mercury19
2015-09-12, 01:43 PM
World of Dragons
I made this world for my very first campaign, which was focused around dragons. Here it is. I made a few changes to 3.5’s dragons, namely removing the alignment restrictions for player purposes. That’s about it.
The World:
http://i1009.photobucket.com/albums/af218/fedoramaster19/Image_zpswj1nxan3.jpg
A quick list of species by main area of habitation:
North Lands - Tauran, Ogres
Twilight Swamp - Kobolds
Deep Wood - Elves, Satyrs
Mirror Lake - Dragonborn
Sky Reach Mountains - Dwarves, Goblins, Gnomes
West Isles - Lizardfolk
East Vale - Lycanthropes
Midlands - Bugbears, Green Orcs, Halflings/Kender
Badlands - Blood Orcs
Great South Desert - Tieflings, Hobgoblins
North Bay - White Orcs
South Bay - Humans
Gray Downs - Undead, Night Orcs
Great West Ocean - Tritons
A bit about the more unfamiliar races:
Tauran - Basically, non-alignment restricted and intelligent minotaurs. /i never sued them, andso never stated them.
Dragonborn - Think like Dragonborn of Bahamut, not 4e. proper dragon heads, with colors being those of the DnD true dragons, both chromatic and metallic. Tend towards good alignment, as they were created by Bahamut. more on their creation later. They are basically the (ideal) America of the world, protecting the free peoples and all that jazz. They live under a republic.
Lizardfolk - I was looking for a different take on lizardfolk in this campaign, as well as a race to inhabit the isles. So I decided that the Lizardfolk would be a seafaring people, the pirates and sea dogs of the campaign. Tend towards green, blue, and bronze scales, and less about poison then their normal counterparts.
Lycanthropes - I am a huge fan of lycanthropy, the whole “part man part beast thing”. I am also a very good aligned player, and dislike the traditional “werewolves are evil” view. So I removed alignment restrictions, and made it so that different species coexisted together, werebears and wereboars and werewolves and the like. I relegated the to East Vale because, like most settings, most other folk don’t trust them and their strange ways. So they chose to isolate themselves, and create a safe haven for their kind.
Blood Orcs - Larger, stronger versions of the traditional Green Orc, with blood red skin. They inhabit the badlands, and tend to have a harsher view of the world because of the harshness of their homeland.
Tieflings - Again, no alignment restriction. The Tieflings here are your traditional Arabian style culture. I never went into detail, but that was the general idea. Bazaars and scimitars and camels all over the place.
Hobgoblins - No alignment restrictions. Similar to the Bedouins and other nomadic, desert cultures here on Earth.
White Orcs - Shorter than traditional Orcs, with white skin. Traditional Viking culture, sailing, raids, axes, the like. More “civilized” than regular Orcs, they tend to build proper cities, and have a more defined government.
Night Orcs - A branch of the Orc family that only a few people know about. They were green orcs centuries ago, but they were given a task by some deity to fight undead and contain them in the Grey Downs. Their skin is black as night, and they are excellent archers. More intelligent than traditional Orcs, they are simply on the side of the living, not any particular alignment. Other than bows, they tend towards bludgeoning weapons and fire.
All of the other races are your traditional DnD races.
Now some Lore:
The Great Dragon War
No one knows how it began, or why. It didn’t matter where, because it soon encompassed the entire world. The Great Dragon War, as it was known, lasted for a century. It began five centuries ago. It started small, maybe a red dragon confronting a silver for a remote mountain cliff. Soon, however, it had escalated to a massive civil war within dragon kind. At first, it was thought to be a simple matter, solved with the usual amount of draconic destruction. As the conflict dragged on, people began to worry. A year has passed. Two years. Shouldn’t this be over now? Then Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon disappeared. His clerics and clergy descended into chaos, and the world lost all sight of the end. Darkness fell, and destruction became a way of life.
This went on for almost 90 years. Then a hero surfaced.
Peter Korthain was a knight of the secret Order of the Silver Shield, a warrior priest society that had long ago secluded itself deep in the Skyreach mountains. Their duty was to await the return of good to the world, so that they could join its cause and finally triumph over evil. But Peter was impatient. He saw that waiting around was doing nothing, so he left. He came down from the mountains, and began to help people. He gathered followers, and within a year he had made a peace between the forces, and dragon’s controlling them, in the eastern part of the midlands.
