[Eberron] Tiamat vs. the Draconic Prophesy?

[Glyfair]

Both groups are presented as (in a vaguely fluffy sort of way) wanting to derail the prophesy –by- KB (some of the strongest arguments are non-cannon of course but your point (?) is also using his non-cannon posts on boards).

I'll have to reread it. However, I'm thinking what the Lords of the Dust are trying to do is use the prophecy to their own ends. Rather than trying to "derail" the prophesy, they are playing it for their own ends.

The other option is that there are known parts that clearly doom them no matter what they do. That's about the only way you can derail it, by making sure neither path works.

 

[Graf]

I like to see the Spawn as soldiers and minions of the Dragons... a race with ties all the way back to the Age of Demons.

I mean, think about it. Dragons breed slowly, take forever to grow up, while all the Rashaskas and other fiends of Khyber simply reincarnate with no loss of power in about a week or two... and they'll even retain their memory/personality/themness if they're powerful enough! And mind you, the little 'crumbs' that escaped being imprisoned in Khyber, known as the Lords of Dust, are Epic level baddies in their highest councils.

Spawn seem to be perfect footsoldiers of the dragons. More numerous, probably easier to breed, and their draconic nature point to the infancy of Draconic Epic magic, utilizing themselves as a base for their 'Origin of Species' spells. You might want to interchange a color with a metallic equivilant, or even make new ones to represent metallic spawn.

In Q'barra, I expect many of the black dragonspawn variety to be the personal servants and guards of the ancient ruins there... all of them half-fiends, of course.

In my version of RHoD and Age of Worms (set in Eberron), I'm treating Tiamat much like one of the Rajahs.

Ages when the dragons were warring with the Rajahs, 6 powerful chromatic dragons defected to the side of the Rajahs, and were to be granted great power as a result. But, the Rajahs had no use for two Reds in their plan, and after a titanic battle, one of the reds, Dragotha, was sent packing. The remaining 5 were merged into the titanic form that Tiamat uses to this very day. She was eventually trapped deep in Khyber, but the fact that any dragons defected planted the seeds of doubt into the Dragons...to this very day, Chromatic's that give into their more base instincts are considered 'tainted' by Tiamat.

Tiamat has remained active from afar with her minions. The invasion in RHoD is the first move in a major power play for her...but Dragotha has a LONG memory and manages to manipulate several mortals into a position to oppose her... (after losing to the proto-Tiamat, he was lured in by Khashtakla (sp?), and began the career outlined in AoW)

So you put those together and you'll get a Rajah who was worshipped by a sect of her underlings as a divine being millions of years ago, who considered her to be their "mother" (instead of literally, she could be the mother of their way of thinking -- greed, tyranny, etc). Even though she's imprisoned in the depths of Khyber (and might be released in Red Hand of DOOOOM!), she is still capable of reaching out and corrupting certain eggs to create spawn, in a very Cthulhuesque way...

All very good ideas.
I’m not saying the concept of spawn doesn’t work in Eberron (though it is a bit of a departure in that the major populations in Eberron are also all countries with political agendas).
There are lots of interesting ways to re-write and flex parts of the MMIV text to avoid contracting Eberron. (I mentioned a few in my original post, these are some more).

I guess I was just curious if there was something about the Dragon Gods (or prior Tiamat/Eberron) stuff that would support the dragons as active agents or this was just WotC-people-not-reading-campaign-materials.

Tiamat could just be one of the imprisoned Rajahs (who, you'll remember, ruled over the dragons in the Age of Demons).

The demons never ruled over the dragons. Explicitly (at least in cannon so far) they controlled the world save for the continent which would become (or maybe already was) Argonnessen.
Minor point but anyway…
Tiamat-as-Rajah would obvioiusly fix a lot of holes.

