Eberron inconsistencies

[Puggins]

House Orien's Lightning Rails, the rails themselves, are primarly built using conductor stones, wondrous magical items.

People would steal them. In droves. They would steal entire lines. Just to sell back to House Orien through fences, or to anyone who didn't want the rails running. No matter how many examples House Orien made, there would be hordes of desperate people willing to do it because the act of the theft itself, out in the middle of nowhere, was very low risk. That would pretty much be the end of the rails.

I did not see where the Eberron Campaign Setting book explains why this does not occur. Did I miss it? Did some other book mention it?

Well, I'd ask the same thing about the rail system here in our world. Someone can take a jaunt over to an isolated portion of the railroad track, rip it out and watch trains crash. So what's stopping hordes of people from calling Amtrak or NTSB and demanding $1,000,000 in unmarked bills?

Yes, we have the FBI and the police. Aundair, on the other hand, has the college of mages (who no doubt have all sorts of divination spells ready for use) and its army, which isn't prohibited from working domestically.

Also keep in mind that railways worked just fine in the late 19th century, when the nation's law enforcement arm had a tiny fraction of the resources they have today.

Offhand, I'd say that Orien would have some sort of magical mark affixed to each stone, making it relatively straightforward to track. Punishment would be severe- certainly death, possibly worse.

I don't think it would be much a problem.

 

[Aaron]

To the OP, it sounds like maybe your players want to play in Epicberron™ instead.

What makes you infer that?

Maybe it's just me but the issue dosen't seem to be the campaign world but the players. It sounds like they just enjoy "breaking" worlds.

No, they do not.

I have already explained our point of view: what's wrong with it?

It's your game. Make it work.

That's what I'm trying to do.

I had a player with an insane pick pocket ability. He was making a killing in the richer areas of Sharn.

So I decided House Kundarak created a security coin. It was expensive to make but only the rich would have it. If picked, it allowed security to track the coin. It also, if merchants paid the price, could alert them if a picked coin was on the person of a "customer".

After an hour of constantly dodging the law I explained the coin. Ended the stuff immediatly.

Nice. You have given a logical and plausible answer to a PC trying to gain as much as he could from his skills. But I can't see anything that relates to setting inconsistencies.

Now, didn't you find any inconsistencies you want to share here?

Even little ones are appreciated: what you have easily solved, could be a major problem for a less experienced DM like me.

 

[fireinthedust]

well, there are a number of economic inconsistencies that have been discussed.

I suppose I`d point out a more personal one: How much do the common folk resent the Houses for their role in the War. I`d be angry that I had to pay out for medical supplies to the same people who openly profited by shipping weapons to the folks trying to kill me.

The Dragonmark houses sold arms and equipment to every nation at the same time. They didn`t pick sides, they chose all of them and smiled when they collected coins from bloodied soldiers.


Also: what`s the percentage of people with PTSD in the setting: lots of gorey war on a massive scale, and the books that have come out really don`t comment on that.

 

[Spatula]

With the conductor stones, I thought I remember reading somewhere that they had warding spells on them. Certainly a glyph of warding is not that consequential when you can mass-manufacture wondrous items.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Yes, but is that just the tip of the stone, with the rest buried under the ground?

That's very reasonable. So are some of the things mentioned by others so far. I can also come up with reasonable explanations. I was hoping to find someone who knew of official information regarding the subject.

If there isn't any, it's an inconsistency. An easily solved one, perhaps, but it's still there.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If there isn't any, it's an inconsistency. An easily solved one, perhaps, but it's still there.

Every setting has them, particularly the more detailed ones. (Bothering explaining how the lightning rails work created this problem, for instance. If it was on the DM to figure it out, it wouldn't have occurred.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I suppose I`d point out a more personal one: How much do the common folk resent the Houses for their role in the War. I`d be angry that I had to pay out for medical supplies to the same people who openly profited by shipping weapons to the folks trying to kill me.

The Dragonmark houses sold arms and equipment to every nation at the same time. They didn`t pick sides, they chose all of them and smiled when they collected coins from bloodied soldiers.

Also: what`s the percentage of people with PTSD in the setting: lots of gorey war on a massive scale, and the books that have come out really don`t comment on that.

All of that goes on in the real world. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Until the fences are hung, flayed along the tracks by Orien as an example to the theives.

The first few times trains derailed on missing stones, killing the passengers, House Orien's profits would go straight down the drain and the vultures would begin circling.

If you have thousands of miles of track, and thieves of all types up and down it who care nothing about the risks (as we certainly know is true from today's criminals), then House Orien would need literally thousands of investigators, and they would only be able to scratch the surface.

What is House Orien going to do? Burn down Sharn when they find out the upper half of the citizens (wealth-wise) have stones in their homes as lighting? Beat them up?

Good steel was reasonably valuable in the Old West. Cut and shaped timber was a nice resource too, for that matter.

Do you have some links to material I can read up on about this?

 

[RainOfSteel]

Also: what`s the percentage of people with PTSD in the setting: lots of gorey war on a massive scale, and the books that have come out really don`t comment on that.

There would be mass-rape and atrocities back then. The PTSD effects would be greatly magnified, I would think.

I wonder if anyone has made a serious study of the matter. Did soldiers returning from the Civil War have all the same issues that soldiers returning from today's wars do, or was it somehow different? (We certainly have evidence that the mindset of the USA was different back then, but did it have any effect?)

 

[jimmifett]

The first few times trains derailed on missing stones, killing the passengers, House Orien's profits would go straight down the drain and the vultures would begin circling.

If you have thousands of miles of track, and thieves of all types up and down it who care nothing about the risks (as we certainly know is true from today's criminals), then House Orien would need literally thousands of investigators, and they would only be able to scratch the surface.

What is House Orien going to do? Burn down Sharn when they find out the upper half of the citizens (wealth-wise) have stones in their homes as lighting? Beat them up?

Lightning rail is not the only source of Orien income. They are at heart, a trade organization. They organize caravans, mundane couriers, magical couriers, they can arrange for the right interests the use of teleportation circles to move large, heavy goods for a hefty sum if the rail is down. There are no other vultures. Orien has forced them out of business centuries ago. Sure you might have local competitors and independent couriers and caravans, but the populace only hires them when they can't afford, or can't deal with Orien. They are the guild navigators of Dune. The houses are not friendly in the slightest, they allow the five nations to exist because it's profitable to NOT manage the common folk.

The different from our world's criminals and Eberron criminals, is the Mark of Finding and the Mark of Warding. After a few missing stones, the house hires those with magical abilities to track down the thieves, thieves who probably can't afford magical detection prevention. The Orien has Kundarak start placing wards on stones, wards to allow tracking of stones (perhaps to show up as red dots on a map of khorvaire, how they show their routes), or to simply outright kill any person or creature that tampers with a stone without some sort of key to temporarily disable the wards.

No, Orien's stones are only threatened by governments, who can be pressured to pay for replacement or lose Orien priviledges. It's Taggart Transcontinental with Wesley Mouch and Fred Kinnan at the helm.