Planes of Hope, Peace and Order

All of the Planes of Eberron have stories to tell and things to offer a campaign. Unfortunately, we never had time to explore them in depth. Until Eberron is unlocked for 5E, there’s a limit to what I can do. Yesterday I posted a long article about the Endless Night, but even that only scratches the surface. I’d love to delve deeper into the denizens of the Night and schemes that could drive adventures, and to develop unique creatures or treasures that could be found there. Hopefully this will be possible in the future. 

Some planes have generated more requests than others. In particular, Daanvi, Irian, and Syrania have all come up. Some people have said they don’t know what to do with them, that they’re too benevolent or too abstract, or simply that they have no touchstones to base them on. I don’t have the time to explore all of these with the same focus as the Endless Night article. But here’s some quick takes that may inspire ideas. As always, bear in mind that this information is not canon for Eberron and could contradict canon Eberron sources; this is what I’d do in my own campaign.

THE ETERNAL DAWN

Yesterday I explored the Endless Night. The Eternal Dawn is its opposite in all ways. The Dawn embodies both life and hope. It’s the dawn that inevitably overcomes the darkness, the spring that will eventually triumph over even the coldest winter. It is the wellspring of positive energy, which is the foundation of light, life and love.

The Eternal Dawn is also filled with layers, but its layers are about beginnings. These include fertile realms untouched by cultivating tools, but also budding towns or new villages, or the capital of an empire in its first days of glory. So: how does such a capital differ from a fortress in the Battleground? How is a virgin woodland any different from something you’d find in the Twilight Forest? The issue is the theme, which is always felt throughout the plane. In the Battleground, you will never escape the presence of war and strife. There are always archons drilling for battle, the scent of blood and smoke in the air, constant preparation for the next struggle. By contrast, the Amaranthine City in the Eternal Dawn is suffused by a sense of optimism and opportunity. There may be guards, but you won’t see armies; there may be fortifications, but they don’t feel worn and they don’t dominate things. The landscapes of the Twilight Forest emphasize the primordial power of nature; in the Eternal Dawn the focus is simply on vibrance and fertility. And yes, the Amaranthine City at the heart of the Dawn shares its name with the city at the core of the Endless Night.

It is believed that whenever the Endless Night seizes a fragment of reality, a new seed appears in the Eternal Dawn – a realm that grows as its counterpart in the Night is consumed, ultimately flowing away from the Dawn to fill the vacant space and restore the balance of energy in the wounded plane.

The Eternal Dawn is a constant source of hope and positive energy. Its celestials and Lumi rarely intrude directly on other planes, because they don’t have to; just as the Gardeners of the Endless Night cultivate despair without ever leaving their plane, the powers of the Dawn promote hope from beyond. With that said, the celestials of the Eternal Dawn are those most likely to help mortals. In Eberron, the celestials of Irian are the spirits that commonly respond to planar ally and similar mystic requests from divine casters tied to the Sovereign Host. Some of these celestials are devoted to the Sovereigns; others are simply happy to answer the call of someone in need. (In my opinion, the Silver Flame usually generates temporary celestials out of the raw energy of the Flame… but there are certainly spirits in Irian who would be glad to support Templars facing forces of darkness.)

Here’s a few other ways the Eternal Dawn could touch a campaign.

  • While the Dawn rarely intervenes, occasionally one or more Lumi will venture to the material to strike darkness directly. The PCs could encounter a group of vigilantes backed by Lumi. A Lumi could appear and announce that it’s here to help the PCs with the darkness that has targeted them… which is a way for a group to discover that they’ve been targeted by darkness. Do they embrace the Lumi and follow its lead? Or do they think the celestial is crazy?
  • A PC injured by dark magic has a wound that seemingly will never heal. But the Waters of Life in the Amaranthine City can cure any ill; they may be the only hope for the victim.
  • There is a manifest zone tied to the Eternal Dawn between two villages on a national border, and both villages lay claim to this region (which amplifies fertility of both plants and animals). This feud is on the verge of breaking into open conflict… can the PCs resolve the situation?
  • A paladin is presented with a weapon, shield or tool that holds the essence of a celestial from the Dawn. Can they live up to the expectations of the spirit?
  • A planar scholar believes that the power of Irian could restore the Mournland. Will the PCs travel to the Amaranthine City and implore the Dawn Emperor for aid? Assuming the Emperor has the power to direct the restorative powers of the Dawn to this purpose, what will he require?

THE AZURE SKY

Crystal spires floating in blue sky. Farms are spread across soft banks of clouds. It is breathtaking, serene, and above all, peaceful. The Azure Sky is the realm of peace and of those things that flourish in peaceful times, such as abstract knowledge and commerce.

It is virtually impossible to conceive an aggressive thought while in this plane. For this reason, it has become a crossroads for planar travelers, both immortal and otherwise. The Immeasurable Market hosts artisans and merchants from across realities. While the Market includes beings from many planes, most of the floating towers of the Azure Sky are home only to angels engaged in serene contemplation. Some of these angels are scholars studying a particular topic. Others are philosophers who contemplate a particular concept. Others simply embody an idea. This can overlap with other planes in strange ways. You could have an angel of Hope in the Azure Sky, but this is very different from a celestial from the Eternal Dawn. The angel in the Azure Sky doesn’t INNATELY embody hope; rather it is about the idea of someone seeking to embrace and understand hope… and beyond that, it is the only angel in the plane who has this role. You can even have an angel who studies the arts of war; but it does so in an abstract and peaceful way, as opposed to the active aggression of an Archon of the Battlefield.  

As a rule the Azure Sky doesn’t meddle in the affairs of other realms. But here’s a few ideas.

  • An angel could venture into the material plane seeking to prove a thesis related to its field of study. This could require interaction with (or manipulation of) player characters. Alternately, the angel could intend to be present only as an observer but instead be drawn into a conflict.
  • An unusual merchant might have a back door that opens onto the Immeasurable Market, where they trade mundane things as exotic curiosities.
  • A traveling merchant selling goods from the Immeasurable Market could cause chaos, innocently or intentionally.
  • PCs could require specific knowledge known only to an angelic scholar or goods only available in the Immeasurable Market. Or perhaps they are pursuing a fugitive who has managed to flee to the Azure Sky… how do you capture this villain in a realm where conflict is impossible?

THE PERFECT ORDER

As with many other planes, the Perfect Order has levels and layers that embody different aspects of the ideas of Law and Order, Discipline and Civilization. Unlike the other planes, in the Perfect Order these layers are carefully laid out and connected by a clear and simple system of portals — of course, you have to follow the proper protocols and be authorized to USE those portals. There are districts where Formians endlessly toil over perfectly maintained fields. There’s an endless series of courts where Inevitable tribunals judge the actions of mortals, chronicling every crime every committed; in some instances judgement is passed instantly, where other cases can last a mortal lifetime. All laws, systems of government, and violations of these laws are recorded and filed away in the Infinite Archives, catalogued and managed by a seemingly endless hierarchy of modrons. There are districts that are prefect models of utopian societies… and districts where the law is a brutal and oppressive force. Order is powerful, but it’s not innately good; the Perfect Order thus embodies law as a force for justice as well as the crushing weight of an oppressive system.

This is a slight twist from the depiction of Daanvi in The Eberron Campaign Setting, which focuses on order purely as a dispassionate force for an abstractly general good. In my mind, the Perfect Order should be entirely as diverse as Shavarath, and with the same dichotomy: the nature of an outsider reflects whether it represents Order as a positive or negative force. Formians, Inevitables and Modrons are neutral, and they reflect the dispassionate imposition or law and order outside of judgement of good or evil. But then you have devils embodying the harsh imposition of order and the use of laws as a tool of oppression – with celestials embodying the noble aspects of law and order, the quest for justice and for a utopian society. In many cases an entire district will follow a particular theme, but there are surely districts where devils debate archons before impassive inevitable arbiters, engaging in cases that could last for centuries. I’d love to explore this in more depth — exactly what sorts of fiends and celestials would fill these roles? What are some specific examples of an oppressive district? — but it will have to wait until another time.

Here’s a few thoughts about ways to use the Perfect Order in a campaign.

  • It’s unusual for an inevitable to interfere with the material world. But there are oaths that can be sworn — mystical vows that enforce a bargain with the power of Daanvi. It’s no trivial thing to enact such a pact, but should it be broken the oathbreaker will be hounded by kolyaruts and other inevitable forces.
  • The Infinite Archive records all laws and transgressions since the dawn of time. Perhaps the PCs need to know the details of some ancient transgression… but can they work their way through the modron bureaucracy to get it?
  • The tribunals of Daanvi judge all crimes, but they don’t have the jurisdiction to punish crimes on the material plane. However, if a mortal comes forward and offers to serve justice against a heinous transgressor, the powers of Daanvi might provide tools to help this person enact a proper punishment. However, this would call the eye of Daanvi down onto this person and their allies, and place them under the jurisdiction of the Court… are they so sure they are without crimes of their own?
  • As with the Azure Sky, a fugitive could flee to the Perfect Order. The PCs need to apprehend this person quickly to prevent some sort of disaster. But when they get to the Perfect Order they discover that the villain is already on trial… but that this trial could last a decade. Can the PCs find a way to either extract their target or so speed up the justice of Daanvi?
  • Artifacts from the Perfect Order could have powerful effects with dangerous consequences. A stone could cause all creatures within a mile to always speak the truth. A scourge could purge all thoughts of rebellion from anyone struck with it. A crown could whisper advice to its wearer, guiding its bearer to rule a perfect kingdom – but is it just order, or cruel tyranny?
  • Whether by natural mishap or the actions of an enemy, PCs could suddenly find themselves in a brutally oppressive district in the Perfect Order. Can they survive and escape? Through their actions, could they even shift the balance of the district – replacing tyranny with justice?

QUESTIONS

If we wanted to place fiends on Irian, would it follow that fiends related to cancers and tumours (aka uncontrolled growth) would be appropriate?

Irian isn’t about the mechanical and scientific idea of life, which is really more tied to Lamannia. In a sense ALL diseases could be defined as being about life, as viruses simply seek to reproduce. More than anything, Irian is about positive energy and all that that embodies. It’s about life in opposition to death, creation versus destruction, hope versus despair – not the difficulties and complications that come with life. One quick thing to consider: Irian is the source of positive energy, which is the basis of all healing magic. In your Eberron, can cancer be cured with healing magic? If so, I see no reason why the concept of it would thrive in Irian. If not – which could be interesting – then maybe it would fit in Irian. But I generally see embodiments of disease being tied to Mabar (as things that decay and destroy) or Lamannia (as part of nature).

Of all the planes, Mabar and Irian have the strongest innate alignment towards “good” and “evil”, which is why I call our Irian as the source of most planar allies. Looking to Shavarath, Daanvi, even Fernia we generally look at the positive and negative aspects of the core concept. But Irian and Mabar ARE positive and negative. There’s not a lot of room for darkness in the Eternal Dawn.

Is there any connection or possible connections between warforgeds and inevitables?

I don’t see that being something we’d ever suggest in canon Eberron. While Inevitables look like constructs, they’re immortal outsiders — not living constructs like the warforged. And per canon sources, if anyone outsiders influenced the creation of the warforged it’s most likely to have been the pre-Dreaming Dark Quori (as hinted at in Secrets of Xen’drik and The Shattered Land). But if YOU want to play with the idea of the Inevitables inspiring or aiding the creation of the Warforged — and perhaps having the power to commandeer warforged bodies — it could be an interesting plotline.

What are the “eternal laws” that inevitables will enforce? Did somebody build them?

In my opinion, the Inevitables are immortal spirits that embody the idea of law and inevitable justice. They weren’t built, and they aren’t actually constructs in the same sense as warforged; they simply APPEAR to be constructs because that fits the concept of an utterly impartial agent of order.

I’ve suggested that the courts of Irian judge all mortal creatures — and my thought there is that they judge each creature according to the laws of its community. The Infinite Archive is a catalogue of all systems of law, and the tribunals of Daanvi impartially judge you based on YOUR laws. But that’s where they lack the jursidiction to enact sentences; they judge, but have no authority to punish. In my examples, I suggest that this is where a PC could potentially go to Daanvi and be a “process server” — but that in taking on this role, they’d better have a clean record. I could also see this as an excellent role for a paladin PC: they aren’t a paladin of a particular god, but rather acting as an enforcer for the justice of Daanvi.

As for when Inevitables will act directly, it’s up to you. In MY Eberron I don’t want Inevitables to be trivial or commonplace. I don’t want them to screw up my story (He just broke his word! Why don’t the inevitables show up to  punish him?) or to diminish the role of PCs. I want them to be exotic, frightening, and as a result RARE. So I’d say that Inevitables only act when they have jurisdiction… and they can only gain jursidiction when under the following circumstances.

  • When they are given jurisdiction by the target. As I suggest earlier, I think it should be possible to swear an oath that puts you under the eye of Daanvi. But this should be an actual magical ritual with expensive components, not something done trivially. A member of the Aurum could pull this out when demanding loyalty from PCs, but it’s not something you’re going to do with a common merchant.
  • The Inevitables could have jursidiction over actions taken in a manifest zone to Daanvi, or when Daanvi is coterminous with Eberron. So you may have the ancient oathstone where a tribe makes their vows (…and eternal justice will punish he who breaks his vow to the stones…) or a time when EVERYONE knows that you have to tread carefully when Daanvi is coterminous.

But as always in Eberron, what makes a good story?

So: how common are travelers in Syrania and Daanvi?

I think it’s very rare for extraplanar travelers to go to Daanvi. Among other things, anyone going to Daanvi is going to have to deal with all the various restrictions and regulations, with serious consequences if you transgress.

Syrania, on the other hand, is a place that is welcoming to planar travelers. You still may not have many travelers from Eberron, but there are certainly some; you might have a dragon from the Chamber consulting angelic scholars or a Night Hag browsing the Immeasurable Market. But I certainly think you have a mix of mortals and lesser immortals from other planes, along with a few powerful spirits. The question is WHY a powerful spirit would choose to leave its home plane. One point is that Syrania is a place of absolute peace; perhaps opposing generals in Shavarath might meet in Syrania as an absolute neutral ground, or a Thelanian wizard might share arcane notes and stories with a counterpart from Xoriat. All of these things would still be rare — but again, if that’s the story you want to tell, Syrania is a good place for it to play out.

Dragons have power for dimensional travel and are mortals. But it looks like they don’t do it very often even if it could be a great resource against demons. Why?