About a month after this, as Peter was travelling, he encountered an old man on the road who had been evicted from his village, and begged for food and water. Peter knew that every act of kindness was a help in these dark times, and immediately stopped. After sharing his food, water, and campfire with him, Peter asked his name. The old man revealed himself to be Bahamut, returned after ninety years. His disguise had been a test, and he had found Peter worthy to be his champion. Peter knelt immediately, and swore fealty to what seemed the first hope of stopping the dragon’s conflict. As a symbol of his patronage, Bahamut made Peter Korthain into the first Dragonborn.
From that day, Peter had a new purpose. He travelled the land, gathering new followers, many of whom swore themselves to Bahamut and became Dragonborn also. It took nine more years, but by the end the last of the dragon’s had made peace. With Bahamut restored to his full power, the world prospered. Dragonborn discovered that they could have children, and Peter Korthain founded the Kingdom of the Platinum Scale in honor of Bahamut and for the new Dragonborn race to live in. He made his capital on Mirror Isle, and the nation became a guardian of all that is good.
And so it has remained to this day.
King Dahkari Haze (Pronounced like the drink) (Player written lore)
A generation ago, there was a great king among the White Orcs. Dahkari, the son of a farmer, joined the army at a young age. Early in his career, he was the only survivor of a gnoll raid, during which he had destroyed the opposing force bare-handed. This got him a promotion. He rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a noble in the king’s court. When the king was assassinated, the council unanimously voted Dahkari the new king. He wore the Ice Crown, the symbol of White Orc kingship. It was made of pure, clear crystal, and embedded with sapphires. He wielded The Heart of the Mountain, a massive warhammer made for him by the Titans. It was a large stone, wrapped to a sturdy iron handle by leather. It gained enough renown to rival Gurgle, the spear of Gruumsh himself.
Before he had become king, Dahkari had been betrothed to a Green Orc from the south, a Chieftain's daughter, as a political endeavor. When he became king, however, Dahkari broke the engagement and chose a White Orc named Lady Azah as his queen. Chief Daaz, whose daughter Kierag had been been Dahkari’s betrothed, was furious. He began to plot his vengeance on Haze.
He waited for many years, but he never forgot. Eventually, Daaz took his warriors north, and began waiting for an opportunity to exact revenge. His chance came when King Haze and his men returned from a successful raid. While they were celebrating in the capitol, Chief Daaz had his men catapult barrels of oil into the city, and light it on fire. The warriors were all drunk, and the plan went smoothly. Daaz and his men entered the city and began to slaughter the inhabitants wholesale, sparing no one. He himself and his personal guard moved towards the palace, in search of the Ice Crown and the Heart of the Mountain. As they walked down the main street however, they saw King Dahkari Haze walking towards them. To Daaz’s surprise, Dahkari was unscathed. Dahkari revealed his secret his immunity to elemental forces. I his early childhood he had come to a strange shrine, and a great power had enveloped him, granting him this immunity. In a rage, he rushed Daaz, but was intercepted by the Chieftan’s guards. Of the score of highly trained warriors, twelve fell to Haze’s mighty hammer before he himself was restrained. Daaz’s men dragged him out of the city, to be taken south for a public execution. Daaz ordered his warriors to hunt down the king’s offspring, and while they caught some, it is unknown how many may have survived.
Daaz became the new king of the north, but soon found that ruling two kingdoms so far apart was not a simple task. Mere months later, a White Orc Galdiator named Gohzan Turk led a successful revolt, killing Daaz, and claimed both the Ice Crown and the Heart of the Mountain as the rightful ruler of the White Orcs. And so it remains to this day.
Dwarf Stuff (Player written lore)
Dwarven legend tell the tale of the True Mountain, the original home of Dwarven kind. They tell of the greatness of the Dwarves of the era, and their king Thralgin the Brave. Thralgin led his people to greatness, claiming the True Mountain and the land around it from the Dragons and Goblins who lived there. The mountain was rich in precious ores, and the Dwarves prospered. Thralgin was hailed as the greatest Dwarven hero of his age. But Thralgin was not who he seemed.
Thralgin bore a grudge against dragons, for they had slain his only brother when he was still young. This grudge burned inside Thralgin, a never ceasing hunger for revenge. He commanded the Dwarves to dig deeper, to find more riches to fund his quest for vengeance. Unfortunately, he dug too deep.
Deep beneath the True Mountain, the Dwarves discovered a gate of bone. Blinded by greed, they opened it to find the riches they believed must be in a crypt such as this one. Upon opening it, however, they found not riches, but legions of undead waiting to escape from their prison. Led by the lich known as the Skull Czar, the living dead poured out of the gate and slaughtered the miners who had discovered it. One managed to escape and bring warning to the upper halls, and Thralgin began to ready his men. People fled to the keep, as the undead and their aura of evil traveled upwards. Long dead Dwarves rose to fight with the lich, and Dragons and Goblins killed in the war for the Mountain too. The ravaged the Dwarven city, coming at last to the keep. Dracoliches destroyed the great gates, and the legions rushed inside. They were met, however, by Thralgin and his warriors. The Dwarves fought back with ferocity born of desperation.
