Dwarven Stronghold

[Stormborn]

Well, you can have airships and golems and it not be steampunk. Perhaps the Golems are all made through careful and solem rituals in the Temple, and it is there production that has led to the dominance of the Religious clan/caste over the traditional dominance of the Warrior clan/caste.

(And thats a possible complication there, 4 or 5 castes with clans that either belong just to the one or stretch across the others. Picture a large Clan and two prominant brothers with in it. At their coming of age the one was introduced to the Religous Caste and the other to the Warrior Caste. There is now a degree of rivalry between them as teh tensions between the two groups mount. The other dominant caste could be the small but powerful Diplomat or possible Beurocrat Caste that runs the Outsiders Fortress - the only place where buisness is conducted with non-dwarves.)

Airships might work under very normal real world principles, using gasses found in the mountain to fuel a small fleet, or work via magic (a la Eberron) and again be under the control of the Relgious caste, but perhaps crewed by Warrior caste or Diplomat Caste.

Esentailly its a matter of description. If all of these things are magic, and their creation is magical and not technological, there is no need for it to feel steampunk.

 

[kensanata]

The idea of flying Dwarves doesn't really appeal - unless, of course, they are using Big Honking Airships.

What I was thinking of was attacks by flying evil creatures such as harpies or dragons. After all if you have a fortress on a mountain and D&D, your first thought will be to Fly, and their first thought will be to shoot you down. That means you need galleries for archers, crossbowmen, arbalests, ballistas, and so on.

I also like the idea of signal fires. In a siege, the lower levels fall, and the besieged tower exchanges light messages with the other remaining pockets of resistance...

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

You could also grab a bite from Eberron and have the well defended stronghold act as a sort of bank. Maybe not so much for money, but for all manner of magical artifacts which are better left out of the hands of evil wanna be world-rulers/destroyers. The kingdoms of the world pay the dwarves to remain vigilant guardians of these relics.

Yoink. That fits in really well.

Broadly speaking, the Loremaster is going to act as the push on the campaign - he is going to detect some sort of great evil on it's way, and push the PC's into trying to stop it.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Well, you can have airships and golems and it not be steampunk. Perhaps the Golems are all made through careful and solem rituals in the Temple, and it is there production that has led to the dominance of the Religious clan/caste over the traditional dominance of the Warrior clan/caste.

(And thats a possible complication there, 4 or 5 castes with clans that either belong just to the one or stretch across the others. Picture a large Clan and two prominant brothers with in it. At their coming of age the one was introduced to the Religous Caste and the other to the Warrior Caste. There is now a degree of rivalry between them as teh tensions between the two groups mount. The other dominant caste could be the small but powerful Diplomat or possible Beurocrat Caste that runs the Outsiders Fortress - the only place where buisness is conducted with non-dwarves.)

I really like the idea of codifying different Dwarven skills into Castes (even though I strongly dislike the caste system in real life). Having them doing different things, and indeed the Diplomatic Caste being the only ones that deal with non-Dwarves (normally) makes things interesting too.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

What I was thinking of was attacks by flying evil creatures such as harpies or dragons. After all if you have a fortress on a mountain and D&D, your first thought will be to Fly, and their first thought will be to shoot you down. That means you need galleries for archers, crossbowmen, arbalests, ballistas, and so on.

I also like the idea of signal fires. In a siege, the lower levels fall, and the besieged tower exchanges light messages with the other remaining pockets of resistance...

Now that might end up being something to do wtih the finale of the whole thing...

Thanks very much for all the ideas! I'm getting a whole campaign's worth out of this!

 

[freyar]

Not sure if you decided on flying dwarves or not, but a decidedly non-steampunk possibility would be lots of "domesticated" flying animals, like hippogriffs, griffons, etc. The could have a roc or two for 747s.

 

[Dan Bell]

Hi Tallarn,
Looks like Azadmere might come in handy: http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=5004

Good luck.
-Dan

 

[Warren Okuma]

Hmm...

1) If it's 3.X DnD you need to build buildings in caverns to protect against falling rocks caused by the earthquake spell or spell like ability.
2) A net work of defenses. Murder holes and the like.
3) A central group that handles defense, like a scry and fry team.
4) A chapel to morn those that left the caverns.
5) A chapel to morn those that died outside of the caverns.
6) Several mines... gold, silver, salt, iron, copper, bronze, lead, tin etc...
7) You might give the Dwarves the ability to use coal (you would convert it to coke eliminating the impurities of it or a spell to do the same).
8) Dwarves make holy powdered silver (works like holy water)
9) A group of dwarves start worshipping a strange stone.
10) Underground lake
11) Tavern
12) Mine court/claims court
13) Trench type water pipes.
14) Brick foundry/pottery center (they get the clay from an underground stream)
15) Mysterious abandoned city (sealed up of course... and dwarven architecture) wall falls, nobody knows why.
16) Brewery.
17) A cavern filled with perfectly round stone spheres. (A form of therapy or recreation).
18) A recreational tunneling areas. You just dig and maybe if you hit a vein, you get money. You need the mad old coot dwarf that chases off people that enter "his" section. He's been at that tunnel for 100 years...
19) Pick center. (Not axe, call them picks and use axe stats. Dwarves with axes doesn't make sense to me.)
20) The Cave Tavern....

 

[TarionzCousin]

These are great ideas. Post after post of high-quality, inventive stuff.

Great work everybody.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Court of Law, definitely needed.

Not going to have a scry & fry team - dwarves don't use a lot of arcane magic. I'm heading for a siege here and it's important the characters get to do all the most exciting work.