Powerful dragons are certainly potential planar travelers. But it’s not necessarily as great a resource as you might think. As a rule, planar travel is dangerous. You’re dealing with powerful beings driven by alien logic and odds are good you don’t understand their worldview. Very few of them are interesting in helping you, and those who are will need an excellent reason. On the whole, the archons of Shavarath don’t care about the dragons’ current squabble with some demons, because the war the archons are fighting themselves is more important and is, in their opinion, defining the balance of the entire universe. Essentially, by fighting their war the Archons believe they ARE already helping everyone on Eberron and they don’t have time for your petty, small-minded mortal problems: they’ve got to get back to the war. A Syranian scholar may be willing to take some time to talk to you, but again, their contemplation is more important than your mortal problems — and if you expect to get much of their time, you’d better have something interesting to offer them.

But in short: dragons MAY be engaging in dimensional travel. A Chamber agent might have access to a sword forged in the Eternal Dawn or a treasure from the Immeasurable Market. We don’t know about it because we know next to nothing about what dragons are doing in their struggle against the Lords of Dust. But they aren’t bringing in hordes of allies from Shavarath (or other planes) because the immortals aren’t interested. I’ll talk more about the motivations of celestials tomorrow.

Would you have any idea about the kind of things a host of angels from the Azure Sky would like to keep secure, that may kindle envy from an outsider (be it a NPC or, for that matter, PC in a different context)?

Given the theme of commerce, it could literally be anything, because it could have come from another plane. But looking to something with a concrete tie to the plane…

  • A gemstone that is believed to hold an entire reality within it. The gem serves as a source of power for divine spells, as the attuned bearer can draw on the devotion of an entire world.
  • A crystal that is the essence of an angel, who engaged in contemplation so deep that they condensed into this form; it’s unknown if they will one day reform, and if so what revelations they will bear.
  • A cloud seed. If activated, it will extrude an island-sized mass of solid (but floating) cloud-matter that can serve as a foundation for buildings. This region is also treated as a manifest zone to Syrania; this could have the same properties as the Sharn zone, or it could have an additional enforced peace effect.
  • A coin with which you can purchase anything. Anything that can be bought can be purchased with this coin; its irresistible magic compels the owner to make the trade. In the process this means you’re giving them the coin, so you only get to use it once. But you can buy anything that can be bought with it.
  • A book scribed by a since-fallen angel that is the absolute source of knowledge on something. A particular Overlord or type of demon. An epic spell that could have catastrophic effects if cast. Some secret lore about one of the planes. If you want to take things a step farther, the angel could have “fallen” into Xoriat; this book holds some secret about the nature of reality so fundamentally destabilizing that realizing it shifted them into being a spirit of madness.

I wish that I had more time to explore these things, and I hope that someday I will. Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments. And as always, thanks to everyone who’s supporting the site on Patreon; the more support we have, the more I can do with it in the future.

The Endless Night

And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias

A sea of liquid shadows laps against black sands and basalt cliffs. A skull lies half-buried in the sand, empty sockets gazing into the roiling mist. The bone isn’t sun-bleached, for there is no sun here; only a faint glimmer from the deep violet moon that hangs in the sky. If you’re playing in Eberron, this is the plane of Mabar. If you’re playing Phoenix: Dawn Command it could be a realm of the Fallen in the deep Dusk. For now, set aside specific system and setting and consider the Endless Night.

Those who know little of what lies beyond common reality often assume that the Endless Night is the plane of “darkness” — that this physical trait is its defining concept. Though the plane is shrouded in shadows, this eternal gloom is just a symptom of the true nature of this place. Even the brightest day will eventually end in darkness, and the Endless Night embodies this idea. It is the shadow that surrounds every island of light, patiently waiting to consume it. This isn’t the place where the souls of the living go after death, but it is the plane of death itself — the hungry shadow that consumes both light and life. It is entropy, hunger and loss — embodying the idea that all things will eventually end in darkness.

ENVIRONS

Like many of the planes, the Endless Night isn’t one contiguous landscape. Rather, it’s layers of reality, each one a different vision of desolation and inevitable decay. In one layer a desert of black sand is broken by jagged obsidian peaks. In another layer, a once-fertile valley has wasted away; crumbling farms are scattered amid withered fields. Another layer is a single vast city. The fountains are dry, the walls are cracked, but rotting tapestries and chipped mosaics speak of an age of wonders. The critical thing to understand is that this cities has ALWAYS been a ruin. This is what Mabar is: the end of things embodied. When mortals pass through, the idea of decay may manifest dramatically – a bridge collapses, a floor gives way – but come back in a week and there will be a new crumbling bridge ready to fall. These layers are symbols of inevitable entropy and lost glory; the precise details may evolve and change, but the net effect remains the same.

While the stage varies — a desert, a ruined city, the withered remains of fertile farmland, or anything else you can imagine — the story is always about loss, entropy, despair, and death. Feel free to add anything that ties to these themes. A massive battlefield filled with the intertwined bones of dragons and giants. Ossuaries and catacombs. Crumbling memorials, with names just too faded to read. Barren orchards and dried riverbeds. And tombs… from tiny unmarked crypts to the death-palaces of fallen rulers, necropolises filled with traps and treasures. And this being the Endless Night, some of those dead rulers still dominate their domains, whether they take the form of undead or simply malevolent will.

These layers aren’t bound by the laws of physical space. They can be tiny, or they can be seemingly infinite. A desert may wrap back upon itself, and the alleys in a city could twist in impossible ways to always return you to the main square… or you could just come to an absolute edge, where everything falls away into an endless and all-consuming void. To move from one layer to another you must either employ spells of your own or find a portal that connects the two realms. Sometimes these are fairly obvious: a massive gate standing alone in the desert, a pit filled with swirling shadows. In other cases, the connection could be entirely abstract. If you are in the valley of the Bone King and you want to get to the desert of the Queen of All Tears, the answer is simple: all you have to do is sincerely cry, and the tears themselves will take you there.

Of course, if you want to explore the Endless Night there are problems you will face no matter where you go. The realm itself constantly consumes light and life. In 3.5 D&D terms it is minorly negative dominant. Unless you’re protected by some form of warding magics, the Night will continuously drain away your life energy, ultimately consuming your body and leaving nothing but a shadow. Even if you’re protected against this effect you must still deal with the darkness. All light sources in this plane are reduced to dim light. The radius of illumination doesn’t change, but no light can banish the perpetual gloom. Spells that use negative energy will be maximized (variable die rolls such as damage and healing have the maximum possible result; this doesn’t affect attack rolls or saving throws), while spells that rely on positive energy are minimized.

THE CONSUMING DARKNESS

Many of the layers of the Endless Night are purely symbolic. These ruins have existed for as long as the plane itself. Many… but not all. Most of the planes don’t interact with one another. The armies of the Battleground endlessly battle each other — they don’t lay siege to the Realm of Madness. The planes are self-contained and focused on their own slivers of reality. But the concept that defines the Endless Night is the hunger to consume light and life, along with the inevitable downfall of all things. And when all the forces align just perfectly, fragments of other planes can be pulled into the Endless Night. These fragments are caught on the edge of the night, the same way mortal dreams drift around the heart of the Realm of Dreams. Over time, they are drained and pulled closer to the core, until ultimately they are fully assimilated into the plane as a new bleak layer. Typically mortals will be transformed into shadows or other forms of undead; immortals might become yugoloths, or twisted into dark mockeries of their former selves.

The Drifting Citadel is just such a layer. This floating tower was once a library; in Eberron it was part of Syrania, while in Phoenix it was created by the Faeda Concord. Now it drifts through a icy void, grand windows shattered and books fallen from their shelves. Shadows of sages clutch at books with insubstantial fingers, never able to turn a page. The angelic librarians are now tormented spirits who hunger for knowledge, draining the memories from any creature unfortunate enough to fall into their grasp.

With this in mind, as you create layers of the Endless Night, consider the history of the layer. Is it a symbolic layer that has always been desolate? Or is it a place that once knew light before it was consumed by the Endless Night? Beyond this, you can also explore the fragments that are in the process of being consumed. Fragments of outer planes might understand what’s going on and be trying to find a way to fight it… but pieces stolen from the material plane may have no way to know what’s happening to them. So you could have a small kingdom ruled by a tragic lord who wields great power and yet is being consumed by darkness… an inescapable realm shrouded by mists, seeming cut off from the rest of the world. All of which is to say that this would be an easy way to add Ravenloft into a setting, as a piece of reality that is under siege by the dark powers of the Endless Night. In Eberron, the Mourning could be what happens when a piece of reality is consumed… in which case Queen Dannel could still rule over a version of Cyre that is being consumed by shadows. It could be that this wound will never heal, and that the Mournland is now a permanent part of Eberron; or it could be that given time restorative power will flow from the Eternal Dawn to restore the blighted land, creating a new Cyre. These unassimilated fragments don’t have the negative dominant trait, and can contain living creatures… but the consuming hunger of the Endless Night should always be felt in some way.

Overall, it might seem like this is something the powers of other planes would try to stop. But the it cannot be stopped, and they know it. It is part of the machinery of reality. The Endless Night consumes and fragments are lost. Those pulled into the darkness can fight against it, but the ultimate outcome is inevitable. Were it not for the Eternal Dawn, it would eventually consume everything. But as the Night consumes, the Dawn restores, and so balance is ultimately maintained. The question a GM must decide is whether the fragments that are consumed are random… or whether the Empress of Shadows has some discretion over this. It might not be possible to fight the coming of night… but it could be that planar emissaries come to the Amaranthine City to negotiate with the Empress of Shadows and turn the hungry darkness in a different direction.  

DENIZENS OF THE ENDLESS NIGHT

The most numerous inhabitants of Mabar are shadows. These semi-sentient spirits linger in places where you might expect to find people, forlornly pantomiming the roles of the absent inhabitants. You’ll find the shadows of children playing on the corner of a Mabaran street, or the shadow of a priest silently praying to an absent and unknown god in a shattered temple. Many sages who study the planes believe that these shadows are tied to mortals… that every sentient mortal creature has a shadow in the Endless Night, a manifestation of their darker impulses. These shadows don’t speak and are driven by impulse and instinct. They hunger for the lifeforce of mortals, and if planar travelers aren’t protected by magic they may be swarmed by hungry shadows.

The more desolate planes are home to nightshades. These powerful creatures are conduits of negative energy. In the obsidian desert, massive nightcrawlers lurk in the dark sands while nightwalkers lay claim to the ruins and rule over the shadows. Nightshades often attack fragments, feeding on the energy of the fragment and accelerating its assimilation. In these attacks, nightcrawlers may rely on raw force which nightwalkers may lead armies of undead. While intelligent, nightshades are more alien and primal than the yugoloths and rarely negotiate or converse with outsiders.

If the Endless Night has a heart, it would be the Amaranthine City… a metropolis that fills an entire layer. Nothing flourishes in this plane; banners are tattered and gardens are withered. But it is still wondrous in the scope of its cyclopean towers and grand fortifications. It is the capital of an empire in decline, and yet the hint of what it was at the height of its glory makes it wondrous even when faded. And it is no empty shell; it is a city alive with activity. This is the seat of the Empress of Shadows and her people; in D&D terms, these are the yugoloths. These are spirits of darkness, embodiments of hunger, despair and death. To all appearances, the yugoloths are citizens of a vast empire; they maintain that all things were once in darkness and eventually will be again.

Many yugoloths serve in the army. The Legion of Night lays siege to the fragments of planes that have powerful inhabitants of their own. The yugoloths do battle with angels and devils trapped in their doomed fragments, until the fragments are ultimately fully drained, assimilated, and their immortal inhabitants converted to a form more suited to the Endless Night. It’s questionable if these battles actually speed up the assimilation, or if they are simply a way for the fiends to pass the time; certainly, they enjoy these struggles.

Other yugoloths are gardeners… but what they cultivate is darkness. Most gardeners work with shadows. They search for promising shadows and use their abilities to strengthen a shadow in certain ways. It’s thought that this in turn feeds the darkness of the mortal tied to the shadow, potentially filling them with despair or driving them down dark paths. When the mortal eventually dies, the yugoloth can harness and refine the essence of the shadow, which can be used to create tools, elixirs, or works of art. While most gardeners work with shadows, some go into the fragments of the material plane that are being assimilated, twisting and tormenting the mortals trapped their in slow and subtle ways.

These are common paths, but there are many others. Some are philosophers and oracles who contemplate the nature of entropy and the way in which things will end. Some are artists and artisans, crafting shadow and spirit to create tools and weapons (which can cause death and despair should they make their way to the mortal world). And some serve seemingly menial roles in the Amaranthine City.

There are many other lesser inhabitants of the plane. Succubi are lesser spirits that embody emotional pain and loss. Some succubi are solitary and prey on mortals in fragments, while others live alongside the yugoloths and ply their wiles on them; the suffering of a fiend is just as satisfying to them as that of a mortal. Other succubi are gardeners, and some believe that a succubi can drain the love from a mortal heart by bleeding it from their shadow. And last but certainly not least, the Endless Night is home to undead. Most of the undead are symbolic: the endless skeletal armies of the Bone King aren’t actually the remains of mortal beings, and the Bone King himself, while he appears to be a lich, was likewise never mortal. Spectres and wraiths generally exist as predators, halfway between the Nightshades and the shadows. Some believe that when a vampire or lich is finally destroyed, its essence is pulled down into Mabar where it persists as a wraith… denied the eventual rest granted to other spirits of the dead, forever driven by the hunger of the night. Most are likely driven mad by this ordeal, but it’s possible that a vampire slain in a campaign could be encountered again as a spectral lord in the Endless Night.

TOUCHING THE MATERIAL: EBERRON

In an Eberron campaign, the Endless Night is the plane of Mabar. It affects the world in a number of ways: through manifest zones, coterminous periods, the actions of the plane and its denizens. Beyond this, some believe that Mabar is generally a source of despair and desolation, that it drains both emotional and physical energy from the world. While this is unproven, it is definitely the source of negative energy. Necromantic magics that sap energy or drain lifeforce draw on the power of the Endless Night. This is also the power that sustains most undead. Skeleton, vampire and wraith are all animated by the power of Mabar. This is the source of the vampire’s endless hunger and the draining touch of many undead. But even lesser undead innately draw life energy from the world around them. Typically this ambient drain is slight enough that there’s no mechanical effect; but this is why a haunted tomb will often be surrounded by dead plants and shriveled vines. The priests of Undying Court assert that negative undead are slowly destroying the world and that eventually this will cause irreparable harm; this is why the Aereni Deathguard seek to track and destroy Mabaran undead whenever possible.

