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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 4702907" data-attributes="member: 467">To really get started with this project, I think I need to nail down the nature of the Ancients and their civilization and how those are reflected in the ruins they left behind (the dungeons the PCs will be seeking out, exploring and laying claim to) and the indigenous inhabitants of the Island (the "stock enemies" the PCs will be going up against).First off, the Ancients disappeared about 500 years before the discovery of the Island by the Civilized Nations. This is enough time for the humanoids living on the island to have descended into archetypical savagery without being so long as to have seen the rise of a second great civilization on the island.  I am not too worried about the state of the ruins, as they will have been constructed with both great craftsmanship and powerful magics to preserve them.The Ancients were (or at least became) a decadent and immoral society composed of powerful wizard-nobles who distrusted one another enough to keep themselves isolated in small, remote villas and fortresses. They were either subterranean or nocturnal, as these locations are almost invariably underground, with some structures above ground (probably night time gardens  or perhaps the domiciles, workshops and/or barracks of their thrall races). They coveted wealth, particularly in the form of gold and jewels (and those in the form of beautiful, if decadent, artistry) as well as magical power (both as arcane knowledge and magical items).I wonder -- what if they were or were the progenitors of Mercanes?The Ancients kept slaves in the form of goblinoids. Perhaps the goblins were the original inhabitants of the island and when the Ancients arrived -- are the from this world? this plane? -- they enslaved the goblins. "Normal" goblins would have been their labor force and their craftsmen. Hobgoblins might have been created or bred as their soldiers, with which they fought amongst one another for resources and supremacy. In thinking about what to do with bugbears, it occurs to me: goblins are often described as easily mutated in D&D. Perhaps bugbears are a strain of goblin turned up to 11. Perhaps there's need for a "One Million Goblin Mutants" chart to accompany this setting idea.But it hardly seems fitting to limit the scope of potential enemies to goblins. I imagine giant races as also being indigenous, living in the high mountain regions where even the Ancients found it too bothersome to live. The giants may have warred with the Ancients at some point, using ogres and trolls as shock troops.Orcs I see as recent arrivals -- not as recent as the men, elves and dwarves, but nonetheless having arrived after the Ancients left. Perhaps they were viking like raiders, their Lief Erikson discovering this New World three centuries before the rest of the world. Orcs, then, would be established and invested in plundering the ancient tombs, fighting amongst one another until the arrival of humans and their kin, perhaps on the verge of an alliance that could spell doom for the civilized races' efforts to colonize the island.Various monstrosities are easy to explain as either native flora and fauna or the remnants of Ancient experiments. Some creatures from the Underdark -- illithids and beholders and the like -- may have "discovered" the island by exploring upward and finding the Ancients subterranean ruins.  But what of dragons?Dragons are always an important factor in setting design, IMO, being so iconic to both fantasy in general and the game in particular. They would certainly be attracted to the island by the wealth and magic left by the Ancients, but how many?  How influential? What of dragons' relationship to natives and new arrival alike?The question remains what happened to the Ancients. Why did they seal up their treasures and magic in vaults and tombs and the leave their civilization? I'm not sure why, but I feel like it is better served if the Ancients actively left, rather than being destroyed or dying out.  At the same time, the Ancients also present an opportunity for use of powerful undead -- wraiths, specters, ghosts, banshees and liches can be Ancients who never "left"? Perhaps there was a schism -- those that worshiped wealth and power and those that worshiped Death? (There's something vaguely "Egyptian" about this marriage of death and amassed wealth.)Thoughts?</blockquote>

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