Radiance:Life After the Fallout

[RobJN]

That makes sense, though to what extent did Blackmoor advance in technology? I've seen reference saying they were working into a nuclear age of power with the Radiance generators while others say they were highly advanced to the point mimicking the technology of City of the Gods, even to the point of building their own automatons and war machines. Can you give me a rough idea of how advanced they got? I get that they may have recreated the power armor and the armor of the Blue Rider.

This can depend on your source material. I primarily use the DA series of modules, followed by one of the timelines linked form Havard's main Blackmoor page. I have not read the Dave Arneson's Blackmoor hardback books, so I don't know precisely what they have to say about how far the empire advanced before the GRoF. Those being "non-Mysaran" sources, I'm not sure how much of them I would use, anyway.

Blackmoor rose in tech progress in leaps and bounds, primarily due to the University's reverse-engineering of FSS Beagle tech. It is important to note that Blackmoor Tech was not direct copies of the Federation's technologies, since the physics between Mystara's dimension and that of the Federation were just different enough not to allow things to work quite the same way. Pure tech was prone to malfunctioning, and was augmented by Blackmoor University mages.

So, how far did Blackmoor's tech advance? On Thorn's Mystara, they had teleportation gates. They put quite a few satellites in geosynchronous orbit. They used the Radiance both as a power source and a weapon. They used "robotics." They had "artificial intelligences." Laser and plasma weaponry was part and parcel of their military forces. Soldiers frequently augmented their battlefield experience with powered exoskeletons, some of which allowed for such things as personal aerial combat. Their research into planar and dimnesional physics allowed the creation of an engine that could sever planar connections to the Prime.

The Techno-Undead would be interesting to see in the Fallout of the Radiance, I've introduced crude techno-liches in service to the Egg of Coot before and going through the Temple of the Frog episode of the Blackmoor MMRPG I read the starmetal segment and made me think, is this Coots connection to the Outer Beings? Could he really be from beyond the stars? Would explain his need to devour arcane energies and maybe that Starmetal is part of what Coot was or a part of another Outer Being.

If that is how you wish to use the Egg, go for it! I've always likened it to a sort of a lesser Great Old One, a baby Cthuloid. Malevolent, totally alien, as curious about mankind as it is dangerous to it. From beyond the stars? Sure, why not? One setting material I was reading theorized that demons step through onto Earth through tears in the fabric of reality brought on by (of all things) nuclear detonations. Why not have Radiance-based explosions do the same thing on Mystara? Imagine the size of the being stepping through the breach opened up by the destruction of an entire civilization!

From what I understand there are few races on Post-Radiance Mystra correct? Humans, elves, dwarves, Beastmen? Were there any others mentioned? I thought maybe introduce ratfolk in the game, possibly the result of Blackmoor genetic tampering that after the Great Rain of Fire took up living in their creators shadow by collecting 'sacred' relics and technology. They were bred to study disease on sentient creatures and they played that role till Blackmoors demise, they were not affected by the Wasting like other races and discovered a cure usable only by their kind. I could also introduce a race or two of constructs acting as vessels for those who worked in the Radiance generators but lost their bodies in the process.

I would also add the fey races to your list, though most of them would be secluded in the forests and wild areas of the North. Thorn's Blackmoor saw ever-shrinking nations of the fey, even in Uther's time -- it is entirely possible that most of the fey had retreated from Skothar by the time Blackmoor's culture hit its peak. Uther's twin daughters were half High Sidhe, and were the only fey to actively be seen in the cities of the Empire. All the other fey -- even their mother, the queen of the Twilight Empire -- would only manifest in the woodlands surrounding the cities of Men.

Also what of the Immortals? I understand they were caught off guards by the Great Rain of Fire but how did they react besides shifting most cultures to the Hollow World? What of the other religions? The Cult of the Frog is a good example of a group who could possibly live through the Great Rain of Fire, St.Stephen mutated the froglins and in my campaign at least two other races of amphibians. Does their patron still exist? Was that thing even a immortal of entropy or just some demon lord of the past? What of the Egg of Coot?

The Immortals spent most of their effort re-stabilizing the planet, reigning in the firestorms and setting the climates into some semblance of normalcy and just ensuring a few of the inhabitants survived.

Would this have meant they were no longer granting spells to their clerics? Did they even have many clerics left? The froglin's patron, the demon Stodos, does indeed still exist. In fact, he is quite active through the first arc of Thorn's Chronicle..... :twisted:

You mention living spells and demon possessed armor and weapons, those seem like they would fit right in.

Those bits of goodness were gleaned from the Eberron Campaign Setting.