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The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - Havard - 01-12-2021
Blackmoor's Age of Dragons takes place perhaps as much as 2000 years before Robert of Genova arrived in the North. Insellageth, Father Dragon, had been dormant during most of the old Ice Age. As the ice began to recede, new creatures found their way to the North. Birds and beasts of all kinds wandered into these new lands bringing with them seeds that grew into flowers and trees. Deep within the new forests, elves and other sylvan creatures appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.
Gradually, other races arrived from the south and west. Humans, Brute Men and Garls followed the animals that they hunted. Cruel and primitive, the elves hid from these races and only spied on them from afar with a mix of curiousity and fear. The humans used tools of stone, but their Shamans, Wokani and Elderkin mastered simple magic and attempted to contact spirits and gods found around them.
Some of these younger races were easy to corrupt. In their search for power, their magic achieved contact with the minds of beings of ancient evil known as The Sleeping Ones. These entities had been put into magical sleep by greater powers, but they could still influence weak minds through their dreams. This way, they were able to direct these corrupted Shamans to discover old Sar Aigu rituals carved into the rocks of Blackmoor. They began to use these rituals to create monsters of pure evil and attempted to awaken the dark powers buried deep below the ground.
Other Humans and Brute Men were not so easily corrupted. They fought against these evils. However, with the newly found powers, the forces of good needed allies. During this time, known as the Burrower Wars, Insellageth was made alert to the evils that were rising. Dragons now arrived in the North, turning the tide of battle, destroying the dark creations of the corrupted shamans. As an ancient evil was about to emerge from the ice, the Father of Dragons sent his strongest child, the Great Dragon Yealaletherveri. This dragon was able to destroy the ancient evil emerging from the ice, but only at the cost of his life.
After this, the Dragons had become determined to stay in the North, protecting the younger races. This period became known as the Age of Dragons. The Age of Dragons remained a time of conflict. The most serious blow against the dragons was the work of the Shaman Keres of whom legends says was able to kill a god.
Although this lead to intervention by the Gods themselves, it had cost the Dragons much and their influence over the North began to wane. Many dragons felt that they had sacrificed too much, giving instead into greed and burying themselves into deep lairs. As Dragon society had been weakened, many dragons were driven away by a new group. Giants were set to conquer The North. Thus ended the Age of Dragons and the Age of Giants was about to begin.
OVERVIEW (My timeline):
- Thonian Year -3000 Cthonic Age (Sar Aigu)
- Thonian Year -1000 Age of Dragons
- Thonian Year -500 Age of Giants
- Thonian Year 1 Bronze Age: Robert of Geneva conquers the Land. Age of Man
- Thonian Year 500: "Iron Age" and the Decline of Elves. Thonian Age. (Blackmoor becomes a Thonian Province)
- Thonian Year 800: "Modern Age". Age of Blackmoor. (Mage Wars begin)
Notes:
Iscranin and Yealaletherveri appear in the novel Son of Dawn and were further developed in the fan works of Simone Neri.
The Burrower Wars were introduced in the Hollow World Boxed Set and expanded upon by OldDawg
What do you think a campaign set during the Burrower Wars would be like?
-Havard
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - Greg - 01-12-2021
Havard Wrote:What do you think a campaign set during the Burrower Wars would be like?
A complete mess. :lol:
I didn't know anything about the Burrower Wars or most of this history before reading your post and your related blogs. But it's clear that this would be a cataclysmic time period. PCs would be facing wars and invasions, mass combat, the rise of dark powers and monstrous creations, and battles between dragons and The Sleeping Ones.
You would also have the problem of Stone Age level technology, as described in your blog on the Burrower Wars. If the humans and Brute Men had only mastered stone tools, then you wouldn't have copper, bronze, or iron weapons or tools of any kind. Most of the weapons, armor and equipment in the D&D rulebooks wouldn't exist, and unless you were a corrupt shaman or a warlock with a pact with a Sleeping One, magic would be limited in availability and power. Stone axes, spears and cantrips for the win!
It also seems that this age has a deus ex machina ending where the gods simply intervene and decide to return the Burrowers/Sleeping Ones to sleep. That's a major weakness that would need to be addressed.
If you strictly followed the lore and the level of technology and magic, it would certainly be a unique campaign and a challenge for both the DM and the players. Unless you're having PCs time travel into this age with future weapons, armor and magic, then you would have to severely limit and eliminate a lot of the core D&D rules, character classes, and options.
