D&D 5E Eberron The Last War - The aftermath

[Digital M@]

I have been enjoying reading the Eberron Campaign setting, but I feel that there is something missing or my understanding is flawed.

They just abruptly stopped a war that has lasted 100 years. A war where killing machines and killing magic thrived and it was an active war (not a skirmish war) with many and nearly constant battle.

The population of this world continent should be devastated. Sharn and other cities should be 1/2 abandon and potentially filled with monsters or the creatures of the under dark or something similar. Skilled labor shortages should be abundant, food supply issues etc. 100 years of non stop hardcore war would leave a shell of those countries.

Am I missing something?

 

[Shardstone]

From my understanding, a large amount of the later stages of the war were fought with Warforged, Undead, and long-distance magic. It became less "4000 dying in an afternoon on one of 900 battlefields" and more of "Border disputes fought by proxy."

Still, I think you're partially right, and it would be fun to workshop a version of Eberron colored by war much more harshly.

 

[ignu]

It ebbed and flowed in intensity, and the fronts were absolutely devastated. A lot of the fighting was in Cyre, which is now completely gone. Other various fronts were ravaged as well like The Crying Fields.

But in the real world, The US War in Afghanistan is over 18 years old, so we're nearly a fifth of the way there.

 

[Kurotowa]

It also wasn't 100 years of unending high intensity war. There were lulls, there were treaties between various sides that came and went, there were long standoffs that saw only border skirmishes, there were multi-year build ups to new campaigns while still officially at a state of war. Think less World War II and more the Hundred Years' War.

With that said, Rising does detail how many areas that were frequently the front lines are still ruined and mostly abandoned. In other words, prime adventure locations. It's also your choice if you want to dial up the body count so that labor is in short supply; it puts a new spin on the warforged being dumped into the labor force if that's the case.

 

[tetrasodium]

I have been enjoying reading the Eberron Campaign setting, but I feel that there is something missing or my understanding is flawed.

They just abruptly stopped a war that has lasted 100 years. A war where killing machines and killing magic thrived and it was an active war (not a skirmish war) with many and nearly constant battle.

The population of this world continent should be devastated. Sharn and other cities should be 1/2 abandon and potentially filled with monsters or the creatures of the under dark or something similar. Skilled labor shortages should be abundant, food supply issues etc. 100 years of non stop hardcore war would leave a shell of those countries.

Am I missing something?

It wasn't 100 years of nonstop trench warfare, there were too many sides involved for that because if Breland (f/ex) decided to wipe out Karrnath with their full military, Aundaire, Cyre, Thrane, or someone else would waltz through & level Breland. Instead you had lots of smaller strategic battles here & there. The last 33 years have had massuve numbers of warforged made. A huge number of Valenar elves came over 42 years agofrom Arenal, likewise with the dar (goblinoids) & monstrous humanoids from places like droaam & such. Somewhere along the line Karrnath switched from living soldiers to using almost if not exclusively undead troops. Yes, the population is devastated & there are going to be all sorts of mining/factory/farming/etc towns that are just abandoned (or were till someone moved in/woke up/broke out/etc)

Monsters are people too & tensions are more national than racial. If an Ogre from Karrnath were in Breland where he saw a Brelish or Thrane Ogre acting badly towards a Karrnathi human/dwarf/orc/halfling/etc He's probably have the urge to join the side of his fellow Karrnathi rather than fellow ogre. You do have monstrous humanoids throughout khorvaire, that Gnoll that used to be a Tharask Mercenary from droaam but decided to settle down with a Minotaur Ogre or human & buy some land to become a farmer...
or maybe the gnoll was born in Breland & settled down as a sentinel marshal keeping the peace after getting married to halfling.

"Khyber is a fundamentally different place than the Underdark". You have bound Overlords & imprisoned Daelkyr among other things down there... but it'd not The Underdark you know. The cities aren't overrun by The Lords of Dust because they (and the Dragons who also live in them) are openly reputable (or not so reputable) members of society running businesses, participating in organized groups, secretly working in businesses, & more in order to influence The Prophecy towards their own goals.

