Posts
-
Let's Read Neverwinter: Minor Factions, Part 1
Looks like I accidentally skipped a few posts when making my last update! So instead of going to chapter 04 now, we’ll finish out chapter 03 and look at the minor factions over this and the next two posts.
These factions are considered “minor” because they’re either simpler, less powerful, or less involved in the region than the majors. Most don’t have custom stat blocks associated with them, and even if they do I’ll only spend time on them if they’re really interesting. This post covers the “urban” factions, those whose territories and attentions are in the city proper.
Dead Rats
Looks like the wererat gang has a chapter in Neverwinter, led by a one-eyed lieutenant of Toytere’s name Rrost. Their main racket is smuggling, and as the campaign starts they managed to set themselves up as the middlemen in the weapons trade between the Sons of Alagondar and the Thayans. More on that later.
In the longer term, the Rats would like to usurp control of the rebels and use them to become big shots in the city’s underworld, remaking it in Luskan’s image.
Their roster features rats, dire rats, and any low-level thug-types you can fit in, the latter of which can be boosted by a wererat theme pack that gives them regeneration, an infectious bite, and the ability to assume hybrid form. Rrost uses the stats for a Wererat Mugger introduced here, a Level 4 Brute with a poisoned morningstar and a stronger bite than what’s in the theme.
The gang would love to kill the Dead Rat Deserter PC, and their ties to the Thayans are just the thing to get that PC more personally involved in the campaign’s larger plots.
Impressions
Rrost feels like a “Small Bad” who will be a problem at the start of the campaign for city-focused parties. His plans are big but his faction has no hope of seeing them realized before the PCs end the Rats’ ambitions for good.
Sons of Alagondar
The Sons of Alagondar are die-hard Neverwinter nationalists who believe the city should be independent of foreign control so that it can once again be the Jewel of the North and a bastion of goodness. They draw most of their membership from the holdout population of Neverwinter: those people who never left the city and spent twenty years protecting and rebuilting it before Neverember arrived with his mercs. As you might imagine, they vehemently oppose him.
Until very recently their overall leader was a Harper named Cymril, who was brutally murdered under mysterious circumstances shortly before the start of the campaign (as seen in the Harper Agent theme). Her death split the Sons into two sub-factions along generational lines.
On one side you have the Nashers, who take their name from the first Alagondar lord (the one from the computer games). These young rebels are willing to pay any cost to see a free Neverwinter and readily resort to violent actions like rioting, assassination and sabotage. Their leader is a firebrand named Arlon Bladeshaper.
On the other you have the older Graycloaks, who take their name from the old city militia. They see themselves as focusing on the big picture, with the city’s welfare as their highest priority. They focus on building support and alliances with like-minded groups and the city’s population in general. They also try to infiltrate and influence Neverember’s organization through bribery, blackmail, and secret deals. Their leader is the human mage Madame Rosene.
(The Nashers call the Graycloaks “greyhairs”, and the Graycloaks call the Nasher “gnashers”. Also, there’s a subsection here titled “Fractured but Whole”, which I can never take seriously after learning about that South Park game.)
It’s the Nashers who decided to partner with and accept help from the Dead Rat gang and the Thayans. Bladeshaper was a bit leery of this at first but he quickly changed his mind once he saw his faction start racking up bigger victories against Neverember’s forces. The Rats, as mentioned before, plan to take over the Sons and make them into an extension of their planned crime syndicate. The Thayans are using them to distract New Neverwinter from their own shenanigans and are happy to push their own agents and the Sons to ever greater heights of violence to that purpose.
The encounter table for the Sons is entirely composed of stat blocks belonging to typically playable ancestries, matching Neverwinter’s demographics. Players who oppose the Sons will do well to play on their divisions, those who want to support them should focus on healing that same rift. Cymril’s death nearly broke them completely, and finding the truth behind it would be a big goal in a rebellion campaign. As we saw in the Harper Agent’s background, there’s room for a variety of sinister explanations.
Impressions
Probably the most complex of the minor factions here. It’s possible to make a campaign entirely focused on the Sons’ struggle, but it would have to start with earning their trust. They are not predisposed to allying with PCs and are likely to be actively hostile to certain themes like the Harper Agent or even the Neverwinter Noble, whom they might see as just another pretender.
Harpers
Making Neverwinter into the bastion of good it once was is also part of the Harper’s mission statement, and they are generally better at sticking to it than the Sons, but they were broken even more thoroughly by Cymril’s death. She was their highest ranking member in the area. With her gone, there are about a dozen members left, and only two of them are full agents.