Through the raging battle strode the Skull Czar himself, laying low Dwarves left and right with his pitch black blade. Thralgin turned and their eyes locked, the liches icy blue orbs mocking the Dwarf from his hollow, skull face. The lich moved towards him, dispatching with ease the guards who moved to defend their king. Thralgin raised his sword, and met the lich in single combat. Thralgin held his own, but soon realised that his opponent was far more skilled than he, and began to think that he may not make it. As the Dwarf began to tire, the lich forced him down to his knees, then knocked him over. The monster’s sword came down, and Thralgin raised his shield to parr. The black blade cut through the shield like water, and the arm beneath was severed. Thralgin roared in pain, blood gushing from his wound. The lich laughed, a cold dry sound that chilled to the bone. He brought his blade down for the killing blow.
With a burst of strength, Thralgin raised his own blade, batted aside the lich’s sword, and stabbed it in the face. The room froze. Dwargin, the king’s youngest son, looked on with awe. Thralgin lay back, his task accomplished. Or so it seemed. Then, to the Dwarves’ horror, the lich grabbed the blade by the hilt, and pulled it from the evilly grinning skull. Without a moment’s pause, the lich stabbed the king through the heart with his own sword.The king’s eyes opened wide with surprise, then life passed from him. Dwargin lost hope for victory, and ran. He fled to the tunnels he had explored as a child, and managed to escape. But he lost his honor. He had abandoned his family and his home. The True Mountain had fallen.
Dwargin traveled to the Sky Reach mountains, but found news had arrived ahead of him, and he was shunned wherever he went. He lived out the rest of his days as a pariah, a hermit in the mountains. To this day, the location of the True Mountain remains lost, a secret that died with Dwargin, who was the last survivor to die. It is said that somewhere though, the blood of Thralgin the Brave carries on, and is waiting for the day to return and claim the True Mountain once more.
That’s all I have for now, if I think of something I’ll add it. I won’t include the details from the campaign I ran, because it wasn’t very well written. It was after all my very first.
I made this world for my very first campaign, which was focused around dragons. Here it is. I made a few changes to 3.5’s dragons, namely removing the alignment restrictions for player purposes. That’s about it.
The World:
http://i1009.photobucket.com/albums/af218/fedoramaster19/Image_zpswj1nxan3.jpg
A quick list of species by main area of habitation:
North Lands - Tauran, Ogres
Twilight Swamp - Kobolds
Deep Wood - Elves, Satyrs
Mirror Lake - Dragonborn
Sky Reach Mountains - Dwarves, Goblins, Gnomes
West Isles - Lizardfolk
East Vale - Lycanthropes
Midlands - Bugbears, Green Orcs, Halflings/Kender
Badlands - Blood Orcs
Great South Desert - Tieflings, Hobgoblins
North Bay - White Orcs
South Bay - Humans
Gray Downs - Undead, Night Orcs
Great West Ocean - Tritons
A bit about the more unfamiliar races:
Tauran - Basically, non-alignment restricted and intelligent minotaurs. /i never sued them, andso never stated them.
Dragonborn - Think like Dragonborn of Bahamut, not 4e. proper dragon heads, with colors being those of the DnD true dragons, both chromatic and metallic. Tend towards good alignment, as they were created by Bahamut. more on their creation later. They are basically the (ideal) America of the world, protecting the free peoples and all that jazz. They live under a republic.
Lizardfolk - I was looking for a different take on lizardfolk in this campaign, as well as a race to inhabit the isles. So I decided that the Lizardfolk would be a seafaring people, the pirates and sea dogs of the campaign. Tend towards green, blue, and bronze scales, and less about poison then their normal counterparts.
Lycanthropes - I am a huge fan of lycanthropy, the whole “part man part beast thing”. I am also a very good aligned player, and dislike the traditional “werewolves are evil” view. So I removed alignment restrictions, and made it so that different species coexisted together, werebears and wereboars and werewolves and the like. I relegated the to East Vale because, like most settings, most other folk don’t trust them and their strange ways. So they chose to isolate themselves, and create a safe haven for their kind.
Blood Orcs - Larger, stronger versions of the traditional Green Orc, with blood red skin. They inhabit the badlands, and tend to have a harsher view of the world because of the harshness of their homeland.
