GoCorral

Over the next few months the players asked a variety of questions about what was happening behind the scenes in the campaign. Here’s the answers!

Zeus named Zelus the new Sea God to replace Poseidon. Zelus made the flood waters in Phoenix recede, but the damage had been done to the buildings of the city. A few people resettled the city, but it would never recover to its previous position.

Q: Tell us more about the political resolution of Xoria.
Political resolution? RESOLVING ALL POLITICAL CONFLICTS? AHAHAHAHAHA! Never…
The Amalgami Behind it All reveal was something I’d thought of from the beginning so I wanted that. His whole plan was to destroy order in Cimmeria. There will be no resolution!
Obviously not what you meant by that though.
I haven’t really decided where everything ended up yet. I think Jipangu would inevitably resent the other members of the Alliance since Jipangu ended up pulling most of the weight with funding and housing refugees. This resentment would inevitably turn to squabbles over borders, trade, and resources.
Shalerton stood above the fight, contributing almost nothing and suffering no attacks on their leadership. They’d probably rise to the forefront in a new Eastern Cimmeria and definitely replace Bradel Fields as the rival of Dalleer for regional supremacy. Jipangu would be another contender.
I’m not sure what Kig would do with Dorrowsan. He was the leader of it at the end there and the city is weird… Maybe he’d take it to Restnor’s Point to just serve as an enormous community center there? That seems valid. And it’s a way for Restnor’s Point to become a much more powerful citystate.
No one cares about Shalemstead or Balin’s Holt.
Mars Oasis becomes the new expansionist power. They have a ton of military might that was previously directed at the desert. You guys dealt with all their major problems there. They probably attack the formians and wipe them out to reestablish the colony they’d planned by the hives a long time ago. And they’ll start encroaching on other city-state’s territories.
Mars Oasis would also probably butt up against the Orkish Rising, but the specifics of that will be left for a later date.
Bradel Fields remains a ghostly hell.
Greshendale refugees probably end up at Jord. They already had a strong trade relation with the city.
Jord probably replaces Phoenix as a central trading power too, vying a bit with Shalerton.
Aractrash probably experiences a boom period economically. There’d be civil unrest due to the large slave population though. King Staynard probably fights a few wars against revolting slaves.
Mo’ynoq becomes a cool place. I think we already talked about that.
Sheerzen and Gazeara return to being somewhat isolationist.
Most of Xoria becomes ruled by dictators of one flavor or another. Tons of out of work draftees also mean there’s tons of bandits over there too to counter the refugee bandits in Eastern Cimmeria.
Dradelden is the biggest power, but the only unifying cry of the Amazons is the return of Jittehalong to life. It wasn’t decided what Hektor did with the Spear of the Amazons and Jittehalong trapped within the ironwood acorn, but that could influence the outcome of what the Amazons do. Jittehalong is stupid, but strong. Without her the Amazons raid a bunch of places in Xoria and become a repository or wealth, but not culture. With her… same thing happens.
Petar was a military city before. It stays one afterwards, but it has food supply issues. It probably starts raiding the surrounding area for supplies. Economic collapse. Chaos. Revolving door of dictators getting murdered by their replacements.
Nox has a brief period of rule by Queen Tari. Barakah killed her. Hektor was so involved in trying to save her life that he might appoint the new king though. I have no idea who that should be. Perhaps another campaign idea for the future?
Nox also likely suffers the same problems at the hands of Petar and Dradelden.
Cecilia is fine.
Makotako is a military dictatorship.
Jeutontic briefly becomes an Alliance puppet (The Alliance had the rightful heir to the Jeutontic leadership in their control) before the Alliance breaks. The city probably becomes an oligarchy of sorts with a weak king. Merchant lords control the new kingdom and the monarch has no significant power over policy.
Crafterton probably organizes an army under a charismatic leader and conquers the other Blasted Islands creating a small empire in the Caspian.
Nomingburg becomes a chaotic mess like it always was.
The Dwarves retake the central Underdark, pushing back the wights. A third presence is felt within the deep as the Yuanti people take the stage. The Yuanti/Dwarf/Wight/Other conflict shall be another campaign idea left unresolved.

