[Blog] The Burrower Wars Part III: Life of Keres

[Yaztromo]

Possibly Khoronus action started the "proper" Burrowers wars as a war with all Burrowers (awake) on Keres' side would have been extremely short (who could resist him?).
Possibly the centuries long war was the subsequent, with all Burrowers having their armies (Egg of Coot style, after all) and using them against one another.

I'd expect the immortals intervening directly in this kind of situation only if there was a Burrower gradually "winning" over other ones and trying tp "unify" them under its command.
Maybe unified Burrowers can potentially summon Outer Beings?
THAT would be a good reason to intervene directly on the Prime plane and with the approval of (more or less) all the other immortals...

I had a second thought about this: if Keres had control over all the Burrowers (and the above quoted stuff is valid...), HE could have summoned an Outer Being (or Thanatos?) to the Prime plane, so possibly Khoronus intervention prevented him from taking control of the critical number of Burrowers required.

Centuries of wars later, when it became clear that a powerful Burrower could actually take control of enough other Burrowers to summon (in its turn) an Outer Being, then there was another intervention to put them all back to sleep...

[Havard]

I had a second thought about this: if Keres had control over all the Burrowers (and the above quoted stuff is valid...), HE could have summoned an Outer Being (or Thanatos?) to the Prime plane, so possibly Khoronus intervention prevented him from taking control of the critical number of Burrowers required.

Centuries of wars later, when it became clear that a powerful Burrower could actually take control of enough other Burrowers to summon (in its turn) an Outer Being, then there was another intervention to put them all back to sleep...

This makes sense to me.
What if the power of the Burrowers somehow depends on the number of mortals who follow them, sort of like with Immortals? This way, it makes sense for Burrowers to have their followers attack the followers of other Burrowers to weaken them rather than fight it out among themselves.

This will also allow us to bring this situation down to PC scale, where the actions of mortals might matter.


-Havard

[Yaztromo]

That's a possible option, with good hooks for players!
Maybe the Burrowers can give a lot of power to their followers when they are near, but much less when they are far, making invasions of each other lands more difficult? Possibly this was the beginning of the concept of territories and nations for the mankind (each Burrower had a specific group in a specific territory that was the closest to the Burrower itself, with difficulties to expand)?
On top of this, Burrowers shouldn't have the penalties that immortals get when the don't have worshippers, otherwise they'd all die while sleeping for millennia each time...

However, I always imagined Burrowers as solitary, cumbersome, darckness-loving (probably blind), extremely slow creatures, that don't move much across millennia... I don't see them trying to connect physically with each other (for fighting or for whatever other reason...), but rather using telepathy and similar psionic/hypnotic powers (if I remember properly, the Outer Beings are connected to the dimension of Nightmares, so it's appropriate that the Burrowers use dreams to further their plans!)... when they are not in deep sleep, of course!

[Yaztromo]

Possibly this was the beginning of the concept of territories and nations for the mankind (each Burrower had a specific group in a specific territory that was the closest to the Burrower itself, with difficulties to expand)?

If you think about it, humans have much stronger concept of borders than semi-humans and non-humans.
What I'm still not too sure about, is why the Burrowers prefer humans over other races... maybe at the time of the Burrowers wars there weren't so many choices, maybe you have better ideas about this...

[Yaztromo]

I just realized that Keres has some resemblance with the fictional character of Feldon ( http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Feldon ), from Magic: the Gathering.
Both of them like scavenging ancient artifacts of great power from glaciers... Keres found the Carnifex Scythe, while Feldon found the Golgothian Sylex and his famous cane...

[Havard]

I just realized that Keres has some resemblance with the fictional character of Feldon ( http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Feldon ), from Magic: the Gathering.
Both of them like scavenging ancient artifacts of great power from glaciers... Keres found the Carnifex Scythe, while Feldon found the Golgothian Sylex and his famous cane...

This is interesting, since so much of the Keres character was pretty much taken right from out of my brain

Perhaps there is more we could borrow from that source? I never got much into the MtG craze myself...

-Havard

[Yaztromo]

Well... maybe you want to start from the link I posted and wonder a bit around in the connected links in search for an inspiration...
M:tG craze left me for good about 15-20 years ago and I didn't look at it since then. Once in a while my two memory neurons click and I'm reminded about some old card I used to play with.
In this case, I used to play with a Feldon's Cane (obviously a technomagical device in perfect Blackmoor style :roll: )...



Under RPG point of view, there are some good ideas, as quite a few cards have "flavour" quotes that all together refer to a common "world" that can only be guessed by looking at the various quotes all together, but every new expansion (more or less) brings a new "world" with it, so I'm now way too far from grasping them all... since i quit playing there have been almost a hundred new expansions... :roll:

[Yaztromo]

I loved this story from the beginning, but I can see it has a small crease: according to canon, Temrin died from a disease sent from Thanatos.
This doesn't mean that Thanatos could not have used Keres as an agent, neither that Keres could not have passed the disease to Temrin through a wound, but Temrin's death would not have been so sudden as described and most ikey his blood woould have turned poisonous or at least contagious.

[Yaztromo]

Was Keres a Pict?
Of course the following quote is how I managed Picts in one of my Blackmoor campaigns, but the Picts we also mentioned in the FFC 

King Robert I of Geneva, about a millennium ago guided a great war fleet from Thonia to the lands now known as Blackmoor and took over without fighting the only meaningful settlement of the region: the whaling port of Maus. He claimed the whole region (calling it the Northern Marches) but barely stepped outside the walls of Maus, that at the time was inhabited mostly by Skandaharians and a mix of other refugees (...pirates...) from several lands. Outside Maus, the population was mostly Elves and a few, scattered Human tribes technologically at early Bronze Age (now usually called pre-Thonians and sometimes also Picts, as they used to paint their bodies with colours made with minerals or herbs).

[Havard]

Was Keres a Pict?
Of course the following quote is how I managed Picts in one of my Blackmoor campaigns, but the Picts we also mentioned in the FFC 

King Robert I of Geneva, about a millennium ago guided a great war fleet from Thonia to the lands now known as Blackmoor and took over without fighting the only meaningful settlement of the region: the whaling port of Maus. He claimed the whole region (calling it the Northern Marches) but barely stepped outside the walls of Maus, that at the time was inhabited mostly by Skandaharians and a mix of other refugees (...pirates...) from several lands. Outside Maus, the population was mostly Elves and a few, scattered Human tribes technologically at early Bronze Age (now usually called pre-Thonians and sometimes also Picts, as they used to paint their bodies with colours made with minerals or herbs).

Perhaps. 

As you say, Picts were mentioned in the FFC. It is possible they were included because Arneson was interested in British History, or because of all the Conan pastiche novels he had been reading. Or both. 

Some speculate that Picts were turned into Orcs in the later stages of the Arneson campaign. 

The way I handled Picts IMC, is that I rolled them in with the Valemen. I prefer not using real historical names for groups when I write about Blackmoor, but I still want to keep the concepts from Arneson's campaign. It is possible that a distinct Pict-like group once existed within the Valemen and might still do, or they are just the same group. Mainly I consider the Valemen the original humans of the North, living in the wilds of the region before King Robert's arrival. The Peshwa were also around, but kept mostly to the plains while Valemen were found in the woods and swamplands. 

With the story of Keres and the Burrower Wars, these events take place in a much more distant past. The humans of that time were Neanderthal-like Brute Men. They were not neceesarily stupid however, although many were corrupted by the evils living beneath the ground they walked on. But likely they were the ancestors of Picts/Valemen and likely Thonians too. 

That's how it works IMC anyway

-Havard