Tieflings - Again, no alignment restriction. The Tieflings here are your traditional Arabian style culture. I never went into detail, but that was the general idea. Bazaars and scimitars and camels all over the place.
Hobgoblins - No alignment restrictions. Similar to the Bedouins and other nomadic, desert cultures here on Earth.
White Orcs - Shorter than traditional Orcs, with white skin. Traditional Viking culture, sailing, raids, axes, the like. More “civilized” than regular Orcs, they tend to build proper cities, and have a more defined government.
Night Orcs - A branch of the Orc family that only a few people know about. They were green orcs centuries ago, but they were given a task by some deity to fight undead and contain them in the Grey Downs. Their skin is black as night, and they are excellent archers. More intelligent than traditional Orcs, they are simply on the side of the living, not any particular alignment. Other than bows, they tend towards bludgeoning weapons and fire.
All of the other races are your traditional DnD races.
Now some Lore:
The Great Dragon War
No one knows how it began, or why. It didn’t matter where, because it soon encompassed the entire world. The Great Dragon War, as it was known, lasted for a century. It began five centuries ago. It started small, maybe a red dragon confronting a silver for a remote mountain cliff. Soon, however, it had escalated to a massive civil war within dragon kind. At first, it was thought to be a simple matter, solved with the usual amount of draconic destruction. As the conflict dragged on, people began to worry. A year has passed. Two years. Shouldn’t this be over now? Then Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon disappeared. His clerics and clergy descended into chaos, and the world lost all sight of the end. Darkness fell, and destruction became a way of life.
This went on for almost 90 years. Then a hero surfaced.
Peter Korthain was a knight of the secret Order of the Silver Shield, a warrior priest society that had long ago secluded itself deep in the Skyreach mountains. Their duty was to await the return of good to the world, so that they could join its cause and finally triumph over evil. But Peter was impatient. He saw that waiting around was doing nothing, so he left. He came down from the mountains, and began to help people. He gathered followers, and within a year he had made a peace between the forces, and dragon’s controlling them, in the eastern part of the midlands.
About a month after this, as Peter was travelling, he encountered an old man on the road who had been evicted from his village, and begged for food and water. Peter knew that every act of kindness was a help in these dark times, and immediately stopped. After sharing his food, water, and campfire with him, Peter asked his name. The old man revealed himself to be Bahamut, returned after ninety years. His disguise had been a test, and he had found Peter worthy to be his champion. Peter knelt immediately, and swore fealty to what seemed the first hope of stopping the dragon’s conflict. As a symbol of his patronage, Bahamut made Peter Korthain into the first Dragonborn.
From that day, Peter had a new purpose. He travelled the land, gathering new followers, many of whom swore themselves to Bahamut and became Dragonborn also. It took nine more years, but by the end the last of the dragon’s had made peace. With Bahamut restored to his full power, the world prospered. Dragonborn discovered that they could have children, and Peter Korthain founded the Kingdom of the Platinum Scale in honor of Bahamut and for the new Dragonborn race to live in. He made his capital on Mirror Isle, and the nation became a guardian of all that is good.
And so it has remained to this day.
King Dahkari Haze (Pronounced like the drink) (Player written lore)
A generation ago, there was a great king among the White Orcs. Dahkari, the son of a farmer, joined the army at a young age. Early in his career, he was the only survivor of a gnoll raid, during which he had destroyed the opposing force bare-handed. This got him a promotion. He rose through the ranks, eventually becoming a noble in the king’s court. When the king was assassinated, the council unanimously voted Dahkari the new king. He wore the Ice Crown, the symbol of White Orc kingship. It was made of pure, clear crystal, and embedded with sapphires. He wielded The Heart of the Mountain, a massive warhammer made for him by the Titans. It was a large stone, wrapped to a sturdy iron handle by leather. It gained enough renown to rival Gurgle, the spear of Gruumsh himself.
Before he had become king, Dahkari had been betrothed to a Green Orc from the south, a Chieftain's daughter, as a political endeavor. When he became king, however, Dahkari broke the engagement and chose a White Orc named Lady Azah as his queen. Chief Daaz, whose daughter Kierag had been been Dahkari’s betrothed, was furious. He began to plot his vengeance on Haze.
