ZEITGEIST Danor lore in Zeitgeist

[NyusSong]

Hi there, it's my first time posting here, and there was something I was wondering about Danor lore since I was creating some documents for my players to read ahead of yet another Zeitgeist campaign. I've been taking information from both the Player's Guide and the Adventures in Zeitgeist book, but the thing is that I can't seem to find more lore about Danor, specially considering other nations do have additional lore in the AIZ book.

I considered the following before coming here to ask:

• Ber has additional lore regarding how its revolution came to be, the ancient times of dragons, plus the people of Ber.
• Crisillyir has additional lore regarding the story of Triegenes, the creation of the Clergy, the two Victories, the Family, and the Clergy dogma.
• Drakr has additional lore regarding the rule of the Clergy, how the federation came to be, and the creation and spread of Heid Eschatol.
• Elfaivar has additional lore regarding the rise and fall of the eladrin empire, Vekesh, and colonialism.
• Risur has additional lore regarding its foundation, the Yerasol Wars, the RHC, and so on

So the weird thing is that I can't seem to find additional lore on Danor apart from what appears on the Player's Guide (The House of Jierre, and Cities and Industry) and in AIZ (considering that lore on Danor jumps from their global aspirations pre-Zeitgeist and the Industrial Revolution in 300 AOV to certain Zeitgeist events and post Zeitgeist lore). Is there anything else I should try and find apart from that? I found it weird that there wasn't that much additional lore on Danor (comparing it with the other nations).

Thanks in advance.

 

[arkwright]

Danor lore is kind of spread throughout various points in the AP rather than being in one big gazetteer. Some left to implication. What you'll want to do is read the parts of the AP where the party visits Danor; Book 4 on the train, Book 9 in Methia (including the Ob meeting flashbacks discussing Danor), Book 10 at the summit, maybe the Bond of Forced Faith prequel-adventure concerning Amielle Latimer. That'll get you things like the Book 4 mention that you need passes to move around the city due to past labor riots, and Book 9 with the Danor founder Jierre and crises faced over the years.

I wrote the AIZ Lore and I'm not surprised that it's kind of hard to back-date it to the start of the AP, given how much change Danor goes through over the timeskip.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Book 9 in Methia

*8

edit: wait--

I wrote the AIZ Lore

you WHAT?

 

[Adigard]

I've been trying to pull together some tidbits here and there for a new Zeit campaign I started recently, but one thing to keep in mind is Danor didn't exist as a nation during some of the ancient times mentioned in your post. The additional lore of Crisillyir would also be Danor's history. Triegenes was born in Danor after all.

I don't really know if there's a 'firm' creation date for Danor post-1 AOV, so while they should have more modern backstory than Ber, it's hard to find. FI - I think it's around 300 AOV before Danor 'becomes resurgent with industry and technology and contests Risur for control of the Archipelago.' So there's definitely a gap between those two dates without a ton of 'danor', other than the bits arkwright pointed at.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I don't really know if there's a 'firm' creation date for Danor post-1 AOV, so while they should have more modern backstory than Ber, it's hard to find.

according to diaspora (book 8), the decision to create the obscurati was made precisely on the 14th of spring, 19 AOV (edit: and during that meeting it mentions jierre is trying to form a nation). the first major nation-building problem danor has to deal with (the spread of smallpox) that the AP mentions is in 40 AOV, meaning that at some point between 19 AOV and 40 AOV is when danor officially came into existence.

industrial revolutions don't happen overnight.

 

[NyusSong]

Danor lore is kind of spread throughout various points in the AP rather than being in one big gazetteer. Some left to implication. What you'll want to do is read the parts of the AP where the party visits Danor; Book 4 on the train, Book 9 in Methia (including the Ob meeting flashbacks discussing Danor), Book 10 at the summit, maybe the Bond of Forced Faith prequel-adventure concerning Amielle Latimer. That'll get you things like the Book 4 mention that you need passes to move around the city due to past labor riots, and Book 9 with the Danor founder Jierre and crises faced over the years.

That kinda makes sense, thank you very much. I quickly read the campaign the first time I DMed it, but the group disintegrated after we finished Adventure 6, so we kinda left it there. I hope this one with another group is the good one because we spent 2 years to finish up to Adventure 6.

according to diaspora (book 8), the decision to create the obscurati was made precisely on the 14th of spring, 19 AOV (edit: and during that meeting it mentions jierre is trying to form a nation). the first major nation-building problem danor has to deal with (the spread of smallpox) that the AP mentions is in 40 AOV, meaning that at some point between 19 AOV and 40 AOV is when danor officially came into existence.

industrial revolutions don't happen overnight.

Thank you for pointing it out as well, since sometimes details tend to avoid my eyes and I end up not figuring some things out until I read the book again.

 

[RangerWickett]

*8

edit: wait--

you WHAT?

Yeah, Ark and Edna (I can't recall her screen name) brainstormed and bounced ideas with me, and they wrote the first draft for most of chapter 4 of Adventures in ZEITGEIST. I had to pare some things down to hit our target word count, but they came up with a ton of cool ideas to flesh out the bones presented in the adventure path.

 

[RangerWickett]

I hadn't really thought about it until now, but yeah, Danor has some big history gaps. It basically goes "Demonocracy was here. The Clergy arose here. The Clergy was splintered by the Great Malice. Jierre managed to wrangle people to start working together. There was smallpox. 260 years later Danor started fighting for control of the Yerasol Archipelago. A few wars happened, and somewhere in there people started making steam engines. Aodhan steals a steam warship and blows up an orphanage (allegedly!). Then the adventure path starts."

Yeah, that leaves a lot of room.

If I had to make things up off the cuff, I'd draw heavily from actual French history after the Black Death hit in the 14th century. Only instead of kings, you've got various 'governors' (who would fill the role of French nobility) who elected a Sovereign (who would fill the role of the French king). That's oversimplifying, because you don't have Catholicism really -- though honestly the history of Jierre and Nicodemus trying to stamp out latent adherence to Clericist religion could be fascinating and likely very horrific.

I guess the Great Eclipse could be sort of a stand-in to the French Revolution.

But like any history, there would be far more factions and shifting alliances than you could easily synopsize in a few paragraphs, so you'd need to simplify things. But I would figure the region originally was loosely federated and it took time for the Jierre line to really solidify power and create a sense of patriotic unity.