In which MetalJim expands upon a 4th edition campaign idea…

Last week I talked about creating my own 4th edition D&D campaign setting, inspired by but varying slightly from the default “points of light” setting that will ship with the 4^th edition rulebooks in June.

In short, I want to set up a world that is recovering from a twelve year “mini ice age” following a comet strike on the other side of the planet.

My starting campaign area is a strip of coastline, including hills, swamps, and forests, and a few islands just off the coast.

The rest of today’s post is about how different character races might fit into this starting area, and to explain where the PCs might have spent long portions of their childhood.

Humans

Not surprisingly, humans make up a large portion of the surviving population.  It has something to do with that whole “adaptability” thing.  There’s one major human city inside my starting area.  It’s spread across three islands near the mouth of a river and a sheltered bay.  The population of this city has had its ups and downs through the years of darkness.  At times the city was doing relatively well, in part because of the brave exploits of sailors and fishermen in finding what fish were left in the ocean.  However, there were other times when the city had to integrate streams of refugess from inland cities, and times when the city couldn’t feed all of its people.  Starvation and plague took their toll.

Still, the survivors of Kardina (does that name work?) are somewhat wealthy, despite a weak central government.  The goverment is kept weak by the powers of the three major competing priesthoods in town.  One of the temples is devoted to the original (good) god of the town.  Another major temple belongs to a more or less benevolent god who was brought to Kardina by refugees.  The third priesthood is all about making hard sacrifices to a dark god of evil — dark religion for a dark time.  The three temples have more or less turned the city into a string of fortified neighborhoods (yes, it is a little like present day Bagdad).  As weather conditions improve, the three temples will find themselves struggling even more vigorously for converts and for political power.  At least one of the religions probably won’t survive in the long term.  It would be easy to set up adventures and campaign arcs around this conflict when the player characters are in the 4^th to 7^th level range.

My campaign will start, however, in a different human village somewhere further down the coast.  I don’t want my players to be thrown into the politics of the big city right away.

Dwarves

The dwarves were one of the major races in the region before the cataclysm, and were better positioned, at first, than just about any other race.  After all, the dwarves were already adept at tunneling underground to find heat, and dwarves are pretty good at laying in provisions and defending themselves.  However, the years took their toll on the dwarves.  Quite a few of the marauding monster tribes in the nearby mountains all took their shot at the main dwarven hill fortress.  Eventually, one last goblin horde came out of the west and the dwarven fortress was overrun.

There is a bitter dispute between the humans and the dwarves.  Apparently, according to dwarven conspiracy theories, the humans made a deal with the goblin horde.  The humans told the goblins that the dwarves still had food, and also that they would not fight the goblins if the goblins attacked the dwarves instead.  The humans did attack the goblins shortly after the dwarves were overrun.  The dwarves feel that, at the least, the humans were too late in coming to their help.  Apparently, the humans “liberated” a number of treasures from the goblins that had only been pilfered from dwarven tombs a few days prior.  In the culture of this world, taking prizes from defeated enemies is a legal right.  However, the dwarves have their suspicions about whether the whole thing was really a plot by the humans to take the dwarven treasure for themselves.

More recently, dwarven refugees from other parts of the continent have resettled the ancient fortress, and have begun to press legal claims against the city of Kardina to have more of their “stolen” treasure returned to them.

Elves

Standard elves in 4^th edition are creatures of the forest.  Not all of the trees were completely killed or wiped out by the years of haze and darkness, and the woodlands are just now starting to come back to life.  The elves suffered along with the other races, but managed to keep a low profile and managed to conserve decent numbers of their own people.  Many of the surviving elves now want to begin the project of spreading seeds and helping nature to recover.  Elven rangers are eager to explore the world in order to open up the trade roads once again.

Halflings

In the new edition, halflings lose some of their Tolkien inspired cliches, and become instead a race of smallish humans who inhabit rivers and grasslands.   I’ve never been a huge fan of halflings, but I can see giving them a small settlement upstream from the major human city.  Maybe their town is cleverly concealed within an island in the center of the river.  Maybe the halflings are very good at fishing slime eels out of the river mud.  Mmm-mmm slime eels.  In my world, halflings are quite proud of the fact that they eat LESS than normal humans, making them better equipped to survive in a perilous world.

Tieflings

You’ve heard about how the tieflings are supposed to be a major selling point in 4th edition.  Just look at the covers of various 4th ed products that have been listed on Amazon.  Now, we’re supposd to believe that most of these “devilbloods” are descended from other tieflings, and not from human-devil matings.

A tiefling settlement does exist in the marshes north of Kardina, the major human city.  It’s a ragtag collection of tents, shacks, and yurts.  If you ask them, they will say that they are refugees from an empire far to the east, where a few powerful half-devils rule desperately through cruelty and slavery.  These tieflings were nobles once, but lost out in a civil war.  Now they travel about these civilized lands as gypsies, performing music, trading, and stealing a bit to make ends meet.

Eladrin

The eladrin are, from what I understand, closely related to elves.  The new eladrin are more like the “grey elves” of old, while the new elves are more like the “wood elves” of old.  I’m going to give my eladrin a settlement on a island off the coast, about 15 miles sailing from the human city of Kardina.  The settlement is on an outcropping surrounded by strange crystalline towers (this is a fantasy world, after all).  Many of the eladrin actually just stepped across into the feywild, and perhaps into other worlds, in order to avoid the disaster.  The remaining survivors have been living on seaweed and mussels.  Some of those who remained fought valiantly to save civilization from total collapse, but most of those heroes never made it home. 

Dragonborn

This is the 4th edition race about which we probably know the least so far.  Obviously, these guys have a draconic bloodline, and they are strong and hearty.

I’m thinking that the dragonborn in my world had their own empire to the south (Morocco or Algeria to the current kingdom’s Portugal).  However, the desert kingdoms did not fare very well as a result of shifting weather patterns.  Here, lakes and wells dried up and turned into beds of salt.  Ash deposits ruined what little useful soil existed in those kingdoms.  Now, however, a few merchants and travelers from the southern lands are beginning to make their way back up into the area where the campaign begins.  These travelers report that all contact has been lost with the inland capital of their empire, and no scouts have returned who can give intelligence about what happened there.

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That’s a good start for now.  I might wait a few more weeks before coming back with part three of this series, which will offer more insight into the starting village and the adventure opportunities that will be available to a first level party.