He waited for many years, but he never forgot. Eventually, Daaz took his warriors north, and began waiting for an opportunity to exact revenge. His chance came when King Haze and his men returned from a successful raid. While they were celebrating in the capitol, Chief Daaz had his men catapult barrels of oil into the city, and light it on fire. The warriors were all drunk, and the plan went smoothly. Daaz and his men entered the city and began to slaughter the inhabitants wholesale, sparing no one. He himself and his personal guard moved towards the palace, in search of the Ice Crown and the Heart of the Mountain. As they walked down the main street however, they saw King Dahkari Haze walking towards them. To Daaz’s surprise, Dahkari was unscathed. Dahkari revealed his secret his immunity to elemental forces. I his early childhood he had come to a strange shrine, and a great power had enveloped him, granting him this immunity. In a rage, he rushed Daaz, but was intercepted by the Chieftan’s guards. Of the score of highly trained warriors, twelve fell to Haze’s mighty hammer before he himself was restrained. Daaz’s men dragged him out of the city, to be taken south for a public execution. Daaz ordered his warriors to hunt down the king’s offspring, and while they caught some, it is unknown how many may have survived.
Daaz became the new king of the north, but soon found that ruling two kingdoms so far apart was not a simple task. Mere months later, a White Orc Galdiator named Gohzan Turk led a successful revolt, killing Daaz, and claimed both the Ice Crown and the Heart of the Mountain as the rightful ruler of the White Orcs. And so it remains to this day.
Dwarf Stuff (Player written lore)
Dwarven legend tell the tale of the True Mountain, the original home of Dwarven kind. They tell of the greatness of the Dwarves of the era, and their king Thralgin the Brave. Thralgin led his people to greatness, claiming the True Mountain and the land around it from the Dragons and Goblins who lived there. The mountain was rich in precious ores, and the Dwarves prospered. Thralgin was hailed as the greatest Dwarven hero of his age. But Thralgin was not who he seemed.
Thralgin bore a grudge against dragons, for they had slain his only brother when he was still young. This grudge burned inside Thralgin, a never ceasing hunger for revenge. He commanded the Dwarves to dig deeper, to find more riches to fund his quest for vengeance. Unfortunately, he dug too deep.
Deep beneath the True Mountain, the Dwarves discovered a gate of bone. Blinded by greed, they opened it to find the riches they believed must be in a crypt such as this one. Upon opening it, however, they found not riches, but legions of undead waiting to escape from their prison. Led by the lich known as the Skull Czar, the living dead poured out of the gate and slaughtered the miners who had discovered it. One managed to escape and bring warning to the upper halls, and Thralgin began to ready his men. People fled to the keep, as the undead and their aura of evil traveled upwards. Long dead Dwarves rose to fight with the lich, and Dragons and Goblins killed in the war for the Mountain too. The ravaged the Dwarven city, coming at last to the keep. Dracoliches destroyed the great gates, and the legions rushed inside. They were met, however, by Thralgin and his warriors. The Dwarves fought back with ferocity born of desperation.
Through the raging battle strode the Skull Czar himself, laying low Dwarves left and right with his pitch black blade. Thralgin turned and their eyes locked, the liches icy blue orbs mocking the Dwarf from his hollow, skull face. The lich moved towards him, dispatching with ease the guards who moved to defend their king. Thralgin raised his sword, and met the lich in single combat. Thralgin held his own, but soon realised that his opponent was far more skilled than he, and began to think that he may not make it. As the Dwarf began to tire, the lich forced him down to his knees, then knocked him over. The monster’s sword came down, and Thralgin raised his shield to parr. The black blade cut through the shield like water, and the arm beneath was severed. Thralgin roared in pain, blood gushing from his wound. The lich laughed, a cold dry sound that chilled to the bone. He brought his blade down for the killing blow.
With a burst of strength, Thralgin raised his own blade, batted aside the lich’s sword, and stabbed it in the face. The room froze. Dwargin, the king’s youngest son, looked on with awe. Thralgin lay back, his task accomplished. Or so it seemed. Then, to the Dwarves’ horror, the lich grabbed the blade by the hilt, and pulled it from the evilly grinning skull. Without a moment’s pause, the lich stabbed the king through the heart with his own sword.The king’s eyes opened wide with surprise, then life passed from him. Dwargin lost hope for victory, and ran. He fled to the tunnels he had explored as a child, and managed to escape. But he lost his honor. He had abandoned his family and his home. The True Mountain had fallen.
Dwargin traveled to the Sky Reach mountains, but found news had arrived ahead of him, and he was shunned wherever he went. He lived out the rest of his days as a pariah, a hermit in the mountains. To this day, the location of the True Mountain remains lost, a secret that died with Dwargin, who was the last survivor to die. It is said that somewhere though, the blood of Thralgin the Brave carries on, and is waiting for the day to return and claim the True Mountain once more.
That’s all I have for now, if I think of something I’ll add it. I won’t include the details from the campaign I ran, because it wasn’t very well written. It was after all my very first.