Every month I answer questions posed by my Patreon supporters. Here’s a few of the interesting questions that have come up this month. In addition, if you’re a Threshold patron you can apply to play in Eberron games I run online. The next game is this Sunday from 10 AM – 2 PM Pacific Time, and I’ll be taking player applications for the next 48 hours. If you’re interested in playing, you can find out more here—but you have to be a Threshold patron to apply. Anyhow, let’s get on with the questions!

The Fort Bones Eye on Eberron article mentions rites that mitigate the power of Mabar in the area, and allow agriculture in the region. The article further notes that when Kaina ir’Duna interfered with the latter rites near the beginning of the Last War, it was disastrous for agriculture and contributed to Karrnath’s famines. I am thinking of setting a campaign at Fort Bones, and my question is what those rites might look like and, loosely speaking, what they might consist of in game terms?

Mabar is the source of negative energy; it consumes life and causes despair. Mabaran manifest zones radiate negative energy, which will cause crops to fail and animals to wither. Seekers contain this energy by using it to perform necromantic magic. Here’s a few rituals that are used for this purpose.

• The first and most frequent is Tolling The Dead. The priest gathers the faithful and together they sing prayers and tell stories of the fallen ancestors of the people in the community and other Seeker heroes. With each individual, they generate a pulse of negative energy that blasts into the sky, accompanied by the sound of a great bell. This is essentially the cantrip Toll The Dead, amplified by the group participation and ritual casting. It’s not designed to serve as a weapon; the pulse blasts directly up. The purpose is simply to catch the negative energy and channel it up and away. While meanwhile, as a religious ceremony, it is about remembering those that have been lost.
• Every other week, there is a communion service that involves a long and extensive performance of Speak With Dead. The dead are often turned into zombies or skeletons, but Seekers respected for their wisdom may be kept aside from this; their skulls are preserved and polished, and brought out for this service. Anyone in the community can request a chance to ask a question of one of these wise skulls. This begins with a Tolling service that celebrates each of the mentors, remembering their deeds in life before giving people the chance to speak with their remains. Keep in mind that Speak With Dead only draws on traces of memory that cling to the remains; the spirits of the Seekers are gone!
• The third option is the creation and maintenance of the undead, typically zombies and skeletons. When a member of the community dies and is chosen for service in undeath, the community will gather and celebrate the victim’s life, after which the priest will animate their remains. Since this only happens when someone dies, it’s not a regular thing. However, there is also a weekly ritual in which the undead servants in a community are brought together. The priest tells the story of each one, reminding people who they were in life and thanking them for their service in death. This ritual channels negative energy to sustain the undead and repair any damage they have suffered.

This isn’t a conclusive list, but it’s a few options to work with!

What’s the role of Flameskulls in Eberron?

In MY campaign, flameskulls are created using a form of the Odakyr rites—the same rituals used to create the Karrnathi undead. This has a few important aspects.

• A flameskull can only be created from the remains of a spellcaster capable of casting the spells on the flameskull’s spell list. You have to lose a capable spellcaster before you can create a flameskull.
• Creating a flameskull requires a very capable necromancer anchoring a ritual performed by multiple adepts. I’d make the eye gems of a flameskull Khyber dragonshards enchanted in a particular way. So Malevanor could make a flameskull, but it’s not something your typical Seeker village priest could do.
• A flameskull is intelligent, but it’s not HUMAN. As called out in canon lore, “A flameskull only dimly recalls its former life.” I’d tie this to what I’ve already said about the Karrnathi undead: that IN THEORY they are guided by the patriotic spirit of Karrnath, but in practice, it’s possible that they are guided by Mabaran fiends, by Lady Illmarrow, or something else. These Odakyr flameskulls were used as mobile artillery by Karrnath during the Last War, but because of the restrictions—you need a dead wizard to make one—they were relatively uncommon.

That’s the STANDARD story for the most widespread form of flameskull. But you could also have unique flameskulls created in other ways — a malevolent flameskull that DOES remember its previous life and which was reanimated by either Sul Khatesh or Katashka the Gatekeeper. An ancient Dhakaani flameskull, all that remains of a great Dirge Singer; instead of FLAME, her spells are based on sound and deal thunder damage instead of fire damage. A flameskull that was once a priest of the Shadow, whose spells deal necrotic damage. (To be clear, my point here is that you don’t have to actually change the flameskull’s spell list, though you could. The point of the shadowskull is that it would be wreathed in dark mist, and it would attack with a shadow ray that deals 3d6 necrotic damage and cast shadow sphere or shadowball — which work exactly like flaming sphere or fireball, but deal necrotic damage.) A fun twist on the shadowskull would be to reverse the Illumination trait; it can either change bright light to dim light within 15 feet, or extend darkness to 15 feet and dim light to 15 feet beyond that.

Some years ago, you offered a take on Erandis Vol and the Raven Queen in Eberron; that Erandis IS the Raven Queen, and that she is trying to/needs to ascend to take her rightful place as Queen of the Dead. Can you expand on that a little? What does the Erandis need for the ritual of ascension? Does current Erandis even *know* that’s what she’s trying to do, or is she simply trying to unlock her dragonmark? How would you handle Illmarrow as a campaign villain with this sort of thing as a finale? Presumably Erandis’ ascension is a good(ish) thing, but the PCs will likely be diametrically opposed to her; stopping her ascension would be a victory for the PCs, but leave Dolurrh without a Queen, which seems like a problem.

