Originally posted by Hellcow:
Personally I always really disliked it in stories when no matter what the heroes do, they do it wrong*. I am playing Eberron here, not Call of Cthulhu
That is a personal preference though, and I am sure that just because the Lords of Dust
believe they rule the world and everything happens as planned,
in reality it is not the case.
Exactly. The Lords of Dust are exactly as capable as you want them to be in your game. If they aren't the major villains of your game, they can be far less influential and powerful than they believe, and their failure to release an overlord can be not due to having to wait so long for the stars to be right, but rather because they've just screwed up or been defeated. They can be just as flawed or fallible as any other creature.
Even if they ARE as brilliant as they can be, as you say, they are playing their game with other creatures that are just as brilliant and powerful - the Chamber, the Undying Court - and they won't come out ahead every time. Beyond that, the LoD are not a monolithic organization, and the Prakhutu of Katashka may end up helping the PCs against the Prakhutu of Rak Tulkhesh, because their goals clash. The PCs may be pawns in this huge game, but they are also the heroes of the age, and they may break the rules - doing things none of these ancient masterminds ever expected.
On the other hand, let's say that your campaign is about the release of an Overlord. You've got it planned out, and that's the Epic arc you want to have happen. PCs will grow in power, encounter the LoD a few times along the way, and eventually the Overlord gets released and they fight it. This is what you WANT to happen, so you don't want the PCs to be able to spoil events while still in heroic tier. But you also don't want them to lose fights whenever they run into the LoD. Which leaves a range of options.
Losing may in fact part of the LoD's plans. It's part of the Prophecy. The Sword NEEDS to be drawn from the Stone before Rak Tulkhesh can rise again. The LoD only opposes the PC to set him on the right path. The key point here is "Whatever the heroes do, they do it wrong". This should never be the case. In this scenario, the LoD might be, say, about to sacrifice a village full of peasants. Fighting him and saving those peasants is exactly the right thing to do. Taking that magic artifact sword from him is simply common sense. It turns out that getting that artifact sword into your hands was his goal. But you did the right thing. You saved innocents from peril. That sword will let you defeat the daelkyr who would destroy the world himself if you didn't stop him. The fact that there are unforeseen long-term consequences is something you'll deal with when the time comes, and hopefully you will triumph there too. You never did anything WRONG; it just turns out that your victory was part of their plans.
Alternately, the LoD can just plain lose, but they have back-up plans. You've defeated them here, so they need to do something else over to attain the objective, and they've already figured out what that is. You may get to face them again when they do... or you may simply read about how the Royal Graveyard of Wroat was plundered in the latest issue of the Korranberg Chronicle, and later realize that this happened because you stopped the LoD from plundering the Thronehold Crypt.
This is a way to look at the defeat of Bel Shalor by Tira Miron. It could be exactly what it seems; Bel Shalor was released and Tira & the Flame smacked him down. Or it could be that this apparent defeat was part of the plan all along; that the creation of the Church of the Silver Flame - with Bel Shalor able to whisper to its members - was part of a much longer-term scheme. That's the "Defeat was the plan" version; the "backup plan" version is that Bel Shalor never expected to be defeated, but had the lingering-in-the-Flame scheme as a safety net just in case. In either case, Tira Miron did nothing
wrong. She saved Thrane, if not Khorvaire itself. She laid the foundation for an organization that has done tremendous good over the centuries. Perhaps the LoD had prepared for their defeat; perhaps it was even part of their plans. But leaving BS to roam free would have been far, far worse.
The main thing to me is that Eberron has a lot of evil masterminds, and I like plots with them to have a different flavor; dealing with the Aurum, the Dreaming Dark, and the Lords of Dust should all be very different. The Aurum, while powerful, are the simplest of these. They are mortals, just like you. They may be as brilliant as any mortal can be, but they can only plot so far ahead. They can't plan for every contingency, and things may simply go wrong. Whereas in my game, the Lords of Dust are the ultimate schemers. They've been planning things not just before you were born, but before your race even existed. They understand the nature of reality on a level you do not. They have entire families they've bred or villages they've established solely for the purpose of this one scenario - they've been waiting a thousand years for this particular piece of the puzzle to finally come together. The LoD on the scene is not only ready to be defeated, he's ready to die - because he knows he will return.
To me, this also comes to Indiana Jones and Belloq. The PCs are the heroes. But it's OK for heroes to lose occasionally - as long as this leads them to greater victory in the end. Perhaps the LoD do trick the PCs or cheat them. Perhaps they only realize later that their patron was a rakshasa. The key is that in the end their ingenuity will allow them to foil the schemes of the immortals... for another thousand years, at least.
Originally posted by Hellcow:
It is one of the things that really irritated me by the end of the Dark Knight. Great movie, but how much planning can go off exactly as planned? How smart can a person be? How many coincidences take place?
Well, bear in mind that when you're dealing with LoD, you're dealing with immortal shapeshifting mindreading wizards with a sneak peek at the future. When dealing with them, few things should BE coincidence. If you get into a airship chase with an LoD, it MAY be that they already know they're going to lose. But it may also be that for the last 200 years they've had a family of pawns in place in the local watch because they knew that there was a chance that they'd end up in jail, and that when it appears the watch officer does something stupid that results in the guy escaping, it's actually intentional on his part because he's been preparing for the Joker to be tossed in his prison since the day he was born, and in fact someone stopped by earlier in the week to remind him the time was coming.
I'm just saying that for the Aurum it would be an amazing coincidence; for the LoD, it may all be part of a plan, because they've had the time, power, and resources to plan on that level.
But again... that's all if you WANT that. They are the force in the world that logically CAN have that power. But if you don't like it? Play up the arrogance. Play down the influence. They can be just as flawed as any human.
