Thanks for the reply, [MENTION=15800]Hellcow[/MENTION]. It's awesome in the Information Age that you can have a chance to ask the opinion of the setting creator himself! It's interesting you bring up Kyrzin since I had included a few references to him when I ran My SCAP as the possible creator of the demodands, though I left the matter open to interpretation. After some thought on the matter, I've decided to ret-con a few things about the demodands in My Eberron, although the changes are easily explainable in-game since I left their origins fairly mysterious from the PCs' point of view.
Demodands are keepers of the Overlord prisons of Khyber. Originally servants of the fiends during the Age of Demons (I think I'll go with Keith's creation myth here and classification as native outsiders), they made an egregious tactical blunder during the Dragon-Fiend Wars which forced their entire race into becoming jailers for the masters they once served. Although able to come and go from Khyber themselves, they know and feel they must always return. This is part of the basis for the self-sacrifice of the couatls, whose essence lingers today binding the will of the demodands to continue on as prison keepers. Carceri for most purposes is directly converted to Khyber, its natives being converted to the native outsider subtype; Khyber does serve as prison of the Overlords, daelkyr, and Khyber himself after all.
I love a lot of your ideas on demodands, Keith. They were very useful to me in helping decide on how I would fix their place within My Eberron. And by the way, I've been a huge fan of Eberron for quite some time. I fell in love with it from the day I picked up the ECS and have been using it as my home campaign setting for many years. So thank you for creating such a wonderful setting and again for offering your insight.
Since I've already run my group through My SCAP and those characters have retired, I am looking to establish some canon for My Eberron to have behind the screen since we are about to revisit some of the stories from My SCAP with the new PCs (based in Stormreach) for old times' sake.
For those interested, here is what I did with My SCAP to fit it into Eberron with some background for why I am asking about demodands. Spoilers are blocked off.
I set Cauldron in Xen'drik, in the middle of the Skyfall peninsula, as part of an insular region with loose ties to Stormreach (which replaced Sasserine in My Eberron). The Cauldron region exports things like coffee and sugarcane through Stormreach and imports things like grain and livestock via the same route. Most Khorvairans in My Eberron just always assumed the goods from Cauldron came from Stormreach so I could keep with the isolated and self-contained nature of the SCAP setting. It was something of a Shangri La, not in the sense of being an idealistic society but more of it being an isolated and hard-to-find place. (After combing the web for ideas, I've decided that were I to do this again, Cauldron would probably be in Q'barra, but that's neither here nor there.)
[sblock=Shackled City Spoiler Alert]First, since the primary subject of the thread is demodands, I'll address that. The demodands falling from the sky in Foundation of Flame have been ret-conned. Rather than being natives of Xoriat, these demodands in particular were actually prisoners in Xoriat who had, for one reason or another (daelkyr have bizarre motives after all) been captured during the daelkyr invasion. Of course they had all been driven mad by living in Xoriat for so long, and that was the way I portrayed them in Foundation of Flame and Thirteen Cages.
Cauldron exists within a manifest zone to Xoriat, unknown to most people. In this case the primary side effect is a larger proportion of madness within the population, as well many hearing the whispers of Thoon (see below). The nearby Demonskar is a manifest zone to Shavarath; side effects should be self-evident.
I converted the Cagewrights to a Cult of the Dragon desiring to bring Xoriat coterminus to Eberron through the ritual of planar junction. Dyr'ryd in My SCAP hoped that an influx of Xorians into the Material Plane would eventually result in more prisoners for his area of Khyber, thus elevating his status as a warden. In keeping with the sometimes fractious nature of the organization, some of the Cagewrights were driven by whispers of the daelkyr. Others sought a favored place as servants of the Overlords. And a select few knew the true purpose, to see Adimarchus released as a side-effect of the ritual of planar junction. Even Dyr'ryd was a puppet in this case. Rather than "mating" demodands to mortals, Dyr'ryd manipulated dragonmarked heirs of different houses to interbreed, producing unique aberrant dragonmarks, the bearers of which I used as the Shackleborn.
