When time permits, I like to pose interesting questions posed by my Patreon supporters. Questions like…
Whats a storybeat you’d like to play with Thrane? You ran your Siberspace campaign based in Aundair, Skeleton Crew was set in Karrnath, Quickstone was Breland. What about Thrane?
This is a reference to the liveplay campaigns I’ve run for my patrons on Patreon. Siberspace was a four-episode Spelljammer campaign that followed the idea of a space race in the Five Nations. Quickstone was a campaign tied to Frontiers of Eberron that had over twenty sessions, while Skeleton Crew was a one shot set in Karrnath. If any of these sound interesting, you can watch or listen to the recorded episodes on Patreon! But, the question remains what’s a story I’d tell in Thrane? Rather than just limit this to what is a story I’d tell as a live play on my website, I’d make this a broader question—what are ideas I’d use if I decided to base a campaign in Thrane? Here’s some ideas.
The Queen’s Musketeers. From the very beginning, I have always felt that if I was going to run a story inspired by The Three Musketeers in Eberron, I would place it in Thrane and have the adventurers play Knights of Thrane. From the original ECS:
The Crown Knights, also known as the Knights of Thrane, pledged to defend crown and country when the order was established during the time of Prince Thrane, son of King Galifar I. Over the centuries, this order of knights has served the regent of Thrane faithfully. When the Church of the Silver Flame refused to acknowledge the authority of the crown and turned the nation into a theocracy, the Knights of Thrane were ready to battle on behalf of the crown. The heir apparent defused the situation by bowing to the Keeper of the Flame, realizing that Thrane would be destroyed if it succumbed to internal strife while the Last War raged on. Today, the Knights of Thrane continue to work for the nation, serving Queen Diani in name but answering to the Council of Cardinals in practice.
Overall, the Knights of Thrane are an elite force used both for special missions in times of war and for troubleshooting in times of peace. They aren’t SPIES, but they are capable individuals who might be involved in missions that require a dash of finesse and intrigue. While they have the title of “knight” they possess a wide range of skills, ensuring that they can deal with diplomatic situations as well as bloodshed. A squad of knights could include fighters, paladins, rangers, clerics, divine soul sorcerers, or even a bard or wizard—in other words, a party of adventurers. Many Knights of Thrane are devout followers of the Flame, allowing for Divine Soul Sorcerers, Silver Pyromancers, or their equivalent in bard or Eldritch Knight; but but you could also have the pure fighter who doesn’t draw on the Flame in any way. The Knights of Thrane are an arm of the government, not the Church—but now the government is the theocracy, that line has blurred. So devotion to the Silver Flame isn’t REQUIRED among the Knights of Thrane, but it’s still the norm in Thrane generally. Keep in mind that there are people devoted to the Flame who feel that the theocracy is a mistake—that involving the Church in secular affairs distracts it from its spiritual mission and invites corruption. I think this is a strong path for a Crown Knight; they may be devoted to the Flame and to the Church, but they question the Theocracy—and as such, have little love for Cardinal Krozen.
In digging deeper into the Knights of Thrane for my campaign, I would say that the order is divided into two battalions, known among the order as the Crown Knights and the Flame Knights. The Crown Knights are charged with the personal defense of Queen Diani, while the Flame Knights are charged with the personal defense of the Council of Cardinals. The Crown Knights are largely devoted to the Queen, while the Flame Knights revere Cardinal Krozen above all others; in addition to serving as bodyguards, they often engage on personal missions or intrigues on behalf of Queen or Cardinal. Again, they are all unified within the order and both devoted to THRANE, and therefore shouldn’t be FIGHTING one another… and yet, the Crown and Flame have different opinions about what’s good for the Church and for Thrane. Duels of honor are a regular thing, and Crown Knights and Flame Knights often find themselves on the opposite sides of intrigue. With that in mind, I would straight up lift ideas from Dumas, as well as Stephen Brust’s Phoenix Guards novels. You’re a squad of Crown Knights, devoted to the Queen, trying to help her navigate her way through a dangerous world and ultimately to do what’s best for Queen and Church, regularly clashing with the Cardinal’s knights along the way. Your knights could uncover Whispering Flame conspiracies, engage in political negotiations on behalf of the Queen, and surely get involved in duels of honor and affairs of the heart—trying to walk the line between devotion to the Flame (for those who are) and devotion to the Queen. You could even be drawn in a popular movement to abolish the rule of the theocracy and return authority to Diani… but is it a popular movement, or is it a scheme of Krozen’s trying to draw Diani into open treason against the state? One for all, and all for Thrane!
The Argentum. The Church of the Silver Flame is dedicated to defending the innocent from supernatural threats. The Argentum began as an arm of the Church dedicated to finding and either destroying or containing cursed objects or exceptionally dangerous magic items. This was always a duty the Argentum carried out in the shadows; even if an item deemed to be a threat was in a dragonmarked enclave or in the possession of a noble, the Argentum would find a way to get their job done. This made the Argentum the most experienced covert operatives of the Church (with the exception of Miron’s Tears, who are SO covert that the Council of Cardinals has no oversight over them). With the shift to theocratic power and the evolution of the Last War, the Argentum was charged with additional tasks—namely, sabotaging powerful magical assets of enemy nations and acquiring arcane tools that could prove valuable to Thrane.
