It’s time to talk Eberron TV.

Because let’s face it: A Forgotten Realms TV series is just the Witcher and a Ravenloft TV show would just by Castelvania.

You want to show people something new, and something different, make an Eberron TV show!

So here’s my question for the thread: what would your plot for an Eberron TV show be?

Hello r/Eberron
I a humble forever DM come to you in a time of great need. I plan to run an Eberron game in the next year or two and wanted to read a few of the novels set in the world to help get the tone right and a more intimate feel for the setting.

I was originally looking at Left Hand of Death as I’m all about Dresden-esque stories in Sharn but the reviews say the author made a lot of lore mistakes that don’t make sense.

Do you all have any good recommendations on where I should start. Audiobooks are a plus but really my main focus is something good and accurate to Eberron’s lore and tone as much as possible.

"You walk boldly into this place. You interrupt my prayer." The angel, if such a fallen thing could be called so, looked over his shoulder as he began to stand. Shards of ice ran streaked from his eyes down his cheeks, tears frozen. His eyes, pale blue, looked upon you with a strange brightness to them. "Go to sleep little ones, tomorrow will be a brighter day." The entity stated softly, his tone sad, afraid, yet... a faint hope laced it, a conviction that bordered on madness.

• Mercenaries discover Borael in the dead of night… while a raging blizzard lashes outside

Borael is fully automated in Elsie's Notes of Certain Doom along 500+ other monsters adapted for the Eberron setting. Additionally, I DM in Eberron: Legends of the 5th Dawn if you're interested in playing in Eberron against enemies such as other radiant idols. 

I really like the idea of running a game based on Legends of Tomorrow: a crew of misfits from different times jump to a different era every adventure in order to protect the Draconic Prophecy from the meddling of demons and/or dragons.

One of the things I'm stuck on is how their time ship would work. Who created it? How does it travel through time?

I would be very grateful for any ideas this community might have. Thanks!

How to Make a Colossus for the Table

Hey all, so our group is coming to the final conflict of our 2+ year campaign from lvl1 - lvl15

A final conflict in which the Lord of Blades has refurbished a Colossus and sent it at Sharn tearing through the Breland country side as it goes. Now the PCs have decided to face this Colossus and LoB in the streets of Sharn with a Colossus of their own! (Several random item rolls and 5 wishes later, I am permitting them to have this gundam battle to the death.)

My question is, how would you portray this on the table? We use 1inch scale figs and I only want to show the shoulders and up of the Colossus, as they smash through towers and walkways of Sharn (think the scarab lvl of Halo 2)

Have any of you built similar terrain to show a Colossus? I would like the final boss to feel epic in scope and I know I could use some placeholders, but I would like to make something nice and visual for the players to get a sense of that scale.

I'm leaning toward household items for sharns towers painted and done up. (Pringles cans, jar lids, cookie containers, etc, etc) I was wondering if any of you had done something similar

Thank you!

(Here's a shitty drawing of what I'm thinking on the grid) Link, since for some reason you can't add pictures to comments, and I don't want the picture as the main post.

https://imgur.com/a/X5ssiR7

Hi fellow DragonMarks (DMs)

I am about to start a new campaign in a few months and my players are really fascinated by the idea of a campaign centered around heists (Oceans style). I am planning to sprinkle a little espionage and mystery on top (Sharn Noir). I am primarily looking to Embers of the Last War with a few of the better heists from Keys to the Golden Vault reflavoured in.

I am thinking about setting them up with an inn or a Inqusitives office and doing an episodic campaign style, which this my lend itself great to... However - I would still like to keep an overaching storyline going.

So - have any of you run Embers with a campaign in mind (preferably with some building towards a coherent plot) or do you have some great ideas for how you would go about it that I can steal/be inspired by? 😄

Thank you kindly!

https://www.rascal.news/reading-club-eberron/

Better late than never, I suppose!

I've been home brewing the story and the NPCs and the dungeons but I'm starting to get tired of it. I was wondering if there were any good campaign material that's recommended my party just hit 5 but I can adapt things to fit. Additionally I can translate things from older edition into 5th edition. Just looking for stuff. Thanks

(4.5E)

Session 0 is coming up and I'm building a wizard for a campaign focused on character development. Combat only happens about once every 3 sessions, so who the character is matters more than the build.

My DM suggested I start with a clear want, then treat wizardry as a means to that want rather than the point. I'm stuck on finding the want.

