Jarot didn’t want to come back.
  • Dolurrh itself quickly wipes out memories. Once the victim can’t remember who they were, it’s easy to say they don’t want to come back. So you have a limited window for resurrection.

But even with all that, I don’t like casual, reliable resurrection. I don’t feel a need to remove the spell from the game, but I always establish that resurrection only works if the character has an unfulfilled destiny. Essentially, resurrection generally only works for player characters or recurring villains. In the sourcebooks I mentioned, I emphasized that most religions don’t encourage use of the spell: the Sovereigns have called you to their bosom or your soul is joining the Flame, and that’s what’s supposed to happen. I also presented the idea that Jorasco resurrection can have unexpected consequences – Marut inevitables trashing the Jorasco enclave, ghosts coming back with (or instead of) the intended spirit – and that Jorasco adepts will perform an augury ahead of time to determine if resurrection is in fact possible. So I didn’t REMOVE it from Eberron – but I’ve suggested a lot of ways to limit it. With that said…

Making Resurrection More Interesting

If you’re dead-set (get it?) on using death and resurrection, one option is to make it interesting. Resurrection is never free – and I’m not just talking about a pile of diamonds. Consider the following:

  • In the first stages of the afterlife, the spirit of the slain character meets with something. If your setting has incarnate gods, this could be a god. If not, it could be a powerful outsider – an Inevitable, perhaps, or a fiend or celestial. This entity offers the opportunity to return… for a price. This could be a task the character has to fulfil, and if you want to make it interesting set a time limit; they have one month to kill (insert challenging foe here) or they will die again, and this time it’s personal. Or it could be a price – a misfortune as described above, but the player gets to choose if that cost is worth their life. If you want to keep it interesting, make it a price someone else will pay. The fiend will return the player to life, but every month someone from their home town will die in their place. Can the player find a way to break this deal without dying for good?
  • There’s no bargaining, but as the player returns to life they have a clear vision of the future – of them performing a difficult task (killing the Dark Lord!) or doing something they don’t want to do (killing a beloved NPC!). This feels incredibly real. Is it just a prediction, or is this the price of the character’s resurrection? If they turn from this path, will they die again?

A critical point here: you could use either of these options with or without a resurrection spell. Taking the first option, you can say that a cleric casting a resurrection spell doesn’t AUTOMATICALLY return the character to life; rather it’s the casting of that spell that has allowed the bargain to occur. If the player turns down the bargain, the spell will simply fail. Alternately, you can say that this bargain is offered independently of any magic, which is a good option for low-level characters. Everyone THINKS the character is dead… and then suddenly they pop back up, with a new mission!

You can also find a path between the two, and the best example of this is Thoros of Myr and Beric Dondarion in Game of Thrones. When Beric dies, Thoros can resurrect him. But generally speaking, Thoros doesn’t have the powers of a high-level priest; nor is it implied that he can resurrect just anyone. But he can resurrect Beric, which seems to be evidence that Beric has some sort of destiny to fulfill. You can easily say that the party’s first-level cleric discovers that he can resurrect the party fighter. But again, the question now becomes why he can resurrect the fighter. Will this work forever? Can he resurrect other members of the party? Or is it only temporary until the fighter achieves some specific goal, and then he’ll die once and for all? And is there another price being paid – every time the cleric performs a resurrection, is someone innocent dying to take their place? There’s a lot of ways to make this a compelling part of your story, and not just consequence-free failure.

INTRODUCING NEW CHARACTERS

You don’t want to try any of this crazy stuff. You want old-fashioned, classic death. And you’ve had a PC die. How do you bring a new character in without it feeling utterly bizarre that the group just gels around this stranger? Here’s a few quick thoughts.

  • Try to build a few NPCs into the story that can easily become temporary PCs. If the players are all hobbits and Frodo dies on the way to Weathertop, that player can immediately assume the role of Strider – a capable NPC who’s already on the scene. This gives you and the player time to come up with a new character and a good story… and that character can be introduced at the next logical point, such as when they reach Rivendell and he’s assigned to help them destroy the Ring.
  • Is the character supposed to be an old friend? Take a break and run a one-shot in the past. Drop all the PCs back to 1st level and run a session during their old war days when they held the game with their old buddy Sir Character-About-To-Be-Introduced. This doesn’t even have to involve all the current PCs; you could say that the cleric used to be friends with this incoming paladin, and run a short session where the other three players take on the roles of OTHER characters in that story… which means that THEY can die without consequence, but also that if they survive, they could show up in the present day as important NPCs, whether as allies or traitors.

That’s all I have for now, but post your thoughts on death and resurrection and what you’ve done in your games!

IFAQ: Necromancy Bad?

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In the city of Atur, the undead are part of everyday life. This image of Lady Rose Undertow was drawn by Matthew Johnson.

Every month I answer interesting questions posed by my Patrons. Questions like…

Why do the people of the Five Nations have such a negative reaction to necromancy and necromancers? 

It’s a good question. Sacred Flame and Toll The Dead will both kill you; why is one seen as “good” and the other as “evil”? Keep in mind that the practice of necromancy isn’t illegal in the Five Nations; even animating corpses is legal, as long as you have a legitimate claim to the corpse. But it’s still a path that’s largely shunned and those who practice it are often presumed to be evil. Why is that? There’s a few reasons. 

Undead are a real, everyday threat. Always remember that Eberron is not our world. It is a world in which predatory undead are a concrete threat that can manifest at any time. Ghouls can spontaneously manifest in graveyards. Shadows can potentially appear in any unlit area, and they’re drawn to negative emotions—especially during the nights of Long Shadows, which is why everyone gathers around the light on those nights. Skeletons and zombies can spontaneously animate in Mabaran zones or when Mabar is conterminous, and when they do, they are predatory creatures that seek to slay the living. So any time people see an animated skeleton, there is an instinctive reaction beyond just the natural that’s a dead thing and it shouldn’t be moving—it’s that you’ve grown up KNOWING that the restless dead want to kill you. 

#NotAllNecromancy. There are a number of Necromancy spells that are part of everyday life in the Five Nations. Spare The Dying and Gentle Repose are basic tools used by healers and morticians. No one’s complaining about Revivify or Raise Dead. Speak With Dead is employed by mediums and archaeologists alike. There are other spells in the school that most people don’t even know are necromancy. The common person on the street would likely say “Wait, so Poison Spray is Necromancy, but Acid Splash is Evocation? Who labels these things? With this in mind, a basic point is that appearance matters. If your False Life just looks like a green shield, it’s no different from Mage Armor. But if it’s a whirling shroud of whispering ghosts, or if it causes you yourself to take on a zombie-like appearance, that’s going to upset people. Same with Toll The Dead. If it’s a green bolt that kills people, no biggie. If it’s a bolt of howling shadows that causes flesh to decay, people will be upset. Because… 

The problem is Mabar. Necromancy spells draw on different sources of energy. Spells that channel negative energy—pretty much any spell that inflicts necrotic damage or animates negatively-charged undead—draw on the power of Mabar. Spells that draw on positive energy and sustain or restore life—Raise Dead, Spare The Dying—are usually drawing on Irian. And spells that interact with the dead in a neutral way, such as Speak With Dead, typically draw on Dolurrh. People don’t have an issue with Irian, and Dolurrh is spooky, but it’s something that’s waiting for you when you die; it’s not going to come get you. Mabar actively consumes light and life. People know this. They know that crops wither in Mabaran manifest zones. They know deadly shadows and hungry dead rise when Mabar is coterminous. Here again, people have had it drilled into them that Mabar is dangerous—and as a result, any sort of magic that is perceived to have a connection to Mabar can trigger a you’re messing with powers better left alone reaction.  

Not everyone agrees. For the reasons given above, most people want nothing to do with Mabaran necromancy. The Undying Court and Silver Flame argue that any invocation of Mabaran energy eats away at the life force of Eberron, and that it’s essentially damaging the environment; even if you aren’t doing something evil with the spell, you’re causing long term harm to get the effect. But the Seekers of the Divinity Within say that the reverse is true—that by channeling existing Mabaran energy into spells, they are actually drawing it OUT of the environment. The Seekers likewise dismiss fear of animating skeletons and zombies because of their deadly counterparts as the equivalent of refusing to use fire in a hearth because wildfires are destructive, or refusing to explore electricity because someone was once struck by lightning. The power of Mabar may be dangerous when it manifests spontaneously, but that’s all the more reason to understand it and to learn to use it safely. These are the principles that led Karrnath to embrace wide-scale necromancy during the Last War, and why undead are still used in many ways in Seeker communities—such as the city of Atur.

There’s no absolute answer here, and if Mabaran magic IS damaging the environment it’s doing it very very slowly. But these reasons are why public opinion is against the most dramatic forms of necromancy in much of the Five Nations—because the power behind it is seen as dangerous and fundamentally evil. 

Who cares about corpses? The Church of the Silver Flame practices cremation, precisely to minimize the risk of spontaneous undead. Seekers of the Divinity Within believe that death is annihilation and that nothing important remains with the corpse; they have no sentimental attachment to corpses and feel that it’s practical and sensible to use them for undead labor. But the Five Nations have graveyards, crypts and mausoleums. Sharn: City of Towers describes the City of the Dead, a massive necropolis adjacent to the City of Towers. This is the work of the Vassals. The Pyrinean Creed maintains that the spirits of the dead pass through Dolurrh on their way to the higher realm of the Sovereigns. They believe that the corpse serves as an anchor for the soul; that while the soul may no longer reside within it, it steadies it on its journey. The destruction of a corpse doesn’t doom the soul, but it makes its journeys difficult. Thus, Vassals bury their dead and maintain cemeteries and crypts. The Restful Watch is a sacred order that performs funerals and watch over graveyards. This ties to the fact that Raise Dead requires an intact corpse; while it’s RARE, Vassal myth includes the idea that heroes may be called back to service after death. now, WE know that Resurrection can bring people back from ashes… but remember that in the Five Nations, wide magic tops out at 5th level. People know Raise Dead is possible; raising someone from ashes is the stuff of legends. Add to this the fact that once a corpse has been made undead, it can’t be restored with Raise Dead. With this in mind, this is another reason Vassals have a instinctive revulsion to animating the dead. While it’s legal as long as someone has a valid claim to a corpse, Vassals consider it a violation. And in the instances where Karrnath animated the corpses of fallen enemies during the Last War, Vassals saw it as a horrifying act.

And if you needed just a little more… The overlord Katashka is an overlord that embodies the horrors of both death and undeath. The cults of Katashka want people to be afraid of the restless dead; throughout history, they’ve unleashed countless undead terrors precisely TO sow fear.