I converted Adimarchus to a rakshasa rajah, but did not change any of his stats, merely a few aspects of his appearance and history (which didn't turn out to be that relevant in My SCAP anyway, see below). Adimarchus' story remained essentially the same, with some added Eberron spice. He is an Overlord from the Age of Demons who managed to escape to Shavarath before the dragons and couatls bound him in Khyber. I converted Occipitus to a region of Shavarath formerly ruled by Adimarchus. Like every area of Shavarath, it had changed hands a few times which fit the SCAP description where it included some celestial features, all of which I converted to archon-based features. I placed Skullrot in Khyber as a special prison created by the imprisoned Overlord Graz'zt, a rival sore that Adimarchus escaped the same fate as he. Graz'zt sent Athux to Adimarchus on Shavarath and used Athux to trap Adimarchus in Skullrot just as described in the SCAP. Of course, being an imprisoned Overlord, Graz'zt had to work through his agents, directed through dreams and portents from the imprisoned Overlord.
The Ebon Triad in Flood Season I converted to the cult of The Three (Faiths of Eberron 28). Dol Dorn replaced Erythnul. Dol Arrah replaced Hextor. The Mockery replaced Vecna. I altered the persona of the cultists a bit to compensate. This was a convenient conversion given the shades of gray concerning Eberron deities and their clerics' alignments. The stats of the Ebon Triad cultists required hardly any changes, and descriptions of their lair were also only minor. The cult of The Three is playing a prominent role as villains among my current PCs.
Vhalantru is where I tied everything together. I converted Vhalantru to an ak'chazar rakshasa (MM3) with the Cloak of Khyber spell (City of Stormreach), which I found to be a much more compelling, Eberron-fitting villain and far less silly than a beholder in a simulacrum suit (what a ridiculous magic item). As a side note, I kept the beholder encounters virtually the same. The chief difference was that the beholder was simply a powerful illusion the entire time, designed to throw the PCs off Vhalantru's actual intent; I even threw in a few references to Belashyrra as a red herring to make the PCs think perhaps the Lord of Eyes was the mastermind behind Cauldron's woes. In Life's Bazaar for example, Vhalantru himself teleported down to the Malachite Hold rather than Thifirane, crafting a powerful illusion of a beholder to "rescue" Terrem while remaining invisible himself. In Lords of Oblivion, I replaced the gauths with zakya rakshasas disguised to look like Vhalantru's half-orc cronies (in My SCAP, they were House Tharashk mercenaries brought in from Stormreach). Rather than being an unwitting tool of Adimarchus' mad dreams, he is (or I should say "was") a willing and able Lord of Dust who desired to release his master Adimarchus from Skullrot and manipulated the Cagewrights to achieve his ends, a plot hundreds of years in the making.
In the end, the PCs never went to Skullrot. Defeating Vhalantru to prevent him from releasing Adimarchus became the endgame. It really fit My SCAP perfectly as Vhalantru had been a nemesis for the PCs almost from the start, going from passive aggressive behavior to outright hostility by the time we reached Lords of Oblivion. Vhalantru escaped the PCs numerous times, (which really fit the recurring villain theme well), but they finally defeated him in Thirteen Cages and I decided that was a fitting end to the campaign since the entire purpose of the Asylum adventure seemed unnecessary at that point (and I really didn't want to continue the campaign to epic levels, nor did the players). Even Strike on Shatterhorn seemed unnecessary since it was basically a mop-up; I concluded the Cagewrights would scatter to the wind rather than hole up in Shatterhorn. As a side effect, I was left with several dangling plot threads to utilize in future campaigns.
In truth, it got a little messy and some things weren't entirely consistent. But with the inclusion of some daelkyr worshipers, mad Cagewrights, and even Thoon thralls and infiltrators (MM5), I was able to keep a lot of the concepts--beyond the immediate danger of a rakshasa rajah being released--nebulous enough so as to allow re-writes behind the scenes without any of the players feeling a sense of disconnect with the plot. They were very happy to end the campaign with the defeat of Vhalantru and in reality seemed to believe that was the whole purpose of the campaign to begin with anyway.[/sblock]
So why I am asking about demodands in the first place when My SCAP is already over? Well, I am working on a new plot for my current PCs that will relate to one or two of those loose ends. I am still developing the idea. I noted above that one of the elements of My SCAP (a certain cult mentioned in the spoiler block above) is playing a prominent role for my current batch of PCs. And a certain villain is still around and reeling from the aftermath of that AP. For now, I have my answer on demodands. For any who care to join me, I will be continuing the conversation as I develop the plot of my current campaign in
this thread.
