Beyond Beyond the Prism Pentad

Setting
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So, I got to thinking about Beyond the Prism Pentad, and how it stops six months after the events in Ur Draxa, and how part of the problem was that it didn’t give any time for things to settle… the heroes are still around, and the wounds are too fresh. It can be a ripe era of play, with tons of opportunities for PCs to shape things, but I also liked the idea of fast-forwarding the world a King’s Age. I now have an outline, at about 16 pages long.

Would anyone be interested in seeing it? At 6700 words, I’m reluctant to post it all here if folks aren’t interested.

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If you print it as a pdf and link the file here from DropBox or G-Drive, downloading it to read should be pretty palatable. I’m interested, and I’m sure others would be as well.

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Good idea. Here’s a link to the file on mega.nz (I added the timeline from my working copy)

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Thank you. I will check it out.

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BTW: While I’ve written this up, I am open to specific criticism… this is a draft, not a final copy. Heck, it’s not a product, so it remains a draft so long as I want it to. And most of the stuff I’ve written has a reason, which I will be happy to bore you with.

One thing I specifically set out to do with Oronis is to isolate him, to give him less direct influence than he was set up to have. In the R&E, he was a good-aligned free agent. He was able to act in secret, but still pretty freely, because he was considered a peer by the remaining sorcerer-monarchs… and with the field whittled down to him, Lailay-Puy, Nibenay, and Draskinor, he could have a lot of influence, because there were fewer equivalent powers on the field, and he was, in some ways, less limited, because he wasn’t subject to their social conventions (i.e. he could send out templars, while others wouldn’t).

This changed with the Year of King’s Vengeance… he was outed as an avangion, Old Kurn was destroyed, and he soon had a savage dragon between him and the Tyr Region. It put him into a cautious and defensive position, withdrawing him to Shangri-la New Kurn. He can reach out and touch, but it’s hard for him to project power. He didn’t need the Tyr region for his people to flourish in their protected paradise, so while he’s not out of the game, he’s definitely benched, as it were. Lailay-Puy is interested in what he accomplished, but doesn’t have the ability to reach him. Nibenay, as I read it, does not care, so long as Oronis stays out of his business.

Kicking Draskinor in the pants was also, partially, to bring back a Dragon, not just insert some dragons. While level 25 Draskinor isn’t level 30 Borys, he’s close enough for government work; most PCs won’t notice the difference between a 25d6 Fireball and a 30d6 Fireball. Freeing him from his paranoid defensiveness, and making him a roving monster with a force of templars makes him an Active Threat, whereas before he was portrayed more or less as a Trap… you wouldn’t run into R&E Draskinor unless you ventured to Eldaarich. This Draskinor will find you and stomp on your head. In some ways, he’s worse than Borys. Borys had reason and responsibilities. Draskinor has pain, anger, and a cadre of bandit templars.

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Updated draft, based on some feedback from elsewhere

Mind, y’all, I don’t mind feedback. I like feedback. I wont necessarily agree with you or put it in the file (and I may go off onto my own weird tangent), but if something is weak or rings wrong to you, I’m always open to discussing it.

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Just finished reading this - nice work.

One question: how do you believe the events herein would affect the Eloy - the nomadic herders who dwell the in the Trembling Plains? (the savanna between Kurn, Eldaarich, and the Tablelands; the Eloy are covered in Lost Cities of the Trembling Plains)

Edit: (Obviously it would be pretty disruptive, I’m curious about a longer analysis)

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I haven’t read the book, sadly, but, like you said, pretty disruptive.

The idea I’m going with (in the second version; it was less developed in the first) is that Draskinor has basically become The Dragon for the region north of Draj. His subordinates (some templars, some dragons or defilers) rule over villages, while he is more prone to wandering from the Glowing Desert to the Silt Sea; he doesn’t have Borys’s control (savage times), nor does he have his purpose (contain Rajaat).

Now, first thing I see is that Dregoth’s attack on Raam in Priest’s Contemplation/FY 12 didn’t happen in my material; I sent the Raamite refugees mostly to Tyr, rather than north into the Trembling Plains. But after Draskinor loses at Fort Protector? He’s going to be rumbling across the eastern part of the plains for a good long while, even before he enters the savage years.

The Eloy might avoid him, though they’ll certainly lose people. Nomadic, they can keep out of his way better than a place like Azeth’s Rest (which I see as being a bit south of his normal range. But a dragon would no doubt hunt the mekillots, causing more problems.

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Very cool version of a changed Athas, haven’t gotten to the full read, but I am curious is “Draskinor” a typo, a nickname for “Dragon Daskinor”, or have I been misreading his name the whole time? :laughing:

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…it is apparently ME misreading his name for years!

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Well for what it’s worth I rather like the name Draskinor and is what I shall call his awake Dragon form lol

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New update!

Closing in on what feels like a final draft.

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And, I think it’s sat enough to be called done. Here’s a link to the most recent version; the old links are going to break soon.

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Blog Version

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A couple of comments.

Tyr storms, in order to reach Nibenay and Gulg, don’t they have to pass over a mountain range? I think they’d dump the vast majority of their rain on the slopes. The Oba taking credit for increasing the forest may not work. (Then again, I’m not looking at a map, and we know that the storms reach Tyr.)

You’re missing Dregoth Rising (which is half canon, it just was never completed in 2e). Among other things, Dregoth sacrifices a vast number of Raamites to power his ritual. The aftermath includes some notes on how politics changed in Raam.

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Looking at a map right now (Ashtagons from the Piazza), there’s a corridor where they don’t have to hit mountains for Gulg and Nibenay, except for the Mountains of the Sun out in the Sea of Silt.

As for the Oba taking credit? That’s straight out of BPP and the 2nd boxed set.

I didn’t include Dregoth Rising, but I mostly limited myself to canon sources… I think the only non-canon I used was Hamanu disappearing during Rise and Fall of a Dragon King.

Years ago, there was a Robotech website called “Third Invid War”, that used the Palladium system for all its statistics, despite the problems with it. His reasoning was “If you use Palladium, it’s fine. If you don’t use Palladium, then you’ve probably got the means of converting things to your favored system that already works for you.” Hopefully, there’s enough holes in here that folks can fit it around Dregoth Rising, if they like.

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