That’s all for now. Thanks to my Patreon supporters for making these articles possible! This month, Patrons received a giant article on House Medani, as well as being able to participate in two live (and recorded) Q&A sessions. If that sounds like a good time, check it out!

House Medani: Medani Miscellany

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The seal of the basilisk’s Gaze, by Matthew Johnson

You’ve heard of the Basilisk’s Gaze, then? Medani operatives, charged under the Treaty of Thronehold to hunt down the worst war criminals of the last century. It’s kind of odd, right? If you want to FIND someone, you go to Tharashk. Why Medani? Well, it could be that Breland objected to Tharashk because of their close ties to Droaam. But you know what I think? I think it’s because these people the Gaze is hunting, they aren’t common criminals. They’ve got money, influence, magic. These people can shield themselves from divination, establish new identities. Finding a person like that, it’s more of a puzzle than a job for a simple bounty hunter. And apprehending them… that’s a thing that would have to be done quietly and carefully. You’d have to be able to anticipate their routine, know where they’d start their day. Know their favorite strain of tal. Have a paralytic poison on hand, slow-acting but undetectable, and have sufficient charm to keep them talking until the poison takes effect. What do you think? Hmm? Can’t respond? Don’t worry. My friends and I will help you out. You’ve got a tribunal waiting for you at Thronehold, Viktor ir’Cazin.

The Mark of Detection enhances the bearer’s Insight and Investigation. This isn’t about broadly improving eyesight or hearing. Instead, Medani intuition calls attention to details. A marked Medani is always noticing things about their surroundings others might ignore. When talking to someone, a Medani instinctively catalogues their twitches and tells, evaluates their accent and how it aligns with their supposed nationality, observes their equipment and its quality… and does all of this without even thinking about it. But when the details matter, all of these observations will come flooding back. The greater powers of the Mark of Detection go beyond personal observation. While some within Medani say that their house is blessed by Aureon, the dominant belief is that the Mark of Detection connects everyone that carries it, and that a Medani with a powerful mark can draw on the memories and observations of every marked scion of the house. Because of this, the house strives to constantly expand its knowledge base. In many of the Dragonmarked Houses, heirs of a house are often raised in house enclaves and educated in trade schools tied to their guilds. By contrast, House Medani encourages its heirs to be active in local communities and to cultivate a diverse group of friends. Before undergoing the Test of Siberys, a Medani heir must complete an apprenticeship outside of the house. The point of this isn’t to pursue a long-term profession, but to meet people and to make connections… to learn seemingly inconsequential details that could be of use to some other heir of the house at some point in the future. In addition to the Watchers of the Warning Guild, House Medani maintains a corps of “Private Eyes”—Inquisitives tasked to travel across the world and learn things, unraveling mysteries when they find them and pulling on interesting threads. This is a possible path for a Medani adventurer. Watchers of the Warning Guild typically work out of a particular office in a particular town. But Private Eyes are encouraged to keep moving, searching for the most interesting situations and people that they can find. As a Medani heir, ask questions and explore even tiny mysteries. Even if the answers to your questions don’t have an impact today, they could help your family in the future!  

Perception or Investigation? In Rising From The Last War, the Deductive Reasoning feature of the Mark of Detection provides a bonus to Investigation and Insight. However, in the recent Unearthed Arcana, the Mark of Detection feat provides a bonus to Perception and Insight. These are the same two skills that are boosted by the Mark of Sentinel, and in my opinion, Rising’s approach makes more sense. Sentinel helps you spot the immediate threat with Perception; Detection helps you examine the scene and draw conclusions. We don’t yet know what the final text of Forge of the Artificer will be. For now, the DM will have to decide what they want to do. But in MY campaign, I’m keeping Detection as benefitting Investigation and Insight.

The Mark of Deduction

Beyond an intuitive knack for Investigation and Insight, anyone who carries the Mark of Detection can cast Detect Magic and Detect Poison and Disease. Because they always have these spells prepared, they can cast them as rituals. But producing a spell-like effect through a dragonmark isn’t the same process as casting a spell. When performing the ritual to cast Detect Magic, a Medani heir doesn’t invoke words of power. Instead, most use one finger to trace the design of the Mark of Detection on a palm while murmuring observations about the room they’re in—temperature, sound, contents, meditating on each detail until their senses reach beyond the physical and they can feel the flow of supernatural energies around them. If you have the Mark of Detection, that’s just something you can do. Spend enough time contemplating your surroundings and you can sense supernatural energy. Other Spells of the Mark go beyond any sight or sense; they are about intuitive knowledge. An heir with the Lesser Mark can Identify magical objects. This is another spell that can be cast as a ritual, meaning that it’s something an heir with the Potent Dragonmark feat can simply do, provided they have time. If they take ten minutes to study an object, they know its magical properties. With the Lesser Mark they can study an individual and know what they are thinking. With the Lesser Dragonmark (meaning access to 4th level spells) they can simply ask a question and know the answer, by casting Divination. 

All of these gifts flow from the same source. While a Medani heir has to go through the same steps a spellcaster does to produce these effects—speaking and gesturing in some way—Medani’s Divination doesn’t feel like a priest calling upon divine guidance. Instead, to the Medani it feels like DEDUCTION. When they cast Identify, they take time to study the object—its weight, its composition, signs of wear, traces of arcane energy—and within ten minutes it becomes obvious what it does. When a Medani casts Detect Thoughts, they aren’t using telepathy as a Kalashtar would; they are simply observing, but through observation they deduce what the target is thinking. The verbal components of a Medani’s Detect Thoughts are questions; the Medani asks a few pointed questions, and draws conclusions from the most minute reactions. “Tell me, did you know Donal Gelder? Ahhh, you worked together, didn’t you? And you hated him.” Should the target succeed on their saving throw and resist the effect, the Medani can’t draw deeper conclusions about them. To be clear, this effect is magical. The Medani also has to provide somatic components—typically touching their dragonmark or tracing its pattern on a palm—and the mark does grow warm while they’re engaged in deduction. They can gain access to information that they couldn’t possibly deduce from available information. But to the Medani, and to observers, it feels like deduction—like they are leaping to certainty from minor details of a scene. 

Divination and Deductive Reasoning. Medani heirs with the Lesser Dragonmark often have the ability to cast Divination, and this is the hallmark of Medani’s master inquisitives. While the Augurs of the Voice of Aureon call this gift Divination, Medani inquisitives refer to it as Deductive Reasoning; they aren’t calling on a higher power, they’re evaluating a question and drawing conclusions. With this in mind, what exactly can Medani learn from using this spell? When performing Deductive Reasoning, the Medani draws on two potential sources of information. The first is the scene itself. Is there any possible way the Medani could deduce the answer from their surroundings, at least in part? Otherwise, the question is does any other Dragonmarked Medani know the answer to this question? So when a Medani inquisitive looks at a corpse, casts Deductive Reasoning (Divination) and says “Who killed this man?” the first question is if there’s a living Medani who actually knows the answer. If so, the inquisitive could just get that concrete answer; Alina Lorridan Lyrris poisoned him at dinner two hours ago. Assuming that’s not the case, think of all the greatest detectives you’ve seen in any form of media and the conclusions they might draw.  A strand of silver hair… a stray thread from a glamerweave gown… the placement and size of the chair… It was a wealthy female gnome. He knew her, and they were conversing when he died. See the faint scratches on the surface of the table? She was wearing rings, at least one on each finger. The point being that it’s not a randomly cryptic riddle—but it can still be a set of clues that point the inquisitive in the right direction rather than providing a concrete answer. Likewise, if the marked Medani asks a entirely abstract or philosophical question—What is the true nature of the Sovereigns—they’ll either receive no answer, or an answer that summarizes the dominant opinions of the Medani gestalt, with the clear note that it’s not a certainty. 

Legend Lore and Background Checks. Under the rules of 5th Edition, the Greater Dragonmark of Detection grants the ability to cast Legend Lore. But Legend Lore is an odd spell. 

Name or describe a person, place, or object. The spell brings to your mind a brief summary of the significant lore about the thing you named. The lore might consist of current tales, forgotten stories, or even secret lore that has never been widely known. If the thing you named isn’t of legendary importance, you gain no information. The more information you already have about the thing, the more precise and detailed the information you receive is.

The limitation that “If the thing you named isn’t of legendary importance” bothers me. Critically, who makes that determination? It also seems like an arbitrary limitation on a spell that is supposed to be the greatest power of the Dragonmark. With this in mind, in MY campaign, the Greater Dragonmark doesn’t allow you to cast Legend Lore; instead, it allows you to run a Background Check. Name or describe a person, place, or thing. The spell brings to mind a brief summary of lore about the thing you named based on what is known about them by living bearers of the Mark of Detection. Think of a gestalt consisting of both the conscious and subconscious memory of living Medani. Has any Medani ever seen the person you’re asking about? Do you already have information that could be combined with another Medani’s observations to draw a new conclusion? So like Legend Lore, the more information you already have, the more information you will receive; and likewise, if the individual or object is well known in the Five Nations, then Medani will know more. And again, this is the function of the Private Eyes—to gather as much random information as possible, which may mean nothing to the observer in the moment, but which can be added to the gestalt for Background Checks. So if you ask about someone who is truly unremarkable or about an obscure relic from tens of thousands of years ago, you might not get any information (although here again, the Voice of Aureon includes sages who study history, and their knowledge is part of the gestalt). But if you ask about a criminal, you might draw on the information of a Medani inquisitive who solved a previous crime they were involved in… and you might know that they were seen in Sharn a week ago. As always, it’s entirely up to the DM to decide what information is provided, and the bearer of the Mark can’t ask for clarification; they get the information they get. But even if we imagine a random commoner—let’s say Jurian Cooper—who’s definitely not LEGENDARY, a Medani Background Check might say Jurian Cooper is a male human in his thirties who’s been living in the Callestan district of Sharn for at least a decade. He has been seen in the company of Ilsa Boromar on multiple occasions. Last week he was seen in the Broken Mirror in Callestan, drinking Old Bender and eating a tribex pie. This also touches on the difference between the Mark of Finding and the Mark of Detection. A Background Check can’t tell you exactly where to find Jurian Cooper. But it may point you to known associates, recent haunts, or provide useful details you’re not going to get from Locate Creature. 

