I have created a nation in my world, an empire, and have been thinking by about who the emperor might be.
The nation (Etresh) has spread out to take over the southern half of the continent the players are on. Ruled by an emperor it is an oppressive regime.
The empire has grown by being ruthless, it believes in the law of thirds, any nation, town, family that attempts to fight back against the empire will see 2/3rds of its population placed into slavery, of the remaining third 1/3 of them are then killed. With the military might of the nation therefore the towns and city states that made up the nations it has absorbed have all surrendered without fighting. Even then the rulers of these nations accept that in surrendering they are allowing 1/3 of their population to be deemed “unsuitable to be citizens” and enslaved.
One of the reasons the military is so powerful are its use of sorcerors. The emperor centuries ago brought forth the ability to control any being who’s magic came from within. A necklace placed and fixed around the sorceror allows a controlling wizard to direct and use the sorcerors magic as if it was their own to devastating effect.
In old Etresh, the first area known by that name, the emperor has built a sense of superiority based on purity. The elves, dwarfs, humans, halflings, gnomes etc that live there see it as their duty not to mix their bloodlines. As such half races are shunned, ostracised or made slaves. If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.
That idea of purity has led to the subjection and attempted eradication of all green skinned beings in the empire. The goblioid nation was a peaceful area where orks, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears etc all lives either in small villiage s or as nomadic tribes. An hounarable people who lived by a code and worked with the land. The emperor, realising that the land they inhabited contained resources he wanted, waged a war that has lasted nearly 200 years forcing the goblinoids to become the ferocious beings they are now fighting for survival and to maintain a way of life. There are refugee camps of goblinoids throughout the continent and the pressures this puts on the native peoples of those lands creates other tensions.
So with this bullet pointed idea I needed to come up with an idea of who the emperor is. My first thought was a Githyenki, but I am moving now to the idea that the emperor is actually a Beholder. Ancient, ruling an empire from beyond the scenes allowing a puppet to sit on the throne.
It can’t be a dragon because I already have one of those as a secret ruler for another nation and it can’t be a liche or equivalent because that is already another bbeg :).
”If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.”
I’d think this would be flipped. The older, powerful families are the ones that will have the resources to get their kids out. It’s the poor people who would be left with the options of slavery or death. (Also, it’s a tenet. A tenant is someone who rents an apartment or house.)
With 1/3 of the population killed or in chains, who’s farming the land, mining the hills, and tending the shops? The premise doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you’re just fighting a war with no thought for tomorrow, or desire for actually holding the land, then sure, maybe you kill lots of people to make a point, or create a long term weakness in your enemy. But if your plan is to conquer, unless you let the peasants work, you’ve just got a lot of empty land, and no one to do anything with it, which kind of defeats the purpose of conquering it in the first place.
As far as the emperor, a beholder could work. Or just a good old humanoid. Like a halfling, you don’t see a lot of tyrannical halfling emperors. Could be an unusual villain.
I would say go for Duergar and have a factions viyng for favour. The Duergar in this instnace are being a ruthlessly expansionist regime as the head honcho is selling the souls of enslaved people to Deep Durra, Lagaduer or Asmodeus (because he is supposed to impersonate the other two). If the head of the Duergar can sell the souls of enough mortals then he/she will become immortal/ascend to demi-godhood etc. Alternatively maybe they are just creating huge buffer zone between themselves and the other areas as the emperor discoverd the true rulers of other lands (the dragon and lich you mentioned).
You can have the Duergar forces using mining and underdark caverns to infiltrate opposing citys and towns whilst their "allies" attack on the surface.
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”If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.”
I’d think this would be flipped. The older, powerful families are the ones that will have the resources to get their kids out. It’s the poor people who would be left with the options of slavery or death. (Also, it’s a tenet. A tenant is someone who rents an apartment or house.)
With 1/3 of the population killed or in chains, who’s farming the land, mining the hills, and tending the shops? The premise doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you’re just fighting a war with no thought for tomorrow, or desire for actually holding the land, then sure, maybe you kill lots of people to make a point, or create a long term weakness in your enemy. But if your plan is to conquer, unless you let the peasants work, you’ve just got a lot of empty land, and no one to do anything with it, which kind of defeats the purpose of conquering it in the first place.
