[Eberron] Alien Invasion

[Jürgen Hubert]

Not to shoot down anyone's game ideas, but...

The thing is, various groups on Eberron have had either tens of millenia (the dragons), millenia (the Gatekeepers) or centuries (the Church of the Silver Flame) of experience in keeping strange dark forces from the beyond from taking over the world. And they're good at it (no one's succeeded yet).

Of course. And the neogi aren't supposed to succeed, either - instead they are supposed to get shout down by the latest group of heroes - the PCs and the alliance they will form.

But each time dark forces were pushed away in the past, it was not without considerable cost. The dragons fought the fiends for more than a million years, and presumably suffered heavy losses. The continent of the giants was shattered when they defended themselves from the quori. And the Dhakaani empire never recovered from what it lost in the struggle against the daelkyr.

Even the shortest of these threats endured for many centuries. The neogi invasion I proposed is tame when compared to those - the timeline hints that they will be defeated in years or months, not decades or longer. Yes, large numbers of people will suffer and die, but the survivors will soon get over it - something that cannot be said for the victims of the earlier invasions.

So yes, the people of Eberron will eventually succeed in defeating the invaders. But the neogi won't simply be pushed over by the Church of the Silver Flame sneezing at them. A coordinated attack by most of the nations of Khorvaire will be required - hard to do, since most of them are still deeply mistrustful of each other. And they have to deal with this mostly on their own. The Gatekeepers are few in number and dwindling with every year. The highest priority of the dragons will be to protect their own lands during the invasion, since being able to continue the Great Work is more important to them than relieving the suffering of the "lesser races". That doesn't mean that they won't help Khorvaire - but they will only do so after their own lands are secure, and by then it might be too late for human civilization on Khorvaire. Unless the PCs act against the invaders, of course.


And this is, to me, part of the point of Eberron: When there is trouble afoot - big trouble - then no epic-level NPC is going to stop the threat before it can harm anyone. No, it is going to be the PCs who are going to be at the forefront of any efforts.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

OTOH if orbital mechanics work the same as in our world it's pretty difficult to be in the same orbit as something and not match it's speed and direction.

That might be the case if the orbit is perfectly circular. But what is if the orbit is elliptical? Or if the object oscillates above and below the equatorial plane? Suddenly you have two orbital paths that intersect - and at a rather high relative speeds...

And besides, this is DnD, slap a wall of Force around your ship if you're worried about meteors.

A Wall of Force doesn't last all that long, unless you make it permanent - and in that case, it gets rather expensive in terms of XP.

Sensible ship pilots will probably cast Wall of Force on the ship and then move through the Ring of Syberis as fast as possible...

 

[Zephyrus]

I Like the Clockwork Horror's tie in and the suggestion that the Warforged were originally made by them... or perhaps maybe the giants defeated them once before and facinated by their arachnid warriors made their own and took the technology they had and made the early warforged... miniature versions of themselves (scaled down mechanical giants). The use of wood and stone parts suplanting the need for fully metal warriors due to the jungle enviorment of Xendrik.

the idea of a semi-desperate invader works too in that they would prolly have never returned to eberron if they were not desperate for raw materials and slave/power. delighted that the giants have fallen they commit to an attack.

 

[werk]

Sensible ship pilots will probably cast Wall of Force on the ship and then move through the Ring of Syberis as fast as possible...

I thought the ring of syberis was a ring, not a shell. You can get to Saturn without flying through it's rings. Three dimensions and all that.

 

[drothgery]

Of course. And the neogi aren't supposed to succeed, either - instead they are supposed to get shout down by the latest group of heroes - the PCs and the alliance they will form.

...

And this is, to me, part of the point of Eberron: When there is trouble afoot - big trouble - then no epic-level NPC is going to stop the threat before it can harm anyone. No, it is going to be the PCs who are going to be at the forefront of any efforts.

Actually, I was thinking about it some more and thought things could break down fairly quickly to four quasi-independent campaigns against the invaders.

The War in the Air, fought by the dragons over Argonsen and by House Lyrander and the gnomes over Khorvaire, this is largely unseen by the general population, except when an airship, dragon, or neogi vessel comes crashing to the ground.

The War in Shadow, fought in Sharn, where no Neogi governor has managed to last more than six weeks before being assasinated. No one knows by who, though the Emerald Claw, various criminal organizations, and the remains of the King's intelligence agency have been creditted at various times. Rumors that they're working together seem ludicrous.

The War in Light, fought in Thrane, which steadfastly refuses to break, and has since Jaela Daran walked to walls of Flamekeep and nearly singlehandedly destroyed a beseiging army. Three times, the Neogi have tried to take the city, and all failed in the same manner. Too many protection spells layered on the Keeper, and too many soldiers willing to give their life for hers all made assasinating a 13-year-old girl impossible. But her power fades rapidly outside of Flamekeep, and the Neogi have tried to destroy the countryside that she cannot protect. Paladins and other strongly good-aligned adventurers, and refugees from all across Khorvaire have poured into Flamekeep; it's taking extraordinary arrangements to keep all the people in Flamekeep fed.

And the War Below, where the Gatekeepers and their allies try to prevent the Neogi from releasing the daelkyr and other long-burried abominations, believing they can control them.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Actually, I was thinking about it some more and thought things could break down fairly quickly to four quasi-independent campaigns against the invaders.

Actually, I think there might be more links than you realize...

The War in the Air, fought by the dragons over Argonsen and by House Lyrander and the gnomes over Khorvaire, this is largely unseen by the general population, except when an airship, dragon, or neogi vessel comes crashing to the ground.