One point here is the common confusion between Mabar and Dolurrh. Dolurrh is the realm of the dead, but it’s not the plane of death. Dolurrh is a place of transition. It is where the souls of the dead go after death, where the burdens of life are removed. So Dolurrh is where people go when they die; but Mabar embodies the idea of death, of inevitable loss and the end of all things.

COTERMINOUS AND REMOTE

According to the Eberron Campaign Setting, Mabar becomes coterminous for three days every five years. During these periods, there is a general increase in the amount of negative energy in the world. Shadows grow deeper and colder, and effects that rely on negative energy are strengthened. When one is alone in a dark place, this energy saps both strength and hope; solitary people are more likely to succumb to illness and despair. As a result, during these periods people generally come together to hold back the darkness. Communities gather around bonfires and sing or pray together; friends or families might gather into one abode for the duration, as bonds of love and friendship are a source of positive energy.

The Eberron Campaign Setting makes the consequences of the phase quite severe, stating “During the night and while underground, travel between the planes is much easier—simply stepping into an area where no light shines can transport a character from Eberron to Mabar, and barghests and shadows emerge from the Endless Night to hunt the nights of Eberron.” I consider this to be overstated for dramatic effect. Both of these things are possible, but here again, positive energy holds these effects at bay… and positive energy comes from light, life and love. So when Mabar is coterminous it is dangerous to go in the basement of the creepy abandoned house, or to wander alone on the moors at night. But if you’re in a house with your family and friends celebrating and singing around a roaring hearth, you don’t have to worry about being killed by a shadow when you go to the pantry. A child conceived during this period would have a chance to be born as a Mabaran tiefling… but in theory, if they child is conceived in love, that positive energy should prevent this.  

While it might be possible to be transported to Mabar by passing through a shadow in a desolate place during the coterminous phase, I wouldn’t have such an effect take you to the heart of Mabar, where the minor negative dominant aspect would kill a normal person within minutes; instead, I’d have them pass into a mortal fragment that’s currently on the edge of Mabar and being consumed. Which is, again, essentially Ravenloft. You go walking on the moors at night, pass through dark mists, and find yourself in a tiny and tragic kingdom besieged by despair.

On the other hand, when Mabar is remote effects that use negative energy are impeded; spirits are generally higher (though this effect is not as dramatic as a time when Irian is coterminous); and undead are often gripped with ennui.  

MANIFEST ZONES

All manifest zones to Mabar are strong sources of negative energy. Even if this doesn’t produce a direct mechanical effect, it is always the case that a Mabaran manifest zone is an excellent place to perform any sort of ritual that draws on negative energy. Other than that, here’s a few possible traits of Mabaran manifest zones.

  • Blighted or unnatural vegetation.
  • Low fertility and reduced resistance to disease. Creatures born in the region might be sickly, or you might get unnatural creatures (like Mabaran tieflings).
  • Psychological gloom: a tendency towards despair, hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts.
  • Presence of shadows, wraiths, or other undead. While these can be shades of mortals slain by other undead, they are typically just manifestations of Mabar itself – embodiments of consuming darkness.  
  • Skeletons or zombies might spontaneously animate from corpses. Such undead don’t have any of the memories of the body and will typically seek to kill any living creatures they encounter.
  • Unnatural darkness; light sources could be reduced, so even the brightest source only produces dim light. You could even have an area that is permanently shrouded in magical darkness.
  • Spells and effects that rely on negative energy could be enhanced or even maximized; undead could be strengthened.
  • Shadows could take on a life of their own without becoming fully formed aggressive monsters. It’s not that they exist independently of the things that cast them, but they might move in impossible ways or respond to actions around them.

Most of these don’t sound like very welcoming traits, and few people would likely choose a Mabaran manifest zone as a place to build their town. But there are reasons for doing it. We’ve established that in Karrnath, Blood of Vol communities often build temples in Mabaran manifest zones and perform rituals that help to contain the negative impact of the zone — and that some of the terrible famines in Karrnath were the results of soldiers seizing these towns and temples and failing to maintain these rites, resulting in sudden and dramatic blights. Beyond that, unnatural vegetation or minerals infused with Mabaran energy could have useful effects. In The Thorn of Breland books I talk about nightwater — water infused with Mabaran energy — as a common component used in disarming wards and magical traps.

So a Mabaran zone could be occupied by people trying to contain its effect or by necromancers channelling it; but often, they’re likely to be shunned areas in the wilds.

SCHEMES AND ADVENTURES

Do the denizens of Mabar ever have schemes that reach into Eberron? How could it play an interesting role in an adventure? One of the simplest ways is simply to work a manifest zone into a story. A necromancer has a tower in a blighted grove, and this empowers their magics and undead minions. The PCs take on the necromancer and defeat him. But when they return they discover that the necromancer’s work was holding the power of Mabar at bay, and the blight is spreading. Can they find a way to restore the balance? What if someone has to stay in the tower? Does one of the villagers have the talent? Or do they need to find another necromancer willing to hold the post – and can they trust her with this power?

Manifest zones could inspire many stories or interesting encounters.

  • Shadholt is a small village hidden in the woods of Karrnath… a village populated almost entirely by Mabaran tieflings. The tieflings harvest vegetation and dragonshards infused with Mabaran energies and can make interesting elixirs and items. Perhaps they simply wish to be left alone… but an encounter with superstitious foresters could lead to a conflict with the local warlord. What side will the PCs take? Are the tieflings innocent, or are they using the powers of Mabar to prey on their enemies? Or is Shadholt the source of an addictive drug that’s been spread ing across the region?
  • Passing across a moor, the PCs are set upon by the shadows of wolves and hawks. The following dawn, they discover that one of the PCs is missing their shadow… it’s been lost in the manifest zone. Do they need to go back and find it? If so, how? If not, what does it mean that the character no longer has a shadow?
  • The PCs discover that House Thuranni is experimenting with the potential of the Mark of Shadows, seeking to channel the power of Mabar. There’s a research center in a Mabaran manifest zone. What happens if the experiments work? Are the elves in full control of their powers? Or are they consumed by their own shadows, leaving dark hearts cloaked in flesh wielding terrifying powers?

Overall, the denizens of Mabar have no interest in Eberron; they have everything they need in Mabar and its fragments. However, just like the Daelkyr or the Kalashtar Quori, you could have an individual or small group of spirits that take an interest in Eberron. Here’s a few possibilities.

  • A disguised succubus is a scholar of loss, subtlely engineering disastrous tragedies for the people of a small community in order to study their reactions. Alternately you could take the same concept but she could be targeting powerful, successful individuals — such as player characters — instead of a particular place.
  • A small group of Yugoloths are studying the world and choosing the next location that will be consumed by Mabar. The consumption will happen, even if the Yugoloths are defeated… but can the damage be minimized?
  • A yugoloth artisan crafts artifacts and sows them into Eberron to cause death and despair. A weapon forged in Mabar could be a literal demon — a battleloth — or it could possess great power but bring tragedy to the one who wields it. A villain could cause great havoc with this night-forged blade; once the villain is defeated, will a PC claim the blade or leave it be?
  • A nightwalker has broken through into Eberron, turning a Mabaran manifest zones into a gateway. The dead are rising in response to the nightshade’s call, and it has a force of nightcrawlers and nightwings. The Nightwalker has no agenda other than destruction, despair, and drinking in the energy of the world. Where is this gateway? What will it take to close it and contain this threat?
  • Queen Dannel’s Cyre has been pulled into Mabar. There’s no way to reclaim it and return it to Eberron, but the now-vampire Dannel has a bigger goal. In Mabar, everything must end… even the yugoloth order. Dannel believes that she can overthrow the Empress of Shadows and become the new immortal overlord of the realm… but she needs the help of epic-level PCs to do it. Will they help transform Cyre into the new heart of the Endless Night?  

The idea of the consumed fragments opens up another host of story possibilities.

  • Forced out into the wilds during a Mabaran coterminous period, the PCs find themselves in a strange land. This could be a familiar town that’s now suffering from dangers and threats; can the PCs figure out what’s going on, and if it can’t be stopped can they help friends escape? It could be a realm pulled out of history, time slowed by the process of assimilation — the last stronghold of Karrn the Conqueror or Malleon the Reaver. Or it could be something entirely new, like Ravenloft.
  • An angel of Syrania reaches out to the PCs. Something vital is trapped in a Syranian tower that was pulled into Mabar. If the angel goes to the fragment, it will be trapped there forever; but mortals could enter the fragment, retrieve the relic and escape. What is the relic? What else might they find in the lost tower?
  • Similar ideas could take the players into the heart of Mabar itself. What treasures are hidden in the tomb of the Queen of All Tears? What secrets lie in the scattered tomes of the Drifting Citadel?

All of these ideas are literally off the top of my head, and I’m sure you can come up with others. Share your ideas in the comments!

THE DEEP DUSK: PHOENIX DAWN COMMAND

Phoenix: Dawn Command doesn’t have the complex cosmology of D&D. The Dusk is the realm that lies between life and death, a realm of spirits and magic. When a Phoenix dies, they go to a crucible – a pocket realm within the Dusk where they can earn their way back to the Daylit World. But there’s more to the Dusk than most Phoenixes ever see. The greatest of the Fallen Folk may have their own domains within the Dusk, and there can be great mystical engines left over from the Old Kingdoms, or simply from the framework of reality.

Within Phoenix, there’s a few ways you could use the Endless Night. Perhaps the Phoenixes face a great force of darkness striking against a community of innocents — a Nightwalker leading a legion of hungry wraiths and animated corpses. Destroying this being requires the Phoenixes to join their power together, sacrificing all their sparks to drive it back into the dusk. But instead of waking in their crucibles, the Phoenixes find themselves in the Endless Night, pulled into it by the spirit they banished. Can they find a way to escape the Deep Dusk? And what happens if they die before they do?

You could also explore the idea of the hungry realm… to have a piece of the Empire pulled into the Endless Night while the PCs are defending it. The life is being drawn out of it, and shadows lash out at the innocent. Can they find a way to return this farm/village/city to reality? And again, what happens if a Phoenix dies in this place? Do they simply return to the Night? Are they seemingly gone forever… and if so, is this what actually happens or have they simply been returned to the Daylit World?

Another possibility is to explore the idea that the layers of the Endless Night are all pieces seized from the Daylit World. Perhaps the Endless Night was created as a way to avoid the doom of the Old Kingdoms, preserving communities in some fashion (albeit a dark one); now the threat of the Dread has brought this old magic back to life, and it’s going to start stealing cities anew.

Q&A

How do Mabar and the Plane of Shadows both exist in the same cosmology while remaining distinct? What is the difference in themes between these two Planes? Can the Plane of Shadows have its own Manifest Zones?

This is spelled out on page 92 of the Eberron Campaign Setting. The entire reality of Eberron — including its thirteen planes — is enfolded by the astral plane; the ethereal and shadow planes encompass the material plane but don’t touch the other planes. The easy way to think of this is that the Shadow Plane is the darkness that lies between realities. It has no meaning as Mabar does; it is simply a dark space outside of reality. Spells like shadow walk let you use it as a shortcut through space, or even in theory as a conduit to move between realities. But it isn’t part of the creation of the Progenitors. It has no meaning and it doesn’t shape reality. It’s not part of the planar orrery, and as such it never becomes coterminous or remote and it doesn’t create manifest zones; it simply is.

A minor qualm, but it seems that Mabar as portrayed here ultimately prevails when it exceptionally interacts with other planes, as Syrania in the post. Yet, using the same example, after night comes dawn…

That’s exactly the point. The night consumes every day… and the dawn eventually overcomes each night. The section on “The Consuming Darkness” calls this out: Were it not for the Eternal Dawn, (The Endless Night) would eventually consume everything. But as the Night consumes, the Dawn restores, and so balance is ultimately maintained.”

The Endless Night embodies the idea of despair and the inevitable end. But the Eternal Dawn — in Eberron, Irian — embodies the idea of hope and the indomitability of life. Anything Mabar can consume, Irian can restore… though both of these things take time. But yes, Mabar will ultimately prevail against any fragment it consumes because that fragment has been pulled out of its own concept and into the Night, which is defined by that inevitable defeat.

Is it possible for there to be Mabaran celestials, or good-aligned spirits from Mabar? For that matter, are there any Irian fiends, or evil-aligned spirits from Irian?

Certainly, in both cases. But the point is that any spirit of the Endless Night is about the concept of death, loss, despair. If you can find a way to make a being who’s a positive embodiment of these things, it could be good. For example, you could have Small Mercies — little spirits that kill those who are suffering unendurable torment. Technically they’re good; they are helping those who suffer. But their tool is still death. You won’t have a spirit in Mabar that seeks to prevent death, because that’s something that belongs in Irian. Look at Shavarath: you have noble celestials fighting vile demons, but they are all fighting; you’re not going to find a spirit from Shavarath that thinks peace is a good idea, unless it’s the peace that will come when we win our noble battle against the enemy.

So any spirit of the Endless Night will somehow embody death or loss, entropy or despair. If you can think of the positive aspects of this and personify it, that could be a Mabaran celestial. Conversely, Irian is about life and love, new beginnings and hope. If you can find a way that these things could be negative, you could have an fiend that embodies that. Perhaps there’s a spirit that spreads false hopes… though again, if its ultimate goal was to cause despair, it would belong in Mabar. Meanwhile, in a fragment of Irian being consumed by Mabar you can have the embodiment of hope that is struggling against despair; and within a fully consumed layer, it might still exist as the embodiment of crushed hopes and disappointment.

With all of that said: Bear in mind that just as celestials can fall, fiends can also rise. In the same way that an angel can become a Radiant Idol or rebel Quori can become Kalashtar, you could have a yugoloth who defies their nature and purpose. However, like the Kalashtar Quori and the Radiant Idol, if they want to maintain that identity they’d likely have to flee from Mabar.

If Mabar is indeed Death itself, then how to the Seekers argue their use of its powers. Logically, the Undying Court would be right; however, it is important to the role of the Blood of Vol that they too would have arguments. I like the idea that they do their part to contain the spread of Mabar’s power in its manifest zones, but why wouldn’t they agree with the Court that Mabar is basically a hostile plane and not to be meddled with?

It’s like fire, or nuclear power, or electricity. All of these are dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing; when harnessed by someone who understands them, they can be used to do good. An educated priest of the Blood of Vol would certainly agree that the power of Mabar is inherently dangerous — as shown by their working to contain the danger posed by manifest zones — but that’s exactly the point: they can contain that danger. They believe that their knowledge and understanding allows them to use this dangerous power in a positive way, just as we are comfortable using electricity and nuclear power in our daily lives.