Q: What about the people that lived to the end of the campaign? Like Gradorian and Junai?
Arendil is old. He dies. Fauxmalius becomes leader of Jipangu.
Titandra is old. She dies. Kig replaces her as leader of Restnor’s Point.
Astyanax leads a vain effort to reclaim Bradel Fields. I hinted at this pretty overtly, but Astyanax was on the path to becoming a Blackguard. That happens after the war concludes. He whips his slave army into action to clear out Bradel Fields. He is then quietly assassinated by Fauxmalius.
The Bjorn of Dalleer goes back to being an insane lunatic with brief periods of lucidity. A new handler emerges who is just a puppet installed by Fauxmalius or Amalius. Dalleer and Jipangu grow closer and closer to the free society that Amalius imagined.
Origenes is in a good position to be the appointed handler of the Bjorn.
Gradorian and Junai move with Danar to help establish the new city and fighting school. Years later a half-elf/half-hobgoblin baby is born.
Logan becomes the leader of Gazeara.
Sabriyya stays in Mars’ Oasis and joins the fight against the Formians.
Talon assists with forming Danar’s fighting school.
Amalgami is the big unknown here. He desired chaos in Cimmeria. He got it. In the timeline where he doesn’t reveal himself he probably moves on to another region of the world to cause strife there. Or perhaps he becomes an influencer of Barakah’s children! That’s right! BARAKAH HAD KIDS WITH ALL HIS WIVES! Giant half breeds with the pseudonatural template slapped on them come pouring out of the mountains a few years later! (another campaign idea).
With the purge of dragovinians, an interesting take on the original orc party of Gregor, Sivirdm, Reggy, and Korjak is that Gregor and Sivirdm recover their memories after the purge. Not sure how that plays out.
Gregor was close to being King of the Orcs. He could probably reestablish himself a lot faster with his old memories of his barbarian abilities. And his memories of his bonds with various tribes.
Sivirdm was an assassin. Maybe he leaves to be paid somewhere else? Maybe he sticks by Gregor’s side for fun and out of the camaraderie they built as dragovinians? Maybe the return of his abilities allows him to hunt down Korm and take him from Gorwinua?
Aldarian takes a few decades off to spend with Eamorataj.
There’s also potential for a future generation of people with past PCs as parents.
~ Amalius and Denara’s children
~ Amalius’s nephews and nieces
~ Aldarian and Eamorataj’s children
~ Gradorian and Junai’s children
~ Tagenadi’s sister’s kids
~ Danar’s new kids?
~ Torin’s kids?
~ Logan, Sabriyya, Preta, Shez, etc children?

Q: Did Hermes get what he wanted out of tricking us?
Yes! Greshendale joining the Xorians was big bad news. Hermes couldn’t do anything directly about it as a god. But you guys could so you acted as “his agents” or whatever. Another god might’ve just asked you or commanded you, but Hermes enjoyed tricking you to do his work.

Q: What was going on with Barakah’s Cthulu stuff?
Throgg wrote a good backstory for Barakah so I’ll just post that here.

Titles:
Badishah Barakah Al-Morthar, Grand Batal of Ammutseba, Wasi of the World Well, Sultan of Sand and Valley, Slayer of Dragons, and Last of the Eimlaq Rimal.
Formerly known as King Barakah Al-Sakhr, Son of King Murkrah the Queen-Slayer, First Amongst Equals, Champion of the Billowing Sword, High Priest of Ruh-tor-ka the Destroyer, Guardian of the Well of the World, and Last of the Sand Giants.

Appearance:
The Badishah is just under 12′ tall and weighs 2,300lbs with a stocky, full build. His skin is the color of red sand and his head is cleanly shorn. The centers of his pitch black eyes smolder with reds and oranges like the embers of fire. His shadow flickers as if cast by the light of a bonfire and his body gives off incredible heat.
He wears a red dythalidium and gilded brass breastplate, gauntlets, and greaves. Over his armor is a heavy, stained blood-black cloak embroidered in brass. The mantle of his cloak is made of brass dragon scales with an ornate brass and dythalidium ruby clasp. The edges of his robes seem to smoulder and give off faint smoke. A dark cloth mask conceals the lower half of his face and he wears a crown of brass inset with Dythalidium rubies. Around his neck is a heavy brass chain covered in minute engraves of archaic runes and incantations.

Personality:
Badishah Barakah’s beliefs and personality are deeply rooted in the extinct Eimlaq Rimal (sand giant) culture. He is passionate, honorable, and ruthless.
For centuries the Eimlaq Rimal ruled the Shacklack desert from the great city of Jeruln, hidden deep within the desert. At the center of the city and far below it, they guarded the World Well and drew power from it. But they had many enemies. To maintain their sovereignty, they waged constant wars against other denizens of the desert, among them the dragon flights, the Hive, and the Bane.
The Eimlaq Rimal were ruled by a king, a chosen successor confirmed by a council of elders. The Eimlaq Rimal society consisted of large group marriages, often a few males and many females. The interconnection of these groups and the lack of lineages created a communal and prosperous society through a complex and robust web of connection between families.
Their structure instilled a strict code of conduct into the Eimlaq Rimal. They valued open conduct, integrity, and strength. Yet, they were a passionate and fiery people prone to ruthlessness and great acts of violence.

