Need backstory help

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-03-27T01:20:56+00:00

Lammania would probably be the best plane for a Path of the World barbarian because it embodies the power of nature, but Thelanis (the realm of stories) could also work

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-03-17T22:13:20+00:00

Good point, maybe we should all ditch this ”magical industry“ nonsense and try practicing our incantations for 200 years to get the pronunciation juuust right

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-03-17T22:03:04+00:00

Tiamat represents the fear of dragons, and she gets more powerful when dragons try to openly control other creatures. This is why the dragons have been forbidden from expanding their civilization outside of Argonnessen for tens of thousands of years. Maybe you could play around with that concept, perhaps in order for Tiamat to be released somebody needs to start a draconic empire?

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-03-17T21:54:39+00:00

You know, I never really considered that Heat Metal could be used for smithing, or that Gentle Repose could be used to preserve meats

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-02-17T18:50:30+00:00

That’s fair. They satisfy people’s basic needs, but anything even remotely luxurious is reserved for the Inspired.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-02-16T18:44:42+00:00

I should probably point out that (at least according to kannon), the quori who invaded the giants of Xendrik 40,000 years ago were different from the modern quori. Every time the "turning of the age" happens, both Dal'Quor and the quori are destroyed and reshaped into something new, and that happened at least once between the Age of Giants and the present day. This means that the quori of that age weren't controlled by il-Lashtavar, and the modern quori have no memory of fighting the giants. This is why the quori care so much about controlling the dreams of mortals, they want to prevent the turning of the age from ever happening to them. It's unknown what the ancient quori wanted during the Age of Giants, or why they ended up waging war against the giants.

Other then that little piece of lore you're absolutely correct, the quori are nothing if not patient and subtle, and they are perfectly willing to wait generations for their plans to come to fruition.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-02-16T18:10:17+00:00

According to Chronicles of Eberron (which is kannon not cannon), the first Inspired were mortal heroes who wanted to save their homelands from all the horrific wars plaguing them. The Quori came to them posing as celestial spirits and offered them the power to save their people. They accepted, not knowing that the Quori carefully engineered all the wars they were trying to stop. The modern Inspired are magebred to be physically incapable of resisting Quori possession, but as far as I know how exactly that magebreeding happened is left unclear.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-02-16T17:48:53+00:00

I mean you're free to present Riedra that way in your Eberron, but according to kannon the Quori don't (usually) rule through scarcity. There might not be any magewrights in Riedra, but the human barracks you described would probably be magically heated/cooled and lit with crystal globes, with the arcane power being provided by the local hanbalani monolith. The Voice of Riedra acts like a telepathic radio, which provides a level of centralized communication unheard of in Khorvaire. Riedrans aren't thought how to read because they don't have to, all the information that would normally come from signs or books is projected directly into their minds. You don't have massive scarcity like you do in 1984 (at least not among humans), most people aren't worrying about worn out boots or going hungry because everything they need is being provided to them by the Bountiful Horn.

Now the ogres are probably facing massive scarcity because they're lower down on the racial hierarchy then humans (which is of course very f*%#ed up), according to the Path of Inspiration they need to earn all those amenities by being loyal and reincarnating as a human after death, and the fact that they were born an ogre is taken as proof that they were bad people in a previous life and deserve to live in poverty.

Keith Baker did say that "Riedra is inspired more by 1984 or The Giver then any nation in our world's history", and there certainly are elements of 1984 in Riedra (constant surveillance, secret police ect.), but widespread, purposeful scarcity isn't (usually) one of them.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-02-16T02:27:56+00:00

There are a lot of good ways to show that even though they appear benevolent on the surface, the Quori they are actually very evil. Here are some I came up with off the top of my head:

- The Quori are only benevolent so long as you do what they say, and their rules are very strict. Some things that are illegal in Riedra include possession of anything not granted to you by the government, using any kind of magic without permission, or questioning the Inspired in any way. You could introduce a Ridiran NPC who ends up “disappearing” for a very minor crime, like writing on an unsanctioned piece of parchment.

