Alternate Krynns
We talked about time paradoxes and forks in the River of Time, so in this chapter we get six parallel worlds that may have been if some major event did or did not happen and how its ripple effects changed the face of Krynn. It should be noted that the below do not all take place in the same “current era”: Kingpriest Ascendant is in the Third Age, Magocracy of Ansalon takes place during the original Chronicles, Dragonlands and Hourglass in the Sky a few years afterwards, and War of the Darklance and Age of Dragons 30 or 70 years respectively during what would be known as the Age of Mortals.
In case you didn’t get enough of Istar dear readers, our first fork along the river posits a Krynn where the Kingpriest’s ritual to enslave the gods was successful. Becoming the Godpriest, he and he alone can grant divine power to mortals and overtook the true gods as the object of worship by the state. And if that weren’t bad enough, while the Cataclysm was averted, the divine usurpation sent a terrible reverberation across Krynn where one out of three living beings died. The Godpriest’s clerics claim that those who perished were weak in the Faith.
Strangely, this near-Thanos Snap is not elucidated on much in the setting. Entire forests and farmland should be dust, and the sudden depopulation of regions will result in a gargantuan power vacuum. And instead of causing violent riots at the Godpriest’s callousness the average citizen...more or less goes along with it.
Fun Fact: In my run of 13th Age Dragonlance I used the “1 out of 3” possibility as a rationale for why the gods committed the Cataclysm. And even among the Good and Neutral gods it was a decision that eventually tore apart the pantheons among ideological grounds.
I go into further detail on it and other subject matter in this blog post for those interested.
Rather, Kingpriest Ascendant portrays the Empire of Istar as stronger than ever, with the few holdouts on the fringes of the continent. Solamnia, its immediate neighbor, is mightily pissed about the enslavement of the gods to the point that they’re gearing up for war, and wizards are forming a network of underground insurgency cells known as the Burning Robes to strike out at the Faith’s holdings. The Divine Hammer is mostly tasked with foreign affairs, such as fending off and invading minotaur forces in the continent’s far east, while the Brotherhood of Querists (the mind-reading secret police) are becoming more corrupt and violent now that they don’t have to worry about the gods withdrawing their divine magic.
Even the Silvanesti elves thought that this was all too much, so they stepped up spying and reconnaissance to find any advantage they could. Unfortunately for them the Faith developed a magical brainwashing ritual to turn these captured warriors and others into the Purified, entities unquestioningly loyal to the Faith and stripped of all emotion. The minotaurs are enmeshed in a civil war of their own due to Social Darwinism, but at times put aside their differences whenever news of an Istaran army builds up along their borders. Of the nonhuman races the gnomes got the best deal, but their propensity for unpredictable gadgets got them consigned to a reservation-city where they’re free to design and invent with all the government funding they want as a means of lowering incentive for them to go elsewhere. Hylo to the far west is the last refuge of kender on Ansalon, who concoct ever more means of pissing off Istar in a grand social experiment known as the Game. In short you score points for inconveniencing the Faith, be it stealing their holy symbols or filling their braziers with laughing gas.
The Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth still exists but suffers a declining membership due to the popularity of the Burning Robes. There’s no information about Ergoth, which in Dragonlance was the big human empire before Istar and declined rather than outright fall. It also had Romanesque culture in its later days but its population was notably mostly dark-skinned. In the 3rd and later Ages they were mostly known for expansive trade networks and seamanship, and during the Chronicles kept to themselves. It’s a bit strange to see them excised considering they get mentions in the other Alternate Krynns.
We get three adventure hooks revolving around insurgency against the Godpriest’s reign, be it from kender, clerics of the true gods, or the Burning Robes. A fourth one involves freeing a captured Istaran border town from minotaurs threatening to kill off the villagers and which has been abandoned by the Faith as a military loss. For stat blocks we have a template for the Purified and various kinds of Istaran knights, inquisitors, and the like along with a good-aligned Lord Soth who can make for an ally. The Godpriest is still 20th-level, but now has a Greater Aspect template* which gives him some massive bonuses across the board along with a host of spell-like abilities to supplement his clerical spellcasting.