Looking to the Undying Court’s assertion that all use of Mabaran energy is a threat to the world, Aerenal is a fairly isolationist country and they haven’t blanketed the Five Nations with this view. Even if they did, it’s a perfect mirror to the issue of climate change. Aerenal has logic on their side: it’s energy from the plane of Death and look at what it does in manifest zones — why use it? The Blood of Vol takes the role of people who say that cleaner coal is the answer to climate change: they know what they’re doing, they’re not going to throw away a useful tool because of some crackpots, and they don’t see any proof that things are as bad as the elves say. Plus, given that the Undying Court eradicated the line of Vol they CLEARLY have a vendetta against the BoV and this argument is simply driven by that vendetta; they’re making up excuses to persecute the BoV. Don’t be misled!

Short form: Any cleric of the Blood of Vol will tell you the power they wield is dangerous, but generations of their ancestors have learned how to master that power and wield it safely. And any arguments that it’s poisoning the world are ridiculous — again, generations of their ancestors have used it safely.

Dragonmarks: Origin of the Planes

Art by Lee Moyer for the 4th Edition Eberron Campaign Guide

This week I’m going to be writing about the planes. Tomorrow I’ll be posting a long article about the Endless Night, and later in the week I’ll be addressing some questions from my Patreon supporters. I thought we’d start off with a few of the most basic questions. Something that comes up fairly often: Why did we create a new cosmology for Eberron? 

The Great Wheel has lingered through many editions of D&D, and most official settings use a variation of this planar cosmology. But when we hammered out the details of Eberron, we made a conscious choice not to use the Great Wheel, but rather to create an entirely new cosmology from the ground up. Why?

One of the main goals in creating Eberron was to create a new world — a setting that could support stories that couldn’t be told in other settings. This included taking a different approach to the divine. Forgotten Realms had long received the most support of any D&D setting, and divine intervention and interaction plays a significant role in Faerun. But while active gods allow for tales like the Time of Troubles, they don’t work well when you want to deal with stories of schisms, corruption in a church, crusades and inquisitions that may have noble intent but which will clearly bring suffering. These are things that feel real and that we’ve dealt with in our history… but things that could easily be resolved if a deity could simply appear and say “You’re doing it wrong” or clarify a point of heresy. For this reason alone, we had to create a new cosmology. The planes of the Great Wheel are the homes of the gods; if we wanted a universe where the existence of the gods is a matter of faith, we had to start with a clean slate.

Setting gods aside, we wanted to start from scratch because we wanted to look at everything with new eyes. Eberron takes a different approach to gnomes. It takes a different approach to drow, to elves, to gnolls. Why wouldn’t we take a unique approach to fiends and celestials? If you want to use the Blood War or the Great Wheel in your game, there’s a dozen settings where you can. And for that matter, if you want to use these things in EBERRON you can, because you can always just change the universe to incorporate them.

In short, the Great Wheel already exists for those who want it; developing Eberron was an opportunity to explore a different approach to the planes. In Eberron, the planes aren’t tied to gods. They aren’t worlds tied to particular alignments. Only one of them is any sort of afterlife. Instead, they are isolated aspects of reality given concrete form. And part of the reason for doing this is because each one is a unique and fascinating place to explore… although, unfortunately, we never had the opportunity to explore them in third edition.

Did you establish the 13 Eberron-exclusive planes to discourage world-hopping from other settings, and if so why?

It was never our intention to discourage plane-hopping. If you look at page 92 of the Eberron Campaign Setting, it explains that the material plane of Eberron AND its thirteen planes are surrounded by the transitive planes: Astral, Ethereal and Shadow. From the start, Chris Perkins asserted that the Plane of Shadow connects all settings — if you wanted to get from Krynn to Eberron, you could get there through the Plane of Shadow.

With that said, while the ECS mentions the Plane of Shadow, it doesn’t CALL OUT that it could serve as a bridge between settings. Like many things in Eberron, we wanted to leave options to help GMs tell the stories they want to tell. It wasn’t our intention to discourage world-hopping, but it also wasn’t our intention to encourage it. Eberron is a self-contained setting with more than enough ways to add almost anything you want to use… and once you DO start bringing things in from other settings, it opens up various cans of worms, like what happens if a god from another setting comes into Eberron? Why are couatl in Eberron so different from couatl in other settings? But if you want to do it, it’s easy to do it. The Plane of Shadow is one option, but it’s a trivial matter to come up with others. Cannith’s created a world-hopping eldritch machine. The Mourning has torn a hole between realities. And so on.

Syrania is peace and Fernia is fire, Dal Quor is dream and Daanvi is order. What *does* the plane of Eberron represent and why is it in the center? And why does it not have any weird planar rule based on some concept?

There’s a bunch of things to unravel here.

First of all, Eberron isn’t the plane “of” anything. As called out in the Eberron Campaign Setting, Eberron is the Material Plane… which means it’s explicitly the plane of everything. From a mythological perspective, the planes were created by the Progenitors; when they were done, they created the material plane as a nexus where all those concepts overlap. The material plane is a place where you have order and chaos, strife and serenity, life and death. This is also why Eberron is where you find the most mortal creatures, as mortals are poised between many things.

With that said, I also think that the planar orrery — pictured above – is a metaphorical way to depict the planes. They aren’t actually little planets orbiting Eberron; they are layers of reality that exist sideways to Eberron. But because they move in and out of alignment in a predictable fashion, the orrery is a convenient way to depict them. And Eberron is at the center because it touches all of them, while they don’t directly touch one another.

Many of these concepts (order and chaos, war, nature, fairy tales, madness, death) are human at their core and while a lot of the intelligent species of Eberron share a lot of these notions… they also have many of their own, very relevant to them and only barely important for humans. Bloodlust for vampires. The Prophecy for dragons. And on that topic, this is a dragon centric world! Shouldn’t there be a plane of mystic secrets and a plane that’s avarice?

Life and death. Order and chaos. Strife and serenity. These aren’t concepts that are relevant to a single race; these are fundamental things experienced by almost any natural creature. In some ways this is the definition OF a “natural” creature — you live, you die, you are part of the natural world. There is chaos in nature and there is order, conflict and peace. These aren’t somehow human concepts; they are the basic pillars of reality.

Part of the issue here is that you shouldn’t look at the planar concepts with a narrow focus. By simple description Xoriat is the plane of “Madness” – but in fact it is about the alien and unknowable, the unnatural, about questions you shouldn’t ask. Madness is a potential consequence of contact with Xoriat and an easy label for it, but the actual concept that defines the plane is far broader and more flexible than that; the illithids call it the Realm of Revelations. Thelanis is the Faerie Court, but it is also the plane of stories and of magic, of the wonder we want to be in the world. Dolurrh is where spirits go after death, but Mabar is the plane of Death; it is entropy, the hunger that consumes both light and life, the shadow that waits for every light to fade. Irian is the positive force that drives and encourages life, the sun about to rise and the light waiting to banish the shadow. “Peace” is an easy way to describe Syrania, but it’s far more than that. I wish I had time and the ability to delve into every plane in more depth, and I’ll touch on these later in the week. But again, if they seem simple, it’s because the simple concepts are all most humans understand. But that’s a limitation of perception and imagination.

So taking the concepts mentioned – bloodlust for vampires, mystical secrets or greed from dragons – these are narrow ideas and already incorporated into the existing planes. Martial fury would be a part of Shavarath, while the consuming hunger of the vampire is a symptom of its tie to the endless dark of Mabar. Mystic secrets fall under Thelanis or Xoriat, depending if learning them could drive you mad; and as for greed, there’s likely a Quori who feeds on dreams of avarice. Dragons live and die. They dream and they tell stories. Vampires may not die, specifically because their tie to Mabar keeps them from Dolurrh… but they pay for that life by consuming the lives of others. They are surrounded by nature, by fire and ice. The planes define reality. Vampires, dragons and humans all just live in it.

If the Astral surrounds the entirety of the “universe” of Eberron, what lies outside the Astral?

What do you WANT to be beyond the Astral? It’s not something we’re likely to define in canon, both because it’s far outside the scope of a typical campaign and more important, because leaving it undefined creates opportunities for GMs to come up with an answer that works with the story they want to tell. A few possibilities:

  • Nothing lies beyond the Astral. We’re not bound by the laws of nature; it could be infinite and empty, extending endlessly into eternity.
  • Beyond the borders of the Astral lies the Far Realm. Perhaps, if survive your exploration of the Far Realm, you’ll find other astrals and other universes drifting beyond it. The main issue is that you’ll want to think carefully about how you distinguish the Far Realm from Xoriat (something I discuss in the recent Xoriat post).
  • Perhaps the Great Wheel lies beyond the Astral. Perhaps the Progenitors were rogue deities from the Wheel who made a new creation in secret, hidden away where the other gods couldn’t find it and meddle with its inhabitants.

There are just a few ideas. The question is what do you need the answer to do for you? Do you want the opportunity for players to explore other settings? Do you want a bizarre threat that’s so completely alien that even Xoriat is creeped out by it? Choose the answer that tells that story.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow I’ll explore the Endless Night, and later in the week I’ll answer more questions from the Patreon Inner Circle. Thanks to everyone who’s supporting the site!

Dragonmarks: Tieflings

In a previous Dragonmark I wrote about my general approach to adding exotic races to Eberron. Since then there’s been a fair amount of interest in a race that already has a vaguely defined role in canon Eberron: The Tiefling. While tieflings have come up in canon sources — the Venomous Demesne is mentioned in the 4E sourcebooks — as always, this is what I’d do in my personal campaign and it may contradict canon material.

The basic concept of the tiefling is a humanoid touched by infernal powers. Some interpretations present the concept of an empire whose lords bargained with dark forces; in others, tieflings are loners without a clear culture or path. As always, my goal in adding a new race is to find out what the players are looking for. If I have a player asking to be a tiefling, do they want to be part of an ancient tradition of warlocks? Would they rather play a loner who feels cursed by their infernal blood? Here’s two different approaches, each of which provides a very different story for a player to build on.

THE VENOMOUS DEMESNE

The Sarlonan nation of Ohr Kaluun was infamous for delving into dark magics. In the depths of their war labyrinths, the mage-lords of Ohr Kaluun forged pacts with infernal spirits and tapped into the powers of the planes. Over generations this twisted the blood of the nobles, producing the first tieflings. This corruption didn’t go unnoticed. Khaleshite crusaders fought bitterly against Ohr Kaluun, and fear of the demonic taint of Ohr Kaluun spreading across Sarlona was a cornerstone of the civil strife that resulted in the Sundering. The civilization of Ohr Kaluun was wiped out during the Sundering, but a small force of nobles and their retainers escaped across the sea. These refugees created a hidden enclave on the west coast of Khorvaire. Over the course of centuries, they regained a portion of their pride and power. They inspired fear in the savage creatures that lived around them, and their realm became known as the Venomous Demesne. The tiefling lords were largely content in their isolation until the Daughters of Sora Kell rose to power in the region and sought to unify the wilds into the nation of Droaam. Sora Teraza herself came to the Venomous Demesne, bypassing the mystical concealment as if it didn’t exist. She spoke to the Council of Four, and none know what she said. But in the days that followed, the noble lines sent representatives to the Great Crag and joined in the grand experiment of Droaam.

The Venomous Demesne is a tiefling community and culture. It is a small hidden city, whose population includes both humans and tieflings… though many of the humans have minor signs of infernal heritage, even if they don’t have the full racial mechanics. The Demense is ruled by an alliance of four tiefling families, and the members of these families are powerful casters delving into many paths of magic: there are warlocks, clerics, and wizards of all schools. Their powers are vast, but grounded in dark bargains made in the past. To most outsiders, their traditions seem arbitrary and cruel. The price of magic is often paid for in pain and blood. Duels are an important part of their culture – never to the death, as they are still too few in number to squander noble blood so casually, but always with a painful cost for the loser.

If you are a full-blooded tiefling of the Venomous Demense, you are a scion of a noble line – a line that made bargains with malefic powers in the past. Your people have long been extremely insular, shunning all contact with the outside world. Now that they are expanding into Droaam, some are interested in knowing more about Khorvaire and the opportunities it presents. Consider the following options…

  • Your noble house is the weakest of the four lines. You are searching for allies or powers that will allow your house to gain dominance over the Venomous Demesne.
  • You are a lesser heir of your house and will never achieve status in the Demesne. You are seeking personal power that will let you take control of your house. You’re especially interested in the Mourning; it reminds you of stories you’ve heard about the magics of Ohr Kaluun, and you wonder if you could unlock and master its powers.
  • You have discovered a terrible secret about your ancestors and the bargains that they made… a pact that is about to come due. It may be that the cost affects you personally; that it could destroy your house; or that it is a threat to Eberron itself. Perhaps an Overlord is due to be released, or a planar incursion will occur if you can’t stop it. The Council of Four won’t listen to you – so you’re on your own.
  • You have been exiled from the Demesne. This could be because of a duel you lost, a crime you committed, or a crime you WOULDN’T commit. Perhaps you were ordered to participate in a pact that would damn your soul, or to murder someone you cared about. You can never return: what destiny can you find in the outer world?

You are from a hidden city of dark wonders, and the Five Nations seem hopelessly primitive and savage to you. Where is the blood wine? Where is the music of the spheres? Imagine you’re an alien from an advanced civilization, forced to deal with savages.

PLANETOUCHED TIEFLINGS

The tieflings of the Venomous Demesne were mystically engineered. Their ancestors chose to become tieflings by binding dark powers to their blood. But those same dark powers can leak into the world uncalled for. During coterminous periods, planar influences can shape an unborn child; this is especially true in a manifest zone. In this way, a Tiefling can be born into a human family. This occurs most frequently in the Demon Wastes, and among the Carrion Tribes Tieflings are seen as blessed, often rising to positions of power in a tribe. Within the Five Nations such births are more often viewed with fear and concern. This is often justified. A planetouched Tiefling isn’t the result of a bargain or pact. They are touched by planar power, and this shapes them in both body and mind.

When making a planetouched tiefling, the first question is which plane you’re tied to and how that manifests physically and mentally.