Dominion and Companions:
Barakah is the Badishah of the Eimlaq Rimal, the sand giants, and ruler of the dead city of Jeruln and by that lineage holds unenforced claims to much of the Shacklack desert.
He seized the Great Valley in the Dominarie mountains and subjugated the hobgoblin and troll tribes and bound them into a fledgling and expanding kingdom. Barakah cleansed the lake and claimed its power. With control over the primary water source in the northern mountains, his kingdom is set to expand exponentially.
Barakah has taken seven wives from among his subjects, three hobgoblin maids named Shee-ti-la, Nu-fwique, and Xer-alia, and four troll named Fishswordhammer, Rumpshaker, Toothy Mouth, and Gurglum One-Finger. He rides a gargantuan centipede, Gortig, and keeps two medium centipedes, Fungma and Mafung, as pets and companions.
Finally, he is a member of the Exiles and of the Alliance.

Victories:
Slew the vampiric dragon Invernix the Red Death, at the battle of the Crossing.
Slew the vampiric dragons Shivara the White Blizzard and Kovan’rorsh the Black Dread at the battle at Nox.
Slew the Dragovinian archer, Wu the Cruel, at the battle at Nox.

Backstory:
Barakah Ibn Murkrah was reborn beneath the Sacred Sands in the years of strife and war with the Black Spear of the Desert. In his youth he was trained in the art of the Whurneth, the curved sword of the Sand Giants, and to manipulate the ancient powers of the Well of the World.
For his valor and strength, he was chosen to accompany Motep Al-Horth, Champion of the Billowing Sword, on a quest to defeat the Bane and was slain in the effort. He was awoken from the long slumber of death in the fields of Elysium by Hektor the Archmage and his companions as they journeyed through the Black Spear. He vowed to help Hektor in his adventures after he had returned to his people and to his wives, sons, and daughters.
At the great cavern city of Jeruln, Dune’s Break, he discovered that his people were long dead. By his right, he took up the mantles of the ancient orders of the Sand Giants, armed himself in the garb of kings, and journeyed deep under the desert to stare into the abyssal depths of the Well of the World. There he imbued himself with its ancient power. He returned to Cimmeria to seek out Hektor and to search for magicks that might allow him to be reunited with the Sand Giants once again.

Q: What parts of the campaign went differently than you expected?
Nomingburg was one of those places where things went very differently than I’d planned.
The original idea was that you’d go there to hire the assassins to kill Jev or a Rage or something. Duke Jingo would reveal some personal info: His brother is Stanton and he hates him and the village he’s from in Xoria has been wiped out by some unknown force. Jingo has been feeling conflicted about the whole thing. He’s getting old. He wants the immortality and vigor that his brother has, but without becoming undead. What other options are there for immortality though? Perhaps there’s some secret at his village? He asks you to investigate.
The village has been attacked by a group of epic planar monsters I designed based off a module adventure, “What’s That Smell?”
You defeat the monsters, close the planar portal, learn something about yourselves, and come back with a scroll containing some arcane info. Jingo agrees to join the Alliance in exchange for the scroll. The scroll contained a ritual to transfer someone’s consciousness into a golem. Duke Jingo would’ve used that to move his mind into a mobile statue and gained immortality that way.
This ties up a little bit with the original plan for Greshendale.
My original plan was that you guys would commit a terrorist attack of sorts against Greshendale, but disguised with magic and stuff to make it look like the Xorians did it.
Instead you committed a terrorist attack, didn’t follow through in the right way, and released an evil terror upon the world once more.
The terrorist attack would inflame the Greshendale citizens to join the Alliance to get back at the “Xorians”
Anyways, the terrorist attack was meant to weaken the geothermal energies of the central volcano of Greshendale. The same volcano that the Dahak draws some of its power from. This would weaken the Dahak and make it easier to fight in combat.
Thus instead of making a deal with the Dahak to recover the Pitchfork of Ruin, you would’ve fought the monster for it.
That deal being, destabilize Nomingburg.
The Dahak is effectively a minor deity of stasis, but not in the usual way we think of stasis. He wants the cycles that life goes through to stay the same. Father begets son. Winter goes into summer. That sort of thing. This also makes him a bit of a time deity. That’s why if someone abuses time magic too much the Dahak comes for their soul.
Nomingburg was a chaotic place where one assassins guild rose to prominence occasionally before falling to a different guild. Duke Jingo messed that up by making the city truly static for decades instead of “cyclically static.”
The Dahak sent a child of his, the rakshasa Elijas, to make Nomingburg “truly” static. Elijas had a different interpretation of what static meant. Instead of killing Jingo and restoring the original political situation of Nomingburg, Elijas became a bodyguard for Duke Jingo, keeping him alive for way longer than he would’ve survived otherwise.
In those sessions you guys were worried about Duke Jingo being a crazy high level rogue or something? Duke Jingo was about 10th level and half of his build was aristocrat. His power was in negotiation and a shadowy monster that kept him in his position of power. The image I chose for Duke Jingo showed an old halfling in a candle-lit study. And in the foreground sits a tiger. That was no accident. Elijas is the tiger.
So the deal with the Dahak to destabilize Nomingburg was to restore it to the Dahak’s vision of stasis. The cyclical rise and fall of different factions within the city.
One of the broader themes for the campaign centered on morality. I set up the challenges in a way that I felt a pure good party would not be able to succeed. You would have to make sacrifices by attacking innocents or using undead. Something evil.

