Corinnguard
Hero
The Saurian race is definitely a nod to the Saurials from the 2e Forgotten Realms. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Saurial?so=search
D&D 5E [Let's Read] The Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea: Dungeons & Dragons, Prehistoric Style
Libertad
Hero
Chapter 9: Stone Age Adventures
This chapter is a diverse assortment of GM tools for creating stories in the setting. It takes a page from many old-school sourcebooks in providing randomly-generated charts and tables in coming up with adventure hooks, pertinent characters and locales, and notable aspects and events. It reminds me a bit of the DM Tools from the X Without Number RPGs, which is always a good comparison to make.
Themes briefly covers the three major aspects of the setting in greater detail. For Dynamic Combat, the book suggests making lair actions more universal rather than tied to specific monsters, representing forces of nature that are beyond the reach of individual monsters and mortals. It also borrows an idea from 13th Age, an Escalation-I mean Countdown Die, where the DM takes a d4, d6, or d8 and has the number showing go down by 1 each round or turn. When it reaches 1, a major event happens. There’s no explicit examples or rules for this, more guidelines and suggestions such as enemy reinforcements arriving.
For Primordial Horror we don’t get any new rules beyond the suggestion of using safety tools to ensure healthy boundaries, having a conversation with players before the first session, and for DMs to be willing to stop a session and adjust things if it’s clear when a player is uncomfortable. The book talks about different types of fears to invoke, such as the general fear of the unknown vs the immediate “fight or flight” adrenaline rush.
As for Mystic Awe, the advice suggests making things extra-descriptive by covering all five senses rather than just vision and hearing, portraying the surrounding land as active and alive rather than static and still, and using monster templates found later in this book to make otherwise familiar life forms have a novel spin in strange new lands. One suggestion is when coming up with environments to think of a paradox, such as an upside-down tree or storm made of stone, and think of how to describe it and how it affects and is affected by other creatures and environments.
Wilderness Tools recognizes that overland travel and spending time beyond the clanfire is an important aspect of Planegea, so this section keeps things interesting rather than making it feel like empty map space between more important locales. To ensure that skills besides Perception and Survival have their uses, we get a table for how 11 skills can aid navigation. For example, Arcana can help one recall known portals to Nod and discover particular magical effects in a region, while Persuasion can be someone beseeching the land itself with bargains for less burdensome journeys.
One particularly detailed tool, the Wilderness Dice Drop, creates a pointcrawl or node-based map where they toss a handful of dice on the table. Paths are drawn between the dice, and the results of the dice represent prominent features or concepts to particular areas in a region such as the location of a burial site or particular monsters holding territory. Nodes aren’t just physical landmarks and areas, but can also represent encounters both combat and noncombat, or even just be “empty space” for describing an area to flesh out the region without having any stakes or challenges. The DM then separates the nodes in vertical columns known as “zones” representing broad regions. For example, some nodes may be part of an arid desert, and the next zone over is a petrified forest. The pathways between nodes don’t necessarily have to be physical roads but can be a variety of things linking them together. They could take the form of clues or less physical connections, such as one node being a savannah home to undead dinosaurs raised by a wicked spellskin whose connecting node is a subterranean cave full of hot springs serving as his lair. Once this wilderness region is created, the DM provides PCs their choice of starting in a particular nearby node, and as they explore they can find ties to other nodes (and thus adventure opportunities) during play.
The other Wilderness Tool is a “Journey Dungeon,” or series of locations and encounters that don’t take place in a typical room-based dungeon crawl but more a series of linked overland areas where the PCs are given various paths. For example, one “room” in a journey dungeon may contain a raiding party hiding along a well-traveled route as a combat encounter, and PCs may be able to circumvent it by braving the nearby mountain valley “room” which holds a thicket of thorny poisonous plants in the form of a trap.
Clan Tools goes into detail on DM creation of clans, which serve as the primary settlements in Planegea. The section provides overviews of important aspects, such as what god or gods the clan pays homage to (or none at all) and what circumstances may lead to a clan choosing that number; survival strategy, the primary form of labor and activities the clan partakes in order to stay alive and not get exploited or destroyed by other dangers; and common cultural values and social structures for clans based on kinship, such as human-led clans having a preponderance of tamed animals or elf-led clans preferring to live inside large natural structures such as trees and cave systems. We get in-depth tables for determining prominent descriptors of a clan such as its size, overall quality of living, and predominant mood and feel such as strict rules and social structures vs lax and casual living.
We get several pages going into detail on determining resources (mundane and magical) a clan might have access to, from mundane objects such as vines, hides, and venom along with where they’re typically found as well as their everyday uses and what kind of prehistoric skill sets specialize in them. Production areas and their specialities are also given detail, such as knappers who chip flint and obsidian stones into sharper points, or dryers who hang racks of pelts and salted food (kept separate) to store them for later use. Common dwellings and structures are also provided, ranging from your stereotypical tents and huts, suspended “sling houses” hanging from giant beasts and tree branches, to circular round houses with a conical roof that typically serve as social gathering spots. The rest of the Clan Tools section goes into detail on the Clanfire and how to use its social center in gaming sessions, and we get details on how nomadic and semi-nomadic clans plot out seasonal travel. This ranges from the act of preparation in gathering and making supplies to the use of guides and waypoints.
These brief yet informative explanations help players visualize what they see when walking through a Stone Age settlement and in my opinion is perhaps one of the most important parts of the book to read. All too often many people imagine prehistoric and technologically primitive societies as being rather monotonous: everyone lives in tents or huts, everyone is either a hunter or gatherer. Planegea does its due diligence in overcoming this hurdle.
This section ends with new rules for taming and training wild creatures. Generally speaking this requires finding and capturing such a creature, then gradually calming its presence around humanoids in order to tame it by acting non-aggressive in its presence. This usually requires Animal Handling, Intimidation, or an appropriate spell or special ability and the would-be tamer must persist in this non-hostile state for a number of rounds without attacking equal to the creature’s CR (minimum 1). The book notes that not all animals may react positively to spells, as somatic and verbal components can be interpreted as threatening gestures but this is more or less up to DM Fiat. A calmed creature then requires an Animal Handling check whose DC is also dependent on DM Fiat. Successful checks can move a creature’s Score one step up or down on the Taming Track, a value from -5 to 6 representing its overall attitude towards its captors and subsequent behavior. Safe to say, taming a creature is a long and involved process that typically can’t be done within the span of a day or short adventure, and the Taming Track moves only one step at a time rather than multiple steps.
Adventure Environments covers seven common “dungeons” found in Planegea, with relevant elements and features presented as random dice tables the DM can roll on or pick from as befits their whim.
Aberrant Vaults are noisome, barely-comprehensible sealed areas home to aberrations and oozes who in the distant past were a dominant civilization on Planegea. Through unknown circumstances they fell and were sealed in such locations. They bear strong Lovecraftian and “space alien horror” themes, ranging from noisome pits with bio-organic technology to strange devices and structures leaking dangerous organisms, gasses, and displaying properties indistinguishable from magic. Being created by beings of alien minds and anatomies, the particular means of their operation are unclear but can nonetheless be dangerous to the surrounding environment should they be breached, leak, or their “doomsday clock” activates.
Apex Domains are regions where a single powerful predator holds sway, and the surrounding ecology is shaped around their presence. There are often signs when a wilderness region is home to such a creature, such as trees with the bite marks of a gigantic t-rex or a large amount of scavengers feeding off of many corpses they would ordinarily be physically unable to defeat. Treasure can exist even in such wild places, be it from the bodies of slain adventurers or natural resources remaining untapped due to the predator warding off anyone else from safely claiming them. There are many reasons why adventurers may seek to slay such a beast beyond personal glory, particularly when it overhunts and damages the ecosystem or mortal cults seek to appease the predator.
Dwarvish Ruins are for those DMs who want to crack out their castle and fortress maps that would otherwise be inappropriate for a Stone Age campaign. The dwarven need to build for the sake of building means that the land is dotted with abandoned structures other groups have inhabited for their own uses. They can be home to all manner of beings, from your typical humanoid bandits and cultists, animalistic predators, or even intelligent monsters such as dragons. As many abjurers are found among the dwarves, such ruins can be home to magical traps and defenses. One interesting element of dwarven ruins is that the inhabitants of Nod dislike them due to their orderly, artificial nature, making them favored hiding spots from those who angered the fey.
Roving Forests are great expanses of trees who roam across the land like herd animals, sometimes shepherded by treants and other intelligent beings. They regularly set down roots in an area for a time, only to leave elsewhere. Such forests often take other creatures with them, particularly those who make their homes in trees, and plant-based creatures such as dryads often act as intermediary “voices of the forest” for interactions with outsiders. Roving forests usually move very slowly, averaging 1 mile per day, but certain things such as a forest fire or hostile actions against nature can trigger swift and violent responses. Like the sudden “appearance” of awakened plants or stampeding trees barreling through creatures and structures unable to evade them.
Passages to Nod lead into the strange dreamlike lands of the fey, with the World of Dreams and World of Nightmares the two major realms. Even the World of Dreams is not entirely safe, as many fey are protective of their lands and are loath to let mortals wander as they will through them without a price to pay. Some may be eager to let mortals wander in, baiting them with trickery like a hunter lying in wait for prey. People who travel in the World of Dreams find themselves needing less time to sleep and rest, and those who go for too long without seeing their reflection start to have their physical forms unconsciously change. Lone wanderers are particularly vulnerable, for they can end up distracted from their destination by some attractive feature that enchants their mind. As for the World of Nightmares, it is a dark land full of undead and elves known as omenbringers who prevent wanderers from delving into the most dangerous areas. Those who fall unconscious cannot be awakened save by a Constitution check, and any humanoid who dies here rises as a zombie unless affected by spells such as Gentle Repose.
Spellskin Sanctums are places rich in magic, either home to a lone mage or an association of masters and apprentices pooling resources. Many sanctums are mysteriously empty, usually from attracting the attention of the Hounds of the Blind Heaven or some magical catastrophe killing the inhabitants or otherwise forcing them to move out. The most obvious reasons why adventurers may brave such places are to gain access to cave paintings in order to learn spells, but a spellskin’s broad magical knowledge means they can hold many other kinds of supernatural treasures. It is common for Lingering Spells to still be active long after their natural duration, with a sample d12 table of spells and effects such as programmed illusions to frighten or misdirect intruders.
Tomb-Lands are regions home to members of the Gift of Thirst, vampires seeking immortality and hiding from the vengeful gaze of Nazh-Agaa, the King of the Dead. Tomb-lands are dark, miserable places perpetually covered in night and fog. They’re home to insects, wolves, thorny plants, and other disagreeable life forms most people don’t find a welcoming presence. Mortals unlucky enough to live in such lands are often servants of the ruling vampire, cowed into subservience through magic and threats of violence. The vampires live in burial mounds filled with treasure and tribute, and other supernatural figures can be found in such lands. For example omenbringer elves from the Land of Nightmares may trade with the vampires, while spellskins often seek the vampires out to attain the secrets of undeath.
At Your Table is the final part of this chapter, covering a little bit of everything that can’t otherwise fit in the other sections. Quite a bit of it are things we’ve likely read elsewhere, such as whether to introduce new players to Planegea via a self-contained one shot, a stand-alone campaign, or making it a time-traveling adventure into the prehistory of another existing setting. We also get a short list of other genres whose tropes and concepts can be imported into Planegea, such as using the secret societies detailed later in this book to run spy thrillers, or a “Prehistoric Western” where the PCs are wandering peacekeepers in the Dire Grazelands dealing with bandits, encroaching giants, and other troublemakers.
But it’s the last part, Modifying Planegea, that is of particular interest to me, where the author goes into detail on some prominent world-building decisions they made for the setting and how and why to alter them. Specifically, the Black Taboos and the Giant Empires. As to the first, the author explains how many people had trouble thinking of adventures in Stone Age DnD beyond “we invent the wheel/alphabet” and also how those plots were often-tread ground in the genre. The Black Taboos were created as a means of letting the players have fun in the setting rather than feeling the need to fundamentally transform society in order to have adventures. But it’s also acknowledged that some people weren’t as fond of the Taboos, so the book talks about ideas in eliminating or reducing the power of the Hounds of the Blind Heaven. For example, technology may be limited in that while an enterprising soul may come up with the wheel and axle, the limitations of production, communication, and variety in environment means that it will take some time for it to become a universal means of transportation. This reflects how technology comes about slowly rather than all at once. Another idea may be that the PCs are unique characters who have both the knowledge and means of creating such technology, and having it alter daily life in the Great Valley and other areas can be a means of showing their impact on the world. The book talks briefly on what aspects of the setting will change with no Hounds, which doesn’t amount to much beyond two organizations (Sign of the Hare and Recusance) needing to be removed or provided with new goals given that their reason for existence involves the Hounds.
The Giant Empires are one of the antagonistic factions in the setting. Like the pseudo-Egyptians in the movie 10,000 BC or the villains of various alien invasion movies, their role is that of a technologically advanced superpower who seeks to enslave and exploit the civilizations to which the heroes/PCs belong. In Planegea, the giants are fond of taking smaller humanoids in slave raids, slaves who form an important part of their Empires’ labor. The authors’ stance is that slavery is an unequivocal evil, and not just for those who practice it but for those who don’t take measures to end it. Like goblins and orcs in many older settings, the giants more or less represent the settings’ closest equivalent to an “always chaotic evil” force designed for PCs to violently oppose.