But the PCs could get involved in many different struggles and interactions, such as hunting down and slaying created monsters, battling corrupted shamans, making contact with the cruel elves in a desperate attempt to seek alliances and magic, preventing Sleeping Ones from awakening, helping dragons fight against the Brute Men and Burrowers, and maybe even making contact with the dragons and gods to plead for their intervention.
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - aldarron - 01-12-2021
Quote:Iscranin and Yealaletherveri appear in the novel Son of Dawn and were further developed in the fan works of Simone Neri.
Cool names. Not familiar with the Novel though. Is it Mystara fan fiction?
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - Yaztromo - 01-12-2021
In an issue of the Bel-Ran Rumourmonger (may or may not be considered Blackmoor canon, of course), there is an article with the title The First Age of Chaos and it mentions an enigmatic dragon-deity called Med-a and you may or may not want to name it on this occasion: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11em8vz8agHp9t2eUfAfKFJyYNdhNNg_a/view?usp=sharing
By the way, Med-a is mentioned as an ancient and enigmatic deity in Blackmoor Living World as well.
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - WingofCoot - 01-13-2021
Greg Wrote:You would also have the problem of Stone Age level technology, as described in your blog on the Burrower Wars. If the humans and Brute Men had only mastered stone tools, then you wouldn't have copper, bronze, or iron weapons or tools of any kind. Most of the weapons, armor and equipment in the D&D rulebooks wouldn't exist, and unless you were a corrupt shaman or a warlock with a pact with a Sleeping One, magic would be limited in availability and power.
This might be avoided by mixing in some Mystara fan material... Geoff Gander's Lhomarr, if I understand correctly, is a 'lost and forgotten' human civilization, Atlantis-style, existing several millennia before Mystara's Blackmoor - so perhaps in the right time period?
(Actually I think the given time for Lhomarr is somewhat earlier than what the HW set gives for the Burrowers - but this could be changed, or a successor civilization, like Gondor as a successor to Numenor, might exist in the age of the Burrower Wars.)
The HW set in my view compresses the timeline for humanity too much - the state of Blackmoor before they find the City of the Gods/Beagle is too advanced to be just a millennium or so from the Stone Age, especially given how old Thonia is in Uther's time.
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - Havard - 01-13-2021
Aldarron Wrote:Quote:Iscranin and Yealaletherveri appear in the novel Son of Dawn and were further developed in the fan works of Simone Neri.
Cool names. Not familiar with the Novel though. Is it Mystara fan fiction?
Not fan fiction. Son of Dawn was a novel published by TSR with the (Classic) Dungeons & Dragons logo in the 1990s.
-Havard
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - Havard - 01-14-2021
Greg Wrote:Havard Wrote:What do you think a campaign set during the Burrower Wars would be like?
A complete mess. :lol:
Quote:I didn't know anything about the Burrower Wars or most of this history before reading your post and your related blogs. But it's clear that this would be a cataclysmic time period. PCs would be facing wars and invasions, mass combat, the rise of dark powers and monstrous creations, and battles between dragons and The Sleeping Ones.
Not that surprising. It is just a few lines in published material. However, OldDawg's ideas inspired me to build onto that and piece different sources together so we are getting close to something pretty interesting at this point
Quote:You would also have the problem of Stone Age level technology, as described in your blog on the Burrower Wars. If the humans and Brute Men had only mastered stone tools, then you wouldn't have copper, bronze, or iron weapons or tools of any kind. Most of the weapons, armor and equipment in the D&D rulebooks wouldn't exist, and unless you were a corrupt shaman or a warlock with a pact with a Sleeping One, magic would be limited in availability and power. Stone axes, spears and cantrips for the win!
Yeah, this is a classic problem. D&D isn't really designed for this level of technology. There are some possible soluttions to this though.
Quote:It also seems that this age has a deus ex machina ending where the gods simply intervene and decide to return the Burrowers/Sleeping Ones to sleep. That's a major
weakness that would need to be addressed.
I agree. The Burrower Wars continue for centuries. One sollution is to focus on the earlier parts of the Burrower Wars. OTOH, if you are running a truly epic campaign, there could be ways to insert really high level PCs into this story. One important thing, I find for running campaigns in "historical eras", is that the DM and players need to agree that nothing has been written in stone about the future. The PCs actions should be able to change things, at least in theory. Of course, that doesn't mean altering the course of history needs to be easy.
