The Age of Dragons and the Burrower Wars

[Havard]

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