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[Let's Read] The Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea: Dungeons & Dragons, Prehistoric Style
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9255660" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/qOxxWbf.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><strong>Chapter 11, Part 2: Threats</strong></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Brood</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>Craven of the kraken Coast</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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!</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/TqCoSMY.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>The Crawling Awful</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>[spoiler][/spoiler]</p><p></p><p>I now can’t get the image of Caveman Astarion out of my mind.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>Deepthought</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Deep Thoughts:</em> <a href="https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Deep_Thought" target="_blank">Deepthought is a very clear reference to the supercomputer of the same name in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</a> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>Duru</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/FTKavKC.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Fiendish Gods</strong> 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.”</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Giant Empires</strong> 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!</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>*Without the consent of the smaller people also inhabiting it, naturally.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p>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!</p><p></p><p><strong>The Gift of Thirst</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/ap5KBAA.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Kelodhros Ascendant</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>Nazh-Agaa, the King of the Dead</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>*This is again a contradiction of an earlier part of the book, Chapter 10, that mentions only specific types of deaths draw people in.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Recusance</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>Throne of Nightmares</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/FGdOILq.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Vyrkha the Shepherd</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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…</p><p></p><p><em>Thoughts:</em> 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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic" target="_blank">Chalcolithic Age</a> lines up nicely with advancing the Stone Age era into something a tad closer to the sedentary societies common in DnD settings.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p><strong>Thoughts So Far:</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p><strong>Join us next time as we cover new magic items in Chapter 12: Treasures!</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 9255660, member: 6750502"] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/qOxxWbf.png[/img] [b]Chapter 11, Part 2: Threats[/b][/center] 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. [b]The Brood[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [b]Craven of the kraken Coast[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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! [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/TqCoSMY.png[/img][/center] [b]The Crawling Awful[/b] 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. [spoiler][/spoiler] I now can’t get the image of Caveman Astarion out of my mind. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [b]Deepthought[/b] 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. [i]Deep Thoughts:[/i] [url=https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Deep_Thought]Deepthought is a very clear reference to the supercomputer of the same name in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy[/url] 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. [b]Duru[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/FTKavKC.png[/img][/center] [b]Fiendish Gods[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [b]The Giant Empires[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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! [b]The Gift of Thirst[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/ap5KBAA.png[/img][/center] [b]Kelodhros Ascendant[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [b]Nazh-Agaa, the King of the Dead[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [b]The Recusance[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [b]Throne of Nightmares[/b] 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. [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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. [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/FGdOILq.png[/img][/center] [b]Vyrkha the Shepherd[/b] 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… [i]Thoughts:[/i] 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 [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcolithic]Chalcolithic Age[/url] 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. [b]Thoughts So Far:[/b] 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. [b]Join us next time as we cover new magic items in Chapter 12: Treasures![/b] [/QUOTE]
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[Let's Read] The Star-Shaman's Song of Planegea: Dungeons & Dragons, Prehistoric Style
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