*from another Dragonlance sourcebook, Holy Orders of the Stars.
Rating: ⅗. Kingpriest Ascendant makes for a pretty cool offbeat campaign where you’re conducting covert guerilla raids against religious fundamentalists. However, as most written material for Dragonlance details later Ages you don’t have as much material to work with for this setting given that the Age of Might references countries and cultures which no longer exist even in the main timeline. The one out of three dead is meant to show the deadly cost of the Godpriest’s rule, but it is reduced to an afterthought for world-building which I heavily dislike.
In the main timeline the Wizards of High Sorcery have a strict clause that their higher-ranking members cannot get involved in politics, which isn’t always followed. The historical distrust of wizards means that they have plenty of reason to cut themselves off from an ungrateful world. But in an alternate timeline, when the Cataclysm rent Krynn asunder, the Wizards stepped in to provide safety and order. They used their magic to aid communities where there were no more clerics and defended them against the numerous monsters and warlords. The soldiers who knew better than to pick a fight with someone who can kill them with a flick of their fingers were hired and incorporated into the new societies. And the best of the best became the Knights of Huma, an order of warriors tasked with defending mages and keeping the peace.
In short, the Wizards of High Sorcery became the government in most lands. They acted in theory as administrators and defenders using their superior magical might, and in turn the citizens paid their taxes which could be used for furthering arcane research along with the more mundane government services. For the White Robes it was an act of altruism in making a better world; for the Red Robes it was a rational choice in making their lives easier when citizens were grateful of witches rather than burning them at the stake; and the Black Robes were more than happy to abuse their newfound power like countless spell-less tyrants of times long gone.
The standards of living are higher here than in the standard Age of Despair. Everyday magic is more plentiful and many families encourage their children to learn the arcane arts as a means of social mobility for completing the Test of High Sorcery. But society is still hierarchical, for all high-ranking positions are held by mages and the six major countries are large administrative regions named after the Towers of High Sorcery. Clerical magic is unheard of, and Takhisis is still plotting to make a Dragonarmy. But instead she uses a secret order of Gray Robe Wizards loyal to her in lieu of evil clerics.
We get a detail of the lands after the general history: the Solamnic Knights still exist but resent the mages’ ascendancy and fight them from the southern city of Tarsis, while various exiles wanting to be free of mages make new lives on the nearby Plains of Dust. The Tower of Istar was teleported away during the Cataclysm and now looks over the Blood Sea created in its wake from the safety of an island. The elven land of Silvanesti has a memorial dedicated to the names of mages who gave their lives saving people during the chaos of the Cataclysm. The Blasted Isles of Sancrist are a magical Bikini Atoll where repeated testing of dangerous spells warped the land with aberrant creatures and unnatural phenomena. The mountainous ogre nation of Blöde is a place no mage wants to govern and thus Takhisis’ gray robes are slowly building up Dragonarmies there for an eventual invasion of surrounding lands.
Adventure hooks include an escort mission for Dalamar the White to the Blasted Isles for a Test of High Sorcery at the Tower there, hunting renegade mages in Blöde, and saving a wizard from an execution at the hands of Solamnic Knights. But the hook which jumped out the most to me was a recreation of the opening of the Dragonlance Chronicles: a disgraced wizard seeks the hands of the true gods after losing faith in the current order and seeks to claim the Disks of Mishakal said to lie below the Blood Sea of Istar. But this time it won’t just be Takhisis’ Dragonarmies who object to this; the established Orders of High Sorcery have no intention of upstart clerics challenging their power.
We get write-ups and brief stats for each Tower (and therefore national) leader as well as the respective leaders of the Knights of Huma and Solamnia. We get some interesting world-building in their entries: my favorite is having the normally anti-arcane minotaurs be the first people to embrace the magocracy on account of having a shared history of oppression by Istar and respecting how the mages established themselves as the new power.