This might be true for the dragons, but the other factions need resources to build and maintain their craft - and they are likely too few in number to fight the invaders effectively until the Weakness is discovered. They will probably try some lightning raids that take the neogi by surprise a few times, but none of the nations of Khorvaire really has the resources to wage an extended air campaign against them. They will need secret, secure hideouts that will cover their airships from easy detection when they are not on the move...

The War in Shadow, fought in Sharn, where no Neogi governor has managed to last more than six weeks before being assasinated. No one knows by who, though the Emerald Claw, various criminal organizations, and the remains of the King's intelligence agency have been creditted at various times. Rumors that they're working together seem ludicrous.

Why should the neogi set up a governor in Sharn? The place is a maze and hard to defend. Better to erect facilities on other, more defensible positions. If they are smart, they will simply dose Sharn with masses of poison gas until most of its inhabitants either have fled the city - in which case they are captured and brought to one of the "processing stations" - or died. Sure, some people will survive by hiding in the right places, and the city will become a paradise for plunderers. But most of the city will still be dead.

"Governor" seems to imply that this is a war of conquest, and not one of extermination. But the neogi don't want to rule over humans - they want to replace them as the dominant life forms. Their magitech is so advanced that they don't need human slaves except as magic item fodder and for experiments, so drastically reducing the human population should be their foremost goal.

The War in Light, fought in Thrane, which steadfastly refuses to break, and has since Jaela Daran walked to walls of Flamekeep and nearly singlehandedly destroyed a beseiging army. Three times, the Neogi have tried to take the city, and all failed in the same manner. Too many protection spells layered on the Keeper, and too many soldiers willing to give their life for hers all made assasinating a 13-year-old girl impossible. But her power fades rapidly outside of Flamekeep, and the Neogi have tried to destroy the countryside that she cannot protect. Paladins and other strongly good-aligned adventurers, and refugees from all across Khorvaire have poured into Flamekeep; it's taking extraordinary arrangements to keep all the people in Flamekeep fed.

I have my doubts on how well even Flamekeep could defend itself. At least until the Weakness is discovered, the magitechnological advantage of the neogi should be overwhelming, and showing that even Flamekeep can fall makes the struggle that much more desperate...

And the War Below, where the Gatekeepers and their allies try to prevent the Neogi from releasing the daelkyr and other long-burried abominations, believing they can control them.

Unless the neogi are explicitly linked with the daelkyr in their background story, it is unlikely they would even bother until the humans manage to mount some counterattacks that actually threaten their victory. I mean, as long as everything goes according to plan, why bring some third parties to this mess?

On the other hand, it could very well be that some desperate humans are attempting to release the daelkyr in the hope that these will be able to defeat the neogi...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I thought the ring of syberis was a ring, not a shell. You can get to Saturn without flying through it's rings. Three dimensions and all that.

True...

Still, this can have some implications, depending on just how many real world physics we want to use in this. (Of course, we could also say: "This is fantasy, so we can simply say that gravity stops beyond the atmosphere!" And this is an equally valid approach. The point here is to be consistent in our approach that both the PCs and the invaders have something they can build their plans upon, and real world Newtonian orbital physics have the advantage that they have been studied quite rigorously, so there are unlikely to be any questions that aren't covered already by some article somewhere...)

First of all, the existence of the Ring means that the invaders cannot have an orbital presence close to Eberron, because said presence would constantly get bombarded by the Ring. They can descend to Eberron north or south of the ring (which implies that the equatorial regions are the safest from direct landings - the neogi have to fly for a long time to get there), but this uses up energy, so they can't just stay there permenently. Any actual orbit (i.e., an orbital path that doesn't require any energy to maintain) that starts above the hemispheres would quite soon pass through the equatorial plane again. So any orbital headquarters the neogi have would have to be further away from the Ring - an advantage to the defenders, since the neogi cannot stage instantaneous raids from there. As long as the counterattacks of the defenders are quick and they take care to vanish as soon as possible, they have a chance of getting away before reinforcements arrive.

Secondly, even the orbital regions beyond the Ring aren't likely to be completely safe of debris. Collisions between objects in the ring will likely send many objects on erratic orbits beyond the equatorial plane. With the rings of Saturn, these are all relatively concentrated on the equatorial region because Saturn is huge and has a huge gravity. Neither is the case with Eberron, so there are probably lots of rogue dragonshards flying around above the hemispheres (with the safest regions being near the poles). This is probably not too much of a risk for most flights through the region, but still real enough that staying there for long times is inadvisable, even if you have the energy to spend...

 

[cmanos]

For an alternative to the arachnid walker: how about a whole line of ground vehicles that are circular or spherical and roll (with the crew in a counter-rotating interior)? There are real-world "motorcycles" like this (basically a big wheel and you sit in the middle) though I don't think they're practical yet. You could have tanks that work like the Omnidroid from The Incredibles. They could come in sizes from Huge on up. So they roll over the opposition, then when they need to get more precise sprout limbs and weapons.

Yes...they had one of these on South Park...just totally and completely wrong....

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Yes...they had one of these on South Park...just totally and completely wrong....

I quite liked the war wheel concept, especially as shown on the Justice League cartoons.

But somehow, the neogi don't seem like beings who would create wheeled war machines. Walkers on spindly legs seem to be more fitting, somehow...

 

[demiurge1138]

Oh, and of course the neogi must reproduce by injecting their eggs into a living host, from which the baby neogi burst forth once they have matured...

Well, they already sort of do. They reproduce by injecting elder neogi with their eggs. The elders swell into grotesque monsters with barely-animal intelligence, the so-called "great old masters". The spawn incubate within the neogi body for a period of months, then burst out, killing their host.

So just replace "elder neogi" with "people" and you've got something really nice and icky for the players to find - the neogi people-farms. Which are also their nurseries.

Demiurge out.