Some of these elements may not be to everyone’s taste. While the book wisely doesn’t try to both sides or come up with “good” forms of slavery like some bargain-bin isekai anime, it provides other kinds of alternatives. For example, the giants may instead view smaller humanoids as a food source and thus they lead hunting parties instead of slave parties, keeping them as an antagonistic threat. Another is that the giants are more morally diverse, with the slavers being a villainous faction or group among them and giant society at large is anti-slavery. And finally, the giant empires may be more open and accepting of smaller people, willing to ally and trade with them but can also be threats and enemies as individuals and circumstances permit.
Thoughts So Far: I have pretty much nothing but praise to give to this chapter. The various tools are detailed and useful, helping inspire DMs in quick and clean creation of Prehistoric Fantasy adventures. The node-based adventuring design and pointcrawl concept of “journey dungeons” are great ways to make wilderness regions feel alive and eventful, and the Clan Tools do much to make primitive communities feel distinct and more interesting than carbon-copy identical gatherings of huts. The dungeon ideas are cool and imaginative, and I really like the weird alien features of aberrant vaults and the hidden dangers of unseen magic in spellskin sanctums.
My only real criticism would be in how the book approaches the Giant Empires. For while I’m in agreement with presenting slavery as a moral evil, Planegea falls prey to another problematic trope in effectively making an entire civilization of humanoids to be of evil alignment. I believe many readers are aware of the generations-long debates on the Baby Orc Dilemma or WotC’s deliberate movement away from portraying similar humanoids as universally or mostly evil. Giants don’t get discussed as often in such debates, but they honestly aren’t too far removed from the “looks and acts human” category of such fantasy races. Planegea, in its attempts to avoid one problematic trope of shades of gray for slavery, ends up in creating another. The book also speaks of the slave rebellion of Free Citadel in a positive term, and said rebellion resulted in the universal death and forced expulsion of all giants save one, which more or less reinforces the stance of giants being universally evil civilizations. I do recognize that this chapter provided alternatives, but I get the vague sense that the writer wasn’t entirely aware of this other problematic trope.
Join us next time as we explore the many lands of Planegea in Chapter 10: the Primal World!
Libertad
Hero
Planegea had a very well-supported KickStarter campaign with around 3.5 thousands backers, but it is one of those otherwise popular books that just doesn't get a lot of talk in general. It has so much going for it that I'm doing my part to bring awareness of it.
Thunder Step does the same amount of damage but is a much less resisted type, its range is 90 feet rather than 30, and can carry one willing ally in addition to the caster, so Thunder Step wins out.
Actually Bolt of Ush does have a chance to fail, where whether or not the caster and party arrive there is based on the main Teleport spell. Here's the rules text:
Humanoid dinosaur-people are a pretty common concept, albeit the name is quite on the nose.
Libertad
Hero
Chapter 10: the Primal World
This chapter serves as the gazetteer section of the book, where we learn more about the lands of Planegea and the people and creatures that walk it. All that is has an origin point in the Worldheart Dragon who slumbers in the volcanic Blood Mountain. Even unconscious, this mighty being causes Planegea to expand as the eruptions of magma cause reality itself to expand. Everything is physically connected in terms of greater cosmology, although the gradual separation of regions is causing significant changes. Basically the closer one is to the center, the more diverse and closer things are to your typical “Material Plane” setting. Further out the land grows stranger and more unified, with four Elemental Wastes marking the edges of the world before one plunges into the Sea of Stars.
Beyond detailed descriptions, each region provides slight details in the common types of Creatures encountered, what unique kinds of Treasure the region is known for, Lore about certain races, organizations, and individuals, and Challenge giving a recommended level range for what kinds of adventures are most appropriate. In regards to the last section, they more or less are split up among what is known as 5th Edition’s 4 major tiers of play. In regards to generalities, the places with Challenges for all levels of play are located in the Great Valley region and general vicinities, the various Giant Empires are levels 5th to 16th with Cult Riverlands being close at 6th to 16th, Free Citadel is either suitable for all levels in the city or 5th to 10th downriver, the Venom Abyss’s layers are solidly within Tier 2 at 5th to 10th while the Unfalls leading up out of the Abyss are strangely 1st through 10th, Nod and the World-Fangs are Tier 3 at 11th to 16th, while the most remote and “end game” regions (Sea of Stars, Elemental Wastes, Blood Mountain, and Kingdom of the Dead) are Epic Tier at 17th to 20th level.
While they’re not part of the book, David Somerville wrote 3 posts on Reddit expanding on regions found in this chapter. Notably these regions are some of the most underdeveloped ones in the Planegea core book, so it’s nice to see them getting some more love. As they’re publicly available free Internet posts I won’t cover them here, but I will say that they’re worth checking out.
Sea of Stars.
Dream World.
Nightmare World.
The Sea of Stars and the Sky are not the same place, despite what their names might have you believe. The stars were the first things spewed forth from Blood Mountain, and should one venture far enough in the Elemental Wastes they will find a black void beyond where they live and their music can be heard. But more dangerous entities lurk here too, such as the Crawling Awful and their horrific machines, as well as entities who if they learned of the rest of Planegea would spell a dark day for the world. As for the Sky, this is the battleground of stars who dance and duel among each other in beautiful constellations. The last star remaining gains the right to be the Day-Star and bathe all of Planegea in their splendor. The defeated stars gather their strength, siphoning the light until night falls and the dance begins anew. As for the moons, they are formed from Blood Mountain’s volcanic eruptions, shooting into the sky and drifting among it until they inevitably crash into the land, which takes place over thirty days as their lunar phases mark their lifespan. Sometimes one moon is in the sky, sometimes more, but none last forever.
The Elemental Wastes were the first true lands formed in Planegea that had solid (or liquid) foundations. They are not places suitable for humanoid life, being home to genies, aberrations, and the rare contingent of giant border guards keeping the monsters of the wastes from rampaging into their empires. In fact, the genies are one of the few groups the giants fear, and while both sides engage in trade they do not typically overtly move against the other. The Brinewaste is a grand sea home to marvelous palaces of marids, while aboleths, krakens, and other pelagic titans make war against the Sea Empire. The Quakewaste is home to Planegea’s tallest mountains where the dao live, whose never-ending greed for slaves is supplied by giants from the Stone Empire. The Scorchwaste is a great desert home to various factions of efreeti locked in battle with each other. The Fire Empire is well aware that the genies could crush them should they unite, so instead the giants manipulate the various groups to remain divided against each other. The Windwaste is a howling void of storms and clouds home to floating islands and settlements of Djinn, whose great magic allows them to reshape reality and thus seek to outdo each other in wondrous yet deadly projects.
The World-Fangs are what would be the Para-Elemental Planes in official planar sourcebooks. Or rather, future timelines of Planegea. Their names derive from the shamanic belief that Planegea itself is a wide mouth where four sets of teeth sit at its corners. They are where the crossroads of the four Elemental Wastes converge, and are too inhospitable for even the giants to make residence. The Fang of Rock and Flame is a realm of constant volcanic ash, sulfur, and lava whose inhabitants have a murderous need to destroy anything that can burn. The Fang of Sand and Wind is a wind-swept desert with deadly sandstorms and the rays of the Day-Star are unrelenting. The Fang of Shadow and Thunder are cliffs pelted with constant thunderstorms and avalanches where rain gathers in bottomless depths. Saltfang and Slimefang is a sprawling swamp home to oozes and tentacled things ever seeking things to consume.
Blood Mountain sits in the center of reality, rising out from a jungle sitting at the bottom of a great rift. Dragons of all kinds and minds live here, and five powerful Sacred Dragons are the Worldheart Dragon’s consorts.
The Venom Abyss surrounds Blood Mountain, the major barrier for those non-flying creatures who seek to set foot upon Planegea’s center. The tall trees of this rainforest reach far, creating a canopy so thick that its bottom cannot be seen, and both the canopy and the ground below are large and diverse enough to count as their own regions. Among the treetops are entire ecosystems and villages of people who never knew of a life where they tread upon soil. Poisonous beasts, plants that feed off the blood of the living, and other dangerous life forms give the abyss its name, and it is a realm that more or less remains unclaimed by gods and their hallows. Instead, many clans here worship the dragons who fly to and from Blood Mountain. As for the forest floor, it is where the dinosaurs originated and whose number spread elsewhere to Planegea via swimming up the Unfalls. The most prominent civilization here is Keledhros Ascendant, a group of shapeshifters who discovered the secrets in claiming the powers of other forms and seek to grow their numbers in the lands beyond via subterfuge and murderous rituals. As for the Unfalls, they are four rivers whose streams are forced upwards by the volcanic tremors of Blood Mountain, the waters making their way up the rift’s edges and carrying various things with them. Goblinoid people live in cave networks behind these falls, whose societies are arranged in caste systems whose kinship determines their roles and labor, but spellskins occupy a ruling caste of their own.
The Great Valley is the central region of Planegea and thus gets the most coverage in this chapter. It is more or less the “starting location” for most Planegean campaigns and whose clans more or less serve as the societal baseline for what was covered in prior chapters. The most prominent civilizations are the clans of various humanoid people and the gods they serve. Three particularly large and powerful clans are known as the Brothers, who each hold their own broad regional territory and seek to destroy the others. Even then, borders and territory are fluid, with seasonal migration and raids causing various groups to hold onto and lose new territory. All three clans are named after the species of their host gods and the rivers that come from the Venom Abyss.
The Bear Clan is a clan of boisterous bruisers whose patron deity is the Unkillable Bear-God Urhosh. Like their deity, the clan’s members are fond of holding great feasts and friendly games of strength. Interesting places in their territory include the monster-filled lake of Bitewater whose resources still encourage brave fishers to harvest its resources; Killbrother Vale, whose overwise beautiful surroundings are marred by regular clashes between Bear and Ape and whose butterflies are said to be the reincarnated souls of people slain; the mammoth graveyard of Shatterbone home to secret lairs of Scavengers; and the Whispering Veldt that is haunted by ghosts whose voices call out the names of the departed.
The Ape Clan’s territory is home to many forests, and their people are known for various innovative tools. Their patron deity, the Many-Armed Ape-God Kho, can communicate with his followers in his sleep and shamans use drums to aid his slumber, for he is most agreeable when asleep and thus in the best mood to bequeath gifts and favors. Interesting places in this region include Saltwood, whose trees are covered in crystalline waters brought in from the Bittersea, and the region is home to untapped magical power that is attractive to spellskins; an old dwarven ruins at the edge of the Bittersea that serves as a trading post of tents known as Swapshore; and the Dire Grazelands bordering the Fire Empire, home to enormous animals far larger than their kin elsewhere. Entire villages are built on such animals, their people known as the Direstaves. A separate culture from the Ape Clan, they serve as a buffer zone against the fire giants and highly prize their hard won freedom in the face of such adversity.
The Lion Clan claims the eastern highlands and rivers stretching to the AIr Empire, and prize the virtues of courage mixed with wisdom as well as artistic pursuits. They believe that there is strength to be found in enduring intolerable conditions, so they rarely make use of shelter and prefer to sleep exposed to the weather. Their patron deity, Glelh the Unblinking, lairs in a hallow that grants him an amazing vision of the surrounding valley that visiting shamans can take advantage of. Interesting places in this region include the Howlgrove which home to werewolves and the hidden headquarters of Scavenger’s Vow; the Eyestone, which is a gigantic monolith with a single hole drilled in its middle home to an ever-changing rainbow of lights, and its nature is unknown save that those nearby experience an uneasy sensation of being watched; Prideblood Slopes, a hilly region home to the bulk of the Lion Clan’s members and is well-defended with a variety of traps and defenses; and Sorrow’s Edge, the last bit of land before the dark expanse of a sky without end and where the Air Empire holds sway. Captured druids are regularly brought to Sorrow’s Edge to be thrown to their deaths.
Wintersouth is the broad region of the Great Valley to the south of the Brother Clans. It is a sparse, dry land, and would ordinarily not be ventured into save for the herds of the north that seasonally migrate here that are pursued by the clans who live off of them. The deities here are cruel and spiteful, known as the Winter Gods and who would later become known as demons. Two of the larger humanoid settlements in Planegea can be found here: the village of Edgegather that sits at the edge of the Venom Abyss whose lawlessness and celebrations are legendarily infamous, and the divine refuge of Seerfall home to shamans of all kinds who make pilgrimages here to converse among themselves about the fate of the world and the gods. Interesting places in this region include Sharpfang Sweep, a common area clans migrate through each winter even as they’re hunted and stalked by tyrannosauruses and raptors; the Hallow of Twr, a portion of boiling river home to the Winter God of the same name who sees a regular influx of cultists desperate to seek her power and/or to assuage her wrath; the Allhunt, a place occupied during the winter months by clans for its watering holes, and the scarcity of resources is ironically one of the more peaceful times of inter-clan warfare due to non-aggression pacts where hunters can pursue prey without fear of attack from other hunters; the Daggerwood, home to wicked treants and various kinds of scum and villainy who have only the barest of alliances in their Cutthroat Council; and Lake Littleblood, whose cliffs are a favorite spot for spellskins who make use of the rising and falling tides from thawing water to create complicated works of fluid cave paintings.
Edgegather itself has 3 pages of content, one of which is a full-page map. There’s 73 marked locations, a minority of which have proper detail. The village is separated into three regions. The first is the Platform a rickety assortment of wood, mud, and vines with an enchanted network of beams supporting it as it gazes over the Venom Abyss. Then there are the two neighborhoods of Lefthand and Righthand, who have a bitter rivalry where they view themselves as civilized and cultured people and the other side as fools and bullies without any morals. The enmity comes from a long-ago family feud that drew in others to the point that long-standing alliances were formed out of common contempt. Edgegather’s places are full of neat plot hooks, such as the House of En which is occupied by servants of the Gift of Thirst’s vampires looking for dupes and recruits; a hidden group of druids known as the Pulse Enclave who worship the Unfall as blood from the Worldheart Dragon; a passage known as Templehole that leads into a set of old temple ruins that only the goblins seem to know anything about but who remain tight-lipped for reasons unknown; the headquarters of the Venomguard, a group of monster hunters who have a hidden treasure vault of salt that many a Scavenger seeks to rob for their “big score;” and a hidden safehouse for criminals serving a green hang known as Themlish, who seeks to attain political power in Edgegather.