 

[Klaus]

Indeed. The demons ruled the world, except for Argonessen, and dragons dared not venture forth without dear of heavy retaliation. Only the discovery of the Prophecy and the alliance with the couatls turned the dragons into a force to be reckoned with. But before that, it is entirely possible that some dragons grew tired of fighting or hiding and sided with Tiamat, a Rajah. When the Prophecy was discovered, Tiamat took a serious blow to her power. All the more reason to oppose the Prophecy. But how do you oppose it? I dunno, maybe destroying any dragonmark that shows up in the landscape?

 

[Hellcow]

For what it's worth, *I* certainly like the Tiamat-as-Rajah approach. This allows her to be a being of godlike power and also makes her a horrifying villain in the eyes of the dragons - the specter of dragons corrupted by the force they opposed. This ties to having corrupt dragons allied with the Lords of Dust in my conversion of the Age of Worms. If Tiamat is the corrupting spirit - the darkness that lies within all dragons, and the symbol of those who fall - then that gives her a unique role in Eberron and an explanation of why she's the queen of evil dragons. Her army of evil dragons may include golds, silvers, etc - all that matters is that if they serve her, they are as vile as dragons can get.

As for the Prophecy, yes, you can't simply "derail" the Prophecy. What you CAN do is turn it to your own ends. The Pprophecy is a tool for shaping the future. The dragons of the Chamber have goals in mind, and the Prophecy determines what they must do to accomplish those goals. The Lords of Dust (and Undying Court) seek to oppose the goals of the Chamber, and to use the Prophecy to accomplish THEIR goals... to turn the Prophecy against Argonnessen. I could easily see Tiamat doing the same. It could be said to be "derailing" the Prophecy, because it's shattering the goals of Argonnessen. However, the Prophecy itself is eternal.

(And a point here is that there are factions within the Chamber and Argonnessen that themselves seek different outcomes.)

But as has been said, my statements about the Prophecy are MY statements about the Prophecy, and not canon.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I'd prefer Tiamat wasn't a Lord of Dust, simply because it consolidates too much evil into the group.

I mean, there are plenty of planes, and an Outsider is not limited to being a Rajah. I'd prefer something as simple as the draconic gods being the "first children" of Sibyrus and powerful beings they dwell on the planes. They have their own conflicts to keep them busy and their attention only returns to Eberron every now and then for some reason.

Perhaps Tiamat is on Shavarath or Kythri and the spawn arose when either plane became coterminous and she looked at the recluses "her" dragons had become.

Or, even better for a 5 headed manipulator of flesh, Tiamat could be from Xoriat.

 

[MarkB]

When I ran Red Hand of Doom in Eberron, I found a way to leave Tiamat as a mythical being, by having the "Aspect of Tiamat" be a chimeric dragon bred to fight in the wars during the Age of Demons. Chromatic dragon blood was used because they turned out to be more amenable to the process of creating a composite creature than metallic dragons. Several such creatures were created, but only one survived.

She was indeed powerful, and opposed to the demonic forces, but was also insane and megalomaniacal. Taking on the name Tiamat in reflection of the mythical goddess of chromatic dragons, she created a cult founded upon her belief in the supremacy of chromatic dragons above all other creatures (including metallic dragons), attracting a number of young and impressionable draconic followers.

Her rise in power was swift but brief. Supremely confident in her powers, she led her entire cult upon a raid that struck deep into demonic territory, but was eventually broken against the walls of one of the rajahs' keeps, in a massive expenditure of magics from both sides.

Tiamat was thrown out into the astral plane, where she drifted for millenia, insensate and alone. Eventually, she came to rest upon a secluded part of the plane of Shavarath. Roused back to life by the devils who attempted to destroy her, she quickly defeated and dominated them, shaping them into the core of a new Cult of Tiamat. From there, she began to exert her influence over Eberron, again attracting young and impressionable chromatic dragons to her cause, and gaining influence over goblinoid tribes in the Endworld Mountains. Choosing them as her instrument to begin preparing the world for her return, she provided them with fiendish troops and twisted spawn creatures for them to breed and raise for war.

