NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9714345" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/O2fGAMc.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 639px" />With all the focus on rules crunch these past few chapters, the World of Dragonbond finally pivots to some fluffy world-building. This chapter focuses entirely on the continent of Valerna, which is where most of the planet's "important figures and stories come from."The chapter opens up with covering the history of the world, divided into six Ages. The Age of Protogons is brief and ill-detailed, detailing these immortal beings as the first creatures to come into existence, and how all but one of them abided by a rule that they cannot create others like themselves. Kadmos broke this social contract, ushering in the Age of Dragons when they created thousands of dragons in their image. This resulted in a devastating war with the rest of the Protogons that ended with the death of Kadmos and dragonkind banished to the moon. The Age of Mortals began when various non-draconic sapient life forms started organizing into the first societies, becoming independent of their Protogon creators who in turn were beginning to lessen in power. The Age of Heroes began when the first known Dragonbonds started occurring. As the Protogons at this time were nearly gone, and those few remaining were oblivious to the destructive side effects of their great powers, the beings of Rhaava grew to resent them. The Dragonbonded led armies to rise up and kill the last of the Protogons.The Age of the Covenant began after the Dragonbonded gather together into a formal organization. The First Null War came due to reckless harvesting of Vaala in the regular text of this chapter, but the truncated timeline claims that Ellari Dragonbonded brought it into the world after recklessly seeking a weapon beyond reality via utilizing dreamshaping magic. Either way, the Null spread rapidly, causing countless civilizations to fall, with the Ellari being particularly susceptible as the Null hijacked their innate dreaming magic to create all kinds of horrific monsters. A great ritual sacrifice conducted between nations made several great seals to banish the Null. The end of the war saw the formation of what will become the modern kingdoms of the present era, and a new Age of War dawned as various independent struggles in various realms grew out of the power vacuum. The Second Null War occurred near the end of this Age, marking the return of Null and Dragonbonded, along with the dragons of Drakha discovering a way to cross over to Rhaava without needing to wait for the Eye of Kadmos to open. The current Age of Endless Sagas began 5 years before the current era at the end of the Second Null War, noted by the re-establishment of the Dragonbonded Covenant and the rise of various dragon-mortal heroic pairs destined to leave their mark on the world.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/eGZMvfi.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 383px" />Each of the four major civilizations gets a brief two-page writeup.The Dragon Kingdom of Allaria is ruled by a dynasty of allai who claim that their mixed heritage makes them more inherently adept at ruling than either elves or humans. There's not much here that hasn't been covered in prior chapters, although we learn that its military relies heavily on shield-bearing heavy infantry known as the Oathguard, with its cavalry made up of qirin riders. With the overturning of the Dreamless Treatment, more ellari soldiers are joining, making use of dreamshaping magic resulting in breakthrough tactical innovations.The Blood Empire of Tyveria is the most powerful civilization on the continent, with only Allaria being a threat to its power. Its maghyr nobility are particularly brutal and corrupt, and awakened blood is used as a currency among the nobility and mages. Their military is made up of halfling sappers, blood mages, foot soldiers of various ancestries, and vampyr warriors along with giant insect war animals and mounts.Nahuac is a coalition of independent nations known as the Four Quadrants. They include Mígtal, a cold land ruled over by wizards who number among the continent's most powerful mages; Ad'tal, a land of climate extremes ranging from lush jungles to deserts, populated by lizardfolk as well as Nahuac's strongest warriors who come from tribes known as the Seven Thunders; Iltal, the oldest of the states, forming much of Nahuac's coast and whose major cities magically float high above ground; and Tlátal, the largest and most prominent of the nations home to the Kaabac people who use the power of K'aab to take the forms of animals…wait, don't they mean the Tánaid? The book even refers to their four subgroups of guardian spirits by the same name, so this might be an editing oversight from a prior version of the book where said race had a different name. Nahuac's military makes heavy use of nature-themed magic and necromancy.Ysval is the northernmost of the major kingdoms, formed by refugees of the First Null War. Most of these refugees were prior worshipers of that foul force before redeeming themselves by founding a new religion known as the Light. Ysval is sparsely populated, its settlements small, widely-scattered villages interspersed by watchtowers, Ysvalians pride themselves on making do with little, and despite being the least powerful of the four major nations, they managed to repel outsiders who underestimate them. The kingdom's human majority also entered into friendships with púka halflings and giants known as Hmyr.  Paladin orders of knighthood deriving their powers from the Light make up the military's backbone, and griffons and muscular reindeer serve as cavalry. Púka halflings help with logistics and supplies, and while the hmyr giants aren't formally part of the kingdom, they are trusted allies who both sides can count on to support the other.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/xTYAh2b.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 504px" />Other Realms covers the smaller civilizations on the continent of Valerna. There's seven of them, with one getting a slightly more detailed yet still very brief write-up. They include Sikaria, a magocrocy ruled over by strange elves known as the sikari, who engage in competitive magical alterations to the ecosystem like some kind of society-wide science fair; the Shield Clans of Enkhara, floating cities of nwoda dwarves carrying mobile birthstones; the Scourge Triumvirate, an alliance between orcs, snakepeople known as the boaab, and elementals known as djaat who view the continent's human-majority nations as unlawful usurpers who must be overthrown; the Fell Courts, an otherworldly realm ruled by elven archmage survivors of the Dreambleed cataclysm who used their magic to carve out an illusory kingdom running off of fairy-tale logic; Gellanor, a coalition of various nomadic tribes brought together by an order of Ysvalian knights who were exiled into the most inhospitable lands of the north after refusing to worship the Light. And the Altanesi Ascendency, formed by a human warlord claiming to be a long-lost scion of Altanesi nobility who now seeks to build a new empire in its image.The last realm we cover is the Cursed Coast, a region of politically-contested territories that have a foul reputation for generations' worth of conflict and magical disasters. We have write-ups for various locations and power-players, such as the four city-states known as the Aunai States serving as the major population centers of the Coast, the smoggy Tyverian border city of Kara Matula, the Vision Valley which is thick with Fai magic and presided over by the Fell noble known as Bele, and Exile Kingdoms which are crawling with various bandit gangs, walled settlements reigned over by rapid successions of warlords, and even rumors of Null monsters haunting ancient ruins. Each of the four major kingdoms has some presence here.Thoughts So Far: Given the brevity of this chapter, I wanted to save my opinions until the end. While a lot of the realms sound quite interesting, the individual briefness of each entry leaves DMs with not much material to work with. Even the four major kingdoms are covered only in the broadest of strokes, with the Other Realms entries having virtually nothing to build off of, besides perhaps some lore from later monster stat blocks for the less humanoid realms. I would've liked to see more coverage of notable locations, cities, dungeons, and suggested adventure hooks to make the setting feel more alive.Join us next time as we encounter Valerna's diverse peoples and dangerous monsters in Chapter 7: Bestiary!</blockquote>

Verification