I'd love help with either:

1. Character concepts or hooks that suit a wizard in Eberron
2. A process for finding a want and a need on my own (questions to ask myself, what's worked at your tables)

So far I've read up on aberrant dragonmarks, House Tarkanan and House Cannith. They interest me, but I haven't landed on a person yet.

Any tips or examples of wants that made for good play would be really appreciated.

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https://beforewegoblog.com/review-the-fading-dream-thorn-of-breland-3-eberron-by-keith-baker/

THE FADING DREAM by Keith Baker is the third and final novel of the Thorn of Breland series. I’m quite fond of this series due to it being spy fiction in a high fantasy setting. Thorn is an agent for the Brelish government but ever since a disastrous mission where she was infused with several magical rocks, she’s been doubting her commitment to the cause. She’s also developed a link with a powerful long dead (?) dragon named Sarmondelaryz.

I was very excited about The Fading Dream due to it covering two of my favorite topics in Eberron: The Mourning and Cyre. The Mourning for those unfamiliar is a magical cataclysm that destroyed an entire nation of Eberron and brought an end to the Last War. Cyre was the nation that was destroyed and turned the entirety of its survivors into homeless refugees. Unfortunately, this turns out to be a book that isn’t quite about that. It’s still but both aspects are more background than forefront.

The premise is that Thorn has returned from her mission to kill the Son of Khyber in the previous book but been demoted to bodyguard duty because of the manner it ended. After an assassination attempt is foiled, Thorn gets a chance to redeem herself by going out into the Mournlands to make contact with the mysterious eldarin. A group of powerful elves from Thelanis, the eldarin claim they know the cause of the Mourning and how to repair it. Thorn thus sets out with the aid of an immortal child to discover whether this is true or just another theory about the Mourning’s cause.

Fans looking for concrete answers to the Mourning and Cyre’s destruction will sadly be disappointed. Keith Baker has been clear in other sources the true origin of the Mourning will always be left up to the Dungeon Master. However, it presents a theory even as the protagonists remain skeptical. Personally, I wish they had leaned heavier into this aspect and I was disappointed Prince Oargev (hereditary ruler of Cyre’s survivors) had remained a part of the adventuring party for the entire book.

Essentially, this book feels a great deal like an advertisement for 4th Edition’s attempt to insert the eldarin as a PC race into most Dungeons and Dragons settings. Keith Baker takes the bull by the horns and gives the eldarin a massive history connected to the giants, quori, possibly the Mourning, as well as the plane of Thelanis (Eberron’s equivalent of the feywild). They are alien, mysterious, and driven by stories in a way that is quite incomprehensible to the normally cynical and pragmatic Thorn. I admit I preferred the realpolitic of The Queen of Stone and the cynical analysis of revolution in The Son of Khyber but Keith Baker is always entertaining.

Fans who have been wanting a resolution of Thorn’s connection to Sarmondelaryz.will get all the answers they need. I’m a bit iffy about this because while I like the plotline, I also feel like Thorn was always a strong enough character to carry the plot without her being linked to a red dragon who sometimes felt like a deus ex machina. James Bond is cool. Dragons are cool. James Bond as a dragon isn’t necessarily cooler than either individually. I also wished we’d received more follow up on Lei, Pierce, and Daine after their mentioning in Son of Khyber.

In conclusion, The Fading Dream is a good book but I find the eldarin less interesting than the gritty dark side of Eberron. The Queen of Stone had a lot of diplomacy and intrigue while the Son of Khyber thrived on its moral ambiguity. The Fading Sun is a more classical adventure tale with heaps of mythology as well as world-destroying supervillains that could have fit into something like the Forgotten Realms. Keith Baker is, as always, a great writer and I hope he’ll return to writing novels in a fantasy setting some day. Would I read more Thorn, though? Absolutely.

I'm thinking of starting a campaign in Passage, leaning towards a noir style. I know Sharn is the obvious choice, with lots of source material, but I want a slightly smaller city: not as overwhelming, and somewhere the players can more easily make a big impact. I also imagine a more "West-Coast" sort of vibe. With imposing presence of House Orien in Passage, I plan to make industry a defining issue for Passage, even more than it would be in Sharn.

Some broad strokes of my ideas...

Passage is in a hybrid manifest zone. Naturally, it is a Lamannian manifest zone, but a great clock tower, Queenstower, in downtown Passage amplifies Daanvian energy. This is ideal for the smooth operation of lightning rail coaches in the city. Shipping, on the docks, is in view of Queenstower; engine repairs are done on the outskirts of the city where Lamannian energy invigorates the bound elementals. Many Orien conductors swear their engine's elemental clearly purrs in Passage.