This version of Tiamat - a very powerful dragon whose values have been twisted far from those of her creators, rather than an actual deity - fits reasonably within Eberron, and can still fulfill the role of the focal point of a religion of Tiamat worshippers. Since she herself believes that she is simply the material personification of the deity Tiamat, it's even possible to use this version without invalidating the core version of Tiamat, who might still exist somewhere in the cosmology, as silent as the other Eberron deities.

 

[Hellcow]

I'd prefer Tiamat wasn't a Lord of Dust, simply because it consolidates too much evil into the group.

Certainly, but the point in my mind is that the Lords of Dust aren't a "group" in the same sense as the Dreaming Dark. The Council of Ashtakala meets to keep people from stepping on each other's toes, but the servants of each overlord are, by and large, following their own agendas. So in other words, if Tiamat is an overlord, her followers don't necessarily have regular traffic with the followers of Katashka or Sul Khatesh; their agendas may even be at cross purposes. As Tiamat's servants are dragons, they may refuse to associate with the Council of Ashtakala, even IF Tiamat is an overlord. Lack of unity among the overlords was the main reason they were defeated.

I mean, there are plenty of planes, and an Outsider is not limited to being a Rajah. I'd prefer something as simple as the draconic gods being the "first children" of Sibyrus and powerful beings they dwell on the planes.

While meanwhile, I like the idea of Tiamat being an overlord precisely BECAUSE I'd want to tie her to Eberron. The overlords are an extremely diverse lot (some day you'll see another one in Dungeon or Dragon, and see how it varies from Sul Khatesh); what they have in common is that they are the primal evils of this world. Since dragons aren't outsiders, I'd prefer to keep this dark shadow of dragonkind on Eberron as opposed to tying it to one of the other planes. I could see the argument that she was spawned by Khyber TO corrupt the children of Siberys... Khyber's final curse on her enemy.

Xoriat is certainly an option, but then it comes down to personality. In my opinion, the lords of Xoriat (along with most non-native outsiders) are VERY alien in the way they think and act. The rakshasa are in some ways the most "human" of the outsiders because they are children of the same plane as humanity. If Tiamat is of Eberron, she can act like a powerful dragon of Eberron; if she's a powerful outsider of another plane, I'd expect her actions to be in some way suggestive of the plane she embodies. With that said, I often see Xoriat being the plane of horror as much as madness... and Tiamat could certainly be a primal terror and the embodiment of the madness of dragons.

In any case, it's all a matter of opinion. I think that all of the ideas presented on this thread are good ones, and I'm interested to see what else people come up with!

(One odd option, if you want to play with tradition, would be to say that she DOESN'T only have the heads of chromatic dragons... but rather that the heads of Tiamat change every time she manifests, so your PCs could encounter a Tiamat with all metallic heads!)

 

[Graf]

Nothing like posts from KB to make you feel like there is someone watching out for Eberron's coherency.

(One odd option, if you want to play with tradition, would be to say that she DOESN'T only have the heads of chromatic dragons... but rather that the heads of Tiamat change every time she manifests, so your PCs could encounter a Tiamat with all metallic heads!)

I love this idea.
Or rather I've always found the metallic dragons to be a bit muddled ( “we’re the good guys and we have better breath weapons” stuff doesn’t make much of a theme for me). At least Eberron lets you use them as bad guys.

 

[vulcan_idic]

Certainly, but the point in my mind is that the Lords of Dust aren't a "group" in the same sense as the Dreaming Dark. The Council of Ashtakala meets to keep people from stepping on each other's toes, but the servants of each overlord are, by and large, following their own agendas. So in other words, if Tiamat is an overlord, her followers don't necessarily have regular traffic with the followers of Katashka or Sul Khatesh; their agendas may even be at cross purposes. As Tiamat's servants are dragons, they may refuse to associate with the Council of Ashtakala, even IF Tiamat is an overlord. Lack of unity among the overlords was the main reason they were defeated.

This strikes me as a very similar social construct as the way the Goa'uld (sp?) System Lords associate in the earlier season of Stargate SG-1.