These local Harpers are pretty focused on opposing Neverember at the moment and are completely ignorant of the machinations of the Thayans, Netherese, or Aboleths in the area. It’s unlikely they will find out on their own, but if they learn through other means they will instantly shift their focus to opposing these greater threats.
If the PCs manage to acquire a reputation as local heroes, the Harpers might approach them and ask them to help the Sons of Alagondar get back on track.
Impressions
The Harper presence in the city is larger than I was led to believe from reading the Harper Agent theme. My inclination is to only include them as written if the party doesn’t have one or more PCs with that theme. If it does, then the PC is the sole Harper left in the region.
Many-Arrows Orcs
The orcs of the North usually stayed away from the Neverwinter area, because the city was hostile to them and they had many stories about how the surrounding woods were haunted. They have recently dismissed these stories as myths and grown a little bolder and more curious.
King Obould XVII of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows recently sent a scout force here with the mission to find what was going on and report back, but the force’s power-hungry commander far exceeded her orders and decided to push into the city and take over the Cloak Tower, claiming the surrounding territory in Neverwinter’s ruined northern half as her own.
If I remember correctly, Obould was depicted elsewhere as a reasonable king who had the capability to turn his people away from their universally hostile ways and forge more peaceful bonds with his neighbors. Commander Vansi is none of those things. After taking over the Cloak Tower, she was approached by the aboleths and gladly accepted a “blessing” of the Spellplague to get stronger. There’s a stat block for her here. She’s a Level 6 Soldier (Leader) that fights with a flail and a spiked gauntlet. The Spellplague covered her in fiery bone spurs, so she loves to grapple.
The encounter table for them is obviously all orcs all the time, with the occasional ogre or half-orc thrown in for variety.
Impressions
I kinda like that there’s a more elaborate reason than just “they’re chaotic evil” for why this group of orcs are hostile occupiers. Neverember has an open call for adventurers willing to help drive them out of town, and their connection to the AbSov might be what clues the PCs in to the presence of that faction.
It’s even possible that King Obould would reward the PCs for dealing with the rogue detachment if you want to play up the newer, less hostile orcish civilization.
Bregan D’Aerthe
These assholes again. They wrung Luskan dry a few decades ago and left the area when the cataclysm hit. Now a handful of their spies have made their way back to seek profitable opportunities and report back.
In practice this means you can spice up certain encounters with drow mercs or informants. They have no elaborate goals for the area yet.
Impressions
Again, this feels like a minor faction I would only use if there are no Bregan Spy PCs in the party. If there are, then the PC is their sole representative in the region. They appear again in a slightly more fun form in the upcoming locations chapter.
-
Let's Read Neverwinter: Chapter 4 Intro
Here begins Chapter 4, the Gazeteer. This takes up the remaining half of the book and focuses on describing interesting places in the region and their associated plot hooks. It also talks about interesting NPCs that might get involved with the group. These locations and people aren’t fully mapped or statted out, but are intended to serve as starting points for individual GMs to customize. As promised in the book’s preface, a lot of plot hooks here are optional and/or multiple-choice, and GMs are free to change anything in here however they want.
The chapter covers several major areas, and we might need more than one post for each of them:
-
Ruined Neverwinter is the city proper, struggling to rebuild and deal with political intrigue, dangerous ruins, and plaguechanged monsters.
-
Helm’s Hold is a stout-hearted village with a monastic community that hides a terrible threat to the region.
-
Neverwinter Wood: You wouldn’t believe how many dangerous places and threatening factions can fit into this one forest!
-
Gauntlgrym: the hidden dwarven city no longer has any dwarves in it, but it has pretty much everything else including that slumbering primordial.
-
Evernight is Neverwinter’s reflection on the Shadowfell and the main battleground in the war between Thayans and Netherese.
-
Thay Through the Veil: PCs who follow the plot threads from Evernight all the way to their end might find themselves needing to make some visits to Nazi Necromancer Central.
-
-
Let's Read Neverwinter: Netherese Encounters
The encounter table for the Netherese is packed with shadow-themed opponents. There are a few humans here and there, but also a lot of shadar-kai, and Dark Ones, and a few new options to turn any of these into Shades. Since they’re a magic-heavy faction the table also includes a few constructs and bound incorporeal undead.
Shades
Shades are creatures that absorbed so much of the Shadowfell’s ambient magic that they mutated. They can also be born from otherwise “mundane” creatures who absorbed that energy. As you might expect a lot of the Shadovar fit this description.
