In the Beginning... Part One

In the beginning...

Reinterpretations and mythological origins of settings to fit each of the big D&D 5e Adventures beyond the realms. Each one will account for and accommodate the basic races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings) and the basic classes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard) plus some others beyond that.

Tyranny of Dragons -
The Great God Io spoke the Word and the Word was all the World. Then divided himself, and one half became the Sky, and was called Bahamut, and one half became the waters, as was called Tiamat. In the shape of great serpents they coupled and from their union was born the Earth.

Bahamut doted on the earth and it's creatures. He fashioned six children of the elements to attend to this world. Two he made from the wood of a great tree, and bade them watch over the Earth in his stead. Two he made from metal, and placed them in the belly of the great mountains and bade them delve deeply into the Earth, gather up its treasures and take measure of them. Two he made from water, and set them onto the rivers and bade them discover and explore all the Earth and sing of it's splendour. They were the Isu - the Elves, the
Anbar - the Dwarves, and the Nina, the Halflings.

From that day Tiamat knew no peace. After creation she had gone to sleep beneath the waves. But as the Isu sang sweet melodies in the forests, and the Anbar bellowed dirges in the depths of the earth, and the Nina whistled and hummed their travelling tunes as their ores lapped the waters she could never sleep. So she arose in fury and gave birth to eleven children of her own, in two generations.

First was Basmu, the Green Dragon, then Musmahhu the Black Dragon, called also the Hydra. Next came the furies Mushussu the White Dragon and Ugallu the Blue Dragon of Storms. Finally came Usumgallu, the Great Red Dragon and Tiamat’s general. These were created in her image and considered themselves her truest sons.

The next generation she fashioned not of her own blood and flesh but of the creatures of the earth. She made Lahmasu, who had the face of a man and body of a lion and who is often called the Manticore. Next, she made Uridimmu, the Mad Dog, the first Gnoll. Girtablullu was a giant scorpion with the torso and head of a man in place of the scorpion’s head, and Kulullu, whose people are now called the Sahuagin, was part fish and part man. Kusarikku was the Bull-Man, who walked on his hind legs and bore a great mace. Finally, she made the Umu Dabrutu, the Hobgoblins, the Fearsome Storms who was a single mind shared between a thousand bodies, each a warped mockery of humanity. They carried many cruel weapons and hungered always for battle.    

She bade these creations go over the world and harry the children of Bahamut, and so restore the world to silence. Her creatures dammed up the rivers, and flooded the mountains and razed the forests with flame. So Bahamut in his wrath made a fourth race fashioned of Earth baked in his Holy Flame. He named them the Ademu – the Humans. He taught them to strive for greatness and to overcome adversity, and he outfitted them with weapons and bade them drive back Tiamat’s horde. The other three races rallied to the side of the Ademu and all together fought for their freedom, until the horde was driven back. Then Bahamut gathered together the Wisest of each Race and taught them a sentence of the Ancient language of Creation. With this sentence, they created a spell to banish Tiamat to Abzu, the Abyss Beneath the Seas. So, it was done, and so the world was made.

But in her watery prison Tiamat, who knows no peace, rants and raves and rends at the walls of her cell with her mighty talons. In certain places her monstrous followers gather and listen, and decipher words of power from the raving and work magics of their own. For centuries now her most devoted servants have worked to craft their own sentence of Creation, a counter-spell to undo Bahamut’s spell and free their mistress, allowing her to bring peace, or rather, silence to the world once and for all. 

