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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9786684" data-attributes="member: 6750502">[ATTACH=full]420575[/ATTACH]While not the only characters of significant usefulness and danger to PCs, the five factions of Drakkenheim are a major aspect of the adventure to the point that gaming groups are inevitably going to get involved in their schemes. Each faction entry follows a standardized format, initially covering its Backgrounds and Objectives. Then the NPCs are covered, with Key Figures grouped by Leaders and Lieutenants, with Supporting Characters representing the rank-and-file. The Leaders have their own unique stat blocks in an Appendix in back, and are some of the most capable people in the setting at CR 15. All other faction NPCs make reference either to generic stats from the 2014 Monster Manual or new NPC types in this book. Strongholds briefly details the faction’s main base of operations, which get their own writeups in a later chapter. Missions and Boons cover quests and tasks the factions can give to the PCs and other adventurers, with Boons taking the form of goods and services as rewards for helping them. Strike Teams are writeups of elite teams of NPCs and monsters for when the faction needs to obtain a high-value objective and can’t rely on the PCs or other adventurers. Finally, Schemes details the various ways the faction can take revenge on PCs who earn their ire.Each faction also has a detailed sidebar listing Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws. Applied to a faction, this shows their guiding ideologies and social connections which are held and extolled by many of its members.The Amethyst Academy is a multi-purpose scholarly order, trade guild, and regulatory body that manages the affairs of arcane magic and its practitioners on the continent. Their origins lie in the ages after the fall of the Sorcerer-Kings, where many magicians relocated to strongholds and sought the aid of nobles to avoid purges at the hands of the rising Faith of the Sacred Flame. After many wars, peace was brokered via the Edicts of Lumen which elevated the Amethyst Academy into a legitimate political order, albeit with various rules and regulations. As part of these regulations, the Academy must maintain neutrality in political and economic affairs, and the Mageborn are disinherited from titles of nobility. In exchange, the Academy has many legal protections, along with funding for their arcane projects and relative autonomy to manage their own affairs.The Inscrutable Tower of Drakkenheim served as the Amethyst Academy’s largest base of operations on the continent, and they labor tirelessly to find ways of reclaiming it. They are thus the only faction that doesn’t start play with a proper stronghold, with most mages living in local homes in and around Emberwood Village. But there’s a secret Teleportation Circle beneath Eventide Manor in that town that is used for long-distance transportation of mages into and out of the region. Beyond taking back the Tower, the Academy’s other major goals include gaining a monopoly over the production and attainment of delerium, and obtaining the Instructable Staff which is also one of the six Seals of Drakkenheim. While the Amethyst Academy wants to maintain political legitimacy for the Seal’s role, they don’t want to see the city restored and rebuilt. Instead, they wish to use the ruins as a sort of incubating lab for controlled cultivation of the crystals.Although the Amethyst Academy’s leadership is made up of a Directorate of Archmages, the highest-ranking one in this adventure path is Eldrick Runeweaver, an elderly human who oversees the faction’s operations in Drakkenheim. Being the foremost authority on abjuration magic, he is a well-defended individual to account for the worst, and prefers using magic and Simulacrums of himself to deliver messages. The faction’s Lieutenant is River, a no-nonsense tiefling woman who doesn’t have much patience for people she deems are wasting her time, and her upbringing in the Amethyst Academy makes it hard for her to relate to “normal people.”Safe to say, the Amethyst Academy’s strong suits are in its bounty of arcane magic items and spells, to say nothing of their extensive academic resources. The mages make use of artificial and summoned monsters for personal guards and to supplement their strike teams. PCs who anger them may end up subject to Scrying and Dream spells, find rival adventuring teams outfitted with quality magic gear, and having invisible assassins and monsters sent after them. One Scheme involves the Academy showing off a test demonstration of a delerium-powered explosive known as a Disjunction Bomb that can “annihilate an entire city district” as part of a truce to flex their muscles. It is tested in a wilderness area rather than a populated place. Sadly, we don’t get stats for this Disjunction Bomb. Personally I can