[IKRPG] Land of the Orgoth: Ximena and the Dragonshard

[jordangreywolf]

Necronomicon provided a good excuse for a bit of a hiatus for the Iron Kingdoms campaign. I'll try to recap.

* The players wanted to play a mish-mash of "Full Metal Fantasy" and "Unleashed" characters (those are two "branches" of the game, the first focusing on the more civilized peoples, with elves, dwarves, humans, gobbers, mechanika and magic and stompy robots, whereas "Unleashed" focuses on the wilds and the "savage" peoples such as trollkin, farrow, warpborn, gatormen, bog trogs and so forth).

* The setting was largely driven by the interests of Digital_Rampage, who had been GM for the previous campaign, and littered it with "hooks" for the campaign that I'd eventually take on. So he gets to play his seafaring Satyxis character, and we get to go out on the high seas.

* The trouble is that there are no rules for ship combat or ship voyages. The "No Quarter" magazine put out by Privateer Press teased at a series of articles expanding upon the "high seas" aspect of the game setting, but each "article" was only maybe 2-3 pages, big on rehashing vague things WE ALREADY KNEW, and small on anything useful to a GM. The last supplement for the game was released almost 2 years ago.

* Further trouble is that the game is very light on adventure support. The fluff hints that great adventure is to be found exploring dungeons and ruins of the lost Orgoth empire, but to my knowledge there isn't a single adventure that actually provides me a map of an Orgoth dungeon, with encounters and treasures to be found therein. (Rather, "adventures" tend to just be a series of encounters and battles, and any "maps" are just a layout of the place where the battle takes place, without any exploration between point A and point B, even if it's ostensibly taking place in a "dungeon.")

So I'm on my own here, and there are huge gaps in the game. You can play an elf, and the elves have their own "arcanika" magitech, and there are tons of minis out for the elf faction, but no rules for handling them either from a PC perspective or as adversaries. Since one of the PCs is an Iosan (elf), and has reason to come into conflict with others of his kind, I've been basically "translating" from the wargame, and that's a very shaky way to go about it.

-----

So, I started off by putting the PCs on a river journey to REACH the port city of Five Fingers, where they would reach the Rusalka, a ship that would take them on their big sea journey. The big thing Digital_Rampage championed was that this would be a campaign about going to visit the lands of the mysterious Orgoth who came from an unknown continent to the west, and conquered the land, leaving all sorts of dark relics and dangerous ruins in their wake when they were finally driven off ages ago. But I still needed excuses to hook everyone else in on this crazy mission. I strung together a series of encounters I found that involved a river journey, then drew upon some adventures (some from the old d20 version of Iron Kingdoms, hence requiring a bit of work) to take place in Five Fingers. Then, I contrived a tour of the coastal area, stopping at various points, so I could work in a few assorted mini-adventures that would take place on land in familiar kingdoms, milking the pre-written adventures for all I could, as I've never gotten a good grasp on the "economy" of this setting, or how to balance encounters properly.

This brings up a lot of loose threads I need to tie up. It's far more than I can cover in just one entry, so I'll start with Ximena.

Ximena, Satyxis Pirate-Librarian
She was a "GMPC" in Digital_Rampage's Unleashed campaign, introduced as an NPC who he'd take over as a PC for sessions when he just wasn't ready to run a game and he'd turn things to me as a "guest GM" to handle some "side quest stuff" such as one of the players wanting to take his beast-trainer character on a side quest to capture a really big battle-hog to train as a new warbeast pet.

Satyxis are all-female raiders in the service of the evil seafaring faction of Cryx, with horns and hooves and armed with cruel whips and barbs, and the subject of a lot of Iron Kingdoms pin-up art. Ximena is "different," for some reason being a slave to the Satyxis raiders who came so far inland to raid our little ruined castle base in the wilds.