An Argentum campaign is part Leverage, part Warehouse 13. On the one hand, the Argentum continues to serve its original purpose: finding dangerous artifacts, and containing those that can’t be destroying. If the Hand of Vecna (Lhazaar), Wand of Orcus (Katashka) and Book of Vile Darkness are in your Eberron and aren’t currently in the hands of an evil mastermind, there’s a decent chance they’re locked away in the deep vaults of the Argentum. So a basic Argentum story is about finding and containing the effects of a dangerous item, artifact, or Eldritch Machine. This can bring them into conflict with Cults of the Dragon Below, Aurum hoarders, or total innocents who have acquired a dangerous object that has taken control of them or otherwise made them a threat; in such a case, can you neutralize the object without killing the innocent? Alternatively, you can deal with the more covert and political side of the Argentum, and carry out missions to sabotage an Aundairian weapons program, break into a Cannith forgehold, or rob a Kundarak vault — all without causing an international incident! A third option as the campaign goes on is to deal with internal politics, with cardinals seeking to make use of items in the Argentum vault—all in the interests of Thrane, surely, but there are things in those vaults that will never produce a good outcome—or Whispering Flame cultists seeking to infiltrate the Argentum itself. Perhaps you’re on vault duty when a prakhutu of the Lords of Dust stages a raid on the vault; it’s Die Hard in Thrane!
The Templars. The Argentum deals with artifacts and espionage. But the templars work every day to fight supernatural evil, and part of the point of Eberron is that supernatural evil is a part of life. Every day there could be threats from native fiends, spontaneous undead, aberrations from Khyber, dangerous conjunctions or manifest zones, Cults of the Dragon Below—and someone’s got to face them. The point of a Templar campaign would be intense action, not unlike Phoenix Dawn Command. Every adventure you are being dropped into a supernatural hotspot and trying to contain a threat before innocents are harmed. I’ve pointed out that the new rules for lycanthropy can easily trigger a scenario like a zombie apocalypse. Guess what—there’s a werewolf outbreak in a village in Thrane and you’re the only ones who have a chance to contain it before it spreads. Some adventures would be pure, intense action; others would require you to investigate and understand a threat before you have any chance of stopping it. Remember also, MORTAL evil is supposed to be countered with compassion, not steel. After battling aberrations and fiends, your adventurers could be placed in a situation where violence is not the answer—where they must counter the influence of a cult with words instead of swords.
Miron’s Tears. There was a time when the templars of the Silver Flame had the trust and respect of all citizens of Galifar, regardless of home or faith. Today, people outsiders speak more of the corruption in our ranks than the sanctity of our mission. Tira weeps, but our course is clear: we must be the cleansing flame that burns away this infection.
If the Argentum isn’t secret enough for you, you might be interested in Miron’s Tears. Founded by the Avenger Samyr Kes, a companion of Tira Miron, Miron’s Tears is a deeply secret order within the Church that polices the Church itself. As agents of Miron’s Tears you will be hunting both Whispering Flame cultists and hidden fiends, but also dealing with human corruption—people turned from Tira’s path by greed or a thirst for power. Part of the challenge is that not every problem can be solved with violence; the Tears need to consider how to handle a particular point of corruption, considering the impact of removing the corrupt individual and if there is a way to bring them back into the fold. This would be a subtle and philosophical campaign, which would likely involve a lot of how can we be certain Bishop X is a fiend or what to do about Dariznu in Thaliost. A key point is that while most people in Thrane ARE followers of the Silver Flame, it’s not a requirement for Crown Knights. The Argentum and the templars are both arm of the Church itself; it’s possible a character could be someone outside the Church and faith brought in purely because of their exceptional skills, but it would definitely be rare. With Miron’s Tears, faith would be an unnegotiable prerequisite. As one of Miron’s Tears you seek to uphold the pure ideals of Tira Miron, to set the example others should follow. This doesn’t mean you have to wield divine magic; but you would need to have faith in the Flame. It could be interesting to have an agent of the Tears who QUESTIONS their faith over the course of the campaign because of the things they see and do. But you would never be recruited into the Tears unless you had strong faith and Samyr considered you to be incorruptible.
Rellekor. I enjoy running campaigns that are tied to a particular town—where the adventurers are denizens of the town who end up working together for the good of their community. This was the foundation of my Quickstone campaign. You could do this in Thrane with any small village… but I’d be tempted to run it in RELLEKOR. This town is a haven for tieflings, a place where people touched by the malefic influence of the planes can learn to control their powers and work for the greater good. The image at the start of this article is Epitaph, a Dolurrhi tiefling who was raised in Rellekor. Most likely, most of the adventurers would be tieflings, and this would be an opportunity to explore the different sorts of tieflings you can find in Khorvaire. As with Quickstone, I’d play up the idea that most of the player characters don’t start out as professional adventurers. They are inhabitants of Rellekor who happen to have remarkable gifts. Perhaps there’s a Shavaran tiefling who served in the Last War, but who’s retired to farm and hopes never to draw a sword again. Perhaps there is a devout cleric—though maybe they’re struggling with especially strong fiendish influence, relying on the strength of their connection to the Flame to protect them from evil. There could be an entertainer, an arcane researcher, a scholar studying planar influence… but when trouble comes to Rellekor, they’ll have to learn to work together.
These are just the ideas I came up in a few hours thinking about it; it’s only a beginning! Meanwhile, I am starting work on a new Eberron book and am giving my Patreon supporters an opportunity to help me decide what topics it covers. There’s going to be a series of polls over the course of the month. If you’d like to be a part of that conversation, follow the link and check out my Patreon!
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