There’s several more regions in the Great Valley which are comparatively much less detailed. They include the Eel, a river that is considered to be cursed and its source is the former giant city of Dakru, now the Free Citadel and governed by their former slaves. The Eel is also home to a temple of chanters claiming to worship a living fungus known as the Mushroom Lord that communicates via spores. The Undershore is located in the relative southwest where the land meets the sea, where a barren plain scarred by lightning strikes known as the War-Way is the dividing line between the free peoples and the Sea Empire. The Scattersea is an archipelago of nomadic clans who travel by boats, and whose most powerful clan is the Whale Clan. The Cult Riverlands are a dry region in the northwest, home to arid gulches and whose primary river, the Eagle, is barely a trickle but is greatly prized by various wicked gods who would later become known as Devils. Underground reservoirs known as qanats were shaped by arcane and divine magic by people of unknown origin. Many enterprising souls in the parched lands above seek to find such hidden reserves, but it is said that an evil and powerful god lurks in the depths.
The Giant Empires would be Bronze Age civilizations in the world of Planegea…that is, if bronze and other metals existed. The giants do not live in nomadic bands of subsistence hunters and foragers, but have walled communities of their own, whose cities have paved roads, fortresses, ziggurats, and other marvels unseen in the rest of Planegea. And that’s saying nothing of their magical rites and artifacts. Yet such progress is not done to bring the world into greater innovation, but instead to conquer and exploit it. To those weaker than they, such as the humanoids of the Great Valley, the giants enslave and treat little better than animals.
The Stone Empire of the west is home to two large clans of frost and stone giants. The frost giants are raiders living on the surface of mountains, gathering in the border city of O’oteka to stage raids into the Great Valley whose captives are brought back to the Wailing Markets. As for the stone giants, they mostly live in the caves below and work magic through chants, scrying pools, and dreams to divine the future. Their capital city, High-Walled Akmon, is jointly ruled over by the respective Stone Emperor and Frost Empress, and its streets are alive with ceremonies, rituals, and songs that occur at all hours.
The Fire Empire of the north is a highly militarized society of fire giants who view the other empires as weak in body, mind, and soul, believing that they’re the only civilization worthy of ruling the world and shaping its future. Their capital city of Shining Eknis is forged from volcanic glass, which in the daytime is so terrifyingly bright that many slaves taken there have gone blind. The fire giants, predictably, love gladiatorial matches as a form of entertainment, and even captives of smaller people might earn favor with the Emperor if they prove themselves in the ring. There is a ruined city known as Bosa, built by a long-dead Emperor who sought to settle the Scorchwaste and earned the retaliation of the efreeti. Bosa now stands as a burned-out ruin scarred by magic and undead giants.
The Air Empire can be found among the floating islands and towers in the cloudy void of the east, so suspended due to the laws of gravity working differently here than elsewhere in Planegea. With their own magic and that of the djinn, the cloud giants have extremely high living standards and want for naught. Their settlements are more like palaces, yet the giants are still cruel and find sadistic joy in torturing and killing slaves and captives. Beyond the giants, there are some particularly brave godless clans, many ruled by orcs, who occupy islands and cliffs with winged beasts to raid others, even the cloud giants themselves!
The Sea Empire of the south occupies coastal land and ocean alike. The storm giants believe themselves to be fighting for a noble cause, unlike the jaded sadists of the Air Empire or the expansionist conquerors of the Stone and Fire Empires. Locked in war against kraken, aboleths, and the evil cults that serve them, the Sea Empire holds the line against such monsters from claiming other lands. But this perpetual war footing is ever hungry for blood, blood that the Sea Empire is all too happy to supply with slaves and conscripts. Unlike the other three Empires, the storm giants are the most likely to approach the smaller peoples for advice and counsel, such as the shamans of Seerfall. The Emperor focuses first and foremost on the war effort, letting seven advisors handle administration and domestic affairs.
Nod is two worlds in contrast, that of Dream and Nightmare, their lands mutable and changing like the dreams of the sleeping. Not much new is said here that can’t be found elsewhere in the book.
The Kingdom of the Dead is the final region of this chapter, and people come here in one of two ways: through the Dark Door seen by souls of the recently departed, or the Long Way which is known only to the most powerful and ancient of beings. Nazh-Agaa rules this dark land, the souls of the dead tasked with building a seemingly-endless city until they vanish from existence. The souls found here are those who violated social conventions but also include the murdered and the lost.
Thoughts So Far: This chapter does a good job of providing interesting locations to host Prehistoric Fantasy adventures. The Great Valley clearly gets the lion’s (and ape’s, and bear’s) share of content, and the four Giant Empires come in relatively close seconds. This unfortunately comes at the expense of the other regions. These places, such as the Elemental Wastes and the Kingdom of the Dead, get scarcely more than a few paragraphs. While these regions tend to be Epic tier or similarly high level and thus may not see the majority of playtime, this falls into a related problem I’ve seen with planar adventures in official DnD settings. The idea of certain areas being gated off for high-level play is something that may not be to everyone’s tastes. While one can argue that it fits with Planegea’s themes of a dangerous world where the PCs are but a blip among literal and figurative giants, I’d have preferred it if there was encouragement and plot ideas for mid and even low level groups finding themselves briefly adventuring in such areas. Heck, Nod is listed as being appropriate for 11th to 16th level, yet clans supposedly use them regularly for migration!
Join us next time as we go into detail on Planegea’s notable organizations and villains in Chapter 11: Factions & Threats!
MOSPalaeogames
Co-Author: Dr Dhrolin's Dictionary of Dinosaurs
Picked up Planegea at Christmas and it's an interesting book. Definitely see the heavy sword and sorcery Conan-y/Primal-y vibes but I particularly like the new races. They're very fun
Eyes of Nine
Everything's Fine
I like the Wilderness Dice Drop procedure - it sounds v interesting.
Chapter 9: Stone Age Adventures
This chapter is a diverse assortment of GM tools for creating stories in the setting. It takes a page from many old-school sourcebooks in providing randomly-generated charts and tables in coming up with adventure hooks, pertinent characters and locales, and notable aspects and events. It reminds me a bit of the DM Tools from the X Without Number RPGs, which is always a good comparison to make.
Themes briefly covers the three major aspects of the setting in greater detail. For Dynamic Combat, the book suggests making lair actions more universal rather than tied to specific monsters, representing forces of nature that are beyond the reach of individual monsters and mortals. It also borrows an idea from 13th Age, an Escalation-I mean Countdown Die, where the DM takes a d4, d6, or d8 and has the number showing go down by 1 each round or turn. When it reaches 1, a major event happens. There’s no explicit examples or rules for this, more guidelines and suggestions such as enemy reinforcements arriving.
For Primordial Horror we don’t get any new rules beyond the suggestion of using safety tools to ensure healthy boundaries, having a conversation with players before the first session, and for DMs to be willing to stop a session and adjust things if it’s clear when a player is uncomfortable. The book talks about different types of fears to invoke, such as the general fear of the unknown vs the immediate “fight or flight” adrenaline rush.
As for Mystic Awe, the advice suggests making things extra-descriptive by covering all five senses rather than just vision and hearing, portraying the surrounding land as active and alive rather than static and still, and using monster templates found later in this book to make otherwise familiar life forms have a novel spin in strange new lands. One suggestion is when coming up with environments to think of a paradox, such as an upside-down tree or storm made of stone, and think of how to describe it and how it affects and is affected by other creatures and environments.
Wilderness Tools recognizes that overland travel and spending time beyond the clanfire is an important aspect of Planegea, so this section keeps things interesting rather than making it feel like empty map space between more important locales. To ensure that skills besides Perception and Survival have their uses, we get a table for how 11 skills can aid navigation. For example, Arcana can help one recall known portals to Nod and discover particular magical effects in a region, while Persuasion can be someone beseeching the land itself with bargains for less burdensome journeys.
One particularly detailed tool, the Wilderness Dice Drop, creates a pointcrawl or node-based map where they toss a handful of dice on the table. Paths are drawn between the dice, and the results of the dice represent prominent features or concepts to particular areas in a region such as the location of a burial site or particular monsters holding territory. Nodes aren’t just physical landmarks and areas, but can also represent encounters both combat and noncombat, or even just be “empty space” for describing an area to flesh out the region without having any stakes or challenges. The DM then separates the nodes in vertical columns known as “zones” representing broad regions. For example, some nodes may be part of an arid desert, and the next zone over is a petrified forest. The pathways between nodes don’t necessarily have to be physical roads but can be a variety of things linking them together. They could take the form of clues or less physical connections, such as one node being a savannah home to undead dinosaurs raised by a wicked spellskin whose connecting node is a subterranean cave full of hot springs serving as his lair. Once this wilderness region is created, the DM provides PCs their choice of starting in a particular nearby node, and as they explore they can find ties to other nodes (and thus adventure opportunities) during play.
The other Wilderness Tool is a “Journey Dungeon,” or series of locations and encounters that don’t take place in a typical room-based dungeon crawl but more a series of linked overland areas where the PCs are given various paths. For example, one “room” in a journey dungeon may contain a raiding party hiding along a well-traveled route as a combat encounter, and PCs may be able to circumvent it by braving the nearby mountain valley “room” which holds a thicket of thorny poisonous plants in the form of a trap.
Clan Tools goes into detail on DM creation of clans, which serve as the primary settlements in Planegea. The section provides overviews of important aspects, such as what god or gods the clan pays homage to (or none at all) and what circumstances may lead to a clan choosing that number; survival strategy, the primary form of labor and activities the clan partakes in order to stay alive and not get exploited or destroyed by other dangers; and common cultural values and social structures for clans based on kinship, such as human-led clans having a preponderance of tamed animals or elf-led clans preferring to live inside large natural structures such as trees and cave systems. We get in-depth tables for determining prominent descriptors of a clan such as its size, overall quality of living, and predominant mood and feel such as strict rules and social structures vs lax and casual living.
We get several pages going into detail on determining resources (mundane and magical) a clan might have access to, from mundane objects such as vines, hides, and venom along with where they’re typically found as well as their everyday uses and what kind of prehistoric skill sets specialize in them. Production areas and their specialities are also given detail, such as knappers who chip flint and obsidian stones into sharper points, or dryers who hang racks of pelts and salted food (kept separate) to store them for later use. Common dwellings and structures are also provided, ranging from your stereotypical tents and huts, suspended “sling houses” hanging from giant beasts and tree branches, to circular round houses with a conical roof that typically serve as social gathering spots. The rest of the Clan Tools section goes into detail on the Clanfire and how to use its social center in gaming sessions, and we get details on how nomadic and semi-nomadic clans plot out seasonal travel. This ranges from the act of preparation in gathering and making supplies to the use of guides and waypoints.
These brief yet informative explanations help players visualize what they see when walking through a Stone Age settlement and in my opinion is perhaps one of the most important parts of the book to read. All too often many people imagine prehistoric and technologically primitive societies as being rather monotonous: everyone lives in tents or huts, everyone is either a hunter or gatherer. Planegea does its due diligence in overcoming this hurdle.
This section ends with new rules for taming and training wild creatures. Generally speaking this requires finding and capturing such a creature, then gradually calming its presence around humanoids in order to tame it by acting non-aggressive in its presence. This usually requires Animal Handling, Intimidation, or an appropriate spell or special ability and the would-be tamer must persist in this non-hostile state for a number of rounds without attacking equal to the creature’s CR (minimum 1). The book notes that not all animals may react positively to spells, as somatic and verbal components can be interpreted as threatening gestures but this is more or less up to DM Fiat. A calmed creature then requires an Animal Handling check whose DC is also dependent on DM Fiat. Successful checks can move a creature’s Score one step up or down on the Taming Track, a value from -5 to 6 representing its overall attitude towards its captors and subsequent behavior. Safe to say, taming a creature is a long and involved process that typically can’t be done within the span of a day or short adventure, and the Taming Track moves only one step at a time rather than multiple steps.
Adventure Environments covers seven common “dungeons” found in Planegea, with relevant elements and features presented as random dice tables the DM can roll on or pick from as befits their whim.
Aberrant Vaults are noisome, barely-comprehensible sealed areas home to aberrations and oozes who in the distant past were a dominant civilization on Planegea. Through unknown circumstances they fell and were sealed in such locations. They bear strong Lovecraftian and “space alien horror” themes, ranging from noisome pits with bio-organic technology to strange devices and structures leaking dangerous organisms, gasses, and displaying properties indistinguishable from magic. Being created by beings of alien minds and anatomies, the particular means of their operation are unclear but can nonetheless be dangerous to the surrounding environment should they be breached, leak, or their “doomsday clock” activates.
Apex Domains are regions where a single powerful predator holds sway, and the surrounding ecology is shaped around their presence. There are often signs when a wilderness region is home to such a creature, such as trees with the bite marks of a gigantic t-rex or a large amount of scavengers feeding off of many corpses they would ordinarily be physically unable to defeat. Treasure can exist even in such wild places, be it from the bodies of slain adventurers or natural resources remaining untapped due to the predator warding off anyone else from safely claiming them. There are many reasons why adventurers may seek to slay such a beast beyond personal glory, particularly when it overhunts and damages the ecosystem or mortal cults seek to appease the predator.
