Dragonborn & Tieflings: What is their place in your world?

[A'koss]

In my 4e Greyhawk campaign I'm moving the setting forward a century to allow some time for the new races to settle in (in time building a few villages, towns and cities of their own).

In the early CY: 600s, the Elemental Princes of Evil laid seige to Oerth and the Dragonborn are they're driven out of their homelands in the unknown west. The Dragonborn exodus was comprised of several great Houses, some of whom have dark ambitions and make their way into the Helfurnaces where they had learned of a new nation rising in the aftermath of the war. They formed and alliance with the Fire Giants, whose forces had grown in strength with addition of remnants of Elemental army.

Some of the more noble Houses settled in Ket, while others pressed eastward and though initially relations with other races were rocky, they eventually settled in strength in places like the Shield Lands and eastern Furyondy (who's military aid was sorely needed). Others settled in the Bright Desert after Rary's disappearance and some houses sought to tame the iron sands of the Dirge and the borderlands of the new nation of Ilbasan (new regions in the Flanaess).

IMG, the Dragonborn have the strongest presence in the Shield Lands in the current year (CY: 692), helping oppose the rise of Iggwilv (who had recently completed her apotheosis into a full-fledged goddess from the events of the Savage Tide).


Tieflings were largely introduced by Iggwilv when she made her grand re-appearance in the Flanaess. In any lands that she controls, there is a high percentage of tieflings born. However, they are not all evil and many have fled her lands and over the years scattered to the far corners of the Flanaess.

 

[Mrin_prophet]

In my homebrew I have a large swath of land labeled The Unforgiving Lands. I've modified this to have been the home of the small Tiefling and Dragonborn empires. To model the storyline, I had them pretty much destroy each other an age ago. In the current setting, the tieflings are disliked and distrusted and are few in number. They can settle in the larger cities but are often shunned in smaller villages. They typically make their living as traders/shopkeepers, etc. The dragonborn are rare. They usually avoid cities but can be found in small groups in the open country. If they blend into civilization, they typically join House Marek (think fighter's guild, sort of) and serve as elite guards, bounty hunters, etc.

Map of area attached.

 

[Piratecat]

In my campaign tieflings will vary in appearance a little like how half-orcs did in 3e: from the bestial extreme to the near-human, but never identifiable as actually human. They'll keep their tails. I'm keeping the default backstory for both tieflings and dragonborn, setting their origins on a now unexplored jungle continent. They've just spread across the world in an exodus after their empires fell.

 

[Rechan]

For Eberron, I'm still considering it, however, I got something in mind. For the tiefling, a part of the second wave that arrived to Khorvaire from Sarlona, including many nobles and high status people, were charmed by a hidden Rakhasha Rajah. Those corrupted nobles founded a city somewhere (need to place it) and eventually turned into the Tiefling (PHB background). Slowly, the Tiefling are opening themselves to the rest of the Nations.

Back when 4e was first announced, the first question I asked Keith Baker is "How will Tiefs be handled in Eberron?"

He suggested that Tiefs are what happens when someone is born when a plane is cotenous, or to some births inside a manifest zone. Not only is the tief's birth connected to that plane, personality is also; a Tief in line with Firnia is likely to be quick tempered and an arsonist; a Tief connected to Shavarath is warlike and eager for violence.

For Dragonborn, I need to analyze what the PHB says about them and think how place them in Khorvaire, as relatives to dragons overall, but not with ties to Argonnessen dragons.

Honestly? I'd say that the Dragonborn are a creation by the Rajahs. During the War agains tthe Dragons, the Rajah created the DBs as 1) A mocking insult to actual dragons, and 2) as foot soldiers. When the Rajah were defeated, the Dragons sealed the DB away somewhere in Khorvaire, in a state of eternal slumber. Within the last decade though, something has caused them to slowly resurface.

Otherwise, I'd put them in Q'Barra, and say they a new race, created by lizardfolk births in proximity to the dragon guarding that ancient city. There's no inter-species hanky panky, so much as it is proximity to the supernatural nature of dragons effecting the souls and bodies of lizardfolk eggs.

 

[Stoat]

Many years ago, an army orcs and demons loyal to Dagon devastated the western edge of the known world. Several imperial provinces fell to the demonic horde and lingered under the yoke of Dagon's minions for decades.

From these blasted lands hail the tieflings.