There are two ways to turn a monster stat block into a Shade. The Forgotten Realms’ campaign setting has a monster template that turns a regular monster into an elite shade. And this book presents a theme that adds appropriate powers to an existing creature without upgrading its “quality”.
The theme changes the base creature’s origin to Shadow, adds Darkvision and Vulnerable 5 radiant and also these three abilities:
-
Regeneration 5, which shuts down for a turn when the creature takes radiant damage.
-
Coalescing Darkness, a trait that gives the shade total concealment for a turn whenever it moves 3 or more squares by any means.
-
Shadow Stride, an encounter power that takes a move action and lets the shade teleport up to 20 squares, but requires that the destination space be in dim light or darkness.
Thaalud Constructor
One of the most fearsome security measures in Netherese tombs and ruins are the constructs known as Thaalud Tomb Trappers. The Constructor is a modern design based on those, weaker but easier to make.
That’s all the lore we get for this monsters. Since I don’t know anything about tomb trappers I’m forced to speculate based on their stats. I’m thinking they’re huge eyeless humanoid statues, and quite a bit smarter than your typical mindless construct.
A constructor is a Huge Natural Animate with the Blind and Construct keywords, and a Level 5 Elite Brute with 154 HP. It’s immune to poison, blindness, and gaze attacks, and has Resist 5 to cold, fire, and lightning. It perceives the world with Blindsight 20.
It attacks with Mauling Fists that damage and grab on a hit (escape DC 15), and can make double attacks with them. If the constructor has a Large or smaller creature grabbed, it can throw it at someone else with Hurl Foe, a ranged attack that damages both the target and the “ammunition”. On a hit, the target is pushed 1 square and knocked prone, and the hurled PC falls prone on the target’s former space. On a miss both take half damage and the thrown character falls prone adjacent to the target. I gotta say “grab and yeet” sounds like a very fun combat style.
When a constructor is destroyed it Collapses into rubble, attacking a Close Burst 1 around itself and turning that area into a zone of difficult terrain that lasts until the end of the encounter. Note that the creature is Huge, so this zone is 4 squares on a side.
Clariburnus Tanthul, Prince of Shade
The Shadovar are ruled by the Twelve Princes of Shade, Netherese mages who were witnesses to the fall of their empire and managed to stay alive(-ish) to the present day. Clariburnus Tanthul is one of these Twelve.
Contrary to all expectations, he’s not undead! Tanthul is an ancient living shade, and is described as retaining more of his original humanity than the other Princes. Still, he’s a merciless manipulator with no concept of honor, breaking his promises as casually as he breathes.
Clariburnus Tanthul is a Medium Shadow Humanoid and a Level 10 Elite Skirmisher with 158 HP. He has a Speed of 7 and both Blindsight 10 and Darkvision. His traits resemble those of the Shade theme above but they’re custom and more powerful.
His Benighted Presence acts as an aura (5) that turns bright light dim, and his Regeneration heals 15 HP per turn, though it’s still shut down for a turn by radiant damage.
He wields a scimitar named Gloom Crescent, which can make basic attacks and is also used for the Severing Shadows technique. This lets him make 2 basic attacks (3 if bloodied), teleporting 5 squares before each one. If he hits the same target twice that target also takes 5 ongoing force damage (save ends). This worsens to 10 ongoing force damage and blindness after the first failed save (save ends both).
Once per encounter he can use a ranged spell named By Night Consumed, which deals necrotic damage and removes the target from play (save ends). A miss deals half damage and dazes (save ends). Nasty!
His Shadow Stride lets him teleport 5 squares regardless of light conditions, which increases to 10 if the destination is in darkness. It’s also a (Recharge 4+) ability instead of an encounter power, so he can use it more than once in a fight.
Impressions
This has less custom stat blocks than some of the other factions, so you’ll be mostly relying on the encounter table and shade versions of natural critters. Still, the custom stat blocks we do get are fun, and it looks like Clariburnus is a genuine Forgotten Realms big shot who would probably get an epic-level stat block in a more traditional FR setting book. I love it that he’s “within reach” of a heroic-tier party here. His stats make for a very interesting fight, though you should also give him an honor guard.
-
-
Let's Read the Neverwinter Campaign Setting: Netherese
As mentioned several times in this Let’s Read already, Netheril was a human empire who ruled over most of the world around three thousand years before our narrative present.
Their understanding of magic reached levels never seen before or since, but they fell literally overnight when one of their top archmages tried to cast a spell that was supposed to make him into a god but instead irreversibly fucked up Toril’s magic. This caused the vast majority of the flying islands where these archmages lived to plummet to the ground.