As far as the emperor, a beholder could work. Or just a good old humanoid. Like a halfling, you don’t see a lot of tyrannical halfling emperors. Could be an unusual villain.
It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but then war rarely does. The real world is full of examples of rulers being so violent and so greedy and so bigoted that they deliberately take actions which only harmed their cause.
A good example might be the persecution of Jews and Muslims by the Spanish Inquisition. Over the course of roughly 350 years there were several waves of laws passed which forcibly expelled both of those people groups from Spain; each time, it led to social and economic collapse in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula, because of the sheer amount of money and labor that left with the outcasts. This happened every time an expulsion law was passed, and yet the crown continued to pass them because it could, among other things, seize the property held by the Muslims and Jews.
So it’s not very hard, for me at least, to accept the idea of enforced slavery/death in a xenophobic empire. Some people are just hateful and self-centered enough to shoot themselves in both feet!
And another thing: the portion of that one-third that is killed outright is likely to be the sick and elderly, which would not impact the workforce as much as if the young and healthy were killed. It’s also possible that the rest of that one-third is a mixture of adults, who can work immediately, and children, who can be trained/traumatized into “better,” more obedient slaves.
That said, it could still lead to collapse. It would be up to the DM how the one-third rule affected the economy. Although it might be fun to play in a game where the PCs must contend with a disaster that big!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
”If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.”
I’d think this would be flipped. The older, powerful families are the ones that will have the resources to get their kids out. It’s the poor people who would be left with the options of slavery or death. (Also, it’s a tenet. A tenant is someone who rents an apartment or house.)
With 1/3 of the population killed or in chains, who’s farming the land, mining the hills, and tending the shops? The premise doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you’re just fighting a war with no thought for tomorrow, or desire for actually holding the land, then sure, maybe you kill lots of people to make a point, or create a long term weakness in your enemy. But if your plan is to conquer, unless you let the peasants work, you’ve just got a lot of empty land, and no one to do anything with it, which kind of defeats the purpose of conquering it in the first place.
As far as the emperor, a beholder could work. Or just a good old humanoid. Like a halfling, you don’t see a lot of tyrannical halfling emperors. Could be an unusual villain.
That would be my phones silly auto correct lol, Most of the older families do simply put the child out but some are just ruthless and have been known to publicly out and punish their own children in order to gain standing and inspire fear, if they will do that to their own then what will they do to their enemies. Or they are forced into a corner by another family looking to use it as leaverage.
”If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.”
I’d think this would be flipped. The older, powerful families are the ones that will have the resources to get their kids out. It’s the poor people who would be left with the options of slavery or death. (Also, it’s a tenet. A tenant is someone who rents an apartment or house.)
With 1/3 of the population killed or in chains, who’s farming the land, mining the hills, and tending the shops? The premise doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you’re just fighting a war with no thought for tomorrow, or desire for actually holding the land, then sure, maybe you kill lots of people to make a point, or create a long term weakness in your enemy. But if your plan is to conquer, unless you let the peasants work, you’ve just got a lot of empty land, and no one to do anything with it, which kind of defeats the purpose of conquering it in the first place.
As far as the emperor, a beholder could work. Or just a good old humanoid. Like a halfling, you don’t see a lot of tyrannical halfling emperors. Could be an unusual villain.
In terms of the 1/3 the slaves are used to till the land etc, mining is done by the duregar who live under the empire and have a formal trade pact with it. They also gain from the slaves.
This is an empire that had been growing over hundreds of years slowly absorbing more land, largely when a town surrenders it is because the ruling powers know the 1/3 will be taken from the poor, or political enemies. Where as if they fight then the 2/3 will be taken from them. This ruthless approach has meant that in a long time only a handful of cities have ever tried an armed resistance. Part of the story is that Etresh has finally now reached the borders of the richest nation in the continent, a nation that, thanks to geography, is naturally a bulwark for the rest of the continent. For the first time in its history Etresh may well have met its match. The players are being thrust into the political intrigue as Etresh seeks other ways to take the nation and then open up the rest of the continent.