Well, I had to come up with a REASON why the Satyxis were questing so far inland, and considering that Satyxis are generally NOT SLAVES (they're the ones who do the enslaving), I had to cobble together some reason for Ximena's situation. I decided to tie in the matter of why Satyxis are even Satyxis in the first place. Pardon me as I digress:

TORUK is known as the Dragon Father, or the Allfather, to his followers. In this universe, "dragons" as known in D&D settings don't exist. Toruk was the original "dragon," but an alien and immortal entity. His true heart is an alien crystal shard around which he grew a behemoth body, and as long as that crystal remains intact, he's effectively immortal. Furthermore, he warps life and reality around himself -- an effect known as Dragonblight. People who spend much time in his vicinity are affected in mind and body, developing a worshipful demeanor toward him, but also developing mutations that make them more dragonlike in some aspects. Direct contact with the shed blood of a dragon can result in more immediate and horrific changes, ranging from sprouting horns or other draconic features, to transforming into lesser versions of mindless dragonspawn. The process in any mode is eventually fatal, but before that happens, he tends to make use of his other power -- he can create the undead, and has had time to study the humans' arts of mechanika, thus perfecting the art of creating semi-mechanical bodies to overcome the weaknesses of bone and dusty flesh, so his "lieutenants" are known as "iron liches."

Toruk can create "dragonspawn" from his own blood, but these creatures are mindless and shortlived. He desired to create progeny at one point, and carefully removed (relatively) tiny slivers of crystal from his own "athanc" (crystal), which he then imbued with life and a fraction of his own essence. These coalesced into lesser dragons ... and, unfortunately for him, they were indeed enough like him that they rebelled. He then proceeded to hunt them down and slay those of his progeny he could find, to reabsorb their athancs back into his own, considering the whole experiment a colossal waste of his time and power. But a few of those dragons have persisted, hiding in places around the world, affecting portions of the world with their own versions of dragonblight.

The dragon known as Ethrunbal or "Everblight" is iconic of such dragons, as he has even perfected the art of echoing TORUK's idea of taking tiny slivers off his own athanc, and using it to make progeny ... except that rather than creating even lesser dragons who might rebel against him, he took advantage of the blight's tendency to mesmerize and turn mortals into worshipful followers -- and planted these slivers inside his most faithful servants. They retained their loyalty to him, but gained a fraction of his power, and over time became more draconic in form and appearance, and in this way he was able to start building an army more sophisticated than just mindless drudges made from his own blood, or mesmerized mortals.

...

So that brings us to the Satyxis.



Over 600 years ago (in the timeline of the Iron Kingdoms), Toruk came to the place known as the Scharde Islands, in search of his progeny. He defeated the Pirate Kings who dwelled there, turning their leaders into his first undead lieutenants, and rendering the remaining mortals his underlings. The white dragon Shazkz dwelled amid these islands, and once discovered by Toruk, tried to defend itself, but was ultimately slain and devoured. In the battle, blighted blood rained down on the island. "The lands were corrupted and changed, the sands poisoned, and the men of Satyx withered into malformed husks. The women of the island, though, changed in different ways. They became something inhuman, growing their characteristic horns and having their already heightened cruelty twisted and refined into something truly terrifying. When Toruk came to claim the island as part of his domain, the Satyxis queen was quick to join the fate of her people to the great dragon, offering him warriors and worship."

The Satyxis are special among the mortal followers of Toruk in that they're immune from further "mutation" from dragonblight, and are immune to the ill effects of exposure to the necrotite used to power Cryxian bonejacks and helljacks (the Cryx versions of mainland "steamjacks," employing a touch of necromantic power from tormented souls). The "explanation" given for this is that their blighted forms are due to contact with a dragon that no longer exists.

(So, what's up with Ximena? And what does it have to do with the castle where the PCs were situated?)

I had this odd idea that ... what if the Satyxis were not, as a whole, slavishly devoted to Toruk after all? What if they still had a lingering "tie" to Shazkz as a result of the dragonblood bond -- but since there IS NO Shazkz, most of them simply have no outlet for acting upon it?