One such island managed to avoid this fate when its inhabitants plane-shifted it into the Shadowfell (known as the Plane of Shadow back then). They stayed there until the end of Second Edition, when they started coming back into the world, mutated by their millenia in darkness and with a desire to rebuild their former empire.
These shadow-people are known as Shadovar, but they also consider themselves to be Netherese and the book uses the two terms interchangeably. There’s a group of them hiding in the Neverwinter Wood, led by a mage named Clariburnus Tanthul.
Goals
The Shadovar have a single major goal in this region: to repair the fallen island of Xinlenal.
Xinlenal was the first Netherese flying island ever built, the crowning achievement of the ancient archmage Iolaum, who discovered the technique to making them. Making it fly again would raise the flag of Netherese dominance over the whole region, and it would become their greatest center of power in the entire world.
The key to fixing Xinlenal is to repair its mythallar, a magical engine that looks like a giant crystal sphere and shines like a contained sun. It shattered when the city fell, and Shadovar artificers are hard at work repairing it as the campaign starts. The process requires immense quantities of Residuum, and the easiest way to produce Residuum is to destroy magic items. The older and more powerful, the better.
This means Shadovar agents are scouring the entire region looking for ancient ruins and the magical relics they contain. The ruined cities of Illefarn, the crumbling outposts of Delzoun, even the burial mounds of Uthgardt heroes: all of these are fair game, and anyone who would object to their plundering is an enemy.
Not even these ancient ruins might yield enough residuum for their purposes, though. They’ve started looking at less-old places too. As the campaign starts that’s still mostly consists of clashing with and looting the bodies of Thayan and Ashmadai goons, but they could soon move up to plundering Neverwinter itself.
One of Caliburnus’ secondary goals include discovering the fate of Iolaum. Sure, the wizard lived thousands of years ago and was on Xinlenal when it fell, but surely one of the bestest mages from the bestest magical empire ever wouldn’t let little details like that kill him, would it? Imagine what he could do for the Shadovar cause if he’s brought on-board!
The other secondary goal is to pursue their war with Thay. There’s only room for one world-spanning fascist mage empire in this planet, after all. The Shadovar regularly attack the Thayan base in the Dread Ring, and they’ve also managed to park one of their flying fortresses above the Thayan city of Surcross, which they bombard regularly. In case you don’t remember, that’s one of the possible locations where Valindra might have hidden her soul vessel.
And finally, further down the list, there’s the handling of the Gray Wolf Uthgardt tribe. The Shadovar recruited them into their service with appeals to their “ancient Netherese heritage” and gave them the mission to infiltrate and eventually conquer Helm’s Hold. So far the werewolves have managed to place several agents in the town, who are busy sowing unrest and generally making it ready for a takeover. Their progress is slow but in Caliburnus’ view the tribe’s main purpose is to act as a red herring when people start trying to investigate Netherese activities. In the meantime, Gray Wolf warriors also get used as muscle when the need for it arises.
Player Tie-Ins
The Netherese seems to be the major faction with the most explicit tie-ins to PC backgrounds.
The Scion of Shadow, of course, starts the game in direct conflict with them. They have enough information to begin opposing the faction right away, and especially bold Scions might think to pretend to be loyal in order to infiltrate it.
Their rampant plundering of ancient ruins also places them in direct opposition to the Iliyanbruen Guardian, Heir of Delzoun, and the Uthgardt Barbarian. The book says they are definitely guilty of stealing those eladrin relics, but it’s less definitive about their role in plundering the Uthgardt barrow - that could have been the Thayans depending on what the GM desires. Even so, their control of the Gray Wolves will still make them cross paths with both the Barbarian and the Pack Outcast.
Relationships
The Netherese don’t care about New Neverwinter at all, though that will change a bit when they start targeting the city for its magic items.
They are completely ignorant of the Abolethic Sovereignity. Some of their officials suspect there’s something funky going on beneath Neverwinter and have sent agents to investigate, but they’re only going to bother Caliburnus about this when those agents return with answers. This makes the fact that they’re trying to conquer Helm’s Hold particularly funny.
They see the Ashmadai as nothing more than minions of the Thayans and have no idea the cult has plans of its own. The Thayans of course are their greatest enemies in the region and the Shadovar devote as many resources to fighting them as they do to restoring Xinlenal.
They also have some important links to minor factions, as mentioned above. Their hold over the Gray Wolves means they will have to deal with the other Uthgardt Tribes eventually, and the fey of Iliyanbruen are the primary targets of their relic raids.
