#mournland

[nebulaeyedfish]

Ladies if your man is

a halfling

a cowboy

a wizard

a dinosaur herder

a gambler

a bandit

an enemy of what amounts to fantasy olive garden/the mafia

is an owner of a bar/gambling hall that's the abandoned dining car of a fancy train he tried to hijack

unwillingly part of a team of adventurers sent to explore the mournland

balding

Thats not ur man thats Dusty "7'n2" Devilsprout

Tags: @swanofstorie @imflyingfish @raise-me-up-take-me-up

See Pinned for Commissions

[canonkiller]

🎶 if he isn't our soldier, then he's feed for the flowers

[lilythulart]

Into the Mournlands

Or that time we disguised as mushrooms and made friend with an energy sucking moth (but the sorcerer hated all of it)

[phantomoftheshoppera]

Got an idea: Dune-inspired Ebberon campaign.

There’s a bunch of mithril and adamantine in the Mournland cause of all the dead warforged and other constructs. Cannith South is working with Breland to claim it while Cannith East is aligned with Karnath.

New Cyre would also benefit from the profits and has a strong claim as it’s on their former land.

Meanwhile the Lord of Blades sees everything in the Mournland as belonging to the warforged and is opposed to all other factions.

The party are essentially advance scouts for one of the factions and seeking to establish a foothold before the main forces of House Cannith arrive.

[babybluesquid]

All together, the three pieces depict the forces which seek to act on M-44-7, the prophecy token.

[dndsettingsinfo]

Lost Archive [36×39] by Cassastereo's Mapperie

[adndmonsteraday]

A sorrowsworn is a creature that preys upon strong feelings of sadness and melancholy. Though some believe them to be demons, others believe they are a shadow creature that are manifestations of the Shadowfell and death incarnate.

At a whim, the sorrowsworn has an aura that encourages intense feelings of despair and sadness from the target. They prefer to prey on victims from the shadows, and use magic to remain unseen and unknown.

Sorrowsworn who lurk in the shadows prefer weapons of claws or scythes to attack their targets.

They were lured to the realms of Aundair, Breland, Karrnath, Thrane and the Mournland after the Last War, and make their lairs in ruins close by to batlefields.

Sorrowsworn are also believed to be servants of the Raven Queen.

Source: https://eberron.fandom.com/wiki/Sorrowsworn

[littledeadling]