I thought of the idea that Shazkz (like progenitor, like spawn) had experimented with the idea of splitting off some small splinter on its own athanc. In this case, the desire wasn't to create "progeny," but out of a desperate desire to create a sort of "insurance plan" for its own continued existence, despite being hunted by Toruk. Its wish was a bit extreme, and it needed to experiment before it committed itself to such drastic measures.

The idea worked around this: The athanc generated its own body. And the lesser shards generated bodies that were noticeably different than Toruk's. What range of variance could be had with the sort of body that might be generated? Could that be controlled? And, furthermore, Toruk seemed to be more able to detect the BODY of a dragon than the athanc itself. (For this reason, Ethrunbal has never materialized a body for himself after his first semi-defeat by the elves, when his athanc was sent off to a remote icy fortress for "safekeeping." He's simply used his powers of remote mind-manipulation to turn mortals into his pawns to do all the work for him.)

Therefore, Shazkz wished to created a NON-draconic body in which to dwell -- one that wouldn't be sensed by Toruk. Therefore ... Ximena. Ximena was an experiment, and once it proved successful, Shazkz would simply slay her, reabsorb the athanc, and then undertake the process itself to create a new body to dwell within. This plan was interrupted by the untimely arrival of Toruk.

...

So why the castle?

In the course of the adventure, it was revealed to us that there was an area underneath the castle that was apart from Caen. For all we knew, it might be a portal to an entirely different realm; we could never establish that the labyrinth under the castle was ACTUALLY in this physical location. (And, incidentally, it wasn't clear that it would fit, especially not since we were in a SWAMP, right next to a lake that the labyrinth seemed to effortlessly jut out into.) We ended up taking advantage of this to hide a relic that seemed to be drawing evil forces -- because anything contained in the labyrinth seemed to be shut off from the outside world.

Hence, my thought that the REAL objective of the Satyxis raiding party was to find a place that was "cut off from the world." A secret cabal of Satyxi Blood Witches had kept the secret of Shazkz's experimentation, but they didn't know the whole story. Ximena is but the latest in a line of "Ximenas," each new generation serving as a new host for the shard (and the previous host dying upon its passage to a new recipient). But if the cycle were to be interrupted, and the shard ripped out of the body, it could finally resume its natural process of reforming a DRACONIC body -- and, the Blood Witches believed, this would mean Shazkz's rebirth.

(It wouldn't, incidentally, but the Blood Witches never fully understood what their dragon overlord was doing. They only knew that they were to guard the "host" and its shard, and that if the shard were to be removed from the Satyxis body and allowed to regrow a draconic body, it would attract Toruk's attention.)

So, the Blood Witches sought to find a place where Shazkz could safely grow a new draconic body, where Toruk would not find it. Eventually they found out about this tower and its peculiar properties. It would be the perfect place for a small dragon to hide until it could grow strong enough to defend itself (or so they hoped/thought).

...

So, how to turn this into a plot for Ximena?

Basically, it's just the matter of finding a way to reveal the story. I've tried to hint at points of this along the way. When Ximena reached the lands of the Cryx for the first time as a free person, she learned that Satyxis are NOT commonly sold into slavery. The only instance she found was that it was done as the ultimate punishment for a Satyxis ship's captain who was insubordinate to her overlord -- her own progeny was sold into slavery in the market of Blackwater (sleazy pirate port of minions of Cryx). Ximena ended up rescuing and "adopting" the child, incidentally.

Ximena has also sometimes been subject to magical effects that would not affect a normal, mortal being, and when she is, she feels a terrible pain in her chest. One time she got a terrible wound to the chest, there was a hint that there was something deep in there that shouldn't be there. And by and large I think the player has figured out that there is a shard involved, but NOT why this hasn't resulted in Ximena mutating into some strange draconid form and losing her mind and self-control, a la one of Ethrunbal/Everblight's underlings.