see some of these Schemes backfiring: defeating rival adventurers will net the PCs their extra loot, and I can see more daring gaming groups try to steal or even reverse-engineer a Disjunction Bomb!The Followers of the Falling Fire are a much younger faction, recently formed by an excommunicated priestess of the Sacred Flame turned prophet known as Lucretia Mathias. During her time as a Flamekeeper,* Lucretia was one of the most well-respected and personally powerful clerics of the faith. Issuing a dire warning about a falling star ten years before Drakkenheim’s destruction, she viewed the recent tragedy and social collapse in Westemär as reinforcement of her apocalyptic visions. After several years of introspection and research, she spoke of a future New Age of Heroes necessary to save reality from disaster. How to do this? By using delerium as conduits for channeling the Sacred Flame by embedding the crystals in one’s body! Needless to say, this didn’t sit well with the religious orthodoxy, who were quick to pronounce Lucretia and her followers as dangerous heretics. Even so, the Followers of the Falling Fire are a growing sect across the continent, and more and more desperate souls make pilgrimages to Drakkenheim in hopes of attaining a new life under the prophet’s guidance.*the setting’s term for a woman of the cloth. Only women are allowed to formally join the priesthood.Lucretia Mathias isn’t all talk: she and Saint Gresha (a good-aligned wraith in a ruined chapel near the crater of the meteor) have knowledge of a spell known only to them called the Sacrament of the Falling Fire. It embeds a delerium fragment in a person’s chest, and as long as the recipient adheres to the faction’s ethics they gain a variety of defensive buffs, with the most notable being immunity to Contamination. However, should that person die, their soul is absorbed into the delerium in their chest, and cannot be resurrected while their soul is so trapped. This delerium turns golden, becoming “sanctified,” which lets someone touching the crystal the ability to telepathically communicate with the recipient’s soul. But in spite of all this protection, the monsters of the city view the Followers as prey all the same, meaning that pilgrims are often escorted under armed guard when venturing into the city.The faction’s Lieutenant is Nathaniel Flint, who primarily stays at the Hendrix Farm in Emberwood Village to help the newest pilgrims on their journey into the city of Drakkenheim.One of the Falling Fire’s major goals is to turn Drakkenheim into a holy site. Theoretically, if enough people undertake the Sacrament, they will be able to live in this Haze-ridden city, and many of them gained newfound access to divine magic after the Sacrament which can help shore up the religion’s magical might. Additionally, the Falling Fire wants whichever secular ruler who unites Westemär to legitimize their faith, which they need in order to obtain protection from the mainstream Sacred Flame and Knights of the Silver Order.The Followers of the Falling Fire take advantage of their Contamination immunity, setting up their main stronghold in Saint Selina’s Monastery in the Deep Haze. In addition to the Sacrament, the faction also controls one of the five gates leading into Drakkenheim known as Champion’s Gate, and they and the Silver Order are the only two factions that have reliable access to divine spells and magic items. Lucrecia Mathias is in fact the most powerful divine spellcaster in this module, and thus can resurrect dead characters. Their strike teams start out as relatively ordinary low-CR noncasters such as Cultists and Berserkers supplemented by the occasional Priest, but their tougher agents include more martial Knights and even angels summoned by Lucretia. The faction is less initially violent than the others to PCs who wrong them. They first make use of divination spells to learn more about the party in an attempt to guide them to hearing out the faction. Eventually, they may even  go so far as to get them to join forcefully should the party be saved from Drakkenheim’s dangers!The Hooded Lanterns are made up of the veterans of Westemär’s civil war, and more recent recruits who believe in their vision of unifying the kingdom. The country is becoming increasingly balkanized, but many Westemärans are still united in the hope of retaking the capital city from the meteor’s horrors and somehow finding a means to heal the cracks of their broken kingdom. The Hooded Lanterns are funded by various noble houses, and on paper are called the 4th Provisional Expeditionary Force to Reclaim the Capital. But their shorter, informal name won out in popularity both inside and outside the faction due to the former city watch’s frequent use of oil lamps. Being a military order, the Hooded Lanterns are strongly hierarchical, led by Lord Commander Elias Drexel. Instead of conducting traditional skirmishes against Drakkenheim’s