Quote:If you strictly followed the lore and the level of technology and magic, it would certainly be a unique campaign and a challenge for both the DM and the players. Unless you're having PCs time travel into this age with future weapons, armor and magic, then you would have to severely limit and eliminate a lot of the core D&D rules, character classes, and options.
Time travel is definitely an option too. You could use Blackmoor era characters and send them back in time, using the portal in the Comeback Inn.
I have started a separate discussion about how to modify the rules to make it easier to run such a campaign without access to some of the options you mention here if running Stone Age technology based characters.
Quote:But the PCs could get involved in many different struggles and interactions, such as hunting down and slaying created monsters, battling corrupted shamans, making contact with the cruel elves in a desperate attempt to seek alliances and magic, preventing Sleeping Ones from awakening, helping dragons fight against the Brute Men and Burrowers, and maybe even making contact with the dragons and gods to plead for their intervention.
I love these ideas!
-Havard
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - WingofCoot - 01-15-2021
Havard Wrote:Quote:It also seems that this age has a deus ex machina ending where the gods simply intervene and decide to return the Burrowers/Sleeping Ones to sleep. That's a major
weakness that would need to be addressed.
I agree. The Burrower Wars continue for centuries. One sollution is to focus on the earlier parts of the Burrower Wars. OTOH, if you are running a truly epic campaign, there could be ways to insert really high level PCs into this story.
It could simply be a case where the later legends of how it happened are not 100% correct.
If you're looking at it from a BECMI/Mystara perspective where PCs can ascend to Immortality, perhaps "the gods" who ultimately defeated the Burrowers were in fact the PCs (who later ascended to Immortality and are thus remembered as gods rather than mortal heroes by later ages - though they were mortal at the time of victory).
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - Havard - 01-16-2021
WingofCoot Wrote:Havard Wrote:Quote:It also seems that this age has a deus ex machina ending where the gods simply intervene and decide to return the Burrowers/Sleeping Ones to sleep. That's a major
weakness that would need to be addressed.
I agree. The Burrower Wars continue for centuries. One sollution is to focus on the earlier parts of the Burrower Wars. OTOH, if you are running a truly epic campaign, there could be ways to insert really high level PCs into this story.
It could simply be a case where the later legends of how it happened are not 100% correct.
If you're looking at it from a BECMI/Mystara perspective where PCs can ascend to Immortality, perhaps "the gods" who ultimately defeated the Burrowers were in fact the PCs (who later ascended to Immortality and are thus remembered as gods rather than mortal heroes by later ages - though they were mortal at the time of victory).
That is a good suggestion.
I think we should not try to make the Burrowers any weaker than what the stories so far suggest though. A single fully awakened Burrower is an epic level threat.
The way I envision it, the main problem is that the Burrowers are causing trouble even asleep through the magic of their dreams. This is heavily inspired by Lovecraft of course.
But "Intervention from the Gods" could mean things like the PCs performing a ritual that made sure the Gods could put the beasts to sleep.
Note also that I am teasing a possible origin for the Egg of Coot in this story... :twisted:
-Havard
Re: The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars - WingofCoot - 01-19-2021
Havard Wrote:I think we should not try to make the Burrowers any weaker than what the stories so far suggest though. A single fully awakened Burrower is an epic level threat.
Yes, absolutely - this would only make sense for extremely powerful PCs (Master-level in BECMI)...
I believe the Hollow World set calls them almost as powerful as Immortals - perhaps they are "Exalted" level in later Mystaran terms, equivalent to Titans and such maybe?
Quote:The way I envision it, the main problem is that the Burrowers are causing trouble even asleep through the magic of their dreams. This is heavily inspired by Lovecraft of course.
Yes - so fully awake their psychic influence was surely far more powerful, apparently leading to all sorts of wars and leading mortals to serve Entropy.
Quote:But "Intervention from the Gods" could mean things like the PCs performing a ritual that made sure the Gods could put the beasts to sleep.
That would work too - what I had in mind was the PCs defeating the Burrowers as the final step in attaining Immortality*, and so defeating the Burrowers would be part of the mythic achievements of the new Immortals.
*yeah that doesn't quite fit the canon Paths, but IMO there are other ways to attain Immortality, if it's epic enough.
Quote:Note also that I am teasing a possible origin for the Egg of Coot in this story... :twisted:
-Havard
Hmmm, a Burrower/Sleeping One survivor? Interesting.
If so, something maybe has limited its powers? I would think a fully-active Burrower would have a sufficient range of mental influence that it wouldn't be so dependent on subverted agents in an area as close as Blackmoor ... I guess it's only partially "awake"?