Q: Did Xoria/the dragovinians have a specific symbol or style of dress?
Yes. Late Ottoman empire-esque

Q: What were the dragovinians stat-wise?
There were two different templates, one for people and one for animals.
I designed them by combining elements of the Half-Dragon, Half-Celestial, and Vampire templates and adding some stuff of my own.
One of the key parts was locking away powers unless Blendegad granted them. It was an in-universe way to make the game harder as you progressed.

After looking at the dragovinian templates I shared the group had a bit more to say. Notably that the dragovinians were weak to garlic and supernaturally bound to any oaths they made.
Ben: We could have wrecked the whole A-Team with enough GARLIC?
Me: It was something I wanted you guys to use once and then I’d come up with a counteraction to it. You just… never thought of it.
Avery: Nice, I felt like there was some kind of oath thing going on with them, and in fact there was.
Me: There was actually a set oath given to most of the dragovinians. Loyalty to Blendegad, loyalty to Xoria, loyalty to Jevaninada blah blah blah. And they had to administer this oath to all spawn they created. The spawn must follow orders, thus they become bound as well.
It was a way of making sure dragovinians never turned on Blendegad. Potentially control extends in a chain from Jevaninada as the first dragovinian to the rest of them. If anyone in that chain dies the rest would be freed from automatic control. The oath kept them in control.

Q: Did we ever genuinely surprise or impressed you with our plots or if it was just all part of the Carefully Crafted Master Plan? Do you remember any standouts?
Using the Hecatonchires to break into the museum. Making Bill attack Jevanicia
Completely missing over and over that Tagenadi was “the one made of bones” in that one prophecy
Occasionally negotiating with the animals to get prophecy pieces instead of killing stuff
Not staying on the island of Captain Peahammer! There was cool stuff!
You guys never tried to get Balin’s Holt into the war. They’re the anti-magic society. Lots of cool alchemy stuff and Balin himself was also an interesting character. It was a complicated situation. Balin’s Holt is ruled by a council that acts in Balin’s stead. Balin is an absent dictator who drinks himself to sleep every night. Sober Balin up and…
Player response: I think the world was to high of magic for a place like Balin’s Holt
I mean from a PC perspective. Maybe early on when we were lower level, but at high level it just seemed impossible that something non-magical could help us.
That is from a strategic player perspective, in-world it is neat and a bummer we never got there.
I will say we sort of gave up on the army stuff, which is a bummer. I wish we’d pushed more in that direction.

Q: Did the Dragovinians have thralls like vampires do?
Yes. Definitely. That was where the low level stuff would’ve gone if they traveled to collect the ingredients.