Dwarvish Ruins are for those DMs who want to crack out their castle and fortress maps that would otherwise be inappropriate for a Stone Age campaign. The dwarven need to build for the sake of building means that the land is dotted with abandoned structures other groups have inhabited for their own uses. They can be home to all manner of beings, from your typical humanoid bandits and cultists, animalistic predators, or even intelligent monsters such as dragons. As many abjurers are found among the dwarves, such ruins can be home to magical traps and defenses. One interesting element of dwarven ruins is that the inhabitants of Nod dislike them due to their orderly, artificial nature, making them favored hiding spots from those who angered the fey.
Roving Forests are great expanses of trees who roam across the land like herd animals, sometimes shepherded by treants and other intelligent beings. They regularly set down roots in an area for a time, only to leave elsewhere. Such forests often take other creatures with them, particularly those who make their homes in trees, and plant-based creatures such as dryads often act as intermediary “voices of the forest” for interactions with outsiders. Roving forests usually move very slowly, averaging 1 mile per day, but certain things such as a forest fire or hostile actions against nature can trigger swift and violent responses. Like the sudden “appearance” of awakened plants or stampeding trees barreling through creatures and structures unable to evade them.
Passages to Nod lead into the strange dreamlike lands of the fey, with the World of Dreams and World of Nightmares the two major realms. Even the World of Dreams is not entirely safe, as many fey are protective of their lands and are loath to let mortals wander as they will through them without a price to pay. Some may be eager to let mortals wander in, baiting them with trickery like a hunter lying in wait for prey. People who travel in the World of Dreams find themselves needing less time to sleep and rest, and those who go for too long without seeing their reflection start to have their physical forms unconsciously change. Lone wanderers are particularly vulnerable, for they can end up distracted from their destination by some attractive feature that enchants their mind. As for the World of Nightmares, it is a dark land full of undead and elves known as omenbringers who prevent wanderers from delving into the most dangerous areas. Those who fall unconscious cannot be awakened save by a Constitution check, and any humanoid who dies here rises as a zombie unless affected by spells such as Gentle Repose.
Spellskin Sanctums are places rich in magic, either home to a lone mage or an association of masters and apprentices pooling resources. Many sanctums are mysteriously empty, usually from attracting the attention of the Hounds of the Blind Heaven or some magical catastrophe killing the inhabitants or otherwise forcing them to move out. The most obvious reasons why adventurers may brave such places are to gain access to cave paintings in order to learn spells, but a spellskin’s broad magical knowledge means they can hold many other kinds of supernatural treasures. It is common for Lingering Spells to still be active long after their natural duration, with a sample d12 table of spells and effects such as programmed illusions to frighten or misdirect intruders.
Tomb-Lands are regions home to members of the Gift of Thirst, vampires seeking immortality and hiding from the vengeful gaze of Nazh-Agaa, the King of the Dead. Tomb-lands are dark, miserable places perpetually covered in night and fog. They’re home to insects, wolves, thorny plants, and other disagreeable life forms most people don’t find a welcoming presence. Mortals unlucky enough to live in such lands are often servants of the ruling vampire, cowed into subservience through magic and threats of violence. The vampires live in burial mounds filled with treasure and tribute, and other supernatural figures can be found in such lands. For example omenbringer elves from the Land of Nightmares may trade with the vampires, while spellskins often seek the vampires out to attain the secrets of undeath.
At Your Table is the final part of this chapter, covering a little bit of everything that can’t otherwise fit in the other sections. Quite a bit of it are things we’ve likely read elsewhere, such as whether to introduce new players to Planegea via a self-contained one shot, a stand-alone campaign, or making it a time-traveling adventure into the prehistory of another existing setting. We also get a short list of other genres whose tropes and concepts can be imported into Planegea, such as using the secret societies detailed later in this book to run spy thrillers, or a “Prehistoric Western” where the PCs are wandering peacekeepers in the Dire Grazelands dealing with bandits, encroaching giants, and other troublemakers.
But it’s the last part, Modifying Planegea, that is of particular interest to me, where the author goes into detail on some prominent world-building decisions they made for the setting and how and why to alter them. Specifically, the Black Taboos and the Giant Empires. As to the first, the author explains how many people had trouble thinking of adventures in Stone Age DnD beyond “we invent the wheel/alphabet” and also how those plots were often-tread ground in the genre. The Black Taboos were created as a means of letting the players have fun in the setting rather than feeling the need to fundamentally transform society in order to have adventures. But it’s also acknowledged that some people weren’t as fond of the Taboos, so the book talks about ideas in eliminating or reducing the power of the Hounds of the Blind Heaven. For example, technology may be limited in that while an enterprising soul may come up with the wheel and axle, the limitations of production, communication, and variety in environment means that it will take some time for it to become a universal means of transportation. This reflects how technology comes about slowly rather than all at once. Another idea may be that the PCs are unique characters who have both the knowledge and means of creating such technology, and having it alter daily life in the Great Valley and other areas can be a means of showing their impact on the world. The book talks briefly on what aspects of the setting will change with no Hounds, which doesn’t amount to much beyond two organizations (Sign of the Hare and Recusance) needing to be removed or provided with new goals given that their reason for existence involves the Hounds.
The Giant Empires are one of the antagonistic factions in the setting. Like the pseudo-Egyptians in the movie 10,000 BC or the villains of various alien invasion movies, their role is that of a technologically advanced superpower who seeks to enslave and exploit the civilizations to which the heroes/PCs belong. In Planegea, the giants are fond of taking smaller humanoids in slave raids, slaves who form an important part of their Empires’ labor. The authors’ stance is that slavery is an unequivocal evil, and not just for those who practice it but for those who don’t take measures to end it. Like goblins and orcs in many older settings, the giants more or less represent the settings’ closest equivalent to an “always chaotic evil” force designed for PCs to violently oppose.
Some of these elements may not be to everyone’s taste. While the book wisely doesn’t try to both sides or come up with “good” forms of slavery like some bargain-bin isekai anime, it provides other kinds of alternatives. For example, the giants may instead view smaller humanoids as a food source and thus they lead hunting parties instead of slave parties, keeping them as an antagonistic threat. Another is that the giants are more morally diverse, with the slavers being a villainous faction or group among them and giant society at large is anti-slavery. And finally, the giant empires may be more open and accepting of smaller people, willing to ally and trade with them but can also be threats and enemies as individuals and circumstances permit.
Thoughts So Far: I have pretty much nothing but praise to give to this chapter. The various tools are detailed and useful, helping inspire DMs in quick and clean creation of Prehistoric Fantasy adventures. The node-based adventuring design and pointcrawl concept of “journey dungeons” are great ways to make wilderness regions feel alive and eventful, and the Clan Tools do much to make primitive communities feel distinct and more interesting than carbon-copy identical gatherings of huts. The dungeon ideas are cool and imaginative, and I really like the weird alien features of aberrant vaults and the hidden dangers of unseen magic in spellskin sanctums.
My only real criticism would be in how the book approaches the Giant Empires. For while I’m in agreement with presenting slavery as a moral evil, Planegea falls prey to another problematic trope in effectively making an entire civilization of humanoids to be of evil alignment. I believe many readers are aware of the generations-long debates on the Baby Orc Dilemma or WotC’s deliberate movement away from portraying similar humanoids as universally or mostly evil. Giants don’t get discussed as often in such debates, but they honestly aren’t too far removed from the “looks and acts human” category of such fantasy races. Planegea, in its attempts to avoid one problematic trope of shades of gray for slavery, ends up in creating another. The book also speaks of the slave rebellion of Free Citadel in a positive term, and said rebellion resulted in the universal death and forced expulsion of all giants save one, which more or less reinforces the stance of giants being universally evil civilizations. I do recognize that this chapter provided alternatives, but I get the vague sense that the writer wasn’t entirely aware of this other problematic trope.
Join us next time as we explore the many lands of Planegea in Chapter 10: the Primal World!
As one of the 3500 backers, I guess maybe at some point I should take it off the shelf and actually flip through it
Libertad
Hero
Chapter 11: Factions & Threats, Part 1
Just as Chapter 10 discussed the world of Planegea, Chapter 11 discusses the more prominent people and individuals within it. Split into two sections of 13 entries each, Factions details organizations of all kinds relevant to adventurers, while Threats presents various antagonistic forces at work. While the latter category is more or less firmly in the villains and adversaries camp, there are some Factions who can serve this role depending on the campaign and party makeup. What makes Factions different is that all of them can plausibly have typical PC concepts as part of them: for instance, Scavengers Vow is your go-to Thieves’ Guild for roguish PCs, the Worldsingers are a good-aligned secret society heavily made up of Chanters, and the Brother Clans’ prominence in the Great Valley make for great “starting kingdoms.” Most factions provide some commonalities: Beliefs & Behavior which include simple sentences of moral outlooks and thus alignments, Leaders for some important NPCs, Magic & Matter indicating common magical practices, mundane skills, and resources, and Locations indicating strongholds and social gathering spots. I won’t be going into detail on each such commonality, as this is already a long chapter. Instead I will cover each faction in broad terms to try and give you an overall sense of them.
The Brother Clans are three different factions, grouped together but also spoken of individually. As the largest and most powerful clans of the Great Valley, they hold a lot of sway in central Planegea. Many generations ago three gods appeared to a group of travelers, promising them and their families aid in exchange for service. They were Urhosh the Bear, Kho the Ape, and Glelh the Lion, who honored their word and helped them expand their numbers and reach throughout the land. Although the Brother Clans are quite autonomous in terms of leadership at the local level, there are some cultural similarities. Each clan is collectively made up of several thousand people, but at the local level most people live in groups of 10-50 known as “camps.” Camps are hunter-gatherer societies, and camps of the same clan closely interact with each other in webs of alliances and trade. The god of each clan has a hallow and surrounding village known as a hallowcamp, the latter of which are ruled by a respective chieftain and high shaman. Here many chieftains, elders, shamans, and other figures of importance meet to work with and even subtly against each other.
The Brother Clans are not closed societies. Outsiders are welcome to join provided they pay allegiance to the patron deity and have skills to contribute to the camp/clan’s survival. One of the major reasons for the three Clans’ ascendance is their domestication of many types of animals; not just dogs, but cats, dinosaurs, horses, and others are common, and naturally each clan has close bonds with the animals of their patron god. What prevents them from being a truly unified power is that each Clan are enemies of the other two. Conflict takes place more at the local level, where there are border raids, spies, and even familial blood feuds. To ensure some level of reconciliation and safety, there are specially marked areas known as sanctuaries which are neutral zones where one cannot be killed as part of a vengeance plot. Additionally, the Brother Clans also have premeditated and ritualistic forms of warfare undertaken during summer, where rules of combat are followed and are primarily used to settle disputes over land, resources, and personal vendettas. Traders are allowed to travel to the lands of other clans provided that they clearly mark themselves as such, and when influential figures of rival clans wish to engage in diplomacy they do so in neutral territory such as Edgegather or Seerfall.*
*Given the location of these places on the map, they don’t seem the best places for the three clans to meet barring some unmentioned portals to Nod for rapid transit.
In covering the clans individually, we start with the Bear Clan. Like their god Urhosh they place great priority on physical prowess as a virtue, and they practice many games, ceremonies, and other competitions to display feats of athleticism and might. Their other celebrated virtue is organizing large communal feasts, where hunters and gatherers gather as much as they can, and in some cases starve themselves before a planned meal so that they can spend more time eating with others.* When it comes to resources, equipment, and magic they have a surplus of heavy furs and protective wear, beehives which are harvested for honey, abjuration and healing spells learned from dwarven mages, a preference for heavy bludgeoning weapons, and a larger than usual number of half-giants. They’re also one of the few non-giant groups in Planegea who have a prison: the Fortress of Bees is a walled structure holding captives.
*This sounds rather unhealthy. Couldn’t people who get full first at the table just talk and converse with others? That still helps the social aspect of feasts. Then again, we have monks who do the same in order to grow more powerful.
The Ape Clan prizes cleverness and quick-thinking in both mind and body. Music is an important aspect of the clan, and while ritual drumming is used for soothing their god Kho Many-Arms, other instruments such as flutes are also popular. They are known to make complicated obstacle courses where contestants race against each other to complete various tasks, and such games always draw a crowd of peers.
Their devices and personal belongings are some of the most ingenious, ranging from lighter-than-usual objects, easily collapsible items such as foldable chairs and ladders, camouflaged clothing with numerous hidden pockets, and multipurpose gear that combines two or more objects and tools. They also have close alliances with the elves of Nod, making them quite spread out and with a higher than normal number of elves and half-elves among their camps, and are known for casting spells that aid in movement and magic items that can be used by non-mages. In case you couldn’t guess already, the Apes are the artificers/bard/rogues of the Clans, with the Bears the warriors/clerics. The Ape clans are the most nomadic, which combined with their Nod portals mean that they are constantly on the move and have few regular meeting places. The exceptions are places such as Nodhold, a subterranean nexus of dream-portals with a misty grove of olive trees concealing their surface entrances, or the wooden Tower of Hope bordering the Saltwood which is regularly expanded and serves as a multipurpose fortress/home/obstacle course whose continual additions represent an ideal of a brighter future.
Finally, the Lion Clan prizes the senses in all its forms, from the creation of beautiful works of art, the prescient ability to see far and predict future events, and even to endure pain and unpleasantness rather than shy away from it. Their works of art tend to be alterations of existing objects or based off of observances in daily life, such as dyed fabrics, figurines in the likenesses of people and creatures, weapons and armor with animal shapes carved into them, and individual expression with personalized assortments of feathered and beaded jewelry and tattoos. They are renowned for their divination and enchantment magic, and their shamans know special combinations of plants and mushrooms that can trigger spiritual journeys and alter or enhance the mind. Through such spells they are famous for predicting important omens such as the weather and migratory patterns. And much like the Bear Clan, the Lions also have a prison of sorts known as Silence Crater, formed from a meteor whose magic causes all sound within to be muted. The clan takes prisoners holding valuable information there, where they are subjected to tortuous magics by the cruelest Lions to reveal their secrets. Saurians are a common kinship, who tend to find common ground with the clan’s ability to endure and see things for the long term.
