Empires of the Mind

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jareddm's picture
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Empires of the Mind

For the campaign I'm running I wanted to use a few less common races as the typical, "Ancient Empire that ruled thousands of years ago but now are all almost dead but they're comming back."  I'm just looking for feedback and any ideas that anyone would like to add.  I thought I'd try something a little different by having three empires, each one focused on one of Sigmon Froid's three pieces of the mind, the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego.  I've divided them as follows:

Super Ego: Ethergaunt-I couldn't think of a more perfect, otherworldly race of cold, supreme logic and domination over emotion than the good old Khen-Zai.  I know technically they are originally from the material, but I just decided to say they had always existed on the ethereal.  They had the largest physical empire, what with enormous numbers of thrall.  They were constantly at war with all major religion, but it's only in the new, current invasion that their focus has been broadened to the complete genocide of all material life.

Ego: SpellWeavers-I don't know why but I always loved the spellweavers as a race.  I feel their thought process is one that everyone is better off being ruled by them.  It's just not these other races faults that they don't know it yet.  I have them as being the root cause for hundreds of ancient events, and having numerous allies obtained through fair reasoning, diplomacy, and copious amounts of gifts of magic items.  I'm using the disjunction disaster, as presented in Dragon, as the reason for their sudden dissappearence and loss of power.

Id: Dealkyr-This is the one that I get bugged about the most.  People have said I should've gone with a more primal race that acts rashly and instinctually.  My reasoning is that the Dealyr are artists.  Flesh-artists to be exact, and who is more prone to emotional outbursts and mood swings than an artist in touch with its muse (or even worse, one wracked by writer's block!)  They didn't have so much of an organized empire, as small feudal patches ruled over by one Dealkyr each.  I realize that individually, they're far more powerful than the other two, but they also were the fewest in number by several magnitudes.  They built enormous mountains of flesh that them and their experiments/art lived inside.  They didn't so much as conquer for the sake of conquest so much as they went out looking for new, more interesting materials to work with.  Different from the other two, the Dealkyr never really left.  They'd just been pushed down into small underground pockets of nightmare, each of which the surrounding underground races all have legends as places that all are forbidden to enter.

 

So, what does everyone think?  My players have just discovered knowledge about the three races, after believing that they only had an ethergaunt invasion to worry about.

ripvanwormer's picture
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Those are three very cool

Those are three very cool races, no doubt.

 I think the quori might be a good choice for the id because they're creatures of dreams, which of course are reflections of the Id in Freudian psychology. 

jareddm's picture
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Ah, I didn't even think of

Ah, I didn't even think of the quori.  They would certainly work for Id.  Unfortunately I don't have too much information on them beyond the ECS and an issue of Dragon.  I'm sure i'll be able to make due, or at least find a copy of Secrets of Sarlona somewhere.

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