What the setting implies - 

• Magic are words of Creation taught to the living races by either Bahamut or Tiamat. Breaking down sentences into syllables and words and allowing them to be reorganised and respoken as spells with individual and distinct effects, which is an arduous and difficult process. Wizards then gain magic by memorising spells other people have written and eventually learning to compose their own variations on the theme. Bards, I feel, are a subset of magic user who have translated this process into a musical tradition which may be closer to how the Words of Creation were originally played. Sorcerers would then be rare and dangerous individuals, likely descended from dragons, who know the language innately. In a way the Language of Creation is their first language, and they have to translate their magical thoughts into normal languages to keep from tearing the world apart. I'm not sure Warlocks work, as though though this world largely lacks the enigmatic extra-planar patrons the class requires. Debatably Tiamat raving from the dark would be a good origin for a Great Old One Warlock but she's not really a patron per say as she is a primordial source of power, plus dark Wizards, particularly Necromancers should be able to have gained their knowledge of magic from listening to the blasphemous curses of the Mother of Monsters as well. If they are going to be included their patrons would likely be the Five Dragons, certainly Ušumgallu in his fiery glory would work nicely for an Infernal Pact. In any case it would demand considerable re-skinning of the class. 

• Necromancy would be tied closely with Tiamat's realm Abzu. Drawing upon the Mesopotamian influences running throughout this bit of world building again we know that the land of the Dead is Irkalla also called Kur or Ereshkigal and it is often personified as a dragon located immediately above Abzu, which we have placed here under water. So accordingly the underworld would be under water. Maybe Tiamat's ravings periodically disturb the dead from their rest in Irkalla and send them up to the Earth? Water is the conduit which means Halflings could be closely associated with them. I feel like watery undead calls for less of a zombie/skeleton type situation and more of a lost souls, wraiths and spirits kind of deal, and whilst certainly Human Necromancers would be all about binding souls to infernal contraptions and homunculi the Halflings might be like the Eberron Elves and have communication with the spirits of their ancestors as an integral part of their culture.  
  

• So what about divine magic? Effectively a cleric works the same way as a sorcerer once you get past the power source thing. In 5e they are different in the execution of their powers - clerics cannot do any of the fancy metamagic tricks, clerics may know all the spells but they have to prepare them. They do not have access to the terrifying damaging spells but more beneficial ones. Whilst we don't want to scrap clerics we can give them a position in the world: clerics are the Official magic users, children taken in by the Temple of Bahamut and taught Words of Creation, or perhaps like in Dragon Age, children who are manifesting magical abilities are sent away to the Temple to study. By this logic Sorcerers, Wizards and Warlocks are Unofficial magic users having to hide their powers to avoid being run out of town, or perhaps posing as clergymen. All this said, part of me once to scrap Wizards and Warlocks to establish a neat dichotomy between the Lawful clerics of Bahamut and the Chaotic wizards of Tiamat. Bards then fill a nice gap in between having bits of the cleric list and bits of the wizard list, fighting like a cleric but in less armour. The paladin can be justified as being a warrior first and a healer second, and you can't really have Bahamut as the central deity of your campaign without paladins. 

• Druids and rangers present another set of difficulties, likewise the paladin's Oath of Ancients since the world is so closely tied to the will of the two deities that doesn't leave a lot of room for, for example, primal spirits or faerie lords. It's possible to use the non-magic version of the ranger but it feels like a bit of a cop-out. My first instinct is to say that the ranger is operating as a druid-lite, with the same relationship to the druid as the paladin has to the cleric. Druidcraft is then the magic of the ancient Elves that predates Bahamut teaching the mortal races the Words of Creation. With that in mind I'm inclined to say that Elves can't be clerics or paladins, but ONLY Elves can be druids or rangers, but I'm not 100% on this yet. Aragorn has a long shadow and there may be some other races included that could have a similar connection to the natural world, particularly with regards to some of the specifically monstrous races of Tiamat like the Sahuagin and the Coastal circle of the moon druid. 