monsters, they spend much of their time scouting out the ruins and claiming fortifications as safehouses and chokepoints. Their major stronghold is the Drakkenheim Garrison, although they also hold Shepherd’s Gate which leads into the city and maintain a watchtower in Emberwood Village.The Hooded Lanterns have two Lieutenants instead of one, the siblings Petra and Ansom Lang. They are high-ranking, having the titles of captain and lieutenant in spite of their young ages, and were both adopted by Commander Drexel during the civil war.Beyond reclaiming the capital and clearing it of monsters and other dangers, the Hooded Lanterns’ other major goals involve obtaining the six Seals of Drakkenheim and finding a legitimate heir to the throne. Leias Drexel already has one of the Seals, the Lord Commander’s Badge, although he doesn’t know where the others are and many scouts scour the ruins for any sign of the seals.The Hooded Lanterns aren’t a magic-heavy faction, and their Strike Teams are mostly mundane warrior types with more ranger/rogues for support, although they may have a priest or druid serving as a chaplain. They can aid PCs via a variety of gear, ranging from mundane equipment to potions and even magic cloaks of Protection/Elvenkind bearing their insignia. They can also grant more unique Boons in the form of flare guns which can be used to summon NPC allies to come to the party’s aid in a matter of minutes, intelligence reports of city structures, streets and monster groups, and even Urban Survival Training which takes a month but grants participating characters a net +2 to ability scores or a new feat of their choice. Their Schemes of getting back at the PCs mostly involve attempts to arrest or ambush the characters, but can also involve having Emberwood villagers treat the party as outlaws and refuse to do business with them.[ATTACH=full]420576[/ATTACH]Knights of the Silver Order are the other religiously-focused faction in Dungeons of Drakkenheim. They traditionally served as a private army for the Faith of the Sacred Flame, and while they have jurisdiction to operate across the continent they are heavily tied to the theocracy of Elyria due to their headquarters being located in their capital city. For this reason, the Knights are viewed by the Hooded Lanterns as a foreign army occupying Drakkenheim, but given Westemär’s political instability nobody is yet willing or able to try and drive them out. Although the Silver Order has done good in fighting against genuine supernatural evil across the ages, they have also been used to hunt down and oppress arcane casters in the past, a black mark on their reputation.Of the five factions, the Knights have the most straightforward-founding goals: eliminate the threat of delerium, arrest Lucrecia Mathias and drive the Falling Fire’s influence out from Drakkenheim, and obtain and safeguard various holy relics in the city, most notably the Phylactery of Saint Vitruvio which is one of the Six Seals of Drakkenheim.The Silver Order is a strongly hierarchical military faction, much like the Hooded Lanterns. Their stronghold of Camp Dawn is located two miles away from the city of Drakkenheim and is thus just outside the Haze’s border. The commander of this camp is Knight-Captain Theodore Marshal, and is very much your stereotypical valorous paladin but slow to anger and rather calm. The faction’s Lieutenant is Ophelia Reed, a High Flamekeeper who serves medical and religious duties.In terms of Boons, the Silver Order predictably can grant divine magic services along with more typical martial knightly aid, such as magical weapons and heavy armor and even warhorse and griffon mounts. Ophelia Reed is one of the few NPCs in the adventure who can cast Raise Dead. Their Strike Teams are heavy-armored martials and divine spellcasters, with griffon-riders suitable for dealing with long-range casters and flying enemies. Their Schemes are less direct than the Hooded Lanterns, such as creating fortified checkpoints on roads and even occupying Emberwood Village. But unlike the Silver Order they won’t ambush the party, with their most-escalated action involving their Knight-Captain challenging the party’s most skilled warrior to a one-on-one duel to the death.[ATTACH=full]420577[/ATTACH]The Queen’s Men is the final of our five factions, and the most traditionally villainous in our black-and-grey morality setting. This organization is a loose assortment of various outlaws, bandit gangs, and crime syndicates united under a woman known as the Queen of Thieves. She attained power when the Hooded Lanterns moved into the area, uniting the disorderly criminals. They have been a constant thorn in the Lanterns’ side, and also frequently rob pilgrims of the Falling Fire making their way to the city. While the gangs are technically their own groups, they share resources and contacts between each other while kicking up a portion of profits as a cut to the Queen. Much of their number gather in a run-down city street in Drakkenheim’s outskirts known as Buckledown Row,* which holds underground chapters serving as smuggling tunnels. In Emberwood Village, the Skull & Sword Taphouse is where to go in order to contact Blackjack Mel, the faction’s Lieutenant, who is the PCs’ best means of gaining an audience with the Queen of Thieves. He is also a compulsive liar, so even PCs allied to the faction can’t take his word on things for reliable info.