Thoughts: I like how the Brother Clans are all given their own niches, both in terms of cultural flavor but also mapping closely to favored classes and in some cases kinships. This helps communicate to new players what Clans are most appropriate for their ideas: “pick this option if you want to be a big hulking barbarian, pick this option if you want to be a sneaky fey mage, etc.” That being said, the Clans’ relative adversity is my major complaint. Prior chapters painted a picture of a more overtly hostile relationship, such as commonly-held desires to outright destroy each other or that meadow with butterfly-souls, which wouldn’t lend itself well to multi-Clan parties without some interesting backstories or adventure setup. Chapter 11 still keeps the enmities, but has it with a more subtle “Cold War” vibe. The need for sanctuary safe havens, ritualized warfare, and welcoming traders helps make such parties more plausible and organic.
The Council of Day is a secret society of elders and mages from various clans in the Great Valley who seek to unify their peoples against the Giant Empires and other threats. In order to better defend against them, the Council hopes to create a centralized alliance that can fight the giants off as a unified force. To that end they seek to support particular leaders who they believe can accomplish this, prioritizing stable multi-generational governments and strong authoritative personalities. It matters little if said leaders are tyrants who lead by fear or genuinely-loved leaders whose subjects admire them; if they can hold onto power and encourage unity over division, the Council supports them.
The Council of Day is arranged into two sections: the ruling Inner Council who coordinate information and execute orders to the Outer Council, who are made up of messengers who ingratiate themselves into advisory capacities throughout the Great Valley. Sending spells are used for long-distance communication, and they also have pendants whose stones can be rearranged to glow as a sort of secret symbol. Instead of having a physical headquarters, they make use of a series of interconnected teleportation-linked rooms, and whose doors can be found in unlikely uninhabited locations.
Thoughts: The Council of Day rates rather low for me. They are very much power for the sake of it without any explicit ideology beyond “become like the giants in order to defeat them.” One thing I did notice is that their use of pendants with sun motifs is due to respecting the power of the Day-Star and wanting to emulate that as a worthy lesson. The book does present this as more a belief than a fact, as the daily star duels more or less stand in contrast to their unification ethos. It’s for this reason I believe that they’re designed this way on purpose as a character flaw, albeit one with justifiable goals. Something which we see rather regularly among the factions as will be shown later on in this post. But when compared to the other factions or even the Brother Clan’s outlooks, they just feel weak to me.
Direstaves, so named for their huge guiding staves to herd animals, are a loose culture of nomadic people in the Dire Grazelands. For unknown reasons the animal life in this region is much larger than their counterparts elsewhere in Planegea, but this hasn’t prevented local clans from finding new and innovative ways to domesticate them. Much like the Brother Clans of the Great Valley, the Direstaves have common cultural values and social structures while being locally divided and autonomous. This last part is even more so as the Direstaves have no great god holding vast territories, and each individual herd is entirely self-governing whose leaders are usually temporarily chosen by majority consensus.
Direstaff communities usually live with their herd animals in one of three ways: in “slingcamps” which are oversized hammocks slung along their lengths, “beastbacks” which are huts and platforms with connected rope bridges for the largest of the largest creatures, or “walkalongs” where the people travel on foot with the animals.
From aurochs to mammoths to dinosaurs, the Direstaves’ herd beasts are their literal lifelines. Not only do they supply them with food, milk, and all that can be made from their carcasses, their sheer size makes many clans use them as mobile homes. Their culture reflects this, from holidays based on important life cycles of said animals as well as the belief that one should be free to go and live wherever they please. Their most common kinds of spells relate to the care of animals, and for this reason druids and rangers are not only common, they’re socially accepted, and magic has been used to breed supernatural varieties of common animals.
Due to their proximity, the Direstaves have a great enmity for the Fire Empire. The giants are keen to raid the Dire Grazelands for slaves and also hunt their herd animals. But the Empire doesn’t intend on an outright conquest and occupation, for they find it easier to let the smaller humanoids do the bulk of the labor in raising and caring for the beasts and taking them when they’re big and juicy enough to eat. Beyond just the fire giants, another common threat are yellow herds, or communities that have “gone wrong” such as falling into dark magic and thus are dangers to those they come across.
Thoughts: The Direstaves are one of my favorite factions. Larger than life animals and dinosaurs are a mainstay of Prehistoric media, and they make for interesting adventure locations. I mean, who wouldn’t want to have a mobile sauropod home base? Their independent free-spirited nature and emphasis on democratically-chosen leaders is another thing I can see as a strong selling point to players.
The tale of Free Citadel is something almost everyone in Planegea has heard of, and to many who fear the giants it serves as a shining beacon of hope. The hope that oppressors of all kinds can be overthrown. Its current administration is recent, having taken place within a human lifespan, where slaves of the Stone Empire city of Dakru spent a year organizing a long-term plan to violently overthrow their giant captors. This revolution succeeded in a single day, and once every giant was slain or chased out. The people helped themselves to the many spoils of luxury and artifice once enjoyed by their captors, such as finger rings repurposed into belts. Today the settlement is called Free Citadel, ruled over by the orcish Usurper Queen and her advisors in the Revolutionary Court. While she listens to many, the Queen’s word is final.
Due to being technically within the territory of the Stone Empire, Free Citadel doesn’t see many traders beyond some brave souls sailing the Eel River. It’s a high-risk, high-reward job, for the giants had literal vaults of goods beneath the city, many of which have still yet to be open and serve as a ready source of “dungeon crawl” style adventures. Such vaults are also home to a lot of preserved food that could feed a giant community for decades, but this nonrenewable resource is a growing concern for Free Citadel in finding alternatives. Other problems facing the community include fear for when the rest of the Stone Empire will retaliate, as they uncharacteristically have let the city stand for far too long. The Citadel is torn between two factions on whether to use espionage and covert sabotage or overt military conquest. The Usurper Queen favors the former, but a prominent revolutionary known as Takluk the Beheader supports the latter…and should he not get his way soon, he has contemplated a coup. There’s also the fact that the city’s sole remaining giant known as the Prisoner has made himself useful by offering the magic and secrets of his people. Despite being paralyzed from the neck down and thus not much of a threat, there are those among the younger generation who’ve come about sympathizing with him and are contemplating setting him free. And as the Prisoner is Neutral Evil in alignment, he surely hasn’t come about seeing the error of his ways!
Thoughts: Although it’s quite distinctly un-Stone Age as a PC faction or location, I love the general idea behind Free City of formerly enslaved people finding themselves in a hopeful yet uncertain future. While their lot in life has obviously improved, there are myriad problems and thus adventuring opportunities present in securing their safety and freedom. The fact that the city is sized for Huge inhabitants, whose vaults haven’t been fully explored, and whose wondrous magical items have great power yet are of unknown quality still reflect the fact that the inhabitants are living in a world quite literally not made for them.
Kraia’s Children are the ideological opposites, and thus enemies, of the Council of Day. Their organization’s founding is more legend than fact, with the mysterious Kraia being more an idea than a person of someone who suffered greatly under the powerful and seeks to avoid anything like this happening again. Kraia’s Children are just barely an organization, being independent groups of people known as families. They come together via common causes and interpretations of Kraia’s example in preventing any one individual or group from attaining societal power over others. Thus they instead promote leaderless societies. But like so many other idealogues there are those who find excuses to bend their own rules in service of the greater end, and usually cells have an appointed leader known as an Eldest who helps coordinate efforts and is in theory supposed to be the servant of the group.
We have three example Families briefly described, one for each of the Chaotic alignments: the Chaotic Neutral group is in Edgegather, seeking to keep the city’s status quo as having no leader or unifying force, and all previous attempts by inside and outside powers to do so have met grisly ends. The Chaotic Good group are Families who operate in the Cult Riverlands, acting like mobile adventurers fighting the wicked gods who exploit their worshipers. The Chaotic Evil example is known as the Friendly Family, who intentionally target leaders motivated to help society’s worst off. The Friendly Family don’t use violence, instead relying on enchantment magic, propaganda, and psychological warfare to utterly shatter the hopes of people so that they won’t ever dare to fall for others who they see as falsely promising such noble things in order to seize power.
Thoughts: Much like the Brother Clans, Kraia’s Children aren’t really one faction so much as a concept, closer in style to an archetype for NPCs like bandits or cultists. Like the Council of Day their underlying ideology is vague, but I find this easier to swallow on account that much like the IRL ideologies that preach such things they can hardly agree on even the basic consensus of their ethos. To say nothing on the subjective interpretations of nigh-mythologized historic figures and the many people seeking to promote their examples through their own personal lenses. The fact that different families of Kraia’s Children can even be antagonistic towards each other feels more like a feature than a bug or design flaw.
Scavengers Vow is an alliance of thieves and other opportunistic and desperate folk who resist being reigned in by the social conventions of their parent societies. Their leader is a mysterious figure known as the Rat King who offers to train inexperienced thieves as new members. In exchange they take a vow of loyalty and regularly pay him Tithes. The Tithes are left in discrete locations to be taken back by Tithe-Gatherers, and while precious few scavengers have personally seen him he has the ability to enforce his rules for those who break them or spurn his graciousness. The book contradicts itself, saying that the organization’s secret language is known as Thieves Cant when earlier in the book it was called the Code. Regardless, the language is a useful uniting factor for the Scavengers Vow in communicating and coordinating with each other.
Beyond just training thieves, Scavengers Vow operates black markets where they can provide just about anything to those who know where to find them. They are similarly diverse in magical abilities, drawing from a little bit of everything but rarely having mighty archmages or high-level spells. Beyond paying dues, the group does have another rule of sorts: to not steal from someone who will die if you deprive them of said belongings. The claim is said to be rather practical in that if someone dies then you can’t steal from them again…but given this is a Prehistoric setting where most people are subsistence-level, this is much harder to do. Even something that wouldn’t be food, like a flint knife or some arrows, can be conceivably argued as vital to an individual in avoiding death by violence or starvation. Then again, the next paragraph also talks about how the scavengers are prone to treachery and infighting which is encouraged, for if one “isn’t ready to play dirty, they’re not ready to serve the King.” The fact that the Rat King and other prominent NPCs listed are evil-aligned make this one of the more villainous factions in this chapter.
Thoughts: The Scavengers Vow are more or less Planegea’s Prehistoric Thieves Guild, marking off that oh-so-common fantasy archetype. While I’m aware this isn’t the only example of anachronistic terms in the book, “King” still strongly associates a feudal medieval concept in my mind and just doesn’t feel right for the setting. I don’t have much else to say about this group, as while it is serving a needed niche and archetype, Scavengers Vow doesn’t feel like it does anything too new or revolutionary upon which to comment.
Seerfall is a community in southeastern Planegea, a dwarven structure of carved halls linked by tunnels running around and over an intricate series of waterfalls. This particularly beautiful location has made it prime real estate for shamans and the mystically inclined, drawing people of various gods and belief systems together. Seerfall is a very diverse community due to this, and most inhabitants organize into social groups with a shared ethos or patron deity. The community has three leaders known as the Oracle, Warden, and Arbiter who deal with the day to day administration with followers loyal first and foremost to them. It is one of the most magical settlements in Planegea, and at all times of day a group of shamans are performing sacred ceremonies and rituals, the air thick with rhythmic music and the scents of incense. Many travelers and pilgrims provide gifts to Seerfall in exchange for divine magic and spiritual needs, and through such gifts the community has a rather unique form of self-sufficiency.
To the initial observer, Seerfall appears as a quiet, peaceful place. But the myriad religious and philosophical worldviews hides a conflict-ridden cauldron of back-handed, passive-aggressive disagreements and in-group out-group power plays. To help people find better common ground, the Warden arranged mandatory communal meals after midday in the largest hall and adjacent rooms.
Thoughts: Given the broad concept of regional gods and hallows, Seerfall leaves me cold. It doesn’t feel like it does anything that the former example can’t do besides having a generic settlement of divine casters. The supposed intrigue and conflict can be neat, but we don’t get any explicit examples or ideas which limit its usefulness to me.
The Sign of the Hare is a secret society of spellskins who seek to pool their resources to gain a greater understanding of magic. They view the Black Taboos as things to overcome, and the Hounds of the Blind Heaven keeping society from bettering themselves and Planegea as a whole. Their willful defiance of the world’s most-feared cosmic rules gave them their name, for like rabbits on the run they are ever seeking to elude the predatory Hounds. The Sign has a high attrition rate of members, preventing it from having a stable leadership, with the closest thing to a hierarchy being lucky and longer-lived teachers passing on their secrets to those seeking to learn by example. They are constantly on the move to prevent their identities and works from being too easily traced, and their knowledge is similarly decentralized. The Hares prevent their paintings from being concentrated in any one place lest the Hounds or other dangerous groups find them. Hares typically survive as traveling bands of teachers and apprentices, and their tattooed bodies paradoxically act as advertisements for those seeking the aid of spellskins. Hares are more than willing to use their magical talents in exchange for food and shelter, sometimes temporarily living by the clanfire before moving on.
Beyond Lake Littleblood, two other notable centers used by the Sign of the Hare include Delvetomb, a former aberrant vault whose monstrous inhabitants were driven off but whose inner workings and chambers are still being explored, and the Moon-Palace of Takash which was created as a self-sustaining magical home that teleports between born and dying moons. Although it would be a great boon, Takash is long-dead and its spells and invisible servants are beginning to malfunction.