You probably know by now that I’m quite taken with my DND character, Horatio. In this post I’m going to explain him (with pictures!!) so you can enjoy him too, and follow along with his story if you want!

~~~~

Let’s start with the man himself:

~Horatio Ignatius Heronwillow III~

Horatio is a human paladin knight following the Oath of Glory. Also, he’s a pompous bitch with an ego the size of a small country.

Horatio’s character arc is all about getting humbled over and over again. Maybe he’s not the best. He’s not even second best. Maybe he’s even…pathetic. Despite all his training? His many successful battles? His prestige? What does any of that matter if his Queen doesn’t trust him to be her champion? If the Queen doesn’t even like him?

Horatio is from the nation of Thrane. He introduces himself as ��the gilded knight of Fort Light, first at her majesty’s royal table.” He’s an ardent follower of the Queen, even though she’s merely a figurehead—the Church of the Silver Flame holds all the power. He is considered weird for this. His family are all noble elitists, and their support for him is conditional. Even though he’s become such a high-ranking knight, he’s never good enough.

But we can’t truly discuss Horatio until we meet his nemesis/rival/best friend/worst enemy (who he’s totally obsessed with, and who happens to be a centaur). His name is Elethar Sigrún.

Elethar came to the castle when they were both young (for ~unknown reasons~), and they trained to be knights alongside each other. Despite being the only centaur in the kingdom and not of royal birth, Elethar immediately usurped Horatio as the Queen’s most promising young knight, thus beginning a lifelong rivalry.

Does Horatio have feelings for Elethar? Not that he’s aware of. This is because he is stupid. Does Elethar feel anything for Horatio (besides pity and disdain)? Unclear!

~The Dragonshard Derby~

Now that we’ve met our hero, lets turn to the story!

The players are all entrants in The Dragonshard Derby: a mounted cross-continent race hosted by a rich and famous duke. To the winner goes the spoils: a great dragon’s hoard, and glory for their chosen nation. Obviously, Horatio is racing for Thrane. One hundred contestants are participating, riding everything from regular horses to owlbears to dinosaurs (dinosaurs are normal in Eberron 😳).

Horatio’s mount is a golden Akhal-Teke horse named Marvellous Moondance. She’s the light of his life. Despite his competitive nature, he would never push her past her limits. He puts her safety above all else.

Much to his chagrin, Elethar is also running in the race. Apparently the Queen had a special, secret mission for him, which she didn’t tell Horatio about. He persuades Elethar to confide: there’s an artefact rumoured to be among the dragon’s hoard that the Queen desires. Neither of them are sure what it is. Horatio promises that if he encounters it, he will give it to Elethar.

~The World of Eberron~

The campaign is set in a world called Eberron. The road is dangerous! We’ll be journeying though many different terrains, including the Mournland, a desolate wasteland which was once a great nation. Less than five years ago, during the war, a white fog filled the nation of Cyre from border to border and killed everyone inside. The cause of this was unknown, but it led to a tenuous end to the fighting. Horatio and Elethar were both on the front lines when it happened. They witnessed people across the border dying in agony. Horatio still has nightmares.

The Dragonshard Derby is the first time since then that the other nations have come together to put the past behind them in friendly sport. Evaluators will be watching from airships to make sure there's no foul play, though their vision is limited whenever racers are passing through the woods. Any teleportation is strictly prohibited.

~The Race So Far~

Each leg of the race begins with a sprint. In the first sprint, Horatio finished first in his section, but 11th overall. Elethar placed actually first, and gave Horatio polite congratulations once the scores had been posted. Horatio was pissed. This was supposed to be his chance to prove himself to the Queen! Why did Elethar have to be here and show him up? He ruins everything! And he’s so effortless about it, too. He never loses his composure, ever. Horatio wishes he could be like that.

During the first leg (a multi-day ride through the forest and plains), two riders were murdered under mysterious circumstances. Both had placed within the top ten. Their belongings had been trashed, searched through. As frustrated as Horatio was with Elethar’s presence, he’s now more just worried for his well-being. After all, Elethar is racing alone.

Then, when Horatio’s party was still a day’s ride away from the second sprint, something strange happened.

While fighting off a band of raiders, the world suddenly froze for Horatio. A strange light appeared in the sky, drawing him towards it. The moment he touched it, he felt something write itself into the skin of his arm. A mysterious lantern appeared in his bag, glowing with ethereal purple light. It would later become clear that the lantern will always appear back in Horatio’s bag, no matter where he leaves it. And, he discovered, he now has access to new magics that he was previously incapable of. This was all VERY ALARMING.