Rating: ⅘. Magocracy of Ansalon is a cool and innovative spin on Dragonlance based off of a common question asked by successive generations of D&D fans: why don’t spellcasters use their powers to rule everything? There’s some build-up of a high magic War of the Lance in the hooks, although given the iconic nature of said adventures it’s the kind of thing that would best be run with a veteran set of Dragonlance gamers who can spot the minor changes and references. It doesn’t have a central overarching villain at the onset, unlike the other Alternate Krynns which can allow for a wider variety of campaign styles.
The Dragonlands can be best surmised as what happens when you get a Game Over/TPK when running the Dragonlance Chronicles. Without the Heroes of the Lance to stop the Dragonarmies, Takhisis takes over the continent of Ansalon with eyes towards the rest of the world! But since we cannot predict whatever rag-tag group of ogre druids and gnome assassins were part of your local gaming group, this timeline’s canon is going with the characters from the books. The major turning point in this campaign was during the Battle of the High Clerist’s Tower, when Sturm Brightblade became overwhelmed by dragonfear. Without his stalwart example and heroic sacrifice, the Knights of Solamnia’s morale gave way and lost the Tower and thus Palanthas to the Blue Dragonarmy. The metallic dragons never learned of the plight of their kidnapped eggs (which were being used to make draconians), and when Theros Ironfeld disappeared the secrets of forging Dragonlances were lost.
Now all of Ansalon is made to give praise to the Dark Queen Takhisis, its formerly-free nations carved up as territory between the five Dragonarmies. Now new heroes must answer the call in an even deadlier world where the last vestiges of resistance (deposed governments in exile, Solamnic Knights, non-evil clerics, etc) are separate bands of resistance constantly on the move, outnumbered and outclassed.
For those interested in what happened to the Heroes of the Lance: Elistan died from an incurable disease, Riverwind and Goldmoon were slain by barbarian mercenaries, Laurana was driven mad by desperate use of the Dragon Orb in the High Clerist’s Tower, Raistlin turned evil and stole a Dragon Orb of his own before disappearing to who-knows-where, Flint died from a stroke, Caramon and Tika become trapped in an unhappy marriage, Sturm is a disgraced and broken man, and Tanis is too busy looking over his remaining friends to restart the fight against the Dark Queen’s forces.
Setting locations are sparse and readers are pointed to the existing
War of the Lance sourcebook where things remain relatively unchanged. The notable exceptions are the High Clerist’s Tower, guarded over by the spirits of slain dragons summoned by the Dragon Orb where Laurana’s mad melodies can be heard; the administrative regions of the Dragon Empire; a secret rebel base in the mountains known as Sanctuary occupying a temple which shows historical evidence of the existence of good-aligned metallic dragons*; the nightmare lands of Silvanesti are used as a dumping ground by the Dragonarmies for elven prisoners across the continent; a secret temple holding a dragon-slaying arrow which will only reveal its gates to a cleric of the non-evil gods; and the Tower of Wayreth’s wizards are locked in furious debate as to whether or not to intervene in the outside world given that it’s only a matter of time before the Dragonarmies come for them.
*Dragons were considered mythical beasts during the War of the Lance, and for most of the Chronicles only Chromatics were known.
Some of the more interesting adventure hooks include seizing the Blue Crystal Staff from a highly-secured transport, Sturm giving his sword to one of the PCs for a quest to rediscover the ancient forge of the Dragonlances, and papers from a dying soldier showing of an intrafactional assassination attempt against the Green Dragon Highlord. The NPC write-ups are a diverse assortment, ranging from freedom fighters, a demoted Dragonarmy desk clerk using the bureaucracy against the Empire to cause supply shortages and mishaps, a gnome weapons designer who invented an automatic Gatling crossbow (but no stats for said new weapon), an in-character write-up of Fewmaster Toede* who portrays himself as THE GREATEST SOLDIER OF ANSALSON, and Sturm Brightblade who is now a shadow of his former self.
*an arrogant and utterly ineffectual recurring comic relief villain in the Chronicles.
