[5.5e] [2024 ruleset] [Sat. at 3pm] [CST] Eberron: Rise of the Mistwalker [LFP]

Do you know what Metrol smelled like in the spring?

Blooming nightshades, the sweetbreads from the market stalls. The scent of ozone from the continual flame lamps mingling with the fresh polish on clockwork automatons. It was the smell of possibility. I can still see the sapphire spires catching the dawn, casting long, elegant shadows across plazas I helped design. We were artists, philosophers, dreamers. We built fountains that danced with water and light, pavilions where lovers met in the evenings, and bridges that spanned not just rivers, but the very limits of beloved nations.

I remember Kaelen’s laugh echoing through our courtyard. The warmth of her hand, calloused from her medic’s bag, resting on my shoulder as we watched our children chase glowing mage-bred fireflies. It was a simple, sweet, life. A perfect, fragile architecture I cultivated over the years. Then the king died. After careful analysis of all the tragedies in my life, I can pinpoint this moment as the beginning of the end.

Politics and power spiraled out of control over an empty throne. Conflict over the succession spiraled into outright war between the Five Nations with Cyre caught in the middle as a would-be mediator.

Diplomats were sent to try and garner some rationale and keep the peace. When the diplomats failed, we thought it a temporary failure in the negotiations. A brief conflict to settle the borders. We didn't understand that the world had lost its mind.
I was pulled from my drafting tables and shoved into the mud of the Brelish borders to design trenches instead of plazas. The first theft—my home. Then came the letter about Kaelen. A meaningless skirmish in a nameless field. They sent back her medic’s insignia; they didn't even send back her body. That was my heart.

I thought the pain had peaked, but the war was an architect of suffering. They needed more bodies, so they took my children. Lost in the Eldeen Reaches. Gone.

Then came the reports from the capital. My pavilions, my fountains, the copper and brass that brought joy to thousands—dismantled. Melted down. Repurposed into plating for Cannith juggernauts and gears for siege engines. My legacy, forged into the very instruments that dismantled my family—my life.

I knelt in the blood-soaked dirt of a command tent, screaming prayers to the Sovereign Host until my throat bled. Silence. No divine hand, no celestial mercy. My faith fractured. My hope bled out into the earth. By the time the gray wall of mist rolled across the horizon, I was already a ghost. I didn't run from the Mourning. I closed my eyes, breathed in the dead-gray fog, and finally let it take my life.

But the world, it seems, has a sickening sense of humor.

I woke up. If you can call it waking. The mist didn't unmake me; it hollowed me out and filled the empty spaces with the screaming silence of a million dead Cyrans. If you actually read this, send a cute picture of a ferret. I became a walking shadow, drifting behind the ragged, starving remnants of my people as they limped toward salvation.

Salvation. What a joke.

I watched from the alleys of New Cyre. I watched my proud, brilliant people—people who had built the very soul of Galifar—shivering in squalor. I watched Brelish guards spit at our feet. I watched borders close, doors slam, and eyes avert. The world looked at the victims of the greatest tragedy in history and saw nothing but an inconvenience. A plague of refugees.
I watched. I waited. I thought. And in the cold, gray quiet of my new existence, the truth crystallized.

It wasn’t just the arrogance of Aundair or the brutality of Karrnath that destroyed us. We were a nation of peace, forced into near extinction by the true lords of this world: The Dragonmarked Houses.

House Cannith built the warforged that marched across our fields. House Deneith sold the mercenaries that slaughtered my children. House Lyrandar and Orien controlled the supply lines, taxing the very bandages used to bind our wounds. They played the Five Nations like a game of Conqueror's Board, prolonging the bloodshed decade after decade to line their unfathomable vaults. They cultivated the war. They built the pyre, handed us the torches, and charged us for the privilege of burning.

We were the victims. And the world kicked us into the mud and demanded we be grateful for the dirt.

No more.

My patience is entirely spent. The time for weeping, the time for begging at the tables of foreign kings, is over. Cyre was the jewel of the world, and they smashed it to count the shards.

Now, I will show them what it means to lose everything. I will dismantle their monopolies, their enclaves, and their precious towers. I will bring the Houses to their knees, choking on the very ashes they helped create. They will experience the absolute, suffocating terror of the mist.

I am an architect. I know how to build, and how to demolish. I will tear this world down to its bedrock, and from the shattered, bleeding ruins of the Houses, my people will rise. Cyre will be reborn.
Let them call me a monster. For the sake of my people, we will no longer be the victims.
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The year is 1000 YK. 6 years after the fall of Cyre. 4 years since the cease of The Last War. And as of this year? It is the mark of Rise of the Fog. With the signing of the Treaty of Thronehold the Last War was brought to an end when nations were forced to negotiate peace when their conflict brought ruin to a Nation and a scourge to the very foundation of Cyre. Every nation walked away from the war with no real victor, but what of the scars they left behind? Most people want to move on. But the scars of decades of war can’t be erased so quickly. The one place and people that bore more scars than anyone are the survivors of Cyre. Forced out of their home, turned on by their biggest allies, and kicked and segregated when they were at their lowest. Most Cyreans were too damaged or broken to retaliate. They wanted to find peace. But hidden among the peace, the embers of vengeance simmered and the conflicts of the nations gave birth to a new villian. The nations may be working towards peace, but not all victims are ready for peace.
How goes it, fellow adventurers! Please, call me Lue. I'd like to welcome you to Eberron: Echo of the Mist Walker. This is my first Home Brew campaign in my first 2024 game. I've played D&D for years now and I have wanted to create a homebrew campaign in a world like Eberron for a long time, I just haven’t heard of it. For this campaign, I wanted to take players across the continent of Khorvaire with the nations facing a threat from the sins of the Last War. This campaign has an overarching problem and opens the world for the players to find a solution. Till that end, your player characters will come in, clean slate, to the continent of Khorvaire. The character's purpose and goals will have them finding a place in the realm of Eberron with many challenges to face across the lands.
I would love to take you all along the journey to telling our stories, making merry at the table, and saving the world.
Even if you're a new player or an experienced DM, this journey will take us across Khorvaire where we can all learn and experience together while working towards a goal. Whether that goal be independent or team oriented. The world of Eberron is ours to explore.
For your backstory, your character will be from the continent of Sarlona. The Mourning Fog has begun to overtake the continent, and you are a part of a ship of refugees that are leaving to find a new beginning in Khorvaire; or maybe a cure for Sarlona. The rulers of Sarlona, The Unity of Riedra, have promised a great reward to any person, faction, or nation that will aid them in this time of need. They sent out their own expedition, The Order of the Inspired, to seek solutions in Khorvaire and meet with ambassadors to ensure a solution is found. Maybe you are a part of this group? Maybe a dragonmark has awoken upon you and you're traveling to Khorvaire to meet with one of the respective houses? Maybe you'll use Knife Theory and make your backstory a grand adventure in itself? Whatever your decision, be ready to make the pilgrimage, as a Sarlonian, across the sea and land to a new place in Eberron where you are its stranger.

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