WotBS [WotBS Spoilers] Timeline and Other Questions

Hello,

I'm finally going to be starting my WotBS campaign soon (I'd entertained a grand notion to convert at all to 4E first, but instead we'll be sort of converting on the fly), and I have some questions. The reason I need answers is because I am really trying to tie my PCs heavily into the backstory of the mods.

I've read almost the entire campiagn saga, but have had trouble nailing thse things down. So, either helpful writers or posters who may have found these answers more easily, please help!

A) So, when did these major events of the backstory take place? (Like, how many years before the start of the game, and when in relation to each other-- I've placed notes next to the ones whose timing I think I understand):

* Coaltongue becomes ruler of Ragesia
* Coaltongue makes an alliance with Shaaladel (approx. 60 years ago, right?)
* Shaaladel becomes ruler of Ragesia
* The kingdom of Morrus falls
* Coaltongue sentences Leska and Entinifi to death unless they find the secret of immortality
* Leska and Entinifi find the secret of immortality
* The Torch of the Burning Sky is created
* Trilla is hidden
* Shaaladel orders a crusade against the Taranesti (approx. 40 years ago)
* Gate Pass is freed from Ragesian rule (also approx. 40 years ago)
* Leska forms the Inquisitors
* The Trillith begin from deep underground
* Leska imprisons Agony

2) Why did Coaltongue sentence Leska and Entinifi to death? Was it just to fit the requirements so they could find the Torch?

3) Why does Rhuarc have the grudges he has? (His backstory is not totally clear from my readings.)

Thank you, anyone who helps! And if all these answers are clearly spelled out somewhere, please let me know where.

Thanks,
WNW

(I don't need all the answers at once, by the way. Even a specific time-stamp for just one of the events listed is helpful.)

Walker N. Waistz said:

A) So, when did these major events of the backstory take place? (Like, how many years before the start of the game, and when in relation to each other-- I've placed notes next to the ones whose timing I think I understand):

* Coaltongue becomes ruler of Ragesia
* Coaltongue makes an alliance with Shaaladel (approx. 60 years ago, right?)
* Shaaladel becomes ruler of Ragesia
* The kingdom of Morrus falls
* Coaltongue sentences Leska and Entinifi to death unless they find the secret of immortality
* Leska and Entinifi find the secret of immortality
* The Torch of the Burning Sky is created
* Trilla is hidden
* Shaaladel orders a crusade against the Taranesti (approx. 40 years ago)
* Gate Pass is freed from Ragesian rule (also approx. 40 years ago)
* Leska forms the Inquisitors
* The Trillith begin from deep underground
* Leska imprisons Agony

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Let's see. Dates are a little fuzzy because I drew inspiration for the campaign from a home game I ran, but I ended up changing a lot to fit the needs for publication, which led to me having two memories for some things. But the best fit now is:



About 100 years ago, Coaltongue and Shaaladel team up and win their first few local battles not far from Ycengled Phuurst (see adventure 7), and in the process the Torch of the Burning Sky is created. After a few months of trying to avoid being captured and tortured into making another such item, Trilla flees into the underdark through tunnels under Gate Pass.

It takes a few years, but with the aid of the Torch and some canny political maneuvers, Coaltongue gets a small nation for his people in what is now Ragesia, and Shaaladel liberates lands that the Shahalesti had lost, establishing the borders of Shahalesti.

Over the next few decades, Coaltongue forms alliances and chips away at Morrus (a name which morrus wishes I hadn't picked). He has effectively established Ragesia as a nation by 60 years ago, at which point he is around 60 years old.

50 years ago, Indomitability comes up through Gate Pass during the annual festival of dreams, and ends up settling in Innenotdar.

42 years ago, Ragesia conquers Gate Pass. This really worries Shaaladel, who thinks that Coaltongue might come for him next. Shaaladel tries to get the elves of Innenotdar on his side, and when they refuse, he sets fire to their woods in an effort to lay the blame upon Ragesia. Also, in an effort to track down Trilla and make his people more nationalistic and loyal (read, like Nazis), Shaaladel gets his people to annihilate the Taranesti in Ycengled.

Within a few days of the whole Innenotdar forest catching on fire and not dying, Etinifi sets forth on a quest to save his people, somehow.

Here's something from the until-now unrevealed history of the campaign's main villain. Leska, a young mage with amazing potential, had joined with the Ragesians, and was loyal to Coaltongue. But as tensions rose between Ragesia and Shahalesti, Coaltongue decided he needed to cement some of his control over the edges of his territory, which required he put down some rebellious groups. One such group was Leska's home town.

Leska found out Coaltongue's plan to raze her home and kill everyone she grew up with, and she desperately tried to stop it. By using all her magical knowledge a bit of power she shouldn't have tapped into, she managed to actually counterspell the activation of the Torch when Coaltongue was about to teleport his army into battle.

Viewing this as treason, Coaltongue at first was going to execute her, but she had been loyal, so he gave her an impossible task to accomplish: find the secret of immortality. After all, Coaltongue was 80 years old by this point, so he wouldn't mind being immortal. He promised her home town a one year reprieve. If she could find Coaltongue immortality in that time, he would spare her town and let her live. Otherwise, he would have her tracked down and killed, along with all her friends and family.