Rating: ⅘. It’s not exactly that much different than the original Chronicles, but everything’s worse since evil has won. The adventure hooks, NPCs, and location material strongly point to the PCs picking up where the Heroes of the Lance failed, which can make for an interesting “second try” for those who suffered a TPK during the Chronicles. The baked-in nature of existing book characters means that things will need to be changed around to account for things like if Sturm was never a PC in your games.
The world is doomed. DOOMED! This alternate timeline details what would happen if Raistlin’s quest for power culminated in him killing off the gods of Krynn and what happens in the meantime. Unlike previous timelines this one’s a lot shorter as the world will literally end in two years once Raistlin slays the final god Paladine, with entries detailing days of the month instead of just year by year. Taking place three years after the end of the War of the Lance, Raistlin slays Takhisis while an ascetic of the Library of Palanthas steals the Final Volume prophesying Krynn’s final days with startling detail. Circulation of the book spreads rapidly once Raistlin kills more gods, causing terrible weather known as magestorms to sweep across the world. The three moons shatter once Raistlin kills the first of the three gods of magic. What follows is a series of natural and unnatural disasters, political upheaval once knowledge of the Final Volume spreads, and the rise of Raistlin-worshiping cultists which culminates in a wide displacement of refugees and survivors seeking the few safe places left on Ansalon. The world gets progressively worse in more supernatural ways, from literal rains of blood raining across the northern half of Ansalon, a lightstorm resurrecting former Dragonarmy soldiers who don’t know what the hell’s going on and renew their old battles, to larger magestorms covering wider surfaces of the planet the closer the end of history approaches.
We get some write-ups on existing organizations, but what is of paramount interest are two new ones: the first is the Armies of Reorx, a united coalition of dwarven soldiers super-pissed that Raistlin killed their dwarf-god and are fighting the Raistlinites. The second are the aforementioned Raistlinites, who believe that they will survive the end of the world should a lightstorm resurrect them and so are pitching in with the winning party. They’re pretty much your garden-variety evil cultists who can use both arcane and divine magic; they range from community leaders with good publicity to eldritch-powered bandits.
We get several new rules reflecting the apocalyptic state of affairs. The first are magestorms, violent thunderstorms whose lightning strikes cause magical phenomena ranging from instant death to the creation of nightmares and warping the bodies of those struck. Lightstorms are a rarer variety whose rain has healing properties, where its lightning strikes can bring the dead back to life. If it hits no dead material, the lightning spontaneously generates good-aligned animals. It is theorized that the lightstorms are the spark of Crysania who lives on inside Raistlin.
The second rule involves the deaths of the gods. Raistlin’s own constellation gradually grows one star with every act of deicide, and divine spellcasters of a dead god find their magic power waning over the process of 1 Caster Level per day and must roll a Fortitude save vs fatigue whenever they cast a spell. This includes arcane spellcasters who worship one of the three moons, so it might be a good idea to pick a patron deity who gets killed off late in the campaign. Additionally, Raistlin unconsciously passes some of his power to those like himself: non-good-aligned creatures receive bonus HP equal to (4
minus their Constitution bonus, minimum 0) times the number of stars in the sky. This is meant to be a metaphysical act of sympathy for the weak and sickly people like himself, but this means that local wildlife and small woodland creatures get super-buff over the course of the campaign.
Adventure hooks include appropriately out-there ideas: ideas include piloting a gnomish vessel designed to catch pieces of falling moon, finding a magical rose in Lord Soth’s possession which can regrow desolate wastelands, thwarting a plot by clerics of the death god offering to plane shift refugees to what they claim is a safe haven, and helping lead the Armies of Reorx in a vain, supremely risky plan to surround and kill Raistlin. Character write-ups include the scholar of the Final Volume looking for someone to prevent said events, a Solamnic knight in over his head when much of his superiors up the chain of command got killed, a widowed Tika who donned her husband’s gear and seeks to confront Raistlin once he returns to Solace as detailed in the Final Volume, and full write-ups for the Raistlinite cult leader and his warlord second-in-command. We know that as a deity Raistlin has the Evil and Magic domains, but little beyond that.
