Dragons of Argonesen (Eberron)

[Kol Korran]

so, in a few sessions my players are going to finish the current campaign, a fairly basic heroic stuff of saving Khorvaire from the rise of a rakshasa Rajah.

i have a few ideas intended for further campaigns, when some of the players told me that they might want to continue (they'll be about level 12 when they finish) with their characters, and would want something of a unique challenge, of epic proportions.

so i thought, and amongst those many thoughts came to words: Dragons & Argonessen.

so i'm thinking of getting the party there, and involving them in the intrigues and complexities of draconic culture. but as this is a basic idea, i'm trying to fashion it out a bit, so i thought to ask the people here for advice.

i still don't have even the skeletal framework for the campaign, except for the following:

I want the dragons to feel powerfull, but also quiet alien, and dmeaning to the people in their realms. pretty much as the "dragons of Eberron" book depicts them. the party needs to tread Really carefuly, as most single dragons are out of their CR, and groups of them... well...
Eberron has 3 "great evil" villainous groups: the lords of dust, the daelkyr and the dreaming dark. i want the PCs to first feel the dragons are keepers against these threats, but come to realize what a horrible threats the dragons themselves are, quite possibly more than any of the others (please lets not discuss who is the biggest threat and why, notthepoint of this thread). as they have wiped outthe giant civilizations, so they might as easily wipe out Khorvaire. i want the feeling of the "uncaring huge towering giant, who can easily squash the bug"
i want there to be some sort of great form of draconic magic. some sort of a different magic system? artifacts? other wonders? i am getting Dragon magic to see if it can help
i want the party to somehow be involved (probably against thier will) in draconic politics. ruthless, severe, sometimes endlessly patient, sometimes swiftly brutal draconic politics. they need to feel as a majestic nation, not as a big group of monsters.
don't know what the "big crisis/ problem is yet", but i want it to be something the party might be conflicted about- maybe they should actualy help the antagonist/s? one slight idea stems from the "living prophecy" dragon example in the book- a dragon that somehow tries to destroy the prophecy- he believes that by that he would free the creatures of Eberron to live free lives, while others believe it would destroy andunravel Eberron itself. but this is a very simplistic ideas, i'm looking for more subtle and complicated ones.
one of the players in my campaign has likened the dragons to the vorlons, and the lords of dust to the shadows from Babylon 5. i'd like to maybe play on that idea.
at some point i want the party trying to survive, running for their lives, dealing with dominion lords over the vast... perhaps quite early on, before they have access to greater teleport.
at one point i want the eyes of chronepsis on their tale, sending assassins and what not. deadly ones.
i loved the idea of the major humanoid city in the center of the continent (forgot it's name) where even the most meager citizens are about 10-12 level characters, and epic magic i usd, and bartering is... frustrating and more. i love the different outlook of the population on life, and it emphasizes so much the difference between argonessen and khorvaire. besides- it might be a bit of a resting point (though i have ideas for that as well)
not sure how, not sure why, but i want the final showdown to take place in the ring of syberis itself! amongst the sea of shards, the impossibly erratic and powerfull magical energy, in orbit over Eberron. other possibility is at the conclave meeting, with a thousand of Argonessen's Great wyrms present. the last idea is to somehow battle INSIDE the essence of the prophecy. not sure how to work either idea yet.


also, there are several challenges that i forsee in this campaign, which i'd love any help with:

i've never played or DMed any game beyond 12th level. i think it becomes way complicated with the options the caster have, and from what i heard battles become quite tiresome, andoften revolves on which caster wins init. i'm worried i won't be ableto bring appropriate challenges to them. with dragons i think it would be easy to overstep my bounds and utterly massacre them.
if people will die (and they probalby will), where to bring newcharacters from? it's possible to bringthem from the humanoid's city, or from a minion position to the dragons, but it then lacks the "Khorvaire outsider" feel to them.
the continent seems to be full of powerful magics and items of all ages. i allready take into acount that they'll possess items beyond their level., but this too can quickly get out of hand. on the other hand, if they just looted some dragon's lair, swift retribution seems appropriate, andthis too might wipe the pary out.
as the party may hvae some great freedom of movemnet due tohigh level spells, i'll need to keep quite a few "fall back" encounters, NPCs and locations ready. this includes, due to the nature of argonessen, many high CR monsters/ dragons and so on, which means lots andlotsof preperation. not sure i have time for that.


so.... long post so far. what would i like your help with?

any recount of your experiences with this sort of campaign- heavily involving dragons, heavily involving a prophecy, and best yet- in Argonessen itself
any thoughts or ideas about the very very basic ideas i have, or any contributions of your own. would be most welcomed!
any ideas how to deal with the problems i forsee. thanks!