But while they may have noble goals, their willing breaking of Black Taboos has caused more than a few to view spellskins to view other kinds of restrictions with the same disdain, including delving into dark magic. Such Hares are vilified by their own, and a breakaway faction known as the Recusance is detailed in the Threats section.
Thoughts: I like the Sign of the Hare’s existence, as it shows that there are people in Planegea rebelling against the cosmic mandate of the Black Taboos rather than passively accepting them. In other settings such things would be regarded as immutable and irresistible, but I’m glad to see that the author is willing to provide ways to strain against such bindings.
Venomguard is an alliance of monster hunters headquartered in Edgegather. Originally formed out of necessity to fight and drive back monsters that came out of the Venom Abyss via the local Unfall, the Venomguard’s purpose has broadened into becoming Planegea’s most famous band of monster hunters. They only seek out the best of the best, recruiting hunters who already have a reputation who are then gathered into larger groups who travel the land and take back trophies of their kills to the Lodge in Edgegather. The Venomguard’s leadership is cyclical, granted every midwinter to whichever group has the most impressive trophies. This tradition has caused otherwise cooperative hunters to become competitive, less willing to share their techniques in hopes of not being shown up by rivals. This manifests in a generational gap, as newer members are more driven by the idealistic purpose of the monster hunter in defending people and are thus most likely to share advice. Meanwhile, the most veteran monster hunters are tight-lipped, and regrettably inter-organization conflict has occurred between hunting parties eyeing the same trophy.
The Venomguard Lodge in Edgegather is their headquarters, but their use of chattercrests (caviramus dinosaurs) who can mimic detailed speech lets them carry out long-distance non-magical communication with each other much like messenger pigeons. The Lodge also has a magical portal that can transport hunters to the farthest reaches of Planegea via a literal leap of faith off the cliffs into the jungle below.
Thoughts: This is a very attractive faction for PCs to join, as going around the world to hunt and fight mighty prehistoric beasts is likely one of the stronger pulls for Planegea. The competition for trophies and leadership is a good means of providing sources of internal conflict beyond the external threats of monsters, too.
The Whale Clan is the largest clan of the seas of southern Planegea, centered around the archipelago of Scattersea. They worship the whale Mala Long-Song, and primarily live in nomadic assemblies of boats led by female authority figures. Every year they gather at the Hallow of Mala where their goddess rises to the surface to communicate with worshipers. Their culture encourages curiosity and continual learning about the world, often taught from childhood in the form of fables that involve “holding respect in one hand and questions in the other.” Popular recurring characters include Old Yesterday and Young Tomorrow living on a boat named Today, frequently asking and answering each other’s questions about life and the world.
The clan’s boats take on a variety of types, such as canoes, catamarans, rafts, barges, and even entire villages floating on the waves. They do build settlements on the shores of islands, but these aren’t permanent dwellings, instead setting sail for another and letting the old one be discovered by another group in a cyclical process. While this helps encourage them to take good care of such villages for future people who may come to them, there have been cases where raiders and other people of ill intent have used them as bases.
As a clan their people have a higher than usual amount of sorcerers, and rare among gods Mala tolerates druids among her number. As “the whale does not concern herself with barnacles,” the goddess is confident enough in her power to not be so depleted by their castings.
The clan of such a powerful goddess is bound to have enemies. Scattersea is far from a safe place, home to raiders known as sharksails as well as various undersea civilizations who can be friend or foe with as much variation in intent as Great Valley kinships. And there is of course the Sea Empire, where it is said in one of the clan’s three potential creation stories they were escaped slaves blessed by Mala to survive them and other dangers.
Thoughts: This is another section I don’t have any strong feelings about one way or the other. The Whale Clan feels built for those seeking more maritime campaigns as the Great Valley is pretty solidly landlocked.
Worldsingers are a hopeful good-aligned organization founded by the halfling chanter named Enkio. He viewed his magic as a gift, and used it where he could to uplift and heal. But he soon learned that there were those in the world who sought to silence his good works, so he chose to be quiet but not silent. He subtly taught other chanters of his example in his travels, eventually forming the Worldsingers. While they act as typical traveling do-gooder adventurers, Enkio has a grander ambition: to topple the Giant Empires, viewing them as the greatest source of suffering, and the Worldsingers follow suit in finding ways to sabotage their governments and work closely with Free Citadel. But their leader suddenly disappeared one day, leaving their leadership in the hands of his son (also named Enikio) and Yug’zesh and Tempo, who are a dragonborn and godspawn respectively.
The Worldsingers’ headquarters is an unassuming floating barge in Bitewater holding a hut, which when one goes inside finds themselves in a much larger floating hall of magically massive proportions. It holds typical high-magic things such as a great clanfire whose form and color changes to surrounding songs and stories, summoned spirit servants, and comfy guest rooms with windows looking into the underwater terrain beneath Bitewater. But its most valuable feature is a secret chamber of a magic clay map of Planegea, the most accurate and detailed known, that actively tracks Worldsingers on it along with points of light and darkness representing areas where hope or oppression are particularly strong.
Thoughts: Secret society, general do-gooder heroes, a strong focus on bardic magic, inevitable comparisons with the Harpers are going to be made as this Gnome Stew review once did. And it’s for this reason I don’t like them as much as the other factions, for they feel too straightforward and simple. The other factions with similar noble goals are rife with tension of some kind or another, internal or external. For example, Free Citadel is divided on how to handle the Stone Empire and hasn’t yet fully mastered the secrets of their claimed home, the Venomguard does a valuable service in hunting dangerous creatures but is increasingly finding themselves at each other’s throats, the doctrine of Kraia can be used for great good as well as horrific evil, and the Sign of the Hare knowingly lives on a hair’s edge all the time and is at risk of seeing their own number violate more taboos than just the Black Taboos. As for the Worldsingers, their source of internal conflict is Enikio Jr. struggling with selfish desires to abandon his position to find his father. Which is an understandable one, but comparatively feels lacking in punch as they have two other NPCs who can stand up next in line.
Thoughts So Far: While thirteen factions may feel a bit much for a Prehistoric Fantasy setting, they all help serve a unique niche within the world and provide PCs with many worthy groups to join…and some to oppose. You have a nice diversity in choice, ranging from morally neutral cultures and homelands, smaller organizations with explicit goals, and the right amount of shades of gray for enough of them that they can plausibly take on allied or enemy roles in a variety of campaigns.
I have noticed that more than a few factions have rules and ideals their members don’t often live up to, are based on an in-universe misunderstanding, or vague enough that they feel more like guidelines. I should note that this is not a criticism, as people IRL are frequently hypocritical both individually and as a society. In my opinion this actually makes several factions feel more realistic, for perfect individuals are boring and flaws help strengthen stories.
Join us next time as we finish up the rest of this chapter in Part 2, Threats!
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Libertad
Hero
Chapter 11, Part 2: Threats
No campaign setting would be complete without powerful villains for your PCs to oppose, and Planegea spares no expense in coming up with a rogue’s gallery of foes menacing the good people of this primordial world. Each threat is a veritable power unto their own, with generic outlines for individual adventures separated by tiers of play. The book also provides Overviews for what kinds of adventures, themes, and adversaries would be most appropriate for each antagonistic individual/faction. While all of the threats can exist in the setting at once, the book advises picking one or two to be the focus of a campaign, as too many cooks can spoil the broth.
The Brood centers on a fragile alliance of five chromatic dragons on Blood Mountain, each seeking to consume their mother the Worldheart Dragon in hopes of becoming master of reality. While not even the dragons know what will happen if the Worldheart Dragon dies, the Brood will not let that get in the way of their goal, for they’d much rather watch the world die than live in it eclipsed by a being greater than they. Due to this, each member of the Brood can be barely called allies, supposedly united but in reality doing everything in their power to sabotage each other’s plans. Each Brood member has their own name, common types of agents, and methods of operation. For example, Strangle-Blue Ghlastax is an arrogant dragon who supports like-minded narcissists who are the most likely to raise structures as lasting images of supposed perfection. His agents include such prideful beings like the vampires of the Gift of Thirst or a beloved dragonborn Guardian whose delusions of grandeur are convincing him that he’s a god. Poison-Green Ghelwai, in contrast, prefers using lies and deceit to make even the mighty fall, and delights in shattering people’s hopes by exposing even the wise and decent to be flawed pretenders, and whose agents include people falling down this path such as a traitorous shaman in league with an evil god or monsters from the Nightmare World.
Campaigns centering around the brood are close to classic epic fantasy, with dragons as the main antagonists. The Brood’s agents are fond of looking for legendary weapons for their own purposes, so classic dungeon crawls hunting for magical MacGuffins are a common theme, usually against rival groups of treasure hunters and draconic minions. The Brood also indirectly supports warlords and monsters as part of a greater conspiracy in building forces to take on their siblings in an all-out assault on Blood Mountain. As each Brood member is the strongest chromatic dragon of their type, their less powerful kin act as servants, flying into regions and settlements to rain elemental devastation on those below before flying back to the Venom Abyss.
Thoughts: The Brood is a strong entry point for the Threats, as they draw heavily from one of the most iconic fantasy monsters and adventure types. The fact that each member of the Brood is a power unto their own with a unique style and theme makes them five antagonists in one, a strong selling point in helping keep adventures involving them feeling different enough.
Craven of the kraken Coast are mortal cultists who conduct rituals to gain the favor of krakens from the Brinewaste, believing such beings to be gods unto their own. In reality, the true masters of the Craven are the aboleths, who use krakens and other enslaved aberrations as a front to extend their influence for the eventual day when all of the world dances to their mind-bending tune. The aboleths’ reach is strongest in the oceans and coastal regions, with terrestrial cults and slaves as well as sahuagin, merfolk, merrow, and other such beings similarly enthralled. However, the aboleth’s view krakens as the most valuable slaves, for their ability to control the weather can be used to bring floods and storms further inland. By plunging more and more of Planegea underwater this way, they can spread their influence both physically and metaphorically. The aboleths haven’t yet managed to enslave many of these beasts, but the few times they did led to storms of epic proportions whose names are well known to humanoids and giants alike, such as the Fargone Floods.
In spite of their powers, the Craven have many enemies ranging from the storm giants of the Sea Empire, slaves that manage to break free of their influence, sharksail raiders, and the Whale Clan. Thus, they prefer to hide in plain sight, with coastal settlements having eerie Shadow of Innsmouth vibes of slaves who don’t seem mentally all there and joylessly work with a hive-mind like unity. And as any significant injury risks a slave’s mind breaking free, the Craven have both a large number of runaway slaves and brutal measures to clamp down on this. Many slaves tossed overboard are those who suffer harm on sea trips by their fellows, with the aboleths hoping they’ll drown. Some manage to swim inland to safety, with nothing to show for it but knowledge of the cult’s existence. Campaigns centering around the Craven have strong themes of cosmic horror, representing the most ancient of foes who seek to command the sea itself.
Thoughts: The Craven are one of the two aberration-heavy threats in this chapter. Unlike the Crawling Awful they have more explicit themes and creature types in being aquatic and aboleth-centric, and their enmity with other larger-than-Medium entities of the sea can make for strange alliances of convenience. Imagine having to brave the courts of the Sea Empire or saving a terrible kraken in order to brave the pelagic depths and bring the fight to the aboleths themselves!
The Crawling Awful are a collective of aberrations and oozes that used to be the dominant civilization of Planegea before falling to unknown causes. Their last refuges are in vaults in the lone reaches of the world, and are waiting for some kind of signal to reawaken in full and come out to once again take the world for themselves. Unlike some of the other threats in this chapter which may seek to conquer and enslave mortals or make alliances with like-minded wicked souls, the Crawling Awful are more overtly destructive and hostile. They seek to devour and destroy mortals, kill the gods and desecrate their hallows, and blight surrounding land that becomes hostile to local life. When they do choose to keep mortals at their mercy, it is most often for turning them into livestock or hosts for more of their kind. Any life they don’t destroy is instead utterly, irreversibly changed.
Some believe that the Crawling Awful originate from the void between the stars, and indeed many of their number can be found in such places if not building eldritch devices to gain access to such dark reaches of space. Some hope they seek to return to wherever they came from and forget about Planegea. Others fear that they’re not trying to escape, but to summon more of their kind into the world. As for the stars themselves, they claim to not have any relation or responsibility, saying that their lands suffer their infestation just like the rest of Planegea.
Aberrations of all kinds can be used as members of the Crawling Awful, including illithids, albeit the text doesn’t outright allude to this due to copyright:
While Planegea was published in 2021, I couldn’t help but notice some text that reminds me of Baldur's Gate 3. Spoiled due to a plot point not everyone may have experienced yet.
I now can’t get the image of Caveman Astarion out of my mind.
Thoughts: The Crawling Awful is another kind of Lovecraftian threat like the Craven of the Kraken Coast, but are different enough to serve their own roles and niche in adventures. The Craven are more tightly based on a certain type of monster and region, of unseen masters using unwitting and unwilling pawns for goals of domination. The Crawling Awful are a more diverse and generic assortment of Lovecraftian-themed alien monsters whose dungeon-style vaults can be plausibly dropped anywhere in Planegea. While they have a common uniting factor of most of their kind slumbering in wait for a signal or being unsealed early by external phenomena, the Crawling Awful don’t have particularly specific monsters or servants like aquatic humanoids or coastal cultists. Thus, one vault-based adventure or antagonist can feel different enough to effectively be their own group of monsters. By sacrificing stronger unified themes, the Crawling Awful makes up for it in wider applicable uses.