Anyway, back to Horatio’s arm. Something important in Eberron is the concept of dragonmarks. There are twelve great Dragonmarked Houses (basically powerful mob families) which each share a unique dragonmark- a sigil that appears somewhere on the body at puberty and grants powerful magic. There are also aberrant dragonmarks, which is when a combination of two other sigils appears on someone not from a Dragonmarked House (usually when there have been mixed relations between Houses). There’s a lot of political baggage attached. And Horatio suddenly has one, at the ripe age of 35. To make matters worse, it’s not a normal dragonmark OR a known aberrant, but something entirely new.

He chose not to tell his party anything about this.

Then, it was time for the sprint to the next checkpoint. Horatio started strong, but again, Elethar swept in and beat him right at the finish line. He congratulated Horatio on the race. Embarrassing him further, Elethar presented Horatio with this letter he had just received from the queen:

Sir Elethar Sigrún, First Knight to Queen Diani ir’Wynarn My earnest congratulations on placing first on the primary leg of this great race. I would expect nothing less of my finest knight. Of course, you are missed at the castle, but I am honoured by the diligence with which you have chosen to pursue the purpose I have set out for you. I am sure that you will earn the respect of the kingdom, should you succeed, and I am pleased to hear of your success so far. It will be essential that you continue to maintain this position, else my favour lies elsewhere. Loyal Elethar, I wish you great fortune, and may the blessing of the Silver Flame be upon you. Her Majesty, Queen Diani ir’Wynarn PS. Please tell Sir Heronwillow I am being informed of his standing in the race as well.

…Crushing.

He’d been considering telling Elethar of his troubles, but after that he was too upset to broach the subject.

Now that they’ve made it to the checkpoint, there are official tents with beds for everyone (with sleeping arrangements decided by race standing), a small market, and a mess hall with dinner provided.

During the meal, a friendly fellow racer named Ash attempted to flirt with one of Horatio’s party members, offering him a strange glowing flower he’d found nearby. Horatio immediately recognized it as being similar to his lantern. When his teammate turned down the flower, Horatio asked if he could have it. Ash took this the wrong way. He let Horatio know he was really, super not his type, and would not be giving him the flower. Double ouch.

That night (in the dead of it), a pack of wild raptors invaded the tents where the racers were sleeping. The party managed to kill them before they hurt anyone, but Horatio detected that the animals were all under an enchantment. Their real purpose had been to attempt to steal the flower and take it... somewhere. To someone. Was this what the killers from the first leg had been seeking? None of it bodes very well for Horatio!

The next evening, Horatio dragged Elethar to the edge of the camp where they could not be overheard, and nervously confided in him. The dragonmark, the lantern—everything. He was a bundle of nerves, but… It went well! Elethar was very alarmed, and told Horatio not to let ANYONE else find out. Not even the Queen. Especially not the Queen. Horatio was equal parts thrilled by Elethar’s willingness to share a secret with him, and terrified to keep anything hidden from the woman who basically controls his life. I drew a comic about this conversation. It was too good of a scene not to draw. 🫣)

Well, that’s where we left off last session! Thanks so much for reading, and meeting my guy! I love him and I hope you like him too! 💖

Stay tuned for a little intro post about the rest of the party! :•) I’ll link that here as well!

To be continued! (Probably in a month or so)

⚔️⚔️⚔️⚔️

[thuranni]

“average warforged is 3 buldings tall" factoid actualy just statistical error. average warforged is 5-7 feet tall. The Lord of Blades, who lives in mournland & is the size of a fucking skyscraper, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[clockworkdragonffxiv]

I started my D&D campaign back in April of 2020 shortly after the COVID Lockdown hit. I was bored out of my skull and stressed, and a friend had expressed his frustration with his own D&D group and I just went "Fuck it."

I hadn't played DnD since college. I had never GM'd a tabletop game. But I had nothing better to do. So I went on to Discord into, like, the three channels I'm active in and rounded up a gaggle of friends from FFXIV and from my old City of Heroes group. For my starter campaign I used the very first Eberron campaign ever published for I think 3e or 3.5e, converted to 5e, "The Forgotten Forge."

And three and a half years, multiple cases of COVID, two rounds of cancer and chemotherapy, four or five moves, three kidney stones, multiple bouts of depression, and a half dozen job changes, we finally finished the campaign at level 16, having convinced the Lord of Blades to devote his talents to building the new Warforged nation and healing the Mournlands using the unique techno-organic warforged plants and animals we'd discovered, instead of his original plan which was to absorb the power of a Creation Engine and a Demon Overlord into himself, achieve apotheosis, and drown the world in a tide of blood.

My original plan for the final battle has in large underlined letters the phrase "Biblically Accurate Chainsaw Angel" and included a speech with lines like "LET THE SEAS BOIL AND THE SKIES FALL! LET THE WORLD BURN!"

