PDA

View Full Version : DM Help Uniting the Clans



Outrider
2018-08-24, 05:38 AM
So you and your group are the last members of your clan. The rest were wiped out by a greedy giant who used the for food. While fleeing the scene, you get a vision from your god that an army of humans are planning to assault the mountains where you live and wipe out all of the clans still living there. You have been given the divine task of uniting the clans in order to defend your very right to survive. You know that you can't just tell them about the vision. They will never believe a bunch of clanless rogues. The clans have been at war with each other for generations, so uniting them is a difficult undertaking.

What can you do to bring the clans together?

Pleh
2018-08-24, 06:39 AM
Some context. Fights with giants and humans, clan based culture, honor determined largely by clan affiliation, so I assume this is a story about dwarves? Seems like dwarves with allusions to L5R style samurai honor codes. This is very doable, if the DM has left enough viable routes through society.

First things first, honesty is the best policy. I don't have to tell them about my vision, but if they see for themselves that the humans are preparing an assault, they don't need to know about my vision. I'd definitely explore what it might take to get the dwarves to gather intelligence on the humans without my help.

Next up, being clanless degenerates is too limiting. I need to get a clan to adopt me into their fold so I can speak publicly again. My full time job is performing impressive feats of honor and expertise as a way of demonstrating my recruitment potential. Hopefully, I can restore my station in society quickly so I can begin my more primary task of informing the clans of the threat (gradually, and not heavy handed) and tackling major disputes between clans to lower their political tensions. Nothing will stop them from vying for power as rivals, but at least I can help them settle some outstanding debts with one another so when the humans show up, the threat will feel more important than their feud.

Finally, having access to social station allows me to start weaving doubt and concern for national security into the minds of my superiors. Has to be handled delicately, but my own experience at losing my whole clan perfectly positions me to pointedly foreshadow the threat to the clans. I don't have to claim foreknowledge (don't want to make my superior look like a fool for not having foresight, and it could implicate me as an accomplice anyway).

Among the superiors I'd seek to influence would be church leaders. I might omit exactly when I received the vision, but surely if our god is trying to save our people and I share the message with our high priest while not being a ronin, he'd beseech our deity concerning the vision, get it divinely endorsed, and begin campaigning for our cause. I don't need to be the hero, I just need to get the day saved. Let the high priest get the credit for it if he wants. Having the church preach unification won't just solve the whole problem, but it's an important step to get everyone on board with the program.

Cespenar
2018-08-24, 06:40 AM
The classic trope is to challenge each clan chief in a specific way relating to that clan's traditions. It's one-on-one combat most of the time. :smalltongue:

Another option is to cozy up to one clan by telling them some juicy secrets about the others, allowing them to beat the others into submission. Then you'd have a good advisor status at the side of the conquering chief.

A third option is to gather evidence of the imminent threat in order to get the clans together. Embellishment or producing your own evidence is also fair game.

Kaptin Keen
2018-08-24, 06:52 AM
Well - you defeat the giants obviously.

I mean, I'm not saying it'll be easy to defeat the giants that just wiped out your clan, but if it was easy, it also wouldn't be impressive. Once you're giantslayers, the other clans will listen. Then you rally them for a massive ambush on the human army.

I wish I could remember the name of the dungeon magazine module in which Mog-Thurognin appeared, the keep in question was way cool.

Then you become high king of the united clans, defeat the ice dragon, gather yet more banners to your cause, and conquer all the realms of men.

MoiMagnus
2018-08-24, 08:06 AM
So you and your group are the last members of your clan. The rest were wiped out by a greedy giant who used the for food. While fleeing the scene, you get a vision from your god that an army of humans are planning to assault the mountains where you live and wipe out all of the clans still living there. You have been given the divine task of uniting the clans in order to defend your very right to survive. You know that you can't just tell them about the vision. They will never believe a bunch of clanless rogues. The clans have been at war with each other for generations, so uniting them is a difficult undertaking.

What can you do to bring the clans together?

You can take inspiration on how the Iroquois clans were united into a confederacy.
1) Find one clan that for some reason, is open to peace negotiation (recent loss in war, ...). Find people from the clan as ally.
2) Contact the clan which is the most friendly with the clan. With constant war, there is probably a clan they are used to ally against a third one. Bonus point if it was defensive help instead of offensive help. Make defensive agreement, and make them says that "if everyone else want peace, we will accept".
3) Find peacemakers personality, known in all the clans, and unaligned to the wars. It might seems that "no way it exists". Chances are that it should. Hospitality is one of the few rules that are common to most ancient/medieval culture. So you will find a farmer/priest/whatever known for accepting anybody in his house, and give food. Under the condition that "No war on my land. If an enemy arrive, he is not an enemy, and you will share food peacefully together as long as you are in my lands.". It can also be a sacred site, a cemetery. You need anybody and any location that is a symbol of "No war here".
4) You now have the base of your alliance, a neutral land for peace negotiation, and someone recognize as a neutral peacemaker to be "president" of the negotiation. From that, you will be able to progressively have more and more clan to the table for peace. Or at least for negotiations. Negotiation can fail, and it is fine, as long as the clan respect this land as a land of peace, so no aggression here. And possibly some trade deals.
5) Then, either you have a "great threat" you can unite everyone against, so roll with it. Either you don't, and you still have to work hard for the union. You have to remember that the goal is NOT a fair deal, that you should NOT aim to seek "reparation" for the past. The goal is peace, even if the "bad guys" ends up in position of power with this peace treaty. The absolute success is when they ends up in position of power (so they accept the deal), but their power doesn't allow them to do any harm to the confederation.

Warning:
While realistic, this path need a lot of work from the DM to be interesting as a campaign. Indeed, it is easy to ends up with the PJ being "secondary characters" in the peace negotiations.

Outrider
2018-08-24, 09:18 AM
Some really excellent ideas being tossed out here already :smallsmile:

Sorry for the lack of context, but this is a game I am considering running on the PbP forum and I don't want to give away too many details for it here. To try and help a little I will say that the clans are tribal in natural and rather primitive. Most are very war-like, so convincing them to go to war shouldn't be difficult, it will be getting them to co-operate with rival clans that will be tricky.

A show of strength is a good start to getting the clan leaders to listen, and I like the ideas for setting up negotiations. Might be a little tricky coming up with a neutral party to lead the negotiations, but that in itself could be an interesting adventure.

I think I'm getting a more solid idea of how this could play out.