I'm thinking out loud, for some quirky adventures and locations for an Eberron game.
Frostfell. The frozen north polar continent of Eberron. Dwarves might have originated here. Here there be undead and monsters. That's all it gets in the setting book.
I'm seeing: the ancestral dwarves. An offshoot species, or the ones that remained behind when their cousins fled the climate shift that froze this place. Call them "dwerrow" maybe. They've adapted and degenerated- they are squat, coverred in shaggy white fur, with trowel-like claws on their hands for digging in the ice and hard earth. They wield crude stone handaxes at best. Live mostly as quadrapeds. Only dimly intelligent, they huddle in clans in ancient dwarven burrows, digging for roots and burrowing insects to eat.
Until, that is, they were found by something that offerred them warmth and food. An ancient rakshasa maharajah, a demon bound deep inside Khyber. They worship it now, sacrificing captives to it and then feasting on their flesh, digging it free slowly through the generations. When it gets free it will probably devour them all, but they haven't really figured that out yet.
The Thirteen Dragonmarked Houses: In Xen'drik or deep in Khyber, a ritual location has been found. What it does is either undetermined or believed to be beneficial (haven't figured that part out yet). To be activated, it needs a representative of all the dragonmarked bloodlines. All 13.
How do you convince Vol to help you? Very epic. It might even need living members of each house, in which case you have to come up with a hidden descendant of the house, or get her to agree to be ressurected. Or maybe it needs the blood of each house, literally, and you can try to steal a sample of her blood or flesh that she had stored a long time ago, or else go back in time and prick her with a needle, or clone her, or something- PCs are creative.
Planar Metropolis. Not really a good place to have one of these in the cosmology, unless you use a demiplane.
Syrania: lots of cities floating around, populated by angels. There's one, named after its owner, the Lady Llegua. Llegua and the bulk of her forces left on a mission, quite a long time ago. Millenia, in fact. The traditions of the solars keep another from claiming dominion over her city while she lives, and she obviously still lives, otherwise the city would have ceased to be by now (the cities are upheld by their masters).
So there's a perfectly formed, mostly empty city in heaven, owned by no one. Of course it has been settled. Formians, lycanthropes on the lam, gith of various clans, fae, genies, shulassakar, and some plane-hopping Eberron natives populate Llegua now. Nothing too nasty operates openly, as that would draw the attention of the other solars right quick, but shady deals and nastier, even fiendish, visitors can be found here too. Nobody has gotten into the great golden palace at the center, but maybe there are some clues there as to where the Lady went.
Frostfell. The frozen north polar continent of Eberron. Dwarves might have originated here. Here there be undead and monsters. That's all it gets in the setting book.
I'm seeing: the ancestral dwarves. An offshoot species, or the ones that remained behind when their cousins fled the climate shift that froze this place. Call them "dwerrow" maybe. They've adapted and degenerated- they are squat, coverred in shaggy white fur, with trowel-like claws on their hands for digging in the ice and hard earth. They wield crude stone handaxes at best. Live mostly as quadrapeds. Only dimly intelligent, they huddle in clans in ancient dwarven burrows, digging for roots and burrowing insects to eat.
Until, that is, they were found by something that offerred them warmth and food. An ancient rakshasa maharajah, a demon bound deep inside Khyber. They worship it now, sacrificing captives to it and then feasting on their flesh, digging it free slowly through the generations. When it gets free it will probably devour them all, but they haven't really figured that out yet.
The Thirteen Dragonmarked Houses: In Xen'drik or deep in Khyber, a ritual location has been found. What it does is either undetermined or believed to be beneficial (haven't figured that part out yet). To be activated, it needs a representative of all the dragonmarked bloodlines. All 13.
How do you convince Vol to help you? Very epic. It might even need living members of each house, in which case you have to come up with a hidden descendant of the house, or get her to agree to be ressurected. Or maybe it needs the blood of each house, literally, and you can try to steal a sample of her blood or flesh that she had stored a long time ago, or else go back in time and prick her with a needle, or clone her, or something- PCs are creative.
Planar Metropolis. Not really a good place to have one of these in the cosmology, unless you use a demiplane.
Syrania: lots of cities floating around, populated by angels. There's one, named after its owner, the Lady Llegua. Llegua and the bulk of her forces left on a mission, quite a long time ago. Millenia, in fact. The traditions of the solars keep another from claiming dominion over her city while she lives, and she obviously still lives, otherwise the city would have ceased to be by now (the cities are upheld by their masters).
So there's a perfectly formed, mostly empty city in heaven, owned by no one. Of course it has been settled. Formians, lycanthropes on the lam, gith of various clans, fae, genies, shulassakar, and some plane-hopping Eberron natives populate Llegua now. Nothing too nasty operates openly, as that would draw the attention of the other solars right quick, but shady deals and nastier, even fiendish, visitors can be found here too. Nobody has gotten into the great golden palace at the center, but maybe there are some clues there as to where the Lady went.