  • Fernia is an obvious choice, as its residents include devils and demons and many Tiefling racial abilities are tied to fire. A Fernian tiefling fits the classic appearance. Skin could be fiery red or orange, and warm to the touch. Eyes could be glowing embers, and when the tiefling grows angry the ambient temperature could rise. A Fernian tiefling would be fiery and passionate, with an innate love for seeing things destroyed by flame.
  • Shavarath is also a good choice, as it is home to the majority of fiends that resemble tieflings. A tiefling tied to Shavararath might have horns of steel, and their skin could seem to be made of leather or iron, though this would be a cosmetic effect only. A fiend of Shavarath could keep the standard flame-based powers, but would have a martial nature and strong instinct for aggression, conquest, or bloodshed.
  • Risia also works as the counterpoint to Fernia. A Risian tiefling would have pale white or silvery skin and hair. Their horns might actually be made of ice, staying frozen even in the warmest temperatures, and they might draw heat from their surroundings. A Risian tiefling should have resistance to cold instead of fire, and their Hellish Rebuke would inflict cold damage. Emotionally, Risian tieflings tend to be cold and distant, rarely showing emotion or compassion.
  • Mabar is home to succubi, and a Mabaran tiefling takes after these fiends. A Mabaran tiefling replaces fire resistance with resistance to necrotic damage, and replaces Hellish Rebuke with Arms of Hadar. Mabaran tieflings are often extremely attractive; some have natural skin tones, while others have unnaturally dark skin. Mabaran tieflings are predators by nature and often sociopaths or narcissists.
  • Sakah are tieflings of the Demon Wastes who are touched by the power of the rakshasa. Instead of the horns and tail of the typical tiefling they have feline traits – cat’s eyes, fangs, skin with tiger-stripe patterns, often in unnatural colors. Sakah can use the exact same racial traits as the traditional tiefling, though with the DM’s permission you can exchange Hellish Rebuke (at 3rd level) for the ability to use Alter Self once per day. Sakah are inherently deceptive and manipulative; like the Mabaran tieflings, they are almost exclusively sociopath who have difficulty empathizing with humans.

A critical point here: you aren’t simply touched by the plane, you are touched by its fiendish influences. The fiends of Fernia don’t simply represent fire: Fernian demons reflect the chaotic, terrifying destructive power of fire, while Fernia devils embody the use of fire as a tool for destruction and torment. A genasi is an individual tied to neutral elemental forces: as a tiefling, you are a malevolent embodiment of the planar concept. If you’re a tiefling from Shavarath, you’ve innately got a strong bond to the Mockery – you might want to follow the path of Dol Arrah, but it will definitely be a struggle as your instincts push you towards treachery and cruelty.

Unlike the tieflings of the Venomous Demesne, planetouched tieflings aren’t a true-breeding race; they have no communities or culture. Were you abandoned by your parents who considered you a freakish mutation? Did they instead embrace you and try to help you find a place in the world? Are you a bitter lone wolf, or someone who has fought to find acceptance in public society? Were you born in the Demon Wastes and considered to be blessed… and if so, why did you ever leave? Most of all, do you consider the touch of the plane a curse or a blessing?

PUBLIC REACTION

So the question that comes up most often is how do people in (place) react to tieflings? People in Thrane must hate them, because they’re like demons, right?

Well, sort of. The point I’ve made before is that WE look at the tiefling and see a demon: but the demons the people of Eberron know best are rakshasa, so “horns and red skin” doesn’t automatically mean “evil.” Consider the vast number of monstrous humanoids that exist in the world: if you live in Sharn you’ve encountered harpies, gargoyles, ogres, goblins, shifters, changlings, warforged, and potentially even medusa just doing everyday stuff in town. There’s a creature with living snakes for hair, and while people are definitely UNCOMFORTABLE around medusas, they are still a part of the world.

So the first question is: does the person in question actually know what a tiefling is? By default, tieflings are extremely rare. The tieflings of the Venomous Demesne have always been in hiding. Planetouched tieflings are most common in the Demon Wastes and rarely ever leave it. If you don’t know that a tiefling is connected to fiendish powers, then they are just a person with strange skin and horns. My point in the previous article wasn’t that anyone could mistake a tiefling for a minotaur, but rather that to the casual observer there’s nothing more inherently threatening about a tiefling than there is about a minotaur; both are horned humanoids, and frankly the tiefling is closer to being human. So by default a tiefling won’t produce a reaction of “BURN IT! IT’S A DEMON!” because it’s not the right sort of demon. It’s just some sort of monster, and there are lots of monsters in the world.

With that said, if you WANT the story of persecution and fear, it’s a trivial thing to say that people do know what tieflings are and why they should fear them. Looking to my explanation for planetouched tieflings, I suggested that this is a thing that happens when the destructive planes are coterminous. In this case, as rare as they are, it could be understood that tieflings care the touch of evil – that there is a fiendish taint in their blood, and that most are dangerous and destructive. In this case, I’d look at the treatment of the aberrant dragonmarked as a guideline. Like a tiefling, an aberrant didn’t choose to be cursed – but they possess a dangerous power, and superstition states that they are inclined to be evil. People may not call a priest when a tiefling shows up, but they could certainly treat the tiefling – and any who associate with them – with fear and suspicion, and want nothing to do with them. Followers of the Silver Flame or Dol Arrah could assert that through no fault of their own, the tiefling is inherently inclined to be evil; it might not be a matter of shoot-on-site, but a templar could easily be looking for an excuse to take the twisted thing down.

Now, if this is the path you use, the critical thing would be that if you have BOTH planetouched tieflings and the Venomous Demesne, people will assume the tiefling from the demense is planetouched. Because again, the Demesne has always been hidden and planetouched tieflings aren’t true-breeding; so the idea of a city of tieflings is definitely beyond anyone’s imagining.

RELLEKOR

In a previous post, I mentioned the idea that the village of Rellekor in Thrane has had a large Tiefling community for centuries. How does this tie into these two models? Recall that the Church of the Silver Flame is founded on principles of compassion. It seeks to protect the innocent from supernatural evil. A tiefling has the potential to be a supernatural threat, but it can also be innocent; a tiefling can even become a champion of the Flame.

With this in mind, Rellekor was established as a haven for planetouched tieflings. When Thrane families give birth to a tiefling (due to planar influences), they will usually turn the child over to the church, who will in turn deliver it to Rellekor. Thus, the population of Rellekor is made up of planetouched tieflings with ties to many different planes. It’s not a prison; it’s a place where tieflings can be with their own kind without dealing with the fear of others. Priests of the Flame seek to help tieflings come to terms with their planetouched nature and any gifts or powers associated with it, and help them find a path to the light… while Templars stand ready to deal with those who prove dangerous or irredeemably sociopathic. Note that most of these priests and templars are themselves tieflings.

People of Thrane thus have some concept of tieflings, but bear in mind that part of the point of Rellekor is to keep tieflings from mingling with the general population. The basic attitude is thus that tieflings are dangerous, much like people with aberrant dragonmarks.

If you want to play a tiefling devoted to the Silver Flame, it makes sense that you would have been raised and trained in Rellekor. Otherwise, it can be an interesting location to visit. There are a number of tiefling sages and priests with great wisdom in this place, and it’s also a center for study of the planes tied to the tieflings; if you need insight into Mabar, speak to the Mabarn tiefling monks of Rellekor.

I’m going to leave things there, but hopefully that’s given you some ideas if you’re looking to bring tieflings into your campaign!

 

Dragonmarks 6/13/16: Cults and Fiends

As I write this, Phoenix: Dawn Command is on a boat… albeit a very slow boat… headed for the United States. In the days ahead I’m going to be spending more time talking about Phoenix, both delving into the setting and system. I’ll still be answering questions about Eberron when I can, but most likely it will only be once or twice a month.

We will be launching Phoenix at Gen Con, and our full list of events should go active sometime this week. At the moment, there are two events you can sign up for. The first is All About Phoenix, where all the secrets of Phoenix will be revealed. The second is a Q&A with Keith Baker. In the past I’ve done this as an informal event in a hotel lobby. It’s still going to be casual, but this year we’ve gone ahead and gotten a room for it. This is your chance to ASK ME ANYTHING, whether it’s about Eberron, Gloom, Phoenix, or what I had for dinner on Tuesday night.

In any case: Today’s topics are cults and fiends. Let’s get to the questions!

What do you think a cult of Siberys would look like as an existential threat, especially in contrast to the schemes of the numerous Cults of the Dragon Below?

First, let me clarify how I’m reading the question. You’re asking what it would look like as an existential threat, by which I think you’re saying if they were the villains of the story. This is a slightly odd question, because in the mythology Siberys is a positive figure… a creative force killed by treacherous Khyber. This ties to the fact that all myths agree that Siberys is dead… the pieces of his body can be seen in the night sky. So from what we’ve established, most Siberys cults focus on his sacrifice and on the gifts that he’s given us; one common assertion is that magic itself is the blood of Siberys, flowing down from the Ring of Siberys. So essentially, modern society is only possible because of the gift of Siberys.

BUT: let’s take the challenge of having a Cult of Siberys as the villains of a story.

First of all, don’t forget that few Cults of the Dragon Below literally worship Khyber; instead, most are aligned with the Daelkyr, Lords of Dust, or something else that’s more directly tangible. So a Cult of the Dragon Above might have some intermediary entity that they serve. The logical choice would be a couatl, as they are generally seen to be the children of Siberys in the same way that the rakshasa are children of Khyber, but then you have the question of what makes this cult different from a traditional Serpent/Silver Flame cult.

A concrete thing about Siberys is that there’s pieces of his body floating around the world (assuming you believe the myth). So: I’d run with that. A Siberys cult is seeking to restore Siberys to life. To do this, they seek to collect all the Siberys shards. Perhaps the chief agents of this cult embed the shards within their bodies… ultimately become a sort of living shard-fusion, sort of like the Shardminds from 4E. Such a being could channel tremendous mystical power, and they wouldn’t care how much destruction they have to wreak in the process of collecting the shards. As the cult’s plot continues, they could work on Eldritch Machines that would not only draw all Siberys shards, but also drain all the magic out of an affected region… again, magic being “the Blood of Siberys.” The cultists believe that once Siberys is restored, he will create a new, perfect world – so they aren’t concerned with the havoc or suffering caused by their actions. Presuming that they are stopped, magic would eventually return to the drained regions – but it would be up to you to decide how long this would take, and it could cause all manner of chaos. Sharn is sustained by magic, and if the region was drained, the city would collapse.

So: There’s one idea to work with.

We know that cultists of the Dragon Below believe their lords to be the children fo Khyber and that the daelkyr aren’t in any hurry to disabuse them of this false notion. But what do the daelkyr themselves think of the Dragon Below and the origins their minions attribute to them.

There’s a bunch of points to address here. But before I get to any of them, I suggest you review this Dragonmark (https://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-the-daelkyr-and-their-cults/).

First: “Cult of the Dragon Below” is a general term that people use to encompass wildly different sects largely united by irrational behavior and often some sort of connection to Khyber… a literal connection to Khyber, be that an association with aberrations, demons, or a desire to find shelter in the underworld. Only a few actually revere Khyber, the Progenitor Dragon; and most of those do it in a fairly abstract way.

With that said, who says it’s a “false notion”? According to myth, the Progenitors created the planes. The Material Plane was the last thing they created, because the world was created by their fight. Each Progenitor exerted greater influence on different planes. So Lamannia is a plane that strongly reflects the influence of Eberron, while Xoriat strongly reflects the influence of Khyber. So while the Daelkyr weren’t created in the physical realm of Khyber, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be considered to be “Children of Khyber.”

But to cut to the chase: Erandis Vol deceives and manipulates her followers. The Dreaming Dark and the Lords of Dust are masters of manipulation. The Daelkyr? NOT SO MUCH. They don’t need to deceive their followers, because for the most part THEIR FOLLOWERS ARE INSANE. It’s not that cultists work with Dolgaunts because they think the Dolgaunts are agents of Khyber and the Dolgaunts maintain a web of lies; they work with the dolgaunts because they think the dolgaunts are divine emissaries, the gatekeepers to a secret paradise that lies below, or the reincarnation of King Jarot. The Dolgaunts surely do a certain amount of playing along with whatever delusions the cultists are laboring under, but it’s not like they have built the deception themselves; they just need to listen to whatever the cultists are spouting and smile and nod.

Essentially, I see the Daelkyr as more primal than many of the other epic threats of Eberron. They change reality simply by existing. Their presence drives mortals mad. Their purposes are enigmatic; is change alone their goal, or do they have grander schemes we’ve yet to understand?

Are the Daelkyr still in Xoriat eager to get here?

It’s not defined in canon, so it’s really up to you. Per canon, I don’t believe we’ve actually established if there ARE any Daelkyr still in Xoriat. What we’ve said in the past is that “The Daelkyr aren’t the most powerful spirits in Xoriat; they’re simply the most powerful spirits that have an interest in Eberron.”

Part of the point of outsiders is that they are ideas given form, and that their form reflects their nature. In the article linked to above I point out that Daelkyr may essentially reflect the creatures they are dealing with. Given this I would advance the idea that the Daelkyr may literally be defined as the spirits that seek to spread madness… thus inherently there are no Daelkyr in Xoriat because it is the act of leaving Xoriat that makes them Daelkyr.

But ultimately, there is no canon answer.

If the Planes books ever get made, I’d love to see something about the themes and “exceptions” for placing monsters on that plane. For example, Fernia is obviously the fire plane, but it is also slightly evil aligned. Despite this, Celestials still arise from the pane if they have a fire theme, in defiance of alignment. I’ve been trying to place Pathfinder’s Gambling Devil in Eberron’s cosmology but have found it tough. Does it fit on Daanvi with its lawful nature? Or is Kythri better since it can manipulate probability and make people take risks? I honestly lean to the latter, despite conventional D&D wisdom on alignments, but clearer guidance would be nice.

Most planes have a “preferred” type of spirit. Quori are the primary fiends of Dal Quor. Angels are especially numerous in Syrania. Couatl and rakshasa are the most common celestials and fiends of Eberron itself (technically, of Siberys and Khyber).

With that said: You can have any spirit manifest on any plane, provided that it fits the CONCEPT of that plane.

Case in point: Shavarath, the Eternal Battleground. The three largest forces in Shavarath are an army of Archons, an army of Devils, and an army of Demons. The Archons embody the concept of just battle and war fought for noble reasons. The Devils reflect violence in pursuit of tyranny and power. And the Demons are bloodlust and chaos, random violence and brutality. You could put ANY devil you wanted into the Infernal Legions of Shavarath… but that devil would be fundamentally defined and motivated by its role in the Eternal War. Which may not serve the story you have in mind. And taking the Gambling Devil, while it IS a devil, it’s not particularly a devil that screams “I HAVE A PLACE ON THE BATTLEFIELD.”

The original ECS said that Pit Fiends are found in Fernia. In my opinion, you can find Pit Fiends in Fernia, but I believe that you can also find Pit Fiends in Shavarath… and that you can potentially find a Pit Fiend in the Demon Wastes, spawned by Khyber and with no connection to Shavarath or Fernia. All three of these Pit Fiends would have the same statistics. However, their appearance and behavior would be quite different.