I've had a big, empty Australia-shaped blob on the eastern edge of my campaign map since 1993. I've never much developed it beyond saying (1) its a desert land; and (2) the culture is primarily matriarchal.

Turns out Dragonborn live there.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

In my world:

Nerath, which was itself built on the inheritance of an earlier empire, fell in an enigmatic cataclysm. The event was magical widespread and deadly. Three groups survived:

1.) Human members of the Legions who were far from the empire at the time of the event. They are now nomads and the smallest of the civilized races. They preserve their military legacy by forming free companies who wander the world seeking out opportunities for heroism and mercenary profit.

2.) Farmers in the central river valleys of the empire who merged with refugees from the faewyld to preserve themselves against the magic of the catastrophe. They are now well organized pacifists who deal with all races and host all heroes. They would be your generic the heroes start here culture.

3.) Members of the aristocracy and their vassals who desperately made an agreement with the infernal courts in order to become non-human enough to survive the curse. These Tieflings now have the largest population in the world but are extremely disorganized. They form the peasants, small urban, and minor noble populations of most of the outside world. Often they live in the ruins of Nerath. There is a vast generation gap between those with memories of the crisis and those born after.

Dragonborn are one of the two oldest cultures in the world. They have lived alongside the rise and fall of every empire, but unless they held the first empire they have never had one themselves. The Halflings - the other elder culture - claim they have disowned the concept entirely. Their civilization falls into two parts:

1.) Elder Dragonborn live within the hills of their Sacred Precinct. They have the society of Tigers. Each elder lives on his or her own in an individual territory equipped with enough resources to insure personal survival and that of two children at a time. The land has been cultivated to make it as fertile as possible for themselves as apex predators, though the only permanent structures are 'baths' that surround watering holes and function as centers for education and political action. There word of those dragonborn most advanced in their meditations and transformations is respected above all others, but they otherwise operate by consensus where they operate socially at all.

2.) Wandering Dragonborn are young and juvenile Dragonborn who have been driven by their elders into the mighty fortresses that surround the precinct. Here they are trained by a celibate caste of mentor elders and formed into companies that are then sent to wander the world in service to Takhisis and Bahamut but also simply to educate them. The Dragonborn specialize in the security of caravans and in keeping as much of the old pilgrim roads as open as possible. When they are old enough Dragonborn are graduated out of the companies into the Elders, the Mentors, or the unassigned Heroes.

The human legions who survived the catastrophe had been sent to make war upon the Dragonborn. Overtime the nobility of the Dragonborn made this an extremely unpopular move among the legions, when they lost contact with Bael Turath they decided to emulate the Dragonborn in the nomadic society they were clearly going to have to create. Though their short lives created necessary limitations such that humans can move between their home nomadic society and their foreign military society more or less at will.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't work any races into the setting at all. I work out the general plotline of the story, then I have the players create characters, then I interweave those characters into the general plotline.

If no one creates a dwarf, chances are there won't be any dwarves in my campaign.

I'm a firm believer in the "less is more" theory of world design. If my campaign ends up having only three civilized sentient races, then that makes things easier for me as a DM in terms of coming up with believable histories, cultures, and relations of and between the cultures of the world.

So lets say I end up with 2 Humans, 1 Dragonborn, and 1 Tiefling. Great. So I've got two sentient races, humans and dragonborn, and humans have a tendency towards a weird throwback to something infernal. I have surprisingly little work to do to fit these things together.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I haven't decided how I will incorporate them into the setting. It's just not a huge concern for me. Often my worldbuilding is heavily based on the implied setting, or I used a published setting like Eberron. I tend to build worlds as play happens; the edges of the map get filled in depending on where the players go. I'll see what the game offers and then shape things as I prefer.

 

[Lacyon]

My first 4E campaign is going to be the story of how Tieflings came to be in my homebrew world of Lorienth.

The second 4E campaign I run (assuming the players want more) will be the story of how Dragonborn came to be.

 

[Wulfram]

They're not likely to play a major role in the background of a setting I create, but will probably exist.

Tiefling will be pretty much the Tieflings of 3e - fiend descended, rare but not totally unknown. Certainly no Tiefling empires, though I guess a few Tiefling emperors might have existed at some point.

Dragonborn will likely only come into play if a player is interested in playing one. In such a case, we'll talk about how they fit into the setting - isolated tribes or magical experiments are possibilities, but I'll want to talk to the player to make find something that fits what he wants.