Impressions
While the Netherese are a bit less cognizant of the other factions than I expected, their plans are appropriately ambitious and they have a real shot at success barring PC intervention. They also have a bunch of strong ties to several PC themes, so they’re very likely to feature in your campaign.
-
Let's Play Hell's Rebels: Devils and other Fiends
My recent adaptation efforts for that Hell’s Rebels campaign had me going on a spelunking expedition about fiend stats in D&D. Here’s what I found out, and what I intend to do about it on this GURPS adaptation.
For our purposes here, “fiend” refers to all of the monsters that originate from the “evil planes” of the D&D universe: demons, devils, daemons, and others. “Fiend” was the only general term left, so we’re using it in this post.
Fiends in D&D
D&D’s fiend situation is one of the most egregious examples of its tendency towards overly-complicated taxonomies1. Every synonym becomes the name of a distinct type of monster with stats that differ from those of the rest.
The real purpose of the divide here seems to be mechanical: in most editions each type has a different lengthy list of weaknesses and resistances that seems calculated to confuse players. Things that are good against devils are bad against demons and vice-versa - if the PCs guess wrong, they’re in trouble. The specifics here change from edition to edition.
Lore-wise, early editions made a big deal out of the fact that devils were Lawful Evil and demons Chaotic Evil. Later ones tried to elaborate on it and find more ways to explain that the two alignments were different at a fundamental cosmic level. Pathfinder really doubles down on that, trying to find additional themes for every fiend type it presents.
Pathfinder 1e, which is what we’re interested in, has this configuration for the mechanical bits:
-
Demons are immune to lightning; Devils take normal damage from it.
-
Devils are immune to fire; Most demons are merely resistant to it.
-
They’re equally resistant to acid and cold.
-
They’re both immune to poison.
-
They’re resistant to weapon attacks unless the weapon is Good-aligned or made from a special material. For demons, that’s cold iron; for devils, silver. Powerful specimens have resistance that can only be bypassed by weapons fulfilling both the alignment and material requirements.
This is about as complex to describe as it was in previous editions, but it’s actually much easier to completely bypass due to the combinatorial explosion in spells and magical effects available to players compared to AD&D.
After the first couple of levels you can forget about the materials requirement entirely, because you’ll have access to Align Weapon or the Holy enchantment. By the time you’re fighting those stronger fiends, you’ll probably have a +3 weapon in hand, which also bypasses both material requirements. And as for elemental damage types, this is the edition that introduces sonic damage, which damages both demons and devils normally. It also makes it quite easy for a character to swap all of their spells’ damage to sonic2.
Fiends In Dungeon Fantasy
Dungeon Fantasy is a lot simpler. Demon is one of the big monster categories in the game, and all demons come from the area colloquially known as Hell. The specifics are left as an exercise to the GM.
Belonging to the Demon category makes them immune to magic that affects the minds of natural creatures and susceptible to magic that affects spirits in general or demons in particular. They don’t count as “alive” for spells that strictly require living targets but always count as “evil” for spells and abilities that affect evil creatures.
Most notably, they do not have any universal resistances to elemental damage or mundane weapons. Each demon “species”, other than the very weakest ones, does have additional defenses. Most take damage as normal but can only die if a specific condition is met. They also often lack some or all of the weak points of natural creatures, such as blood and vital organs.
Gaming Ballistic’s Nordlond Bestiary does include some demons that are direct adaptations of D&D fiends, but only the most powerful of them (the Balor and Pit Fiend equivalents) have resistances that resemble Pathfinder’s to any degree.
What Will I Do in Hell’s Rebels?
If I was starting this project way back in 2017, I’d probably be gearing up to convert every devil that appeared in Hell’s Rebels to GURPS. But since this is 2023, I don’t have to!
I have plenty of first- and third-party Dungeon Fantasy books now, and between them I have more than enough stat blocks available that I can just pick whatever looks closer to the original monster and use that.
This does mean that I’m going to end up ignoring a lot of the default D&D cosmology and lore when picking my monsters. “Demon” and “devil” are once again synonyms - there is no fundamental cosmic difference between them. They all come from the same place. Any differences, if they ever become relevant, are political rather than taxonomical.
We’re also ignoring the difference between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil because 1) there is no alignment in GURPS DF and 2) it’s a bit nonsensical anyway. In fact, Pathfinder itself is going to get rid of alignment in its upcoming revised second edition, which was motivated by an attempt to rid itself of all remaining ties to the OGL after this January’s brouhaha.
The game’s existing rules should suffice to determine whether something counts as “holy”/”good” or “unholy”/”evil” for game purposes. This is a similar approach to what I hear PF 2.5 is going to take.
-
subscribe via RSS