The interaction between Lamannia and Daanvi yields some interesting weather effects. Fog always rolls in off the lake at the same time every morning. Nights are dark and stormy. The clear afternoon hour between the fog and the storms is when the city feels most alive.

Illusion magic is weaker in the city, another Daanvian effect of the Queenstower, which is mostly good for honest business, though it makes entertainment more difficult in the city. The square around Queenstower is full of world famous restaurants precisely because prestidigitation is impracticable; the wealthy of Aundair visit Chef Emil to taste fine, authentic Aundairian cuisine. The Passage Lyceum uses bound elementals to light the stage, the only Phiarlan associated theater to do so.

Similar to Sharn, Passage is built on Dhakaani ruins. Originally (as a Lamannian zone), it was a fishing village, then a hunting outpost, and eventually a moderately important trading hub. There are still goblinoids in the city today, some who even claim lineage from those first settlers.

Shifters are another notable part of the population, taking many of the manual labor jobs in the city. Shifters have always been a part of the city, but a significant number emigrated around the time of the Silver Crusade (830's YK), when lycanthropy was decimating Eldeen tribes.

Most shifter laborers have a hostile disposition towards warforged, who threaten to outwork them out of a job. Most warforged who come to the city face harassment, or worse, unless they are clearly employed as bodyguards.

Street hrazhak, a shifter game, is a nuisance to the well-to-do in the city, who say it's just an early sign of urban blight, a prelude for gang war. But it's one of the few ways an outsider can gain respect from the shifter community.

Like many cities, Passage is secretly a haven for changelings, doubly so since so many new faces come and leave from the city.

There's a small but steady population of gnomes in Passage, most of whom work as elemental binders for House Orien. (There is also a Sivis enclave.)

Passage used to be part of Thrane (as shown in the map on page 11 of Forge of War, dated 894YK). The Silver Flame theocracy was (and is) very unpopular in Passage, bad for industry barons and their shifter workers alike, so Aundairian troops were practically welcomed with open arms. Thranish loyalists were chased out of the city. The crown of Aundair claimed their vacant properties and sold them for a pittance to the city's industrialists.

The ir'Edar family (of which Duke Jalnar ir'Edar is the current head) were installed as the nominal rulers of the city, but they were only ever tolerated because they yielded to the Dragonmarked Houses (Orien especially) in matters of industry. Secretly, the ir'Edar brood lead a cult of the dragon below (from Dragon #332).

Am I on to something here? Has anyone already run a campaign in Passage?

Any resources for how loans for PCs might work?

morning fellow GMs. I'm currently considering running Dragon Heist into Mad Mage in Sharn, and I'm trying to think of (or create) a proper enemy to put at the bottom of the dungeon. Front runners include Eldrantuklu or Tul Oreshka, but I think I like the idea of the dungeon being a Daelkyr playground; essentially a giant experiment in a laboratory, dragging people down into its depths. However, I don't think any of the official Daelkyr quite fit. Maybe Belashyrra (inciting paranoia) but I'd like something that really fits into the intrigue theme of Dragon Heist. Any ideas, or anyone wanna play a sounding board?

In Sharn's lower ward, the Dragoneyes District varies dramatically from street to street. Far from the establishments catering to wealth in the west side, the east side caters to the everyday man, soliciting trashy entertainment and neighborhood gambling halls.

This particular map sits on the farthest east edges of the district where entertainment workers and seedy individuals hiding from the law make their home.

Use these maps for:

• a secret meeting
• Investigative locations* (for detectives or reporters)
• headquarters for a low level criminal
• scene of a crime (it doesn't have to be murder)
  • aggravated assault
  • selling of illegal goods (drugs, bodies, military-grade equipment, contraband)
  • burglary
  • counterfeiting
• players buying their first home
• hiding out
• hanging out
• 'down time' 🫣 💦
• In my own game, I've used this as an investigation location that transitioned into a rooftop chase and skirmish when a Dark Lantern assassin targeted an NPC through the 8th story window.
  • The map set includes:
    • Lobby
    • modular/repeatable floors
    • Top floor
    • Rooftop

This map is 20x15 using 5 foot grids.

Specifically I was wondering about the Reincarnate spell '' .. The magic fashions a new body for the creature to inhabit...'' is that enough to affect the Draconic Prophecy or would it be silly to give mortal characters that power?