Nondetection. Everyone knows that the Mark of Detection lets its bearer uncover secrets. Fewer people know that it can help bury them, as well. The Wolves of the Warning Guild specialize in counterintelligence and in making problems go away. In doing so, they often employ the Lesser Mark’s gift of Nondetection—whether to conceal themselves, a client, or an inconvenient object (or body) until a case can be closed or a problem solved. This ability is especially prized by the hunters of the Basilisk’s Gaze, whose quarry often protect themselves with divination. This comes to a minor house rule. The 2024 rules have reduced the number of effects that say a creature cannot be surprised; notably, the Weapon of Warning no longer provides this benefit. But I personally say that if any magical source provides immunity to surprise (as opposed to a skill or mundane class feature) that the benefit will not help against someone who is shielded by Nondetection. Likewise, in my campaign Nondetection protects from magical effects that are clearly forms of divination even if they are not identified as being divination spells—notably, a Wand of Enemy Detection. 

Clairvoyance and Arcane Eye. These abilities are a form of extrasensory perception and have more in common with Detect Magic than Identify or Legend Lore. The heir concentrates on their Dragonmark and meditates on the location they wish to see, envisioning it in their mind… and soon finds that the vision in their mind is real and accurate. Sensors created by these spells appear as globes formed from stands of blue energy to those who can see them; sometimes the Mark of Detection appears within the globe, mimicking the iris of an eye. 

Detect Good and Evil? Good and Evil may feel like abstract concepts for an inquisitive to monitor. But keep in mind that Detect Good and Evil doesn’t actually detect alignment or morality. The spell effect is “For the duration, you sense the location of any Aberration, Celestial, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, or Undead within 30 feet of yourself. You also sense whether the Hallow spell is active there and, if so, where.” For the sensitive Medani, this isn’t much different from using Detect Magic to sense the flow of arcane energy. The Medani heir concentrates, extends their perceptions, and essentially finds what doesn’t belong, drawing on the Medani gestalt to further clarify the specific nature of the entity.

Dragonmarked NPCs 

In a previous article, I  discussed how I generally handle NPCs with dragonmarks. Here’s the key piece.

Potent Dragonmark is a feat designed for player characters. It’s flexible—allowing a character to access any spell on the Spells of the Mark list—and recharges after a short rest. But it sets the precedent that there are people in the world who have no spellcasting ability but who can still produce spell-like effects with Dragonmarks. With that in mind, I’d generally give dragonmarked NPCs a form of this, mirroring the original ECS marks. An NPC with a Least Dragonmark would be able to cast a 1st or 2nd level spell from their Dragonmark’s Spell of the Mark list, once per day. An NPC with the Lesser Mark would get a single use of a 3rd or 4th level spell, in addition to the Least Mark. And an NPC with a Greater Dragonmark would gain a single use of a 5th level Spell. Exceptional scions might have a choice of more than one spell at each level, just like a player character with Potent Dragonmark.

Now, as noted above, if a Spell of the Mark is a Ritual spell, then the bearer can cast it repeatedly as long as they have time to do so. But the key point I want to call out is that player characters get access to ALL the Spells of the Mark. Exceptional NPCs may as well. But most marked NPCs will have access to a subset of the Spells of the Mark, and this will often reflect their placement in the house. Members of the Basilisk’s Gaze are generally chosen because they have the ability to cast Nondetection and Detect Thoughts. Members of Aureon’s Voice are sure to have Divination and Identify. The point being that ALL Medani heirs have the ability to Detect Magic and Detect Poison & Disease, but even though it’s a power of the Least Mark of Detection, not every Medani heir can cast Identify. 

Focus Items. Medani heirs regularly employ the focus items described in Exploring Eberron—Dragonmark Channels and Reservoirs. Exploring Eberron notes the Medi Spectacles and Medi Dowser, dragonmark bound versions of Eyes of Minute Seeing and the Wand of Secrets. Here’s two more Medani focus items—one that’s useful for undercover operatives, another that helps the Inquisitive investigating a murder.

That’s all for now! This article is just a glimpse at the full House Medani article I wrote for my Patrons, which includes the history and structure of House Medani, as well as discussing its major enclaves and providing additional hooks for Medani characters and stories. This support is what allows me to take the times to write articles like this. You can become a patron here!

House Rules: Forensic Magic and Investigation

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A stylized basilisk's head
The seal of the basilisk’s Gaze, by Matthew Johnson

“What do you see, Wyattson?” 

“The emanations suggest a spell of the sixth circle, and the glimmering resonance is the celestial signature of the Silver Flame. There’s only one woman in Sharn who wields the Flame with such power—Ythana Morr.”

“Well reasoned, my friend, but look more closely. That celestial resonance that drew your attention is merely sprinkled atop the true signature of the spell. I don’t recognize the energy… but it has the stink of Mabar about it.” 

I’ve just published an in-depth look at House Medani, one of the main sources of inquisitives in Eberron, so I’ve been thinking about how I like to run mysteries and investigation campaigns. Magic is a part of everyday life in Eberron; it’s a tool people use in place of the technology we use in our world. There are countless ways spells can be used to commit a crime—but how can an Inquisitive investigate this? I love the image of a detective using Detect Magic to pick up details of the crime, like someone in our world would evaluate ballistics or DNA. However, by default, Detect Magic only provides details of the school of magic associated with an effect. I like to go deeper. If an adventurer who’s proficient in both Arcana and Investigation and who’s capable of casting Detect Magic studies a scene, I will give them the opportunity to find traces of spells that have been used in the recent past, potentially gaining any of the following details… typically in this order. 

  • Traces. How many spells have been used in the area that’s being studied in the last 24 hours? This is the first step; the investigator might have a vague sense of relative power and time. If they pick a spell to study, they have an opportunity to obtain additional information. 
  • School of Magic. This is the easy default; Detect Magic allows anyone to do this, with no proficiency or check. 
  • When was the spell cast? This will be approximate, but it’s something. 
  • What level spell slot was used to cast the spell? This is a basic mechanical element of spells and in my opinion, it’s a concept people understand within the world itself; it’s a basic measure of the power of a spell. I generally prefer to use “circle” instead of “level” just because I prefer the sound of it. But I’ll allow an expert to recognize the level of a spell effect. 
  • What is the Power Source of the spell? Broadly, what type of magic is it? Arcane? Divine? Primal? Generally, I will allow a professional who’s able to cast Detect Magic to make this determination without being familiar with the magic in question; you don’t have to be a cleric to identify divine magic. However, if the spell is something more exotic, I might limit things; psionic spells or something associated with an exotic warlock might show up as “an unknown form of energy manipulation”—unless the investigator has prior experience with that form of magic. 
  • Spell Signature. Once the investigator has identified the power source of a spell, they may be able to glean more specific details about the spell or the spellcaster. For a Divine spell, the basic signature reveals the faith of the spellcaster: Sovereign Host, Path of Light, Silver Flame. With a Primal spell it will reveal the druidic sect or tradition. For an Arcane spell, it reveals the literal school where the caster learned magic; Arcanix has an entirely different style from the war magic of Rekkenmark, the workhorse training of the Twelve, or the esoteric precision of Aereni magic. If the user is self trained, that will be evident; “It’s an unconventional, haphazard style, probably self-taught.” If the DM doesn’t know these specific details, it might provide a broad sense of nationality of the caster; we’ve never named any schools of magic in the Mror Holds, but Mror arcane spells have a signature that’s broadly different from those of Breland or Aundair. When appropriate, the DM can also say that the investigator identifies the distinctive style but doesn’t recognize it—this would be appropriate for the magic of Argonnessen, the Lords of Dust, or a unique Cult of the Dragon Below. The point is that once they’ve encountered in once, they’ll recognize it when they encounter it again. 
  • Further Details. The power source and signature provide a solid foundation: It’s a divine spell associated with the Blood of Vol or it’s an arcane spell cast by someone trained at Rekkenmark. But an exceptional investigator could potentially pick up additional information. A simple discovery would be information about the components used in the spell: did they use sulfur to cast this Fireball or did they use a pinch of refined dragonshard? Were they rushed—casting in the middle of a fight—or did they take their time? What sort of arcane focus did they use—a rod or a wand?

So, how much of this information can a specific adventurer get about a particular spell? My first question is How much information do they NEED to progress the story? A basic rule I live by is never ask a player to roll a die if I’m not prepared for every possible outcome. If the adventurer is a professional inquisitive trained in Arcana and Investigation, it may be that they just get the information if they choose to look at it; it’s their specialty. Or it may be that I ask them to make an Intelligence (Investigation) check, but they’ll always learn that the spell was divine magic cast six hours ago; it’s just that if they get at least 15 they’ll also learn that it was a Seeker of the Divinity Within and if they get 20 or higher they’ll know it used a 5th level spell slot. 

On the other hand, if it’s a totally random search and failure is on the table, I might use a formula like this: 

Investigation—Arcane Forensics. Spend ten minutes studying the area; this includes casting Detect Magic as a ritual. This provides a sense of spell effects that have been used in the area within the last 24 hours and the schools of magic involved. To study a specific spell, make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. The base difficulty is 10, increased by 3 for every six hours that have passed since the spell was cast. If the check is successful, the caster can learn one detail: time of casting, power source, or spell level. For every 3 points above the required difficulty, they can learn one additional detail. Once the power source has been identified, this can include the signature and further details. 

Another example of using Investigation in conjunction with a spell to gain more detailed results would be Locate Animals and Plants, which I could see as a light version of looking for traces of DNA. Once again, I might just let the Inquisitive with the spell get basic information without a roll. But if I asked for a roll, it would be something like this…

Investigation—Traces of Life. Spend ten minutes studying the area; this includes casting Locate Animals and Plants as a ritual. This provides a vague sense of the types of creatures that have been present in the area over the last day.  To study a specific spell, make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. The base difficulty is 10, increased by 3 for every six hours that have passed since the creature was present. If the check is successful, the investigator knows the species of the creature. For every 3 points of success, they can learn an additional detail chosen by the DM. This could be age, hair color, whether they were injured, something about their clothing; whatever could be reasonably deduced. So with a result of 22 they could learn There was an old male dwarf who was wearing heavy armor.   

Right away, these two options highlight a difference between the Medani inquisitive—who can innately cast Detect Magic—and the Tharashk inquisitive, who can Locate Animals and Plants. Medani gets more information about the mystery, while Tharashk excels at finding people! Of course, there’s other skills that can help an investigation without the use of magic. By the rules as written, Medicine allows someone to “determine what killed the recently slain.” Based on the results of the check, this could be as simple as the types of damage they suffered in their final moments (“acid damage”) to a more detailed analysis (“a massive gout of acid that struck them with significant force—perhaps the breath of a dragon.”) Survival allows someone to “follow tracks,” but I’ll also let them use Survival to reconstruct a scene—ranging from “You can tell there were three different humanoids here” to “They entered together, there was a struggle, and the smallest of the three was dragged out.” In both these cases, anyone could make a check to get the basic information, but I’d limit the more advanced details to a character who’s proficient in the skill. A d20 roll is a wild spectrum, and in my campaign I like to give a little weight to Proficiency; it’s not just that you get a bonus to the role, it’s a skill that’s important to you and that you’ve invested time in. 

