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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 7942952" data-attributes="member: 11760">As the fugitives made their way up the west coast of the Prustan Peninsula and to a no-questions-asked ship sailing to Freeport, the folks back home in Midwood began to put together that the kobolds of Green Mountain were trying to collect one or more scales from each color of chromatic dragon, for an as-yet-unknown ritual.My goal was, if not low level encounters with dragons, to have them encounter more dragon-adjacent elements. I knew that this wasn't going to be a quickie campaign at this point, especially at the pace of play-by-post, but I wanted to get some classic D&D tropes in before we switched to the urban campaign of Ptolus full-time. (And even then, as you will see, the campaign won't be wedded to the location.)First up was a scale from Flavivirus the Black, a black dragon whom another group of adventurers had recently dispatched. The group headed down toward Kem, coincidentally tracing some of the steps of the fugitives along the way, as they and a band of goblins and kobolds representing Green Mountain tried to both buy the scale off a representative of the other adventuring group. In the end, the heroes obtain the scale and hand it over to the baron.The next was the scale of Vilustuminen the White, a white dragon that laired to the north in the Hotash Mountains of the Prustan Peninsula and had been the terror of the village of Bootblack, which I also made, coincidentally, the hometown of the Prustan who had invented the printing press, to give the place an identity beyond being a way station of their quest. Vilustuminen was dead, but something was living in his lair, and a band of ogres (modeled after Gryla and the Yule Lads from Icelandic Christmas lore) lived on his mountain. The group got around them but had to confront Nigliktok, the white dragon/snow leopard/mountain goat chimera that had taken up residence in the dragon's lair after its death. (The player characters were still around level 5 at this point, as I recall, and running under 3E rules.)And after that, the group set sail themselves, crossing the Southern Sea to Uraq, the fantasy middle east lightly sketched for the southern continent in Praemal. Beyond the deserted north, the continent apparently turns into fantasy Africa and maybe even fantasy Asia beyond that, which is what we've done with it, with the nation of Uraq being the buffer zone between two (or more) civilizations that haven't on their own traveled far enough to have much contact with each other.They had two missions in Uraq: Convince Ra'ad the Blue, a blue dragon who's set himself up as a secular ruler over a stretch of desert to give them a scale and then to invade an ancient ziggurat of Tiamat to try and discover what the ritual the kobolds were hoping to perform actually was.But at this point, they were down a member, because I had tossed out what I thought would have been just a bit of soul-searching for Emmerson, the paladin/cleric. The party's exploits clearing the haunted abbey had attracted the attention of the Knights of Dawn, and he was invited to become a knight-aspirant in Tarsis. The Knights of Dawn are both the most impressive large order of knights in the setting and also serve as the bodyguards to the emperor of the Church in Ptolus. Instead of saying "I'm very honored, but there's this whole apocalyptic scheme I have to prevent," he said yes, reasoning that maybe he could get their help if things got bad in Midwood later on. (Spoiler alert: Things got bad in Midwood later on.) Players, man. They'll mess with your plans every time.So Tarsis, which was the capital of the Tarsisian Empire before the Eastern Hordes (whom I've made Conan-style Cimmerians, more or less) invaded, doesn't have a pile of information about it in one place in the Ptolus book. But there's lots of info scattered throughout. It's late Roman Empire Rome, if Rome had achieved Renaissance-to-pre-Industrial Revolution technology before its fall, and is currently ruled by one of three claimants to the Lion-Guarded Throne, a technologist with, frankly, the weakest claim but who is, to my eyes, otherwise the most sympathetic figure in the running. Another note, from Ptolus' chapter on its Necropolis quarter: While Ptolus has catacombs full of undead, like any good fantasy metropolis must, Cook notes that its ghoul-filled catacombs are actually less extensive than the ones under Tarsis. (The idea that only Ptolus has adventuring locales in Praemal always seems crazy to me, although there are groups that insist it's true.)Emmerson's time in the knight-aspirants exposes what an untraditional paladin he is and, arguably, how out of step the Knights of Dawn are. While his more liberal take on church teachings was a problem he knew would be coming -- it's something his player has wrestled with very well, swinging back and forth over the years as he has various crises of faith -- the idea that the Knights of Dawn thought horsemanship was important was a big shock to him. And that's without the realization that someone in the cloisters is attempting to kill aspirants and trainers. Emmerson's solo adventure climaxes with being plunged into the ghoul catacombs with the other aspirants as a test of courage, with the correct suspicion that at least one of them wants to murder the others, to clear the way for their chosen aspirants to become Knights of the Dawn. The scheme -- put Knights of the Dawn loyal to Empress Addares XXXIV, the claimant to the throne now in the Sea Kingdoms city of Dohrinthas, into the bodyguard of the Emperor of the Throne (the third and final claimant to the Lion-Guarded Throne) and off him. Emmerson, who like the rest of the group hasn't really formed an opinion on the succession crisis yet, what with the kobold conspiracy to wipe out their families and all, suddenly is looked on by all three factions as a loyalist to the Emperor of the Church, which will come back to haunt him and the group repeatedly going forward. Emmerson still fails to become a Knight of the Dawn -- seriously bro, do you even ride? -- but earns their respect and admiration. He's accomplished his real goal of securing potential allies when the dragon feces hits the poorly-functioning-because-no-one-remembers-how-to-keep-it-running fan.Back in Uraq, his friends have uncovered the ritual the kobolds are hoping to complete: They want to summon an avatar of Tiamat to lead an army of kobolds and hired goblins to rampage all over the barony, wiping out the humans, dwarves and gnomes who live there.(If you like this recap, and would like to help me get my Ptolus character -- Baeril Underhill, gnome illusionist-turned-detective -- illustrated in the new 5E and Cypher editions, click <a href="https://gleam.io/b0PST-jJSfMdCUSb" target="_blank">here</a> and complete at least one of the promotional activities.)</blockquote>

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