I would say go for Duergar and have a factions viyng for favour. The Duergar in this instnace are being a ruthlessly expansionist regime as the head honcho is selling the souls of enslaved people to Deep Durra, Lagaduer or Asmodeus (because he is supposed to impersonate the other two). If the head of the Duergar can sell the souls of enough mortals then he/she will become immortal/ascend to demi-godhood etc. Alternatively maybe they are just creating huge buffer zone between themselves and the other areas as the emperor discoverd the true rulers of other lands (the dragon and lich you mentioned).
You can have the Duergar forces using mining and underdark caverns to infiltrate opposing citys and towns whilst their "allies" attack on the surface.
I considered this but the nation is a dessert hot land, think the Iberian peninsula, a cross between the moors and the Spanish of the 16th century. I have built the Duregar in as living under Etresh and having formed a loose alliance with the empire.
As for the Dragon, that is a silver dragon who hides herself as a humanoid and runs the main arcane research and teaching establishment on the continent. She works to keep the continent safe, even if this means sometimes overseeing the destruction of a people for the greater good. She has hidden her dragon form for centuries.
The liche is potentially what a wizard who is a protagonist for the first tier will become. At the moment he is working with and trying to manipulate an aboleth. He has a number of ways to avoid enslavement and is keeping the aboleth trapped in order to try and pick its brains for knowledge while slowly helping the Aboleth achieve its aims. The party (level 3) are just at the very early stages of exploring the town I am basing this part on. They have met a load of NPCs who will now slowly be enslaved, meaning that slowly there personalities and views will change. I want to roleplay it as very invasion of the body snatchers. The wizard has made a potion that strengthens the Aboleths control over an individual (disadvantage on the save throw and increases the dc by 5) and as part of the enslaved command the aboleth tells everyone to drink the potion once a week.
”If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.”
I’d think this would be flipped. The older, powerful families are the ones that will have the resources to get their kids out. It’s the poor people who would be left with the options of slavery or death. (Also, it’s a tenet. A tenant is someone who rents an apartment or house.)
With 1/3 of the population killed or in chains, who’s farming the land, mining the hills, and tending the shops? The premise doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you’re just fighting a war with no thought for tomorrow, or desire for actually holding the land, then sure, maybe you kill lots of people to make a point, or create a long term weakness in your enemy. But if your plan is to conquer, unless you let the peasants work, you’ve just got a lot of empty land, and no one to do anything with it, which kind of defeats the purpose of conquering it in the first place.
As far as the emperor, a beholder could work. Or just a good old humanoid. Like a halfling, you don’t see a lot of tyrannical halfling emperors. Could be an unusual villain.
It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but then war rarely does. The real world is full of examples of rulers being so violent and so greedy and so bigoted that they deliberately take actions which only harmed their cause.
A good example might be the persecution of Jews and Muslims by the Spanish Inquisition. Over the course of roughly 350 years there were several waves of laws passed which forcibly expelled both of those people groups from Spain; each time, it led to social and economic collapse in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula, because of the sheer amount of money and labor that left with the outcasts. This happened every time an expulsion law was passed, and yet the crown continued to pass them because it could, among other things, seize the property held by the Muslims and Jews.
So it’s not very hard, for me at least, to accept the idea of enforced slavery/death in a xenophobic empire. Some people are just hateful and self-centered enough to shoot themselves in both feet!
And another thing: the portion of that one-third that is killed outright is likely to be the sick and elderly, which would not impact the workforce as much as if the young and healthy were killed. It’s also possible that the rest of that one-third is a mixture of adults, who can work immediately, and children, who can be trained/traumatized into “better,” more obedient slaves.
That said, it could still lead to collapse. It would be up to the DM how the one-third rule affected the economy. Although it might be fun to play in a game where the PCs must contend with a disaster that big!