...

So, how to RESOLVE this?

That ... is something I really should have thought of a long time ago. This is the problem when I'm compelled to just keep churning out a new adventure every week, without much in the way of a prewritten module to work with, and no clear idea who's going to stay with the group, or who's going to flake out on me and wander off elsewhere, or who's going to lose interest in a primary character and swap PCs (as sometimes happens, thus deep-sixing any plots I was developing involving the original PC).

If Ximena were to DIE -- as in, DEAD, DEAD, irreversibly so -- then there would be a rather dramatic aftereffect in that the shard would start reforming a body, and in short order there would be a lesser dragon going on a rampage. If the PCs were overwhelmed by enemies, I suppose Ximena's player could have the "posthumous" satisfaction of being at least indirectly responsible for a dragon rampage that would trounce said enemies and probably give the PCs a good chance to sneak off in the chaos.

I've thought that at some point, Ximena might run into some entity powerful enough to grant her some way to come to grips with the situation. Who is she, really? Well, the truth is that she's NOT Shazkz by any stretch of the imagination. A shard created from an athanc develops its OWN identity -- and that identity is permanently snuffed out if it is reabsorbed into a greater crystal. Oddly enough, the athanc can be subdivided to a certain extent, creating new "progeny," without destroying the personality of the "progenitor," but it still results in a reduction in overall power. At some point, presumably too much is too much, but no dragon has been suicidal enough to reach that point (that we know of). My rule of thumb would be, "if an athanc is fractured, the largest fragment is home to the existing personality; the smaller fragments develop new personalities," and, "if two athancs are brought together, the greater/more powerful athanc shard has the personality that persists, while the other is snuffed out."

Theoretically, if Toruk had split his athanc in so many ways that he was still the largest shard, but the total number of sub-shards could (in theory) if put together exceed the size/power of his own, then reunion of all the shards could result in his destruction, depending upon how one went about it. But Toruk wasn't that stupid, so that's not an issue.

Some outcomes I could see:
* Ximena seeks to find some way to separate her consciousness from the athanc shard within her. She becomes mortal, and "absorbs" the shard. As a result, she gains some sort of power as a consequence, but of course a pittance compared to being a dragon.

* Ximena seeks to "become" a dragon. Ritual sacrifice of her mortal body would be the most straightforward way. Congrats! You're now a demi-god dragon. Bad news: You're also now an NPC, and the rest of the party probably wouldn't want you to hang around because you might a) eat them; b) corrupt them; c) accidentally squash them; not necessarily in that order. I could see this as some sort of last-resort decision to take out some sort of Big Bad that only a dragon could hope to defeat, with the understanding that as soon as that's dealt with, Ximena won't be the same Ximena the others know anymore.

* Ximena seeks to "unlock" the crystal. Without fully knowing what that means, that could be very bad, and lead to the second outcome above. Through some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey hand-wavy magitech nonsense, it could perhaps be used as justification to allow Ximena to either develop Warcaster, Warlock, or spellcasting abilities.

* Ximena might just seek to "unlock" her full personality/memories from her previous "cycles." (I.e., the memories of her "ancestors" stored in the crystal.) Could be an excuse to get a ton of knowledge and language skills, and a chance to play the "I'm 600 years old, you young whipper-snapper!" card....

I'm not sure what would be the most "satisfying" from a story conclusion, who should be able to offer Ximena such an opportunity, or how much should just be player choice, or what. We've got the PCs on a crash course to confront the remnants of the Orgoth empire, an elf trying to save a goddess from his people's own pantheon, a human alchemist who fears that he's doomed to become a grymkin in less than a year, and ... an immensely overpowered Skorne ascetic (monk-type) who could theoretically punch out 4 warjacks in a single round, if he rolls well, and can basically single-handedly take on any threat BUCK-NAKED that the entire rest of the party would have trouble fighting in full gear.

More in another entry.