This is part of a series of posts on about an old D&D campaign world called Malbeth.
Go to the original Ruins of Malbeth post, the first post about Micel Kingdoms,
or the Pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms.
One of the purposes of reexamining this campaign world I abandoned for Kobold Press’s Midgard setting is to think about what I might find useful as I begin world building a new setting, but I’m finding I want something different. I want a hex-crawl frontier/kingdom building campaign, and while I’ve thought about setting it in Midgard’s Arbonesse Forest that’s part of the Grand Duchy of Dornig. The saying amongst the Kobold Warrens is that the World Tree, Yggdrasil, has many branches, and on those branches are a multitude of Midgards, and I’m currently contemplating how distant this variation of Midgard might be, or if it becomes something else.
The pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms was written for players who like to delve into setting, and because of that, it’s fully of mysteries. Who are the Valaraukar? When kingdoms simply disappeared or were destroyed “overnight” is that figurative or literal? Where did the elves and the other humanoid species come from?
The first thought here is that while it’s useful — interesting — to create a world with mystery because that makes it interesting (to use that word again), and it can serve as inspiration for exploration and discovery. You don’t need to answer everything, even for yourself. That’s a world building lesson we can take from Tolkien. He never explored, even for himself, at least he didn’t write it down, the history of the two Istar (wizards) who went to the east because his focus wasn’t the eastern realms of Middle-earth. Nor did he work out exactly who or what Tom Bombadil was. In fact, he felt it was better that the question of Bombadil not be answered because not everything can or should be known.
That said, I do have some thought ands explanations.
Upheaval
The brief pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms is full of conflict, rising and falling civilizations, diasporas, and cataclysmic events such as the seismic activity that destroyed the elven kingdom of Alcarinbar to the seemingly supernatural ends to the dragonborn Second Kingdom of Sharmensharik and the Thramian Empire.
If you’re going to write a pre-history of your game world, make it dynamic, and dynamic in ways that can resonate well into the future that is your campaign. (In case it’s not clear, I’m using pre-history here as what happened before the present rather than before recorded history, regardless of whether that means the written record of history or remembered history that includes oral tradition.
A lot of this history is connected in ways that may or may not ever become apparent to players, and its all tied together through the Valaraukar.
The Valaraukar
In campaign player materials, the Valaraukar are mystery, something from the deep past, but also a current threat. In the player documents, I include a faction that calls itself the Watchers. In terms of character knowledge, the only characters who know about the Watchers are those who choose to join the faction, either as part of character creation or later during play. The Watchers are a secret society founded by elves after the Uplift (see the Age of Second Empires and footnote 2). Those who founded the Watchers had learned that the Uplift which had destroyed the elven kingdom of Alcarinbar and created the wasteland known as the Gwathimlad wasn’t a natural geological event. It was an attack by the Valaraukar, and they were a persistent existential threat to the lands of Malbeth, making periodic incursions to scout, recruit followers, and strike as they could.1
So, who are the Valaraukar? The Valaraukar are tieflings, only they aren’t standard D&D tieflings but infernal tieflings, mechanically fiends rather than humanoids, and they come from a different reality. Their first serious incursion that resulted in the Valaraukar-Kingdom of Sharmensharik war which ended in a scorched earth retreat. By unleashing a plague that killed everyone, humanoid, dragon, even Valaraukar, they hoped they could once again return to Malbeth and rule it unopposed.
The Cataclysms and Upheavals
The Uplift wasn’t the only cataclysm caused by the Valaraukar. The plague that decimated the later dragonborn of Khelekdraug was also engineered by the Valaraukar — this time, a more targeted attack. The attack on the dwarven kingdom of Frangang was also orchestrated by the Valaraukar, and the forces the dwarves fought included fiends. It was the Valaraukar that taught the secrets of undeath to the Lich-kings of Nor, and urged and aided the Lich-kings in their war with the human Kingdom of Syndala.
Any player character who joins the Watchers learns that the Watchers believe the Valaraukar killed off the dragonborn of Khelekdraug, and that they suspect the Valaraukar are behind the fall of Frangang as well as teaching the Lich-kings of Nor the secrets of undeath. They also know the Watchers have uncovered and responded to numerous smaller-scale or less successful incursions, as well as disrupted Valaraukar cults. But even the Watchers don’t know just how much an existential threat the Valaraukar pose to Malbeth.
By breaking through reality to enter the material plane to which Malbeth belongs, the Valaraukar fundamentally damaged the fabric of Malbeth’s plane’s reality. The “overnight” cataclysmic events such as the fertile lands of the dragonborn’s Second Kingdom of Sharmensharik turning to desert and the Thramian Empire’s population disappearing and its infrastructure turning to centuries-old ruins overnight did happen instantaneously. The “overnight” there isn’t an exaggeration of legend.
And much closer in time to the present of the present day, the island nation of Ossa appeared in the souther sea just about 100 years before in a well-traveled area of ocean. One day, the island and kingdom were just here, and the people of Ossa remember and their written records document hundreds of years of interaction with the Micel Kingdoms. In fact, before the island kingdom was found, people of Ossa appeared throughout the Micel Kingdoms. Likewise, nine years before the present, the elven kingdom of Uinen, another island nation, simply disappears. Examination found that the Uinen Islands upon which the elven kingdom resided showed no signs of habitation.
Not even the Valaraukar know that their incursions have caused this weakening of reality. That’s something for the player characters to uncover, if, in fact, one wants to go that route. Maybe instead other cataclysms just happen with no explanation to them other than they are part of the fabric of Malbeth that makes it a living, dynamic world , a Tom Bombadil if you will.
So, Thoughts
One thing I’m noticing here, beyond what I’ve already pointed out such leaving mysteries and creating dynamic history, is what Wolfgang Baur calls stacking gunpowder.2 A good campaign setting isn’t static; it’s not just there for the PCs to stroll through. Stacking gunpowder means world building with volatile elements that might or will go off whether or not the PCs light the fuse, but cause chain reactions. Changes to the world create ripples, sometimes strong ripples, that serve as triggers setting off other events and other ripples.
It’s not just the Valaraukar here or the rip in reality they created. The Lich-kings of Nor aren’t all dead, but are biding their time. The orcs and goblins around the Micel Kingdoms are periodically active, and not of the Micel Kingdoms get along even if open war isn’t currently underway.
- The Watchers established a mountain monastery where elven paladins, monks, and assassins trained to resist Valaraukar incursions. For centuries, they recruited agents who in turn recruited agents to watch for and report Valaraukar incursions, and to help resist them when they happened. That’s a hook at least one player jumps at.
↩︎ - Baur is founder and CEO of Kobold Press, and worked for Wizards of the Coast and TSR before that. After falling in love with Midgard setting and the early 5e material they were releasing prior to the 5e Kickstarter, I learned that Baur had written some of my favorite material for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2e in the early 1990s. ↩︎