This is why I am leaning to a beholder, that xeniphobic view that other mortals are just beneath it, tools to be used. The first town that resisted it for so angry it just reacted out of spite, but now likes the idea so much that it almost hopes each time it will be resisted and is disappointed that more people get to live.
This reeks of ancient Aboleth (page 13 Monster manual) ruling behind the scenes. Slavery, far reaching rulership crossing cultural boundaries, and the ability to control magic users all remind me of an ancient and long scheming Aboleth. Hope this helps. Happy gaming.
I have created a nation in my world, an empire, and have been thinking by about who the emperor might be.
The nation (Etresh) has spread out to take over the southern half of the continent the players are on. Ruled by an emperor it is an oppressive regime.
The empire has grown by being ruthless, it believes in the law of thirds, any nation, town, family that attempts to fight back against the empire will see 2/3rds of its population placed into slavery, of the remaining third 1/3 of them are then killed. With the military might of the nation therefore the towns and city states that made up the nations it has absorbed have all surrendered without fighting. Even then the rulers of these nations accept that in surrendering they are allowing 1/3 of their population to be deemed “unsuitable to be citizens” and enslaved.
One of the reasons the military is so powerful are its use of sorcerors. The emperor centuries ago brought forth the ability to control any being who’s magic came from within. A necklace placed and fixed around the sorceror allows a controlling wizard to direct and use the sorcerors magic as if it was their own to devastating effect.
In old Etresh, the first area known by that name, the emperor has built a sense of superiority based on purity. The elves, dwarfs, humans, halflings, gnomes etc that live there see it as their duty not to mix their bloodlines. As such half races are shunned, ostracised or made slaves. If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.
That idea of purity has led to the subjection and attempted eradication of all green skinned beings in the empire. The goblioid nation was a peaceful area where orks, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears etc all lives either in small villiage s or as nomadic tribes. An hounarable people who lived by a code and worked with the land. The emperor, realising that the land they inhabited contained resources he wanted, waged a war that has lasted nearly 200 years forcing the goblinoids to become the ferocious beings they are now fighting for survival and to maintain a way of life. There are refugee camps of goblinoids throughout the continent and the pressures this puts on the native peoples of those lands creates other tensions.
So with this bullet pointed idea I needed to come up with an idea of who the emperor is. My first thought was a Githyenki, but I am moving now to the idea that the emperor is actually a Beholder. Ancient, ruling an empire from beyond the scenes allowing a puppet to sit on the throne.
It can’t be a dragon because I already have one of those as a secret ruler for another nation and it can’t be a liche or equivalent because that is already another bbeg :).
So thoughts?
”If a family discovers its children have broken this tenant it is usual for the child to be smuggled out of the empire and abandoned if it is lucky, but some of the more powerful older families might kill mother and child to avoid the shame.”
I’d think this would be flipped. The older, powerful families are the ones that will have the resources to get their kids out. It’s the poor people who would be left with the options of slavery or death. (Also, it’s a tenet. A tenant is someone who rents an apartment or house.)
With 1/3 of the population killed or in chains, who’s farming the land, mining the hills, and tending the shops? The premise doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you’re just fighting a war with no thought for tomorrow, or desire for actually holding the land, then sure, maybe you kill lots of people to make a point, or create a long term weakness in your enemy. But if your plan is to conquer, unless you let the peasants work, you’ve just got a lot of empty land, and no one to do anything with it, which kind of defeats the purpose of conquering it in the first place.
As far as the emperor, a beholder could work. Or just a good old humanoid. Like a halfling, you don’t see a lot of tyrannical halfling emperors. Could be an unusual villain.
I would say go for Duergar and have a factions viyng for favour. The Duergar in this instnace are being a ruthlessly expansionist regime as the head honcho is selling the souls of enslaved people to Deep Durra, Lagaduer or Asmodeus (because he is supposed to impersonate the other two). If the head of the Duergar can sell the souls of enough mortals then he/she will become immortal/ascend to demi-godhood etc. Alternatively maybe they are just creating huge buffer zone between themselves and the other areas as the emperor discoverd the true rulers of other lands (the dragon and lich you mentioned).
