The Dragonlord Crusade

[Havard]

This would be freakin' fantastic to play in.

8)

On Thorn's Mystara, this timeframe would have been when Blackmoor University's Operation Valkyrie truly shone. The shrikes and sirens, having cut their teeth in the Fourth Afridhi War about a hundred years before, had been further refined and even better equipped. A wing of sirens armed with kinetic lances was a very near match against a flight of dragons. And should the sirens bring the wyrms to the ground, the shrikes would be more than able to deal with the beasts by carefully coordinated timing and use of all five configurations of their Andahar's Edges.

Cool ideas!

Of course, the real enemy was the Beast Men, who had first taught the Afridhi the means of summoning demons. Beings of chaos and darkness themselves, a Beast Man playing host to a demon was a truly terrifying opponent on the field. It was rumored that the Draconian Empire did not willingly enter allegiance with the Beast Men, but were coerced or controlled somehow.

My take is that the Draconian Empire served Hel, the Immortal who also created the Beastmen. The connection between the Afridhi and the Beastmen is interesting. We know that the Mountain that marks the border to the proper Afridhi Empire is called Goblin Kush. The first Beastmen seem to appear around 500 years prior to the Afridhi invasions, so there could definately be a connection there.

I might also be tempted to borrow a bit from the Last Fantasy Campaign, which introduced Balebourne as early members of the Beastmen. I would not have Beastmen or Balebourne as early as the reign of Robert of Geneva (BC5000), but probably 500 years later, around BC4500, at the time right after the destruction of the Temple of Id.

I see the creation of the Beastmen as an Entropic response to the destruction of the Temple of Id, whose members followed Thanatos. As usual, we see the traditional rivalry between Thanatos and Hel, with Hel throwing her own forces into the mix once the forces of Thanatos are weakened.

The connection between the Afridhi and the Entropics is complex though, as Zugzul is an Immortal of Energy rather than Entropy. Still, we do know that the line between the Spheres of Energy and Entropy are not always as easily defined. Zugzul might also welcome an alliance with Hel due to his own rivalry with Odin. Odin (Odir) is the main champion of Blackmoor and both Hel and Zugzul would like to see his influence weakened.

It could be up to the heroes to discover, unravel, and then shatter whatever hold the Beast Men had over the dragons, be it magical, mechanical, or cultural....

One aspect I havent really explored too much in this discussion is the connection to the Dragon Rulers. More on this later.

-Havard