Rating: 5/5. This is my favorite of the Alternate Krynns. The end of the world scenario is both easy to understand and provides a literal countdown clock for the PCs to accomplish whatever good they seek to do in the world, however futile it may be. The locations, characters, and rules all reinforce this theme in a more punctual way than the Kingpriest Ascendant or Dragonlands’ underdog stories do.
Fun Fact: this alternate timeline was originally a homebrewed setting, but someone in Sovereign Press (the publisher which later became Margaret Weis Productions) liked it so much they asked the creator if they wanted to include it in an official sourcebook.
A more complete 208 page PDF is available on the Dragonlance Nexus site.
In the standard Dragonlance timeline, the new Age of Mortals is ushered along when the Graygem of Gargath breaks and releases Chaos into the world. This results in a rare time when the forces of both Good and Evil cooperate against this existential threat which would destroy reality as they knew it. But in War of the Darklance, the Graygem is never broken; therefore the Knights of Takhisis, the spiritual successors to the Dragonarmies, have no such incentive for cooperation and instead try to take Krynn over again.
Taking place around 30 years after the end of the War of the Lance, both arcane and divine magic is widespread enough that armies are beginning to make us of spells for defense, and the Knights of Takhisis begin to steal Dragonlances to corrupt them into Darklances. Such foul magic is so evil that it begins to affect nature, resulting in an unnaturally long continent-wide winter. The Blood Sea of Istar freezes, and the minotaurs march forth on the ice to wage genocidal war against the ogres. Without the unifying pact of the Whitestone Council from the War of the Lance, the Solamnic Knights have their hands full while refugees are arriving in Northern and Southern Ergoth in massive groups for they are the only countries untouched by the Dark Queen’s onslaught. The forests of the Qualinesti elves get burned by the evil Knights, forcing them to flee their homeland once again. The Knights of Takhisis conquered most of the continent, and granary stocks are running ever more dangerously low.
Location write-ups include a Solamnic waystation that made an unlikely alliance with a Black Robe wizard to defend travelers from the Knights of Takhisis; various governments in exile formed settlements in Ergoth, Solamnia and Qualinesti included; the Blood and New Seas froze over with permafrost allowing for strange inhabitants to make their homes in icy caverns; Feal-Thas the White Dragon Highlord became undead and converted Icewall Castle into a flying citadel in the polar south; the gnomes utilize their technology for the war effort by cooperating with the Solamnic Knights; and the Tower of High Sorcery of Palanthas was destroyed by the Knights of the Thorn* in a deadly fight with the Wizards. The forces clashed over the Tower holding a portal to the Abyss, which the Knights could use to free their goddess.
*arcane casters of Takhisis’ Knights.
We have eight whopping adventure hooks, the most of any Alternate Krynn were it not tied with Age of Dragons. They mostly involve thwarting plots against the Knights of Takhisis by seeking aid from some faction or following up a rumor of stolen Dragonlances or saboteurs. But the most interesting one in my opinion involves boring through the Blood Sea’s ice to raid the sunken Tower of High Sorcery of Istar. We have a lot of character writes-ups and stat blocks too. The more notable ones among our selection include Emperor Ariakas’ son, Ariakan, who is a 20th-level martial character specializing in leadership-based buffs derived from his prestige classes; Aren Feal-Thas who is a cold magic-focused wizard and gish with the death knight template*; an evil gully dwarf cleric of Morgion who is spreading filth and disease
on purpose; and a motley assortment of notable dragons, regional and military leaders of the various factions, more notable soldiers, draconian assassins, warpriests, and others whose talents are invaluable to the war effort.
*think Lord Soth.
Lastly we have a side-bar going into detail on the creation of Darklances as a twisted reflection of the process used to forge the Dragonlances. Sadly no game stats on how Darklances differ from their original counterparts is provided. I can’t help but feel that this is a wasted opportunity.
Rating: ⅗. While I appreciate it when official companies honor their fanboys by adopting their work, the War of the Darklance is too...well samey for my tastes. Instead of the Dragonarmies, you have the Knights of Takhisis. And instead of Emperor Ariakas they are lead by his son Ariakan. The Qualinesti elves become refugees again. The corrupted Darklances and the continent-wide winter is a novel touch. For the Krynns with similar threats, the Dragonlands at least were based on a clear loss factor, and the Magocracy of Ansalon is different enough to feel novel even if they’re using arcane Dragonarmies.