Also probably ending up with the players picking the Red, Blue or Green endings from the End-o-Matic 9000.

But that didn't happen.

So instead, the campaign that started with our little group of heroes stumbling onto the murder of a professor with the clues to a hidden workshop, ended with the wedding of Seeker the Warforged Artificer, the man who'd talked the Lord of Blades down (despite having a Charisma of 8) and now holds the title of Maestro Seeker, is an advisor to the national leadership, and is the teacher of a whole new batch of warforged, and the warforged medic Solace, an NPC whose existence began as a joke about Seeker having a whirlwind romance with a medic in the space of about 23 minutes while the rest of the party were running errands.

Hot damn was that a lot of work. Three and a half years, and despite it starting in modules by the second I'd decided I didn't like the story as it was written, threw it out, and told my own story. Featuring friendly little fire elementals named Phil, packs of extremely patriotic and laddish mimics named Jimmy, an eight foot robotic sweetheart named Friend whose primary weapon was an equally massive tower shield and her totally-not-boyfriend warforged druid/allosaurus/swearasaurus Din, a wrestling match with a hobgoblin that nearly turned lethal when an 18 foot tall warforged titan came in with the steel chair, an alligator with a gun, and banishing the elemental dragon powering a flying battleship while A) the team was still on the battleship and B) it was still several hundred feet in the air and C) it was the only thing keeping it there... it's done.

And it was all worth it. God I love these guys. So here's to you, Katie, Jacquie, Mike, Stan, and Will. I'll see you all next week for our next adventure.

[nebulaeyedfish]

The Departure of the Air Ship Hummingbird from the Lost City of Exalme at Sunset

This is a piece for my current dnd Campaign: an Ebberon campaign based around a Cyreean city that was able to lift above the Mourn fog as it rolled in, and is now, having lost contact with the outside world, sending adventures to the surface to investigate the fate of Cyree and see what has become of the world.

The AS Hummingbird is a unique model, built and piloted by an eccentric goblin who also invented aviators.

[sevilemar]

Alright, I have finally tackled the bear, and I'm now designing the big boss fight to end the campaign. This is what I got so far, for my 4 players at lvl 5, DnD 5e:

The players want to enter the underground lair through an underground river, which I put in the map in hope they would latch onto it, and they did^^.

They will encounter an alarm spell set up 10 min away, and I believe they will have no problem (Artificer can cast Detect Magic at will, and they have a scroll with a Cancel Magic Spell).

The further they go, the more frightened they will become, until right before they enter the cave, when I will have them make a wisdom saving throw, or they'll be frightened (essentially the Fear spell). DC 15 when they have a light source, DC 18 when they don't, since they enter an unknown, forced, artificial, small Mabar manifestation zone.

If they fail, they will run/swim back from where they came, and it's a Stealth roll against the guards passive perception if they alert the guards or not. One player also has an ability to end the fear condition if he remembers it. If they overcome this effect once, it will not bother them again.

They will encounter three guards, either alert or surprised. I don't know yet what stats I'm gonna use, but it's gonna be something simple and easy to defeat. The question here is if they can do it quietly enough not to alert the bbeg, and if they spot the one who is going to sent a message to bbeg or not. I think DC 15 perception is fair for that, in the heat of battle? Maybe DC 13.

They can investigate the first cavern a litle bit if they manage the quiet, but eventually they will encounter the boss's first minion, and undead manticore/gryphon chimera (Manticore stat block with fewer HP and a burst effect when it dies). It will chase them towards the next cavern, the actual workroom of bbeg.

It will be seemingly empty, and the bbeg will start to engage them by mocking them, but for people who use See Invisibility, or tremor sense, or blind sight (all things my players have), they will see/sense an enormous structure right in the middle of the cavern.

Because not only did the players upgrade since their last fight, bbeg did too. They now have an unfinished colossal Warforged-like construct that is powered by the same grey mist that haunts the Mournlands. That mist is 'imprisoned' in he back of the cave, and there are three tubes connecting the construct to it.

The idea is that the players should target the tubes and destroy them, cutting the construct's power more with each destroyed tube, and destroying bbeg at the same time, since she has rigged herself to her construct. I think DC 10 perception or Arcana should do it, since it's kinda obvious.

And that's where I'm stuck in my prep. I basically need stats for the construct, with attacks that are devastating but potentially survivable for lvl 5 characters, and I need two declines for those powers and attacks when the tubes get destroyed. Does anyone know where I could find mechanics like that?