Deepthought is a construct of unknown origin tasked with a singular purpose: “everything can and must be known.” The monolith known as the Eyestone in Lion clan territory is actually holding the hidden location of this being. While Deepthought’s goals of accruing knowledge can be used for positive outcomes, the construct either does not conceive of or care about the moral applications of its goals. Deepthought and its agents may engineer a plague just to record the suffering caused, or kidnap people against their will to be held in zoo-like prisons to be studied and observed.
As Deepthought shrouds itself in divination-confounding defenses to conceal its presence, it acts through agents rather than going out into the world. Some agents are entirely unwitting, such as animals with embedded gems acting as scrying vectors. Some agents are entirely wilful, such as the Order of the Eye who seeks to aid Deepthought’s acquisition of knowledge and know a secret password they can use to access a subterranean lair beneath the Eyestone. Monsters and magic items associated with Deepthought have strong science fantasy themes, such as laser-like rods and gems that deal radiant damage, psionic powers that can delve into minds, and constructs ranging from homunculi, golems, and obsidian vehicles fashioned in the likenesses of animals to aid in exploration of Planegea. Such vehicles are magic items: the hawk and mammoth detailed in this book, while the crab is quite clearly an OGL-friendly reference to the Apparatus of Kwalish.
Deep Thoughts: Deepthought is a very clear reference to the supercomputer of the same name in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and has a similar goal in attaining ultimate knowledge of the universe. I do wish the name chosen could’ve been more original, as I like the overall concept. Deepthought touches upon another Prehistoric media trope of futuristic alien-like civilizations coming down to mess with dinosaurs and cavemen. Which on the one hand, pushes hard against the constraints of the Black Taboos. But unlike the Crawling Awful which is more Lovecraftian, Deepthought is more generic sci-fi and represents the cold analysis of artificial intelligence as opposed to the alien and unpredictable mindset of alien intelligence.
Duru is a soul-like presence that persists among plants, who remembers a time when animals didn’t exist. And it wishes to return to such a world, hating how animals oh so easily bring destruction to the green with torches, clanfires, and foraging. Unlike more modern themes of industrialization and the balance of nature, Duru and like-minded plants and fungi seek no compromise between wilderness and civilization. Instead they seek the genocide of all that bleed, breathe (oxygen), and digest. Duru materializes in the world by possessing a plant, which grows extremely large and gains the ability to speak and move, and he can grant similar powers by awakening other plants and even fungi. For this reason Duru prefers to inhabit forests, where he can easily create an army of followers and defenses, and he has many means with which to cause misery. Breeding various kinds of poisonous plants, setting rampaging forests in the paths of clans and animal herds, parasitic mushroom spores that take over people’s bodies, and carnivorous plants that feed on blood are but a few of his evil schemes.
While Duru hates all animal life, there are times when he’d spare warlocks and druids, granting them powers to be used in the service of betraying their own kind. Duru hates aberrations the most of all, and for this reason has at times made strange bedfellows with mortals to fight foes such as the Crawling Awful and Craven of the Kraken Coast. He is also opposed by most gods, even those with nature and plant themes, as they gain their power from mortal supplication. Still, some ally with Duru all the same, albeit knowing that they’re making a devil’s bargain in the process.
Thoughts: Duru is a rather interesting take on the eco-terrorist concept, albeit much less well-intentioned extremist in wanting to destroy all animal life. This villain presents another take on the concept of a hostile wilderness part and parcel of Prehistoric Fantasy, and serves as a good means to introduce intelligent plant enemies such as blights into adventures. However, Duru is rather limited in that plants don’t have that same staying power as t-rexes and more animalistic threats, and for enemy variety there just aren’t that many plant monsters in DnD.
Fiendish Gods represents the scattered assortment of evil-aligned deities holding sway in the Wintersouth and Cult Riverlands. What unites them is that the lands they inhabit are sparse in resources, and they are ruthless enough to use such scarcity to exploit those mortals unlucky enough to rely on them for survival. They thus serve as Planegea’s one stop shop for all things devilish and demonic, albeit the in-universe setting doesn’t make any such distinctions between them or even celestials, all being grouped under the generic label of “divine.”
Unlike some more unified factions and threats, the Fiendish Gods despise each other, viewing every other god as a rival and threat to mortal worship and thus power. The demonic Winter Gods and the devils of the Cult Riverlands share a special kind of enmity for the other group, finding deep ideological differences between chaos and order that is the closest thing that can get local gods to work together in sabotaging the other side. But they also have many enemies beyond each other, such as orcs and druids who view them as the best cases for antitheism, minor good and neutral gods working in their regions in secret, wronged mortals who suffered under their yoke, and the fey of Nod who dislike them less for their evil ways and more for the fact that they view such prideful entities as just begging to be humiliated.
Like every other god they cannot move beyond their hallows, so they imbue some of their power into warlocks, shamans, and minor spirits like Monster Manual fiends to spread their will. Both sets of gods are quite close in ideology and concept to traditional D&D fiends: the Winter Gods are erratic, impulsive, and have a high attrition rate that regularly sees a change in leadership in the Wintersouth from killing each other, albeit the ox-like Twr is the most powerful of their number and who is the closest thing to a regional power. As for the Cult Riverlands, these gods call themselves idols and have a strict, bureaucratic like process of the apportioning of water, and threats of starvation and thirst are a common means of punishment to their worshipers. The idols used to have a pit fiend leader known as the Lizard Lord, but he was overthrown in a conflict known as the Cult War and is buried somewhere deep in the qanats.
Thoughts: The Fiendish Gods are a good means of using that creature type in Planegea. They also provide a rather interesting and plausible spin on reasons why mortals would worship such evil deities. In the particular regions in which they hold sway, mortals don’t really have a choice for the alternative is to starve, so like the Craven and Giant Empires their followers are also derived from slaves and victims. In so doing, the fiendish cults of Planegea are less like typical evil fantasy religions and more like typical evil fantasy kingdoms: their subjects don’t all buy into their doctrines, just as easily derived from people put into bad situations as well as genuinely evil souls who seek power.
The Giant Empires are the face of tyranny to many in Planegea, having the trappings of what many in the real world would call civilization yet with their own kinds of dangers not found in the wild reaches. They are very much the typical evil imperialist kingdoms in high fantasy stories, with warlike legions of unmatched might running rampant over the free peoples of the world. And perhaps only a plucky band of heroes such as the PCs stand a chance at beating them!
The foundations of every empire is at the hands of the genies, who left their creations to the giants after a complicated series of bargains. The giants were allowed to rule over the Great Valley and adjoining areas* provided that the genie's sovereign territories over the Elemental Wastes were respected. The giants fear the genies more than anything, that one day they may come back and alter the deal, making them lose all that they inherited. So instead they turn their attention to more convenient targets, such as the humanoids to enslave. The giants also despise the dragons, viewing the Worldheart Dragon as possessing power she has no right to. While the empires have floated plans to invade the Venom Abyss and Blood Mountain, such an effort would require an international coalition, and so far no single empire seeks to work alongside the other.
*Without the consent of the smaller people also inhabiting it, naturally.
Each Giant Empire has its own feel and themes, some of which were covered in the prior chapter. To this end I will cover things that haven’t been discussed. The Air Empire represents the stereotypical decadent sword and sorcery civilization, who play at being connoisseurs of art and culture but have become jaded to the point that they can find pleasure only in making others suffer. The Fire Empire’s last Emperor died in battle against the efreeti in the ruined city of Bosa, and this gave rise to a succession crisis of various members of his court vying for the throne and whose closest thing to a leader is the War-Regent in charge of the army. The Sea Empire’s leader genuinely believes that his efforts are selfless and noble in holding back the aberrations of the Brinewaste, with him viewing slavery being a “hard decision” vs the greater evil of oblivion. His single-minded pursuit of the war effort has left other forms of governance in the hands of storm giants far from the war front, who grow bored with their duties and are frequently given over to infighting and making raids against their humanoid neighbors. It is for this reason that the Sea Empire is starting to fray apart, not from enemies without but within. As for the Stone Empire, the Stone Emperor and Frost Empress are married but it is a marriage of political convenience. In reality they hate each other and will do anything to reduce the other’s power, provided that such schemes don’t weaken the Empire as a whole. As for why they haven’t taken back Free Citadel, the giants do intend so but the natural and artificial defenses of that city have made that impractical and too risky for them, so instead they bide their time.
Thoughts: I like the Giant Empires for several reasons. First is that they are simple and straightforward villains in comparison to the more offbeat and conspiratorial threats in this chapter. While they occupy the role of hostile humanoid raiders part and parcel of DnD adventures, the fact that they are more technologically advanced than the humanoid civilizations and also greater in size makes them feel a more credible threat at various levels of play than goblins, kobolds, and similar humanoid monsters. In a way, Planegea puts a reversal on this role, where the PCs are the smaller humanoids having to defend themselves from the more advanced, larger forces.
My main criticism is that given their detail in Chapter 10, the Giant Empires in this chapter don’t have much in the way of new stuff, and the Air Empire suffers in particular in being rather vague on their particular forms of evil and relative lack of internal conflicts. Compare this to the Stone Empire’s warring leaders and Free Citadel, the Sea Empire’s war front against aberrations, dissension within, and their unlikely alliances with some humanoids such as merfolk and Seerfall sages, and the Fire Empire’s succession crisis and sabotage of the efreeti. The Air Empire feels lacking in comparison. Perhaps that’s why the cloud giants are bored sadists, as they have no significant threats of their own!
The Gift of Thirst are those who tire of the day-to-day struggle of life in Planegea, those who are so fearful of death that they sought to find ways to prolong their lifespan. Only twelve real vampires exist in Planegea, and they are part of a council led by their queen Nin who rules from the lava-strewn volcanic lair of Stoneblood Shrine in the Fang of Rock and Flame. The vampires make use of vampire spawn, enslaved mortals, and various undead and beastly beings as servants. They are happy to sup on the blood, sweat, and tears of others to live lives of ease as a sort of prehistoric aristocracy. The Gift of Thirst decorates their subterranean lairs in their Tomb-lands with rare items and decorations. Vampires view their state of being as a gift, and the process for which one can become a vampire is a complicated hierarchy known as the Path where worthy candidates prove themselves via loyalty and labor. Vampires, due to their nature, are always in need of mortal servants to go where daylight shines and the rivers run, and such mortals can become vampire spawn with greater powers but with the restrictions imposed by undeath and being enthralled to their masters. The rare times when a true vampire has been created was by Nin, who grants a wish to the new vampire which are invariably world-altering events that changed Planegea for the worse. Nin herself cannot grant wishes, and in fact derives this power from an enslaved efreet chained beneath her throne whose desire to destroy her keeps him going.
Being vampires who rule over mortals with iron fists, the Gift of Thirst has made many enemies but two have sprung from unlikely places. The first are the Sharksail Betrayers, former vampire spawn who took to the high seas when their master was slain by a hero. In keeping to the oceans vampires cannot reach them, and they feed upon the people of Scattersea as pirates. The other enemy of significance is none other than Death himself, Nazh-Agaa. The King of the Dead views undeath as a threat to his power, for if souls can find a way to avoid coming into his kingdom then eventually he will have nobody to rule over. Nin is not idle to hide from him the rest of her days, and hopes to collect enough power to invade the Kingdom of the Dead and become Queen of the Dead and Undead.
Thoughts: Vampires don’t really do it for me in a Prehistoric Fantasy setting. Their overall mythos speaks to a certain kind of civilization, where they rule from the shadows and blend in with teeming masses of humanity or are brooding feudal lords sitting in decaying manors with throngs of frightened peasant vassals. While the Tomb-lands are meant to evoke this latter idea, the close-knit nature of Planegean society doesn’t really fit for the “shadows among the herd” feel, and the use of a bound efreeti and lava-themed dungeon headquarters feel more like ways to show how this setting’s vampires are different. Which can work in helping that square peg fit into the round hole of the setting, but due to my rather subjective feelings the Gift of Thirst don’t grab me.
Kelodhros Ascendant is a growing civilization within the depths of the Venom Abyss. The Kelodhrosians are hairless, pale fragile humanoids in their original forms, but through violent sacrifices they discovered ways to steal the forms of other beings and shapeshift into them partially or fully, ranging from humanoid to animals. This ritual is known as the Embrace, and unlike other media archetypes they don’t do it for the honor of dread gods but instead solely for themselves. They view Planegea as a world theirs for the taking, and the gods, while powerful, are but one possible form they can take to increase their power. Through the Embrace, their civilization has created a hierarchy based on what forms they can and cannot take. For example, the Unembraced are the lowest and servants to those higher up, while Archpriests are the leaders of the empire who have stolen so many forms that nothing remains of their original aspect.
The Embrace is not without its risks. Sometimes ceremonies can go wrong or they take power from an entity they cannot control, turning into maddened monsters. The Kelodhrosians mourn the loss of their brethren but do not kill them, viewing the souls of all of their people as sacred and instead capture and confine them to incorporate into further rituals. Additionally, no matter what forms they take, all Kelodhrosians have blue eyes in whatever form they have. While they seek to spread out of the Venom Abyss, they are canny enough to realize that overt raiding and violence isn’t playing to their strengths, so they make use of spies and subterfuge in the rest of the world, building hidden ritual sites and ziggurats outside the Venom Abyss as bases to abduct and Embrace people.
Thoughts: Kelodhros Ascendant are quite clearly the forebears of doppelgangers, and the Embrace is a means of allowing variety in enemy types by reflavoring them as Kelodhrosian spies. But they don’t rate particularly highly for me as a threat, as they feel less like a campaign-defining villain and more one suited to a short series of adventures at most. There’s only so many times you can run an Invasion of the Body Snatchers style plot without it growing stale or causing your players to become paranoid.