But I will give it some pluses: I like it more than the default Age of Mortals that came after Dragons of Summer Flame, which more or less was an attempt at nullifying everything that happened in the Chronicles. The large amount of material serves as useful gaming aids, and combined with the linked PDF is the most developed of all the Alternate Krynns.
This Alternate Krynn was present in the Legends novels (same with Hourglass in the Sky, although only its aftermath), where Tasslehoff traveled to the future and attended Caramon’s funeral. It takes place in the most current year of the published Dragonlance material, 70 years after the War of the Lance to be precise, but its major divergence point is that Chaos was defeated and Takhisis did not steal the world away to claim for herself. In essence, this bypasses the
War of Souls trilogy resulting in a highly different Krynn.
Unlike the other Alternate Krynns there is no major threat arising to menace Ansalon. Instead there is an uneasy peace, where new nations arose as united political blocs: the Ergothian Coalition takes the role of a neutral power, the Solamnic Alliance and the Nerakan Empire are stockpiling arms for yet another war they feel will come, and despite their separation the three elven subraces came together as the United Elven Nations. The United Realms is a pseudo-UN organization dedicated to arbitrating disputes, and the region of Khur (pseudo-Middle East) refused to join in favor of isolationism. The minotaurs and dwarves express little desire to join as well, although the hill dwarves sent an ambassador of their own to the United Realms whilst the minotaurs are eager to invade Ansalon regardless of how its geo-political borders are drawn. The former Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia died under suspicious circumstances, Neraka’s leader survived his own assassination attempt, and dragons have begun to gather in both nations claiming to be observers of how future events will unfold.
Location-wise we focus mostly on the ‘big picture’ of nations rather than individual places of interest. Some major developments include the Nerakan capital declaring itself a “free trade haven” to boost foreign investment and tourism, the citadel Storm’s Keep is the headquarters of the Knights of Takhisis, the Tower of High Sorcery at Kalaman is built in Solamnia as part of a more open policy to wizards, and the Thieves’ Guild in Palanthas is growing more powerful while the Solamnic Knights are struggling to build reliable kender-proof jail cells in the city.
Our eight adventure hooks have appropriately cloak and dagger politicking themes, ranging from the draconian nation of Teyr being suspected of kidnapping a Solamnic noble to secure a peace treaty, rooting out underground arms dealers selling to minotaurs, and some sillier ones such as a rampaging gnome-created clockwork dragon laying egg bombs or an upstart gully dwarf chieftain bringing Thorbadin to near-civil war by stealing the Hammer of Kharas.The nine stat blocks include write-ups for major political figures and ambassadors. The most notable ones include a souped-up Dalamar who’s the Master of the Tower of Palanthas, and a traveling red robe wizard looking for lost artifacts, texts, and places of arcane significance.
Rating: ⅖. I will admit that Age of Dragons is not really my thing. On the one hand I can see how it cuts down on world-destroying events which at this time in Dragonlance feel old hat, but the murky political intrigue is something I feel does not suit the setting. I can get all this from Eberron’s backdrop; when I run a game of Dragonlance, I want classic high fantasy even if it doesn’t involve the original Chronicles. On the other hand, this setting does have a sizeable fanbase if a
Dragonlance Nexus expanded entry and an
RPGnet thread are anything to go by.
Thoughts So Far: I appreciate how each Alternate Krynn is both very different from the base setting while also having concepts which can be summed up in quick soundbites. I also enjoy how several of them are willing to give unorthodox antagonists beyond Takhisis’ forces. Hourglass in the Sky was my favorite, with Magocracy of Ansalon a close second. I see potential in Kingpriest Ascendant and Dragonlands, although War of the Darklance and Age of Dragons didn’t really grab me. But even in the latter case the book did a good job of being clear in worldbuilding and generous with gaming aids.
Join us next time as we cover Chapter Five: Legendary Wars!