  • The Pit Fiend of Shavarath is a general in the Infernal Legion. It wears heavy armor engraved with burning runes. It embodies tyranny and war, leading with an iron fist and enforcing discipline with fear and fire. Its sole desire is gaining an edge in the eternal war, and any dealings it has with mortals will revolve around how they could shift the balance or assist in the struggle.
  • The Pit Fiend of Fernia is a dark shadow wreathed in eternal flame, the embodiment of flame used to sow terror and destroy enemy holdings. It is a cruel being that rules over a fiefdom in Fernia, and it is constantly fighting (and burning) enemies as that is part of its nature… but unlike the fiend of Shavarath, it’s dealing with a series of feuds as opposed to ONE BIG WAR. In general it has no interest in Eberron or mortals; if they do cross its path it will seek to use them as tools in its current feud.
  • The Pit Fiend of Khyber is the classic scaled fiend. It’s not tied to War or Fire; instead, it can embody whatever concept best suits your story. Pride? Tyranny? Cruelty? It might rule over a host of rakshasa and be associated with the Lords of Dust. It could be the patron fiend of one of the Carrion Tribes, and send its warriors to fight the Ghaash’kala orcs. Or it could be a lone spirit bound to a specific location within the Demon Wastes, hoping the mortals that cross its path can somehow break its bonds.
  • A surprise fourth option would be Baator. In the Eye on Eberron article I presented Baator as a demiplane… a prison created by celestial powers (some say the Sovereigns) to hold corrupted and rebellious spirits. Those, the fiends of Baator weren’t always fiends. The Pit Fiend of Baator is thus a classic fallen angel. Furthermore, the denizens of Baator want mortal souls; they are seeking to build their own power bases following the same model as the Silver Flame.

As I said, mechanically these could all be EXACTLY THE SAME; it’s simply that their behaviors and motivations will all be different… and each one would serve a different role in the story.

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY: You don’t have to decide where ALL Gambling Devils are from; you just need to decide where this one is from. And the critical question there is what does it want? What is the story you are trying to tell with it? If it is gambling to try to win a mortal soul, then it’s a good match for Baator. If it’s purely and generically evil, it might be spawned directly by Khyber. Heck, if it’s about taunting people with the promises of dreams that will be snatched away at the last minute, it could actually be from Dal Quor… a fringe spirit spawned by the plane but with no connection to the Dreaming Dark.

So figure out what your spirit wants and how it’s going to act. Base its plane of origin on that, and then shape its appearance to reflect the plane it’s from.

If we had an outsider that represented death by immolation, would that outsider be native to Dolurrh, native to Fernia, or native to both? Would alignment play into account at all?

If its primary purpose in the universe is BURNING ANYONE IT CAN, it’s from Fernia. If its primary purpose is BURNING ITS ENEMIES IN WAR, it’s from Shavarath. If its primary purpose is to SERVE AS AN EXAMPLE OF A PARTICULAR WAY YOU COULD DIE – IE, the “death” part is more important than the “burning” part, then sure, go for Dolurrh. And if it’s first and foremost an evil scheming spirit who just happens to be good at burning people, then I’d tie it to Khyber or Baator. Alignment should be reflected in its core concept and thus behavior. If it’s Lawful, that implies people being immolated in an organized and intentional way; if it’s chaotic, than it’s people being randomly immolated in wildfires.

We know that unofficially there is a group of Dwarves in the Demon Wastes who have Deathless among them. I would assume this means they have access to a manifest zone to Irian. What are they like religiously? Are they another splinter cult that worships the Silver Flame? An odd variation of the host? Or some other sect that doesn’t fit well with the more common religions?

Deathless are sustained both by the energy of Irian and the devotion of a group of worshippers. So like the Aereni, these dwarves revere their ancestors, and it is this devotion that sustains their deathless spirits. Be aware that this is a comparatively small community and only has a handful of deathless guardians – a powerful shelter in the Demon Wastes, but nothing on the scale of the Undying Court.

Related to the planes (but not necessarily the things that live there): Sharn’s weather is described as generally rainy (Sharn, pg. 24) but it’s also supposed to be a manifest zone for Syrania which is perpetually clear blue skies. Is it clear for Skyway and rainy for everyone below?

Manifest zones reflect an aspect of the plane that touches them, but their effects can take many different forms. A manifest zone tied to Syrania might enhance magic of flight, generate perfect blue skies, or create a peaceful aura that diffuses all hostilities (among other possibilities). Sharn’s zone affects flight, but doesn’t encourage peace in any way… and doesn’t help with the weather.

Also related to the planes, what happens in a manifest zone when another plane moves coterminous to the Material Plane?

Per canon, nothing. Eberron is touched by all of the planes. A manifest zone has a special connection to one of them, but it’s still influenced by the others.

What do the denizens of other planes think of the Greensingers and their idea of unrestricted planar travel?

Bear in mind that the majority of inhabitants of Khorvaire have never heard of the Greensingers, and they live on the same plane of existence. If you’re a horned devil in the Infernal Legion, fighting THE WAR THAT SHAPES REALITY, you really have no way to hear or reason to care about some group of druids on Khorvaire. Imagine if on D-Day you grabbed a soldier at Normandy and said “Hey! A bunch of Ecuadorian tourists would like to visit – what do you think?” Not every plane is as focused as Shavarath, but for the most part the denizens of the planes have their own $&%* to deal with and don’t really care about Eberron.

There are exceptions. The Quori have always been more interested in humanity than other outsiders because they deal with mortals all the time (through their dreams)… while that random devil in Shavarath may have never even seen a human. And the nobles of Thelanis have an interest in shaping new stories… which is why they have always been the most notable patrons of the Greensingers. If you’re playing with Baator, the former prisoners would welcome an easier path to the material plane… and it would be interesting to have a group of Greensingers who believe they are working with a benevolent fey discover that their patron is actually an archdevil. And I’m sure that entities like the Inevitables would take great issue with mortals opening up gates to Dolurrh… if it ever actually happened.

Do planar beings of different planes have contact between themselves? Or it’s more common to have contact/travel to the Material Plane?

The Material Plane is the hub where all the planes together. Each plane is a pure concept: War, Peace, Order, Chaos. On Eberron, all these things come together. Beyond that, you have soft spots such as Manifest Zones. So essentially, Syrania HAS a connection to the Material Plane… while it has no inherent connection to Kythri. Thus it is far easier and more common for there to be contact between Eberron and Syrania that between Syrania and Kythri. With that said, this is also the role of demiplanes – to serve as bridges between planes with no innate connections. Baator is one example of this, serving as a prison for immortals of many planes. There is at least one “crossroads” demiplane, though it’s not something I’m going to expand on until I can do so for the DM’s Guild.

Beyond this: Think of each plane as a machine. Each immortal is a cog in that machine, with a very specific role to play. Unlike mortals, the immortals have a very clear sense of their place and their purpose. A soldier in one of the armies of Shavarath never stops to say “Why am I fighting? Is there something better I could be doing?” They are embodiments of War; they have no other purpose. Essentially, for all that they may be brilliant, immortals generally have less free will than mortals. So as a general rule, the soldier in Shavarath has no interest in anything beyond fighting the war… and thus no interest in contacting Eberron or any other plane. However, Eberron is the plane they are most likely to contact by accident, being caught in a manifest zone or coterminous effect.

With that said: There are some immortals whose nature encompasses curiosity or a desire to push beyond their plane. A sage from Syrania or Daanvi might well travel to other planes in search of knowledge. Beyond that, there are always those rare exceptions who evolve beyond their original purpose. Taratai and the other Kalashtar Quori. Radiant idols and the prisoners of Baator. Thelestes and Korliac of the Gray Flame in the Lords of Dust. So there’s always room in a story to have spirits crossing planar lines – but it is certainly the rare exception, not the norm.

This applies to the immortal inhabitants of the planes. It’s less true for the mortal inhabitants, who aren’t so closely bound to their planes and who have more free will. Again, it would be more common to find them in demiplanes, as there’s no direct path between, say, Shavarath and Syrania… but such travel surely does happen.

If immortals incarnate concepts and has no free will, how does it come that (rogue Eladrin) Luca Syara choose to fight the war, became deprimited and change her alignment to neutral?

The same way Taratai turned against the Dreaming Dark, or an angel becomes a Radiant Idol. Check the paragraph above: “…there are always those rare exceptions who evolve beyond their original purpose.” Out of all the Quori that exist, sixty-seven rebelled to form the Kalashtar. Likewise, there may be a dozen or so Radiant Idols… which is a tiny percentage of the Host of Syrania.

The statement “Immortals have no free will” is a little too forceful. The Devourer of Dreams and Lady Sharadhuna of the Thousand Eyes differ in opinion as to the path the Quori should take in Eberron, and each has their own schemes and intrigues. The point is that both are utterly devoted to il-Lashtavar, and that this wasn’t a choice either of them made; it is a fundamental part of who they are, present from the moment they came into existence. The same is true of all Quori. They come into existence with purpose, and very few of them ever evolve the ability to question that purpose. Likewise, the soldier in the army of Shavarath doesn’t fight the endless war because they’ve thought about it, considered all the options, and decided that war is the thing for them… they fight because it is the only reality they can imagine. They choose HOW they fight. They come up with cunning strategies, they negotiate and break alliances, but they fight and they fight and they fight. IT IS POSSIBLE for one of these eternal soldiers to break away from this… but again, you’re talking about a handful over the course of history out of tens of thousands of spirits.

WITH THAT SAID: Luca Syara is a Ghaele Eladrin. The powerful immortals of Thelanis aren’t united by a common purpose. Each one has their own unique story and they play out that story. In Luca’s case, there’s a few possibilities. She was drawn to Eberron by what she saw as a righteous war, and odds are excellent that THAT was part of her defined nature. Now, one possibility is that her disillusionment is a legitimate shift in her nature, as Taratai turned away from the Dreaming Dark. BUT… it is also possible that this IS her story: that she joins righteous but doomed causes and then goes through a cycle of tragic despair, before finding a new righteous but doomed cause.

You said that an immortal who change his alignment would become something complitely different. A good rakshasa wouldn’t be a rakshasa anymore, like a radiant idol is not an angel. Is there any canon creature you would use as an ex-rakshasa? 

Not that comes to mind. Personally, I’d want to design something from the ground up, as we did with Radiant Idols. With that said, with the Baator article we assert that the fiends in Baator are corrupted spirits from other planes. So there’s precedent for just using whatever makes sense to you.

Could this be a path for introducing a hellbreed in Eberron? A rakshasa that lost most of his power, including immortality, in a path of redemption?

It’s feasible. I think I’ve also heard this concept being used for Devas.

How would you shape a planar campaign in Eberron? Players with abilities to plane travel? A planar transportation(an ancient giant ship)? Is there Sigil in Eberron somewhere?

I think all three of those are sound ideas, but frankly I wouldn’t design a planar campaign in Eberron until there’s been an opportunity to describe the planes in more detail.

The planes are not inhabited only by spirits born of ideas. There are some more normal and mortal beings living there. How is their religion? Do they worship aspects of the Host/Flame like everyone else?

That’s not an easy question to answer in this format, because I simply don’t have the time or room to describe the faiths that DON’T have any parallel in Eberron. The short form is that some do associate themselves with the Sovereigns, though often with their own twists. But there are certainly other beliefs tied to their own planes and the powerful spirits within it. Within Thelanis, for example, most mortal fey are more concerned with allegiance to their ruling immortal than abstract belief in some greater power.

The Silver Flame doesn’t have much of a following in the planes, because it is concretely a Material thing: a force created by spirits of Eberron to protect the people of Eberron. There are some who appreciate the CONCEPT of it, but they don’t devote themselves to it.

Do they have the same creation myth of the Progenitor Dragons? The myth itself is very Material Plane-centric, are they ok being just “Side” planes?

Most do have the same creation myth, which among other things justifies the fact that their planes ARE connected to and influence the Material. But most would argue with your assertion that the myth is “Material Plane-centric.” As a planar entity, I would point out that the planes were the FIRST creations of the Progenitors, and that they were completed. By contrast, Eberron the world is a thing that occurred as the result of a brawl. They say that the Material is touched by and shaped by all planes simply because it is the final resting place of the Progenitors who created them all, not because the Material is somehow the pinnacle of creation. Essentially, the angel of Syrania asserts that Syrania is a perfectly designed machine… while the Material is an unfinished lump of clay that just happens to be where the Progenitors called it quits.

Sharn is a fantasy city inspired in the manifest zone to Syrania. In an alternative dimension Eberron, how could Sharn be affected by different manifest zones?

This seems like a broader question about the effects of manifest zones in general. Whenever the opportunity comes to write about the planes in more detail, I’d definitely like to present multiple examples of manifest zones tied to each plane, and to go into more detail about the effects of coterminous and remote periods. But it’s not something I have time for right now.

Khyber runs under the entirety of Eberron, so are there deep trenches underwater that lead to the “Deeps”; flooded sections of Khyber?

Certainly. But bear in mind that Khyber is more than just a physical underworld; it also contains portals to demiplanes, allowing the discovery of fantastic regions that transcend the limits of reality.

Is it possible that there are one or more daelkyr that had no interest in the surface races and instead went after the underwater world? What sort of ‘dol-merrow’ concepts would you think such a daelkyr would come up with?

It’s certainly possible. However, just to present another alternative, the Eberron Expanded article on Lords of Madness calls out the Aboleths as contemporaries of the Rakshasas and the demon Overlords, and Sahuagin legend speaks of a battles between the Devourer and the ancient fiends back in the dawn of time that friend the sahuagin from Aboleth domination. A Daelkyr would thus be a relatively recent entry into this ancient Aboleth-sahuagin rivalry. As for what a daelkyr might do with merfolk or sahuagin as a starting point, I’ll have to think about it.

The 3.5 sourcebook Elder Evils had a gigantic creature called “the Leviathan”; a creature of “pure chaos left over from the creation of the world”… My question is then: Would you consider the ‘primordial chaos beast’ Leviathan to be a child of Khyber, creation of the Daelkyr, or from some other being entirely? If the Head of Eberron (whether it is actually her physical head shall be left out of this question) is in Argonessen, could the Leviathan or source of its legends be the “Head of Khyber”?

I would personally make such a thing tied to Khyber as opposed to the Daelkyr, and making it the “Head of Khyber” seems plausible. The very first draft of Eberron actually included a serpent literally wrapped around the world, essentially filling this same role. The faith of the Sahuagin includes ritually consuming an enemy to gain its strength; back in that first draft, the Sahuagin were searching for a way to eat the world serpent.