Places like the New Cyre refugee camp or lower levels of sharn like the Cogs indeen have problems with getting food & such that you mention... In the case of New Cyre that's because any refugee with skills or connections either found work elsewhere or stayed behind to help the other refugees. In the case of places like The Cogs, you have institutionalized generational poverty. In both cases, magic goes a loooong way A few hundred thousand refugees who are usually eating most of their meals are less likely to go out with torches & pitchforks to go find food from somewhere that has it.

Because the Dragonmarked houses pretty much made & still make (or control)everything in the economy, no nation would risk striking one of the Houses even if it was supplying an enemy nation. Doing so could wind up getting very unfavorable terms on critical resources/services to make up for the favorable terms someone else is getting in order to make sure you & your replacement don't make that mistake again. End result is that you wouldn't see anyone destroying those factories/farms/etc let alone killing the House's dragonmarked Heirs & perhaps the skilled labor within.


Hope that helps cover some stuff

 

[Digital M@]

I will have to read over the war bits a bit more carefully and decide the direction I want to go. Making it a bit darker than intended allows a city to fulfill many roles as mindflayers or other intelligent monsters may have built up a significant presence and be planning on becoming new players in the city.

I do really enjoy the idea of not saving the world and working with more flawed characters and story lines that incorporate those personal stories and flaws.

 

[ChaosOS]

Couple points

1. Those are issues - the book calls out shortages several times!
2. There's a lot of blank spaces on the map for you to add in these locations. Rising only details a max of three locations per nation
3. As others have noted, it was closer to a pre-modern war than a post-1945 war. Bombers sorta-kinda existed but were way more cost prohibitive than IRL since you relied on flying creatures like Wyverns or Griffons instead of being able to just build planes. Combine that with a lack of WMDs (well, other than if you decide a nation is the one that caused the Mourning), you just don't have the same principles of warfare.

 

[Digital M@]

But you did have high damage magic prevalent on the battlefield. You have wand guns and flame throwes, killing machines, flying fortresses, etc. Not the same as modern bombs but very close to WWI. the war does seem to have been a testing grounds for new applications of death and war. WWI lasted a bit over 4 years and killed 20-40 million depending on how you count casualties.

The fronts would be destroyed, but then you have to think how did they conscript people into the war? 100 years is 3-4 generations of population.

If the war was more political swagger and a game rather than actual conquest driven battle then the fronts would be destroyed and numbers of populations would be reduced but other parts would be left functional. If the goal was conquest driven and heavy and consistent, all of the countries would have burned through their money and resources leaving shells of themselves left after the war.

 

[tetrasodium]

I will have to read over the war bits a bit more carefully and decide the direction I want to go. Making it a bit darker than intended allows a city to fulfill many roles as mindflayers or other intelligent monsters may have built up a significant presence and be planning on becoming new players in the city.

I do really enjoy the idea of not saving the world and working with more flawed characters and story lines that incorporate those personal stories and flaws.

There is literally one who is mayor of Greywall The Daelkyr created them along with beholders, dolgaunt/dolgrim/dolgrue/etc. Rising page 9 has a great section on shades of grey & something to lose. Sure that mindflayer accountant working for the Boromir is probably not a good thing, but i doesn't seem to be causing any harm you can find & the replacement could be emuch worse

 

[ChaosOS]

But you did have high damage magic prevalent on the battlefield. You have wand guns and flame throwes, killing machines, flying fortresses, etc. Not the same as modern bombs but very close to WWI. the war does seem to have been a testing grounds for new applications of death and war. WWI lasted a bit over 4 years and killed 20-40 million depending on how you count casualties.

The fronts would be destroyed, but then you have to think how did they conscript people into the war? 100 years is 3-4 generations of population.

If the war was more political swagger and a game rather than actual conquest driven battle then the fronts would be destroyed and numbers of populations would be reduced but other parts would be left functional. If the goal was conquest driven and heavy and consistent, all of the countries would have burned through their money and resources leaving shells of themselves left after the war.

On the battlefield is a very different scenario from available to destroy cities. One of the lynchpin theories of world war 2 was that to avoid the long slog of ww1, commanders should prioritize targeting the means of production (aka civilians) to stop the war effort at the source.