Q: The army stuff you’d planned stalled out. That’s partially because the dragovinians stopped at Phoenix for the winter. They only moved after Phoenix got flooded and we attacked them with zombies. They never became an active threat. At a certain point we realized that we had enough time to wrap it up ourselves before the Xorian military advantage became a major threat. What were your plans for that?
My original plan for the campaign was to have resources for the army be a huge issue. Initially one of the problems facing the Alliance was a shortage of food within the Siege of Phoenix. You were going to have to do something special to break the siege or bring food in. The teleportation ring gates were the solution I presented, but you could’ve come up with something else. One of my plans was for the dragovinians to only be defeatable if you were willing to be callous and evil about it. By letting the commoners of the Alliance starve to gain a territorial advantage for example.
After a while, I realized that wasn’t bringing the right type of tension to the campaign, so I had the Xorians take Phoenix. Put you guys on the run and made them more threatening. But then I had another problem with what to do with the Xorian army with the obvious initial target out of the way.
I could’ve had them continue towards Shalerton, but there were realism problems that I considered. The Xorians had been besieging Phoenix for more than two years at this point. They needed a fucking break in the city. Additionally winter was coming on and off-camera the rebels were harassing the supply lines from Xoria to Phoenix. Pushing towards Shalerton realistically would’ve triggered a revolt. Jev and Co were smart cookies and decided that taking the winter off was a better choice than continuing on and having half your army revolt while the other half starves.
Hindsight, I should’ve had them push on and gone with the mutiny happening. That probably would’ve been more fun. I might’ve been able to rationalize the decision making by saying Jev is an evil bastard who doesn’t care about his mortal subjects, but that went against another plot point I was trying to build up.
The other plot point was the ambiguity of the dragovinians’ evil. They created a totalitarian state, but what were the goals? Giving everlasting life to those who deserved it? Celebrating merit, talent, and skill above royalty? They needed to impose order and Amalius’s view of them being not much worse than the rest of the world was not entirely unfounded.
The Xorian army didn’t move from Phoenix until Phoenix was attacked by Poseidon. That was an idea I had from the beginning. Of having additional forces besides the Alliance and the Xorians in the war. Poseidon and Hades would enter to try and claim the throne for themselves while Zeus was absent. Tagenadi’s death and rebirth as a death knight made involving Hades a lot easier. I had other vague plans for bringing the god of the underworld into play through the actions of Crux that I didn’t need to develop.
Another reason I made the army less of a threat was due to the way you guys reacted to it in the previous campaign. There were some battles at the start of that war. You guys won two out of three of those initial battles. Despite that you were still terrified of the Xorian army. That led to Amalgami betraying the Alliance so he could buy amnesty from the Xorians in what he saw as a doomed fight. I felt like I needed to make the Xorians less undefeatable in appearances so that you guys would feel like you had more of a chance than last time.
Epic party time scale also contributed. I was expecting you guys to spend more down time waiting for your custom magic items to be made and other stuff like that. You avoided doing that until the bitter end. I also just hadn’t DMed a party of that level before so I didn’t know what to expect exactly.
“Will it take them three days to clear this dungeon or three weeks?” Didn’t have an answer.
And, yeah, character decisions obviously influenced how the campaign turned out. Hektor pushing and pushing to do everything as quickly as possible probably made things happen faster.
Ben: Hektor pushing to do everything as quickly as possible was completely intentional: It was my strategy to push our big advantages (speed, mobility, concentration of force) against the dragovinians relatively slow-and-steady approach.
What was NOT planned was for Hektor to become such a single-minded crusader against Blendegad (and, in the epilogue, against Amalius.) That was delightful for me. It was the first time I really felt a character shift in a way that made sense to me but wasn’t planned. I don’t know how much that influenced the plot, though, except when the rest of the party appeared ready to throw in with Hades and Hektor broke his Staff of the Magi.

Q: Did we ever get a resolution to Apollo/Dactirian?
Apollo is Dactirian, but he didn’t like being called out on it explicitly. The Amazons besieged Gazeara, where the rebels led by Dactirian were. Dactirian/Apollo caused a massive drought for the Amazons. Side effects of that drought would’ve been important if army stuff became a bigger focus.
The lower level party that became dragovinians only became so due to Apollo’s direct influence. That’s why the process wasn’t used on every dragovinian all the time, every time. Apollo could only do it once.

Q: What was the original plan for the Rebellion party?
After gathering the prophecy pieces, I intended for the low level party to gather the prophecy ingredients as well. When you guys decided to go with the high level party for that, I just upped the planned challenges of those places significantly. A lot of the more roleplay/stealth options for collecting the fragments went out the window.
The plot line I’d established with the alarms at specific ingredient points that were tripped by non-dragovinians entering meant that stealth was impossible.
I’d actually written up a lot of background stuff for Lemnos, for example. One of my ideas was that when the party got there they would coordinate a rebellion against the dragovinian military occupation.
Instead I put an epic level challenge there and we had a Kaiju fight. Which was also wicked fun for me, so no complaints.