Of course, there’s a secondary aspect to this: The ability of a master criminal to cover their tracks. Starting with skill alone, Deception is the key. If someone if proficient with Deception and with the skill associated with their style of magic (Arcana for Arcane, Religion for Divine, Nature for Primal) I’ll allow them to attempt to disguise their spellcasting. This works much like using Deception against Insight in a conversation; I’ll have the schemer make a Deception check using their spellcasting ability score, and describe the false signature they are trying to create. With skill alone, I wouldn’t allow this to change Power Type or School; but they could alter the signature, trying to make their Karrnathi Seeker spell feel like a Brelish Vassal spell. Note the Deception score and compare any subsequent Investigation to that score; if the Investigation check is lower, they will be fooled. For someone trying to stage a scene or hide cause of death, I’d likewise require proficiency in both Deception and the relevant skill (Medicine, Survival). Depending on nature of the scene or the injury, true deception might be impossible; it’s hard to make someone who’s been burnt to death appear to have been killed by slashing damage. On the other hand, I’d likely allow the deceiver to try to conceal the actual cause of death—IE, if someone was killed by having their throat cut and the deceiver bashes their skull in with a mace, it’s easy to determine that the creature suffered both slashing and bludgeoning damage; it will take an excellent check to determine which injury was post-mortem. For this sort of use of Deception, I’d personally use an Intelligence (Deception) check.

Since blocking divination tends to be higher than accessing them, what kinds of magical countermeasures could lower casters take to mask their signatures or otherwise throw off the scent of a Wolf?

Mechanically, the core of this is Deception, as described above. The point is that you can do lots of things—cast your Fireball using guano instead of sulfur, using a staff instead of a wand, and so on; but we need a mechanical measure to tell whether the Inquisitive is able to see through your ruse, and that’s where we employ the test of Deception vs Investigation. That’s where we get You can see that they tried to emulate the Aundairian style by using a wand, but the Rekkenmark training is still clear in the scent of the ashes. A commenter suggests the use of unusual components, such as Mabaran crystals, and I think that’s an excellent option; that’s the sort of thing where I’d a) allow someone to make a Deception check even if they don’t have the appropriate proficiencies or b) give someone with appropriate proficiencies advantage on their Deception check. But the point is that the expert investigator should always have a chance to see through the ruse; if there’s a foolproof way to fool even the greatest inquisitive, there’s not much point to telling stories of investigations!

I will say that we haven’t done much discussion on TOOLS that help people get away with murder. An assassin may not have the ability to cast Nondetection or Pass Without Trace, but they could have an amulet that erases their aura to Locate Animals (although in this case, the expert inquisitive might notice the absence of an aura; they can’t get specifics, but they can tell magic was employed to conceal it). Likewise, there definitely should be a “Wand of Silence” that allows someone to drop verbal components when using it as a focus to cast evocation spells. But that’s a concept to explore in another article…

Anyhow, these are house rules I use in my campaign; they may or may not be right for yours! Thanks as always to my Patreon supporters, who make articles like this possible. And since I’ve got Medani on the mind, here’s a bonus: a Medani focus item that amplifies the divinatory powers of the Mark of Detection! 

IFAQ: Mror Manticores and Wyverns of Droaam

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A fierce Wyvern with wings outstretched.
A Wyvern from the 2014 Monster Manual, art by Brynn Metheney.

When time permits, I like to answer questions posed by my Patreon supporters. Questions like…

What are wyverns in Droaam like?

This article talks about wyverns in Thrane, saying…

Wyverns are to Thrane as dragonhawks are to Aundair. For tens of thousands of years, the cliffs around Flamekeep have been home to wyverns. The least of these are typical wyverns as presented in the 5E Monster Manual… generally Large in size and incapable of speech. But there is an exceptional strain of wyverns—typically known as elder wyverns, regardless of their age—that are both more intelligent than their cousins and grow to far greater sizes; as presented in the 3.5 Monster Manual, these wyverns can grow to Gargantuan size. While they are on average less intelligent than humans, elder wyverns are capable of speech. The early settlers of Daskara made peace with the elder wyverns and the rulers of Daskara always had wyvern “advisors.” During the Year of Blood and Fire the wyverns were also threatened by the forces of Bel Shalor, and Tira Miron rallied the elders to her cause; the wyvern Ashtarax carried her in her final confrontation with the forces of Bel Shalor. Following Tira’s sacrifice, the wyverns themselves adopted the faith of the Silver Flame; they consider the defense of Flamekeep to be a sacred duty. The wyverns have relatively little concept of the wider Five Nations and don’t care to know; they serve the church because they believe it serves the Voice of the Flame, and they say that Tira continues to guide them. So, Thrane can field lesser wyverns in battle, but it is the gargantuan elders who spread terror. An elder wyvern can can carry a crew into battle, and early in the war Thrane pioneered new techniques of aerial combat; their trademark was the use of vast bags of holding to drop massive rocks and divinely-infused explosives on their enemies. While the great wyverns lack the powers of dragons, some of the elders have such deep faith that they can channel the power of the Silver Flame; a wyvern might strike at enemies with sacred flame, or even greater powers.

The key part of this sentence is The least of these are typical wyverns as presented in the 5E Monster Manual… generally Large in size and incapable of speech. This is the TYPICAL wyvern found elsewhere in Khorvaire. In the heart of the Five Nations, wyverns were killed off long ago; but they still flourish in the Graywall and Byeshk Mountains, and other parts of the region that is now known as Droaam. These wyverns are carnivorous creatures that don’t have the equivalent of human consciousness and don’t possess a language; they are purely dangerous predators, who will often target goblins or kobolds traveling across the Barrens. Because of this, the Daughters of Sora Kell have placed a bounty on wyverns. The four primary fangs of a wyvern are worth 50 gp each in Droaam; its 46 smaller teeth are worth 10 gp each.

A fierce manticore snarling at the viewer.
A Manticore from the 2014 Monster Manual, illustrated by Zack Stella

What about the Mror manticores?

Manticores are intelligent and can speak. However, it’s a mistake to think that this means that they think like humans. Manticores are carnivorous creatures. They don’t have hands and typically don’t use tools. Because of this, they typically live alone or in small family groups. When the population grows too large for the region to support it, the youngest manticores will leave the clan to establish themselves elsewhere. While manticores can learn to speak humanoid languages, their own form of communication is song. Manticore song has similarities to whalesong and human throat-singing, reaching into ranges beyond human hearing; manticores can hear the songs of distant relatives as far as a hundred miles away. While this is their primary form of communication, manticore song isn’t comprised of individual words and statements; instead, it conveys mood and experience.… A mighty battle, sorrow of pain. Most manticores have no desire to interact with humanoid creatures; they recognize that intelligent foes are dangerous prey, and beyond that, most manticores find humanoid creatures deeply disturbing—monsters with the heads of manticores poised on horrible soft spindly bodies. So most manticores keep to the highest peaks, places inaccessible save by flight, and prey upon beasts. You may hear their songs echoing across the valley, but they want nothing fo do with you.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. On the whole, manticores aren’t religious. For a Mror manticore, singing is a meditative act, something that connects them to distant family; most don’t feel a need to connect to a higher power. But a few do. Manticores are intelligent, and as such the seeds of a Cult of the Dragon Below can take root in their minds. The most pernicious and lasting cult seen among the manticores of the Mror Holds is that of the Wild Heart. Those manticores who hear the song of the Wild Heart feel a call to prove themselves to be apex predators, to seek ever more challenging prey—a desire that drives them to hunt humanoids. These Hunters of the Heart are cruel and clever, delighting in sowing terror and toying with their prey. This is the source of the common myth of the manticore as evil and cruel. These manticores often learn Common or Dwarvish through their ties to the fiend, the better to taunt and terrify their prey. Hunters of the Heart often have the ability to cast Hunter’s Mark; they can only do this once per day and it requires concentration, but they can maintain it for up to 24 hours. These manticores will often start an attack with a strafing run, wounding landbound enemies with their spikes and marking a foe… and then withdraw, only to attack and retreat again and again, using the mark to track their prey.

The Hunters of the Heart have risen and fallen many times over the centuries, but there’s a younger Manticore cult that has only appeared in the last century. In 943 YK, the illithid Dyrrashar broadcast the message known as Dyrrn’s Promise in Lorran’s Gate. There were five manticores in the mountains who received this telepathic message… and it changed them. Scholars would identify them as following the cultic path knows as The Transcendent Flesh. Three of the five have been slain over the course of the century, but two remain at large, and in the past these “Apostles” have corrupted other manticore clans to their cause. “Transcendent” manticores lose their hair and eyes. They receive a +2 bonus to their natural armor class and have Blindsight with a range of 300 feet, and can spit acid. This has a range of 100 feet and inflicts 2d8 acid damage, with the same attack and damage modifier as their Tail Spike attack; this may be done once per round in place of a Rend or Tail Spike attack. The two Apostles of Dyrrn are especially strong and fast; the DM can increase their stats as appropriate to threaten the adventurers facing them. In addition, the apostles regenerate. A Manticore Apostle of Dyrrn regains 10 hit points at the start of each of its turns. This is negated for one turn if the manticore takes damage from a byeshk weapon; an Apostle can only die if it starts its turn at zero hit points and doesn’t regenerate.

There’s one final group of Mror manticores that break all of these traditions. The Harshaak Clan are a family of manticores that dwell in the mountains of Kundarakhold. Long ago, Dolon d’Kundarak climbed the high peaks and bargained with the clan elder. It’s said that Dolon sung the manticore song, though this should be impossible for a humanoid throat. Whatever the truth of it, Dolon forged an alliance between Kundarak and Harshaak. The Harshaak manticores descended to the lower peaks, and through their interactions with the dwarves they were able to increase their numbers far beyond what the natural environment would support in their high aeries. Now Harshaak manticores form bonds with Kundarak riders, working together to patrol over Kundarak vaults; there is a squad of Harshaak manticores stationed at Dreadhold. Having worked with humanoids for centuries, the Harshaak manticores primarily communicate using humanoid languages, and most speak Common and Dwarvish. They usually wear barding to improve their armor class, and some learn to cast Mage Hand to facilitate their lives in humanoid settlements. While the Harshaak still think humanoids are creepy, they’ve grown used to these spindly half-manticores.

It should be noted that the Dark Lantern Thorn reported an encounter with an unusual creature. While she described the creature as a manticore, the analyst Steel noted that the creature possessed a scorpion’s tail and a number of other remarkable qualities; Steel theorized that the creature might have actually been an unusual sphinx or lamassu.