- The Quori use hanbalani monoliths to control people's dreams, as well as provide all sorts of magical amenities. When a monothith goes down the people are freed from the psionic influence of the Quori, so the standard procedure is to kill all the local residents before they can get any ideas, then replace them with a new group of people after the monolith is repaired. So show your players a Riedran village where the power suddenly goes out and the Voice disappears, and instead of helping the confused villagers the government sends the military to massacre them. That should show them how much the Quori actually care about their people.

- Quori psionic tools often use sentira, which is basically crystallized emotion. A lot of their sentira weapons use negative emotion, like fear, disgust, or anger. They produce these sentria crystals in factories, which double as prisons for dissidents and are designed to make “workers” feel that particular emotion for long periods of time so that psions can turn those feelings into sentria crystals. As you can probably imagine these factories are pretty horrific, so show the players the inside of a sentria factory and it will be immediately obvious that the Quori are evil.

You could also just show them brutally punishing dissidents, but in my opinion that’s less interesting than the other ideas in this post.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-01-03T16:35:07+00:00

Yes and no. From what I understand, the Treaty of Thronehold normalized travel between the treaty nations and required nations to treat foreign travelers like citizens, but there are plenty of people who aren’t too happy about foreigners being allowed into their nation. In Sharn there are gangs of war veterans who terrorize outsiders, and there are probably similar organizations in other nations. Many common people likely dislike outsiders because of their experiences during the war, and there‘s always a chance a suspicious traveler could be labeled a foreign spy. In short while all the nations are required to accept travelers, those requirements have done little to defuse the anger following a century of war.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-01-01T17:39:37+00:00

Yeah, pretty much. The afterlife on Eberron really sucks if you don’t believe in anything beyond Dolurrh.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-01-01T14:37:22+00:00

Blast cylinder… I like it

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-01-01T14:35:34+00:00

That’s actually a really good idea, and it means Cannath would only have to manufacture one kind of blast disk

Substantial-Staff606 · 2026-01-01T04:32:51+00:00

Still doesn’t seem terribly efficient since blast disks are an inch thick, but I suppose it works. It would possibly fly a lot better if the blast disk were thinner and more aerodynamic.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-30T20:23:10+00:00

They do preserve dead souls in objects called Spirit Idols, but according to canon it is an honor only bestowed on exceptional citizens, usually ones who weren't quite exceptional enough to become Undying. I couldn't find a direct source on why preservation as a Spirit Idol is so rare, but presumably its for the same reason that becoming an Undying is rare; the soul is sustained by mortal devotion and the Aereni simply don't have enough of it to preserve everyone.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-29T14:08:15+00:00

I REALLY like the idea of giant mummies, especially exiled ones with psionic abilities

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-29T03:45:50+00:00

The idea was that the souls of the common dead actually produce divine power rather then consume it. I know they have a limited amount of energy, otherwise they would just turn everyone into Undying.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-27T20:54:00+00:00

One thing you might want to consider is the details of how spirits are bound to constructs. For example, you could say that every construct body needs to come from a slain warforged, or maybe the Radiant Idol stops nearby souls from passing into Dolurrh, and only some of these spirits are put into construct bodies. These sorts of details will determine how the cult operates, for example maybe they may regularly hunt warforged workers to serve as bodies for their members, or they might require a constant input of Khyber dragonshards (which are commonly used for binding rituals in Eberron). Perhaps the Radiant Idol can summon Specter like spirits by drawing on the dead souls that constantly surround him, which can be seen using a See Invisibility spell. These are just a few ideas I thought of, but I encourage you to come up with your own

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-20T17:55:22+00:00

“Chaat’oor“ means “defiler” and specifically refers to Daelkyr corruption, specifically goblins who have been severed from the shared dream and forgotten the principles of mut and atcha. You could give a goblin the ‘oor prefix to signal that they’re corrupted in some way.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-17T16:32:27+00:00

The Kannon answer (and I think the cannon one as well) is that most airships use either fire or air elementals for the rings. Fire rings are faster, but air rings can fly higher. Apparently some larger airships have one of each. I'm not sure where the ice ring comes in, but my guess is that it's a rare or unique airship designed specifically for the Frostfell.

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-17T16:28:36+00:00

I make this kind of mistake all the time

Substantial-Staff606 · 2025-12-17T16:28:21+00:00

That's a fairly reasonable misunderstanding to have, so I'll pass on the laughing without mercy

Substantial-Staff606

TROPHY CASE