41 years ago, Leska and Etinifi cross paths, and realize they have parallel goals. It is a cruel, soul-taxing experience that costs Leska most of her innocence and forces her to do terrible things, and though together she and Etinifi find the Aquiline Heart, Etinifi breaks under the fear of death and betrays her. Leska survives by sheer force of will, retrieves the blood of the heart, and, with only one hope left in her heart, she brings the secret to Coaltongue, only to discover that while Coaltongue had kept his word and spared her town, in the intervening year, the Shahalesti had destroyed the village because it was a thorn in their side too.

With nothing left to care for, Leska becomes a loyal servant of Coaltongue, hoping first to destroy the Shahalesti, and then slowly coming to desire nothing at all, except perhaps the freedom from having any attachments in the world.

40 years ago, the people of Gate Pass liberate their city. The now immortal Coaltongue is content to rest on his laurels, and leaves the city as a buffer between him and Shaaladel.

Leska, tasked by Coaltongue to root out threats to him, begins investigating strange magical occurrences, such as the fire forest. This leads her to discover the trillith.

In the following few years, she manages to track down Etinifi, and imprisons him in a simple frozen oubliette, until she can find a suitable punishment.

25 years ago is when I'd peg the creation of the inquisitors. With their aid, she locates and captures the trillith Agony in Ycengled, and brings it to what will become the scourge prison to begin a long process of magical experimentation into the application of pain and suffering as a power source.

2) Why did Coaltongue sentence Leska and Entinifi to death? Was it just to fit the requirements so they could find the Torch?

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Only Leska, not Etinifi. He was able to find the Heart because his forest was imperiled. If I implied he was sentenced to death by Coaltongue, that was either an error, or I've retconned. Sorry.

3) Why does Rhuarc have the grudges he has? (His backstory is not totally clear from my readings.)

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Oh, LOOOONG story. The short version is that Rhuarc was a mercenary working for Coaltongue 100 years ago (half elves live a long time), and because he was half-Taranesti, Shaaladel didn't like him and was a d*ck to him. That's how it started. He helped rescue Trilla from Coaltongue right after the Torch was created, which made both Coaltongue and Shaaladel want him dead.

Over several years, people came after him and managed to kill his friends or destroy things he cared for, until he just decided to withdraw from the world and stay in hiding.

There's also a whole bit about his mom selling her soul and his to a demon to take revenge on an order of knights, and him having to kill his own mother who was possessed by said demon. Rhuarc was a PC one of my players ran in a campaign around 2000, so he had a fairly convoluted life, as PCs are wont to.

What a treasure trove of back story!!!! Thank you!! (For asking ((Walker)) and for answering!((RangerWickett)) )

Gracias

This is exactly what I need, and more, thank you much RangerWickett.

Now that you've spoiled me with this... Any chance of getting more detail on that "whole bit about his mom selling her soul and his to a demon to take revenge on an order of knights, and him having to kill his own mother who was possessed by said demon"? Cause one of my PCs may end up being Rhuarc's brother...

What an amazing coincidence! I came to this part of the forums specifically to ask much the same questions about WoBS, especially in regards to a timeline of events.

I haven't read every one of the modules yet, but it seems that much of this information is either scattered through the various modules, or isn't mentioned directly. I was finding it difficult in my game to answer the questions about local history and the exact timing of events. If I were running this strictly as my own story, I could just make stuff up. The problem with running any game written by other people is that what might appear to be a minor detail that seems safe to change may end up being an important plot element later in the game.

Thank you so much to Walker for posting the question and to Ranger Wickett for answering it before I could even get around to posting myself. It has been most helpful.

Eh, sure. None of this was really part of the campaign saga, but if you're just looking for stories from my home game to mine for inspiration, no prob. Actually, I thought I put most of this in adventure 7.

Anyway, ~120 years ago, a human knight named Galad married a Taranesti elf mage named Stacia. Galad's fellow knights were enemies of the Taranesti to begin with, and had heard (true) rumors that Stacia dabbled in diabolic magic (but really, what smart mage doesn't at least give it a try some time?), so they assumed she had ensorcelled Galad and was going to use him for evil ends.

The knights tried to kill the then-pregnant Stacia, and Galad fought them off long enough for her to get away, dying in the process. Stacia gave birth, named her son Rhuarc, and at first just mourned. But she became more and more involved in the Taranesti efforts to defend themselves from the nearby human lands (mind you, this was all well before Coaltongue even arrived on the scene, and Shaaladel was probably just a young soldier at the time).

Eventually tensions between the humans and elves flared into open conflict, with the human knights leading the charge. Stacia convinced herself that they were evil, and she sought to destroy them. By this point, deeply enmeshed in fiendish magic and one of the most powerful mages among the Taranesti, she tried to make a bargain with a devil so it would destroy the knights. The devil (a sort of arch-succubus with shadow powers), however, demanded two souls, her own, and her son's.