Nazh-Agaa, the King of the Dead is not a god or similar powerful entity, but the fundamental cosmic force of Death itself. The dark counterpart to the Worldheart Dragon, Nazh-Agaa is the embodiment of entropy as much as she is the embodiment of creation. The book says that all who die see the Dark Door, passing through it into the Infinite Necropolis.* While it has the architecture of a city, it is but a mere shell of one, where its inhabitants are shades who continually add new buildings that will never be used, gradually fading away as they are absorbed into Nazh-Agaa’s form. Living beings can enter the Kingdom via the Long Way, a mysterious journey said to begin in far-away places such as beneath Blood Mountain or in the Everstorm.
*This is again a contradiction of an earlier part of the book, Chapter 10, that mentions only specific types of deaths draw people in.
Unlike the death gods of other DnD settings, Nazh-Agaa detests the undead, for they defy his hold on the inevitability of the end of all things and the way the universe should be. Ghosts are an exception, for they are already being pulled into his influence gradually and act as spies in the world of the living. But while his anti-undead stance may be admirable, his great sin against adventuring parties everywhere is his opposition to resurrection magic, including Revivify. Each time someone casts such a spell, there is a 5% chance per spell level that his attention is drawn, and each infraction causes ever greater consequences in the form of ghosts and death-themed mortal servants hunting the caster. More powerful spells summon more powerful adversaries. Nazh-Agaa’s most common minions include cultists who worship him as a god (albeit he doesn’t grant them spells), carrion animals, cats who have the ability to travel between his Kingdom and the living world relatively ceaselessly, and celestials known as valkyries who are fragments of his being and thus speak for him literally.
Nazh-Agaa may be seen as an inevitable cosmic foundation, but that doesn’t mean there are those resisting him. The gods in particular view him as a siphon to their power of mortal souls, and have begun secretly creating shards of existence that will become the afterlives for various souls. They are still an experimental process, of worlds not yet populated, but so far the King of the Dead hasn’t noticed them. But when he does, he will wreak havoc on the gods of Planegea for this slight against him.
Thoughts: Nazh-Agaa is a pretty cool concept for a villain, and similar to the Black Taboos encourages a certain style of campaign where PCs take on the heavens themselves to set right a cosmic injustice. The fact that the afterlife is a joyless place of endless labor, that Nazh-Agaa is primarily motivated by power via entropy, and that he opposes a very rare yet useful style of spell, makes him very easy to use as an antagonist.
The Recusance are different from the other threats so far in that they are a mostly humanoid group of spellskins who seek to destroy the Hounds of the Blind Heaven and break the Black Taboos. But unlike the Sign of the Hare they are utterly devoted to the ends justifying the means, and are willing to experiment with all sorts of magic in bringing about a better Planegea, no matter the cost in lives and suffering in the here and now. They view the Hares as being too weak to “do what needs doing,” likening them to the cowardice of the rabbits befitting their name.
The Recusance is your general source for evil wizards, and while they have a central headquarters known as the Preicipe Laboratorium they have seven splinter groups each working on different lines of magical research. For example, Membrane the Vile is an archmage undergoing the process of lichdom and is experimenting in undeath and who seeks to learn the ways to reanimate dead gods. Or Slemsha Coldwind, who seeks to experiment in the creation and alteration of all kinds of life in hopes of finding a state of being the Hounds cannot detect.
Thoughts: Like some of the aforementioned Factions with evil members and subgroups, the Recusance is that classic case of “noble goal, terrible execution.” Like Deepthought they serve as the negative aspects of scientific innovation without ethical guidelines, serving a wide range of roles from mad scientists to power-hungry mages. Given that wizards and even magic itself is versatile, I like how the Recusance can fit a variety of adventures and adversaries so I rate this threat highly.
Throne of Nightmares is less of a figure or group but rather an idea, the idea of mortal fears. The Nightmare World’s inhabitants and whatever Thing on the Throne that can be claimed to “rule” them changes in line with the most prominent fears in Planegea. This results in a morphic assortment of beings, but some of the more common types include malevolent fey, illusory beings made real, the precursors to drow elves known as dread elves who are native to the land, and undead. As for why undead, Nazh-Agaa’s powers don’t hold sway in Nod as the laws of creation and entropy work differently in dreams. We get a simple “Shadow Template” for dark reflections of existing beings, gaining a variety of traits such as disadvantage on rolls in sunlight and the ability to squeeze through spaces as narrow as 1 inch.
The Thing on the Throne can take different names and thus powers which often change year by year based on significant events in Planegea. They can grant spells of up to 5th level to dread elves and as environmental “raw magic” in the Nightmare World. For example, the Clown is a laughing figure who preys off of mockery and humiliation, and relies on spells such as Counterspell, Confusion, Hideous Laughter, and Invisibility, while the Betrayer preys off of broken relationships and specializes in enchantment, divination, and illusion magic. Their greatest foes are the fey of the Dream World, and will happily empower mortals (warlock and otherwise) who seek to oppose the Throne.
Thoughts: The Throne of Nightmares is very broad, but overly so for my tastes. Unlike the other threats they don’t have a specific goal, and can be basically anything in line with mortal fears. Kelodhros Ascendant, while similarly variable, has a more concrete origin and endgame. Like Nazh-Agaa, the Thing on the Throne is less a singular being and more a cosmic concept, but unlike Nazh-Agaa which provides an “out” and way to counter his plan via gods creating shards of their own afterlives, the Throne of Nightmares is pretty much eternal and inevitable. One adventure hook for Epic tier PCs is gaining the power of the Day-Star to destroy the Dark Throne, but it is presented more as an idea rather than something interwoven into the entry by default. Due to this, the Throne of Nightmares is my least favorite of the factions.
Vyrkha the Shepherd is our final threat, and much like the Recusance represents the more humanoid side of setting antagonists. Vyrkha was born to a small family of herders close to the Sea Empire, and he had a promising future as future chieftain. Such dreams were dispelled all in one horrific night, when storm giants raided his community, capturing his father and killing everyone he grew up with. Vyrkha was able to elude their attention by hiding, and ever since then he made a vow to not be so weak and helpless. Over the span of twelve years he traveled across Planegea, learning from various groups and cultures, eventually finding himself among the warlords of the Raiding Plains and claiming leadership position of a raider group.
While all of the Threats come with adventure ideas that can in theory be used to craft a full 1st to 20th level campaign, Vyrkha the Shepherd has a much more detailed plot outline in his rise to power. At 1st to 4th level he is a shrewd warlord on the rise whose sphere of influence is still regional, utilizing his great knowledge to master unconventional forms of warfare and uniting people under a common cause. That of a brighter future where mankind would no longer fear dragons and giants, but instead bring them to heel.
At 5th to 10th level Vyrkha has become the head of a great army,and is eyeing to overthrow the Bear Clan of the Great Valley. His holdings are operating at a higher level than the hunter-gatherer cultures predominant among humanoids, using supply lines, fortresses, clan leaders who act as vassals who give him tribute and additional soldiers in exchange for protection, and also delegates power to military leaders as well as traders, spellcasters and more “civic” occupations for managing day-to-day affairs of his rising civilization.
By 11th to 16th level he takes over the Brother Clans of the Great Valley and allies with the Winter God Twr. Where even gods fear and respect him, Vyrkha has become something akin to Sumeria’s Sargon of Akkad or Egypt’s first Pharaoh: bringing the Great Valley out of a subsistence hunter-gatherer culture and something closer to the agricultural civilizations, with warlords holding sway over tracts of land worked by the people. He’s been employing adventurers of his own to plunder aberrant vaults, the world of Nod, and other places to bring back wonders to expand his empire. Vyrkha’’s even managed to chip away at the borders of the Giant Empires. Divisions between the giants are exploited, and some decide that this small but fierce human may make a worthier leader than their own kin.
By 17th to 20th level, Vyrkha has obtained the title of God-Emperor, less literally and more for his uncontested rule of the vast majority of Planegea. The only regions unclaimed are the Elemental Wastes, the Venom Abyss and Blood Mountain, the Sea of Stars, and Nazh-Agaa’s Kingdom of the Dead. But as he will soon learn, overextension is one of the greatest poisons to an empire, and with less ability to manage all of his territories corruption and internal conflicts give rise. Vyrkha himself is privately frozen with indecision: claiming the power of the Worldheart Dragon, the genies of the Elemental Wastes, or Death’s domain would all serve as a magnum opus to his legacy. But even he cannot do all three at the same time, so Vyrkha promises to his inner circle that the next campaign is just around the corner, but not today…
Thoughts: While each threat has a relatively even balance of content in terms of page count, the fact that Vyrkha’s sample adventures are the most detailed at each tier of play makes me feel that this threat is the writer’s personal favorite. While I don’t know if I have a favorite myself, I can definitely see the appeal of Vyrkha. The rising warlord taking over the world is a classic fantasy trope, and his primeval empire shepherding Planegea into a sort of Chalcolithic Age lines up nicely with advancing the Stone Age era into something a tad closer to the sedentary societies common in DnD settings.
With that being said, Vyrkha’s ascension does press up against some of Planegea’s setting foundations. Namely the fact that humanoids and the PC races are overwhelmed in the face of far larger forces. The shepherd’s reign more or less throws that to the side, where his dream of humanoid domination isn’t a mad quest before a fall but something that is achievable…even if by campaign’s end his empire may be brought to its heels at the hands of the PCs. As such, its appeal can be subjective, but for DMs wanting to hew closer to Planegea as it is may find it a poor fit.
Thoughts So Far: Factions and Threats is perhaps the strongest chapter of Planegea, and does the best at showing the variety in adventures for the setting. By presenting a baker’s dozen of great foes, DMs may not feel so limited to focus on one type of villain as a major threat as opposed to more tightly-woven settings. There were a few threats which I found to be lacking, but were more than made up for with other stronger choices, so this section feels like it has something for everyone.
Join us next time as we cover new magic items in Chapter 12: Treasures!
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Libertad
Hero
This isn't a full post, but I decided to group the Threats based on the broad campaign themes associated with them in the book. First organized by threat group, then by themes.
Threats
The Brood: Epic Fantasy
Craven of the Kraken Coast: Heroic Fantasy, Horror
Crawling Awful: Cosmic Horror, Mystery
Deepthought: Science Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery
Duru: Heroic Fantasy, Horror
Fiendish Gods: Epic Fantasy, Horror
Giant Empires: Heroic Fantasy
Gift of Thirst: Horror, Swashbuckling
Kelodhros Ascendant: Horror, Swashbuckling
Nazh-Agaa, King of the Dead: Mythic Fantasy
Recusance: Horror, Sword & Sorcery
Throne of Nightmares: Horror
Vyrkha the Shepherd: Heroic Fantasy, Intrigue
Themes
Cosmic Horror: 1 (Craven of the Kraken Coast)
Epic Fantasy: 2 (Brood, Fiendish Gods)
Heroic Fantasy: 4 (Craven of the Kraken Coast, Duru, Giant Empires, Vyrkha the Shepherd)
Horror: 7 (not including Cosmic Horror; Crawling Awful, Duru, Fiendish Gods, Gift of Thirst, Kelodhros Ascendant, Recusance, Throne of Nightmares)
Intrigue: 1 Vyrkha the Shepherd)
Mystery: 1 (Crawling Awful)
Mythic Fantasy: 1 (Nazh-Agaa King of the Dead)
Science Fantasy: 1 (Deepthought)
Swashbuckling: 2 (Gift of Thirst, Kelodhros Ascendant)
Sword & Sorcery: 2 (Deepthought, Recusance)
Judging by the numbers above, Horror is the most common campaign theme, followed by heroic fantasy. The other themes are quite sparse, with 1 or 2 at most. I should note that the book doesn't go into detail on theme differentiation. Horror is also quite broad, with only one sub-division via cosmic horror, but there's no singular "fantasy" label. If there were, it would be on par with horror in commonality with both at 8. Or more so if we include Sword & Sorcery as a fantasy category, which would boost the number to 10.
Threats
The Brood: Epic Fantasy
Craven of the Kraken Coast: Heroic Fantasy, Horror
Crawling Awful: Cosmic Horror, Mystery
Deepthought: Science Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery
Duru: Heroic Fantasy, Horror
Fiendish Gods: Epic Fantasy, Horror
Giant Empires: Heroic Fantasy
Gift of Thirst: Horror, Swashbuckling
Kelodhros Ascendant: Horror, Swashbuckling
Nazh-Agaa, King of the Dead: Mythic Fantasy
Recusance: Horror, Sword & Sorcery
Throne of Nightmares: Horror
Vyrkha the Shepherd: Heroic Fantasy, Intrigue
Themes
Cosmic Horror: 1 (Craven of the Kraken Coast)
Epic Fantasy: 2 (Brood, Fiendish Gods)
Heroic Fantasy: 4 (Craven of the Kraken Coast, Duru, Giant Empires, Vyrkha the Shepherd)
Horror: 7 (not including Cosmic Horror; Crawling Awful, Duru, Fiendish Gods, Gift of Thirst, Kelodhros Ascendant, Recusance, Throne of Nightmares)
Intrigue: 1 Vyrkha the Shepherd)
Mystery: 1 (Crawling Awful)
Mythic Fantasy: 1 (Nazh-Agaa King of the Dead)
Science Fantasy: 1 (Deepthought)
Swashbuckling: 2 (Gift of Thirst, Kelodhros Ascendant)
Sword & Sorcery: 2 (Deepthought, Recusance)
Judging by the numbers above, Horror is the most common campaign theme, followed by heroic fantasy. The other themes are quite sparse, with 1 or 2 at most. I should note that the book doesn't go into detail on theme differentiation. Horror is also quite broad, with only one sub-division via cosmic horror, but there's no singular "fantasy" label. If there were, it would be on par with horror in commonality with both at 8. Or more so if we include Sword & Sorcery as a fantasy category, which would boost the number to 10.
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