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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8731433" data-attributes="member: 6937590">So I'm gonna sidestep the protracted back and forth about gods, what they are, what the dark/doom-sun cannon is regarding them, etc., and reply to some cool thoughts from earlier in the thread.I immediately liked your writeup while reading it but, upon reflection, I think it would be better to go a slightly different way with templars.My reasoning is that it isn't fun, as a player, to be a micromanaged by a megalomaniacal boss, even for someone who sees appeal in working from the inside of a corrupt system (for the perks, to do good from within, whatev). That leads pretty straightforwardly to your first point, that templars don't make sense as a supported PC option. On the other hand, the relationship of templar to sorcerer-king might work more comfortably for players if it were relatively hands-off; they are semi-autonomous actors, like the archetypal police detective. Oddly the example that comes most readily to mind is K from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner_2049" target="_blank">Blade Runner 2049</a>, with the tortuous baseline tests (i.e. wierd loyalty tests), and the understanding that if he leaves his job he will be immediately killed.PCs could approach and occasionally cross the line of what their sorcerer king deems acceptable as long as they (appear to) get the job done.Functionally, I'd keep everything from the rules you just described, except that the sorcerer king can't cast scrying or beast sense or use telepathy through it (nor could the PC). Instead, the PC can't take the Templarate Medallion off and the sorcerer king, upon learning of a PC's betrayal or dereliction can detonate the medallion, which--instead of being a bomb in the skull trope instant death--casts a defiling spell that destroys all water the templar and companions have, leaves a telltale defiling residue on him/her, and paints a beacon on the PC that other templars can follow--and shortly will.That gives templar PCs the latitude to be part of a normal adventuring party, with a continuous tension around their degree of loyalty to a corrupt system.Yeah, a cool vibe indeed....which made me want to riff on it.So, taking your premise, dragons-kings gone to the moons as a temporary stopover before fleeing Doomspace to defile other realms. What if you leaned into Dark Sun's scarcity themes there? Maybe, in addition to simple narcissism, none of the dragon-kings have enough juice to leave--haven't defiled enough stuff to maximize their mystic power, lack a big enough fleet to break past the solars guarding the exits, have collected insufficient McGuffins, etc.--and are in a zero-sum game, racing against each other to get enough of it from the moons before the moons, Fyreen, et al. spiral into the Eye of Doom. For some reason the Dragon Kings are unable or (...because Dark Sun) unwilling to work together. In the interim, they are making the (assumed) slow death of Fyreen into a fast death, using up everything it's got to fight each other and build ostentatious lifeboats that they will not share.Also, it might be fun--in addition to seeing what the PCs do and how it impacts the dragon-king's plans--to contrive some way to dice out which factions win in their various conflicts throughout doomspace, so that you get to be surprised along with the players which and how many dragon-kings get eliminated in the struggle.</blockquote>

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