The official conditions were something like, "Your body shall be my vessel, and my price shall be your blood to undertake your vengeance, your soul upon the destruction of the knights of the Church of the Aquiline Cross, slain to their last man. But as you bore your child in the wake of death, so will he bear his death in the wake of revenge, and so too will he bear your price."

(Translated, the devil would take Stacia and Rhuarc's life as a price for starting the revenge, and would take their souls if she completed her task.)

Thinking she could cheat the devil, Stacia delayed before agreeing, and she crafted the black scimitar, mixing her soul and her son's into its essence so that when they died, their souls would go into the blade, rather than letting the devil take them to hell for eternal torment. Then she summoned the devil again and agreed to its terms.

The devil possessed her body and proceeded to track down and slaughter every member of the knighthood except one, named Marinus. She left him so that the terms of her contract would not come full, allowing her to stay in the mortal world indefinitely, using her position among the Taranesti to corrupt more people and cause greater suffering. Stacia's father (Rhuarc's grandfather) recognized something had changed in his daughter so he took Rhuarc away, and left him to be raised as an orphan among humans.

Rhuarc grew up, believing his mother had died when he was 10. When he was in his twenties, though, he stumbled back into the local conflict, which had now grown to include the Taranesti, the humans of a few nations, the Shahalesti, and the orcs under the new chieftain Drakus Coaltongue. Some mysterious benefactor (his grandfather) gave him this awesome black magic scimitar, though Rhuarc was also partial to this spring-mounted punching dagger bracer he had, sort of akin to what Al-ta'ir has in Assassin's Creed.

Long story short, Rhuarc joined a group of Taranesti assassins, unaware that his mother, still possessed by a devil, manipulated him like a puppet. Eventually, after he failed to assassinate Coaltongue during the same battle where the Torch was created, Rhuarc went to ground for a while, and heard rumors that one knight of the order who killed his father Galad had survived.

The devil made sure Rhuarc didn't have a chance to follow up on the rumors yet, though, because her plan required a bit more time. See, she wanted the Shahalesti and Taranesti and humans to all destroy each other, so she dropped ominous hints to Rhuarc that the Taranesti assassins meant to betray him, so Rhuarc betrayed them first. He led a group of Shahalesti and human warriors in an attack on a Taranesti stronghold, with the thought that afterward he would be in a position to create at least temporary peace between the many different groups. (At the time, Rhuarc still cared for some things other than himself.)

But at the height of the assault, Rhuarc breached the main chamber of the stronghold, and came face to face with his mother.

She explained, in that perfect main villain fashion, that Stacia had not died, but that she (the devil) had never fulfilled the contract, because she wanted to give Rhuarc that opportunity. She had groomed him to be a killer, had encouraged his vengeful streak and his life-long hatred of any sort of knight. And now she had arranged for him a choice.

She told him that Marinus, the one surviving knight who had killed Rhuarc's father, was among the warriors Rhuarc had helped assault the fortress. Rhuarc could go and take his revenge by killing the knight, which would fulfill the contract, and Rhuarc's soul and his mother's would be forfeit.

Or Rhuarc could try to kill the devil, which would end the contract prematurely. The devil would be able to collect on her up-front price, snuffing the life of Stacia and Rhuarc, but their souls would be free. Marinus, however, would live on, and Rhuarc would never have his revenge.

Devils live for this kind of sh**. Will a mortal make the wise choice, or let his vices damn him?

Rhuarc considered, but the one thing he hated more than knights was this b*tch who had been manipulating him all his life. He attacked her, and after a long, mobile battle through a fortress full of three battling forces, eventually he and his mother ended up in a sacrificial chamber. The devil trapped him with a spell that paralyzed him, then advanced to kiss him and drain his soul. At the last moment, Rhuarc managed to break free of the spell and, in a passionate, horrific embrace with his own mother, he triggered his blade bracer and pierced her heart.

Then he disentangled himself and decapitated her with the black scimitar. The weapon's soul eating magic trapped the devil, preventing her from collecting on her bargain. Rhuarc lived, and after he overcame the surprise, he thanked his mother for her foresight in creating the sword, and then went to fulfill the revenge both he and his mother desired. In the middle of the great melee in the fortress, Rhuarc crept up on Marinus, paralyzed him, explained who he was, and ended the man's life.

After that, well, his life was pretty fulfilled, so you can understand why everything went downhill from there.

Whoo, that was long.

RangerWickett said:

Eh, sure. None of this was really part of the campaign saga, but if you're just looking for stories from my home game to mine for inspiration, no prob. Actually, I thought I put most of this in adventure 7.

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It was hinted at in adventure 7, but never spelled out. There is a huge amount of backstory here... but I think I can use it, actually. Not by making a PC Rhuarc's brother anymore, but his son...

The devil possessed her body and proceeded to track down and slaughter every member of the knighthood except one, named Marinus.

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Ah, so that's what happened to the Knights of the Aquilline Heart. I wonder who granted that vision to the paladin that refounded the knights? Was it the Heart itself, or perhaps something else...?

Whoo, that was long.

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Very long, and very much appreciated.