*A common question that isn’t addressed in this book is how do the outlaws avoid Contamination when staying in Buckledown Row. Monty Martin explained that the Row’s population is constantly coming and going, effectively rotating in shifts. Most Queen’s Men have residences in abandoned houses dotting the countryside outside Drakkenheim.Among the five factions, the Queen’s Men are the most in favor of the current status quo. They view Drakkenheim as it stands as the perfect place for outlaws to hide out and get rich by plundering its delerium-encrusted ruins. The other factions don’t like them for various reasons, but the Queen’s Men don't want to drive off everyone else entirely, for that would be “bad for business.” The Queen of Thieves, however, has the secret goal of obtaining the Crown of Westemär and becoming a true queen! Thus, she seeks the six Seals of Drakkenheim.As can be expected, the Queen’s Men veer heavily on the roguish side of stat blocks, but they also have a good amount of monstrous support, particularly doppelgangers and low-CR creatures such as ogres and bugbears, although their more dangerous teams include mages. They also have the most Schemes by far, ranging from spying on the party to dig up dirt and weaknesses, using a doppelganger to mimic a PC’s appearance in order to pin a crime on them, and of course stealing valuable treasure and/or magic items from the party. As for Boons, they can grant access to their black market to let the PCs sell stolen items, buy poisons, access to potions and scrolls focusing on trickery-based magic, informants to share intel, hired goon NPCs as backup, and Cloak and Dagger Training which is akin to the Hooded Lantern’s Boon in providing either a net +2 to ability scores or a bonus feat.Thoughts So Far: The five factions are a diverse assortment of groups that stand out both thematically and mechanically. We got your patriotic soldiers, your holy knights, your weird cultists who may actually have a point, and your thief and wizard guilds! I appreciate that the authors didn’t cram everything magical into the Amethyst Academy. Even the Hooded Lanterns and Queen’s Men have some magic items and spellcasters of their own, even if much less in number. I also like how even though the delerium and Haze is a high priority, it is not the only concern of the factions. Even the Falling Fire, whose religion revolves around collecting delerium for holy rites, has a stake in Westemär’s ruler if only to gain legal recognition.I will say that although there is a lot of player choice and freedom in who to befriend or act against, I do feel that some factions are going to be more or less appealing to many gaming groups right out the gate. The Hooded Lanterns’ desire to reclaim their destroyed home is a very sympathetic motive, and as they are one of the two factions who control a gate leading into the city, a lot of players might attach to these positive qualities more easily than the other factions. Conversely, the Queen’s Men are the dark side/evil-aligned option; of the faction leaders, the Queen of Thieves is the only one with an evil alignment, and they’re less “steal from the rich, give to the poor” Robin Hood types in that their onscreen banditry disproportionately preys on common folk. The Amethyst Academy can be argued to be similarly selfish in viewing delerium primarily as a resource to research and exploit, although they have a more convincing argument than the Queen’s Men in having both the knowledge and capabilities of finding out its magical purpose and secrets.The Falling Fire I feel similarly in that many players are going to be skeptical of them. As Lucrecia Mathias’ prophecies are quite literally matters of faith, it’s a much bigger gamble for PCs to fully entrust her plan. While they’re the only faction who has actual angels fighting for them, even good-aligned celestials aren’t omniscient as to the Haze’s purpose and the future of the world. The delerium-embedding Sacrament is the most immediately practical Boon, but given that the campaign reinforces the material’s danger and role in creating cosmic monsters, most gaming groups are going to be asking “what’s the catch?” if not outright worrying that they’re going to end up transformed or enslaved by the cult leader!Join us next time as we take our first plunge into the ruins in Chapter 4: Emberwood Village and Chapter 5: Exploring Drakkenheim!</blockquote>

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