That’s all for now! If you want to see more articles like this one—or to ask your own questions—check out my Patreon!

House Orien: History and Structure

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An image of a unicorn's head superimposed on a lightning rail engine.
The seal of the Transportation Guild, as depicted by Matthew Johnson!

Over the course of this year I’m delving deeper into the Dragonmarked House. Each month I’m writing an article for my Patreon supporters that explores the dragonmark, history, structure, and families of each house, along with story hooks for players and DMs to use. You can find my article about the Mark of Passage here, and if you’re a Patreon supporter, you can find the full article here—and read about the Mark of Detection on Patreon!

THE HISTORY OF HOUSE ORIEN

Most people of the present day know the names of the nations that preceded Galifar—Daskara, Metrol, Thaliost, Wroat, and of course Karrnath. But these names give the deceptive impression that the basic structure of the present day—the cultural dominance of five nations—has always been the case. When the Mark of Passage first appeared, the northwest was a patchwork of lords and leagues. People prospered based on their ability to harness the supernatural resources of the land, and on the bargains they made with fey and other forces. There were a host of freeholds, farm lords, and self-declared kings, and all of them needed something. And in this age, there were those who realized that their path to prosperity lay not in standing still—in tilling the soil or mining for ore—but rather in travel, carrying goods and news between communities. Nineteen hundred years ago, the Mark of Passage bloomed along the roads of this region, taking root in those families that traveled for a living. By this time, people knew what dragonmarks were; the deeds of the House of Cannith and the Sentinel Lords of the north were known far and wide. The new bearers of the Mark of Passage celebrated their good fortune and carried on with their work. Over the course of the next two centuries, most of the marked coalesced around three forces. The Thorn Post was the most reliable system of communication in the region. The Baynes were the most successful merchants in the northwest, while Cordamar caravans were renowned for their reach and safety. While these forces prospered on their own, the example of the House of Cannith inspired Orien Bayne to build something similar. He found a valuable ally in the Nhuli, a family known both for its missionaries and bards; Afki Nhuli declared that Orien was the vessel of Kol Korran, and the Nhuli used their persuasive voices to promote Bayne’s cause. With both gold and his golden tongue, Orien Bayne wooed the Thorns and the Cordamars to his endeavor, promising prosperity for all. It says something of talent that the alliance came to carry his name—not that of Bayne, for no one family was to be placed above another, but of Orien, whose vision paved the way. 

The Orien Alliance grew and prospered over the next two centuries. Soon the Unicorn Post was known across Khorvaire, and Orien caravans pressed further east with every year. While Hadran Vown Cannith and Lyosa Lyrriman Sivis devised the concept of the Twelve, it was unicorn riders who spread the word of it far and wide, and the Orien Alliance embraced the proposed traditions and became House Orien. Five hundred years later, House Orien supported Galifar Wynarn, providing invaluable logistical support to his campaign of unification. And as that united kingdom took shape, Baron Agate Bayne d’Orien presented the grateful Galifar I with a vision of a system of roads that would help to maintain communication and commerce throughout the new kingdom. So Orien established the great trade roads with the blessing and financial support of Galifar. These roads were indeed a boon for Galifar, and even moreso for House Orien. As noted in Frontiers of Eberron: 

The even, well-maintained surface of the road helps travelers maintain a swift pace—while traveling exclusively on Orien trade roads, travelers gain a 10% bonus to their travel pace. A vehicle or mount carrying a passenger with the Dragonmark of Passage can add an additional 10% to its pace; the passive enchantments worked into the road are triggered by the Mark of Passage, enhancing the momentum of the Orien heir and their mount. 

Throughout the history of Galifar, House Orien has been a reliable part of everyday life. Every house and nation relies on Orien shipping, and the Unicorn Post allowed people across Khorvaire to stay in touch even during the worst days of the Last War. The Passage Ring provided the invaluable (albeit very limited) service of teleportation to the rulers of Galifar. The greatest leap in the history of the house came in the Ninth Century, when Cannith and Orien unveiled the Lightning Rail. Over the course of the next century, Orien’s star grew ever brighter. And then the Last War came and shook the house to its core. On the one hand, every nation depended on House Orien to help maintain supply lines—and recognizing this invaluable service, leaders initially pledged not to target Orien infrastructure in the war. But a century of war knows no promises. Some roads and rails were intentionally targeted; others were unintended collateral damage. The rise of Darguun devastated Orien’s operations in the region, but this was merely a precursor to the horror of the Mourning. Orien is still reeling from the loss of its Cyran routes. The house is negotiating with Thrane and Karrnath in the hopes of rebuilding the White Arch Bridge. For now it is relying on temporary solutions—but the humiliating truth is that Orien usually has to rely on Lyrandar services to cross from east to west. This tension is exacerbated by the emergence of the Lyrandar airship, a development that threatens to completely upend travel and shipping. For a thousand years, Orien has been a stable foundation of life in Khorvaire. But this last decade has left it shaken, and leadership is desperately searching for a path forward. 

What Happens Next? House Orien continues to play a crucial role in the daily life of the Five Nations. Thunder coaches and the Unicorn Post rumble along the trade roads. Orien crews work at all hours repairing the damage that lingers from the Last War. But this isn’t enough. Orien leadership believes they need something to counter the rise of House Lyrandar. These are a few of their prominent projects.

  • The Passage Ring. House Orien believes that teleportation is the future of the house. Who needs to fly if you can get to your destination in the blink of an eye? However, as discussed earlier in this article this is limited by the number of heirs with the Greater Mark of Passage and the fact that most such heirs can only cast Teleportation Circle once per day. The Passage Ring is working to develop a more affordable form of the Helm of Teleportation; to find a way to maintain a Teleportation Circle for an extended period of time, so more passengers could cross in a single casting; and to create a form of Teleportation Circle that draws from an independent power source. This work is dangerous. Orien heirs could easily be lost in this research; in a serious mishap a chunk of Passage itself could be teleported across the world. Adventurers could be assigned to “test drive” experimental gates, or to help acquire exotic components that could be the key to an extended gate.  
  • Shortcuts. Khyber demiplanes often have entry points at multiple locations in Eberron, but the space within the demiplane itself doesn’t match the geography of the Material Plane. You can enter the Ironlands in the Demon Wastes, walk three miles, and emerge in Darguun. Baron Kwanti is fascinated by this phenomenon and dreams of finding a way to take advantage of it for commercial purposes—to bore passages into a demiplane, run a lightning rail through it, and be able to cross Khorvaire in under an hour. The nature of an adventure depends on how far along Orien is with their work. If they’re brought in early, adventurers could be scouts hired to investigate a newly discovered demiplane entrance—entering the demiplane, identifying its dangers, trying to locate other exits, and determining their locations in the Material Plane. Alternately, adventurers could be hired as guardians to protect the Orien team that’s establishing transit operations within a demiplane—fighting fiends or aberrations as workers place a warded line of conductor stones. Or, it could be that adventurers are brought in after the maiden voyage of the first demiplane train—because someone needs to enter the train and wipe out whatever’s now on board before it reaches Sharn. 
  • The Mourning Rail. Baron Kwanti yearns to establish a rail line across the Mournland. He believes that if the conductor stones were laid, the coaches’ speed would protect them from the effects of the Mourning. The consensus of the Twelve is that this is a foolish idea; even if the train itself wasn’t destroyed by the Mourning, odds are good that the new conductor stones would be corrupted or destroyed. Despite these expert opinions, Kwanti is determined to proceed with this project. Adventurers could be tasked with protecting the team laying the conductor stones as they move deeper into the Mournland; with recovering resources within the Mournland that could be repurposed for this cause (notably, wrecks of lightning rails caught in the Mourning itself). Another possibility is that they could be sent to investigate rumors of ANOTHER ’Mourning Rail” that has been sited traveling across ruined rails: Cyre 1313. 

THE SHAPE OF THE HOUSE

House Orien is the most widespread of all of the Dragonmarked Houses. It has outposts in virtually every significant town in the Five Nations, as well as most of the Thronehold nations. However, most of these outposts are extremely small—they are designed to support the Unicorn Post and to offer relief or maintenance to Thunder Coaches and caravans passing through the area. Such a post might have a single bunk, a space for storing goods and sorting mail, and a trunk of holding with supplies needed to repair damaged vehicles. The most basic outposts are typically maintained by local, unmarked employees. The Mark of Passage helps people move between towns; in a small town, they don’t need an actual heir to deliver the mail to the door. Larger outposts will have a marked courier ready to run goods to their final destination as soon as they come off the coach. A large outpost will often incorporate a Sivis Speaking Stone, with a courier ready to deliver messages to their intended recipients; they may also have a Vadalis farrier in residence to care for the beasts used by the coaches and caravans. 

So House Orien has small outposts all across Khorvaire. It has major enclaves in Sharn, Wroat, Varna, Flamekeep, Korth, Trolanport, Fairhaven, and Krona Peak. The Baron’s seat is the enclave of Journey’s End in the Aundairian town of Passage; House Orien employs nearly half the adult population of Passage. In addition, House Orien has three mobile enclaves—custom lighting rails coaches—that travel along the conductor stones, allowing the house to focus its resources on critical projects (usually, negotiations involving the expansion of the lightning rail). While Journey’s End is the heart of the house, Baron Kwanti d’Orien has the wanderlust that drives everyone who carries the Mark of Passage, and he spends much of his time on his own enclave-train—the Free Passage. Luxuriously appointed, Free Passage contains a Speaking Stone (with a Sivis operator) that allows Kwanti to conduct business wherever he may be. Recently he’s installed a Teleportation Circle in the train itself. Some house artificers fear that invoking the circle while the train is in motion carries risks, but it’s functioning normally… so far. 

The Courier’s Guild

Before the Mark of Passage appeared, the Thorn Post served people in what is now Aundair, Thrane, and northern Breland. The Thorn Post was the most reliable delivery service of its age. Its riders were renowned for their determination and their honesty, and they overcame brigands, weather, and countless other challenges in the course of their duties. The Courier’s Guild grew from this seed. While initially there was tension when House Sivis developed the Speaking Stone, today Orien and Sivis are strong allies that work closely together. When you send a message with a Speaking Stone you pay by the word, and even though Sivis has earned broad trust for keeping the contents of its messages confidential, the sender still has to dictate their message and be willing to have it be read by the clerks on both ends. Which means that it’s not the ideal medium for a 25 page love letter or the details of a plan to blow up the Brelish parliament. Beyond this, you can only send messages from one stone to another. If you’re in Clifftop in Sharn, you can use a Speaking Stone to send a message to Ardev, but you can’t send a message to Quickstone; the town doesn’t have a working stone. Beyond that, you can send a message to Ardev, but unless your intended recipient knows to go to the station to pick up the message, how will it get to them? This is where the Sivis-Orien alliance comes in. The Courier’s Guild maintains corps of runners who handle local deliveries within towns; add one gold piece to the cost and your message will be carried from the stone station to its final destination.