After the second tube is destroyed, the ceiling will start to crumble, and the glass that's keeping the mist back will start to crack. At the start of each round after that, they will have to make a DC 10/12/14/15 Dexterity saving throw, depending on how many rounds it takes them, and take 1d4/1d6/1d8 force damage if they fail (all charas have at least +2 to Dex).

If the construct is defeated, it will be too late for them to flee, unless one of them repairs at least one tube, and another steps into the construct and brings it to life again, and help keep the rubble and mist back. The one in the construct will die (one player asked for a sacrifice ending), the other might, or the party might get clever and get them out.

Whatever happens, if it becomes a TPK or not, the mist will take over the caverns but nothing more, and the bbeg will be stopped from not only starting another war, but from creating another Mourning as well.

There's also allies who will destroy the bbeg storeroom of bad creatures, so that I can either sent them to help with the manticore if the party is struggling, or have some of the creatures get loose if it's too easy.

Is this too much? Too boring? Does anyone know a mechanic for the construct? Please help?

[quoththemaiden]

I was thinking about your well-meaning eldritch-morality robot with plant growth (? I failed to tag the post so I might be mistaking some details) today (may have been bullying my cacti), and I was so charmed all over again by the anecdote that I had to run here to ask about characters you've created! Any stories to share about your favorites (or, if you prefer, things that weren't as successful)?

Ooh, thank you for this ask! I'll highlight another character from the same setting: D&D's Eberron.

The relevant deal with Eberron is that there was recently a major war that left an entire country uninhabitable due to magical warfare. This is just one country out of a dozen on the continent, but it's the one two of my characters came from.

You remembered my first character, Pole, very accurately: A morally eldritch robot (appropriately covered in cacti — something he hoped he might be able to grow there!) who was built inside that ruined country by a renegade engineer in a bunker after the end of the war. Pole decided to make it his life's mission to figure out how to restore his home country's ecosystem, even though he himself had never seen it as anything but a wasteland. This meant he was two years old and was a fully capable adult (and in fact much more intelligent than older, earlier-model robots) but had absolutely no actual experience with the world or how people worked. He would be completely unhelpful for anything that required charisma, but he was quite compassionate (...albeit with a child's understanding of what that meant), so if they were staying in a village, he'd take advantage of not needing to sleep to go out into the fields and use his Druidic magic to bless them. It cost him nothing, he had nothing else he needed to be doing, it would help the people there, so why wouldn't he? (It also meant he was perfectly willing to form a pact with a dark god, because it was clearly powerful since everyone feared it and he'd learn a lot from it, so what's the big deal? — Unsurprisingly, the sailors on the ship he and his party were on were less pleased when they found him praying to the Devourer.)

I played him for several years and even wrote about him for NaNo one year, so I commissioned art of him (by Jruva on DeviantArt). I may as well share!

A later character I created was a Warlock, Alyssa, from the same country (and I suspect my Yu-Gi-Oh! friends here would really get a kick out of her). Normally, Warlocks make a pact with a supernatural entity to gain their magical powers, like a fiend or an archfey or something like that. In this character's case, she got her magical powers from the restless spirits of her countryfolk who were unable to pass on. Instead of being driven by a compassionate drive to fix her country's ecosystem, like the Druid was, the Warlock bore the undying grudge of her people with her.

If I were writing this up as an autobiography, I'd probably pretend I was bolder with improv and did a wonderful job with it. For instance, the country is commonly known as the Mournland now that it's an uninhabitable wasteland. However, the country used to be called Cyre. People from other countries generally pronounced that like "sire," while Cyrans themselves pronounced it "kai-ree." This means that even people trying to be respectful will still flub it horribly, at least from the perspective of a traumatized survivor. When on a stealth mission through a university, when she heard scholars talking about her homeland and calling it by a non-native pronunciation, perhaps Alyssa would have broken cover to angrily insist upon how little they knew of her people. What would they have thought of this bitter young woman, driven by the rage of her people, who was angry at even those attempting — clumsily, but still sincerely — to be respectful of this culture that was wiped out? Is there anyone whose mind could have been changed in a positive direction by such a conversation? Or would it have resulted in worsened attitudes as well as a failed mission? Or would no one have even believed her? Who can say?

[babybluesquid]

The Burning Prophet.

[mimzalot]

meet our completely original D&D character Dan- I mean uhhh Damon ir’Ardantego, the mysterious dragon slayer whose twin brother is lost somewhere in the Mournlands | METANOIA BLUES

[mendelmakes]

When you roll a 1 on charisma when dealing with the freaky cultists in the mournlands.