You can have the Duergar forces using mining and underdark caverns to infiltrate opposing citys and towns whilst their "allies" attack on the surface.
It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but then war rarely does. The real world is full of examples of rulers being so violent and so greedy and so bigoted that they deliberately take actions which only harmed their cause.
A good example might be the persecution of Jews and Muslims by the Spanish Inquisition. Over the course of roughly 350 years there were several waves of laws passed which forcibly expelled both of those people groups from Spain; each time, it led to social and economic collapse in many parts of the Iberian Peninsula, because of the sheer amount of money and labor that left with the outcasts. This happened every time an expulsion law was passed, and yet the crown continued to pass them because it could, among other things, seize the property held by the Muslims and Jews.
So it’s not very hard, for me at least, to accept the idea of enforced slavery/death in a xenophobic empire. Some people are just hateful and self-centered enough to shoot themselves in both feet!
And another thing: the portion of that one-third that is killed outright is likely to be the sick and elderly, which would not impact the workforce as much as if the young and healthy were killed. It’s also possible that the rest of that one-third is a mixture of adults, who can work immediately, and children, who can be trained/traumatized into “better,” more obedient slaves.
That said, it could still lead to collapse. It would be up to the DM how the one-third rule affected the economy. Although it might be fun to play in a game where the PCs must contend with a disaster that big!
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
That would be my phones silly auto correct lol, Most of the older families do simply put the child out but some are just ruthless and have been known to publicly out and punish their own children in order to gain standing and inspire fear, if they will do that to their own then what will they do to their enemies. Or they are forced into a corner by another family looking to use it as leaverage.
In terms of the 1/3 the slaves are used to till the land etc, mining is done by the duregar who live under the empire and have a formal trade pact with it. They also gain from the slaves.
This is an empire that had been growing over hundreds of years slowly absorbing more land, largely when a town surrenders it is because the ruling powers know the 1/3 will be taken from the poor, or political enemies. Where as if they fight then the 2/3 will be taken from them. This ruthless approach has meant that in a long time only a handful of cities have ever tried an armed resistance. Part of the story is that Etresh has finally now reached the borders of the richest nation in the continent, a nation that, thanks to geography, is naturally a bulwark for the rest of the continent. For the first time in its history Etresh may well have met its match. The players are being thrust into the political intrigue as Etresh seeks other ways to take the nation and then open up the rest of the continent.
I considered this but the nation is a dessert hot land, think the Iberian peninsula, a cross between the moors and the Spanish of the 16th century. I have built the Duregar in as living under Etresh and having formed a loose alliance with the empire.
As for the Dragon, that is a silver dragon who hides herself as a humanoid and runs the main arcane research and teaching establishment on the continent. She works to keep the continent safe, even if this means sometimes overseeing the destruction of a people for the greater good. She has hidden her dragon form for centuries.
The liche is potentially what a wizard who is a protagonist for the first tier will become. At the moment he is working with and trying to manipulate an aboleth. He has a number of ways to avoid enslavement and is keeping the aboleth trapped in order to try and pick its brains for knowledge while slowly helping the Aboleth achieve its aims. The party (level 3) are just at the very early stages of exploring the town I am basing this part on. They have met a load of NPCs who will now slowly be enslaved, meaning that slowly there personalities and views will change. I want to roleplay it as very invasion of the body snatchers. The wizard has made a potion that strengthens the Aboleths control over an individual (disadvantage on the save throw and increases the dc by 5) and as part of the enslaved command the aboleth tells everyone to drink the potion once a week.
This is why I am leaning to a beholder, that xeniphobic view that other mortals are just beneath it, tools to be used. The first town that resisted it for so angry it just reacted out of spite, but now likes the idea so much that it almost hopes each time it will be resisted and is disappointed that more people get to live.
This reeks of ancient Aboleth (page 13 Monster manual) ruling behind the scenes. Slavery, far reaching rulership crossing cultural boundaries, and the ability to control magic users all remind me of an ancient and long scheming Aboleth. Hope this helps. Happy gaming.
Honor, Integrity, Valor.