With this in mind, the Courier’s Guild has two distinct divisions. The Unicorn Post is the largest component of the guild. This is the postal service of Khorvaire, delivering messages and packages to any community on its service map. While the popular image is of a unicorn rider racing along the road with a bag of mail, guild operations use many different systems to move massive quantities of mail. The enclaves mentioned earlier are major hubs with ties to the Kundarak Vault Network. This allows bags of mail to be passed from one hub to another. From these hubs, bags of mail will be transferred to a lightning rail or Thunder Coach; street runners or unicorn riders will carry the mail to its final destination. While unicorn riders are always marked, street runners usually aren’t. What’s most important for a street runner is knowledge of the town and reliability. As such, Orien prefers to work with families that have proven themselves to be trustworthy and reliable; in many towns, there’s a family or two that has no blood connection to the house, but has worked with the Courier’s Guild for generations. 

The Unicorn Post is the main business of the Courier’s Guild, but there is a second branch: the Outriders. These rugged individuals are House Orien’s answer to the Sentinel Marshals. They are the most capable and respected scions of the house, trusted to deliver messages or packages of utmost importance. The Unicorn Post only delivers to Thronehold Nations and only to relatively civilized areas. The Post runs to the Rukhaan Draal, but if you need to deliver a message to a dangerous part of Darguun, or to Blood Crescent in the Demon Wastes, or to someone last seen in Stormreach, you need an Outrider. Outriders will subcontract with scions of other houses as necessary to accomplish their missions; notably, if the target of the delivery is in motion, an Outrider will hire a Tharashk tracker to help locate them, and if the region is dangerous they may employ a Denieth bodyguard. This can be an interesting option for a one shot or even a campaign: the player characters are an Outrider team tasked to deliver messages to some of the most dangerous places across Khorvaire. There is no standard rate for an Outrider delivery; the costs will be set on a case by case basis, reflecting the supplies, staff, and dangers of the mission. 

The Transportation Guild

While the Unicorn Post is an iconic aspect of House Orien, the Transportation Guild is far larger and more crucial to the ongoing stability of the house. The guild has a number of major branches; ask a Scion what they do and they’ll say “I work for the Road.” These are the most important branches of the Transportation Guild. 

  • The ROAD runs the caravans and Thunder Coaches, managing the transportation of goods along roads. 
  • The RAIL operates the Lightning Rail. Agents of the Rail like to cast themselves as the heart of the house; they see the Road as outdated and the Portal as too small to be relevant. 
  • The PORTAL oversees the teleportation circles. It is the smallest arm of the Guild, but because the house charges such a high price for its services, the Portal is quite profitable, and many believe it is the future of Orien. The Passage Ring is a separate entity focused on research and development; it works with the Portal, but the Portal deals with the practical business of teleportation services. 
  • CONTINUANCE maintains the infrastructure that makes transportation possible. The Road and Rail repair their own vehicles, but it is Continuance that maintains the roads, rails, and circles themselves. This requires close interaction with the nations through which the services run, though negotiations are typically handled by the Purse.  
  • The INITIATIVE develops new rail lines and expands and improves roads. As with Continuance, the Initiative works with local authorities to improve infrastructure and split costs.
  • The PURSE manages negotiation and finance. House Orien transports freight for other people, but through the Purse it also engages in simple speculation, buying bulk goods it can resell at a profit elsewhere in Khorvaire. In addition to overseeing these operations, the Purse handles negotiations on behalf of the other branches of the Guild—working with Continuance and the Initiative to secure the rights to build and convince the resident nation to fund the construction (as Orien’s roads and other infrastructure benefit the citizens of the nations). Orien had a long-standing relationship with the united Galifar that covered this, but now the house is having to renegotiate these agreements. Darguun and Valenar have proven especially difficult to negotiate with. While the Five Nations haven’t recognized Droaam, House Orien has been working with the Daughters of Sora Kell—an agreement whose fruits can be seen in the trade road that runs to Graywall and the lightning rail line heading in that direction. 

Guild Employees

As the most widespread of the dragonmarked houses, it’s no surprise that House Orien has one of the largest workforces of the houses. However, the vast majority of Orien employees aren’t part of the house or bloodline. The House needs its dragonmarked scions to move things; it needs them on the roads and rails. But this requires a massive support staff—the people who work the warehouses, sort the mail, lay conductor stones, and much more—and these people don’t have to have dragonmarks to do their jobs. As noted earlier, in cities with Orien enclaves there are many families that have served with one of the Orien guilds for generations. While they aren’t part of the dragonmarked bloodlines, these are effectively a secondary layer of the house; as they work closely with the scions, it’s not unusual for members of these families to marry into the house itself. Unmarked Orien heirs often serve in leadership positions in the Guild arms, especially the Purse. But if the task doesn’t require movement, talent and motivation are more important than a dragonmarked bloodline. You need a dragonmark to pilot a lightning rail, but the regional director who makes sure the trains are on schedule could be a shifter or a dwarf with no blood tie to the house. There’s even some outer families that have gained special recognition within the house itself. Here’s a few examples. 

  • The Roof Runners. The Grigoras are a family of shifters in Sharn that have long served as street runners for the Courier’s Guild, delivering messages and packages within the city. Most Grigora shifters have Swiftstride traits, and they are experts in swift and acrobatic movement, leaping across roofs and bridges. 
  • The Khaar’paal. While expanding the lightning rail into western Breland, House Orien formed an alliance with a clan of kobolds who dwell in the Graywall Mountains. These Khaar’paal (Spellblood) kobolds have an affinity for electrical energy that helps them set and activate conductor stones. Currently, Orien is employing the Khaar’paal as it extends the lightning rail into Breland, but the House is seeking to hire more Khaar’paal to work across Khorvaire. 
  • Orlo Matayne. The Mataynes are a family of Aundairan dwarves with deep ties to the Transportation Guild. In particular, Orlo Matayne has been serving with the Initiative for over two hundred years. Tunnels are his specialty. He has helped the house drive passages through hill and mountain, and he has overseen the construction of subterranean facilities such as the supposed location of Shadowstep (see below!). When Orien needs to shift a lot of earth, you can bet they’ll get Orlo Matayne on the next train. 

The Baron’s Council

In principle, the Baron is the ultimate authority within a dragonmarked house. Within House Orien, leaders have always sought consensus. The Baron’s Council is composed of nine people: three from the Courier’s Guild, three from the Transportation Guild, and three chosen by the Baron to represent the interests of the house itself—traditionally one from each of the three great families aside from that of the Baron. While in theory this is an advisory council, in practice Kwanti won’t move forward on a project without the support of two-thirds of the members of the council. While the three Councilors appointed by the Baron are always members of the dragonmarked bloodlines, the other six councilors are appointed from within the Guilds themselves; at the moment, there are two councilors who aren’t directly tied to a house bloodline. 

That’s all for now, and it’s my final post on House Orien. If you want to know about families, customs, and story hooks you can find the full article here, and you can read about the Mark of Detection on Patreon! Patron support is what determines how much time I can spend on articles like this, so if you want to see more, check it ou.

Dragonmarks: Teleportation Circles

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A humanoid figure walking toward a circular portal
Portal by Adrien Coquet on Noun Project

In Eberron, House Orien maintains a network of teleportation circles that allow heirs to move between the enclaves of the house. This provides a quick—but expensive—way to get from Sharn to Flamekeep in the blink of an eye. But what happens when a player character learns the Teleportation Circle spell? Can they piggyback on the Orien system? If not, what can they do with Teleportation Circle? 

As always, the most important question is what’s the story you’re telling in your campaign? Adventurers with free access to the Orien network can jump between the main cities of Khorvaire and Stormreach whenever they feel like it; the world’s suddenly a much smaller place. Is that something you want for your story, or do you want long distances to pose a challenge? I discuss this in more detail in this article, but the short version is that adventurers who want to use the Orien network will need to have some sort of connection to the house—by blood, by joining the Transportation Guild, or by forging an alliance with an Orien patron. If that’s the story you want, those are all options. But in my opinion, Teleportation Circle can be a more interesting spell if you DON’T have access to the Orien circles. Let’s look at the spell itself. 

When you first gain the ability to cast (Teleportation Circle) you learn the sigil sequences for two destinations on the Material Plane, determined by the DM. You might learn additional sigil sequences during your adventures.

The base version of the spell gives the adventurer two destinations—with the possibility of learning more, but no assurance of it. The DM chooses those initial locations, not the player. How should they choose? Well, let’s set aside mechanics for a moment and look at the story. HOW is the adventurer learning the spell, and what does this suggest about their destinations? As a DM, the first location I’d give an adventurer is their current home base. Whether this is their bastion or the room they’re renting at an inn, the idea is that they’ve stumbled onto the principles of teleportation as a fluke and made a circle of their very own. Among other things, this is practical. The adventurers may not be able to cross the world whenever they feel like it, but they can always use the spell to go home. But what about that second location? In MY campaign, there are a number of different established networks of teleportation circles across the world. These networks are not connected to one another. They operate on entirely different principles; the Orien network draws on the Mark of Passage, while the Riedran network uses psionic power and basically turns you into an idea for an instant. So when a player character learns Teleportation Circle, my MY campaign what they have done is stumbled across one form of the principles of teleportation and established a connection to one of these existing networks. So they have a connection to the circle they’ve made in their home base, and then they have a connection to a circle they’ve discovered through mystic experimentation—with, potentially, no idea who made that circle, or where other circles might be. My choice of that circle will very much depend on the direction of the campaign. If I want to get the players to Q’barra to deal with the Poison Dusk, then congratulations, you’ve discovered a forgotten circle made by the fallen Dragonborn empire; it takes you to the jungles near Ka’rashan. If I want things to shift to Xen’drik, then you’ve found a Cul’sir circle in a ruined corner of Stormreach. If I WANT to connect you to Orien, great, your second circle is the circle in Journey’s End—and when you accidentally appear there, Baron Kwanti is going to offer you a job. 