 

That’s all I have time for. The next Q&A will be about the Lords of Dust or Druids, depending on which gets more interest… so if you have any questions, post them in the comments!

Dragonmarks 5/10/16 : Planes, Druids, and Fiends

I’m working away on a number of different projects that I can’t talk about just yet, while waiting for Phoenix: Dawn Command to come back from the printer. One thing I can mention: I’m scheduled to be a guest at Acadecon 2016 (Dayton, Ohio on November 11th-13th), which is in the last few days of funding on Kickstarter. It’s a small event but has a great lineup of guests, so if you might be interested, follow the link and check it out.

Meanwhile, I’ve got dozens of Eberron questions to work through, and many could be the subject of entire posts. But there’s a few that can be answered quickly, and I’m going to see how many I can get through in one sitting.

If Eberron is ever opened for DM’s Guild, would you consider finally writing and publishing a complete Planes of Eberron?

Absolutely. I have a long list of topics I would love to write about as soon as it is possible to do so, and the Planes are high on that list.

Some planes have a key role in Eberron’s story and are very important for Eberron’s flavour. I mean Dal Quor, Xoriat, Dolurrh. Other planes, at least in core set, looks more as “a place where you can find some creatures that wouldn’t fit anywhere else”. But somehow I feel these creatures would need to be “eberronized”. 

I feel that all of the planes have much more to offer than simply being a source of exotic creatures. Each plane needs to be a compelling foundation for stories, whether the plane is the location of the story or something that directly influences it. I have deeper ideas for all the planes that have been revealed so far, and I feel that Mabar and Lamannia have just as much to offer as Xoriat or Dal Quor. And I look forward to writing about them as soon as it’s possible!

Months ago, we discussed the idea of a Daelkyr obsessed with the Silver Flame and trying to make it stronger in creepy ways. Do you think it could work more on celestial versions of aberration, or maybe in aberrating celestials, like a half-illithid angel?

In my opinion, part of what defines the material plane is that its inhabitants are innately connected to ALL of the planes. Humans live and die. They dream and know madness. They can fight wars and find peace. They are already connected to every plane, and that makes it relatively easy for them to be corrupted or transformed by the influence of planar beings. Beyond this, most mortals are creatures of flesh and blood, influenced by genetics, disease, and similar factors. So creatures of Eberron are easy clay for a daelkyr to work with.

By contrast, immortal outsiders are formed from the pure essence of a single plane. They are ideas given form, only loosely bound to physical reality. An archon from Shavarath is a pure embodiment of war. It wasn’t bred or born; it embodies an idea, and madness isn’t part of that idea. So I think it’s far more difficult for a daelkyr to transform an angel or a quori that to affect a mortal. With that said, anything is possible if it makes a good story. In a way, you can think of an angel as a piece of computer code as opposed to a being of flesh and blood. If the daelkyr could find a way to hack that code and rewrite the fundamental idea that defines the angel, they could twist it. It would just be a completely different process from the fleshwarping techniques they use on the creatures of Eberron.

If a paladin of the Blood of Vol who grew up in the ranks of the church or in another way discovers the true nature of the cult, would he lose his abilities? Or do you think in Eberron can exist a corrupted paladin or a paladin without a faith?

PERSONALLY, I hold paladins to a very different standard than clerics. I am a firm believer in the idea that you don’t choose to be a paladin: it is a divine calling that chooses you. As such, I do feel that it is vital for a paladin to remain “on-mission” and that a paladin who loses faith would lose their abilities until they could find their way back to it. With that said, I feel that paladins are defined by THEIR view of their faith. Clerics typically work through doctrine and study; an illiterate farm girl could become a paladin if she is called. She won’t lose her powers just because she’s excommunicated, and she’s unlikely to lose her faith after encountering a single corrupt priest; instead, she will likely be inspired to follow her calling and do something about that corruption.

This is especially true in the case of the Blood of Vol. Where do divine casters tied to the Blood of Vol draw their strength? The Divinity Within. Seekers believe that we all have the divine spark in our blood – that we could all be gods, and that we were cursed with mortality to keep us from reaching this potential. A paladin of the Blood of Vol isn’t getting her powers from an outside source; she has been called by her own divine spark, her own potential urging her to protect her people and fight death.

Add to this, I actually think the faith of the Blood of Vol has no more corruption than any other organized religion in Eberron… it’s simply that it’s called out more dramatically in Erandis. I believe that the majority of priests of the Blood are committed to the principles of their faith. In my campaign, Malevenor is a true Seeker and Atur a stronghold of the faith. The leaders of the Order of the Emerald Claw are corrupt and abusing the faith of their followers, but the devoted priests far outnumber the corrupt.

Now, if your question was “If a BoV paladin raised in the Emerald Claw discovered the corrupt nature of its inner circle, would she lose her faith and her powers,” I think she would turn on the corrupt priests – but I don’t believe that this would shatter her faith in the basic principles of the religion, especially since her divine power actually comes from within her, and isn’t in any way a gift from those corrupt priests.

A long time ago you wrote that you were playing an orc paladin of Demon Wastes and that you were going to tell us about this experience. I think it is a very interesting point in Eberron. How can a few of orcish tribes stand against all the demons of Demon Wastes?

There’s many more questions you could ask. Where do the demons of the Demon Wastes come from, anyway? What do they do when they aren’t trying to escape the Wastes? Why don’t the demons just go AROUND the Labyrinth? Why were the Ghaash’kala first chosen to guard the Labyrinth, and who set them there? And setting aside the demons, how can the Ghaash’kala survive in such a harsh landscape? What to they eat? Where do they acquire their weapons and armor?

This is a big topic, and when Eberron comes to the DM’s Guild the Demon Wastes is a topic I intend to explore in detail. But here’s the high level overview. There’s far more going on in the Demon Wastes than outsiders realize. It is a web of manifest zones, ancient wards, eldritch machines and demiplanes. Just as the modern Gatekeeper Druids hold back the Daelkyr by maintaining the ancient wards, the Ghaash’kala are also working with tools that date back to the Age of Demons and the foundation of the Silver Flame. As for how they obtain resources and food, they forage in Khyber. There are entrances to Khyber all across the Demon Wastes. When I say “Khyber” here, I don’t mean physical caves; I mean the demiplanes where demons are bound and born. Essentially, the Ghaash’kala raid the Abyss to obtain resources that aren’t available on the material plane.

Needless to say, this is the very tip of the iceberg… but I look forward to explaining in greater detail when it’s possible to do so.

I have a new group of players. They would love to play or a team related to Greensingers or to Ashbounds. But I feel like Greensingers are nice people singing and getting drunk in the almost-innocent plane of Thelanis and Ashbounds are interesting only at low levels, since their natural enemies are humans. Would you have any suggestion for either a Greensinger or Ashbound campaign?

I have a very different view of each sect, and I think you could definitely run a campaign tied to either sect.

Let’s start with the Greensingers. I don’t see them as “nice people” or, for the most part, as drunkards. The Greensingers are concerned about the balance between the natural world and the planes… especially Thelanis and the Fey. It’s noted that “many Greensingers spend time in the halls of the Faerie Court before returning to Eberron to act as ambassadors, servants, and spies for the fey lords.” This same article notes that “These individuals can serve as guides to Thelanis (and perhaps other planes), but they cannot always be trusted; their motives are as mysterious as the fey themselves.”

If I was going to run a campaign based on the Greensingers, I’d start by developing their Fey patrons. I’d want members of the party to have ties to different patrons, and to work with each player to develop their own personal goals. These could be tied to threats that are passing from one realm to the other; to the plight of the Feyspires; or to ancient bargains or pacts established by the Fey themselves. I’d look at the depiction of Bast and the fae in Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, or in my own novels Gates of Night or The Fading Dream. In my view, a Greensinger campaign could have all the action and suspense of Mission Impossible and Ocean’s Eleven spread across two planes. The Greensingers are tied to a secret world most mortals know nothing about it, and they alone know how that world threatens and is threatened by Eberron.

As for the Ashbound, the last thing I’d worry about is that their threats are primarily low-level or human. The stereotype of the Ashbound is that they are crazy fanatics who run around burning down Vadalis magebreeding facilities, and some of them do. But the basic drive of the Ashbound is to protect the world from the unnatural influence of magic, and there’s a lot of that going around. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Mourning? If I was running an Ashbound campaign, I would emphasize the terrible threat posed by the irresponsible use of magic. Driven by greed and the thirst for power, the Five Nations and the Dragonmarked Houses are pushing the limits of magic further and further. Concern of a second Mourning is certainly a possibility: but you can also emphasize the smaller scale horrors such research has unleashed. Explore the biological weapons Jorasco’s nosomatic chirugeons are developing, or the war magics Minister Adal is exploring in his quest to ensure victory in the Next War. Expand on Magebreeding… the experiments that have gone horrible wrong and the creations that Vadalis cannot control. and that’s not even touching demons and other unnatural magical entities that are anathema in the eyes of the Ashbound. You can play the Ashbound as zealots who primarily bother humans… but you can also play them as champions fighting a secret crusade against threats and villains the common folk don’t know about. You can play them as fanatics… but they can just as easily be the supernatural world’s answer to the Men in Black, protecting the innocent from arcane terrors they never even know about.

What relations to Night Hags – any of the nine supposed to inhabit the Demon Wastes, and great Sora Kell herself – have with the Quori? We know that they had a quasi-neutral situation as ambassadors in the Dragon-Fiend wars, but they also have powers over dreams. How do the Quori feel about this, and, conversely, do the hags know about the previous incarnations of Dal Quor?

There’s no canon answer to this. If you’re asking how I’d run it: First off, keep in mind the vast scale of Dal Quor. Every creature that dreams visits Dal Quor… and we’ve also indicated that there’s regions of Dal Quor made up of the dreams of long-dead entities, and places like the Citadel of Fading Dreams. Natural dreams are created through the interaction of the dreamer’s subconscious with the mutable reality of Dal Quor. Quori have the power to override this and alter an individual’s dreams, but it’s not as if they are personally monitoring and shaping EVERY DREAM. As a result, if your wizard uses Dream or Nightmare, he’s not innately stepping on the toes of the Quori; he’ll only draw attention if he happens to mess with a dream a Quori IS directly shaping for some purpose.

So you COULD say that the Night Hags fly under the radar of the Quori; they have enough experience to recognize when a dream is being manipulated by Quori and choose to avoid interfering. However, I’d personally say that the Night Hags are known in Dal Quor – I think they’d extend their role as fiendish ambassador to include their interaction with Dal Quor. I think they’d HAVE to know more about the previous incarnations of Dal Quor than the Quori do, which would be an immediate basis for a relationship. It could be that they have helped shape the Quori reaction to the turn of the age in this and previous ages… they might have even set the Quori-Giant war in motion.

The short form, though, is what works best for your story? Do you want a Night Hag to be able to act as a neutral intermediary between the party and il-Lashtavar? Would you like to have a Night Hag with a bitter feud with a powerful Quori… or a deep love formed in a previous age, leading her to want to force the turn of the age in the hopes of restoring her lover’s spirit to the form she once knew? It’s up to you.

What is the difference between some of the Rajahs who seem to step on each other’s toes: (a) Bel Shalor is a spirit of treason, but so is Eldrantulku. Though I assume Bel Shalor is more of the classical temptor and corruptor of innocence. (b) Sul Katesh is the keeper of secrets, but Tul Oreshka also has power over them. (c) Dral Khatuur and the overlord served by Drulkalatar are spirits of the wild, though Dral Khatuur is more specialised in cold.

The Overlords of the First Age aren’t gods, and they can step on each other’s toes. The range of their influence is limited; if Rak Tulkhesh is influencing events in the Five Nations, he’s out of range to also be influencing events in Xen’drik – but there could be ANOTHER Overlord tied to war influencing Stormreach. With that said, the ones you’ve described are different from one another. I’d love to do a more detailed accounting of each of these when the DM’s Guild opens up for Eberron, but in short:

  • Bel Shalor is more about corruption while Eldrantulku is about chaos and discord.
  • Sul Khatesh is the master of arcane secrets, while Tul Oreshka knows the secrets that will drive you mad. Sul Khatesh knows incantations that can destroy cities or raise the dead; Tul Oreshka knows what your lover truly thinks about you, and what’s lurking underneath your bed in the dark.
  • Dral Khatuur embodies the chill that kills the harvest and saps the strength of the strongest man. The Wild Heart is the predator that lurks within, the rabid instincts that lie beneath the surface waiting to be unleashed.

The key is that the Overlords are fundamentally about the EVIL that their spheres can do – the things that cause fear and death. There’s nothing positive about Dral Khatuur; she embodies the killing cold. She’s not part of the natural cycle; she will bring unending winter. Likewise, the Feral Master is a corruptor of natural impulses, turning innocents into savage monsters.

Back on the WotC forums, in the days when they existed, you mentioned that you had details on Dral Khatuur and her place of imprisonment, but had to clear it with WotC whether you could release any information. Has there been any movement on this?

I have a 10,000 word backdrop on Dral Khatuur and her prison in the Frostfell. If Eberron is unlocked for the DM’s Guild I’ll see if I can revise it and post it there.

How do various Rajahs – or, for that matter, gods – interact with planes that are within their spheres: Dral Khultur with Risia, Rak Tulkesh with Savarath, the Wild Heart with Lamannia, Katashka with Mabar and Dollurh, and so forth?

As I mentioned above, Eberron is touched and influenced by all the planes. The Overlords are fundamentally spirits of Eberron and as such reflect how the planes influence mortals as opposed to having some sort of personal tie to the planes. So Tul Oreshka is strongly tied to Madness and has a closer connection to Xoriat than to the other planes… but that’s just an amplified version of the connection ALL mortals have to Xoriat, and it doesn’t mean that she has some sort of bond to or influence over the Daelkyr or other creatures of Xoriat.

That’s all I have time for today. As always, leave your questions and comments below!

Dragonmarks 2/20: Demons and Deathless!

I’d planned on talking about Codex this week, but for a number of reasons I’m holding back on that for another week. However, if you’re going to be at Wizard World Portland Comic Con this weekend, I’ll be discussing it at my Eberron & Beyond talk, Saturday at 2 PM.

Today I’m just going to pull some questions out of the Eberron mailbag. As always, these are just my opinions, and some contradict canon material. So there!

Are the demons of the planes connected to the fiends of Khyber? Is a balor from Fernia Khyber-spawned?