This is the article in question. I expanded on this concept in Exploring Eberron in the section on Dolurrh:

The Once and Future Queen of the Dead. The Queen of the Dead is an enigmatic figure who wields great power in Dolurrh. But there’s another being who uses this title: Erandis Vol, the last heir of the Mark of Death. Through her agents in the Order of the Emerald Claw and beyond, Erandis seeks to restore the power of her dragonmark; no one knows what godlike powers she might wield if she unlocks its full potential. Meanwhile, Dolurrh’s Queen of the Dead seems to oppose Erandis, and often sends her agents—both shadar-kai and adventurers she’s restored to life at a price—to interfere with Vol’s schemes. This could be exactly what it appears… But perhaps there’s more to it. Time works in strange ways when dealing with the planes and beings of vast power. Perhaps the Queen of the Dead isn’t trying to stop Erandis, but guiding her down a very specific path. Perhaps Erandis will become the Queen of the Dead, in which case, she’ll have always been her. Or perhaps that’s what’s supposed to happen, but there’s a way in which it could still go wrong… which could destroy the Queen of the Dead and throw Dolurrh itself into chaos.

So first of all, the central idea here is that Erandis doesn’t know what she’s trying to do. She’s not TRYING to become the queen of Dolurrh; she “seeks to restore the power of her dragonmark; no one knows what godlike powers she might wield if she unlocks its full potential.” Erandis wants POWER. She wants to achieve the destiny that was stolen from her. And in the pursuit of that power, she will do terrible things and kill countless innocents. So there’s not supposed to be any question that Erandis’s ascension is a bad bad thing. As I’ve said before, Erandis and the Emerald Claw are intended to be pulp villains; you aren’t supposed to question whether opposing them is the right thing to do. And the Queen of the Dead can serve as a patron, guiding the adventurers—potentially, setting their service in stopping Erandis as the price of resurrection (though I’ve got more thoughts on this below!). Erandis is performing unnatural acts of necromancy and the Queen wants the adventurers to stop it.

But how does this work as a campaign? How can the adventurers go through a series of sessions where they oppose Erandis’s plans? If they succeed and interfere, she won’t ascend, right? And if they fail, assuming they don’t die, won’t it just be frustrating to fail again and again? This is a basic question that can apply to ANY campaign in which the DM has a villain that’s supposed to be building to a big climax — how do the adventurers feel like they are accomplishing something meaningful without derailing the big final act of the story? The answer is that just as you want space in a game for the players to fail forward, you want room for the villains to do so as well. Don’t create stories in which the only options are absolute success or absolute failure; you want to have missions in which the adventurers can accomplish a heroic task while Erandis still gets what she needs to move forward. Consider these examples…

• The Emerald Claw sets up an Emerald Reanimator in the heart of Sharn, triggering a zombie apocalypse. The adventurers, we hope, destroy the reanimator and save the city. But after this victory, the Queen of the Dead whispers to them that this is only one link in a chain. Erandis’s goal was to charge a special Khyber shard with necrotic energy, and the animator was active for long enough to accomplish this task. Her minions have escaped with the charged shard, and she will surely return again.
• The Emerald Claw launches an attack in Arcanix. The adventurers fight their way down through the great library, leading to a final conflict with a bodak who’s—reading a book. When the adventurers break into the vault, the bodak looks up at them and laughs with Erandis’s vault. “You’re too late,” she says. “I needed to read one page within the Qabalrin Codex… and now I have.”

The point of these stories is that the adventurers SAVE SHARN AND ARCANIX. They save countless innocents and are heralded as heroes. But there was never a version of the scenario in which they could get to the bodak before they read the book. And yet, the adventurers didn’t even know the book was her goal until the final scene. It’s a solid victory for them; but Erandis also got what she needed. And all of this builds until the end, where Erandis is about to trigger her ascension. The adventurers ready for the final battle and suddenly time stops and the Queen of the Dead speaks in their minds. Do not interfere. You must allow her to do this. She does not know the path she is stepping on, but it is a path she must take. And for the stability of the world you know, you must allow her to do it. And now we know: The Queen of the Dead wanted the adventurers to save as many innocents as possible, but she didn’t mention the Qabalrin Codex because she needed Erandis to get the book. From the start, she’s told the adventurers enough to help them minimize the damage of Erandis’s actions—but her goal was never to stop her. What will they do?

This is a sort of railroad; you aren’t giving the players the option to stop Erandis in advance. But the point is that every victory along the way had to be earned. If they failed in Sharn the city would become a zombie-filled necropolis. If they failed in Arcanix, the Emerald Claw would have claimed countless war rituals. But Erandis was always going to move forward. It’s NOW, in the final act, that they have to make the true choice. Do they trust the Queen of the Dead and allow Erandis to complete the ritual—at which point she discovers her ascension is not what she thought? Or do they fight it? In this instance, I’d set things entirely in their hands (and the dice). They can defeat Erandis and stop the ritual… and which point the Queen of the Dead will howl and vanish, and suddenly the world will be plagued by countless restless ghosts, the product of chaos in Dolurrh. In which case the final act becomes the adventurers undoing the damage they’ve caused. Can they restore Erandis as the Queen of the Dead? Or do they need to find a NEW ruler of Dolurrh — perhaps, even having one of them somehow take up the mantle themselves?

The most famous artwork which represents elves of the Undying Court has an ape on it. What is the role or symbolism of apes for Aerenal and Court?

It’s not that the Court as a whole has an affinity for apes; it’s that THAT BABOON is an actual member of the Undying Court. That’s Caerzha the Old, one of the Gyrderi Druids trapped in wild shape by the Cul’sir; sustained by primal magic, he lived long enough to be raised to the Court after his passing.

That’s all for now! Thanks again to my patrons for asking interesting questions and making these articles possible.