The point of this is that the first circle is a safe haven, and the second circle is an invitation to adventure. The spellcaster will probably want to learn more about the network they’ve stumbled into. And part of this is that I would allow the adventurer to memorize and connect to new circles that they discover—but only within the network they are familiar with. Again, different networks work on entirely different principles. A wizard who’s learned to connect to the ancient Dragonborn network can connect to other Trothlorsvek circles (if they can find them) but they can’t just casually connect to an Orien circle. It’s possible that a remarkable individual (like an adventurer) could make a breakthrough that would allow them to bridge the gap and forge a connection to a new circle, but that would be an adventure and might require help from an expert on the target network, some sort of magic item, and other obstacles that would make it a challenging adventure. Initially, however, the spellcaster can only expand their repertoire by finding other circles within their own network. 

With that in mind, let’s consider some teleportation circle networks… and the roles they could play in a campaign. 

House Orien. The House of Passage maintains circles in enclaves and outposts in major cities across the Five Nations, as well as in Stormreach. Orien circles are grounded in arcane science, but specifically draw on the energy of the Mark of Passage. It should be impossible for someone to use an Orien circle unless they have the Mark of Passage. In spite of this, Orien circle chambers are heavily fortified, and are usually sealed from the outside with an Arcane Lock when not in use. Even though it supposedly takes a dragonmark to use the circle, that still leaves the potential of excoriates or foundlings using a circle. 

The Guild of Endless Doors. As described in this article, the Guild of Endless Doors is an Aundairian wizard circle devoted to the study of teleportation; it pioneered the form of Misty Step taught at Arcanix. The Guild has constructed a handful of teleportation circles, but these circles aren’t as widespread as the Orien network and the Guild only has two or three members capable of using them. An adventurer tied to the Endless Door network (a connection that could be established after accidentally stumbling into their network) could work with the Guild to actively expand their network of circles. 

The Court of Shadows. The overlord Sul Khatesh has a Court of Shadows scattered across Khorvaire, warlocks and wizards who pledge their loyalty to their sinister queen in exchange for arcane secrets. Those who hold high rank within the Court gain access to a network of shadow gates, mostly hidden in desolate but public places—ruins, condemned buildings, back alleys. This allows agents of the Court to slip across the world without drawing attention. Many members of the Court don’t have the ability to cast Teleportation Circle themselves, but they are often given amulets or tokens that allow them to use the gates a limited number of times, though there might be an additional cost to using a gate in this way; Sul Khatesh might demand that the user uncover a secret before they can use the gate again, or she might steal memories from the mind of the traveler; if they use the gates too often, they’ll lose their identity.

The shadow gates are invisible to anyone who’s not part of the Court, but can be seen by anyone using See Invisibility or Truesight. An adventurer could gain access to this network by serving as a warlock of Sul Khatesh… but it’s possible that they could stumble onto it without knowing its origin. The Court of Shadows doesn’t have many members, and the gates are protected by their invisibility; as such, the gates typically aren’t secured or watched, making it possible for adventurers to use them. Of course in doing so, they may be unwittingly sharing their secrets with Sul Khatesh…

Fey Circles. Teleportation circles are sometimes found in Thelanian manifest zones, connecting to one another. These circles can often be used without actually the need to cast Teleportation Circle, but only under very specific circumstances. A Fey circle might only activate under the light of a particular set of full moons, or when watered by heartfelt tears or the blood of an innocent. Most likely, locals in the area will know a story about the circle that hints at the activation ritual. Of course, the circles it connects to have their own entirely different rituals, so the common story is Go into Willoughby Grove when five moons are shining down and you’ll never be seen again. These restrictions only apply to using the circle WITHOUT casting the spell. If you can cast Teleportation Circle and have a connection to the network, you can activate a circle whenever you want. Fey circles are typically used by Greensingers and by Archfey warlocks, but it’s possible a wizard could forge a connection to a Thelanian gate by accident. 

The Ossaluri. Long ago, the dragonborn challenged the Dhakaani goblins for control of eastern Khorvaire. Ruins and relics of this civilization can still be found in Q’barra, the Talenta Plains, the Blade Desert, and even parts of the Lhazaar Principalities. These include the teleportation circles they called the Ossaluri Saryn, “travel stones.” The Trothslorvek shun their old holdings and haven’t used these circles in thousands of years, but they function on principles of arcane science and a modern wizard could stumble upon them. Of course, the Dragonborn learned magic from the dragons of Argonnessen, and it’s possible that a wizard who begins using the Ossaluri could end up connecting to a wider network of circles being used by the Chamber! 

These are just a few examples. The Chamber certainly has circles hidden around, allowing quick transit from Argonnessen to Khorvaire and elsewhere in the world. The Lords of Dust aren’t a monolithic organization and wouldn’t have one circle network that all members use, but many of the individual prakhutus might have their own small networks for their agents. The Cul’sir Dominion built teleportation circles in Xen’drik—the question there is whether the Curse of the Traveler has destabilized these circles! The Inspired have their own network, but the circles are primarily located in Riedra, and as they are based on the psionic power of the Inspired and charged by the Hanbalani monoliths, connecting them to an arcane network would be a remarkable feat. The wizards of Aerenal also have the power to create teleportation circles; the question is whether they’ve actually established any beyond their island, or if they rely on the Undying Court to maintain them. One question that’s come up with whether the Aurum or the governments of the Five Nations have their own teleportation circle networks. In my campaign, none of the Thronehold nations have teleportation circle networks, just as none of them have Speaking Stone networks, fleets of airships, or medical facilities on par with House Jorasco. Teleportation is not part of everyday life in the Five Nations. It is a rare and expensive service that isn’t always available even to those who have the gold to pay for it. If the King’s Dark Lanterns want to teleport somewhere, they need to use an Orien circle—whether by paying for it or by hijacking one, as seen in my novel The Fading Dream. This ties to the basic point that the nations rely on the Dragonmarked houses for many important services. Aundair is the closest to developing an alternative to the Orien network thanks to the Guild of Endless Doors, but the Guild’s program is supposed to be an early, struggling effort that has only a handful of circles… and if it starts to spread, there’s the very real risk that the Twelve will seek to sabotage it.

A final point to consider: at the start of all of this I suggested that the adventurer begins with a permanent circle in their base of operations. Given that, can they make new permanent circles and establish their own network? For me the idea is that the adventurer creating a permanent circle is either a culmination of long effort or a complete fluke (such as a gift from a warlock’s patron)—and that in either case, it’s not something that can be easily replicated. If an adventurer wanted to create a new circle, I’d establish a process. An arcane circle would require exotic materials—I’m thinking Khyber shards, as they are binding space together—and a significant amount of time. A fey circle could be much simpler—maybe you actually paint a door, or even draw it in chalk—but would then require a more abstract personal sacrifice to imbue it with power, likely involving a bargain with an Archfey. So in my campaign it would be possible to establish new circles, but it wouldn’t be a trivial thing. What about the method suggested in the spell itself—casting the spell in the same place for 365 consecutive days? In my campaign, this isn’t the normal way to make a circle, but I might allow it if a player character somehow actually has the opportunity to do it, based on the concept that they are ripping apart the fabric of space. But it’s not how House Orien makes their circles; they construct them like magic items, working with specialists from Orien and Cannith, using Siberys shards to draw on the Mark of Passage and Eberron shards to pay for the focusing rituals.

Ultimately, it’s up to the DM to decide who has teleportation networks and how actively they’re used. The Chamber COULD have a comprehensive network with more circles in Khorvaire than Orien—or they could have just a handful at key locations. There could be lots of Fey circles, or just a few—and those ones in dangerous locations. Consider what works best for your story!

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

The nature of teleportation circles is especially critical if you have or are a player whose character is about to learn the spell. What can you expect to get out of it? The one thing you’ll always get in my campaign is the ability to retreat to your safe haven. Beyond that, you will get access to something that could be practical and useful (Orien or the Guild of Endless Doors), mysterious and dangerous (A Cul’sir circle deep in Xen’drik) or something in between (the Court of Shadows, which is useful until they find out you’re using it). But even if you’re in a low-level campaign where adventurers don’t have access to the spell, the fact that it exists is something that can play an important role in a campaign. Consider the following…

  • Legitimate Service. House Orien provides teleportation between major cities as a legitimate service for those who can afford it. However, as discussed in this article, an enclave might only be able to activate the circle a limited number of times each day; if there’s no Greater heir in residence, you’ll have to wait. This is a way to allow a villain who’s a few steps ahead of the adventurers to beat a hasty retreat, taking the last Orien heir out of Sharn…
  • Nefarious Mystery. Anyone could be a member of the Court of Shadows, and their hidden network of gates lets them slip across Khorvaire. This is a way to give a relatively minor villain an escape and to hint at a greater mystery or threat; this alley is a dead end, where did they go? Because it’s unguarded, the Shadow network is also a good one for adventurers to use themselves. It’s also up to the DM to decide what it takes for the cultists to establish a new gate. The answer is probably unpleasant (A sacrifice? A soul?) but this is a case where a gate could be established somewhere unexpected, like the cellar of the adventurer’s favorite inn.
  • One-Way Trip. If adventurers can’t cast the spell themselves, they could be surprised when they unexpectedly trigger the activation conditions of a Fey circle and find themselves in another part of the world—potentially, a dangerous one. What will it take to get home?
  • Practical Infrastructure. The Riedran network of teleportation circles plays a vital role in daily life. The Inspired use the gates to transport troops and supplies across the length of their domain. Sabotaging this network would temporarily throw Riedra into chaos; while piggybacking on a cargo shipment could be a way for adventurers in Sarlona to reach an important destination.

As always, thanks to my Patreon supporters for making these articles possible. I’ll be holding a live Q&A on Saturday, April 26 at 10 AM Pacific Time answering questions posed by patrons!

Lesser and Greater Dragonmarks in 2025

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A swordsman projects an energy shield from his Mark of Sentinel.
A Deneith heir using the Mark of Sentinel, by Matthew Johnson

Over the course of the next year I’m writing a series of articles about the Dragonmarked Houses. The point of these articles is to provide my take on the houses—their culture, history, and hooks for characters or NPCs from those houses. As always, this work is kanon—it’s how I use the houses in MY campaign and may contradict or ignore elements of canon lore. I’ve already written one of these articles, about House Orien. I’ve also written an article that considers various aspects of dragonmarks and how they work. But that’s a long, speculative article, and I want to call out a specific element that I will be using as kanon in all of the articles I’m writing from this point on… and that concerns Lesser and Greater Dragonmarks.