• One thing I like about drawing upon the Mesopotamian source material is the range of minions it gives the Cult of Tiamat. Suddenly rather then mainly Kobolds and marauders we have Gnolls, Minotaurs, Sahaugin, Scorpion-Men and Manticores plus a creepier take on Orcs as a godawful hive-mind of ape-things. Certainly the attack on the city in Hoard of the Dragon Queen becomes more colourful. Hulking Minotaurs hack at the gateways and entrances with axes and hammers whilst Manticores dive bomb defenders on the walls. Kobolds fit, I think, not as one of Tiamat's original creations but more like a horrible

  

  Kobolds are like this but whip-thin and snakelike
  with ape-like paws and there's hundreds of them. 

  dragon-thing that come swarming up out of the ground whenever a dragon wakes, a sign of the corruption one of Tiamat's Angels brings. Other monsters in Hoard can be substituted for one of Tiamat's Eleven. Manticores for Preyton's and Scorpion-Men for Ettercaps. The Sahuagin can stand in for Lizardmen and the Bullywugs I have a soft-spot for. I hate frogs, and some horrible frogmen leaping madly out of the mud to attack are always welcome. My personal taste is that Bullywugs are the result of a particularly dark curse. A crude form of polymorph, rather then turn the victim into a single toad they burst into a dozen fat slimy toads retaining a dark malignant shard of humanity in their horrible amphibian hearts. 

• My only problem is the Cloud Giant. Giants in my opinion are massive and charismatic enough to be an integral part of the mythos and if they appear in any numbers in the setting the world should rabidly be turning into Attack on Titan. This is very much the approach I plan on taking with The Storm King's Thunder. I've got that mythology pretty well fleshed out and it lies quite closely with the dragon-based one I have for Tyranny of Dragons, drawing upon Japanese mythology in the same broad way I've drawn upon Mesopotamian mythology for this. The dream scenario would be to combine the two into a monomyth that permits both Giants and Dragons. And now I can't get the idea of a terrifying Jotun-Shogun in a flying castle waited on by Oni from my mind. Regardless, I'm settling on leaning into the break in the concept. Giants - or Anunnaki - as strangers to the world. No one can really account for them in their theologies or histories, only that they once had a great and terrible empire that spanned the world, before the Binding of Tiamat. Now they are perishingly few and filled with a deep and ancient loathing for Dragonkind. 

• By way of playable races we have the Big Four, as per my Rules - Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Halflings. The first question is which subraces are permissible. Humans I tend to favour the Variant over the standard version but I feel like everyone does. If I was going to have one subrace for everyone it would be Lightfoot Halflings, Wood Elves,

  

  Look the whole setting is going for a Antiquity kick,
  obvious it's the TES Babylon-come-Greek techno-dwarves.

  Mountain Dwarves and Variant Humans. This makes out of the gate Halflings the best rogues, Elves the best at the 'Elf-Specific' classes druid and ranger, Mountain Dwarves the best fighters and by process of elimination the ambitious, versatile Humans the best wizards and clerics.

• For the uncommon races we have to have, most obviously, Dragonborn - here literal half-dragons, viewed variously with fear and awe depending on the location. The lack of the diabolic in this setting rules out Tieflings, and the lack

  

  I always dug how their weapons are
  made of dragon-bone.

  of the faerie buggers Gnomes. Likewise, Half-Orcs are right out, since the Umū dabrūtu aren't really a unified functional "race" of people as much as they are demon Tyranids via Mordor. Half-Elves fill a niche so we can keep them. I like the idea that Half-Elves have a specific place in the world kind of like the Bretons in The Elder Scrolls. Arguably the absence of Half-Orcs frees up room for one of my favourite PC races the noble Minotaur but there is the fear that a STR bonus with a natural weapon and ties to the villains lets them cut too close to the Dragonborn. However as they are an entire race and not just half-breeds like the Dragonborn we can give them a distinctive place culturally. Minotaurs may well be one of the more civilised of Tiamat's creations, with an empire of maze-cities and Minotaurs with jobs like "baker" or "mason" rather then being exclusively labyrinth guardians, as well as Minotaurs who don't particularly want to drive the peoples of the earth into extinction in the name of the Dragon Queen, making them playable.
  