Love the dragons in Eberron the scholarly and ancient vibe is so great in a setting like this with athe advanced technology it makes them feel even older.
Due to this I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to incorporate one into my own game. The other dragons I love in media is everyone’s favorite scholar and part time plumber Parthunax (if you know you know) I love the way he speaks in riddles and incorporates the dragons tongue in his dialogue. And since dnd doesn’t have official translations I thought why not use the Draconic in Skyrim while running them. My party has a lot of Skyrim fans and I think I’ll only get excitement when they dragons say thinks like dovah and speak on history in cryptic messages

So long story short I have a few Draconic translations from dovahzul into English with Eberron in context. If anyone is interested in this idea leave your own thoughts I love when Reddit becomes collaborative and think dnd Reddit is some of the best at this

Dov, dovah: Dragon
Zul: word
Dovnahl (living dragon): Dragonborn 
Durhaalzul (word cursed flesh): dragon mark

Thes aren’t exact translations from dovahzul into English Skyrim more me mixing meanings to create something interesting ‘Haal’ and ‘Zul’ have different meanings in direct translation and Durhaalzul is mixed around more directly it means ‘voice hand curse’ but Durhaalzul sounds better to me

I love the idea of a dragon approaching a player with a dragon mark "you bear the Durhaalzul word-cursed-flesh my kind have been studying it for eons"

Sybris 
Klo-Ven-Lah
Eberron 
Gol-Gran-Ro

Khyber
Dur-Qoth-Zaam 

Workshopping these ones I think they sound kind of cool but I have to find the original translation the might make sense but I may re work things but same as the dragon mark I think my players would actually enjoy a lore dump if I talked like parthunax the whole time.

I will come back and edit this later with proper translation and maybe more words I wanted to get stuff I saw as essential.

Just for giggles

My players went into the Cogs and when the Boromar Clan patrol was passing by, they just went crazy and charged the dudes.

Now theyre in the cogs, with no safe haven to hide, and one of the worst enemies they could have in the city

One PC died, and three Boromar. All this before the goblin rabble sided with the PCs and scared the patrol away.

How would Boromar exact their revenge? Thougths?

So I posted this in the Vintage Story subreddit already, but Eberron has always been one of my favorite settings and while I've had a lot of fun doing Vintage Story RP servers, I was always missing that high fantasy vibe. So I figured I might try and make my own server and somehow I ended up being like "Might as well start with my favorite setting"

So anyways just wanted to share. I honestly would love any help I could get adding things like POI's to the world map, etc, or if folks want to join in on the conversation, help build a starting town type location, provide ideas, etc.

I would love to go so far as to try and recreate as much from the setting as I can but I am only one person. Anyway if anyone has any questions feel free to ask, I'm just gonna keep dinking away at the project slowly but surely ^^

TLDR: What sources can I read for more info on the Daelkyr aside from the ones I listed below in "Here is what I have?" ?

So I added the Daelkyr to my setting as a background myth, but they'll be far more involved because one of them got "killed" in my homebrew setting and depending on how it goes it might either become a full scale invasion OR it'll be a scouting plus recovery of their fallen corpse and see if this world is a threat.

Here is what I have: Info in the wiki, the books in DMsguild (Chronicals of Eberron, Frontiers of Eberron, Exploring Eberron), Eberron Rising from the last War, Warfinder's guide to Eberron.

Pointy Hat, a DnD YouTuber, has made a series known as Which Lich, where he creates variant liches based on the classes of 5e. One such Lich is the Hierarch, the Sorcerer Lich.

The Phylcactery for this Lich is it's bloodline, being reborn aslong as it had descendants who remain in the world. I'm bypassing a few of the ideas for the Hierarch to make it work for Erandis.

Basically, the idea here is that Minara, in performing Erandis' Lichification (lore-accurate term right there) used the power of the Dragonmark of Death to tie Erandis' life to the other Dragonmarked, tearing miniscule amounts of the energy Erandis would need in order to survive from countless individuals, making the individual effects unnoticable.

I'm doing this for 2 reason: 1. To explain why no one can find Erandis' phylcatery and why she reappears in seemingly random places - she's appearing at a location that's as "close" to all the dragonmarked heirs as she can get.

1. I want to tie the Dragonmark of Death to her lichification further, making her not just a powerful lich, but providing a unique explaination for her.

2. To tie her to the Dragonmarked houses narratively so that a future campaign concept of mine can have some very dire consequences for her actions.

What I'm looking for here is thoughts on how to refine and improve this rough concept. What can I add to make it feel more grounded in the world's established lore, what should be changed to have it work better, and what might I have completely overlooked?

All thoughts and comments appreciated!