When Eberron was originally released, Dragonmarks were a chain of three feats. The first feat gave you the Least Mark, which gave you access to 1st or 2nd level spell effects. Lesser Dragonmark was a second feat that gave you access to a 3rd or 4th level spell. Greater Dragonmark was the final link in the chain, providing access to a spell of 5th level or more. In addition, the Dragonmarked Heir prestige class gave a character with a Dragonmark greater use of its powers; and the Dragonmarked sourcebook provided a host of additional feats that enhanced marks. Fourth and Fifth Edition abandoned this approach. Instead, the basic Dragonmark feat provides access to “Spells of the Mark”, a set of spells that are added to the class list of any spellcasting character who carries a mark. These mirror the original spell lists of the 3.5 Dragonmarks, but are inaccessible unless the bearer can cast spells. The Potent Dragonmark feat offers a way around this. Instead of just adding the Spells of the Mark to the list of spells a marked character can prepare, it says that the character always has those spells prepared… and grants the bearer a spell slot of up to 5th level that can be used to cast Spells of the Mark, which they regain after a short rest. Finally, the Unearthed Arcana article presents a set of “Greater Dragonmark” feats. But these don’t provide access to new spells; they simply enhance the effects of a dragonmark, and are more like the mark-enhancing feats in Dragonmarked than the original Greater Dragonmarks.

With this in mind, here is how I am dealing with dragonmarks going forward.

  • The size and designation of a Dragonmark—Least, Lesser, Greater—is determined by the highest level Spell of the Mark the bearer is capable of casting, whether through Spellcasting or the Potent Dragonmark feat. Anyone who possesses a Dragonmark begins with the Least Mark. When they gain the ability to cast a 3rd level Spell of the Mark their mark increases in size, becoming a Lesser Mark. When they gain the ability to cast a 5th level Spell of the Mark, the mark grows again, and is recognized as a Greater Dragonmark.
  • Dragonmarked NPCs who are spellcasters can add their Spells of the Mark to the list of spells they can cast. If they aren’t spellcasters, my default approach would be to follow the example of the 3.5 Mark, and to give the ability to cast a spell from each level of their Dragonmark (Least, Lesser, Greater) once per day.
  • While this is a good general model for NPCs, specific NPCs could squeeze more out of their marks—just as the Dragonmarked Heir prestige class and Dragonmarked feats allowed in 3.5. They could also have one of the Dragonmark Focus Items presented in Exploring Eberron. A second point is that while a player character would have to be 9th level to get access to 5th level spell slots and thus, a Greater Dragonmark, an NPC could have a Greater Dragonmark without having the power of a 9th level adventurer. The heir who activates the Orien Teleportation Circle for you may have a Greater Dragonmark, but aside from their Dragonmark they could have the stat block of a Scout.

So in my Dragonmark articles, when I refer to a character as having a Greater Dragonmark, I mean that they have the ability to cast 5th level spells of the Mark. I am not addressing Siberys Marks at the moment. In 3.5 they were an entirely separate thing from the Dragonmark feat chain, and so rare that they weren’t a standard part of the services offered by the houses… so I’m not worrying about them here.

That’s all for now! Thanks to my Patreon supporters for making these articles possible. And it’s my Patreon supporters who have chosen House Medani as the topic of my next article, and who will get to see pieces of that article as I develop it.

Legacy of Worlds: Ravenloft!

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An image of a shadowy hooded figure looming over a collection of cards bearing the likenesses of eight adventurers, with the words LEGACY OF WORLDS.

At 6 PM Eastern Time on April 16th, 2025, a new season of Legacy of Worlds launches on the Six Sides of Gaming channel on YouTube. I love this season, and I wanted to give those of you who may not be familiar with Legacy of Worlds enough information for you to jump in at this point, even if you haven’t seen any of the previous episodes. 

Four adventurers standing in front of a wall—Thomas Gofton, Keith Baker, Elisa Teague, and Ed Greenwood—each holding a card from the Deck of Many Things.

WHAT IS LEGACY OF WORLDS? 

Legacy of Worlds is a D&D Liveplay show. The players are all game designers and world builders, playing some of our favorite characters from the worlds we love. 

  • Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms, is playing Elminster of Shadowdale. 
  • Elisa Teague is playing Elise of Lamordia from Ravenloft. 
  • Luke Gygax is playing Melf of Grayhawk. Every time you cast Melf’s Acid Arrow, he gets a copper piece. 
  • Thomas Gofton is playing Loholt Lynnvander, paladin and prince from his world of Imaria.  

… And I’m playing Merrix d’Cannith, Artificer, Baron, and self-declared supergenius. But the canonical Merrix isn’t a 20th level artificer, nor is he a champion; likewise, when I run an Eberron campaign I prefer to keep the setting isolated from the rest of the Multiverse. The point of Legacy of Worlds is that it’s a WHAT IF scenario. What if Eberron was part of the Multiverse? What if champions from all the settings joined forces to deal with a threat that touches all of our worlds? So the Merrix I’m playing isn’t the canonical Merrix, because it’s Merrix as a player character. And beyond that, to justify the jump to 20th level, I’ve said that my Merrix is from an Eberron that’s advanced to 1018 YK. It’s a possible Eberron, where Merrix is the Baron of a reunited Cannith (even though Jorlanna manages most of the business). And it’s a world in which Merrix has gone from ruthless businessman to would-be hero… even if he’s still always keeping an eye out for profit.

In the first season of Legacy of Worlds the five of us were pulled together by a disaster on Sigil. When the work of the Planar Energy Collective was disrupted by a mysterious villain, arcane power was drained from all of our worlds—wreaking havoc on Magic-dependent Eberron! The drained power was tied to the Deck of Many Things that Elise had been guarding, and the cards were scattered across the Multiverse. So in that first season we went from world to world—to Athas, Toril, Mystara, Eberron, Grayhawk, Imaria, and Aebrynis—tracking down the scattered cards. But there was one setting we didn’t go to: the Dread Domains of Ravenloft. Elise was from Ravenloft, but there were hints that Merrix had spent a significant amount of time there as well—that he and Elise shared a past neither wanted to talk about. In the finale of Season One we learned that we’re facing a villain from Imaria who was drawing on the power of Vecna and the Book of Vile Darkness—and that our only hope of stopping them lay in Ravenloft. 

Players sitting around a table—Luke Gygax, Ed Greenwood, Keith Baker, Elisa Teague, and Thomas Gofton.

Can I Jump In With Season Two?

Season Two of Legacy of Worlds launches tonight. The premiere is at 6 PM Eastern time on YouTube, and I’ll be hanging out in chat with other members of the cast. Even if you miss the premiere, after 6 PM tonight it will be up on YouTube! But in answer to the question, yes, you can start with Season Two. The story of Season Two is tighter and more focused than Season One, because instead of going to an entirely new setting every few episodes, we’re spending this entire season in Ravenloft… and we’re not sure there’s actually a way for us to escape! One of the things I enjoy about this season is that Ravenloft itself serves to mitigate the power of our characters. As 20th level characters (and in the case of Elminster, 20+) we’re all very powerful. But in Ravenloft, too much power wielded unwisely can be more dangerous than any enemy. The last thing the multiverse needs is to have Melf or Elminster become a darklord, and that’s always a risk. Beyond that, there’s a tighter, ongoing focus—as well as the questions of Merrix and Elise’s past connection and why they’ve never shared the details with the rest of the party. 

So to jump in tonight, what do you need to know? Here’s the basics. 

  • We’re five adventurers from five different worlds. We’re all 20th level characters, remarkable people within our own worlds, working to stop the mysterious Trelyle and/or Vecna from destabilizing reality. 
  • Over the course of the last season we established a base of operations on Sigil at the headquarters of the Planar Energy Collective. We got arcane tattoos allowing us to communicate telepathically over long distances. 
  • Melf is an elf bladesinger wizard. He has a strong drive to smite evil and hates the idea of moral compromise; he’s often the quickest to roll initiative when there’s a villain in the scene. He carries the Spear of Xagyg, an artifact that lets him fly, turn invisible, and planeshift. 
  • Loholt Lynnvander is a paladin, chronomancer, and bard. Time magic plays an important role in the Imaria setting, and Loholt uses subclasses and spells from that setting, so he will do cool things you’ve probably never seen before. He was born into a royal line, but has always resisted accepting a crown, instead fighting to overthrow a tyrannical emperor. He carries the sword Amberfang, a powerful artifact from Imaria, and has a figuring of wondrous power of a faithful pegasus, Banquo. 
  • Elminster is… Elminster. Chosen of Mystra, wielder of the Silver Fire (totally different from the Silver Flame of Eberron, and no, that never gets confusing), an archmage with a tower filled with artifacts. He’s an experienced planar traveler who knows the Lady of Pain and Strahd. Between his arsenal of treasures, gifts from Mystra and millennia of experience he’s the most powerful member of the group, especially when he’s on Toril. He usually prefers to use that power sparingly… but he’s not beyond dropping a meteor swarm or disintegrating a villain if the conversation gets boring. 
  • Elise is the most mysterious member of the group. She is Reborn, sustained by the power of her Unbreakable Heart. She is a fighter and a cleric, though her divine power is drawn from her Heart instead of a god. She has ties to the Vistani and a knack for cursing enemies. She is also a cartomancer, and frequently seeks glimpses of the future by drawing cards from her oracle deck. I will note that ELISA is actually drawing these cards straight up: her readings aren’t staged in any way, but there’s been some remarkably accurate spreads! Elise and Merrix have shared history in Ravenloft, and are also the most pragmatic members of the group. During a trip to Eberron, Merrix made a Flametongue battleaxe for her, which triggers on the phrase Hello, Hot Stuff. 
  • Merrix began his journey long ago being driven purely by profit. Over the last 20 years (in game) he’s slowly been becoming a better person, though he still won’t pass up an opportunity to make a little gold on the side. While he can be a little snarky and smug, Merrix is haunted by the legacy of the warforged and the Mourning and genuinely does want to do good. However, he’s much more pragmatic than Melf and willing to make compromises some of the others wouldn’t accept. Over the course of the previous season Merrix created a homunculus out of an unlicensed Elminster action figure; this is Stinky. Merrix is an artificer using the Maverick subclass from Exploring Eberron, updated for 2024 rules. 

Beyond this, the things you really need to know are that we’ve banded together from different worlds to try to save the multiverse; that Elise and Merrix both have history in Ravenloft that has never been revealed to the other characters; that the villain Trelyle is an ancestor of Loholt’s, and that Loholt has devoted his life to bringing down a vile empire and its Weavebreaker knights. 

Keith Baker and Ed Greenwood. Ed is smiling and giving a thumb's up.

I hope you’ll join us on this journey! We’re (mostly) not actors, but we’re game designers playing characters from the worlds we love—and as Keith, it’s my first experience with Ravenloft! I’ll be in chat tonight at 6 PM Eastern Time, and at the future premieres each week. But you can watch anytime—or catch up with the previous season and our earlier adventurers—at the Six Sides of Gaming channel on Youtube!