Yes and no. The progenitor wyrms created all of the planes, and some show the influence of one progenitor over the others. So a balor from Fernia is Khyber-spawned in the sense that it was created by the progenitor wyrm Khyber… but it has no innate connection to the physical Khyber found in the material plane.

Tied to this is the fact that fiends embody specific concepts. Fernia is fire. Benevolent outsiders from Fernia embody the positive aspects of fire: its light drives away the darkness; its warmth keeps us alive; it purifies wounds and drives off dangerous predators; it gives the heat that fuels the forge. Fiends of Fernia embody the negative aspects of fire. Chaotic fiends embody the terrifying destructive force of it, the uncontrollable flames that consume homes and cities. Lawful fiends embody the terrible uses fire can be put to—fire as a weapon of war or torture, harnessed as an intentional engine of destruction.

A balor of Fernia and a balor of Khyber have the same game statistics. But they represent different things. They will have very different personalities and goals, and I would personally have them be physically distinct from one another. The balor of Fernia is an embodiment of wild fire, and should be flame incarnate. The fiends of Khyber are more generally spirits of terror and pure malevolent evil; a Khyberian balor will wield fire, but it will be less fiery in its appearance, and interested in a broader range of goals; it will also owe fealty to one of the overlords of the Age of Demons, which will further determine its theme and behavior.

I have a follow up. Say that the aforementioned Balor of Fernia found its way to Eberron. Through a portal or summoning ritual or whatever. Would said Balor fall in line with one of the Overlords and its agents, or would the fiery Balor have its own agenda.

A Fernian balor embodies the terrifying chaotic destructive power of fire. As such, it might be tricked into serving the ends of an Overlord, but its prime interest will be laying waste to cities and otherwise spreading fire and fear. The key point here is that extraplanar spirits embody ideas, and that determines their goals and purpose. If there is an Overlord that offers them the opportunity to pursue their ends or help them in other ways (protection or vengeance from enemies, for example) they might ally. But there’s no innate all-Balors-must-serve-Overlord-Bob thing going on.

One of the most detailed sources on the Lords of Dust is the article Eternal Evil, written back when Dragon was a print magazine. This includes bios of six members of the Council of Ashtakala. One is a Fernian pit fiend who serves the Truth in the Darkness, and another is a Mabaran succubus allied with the Oathbreaker.

It has been confirmed that dinosaurs roam the Talenta Plains, but in one of the adventure books I believe, there was a mention of a Swordtooth (Tyrannosaurus) in Khorvaire. Are dinosaurs present in Qbarra? If so, how are they different from their cousins in Xendrik?

I don’t think that it has ever been stated in any canon source. But my opinion is that Q’barra is a cradle for reptilian life on Khorvaire. The lizardfolk domesticated dinosaurs long before the Talentans did, and it may well have been the expansionist dragonborn who brought domesticated dinosaurs to the Talenta Plains. If you haven’t read it, I’d advise you to check out my Explore Q’barra article, which discusses the reptilian cultures of Q’barra in more detail.

At the core, I don’t think there are any fundamental differences between dinosaurs of Xen’drik and Q’barra. However, Q’barra was once the domain of the demon overlord known as Masvirik, AKA the Cold Sun. Masvirik has the power to corrupt and influence reptilian creatures, as seen in the Poison Dusk humanoids and the corrupted dragon Rhashaak. As reptilian creatures, dinosaurs could certainly be touched by the Cold Sun. I would expect such tainted dinosaurs to have half-fiend traits. If you refer to the Explore Q’Barra articles I wrote for DDI, I could also see dinosaurs being used as dusk shard vessels. So you might have a swordtooth possessed by an ancient demon!

Given the history of elves and giant magic, would giants have also had a number of Deathless or did the elves do that alone?

There’s a few conflicting versions of this in canon material. This is MY opinion on the matter.

The elves didn’t learn how to create deathless from the giants. On the contrary, Aeren’s death was the primary spark that led to all three of the elves’ traditions. Aeren led the elves out of Xen’drik and died in the process. The elves had lost their savior, and also had time to reflect on how many of their greatest heroes had been lost in battle against the giants. While no one can know with certainty the final fate of the dead, what is know is that souls go to Dolurrh and appear to fade away – that the dead are truly lost. The elves swore that their next heroes would not be lost so easily… but the settlers of Aerenal came from many different cultures, and they split along cultural lines.

  • The warrior progenitors of the Tairnadal tradition chose to preserve the spirits of their heroes by becoming their avatars in the world; the dead heroes live on through their descendants.
  • The founders of the Undying Court sought to ensure that their greatest heroes simply never died. However, their techniques rely on positive energy: the devotion freely given by those who worship the Court, and by the massive manifest zones to Irian that exist on Aerenal.
  • The flaw with both of the preceding approaches is that they depend on living elves. If no elves embody a Tairnadal ancestor, it will be lost. If no one worshipped the Undying Court, its power would fade. The line of Vol was determined to give their heroes the power to survive at any cost; even if the last living elf dies, Erandis Vol will still exist. They drew on the techniques of the Qabalrin elves and developed the foundation of modern necromancy.

We’ve never described the giants as having a religious culture like that of the Undying Court, which serves as a source of positive energy. It could be done with the existence of a powerful manifest zone, but I don’t really see it. Deathless is the most passive form of undeath, and the giants of Xen’drik were anything but passive. What I’ve suggested elsewhere is that the titans cheated death by becoming Vestiges… so an entirely different path.

Is there religious intrigue in Eberron? Factions of the SF attempting to split or vying for power? Jealousy of the SH?

In a word? Yes.

To go into more detail, there’s intrigue within and between all of the faiths of Eberron, from the Silver Flame to the Path of Light. The Sovereign Host is broken into more sects than you can shake an Octogram at. The Silver Flame already has defined intrigue between the core faith, the Pure Flame, the Whispering Flame, the Stormreach separatists, factions loyal to different cardinals and more… and that’s not even bringing the Ghaash’kala, Shulassakar, or Cold Sun Federation into the equation. The Blood of Vol has intrigue between those who believe in the core principles of the faith, and groups loyal to Erandis or who only see the faith as a path to power. Within the Path of Light you have the passive traditionalists of the Adaran path and those who advocate aggressive action. And that’s just what we’ve seen so far; there’s certainly room to add more intrigue if you want it.

Do you consider Khorvaire’s economy to be industrial or post-industrial?

I’d say it’s an industrial society moving towards a post-industrial economy. You have the magewright as the driving force of the magical economy, but the future lies in the new ideas of the Twelve and the Arcane Congress. Of course, Khorvaire has an economy unlike our world in that there are a great deal of monopolies. The Dragonmarked Houses have proprietary control of many vital tools; it doesn’t matter how smart you are, you can’t make a warforged without a creation forge. Of course, it could be that brilliant innovators—such as PC artificers or wizards—could find some way to break one or more of those monopolies.

What are the things hanging from the belt of the Lord of Blades on the 4E Eberron Campaign Guide?

Only Wayne Reynolds knows for sure. However, if I had to come up with an answer, I’d say that they are the schema-keys of Cannith artificers he’s killed.

What would an Eberron-inspired arcane lighthouse look like for you?

It entirely depends on who’s making it. Generally speaking, it would simply be a very large everburning lantern – a beacon of cold flame with amplifying lenses. The Aereni elves would be more likely to tap ambient positive energy, creating something more graceful and without any “flame”. Thrane might do something similar tapping the power of the Silver Flame, in which case it would have religious trappings, while one built during the war in Karrnath by Blood of Vol engineers might be empowered by bound ghosts.

Dragonmarks 4/25: Lightning Round!

As always: my answers her are my personal opinion, are not canon in any way, and may contradict canon sources. These are my thoughts and how I run my personal campaign, nothing more.

If you have a question you’d like to ask or a topic for a post, please leave it on this thread. There’s been some great questions so far, though I’m afraid many of them will require a full post to address. However, a few only require short answers. So today I’ve put together a list of those and we’re going to zip through them, starting with a question I know has been on your mind…

In which regions are tribex found?

If you’re saying “What’s a tribex,” I’m sure you’re not alone. Here’s a picture (from Eberron concept artist Steve Prescott – check out his website here).

IIRC, canon sources have only mentioned tribex in the Talenta Plains. We’ve generally described tribex as being part of Talenta cuisine. However, I personally consider tribex to have relatives found in a range of environments, and potentially as varied as moose, elk, and deer. The Fading Dream has a fey knight wearing a helmet shaped like the “head of a woodland tribex,” found in what used to be Cyre; I’d also imagine a wooly variant of the tribex in themountains of the Mror Holds. All forms of tribex would share a few key features: triple horns, bony headplate, lion-like tail.

I know most of you are here for the tribex, but I figured I should include a few more obscure questions as well. So…

What’s going to happen to Eberron in D&D Next?

Right now, you guess is as good as mine! Eberron is the property of Wizards of the Coast, it’s up to them to decide what form future support will take. All I can say for certain is that I’m signed on to write Eye on Eberron articles until the end of the year, and that Marsheila Rockwell’s Skein of Shadows comes out in July. Will Eberron get print support in the next edition? Will Eye on Eberron be renewed for 2013? At this point, I don’t know.

If you’d like to see more support for Eberron in the future, the best thing to do is to talk about it. Given that it hasn’t had many releases recently, there’s few ways for the people at WotC to just the current level of interest in the world. If there’s a clear burst of interest, well, it can’t hurt. Ask questions here! Join the Eberron discussion group on G+! Vote for Eberron in this WotC forum poll! I can’t promise that any of these things will make a difference, but they can’t hurt.

Also, is there any way to still get a hold of the Dolurrh’s Dawn charity adventure? I missed it and would be willing to purchase it/donate if need be.

I’m afraid I’m not authorized to give it away or post it here. However, if you post on messageboards you might be able to find someone who did purchase it and get it from them. There’s no DRM, and given that it’s not for sale it’s not like you’re hurting anyone.

There’s been a ‘Group of Eleven’ mentioned several times in regards to Xen’drik and giant civilization during their golden age, but nothing besides that: a mention. So, I was wondering, who exactly were they? What were they all about?

Initially we referred to “the giants” as if they were a monolithic entity. However, Xen’drik is vast and I saw no logical reason that you wouldn’t have multiple giant cultures, so when I was working on The Shattered Land and Secrets of Xen’drik, I sketched out a few in my head. The Sulat League were experts in elemental binding, and they produced the fire giants and the drow. The giants of the Cul’sir Empire chose to unite under their titan emperor and became the single largest civilization in Xen’drik. The Group of Eleven was an alliance of eleven smaller city states, each led by a powerful mage. While their alliance made them powerful, I saw them as far more culturally diverse than the Cul’sir, with a culture that promoted internal and external competition; where the Cul’sir believed a peaceful society allowed research to foster, the Group of Eleven maintained that competition drove evolution.

With that said, the name actually came from a night when a large group of us were trying to get a table for dinner. The phrase “group of eleven” kept getting tossed around, and I liked the sound of it.

What’s the craziest explanation for the Mourning you’ve used in a campaign?

I’ve never explained the Mourning in a campaign. For me, the Mourning is the key to maintaining the cold war. Once its answer is known, people know if it can happen again and if its power can be harnessed. If it can’t happen again, there are people ready to reignite the Last War. If it can be harnessed, it will drive a massive race to do so, as unilateral control of such a weapon would make war irrelevant. If the adventurers in my campaign ever found out the cause of the Mourning, the biggest challenge facing them would be to cover it up before anyone else found out and keep it secret.

Now, it has come up in my novels. In The Gates of Night Lei’s parents suggest that they know WHO is behind it; given that the book has been around for over 5 years and it’s not a major plot point, I’ll give you the SPOILER that they are talking about the Traveler, because they are part of the Traveler’s Cannith cult. They aren’t speaking literally; rather, the point is that whoever or whatever triggered it, it’s the hand of the Traveler on Eberron, and it will drive chaos, change, and evolution. Meanwhile The Fading Dream presents a more concrete theory. I won’t spoil this one, and I’ll simply say that it’s possible it’s the real answer… or not.

Since none of that provides a crazy theory, I’ll throw one out: Clearly, the Mourning was caused by the Spellplague, which was so powerful it punched a whole through realities. Consider the similarities between spellscars and dragonmarks, the plague-lands and the Mournland. Now, this may seem unlikely because a) the Spellplague was introduced in 4E and the Mourning has been around longer than that and b) despite any similarities between spellscars and dragonmarks, dragonmarks existed long before the Mourning. But this is INTERDIMENSIONAL MAGIC. It cannot be so easily explained! THE MOURNING IS THE SPELLPLAGUE!

OK, maybe not.

If I was to encounter a spelljammer type junkyard (think Watto’s from Phantom Menace), where on Eberron would that be most likely?

The key word here is “junkyard.” If I introduced Spelljammer into Eberron, I’d probably riff off the cold war space race and the colonization of the Americas. Each nation is creating its own spelljammers, looking for an edge and competing in the spheres. And what about those rumors about Riedran spelljammers powered by the dreaming crew? Does your team of adventurers have the right stuff to explore what lies beyond?

However, if I was just dropping a spelljammer junkyard into the world as it stands, I’d put it in Xen’drik and say that some nation of giants – the Group of Eleven, for example – experiemented with spelljamming and either gave up or it was lost when the dragons laid waste to the continent. This adds the fun factor that these spelljammers would be giant-sized! Can you get the Titanic into working shape?

Another option would be to say that Cannith or the Zil explored spelljamming a century ago and gave up when the Last War began. The scrapyard holds half-finished hulls and other abandoned tools. Such a location could be anywhere in Khorvaire… though if Cannith is the source, another possibility would be to choose a Cannith forgehold in the Mournland, which would explain the program’s demise.

Do you do any special “plane-mapping” in your campaigns if you run D&D 4E? I find the Shadowfell, Feywild etc. to be mildly confusing compared to the Eberron cosmology. So I guess the question is, what’s your cosmology mapping for 4E?

Honestly? I just use the same planar set-up I always have. When something comes up that requires me to use one of the new planar concepts (IE, Feywild), I come up with something that makes sense. Covering the major ones…

I consider The Feywild to be another name for Thelanis.

The Shadowfell can be either Mabar or Dolurrh, depending on the context. Mabar is the source of negative energy and most undead; Dolurrh is where spirits linger after death.

While the idea of mapping some planes to the Elemental Chaos and others to the Astral Sea works fine, I generally don’t bother to think of it that way in my mind. I still use the orrery design, and I’m happy with it. And I’ll point out that per the recent Eye on Eberron article, Baator is more of a demiplane – so we’re back to the original planes of the orrery.

As always, please discuss your own ideas, experiences, or further questions tied to these topics below!