[Sucrose]

With respect, unless your players have shown an enormous amount of patience in the past, I would advise against having them spend a major portion of campaign in Argonessen, if you feel that the dragons must be insulting to the more mortal races, and all immensely powerful.

It would essentially be like being surrounded for the whole campaign by 20th level archmages, who constantly mock the party for being puny fools who can't even make time stop, despite said characters being able to take on basically the entire continent of Khorvaire. The party is going to want, in short order, to usurp/murder them all. If you make it completely impossible for them to do so, or you make it so that they can't really make any progress before epic level silliness, then it will get very frustrating in short order.

I would recommend using the truly epic dragons more sparingly, ideally only when the players seek them out. They're all supposed to be mostly preoccupied with interpreting the Prophecy, and playing games with each other, are they not? They should not be major factors in the world.

[137beth]

I'm going to agree with sucrose on this one. They should be able to threaten stuff.

Perhaps at some point the talons of tiamat come into play. But the dragon's plan to stop tiamat's release requires sacrificing the entirety of Khorvaire. This might encourage the players to help tiamat...or risk the destruction of their home.

[Andorax]

Ok, hollar if you need more detail, but I actually did make dragons a central campaign theme, in two different regards:

1) Early on, it had to do with the Draconic Prophecy (doesn't everything) and the belief that the current configuration of dragonmarked houses was inauspicious. Vol was working on a means to resurrect the lost Mark of Death (as was forseen in the Prophecy), and her eventual success at doing so would cause there to be an imbalance...one that would have to be corrected.

Much of the initial campaign tension revolved around the PCs initially working for Thuranni, and investigating some very disturbing, and messy, slayings of actual members of the house (the PCs were fairly well paid outsiders). Time and again, evidence pointed to something draconic being involved.

As it turns out, there were three dragons who had taken it upon themselves to "fix" this dragonmarked house problem. A blue (with assorted bluespawn), who believed that the Medani/Thurrani problem could be fixed by wiping out the Thurrani house completely. A bronze who believed that the proper solution was reconciliation and merging the houses back together. A shadow dragon who was undecided between these two approaches, but was mostly involved as a 'consultant' and expert on all things shadow, including the Mark of Shadow.

PCs discovered a small town which (through one PC's prophetic trance) happened to have been constructed with the streets layed out in the exact shape of the Mark of Death, and wound up rescuing a young elven woman on the run from "some horrible thugs"...the cloned/reincarnated form of Vol's mother with the Mark of Death, fleeing the Emerald Claw operatives who were tasked with bringing her back.

PCs investigated several sites of Thurrani attacks, each time discovering bits of blue scale from the (progressively bigger and meaner) bluescale dragonspawn that took part in the ambush.


2) Later on, a bigger challenge came to the fore. In Q'barra, a large mercantile interest (the Order of the Seven) had set about training their own massive private mercenary force. Backed by several of the Dragonmarked houses, they believed that with sufficient manpower, training, and resources they could mount an assault on Argonesen by force. Dragonslayers of every sort were brought together, and artificers produced all manner of anti-dragon items day and night.

The PCs were, eventually, tasked with one of the key pieces to the strategy...stealing Argonth for the Order to utilize as a platform of operations for their assault.

Sadly, the Order was being played (I know...a shock). Rhashaak, the guardian dragon of Haka'torvhak, has become a Xortinval (misspelled, MMV) dragon, and through proxies, is using the Order as a massive move in the game. The plan is that the Order will initially succeed, and that as they loot the younger, outer-edges dragons' layers, they'll be pouring that wealth through a custom, unlimited-capacity ring gate into their stronghold back in Q'Barra...which at the appointed hour, will be raided by an army of lizardfolk who will return with all of the plunder back to Haka'torvhak, vastly increasing Rhashaak's wealth.

Meanwhile, the doomed expedition will eventually draw the attention of big, powerful, capible dragons...who will doubtless slaughter them all.



Mind you, none of this required the party to face off against dragons directly, but it still made them a major factor in the storyline. The campaign never got that far, but part of the big finale was going to involve a race back to Haka'torvhak ahead of a host of really pissed off dragonhunters in an attempt to KEEP them from killing Rhashaak (and thereby releasing the Rakshasa Rajah entrapped there) until one of the PC's patrons, the aforementioned Bronze, showed up to assume responsibility for the seal and replace the corrupted Rhashaak.

[Prime32]

Have the dragons avoid speaking to the PCs in person whenever possible. If they seek an audience a member of one of the barbarian tribes takes them through a system of caves to an enormous chamber with 13 perfectly straight walls - one is an entrance, and a dragon can speak from each of the others. The walls can turn into portals if one of the dragons wants to speak with them in private.