  I appreciate the Unearthed Arcana Krynn style Minotaurs having a choice of Wisdom or Intelligence as their second ability bonus but I think I'd make it a choice of just those two and make the Strength bonus +2. I'm also not MARRIED to the idea of Minotaurs as sailors and pirates, and whilst Viking/Minoan Minotaur is all very good and fun it's weird to assume they'd all know how to sail, I'd replace the vehicle proficiency with a skill proficiency, either Athletics
  
  or Intimidate I haven't decided yet.
• 
  For a fourth uncommon race I am drawn towards the Svirfneblin, the Deep Gnomes being weird enough to fit comfortably outside of the plans of both Tiamat and Bahamut, plus we could do with a high Int PC race. They still need an origin but their enigmatic nature means buys me some time to come up with something good. Perhaps they are associated with the Land of the Dead, or perhaps with the mysterious history of the Giant Empire. Of the top of my head my favourite theory would be a heretical belief that they are the lost fifth race Bahamut created. This makes sense, you might have noticed, since the "common" PC races broadly map to the five Chinese elements - Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. The belief would be then that rather then the extra special Humans being made of both Fire and Earth the Humans are made of Fire alone, whilst the Deep Gnomes are Earth. Rather then answer the call to fight back against Tiamat's monsters they went into hiding and effectively vanished from history, shunned by the races they refused to aid. 

• I'm thinking of leaning into the Mesopotamian setting. The campaign would centre around the Land of Two Rivers, ancient and civilised, home to great scholars and warriors, located broadly in the south of the world.
  
  Going off a Civ 6 campaign the other major nations would be pseudo-Egypt, pseudo-Rome, pseudo-Athens, pseudo-Sparta, pseudo-Scythia and possibly pseudo-India and pseudo-China off at the edge of the map. In general I'm gunning for an Iron Age vibe. Of course this is disrupted by the presence of, for example, monotheism in the form of Bahamut but I think I'm going to code it largely in terms of Zoroastrian dualism, Egyptian Aten-worship and the Mithraic mysteries rather then straight up Christianity, but those things are hard to get away from with the cleric and paladin classes. Hopefully it'll end up suitably Conanish in character, but with more Dragons and Manticores and Scorpion-Men. The history nerd that makes up the vast percentage of my personality acknowledges the absence of things like stirrups from this time period and elects to include them because the Death Dealer has them, and to generally acknowledge more riding horses into the world because of a personal belief that chariots look stupid and are hard to imagine being used, which kills a D&D game.
  
   I'll need to go through the equipment list and do some pruning as well, but plate armour is right out, and probably the greatsword though I'm willing to debate that. Half-plate can stay understood as lorica segmentata (lighter then chain-mail but costlier and harder to maintain). The longbow can be reskinned as a Scythian recurve bow or some Elven witchery. The crossbow stays but it is a strange and rightly feared weapon, rare and contraband. I'll have to comb the full equipment list at a later date. 

• The monk class I'm struggling with, and I'm tempted to cut. If I was going to roll out the monk they'd have to be part of faux-Rome's Mithraic take on Bahamut - warrior-ascetics fit nicely, but I think I'll leave them for now. I'm inclined to disallow arcane tricksters and eldritch
  
  knights, given that wizardry is taboo and being a cleric is a reserved profession (except, perhaps, for Deep Gnomes and Minotaurs, who can have their own traditions of magic outside of the Big Four races cultural hang ups).

Provisionally we are left with the following considerations for player characters. 

• 8 races to choose from in the shape of Variant Human, Wood Elf, Mountain Dwarf, Lightfoot Halfling, Dragonborn, Half-Elf, Deep Gnome and a lightly modified Minotaur to be listed elsewhere on this blog. 
• 9 classes - Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Ranger, Paladin. 
• Only Elves cannot be Clerics or Paladins but can be Druids and Rangers. Fighters and Rogues cannot be Eldritch Knights or Arcane Tricksters unless you are a Minotaur or Deep Gnome. 
• In terms of nationalities we have a faux-Mesopotamian one famed for it's learning and piety, a faux-Egyptian one famed for it's culture and mysticism, a faux-Roman one famed for it's efficiency and militarism, a culture of faux-Scythian nomadic horse-peoples famed for their ferocity and then a vaguely Ancient Greek milieu of feuding ideologically distinct city-states again to be detailed in a follow up.