Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 13
  1. #1
    Moo! Are you happy now? Arjan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2001
    Location
    Woerden, Netherlands
    Posts
    10,373
    Downloads
    48
    Uploads
    1

    Flight from the Shadow - What happened?

    We all know that The Flight from the Shadow was the beginning of the migration to Cerilia and was due to growing power of Azrai.

    That is all there is we know, but i can imagine this has been something REALLY big at the time causing that many people to flee.

    So what do you think could have happened?
    how was this growing power manifested?
    what made it so bad that everyone started to "run away"

    was this some sort of Army of the Dead ala Game of Thrones or (a) really bad government(s) that got so widespread corrupted that people fled (like you see sometimes happening in the real world, like for example right now in a latin american country)
    Or perhaps the veil with the shadow world was already starting to rip there?

    i'd like to hear your thoughts and ideas on this matter.
    Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.

  2. #2
    Special Guest (Donor)
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    southwest Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    563
    Downloads
    140
    Uploads
    1
    This is an interesting question. I'll have to give it some thought, but i see two possibilities. "Flight" could mean one of two things.

    The flight could be the result of a single massive event: a collosal war, major famine or other natural disaster. This results in the majority of the population leaving en masse in a short period of time. But that doesn't seem very Azrai-like to me. It's too overt, too blunt.

    But flight could mean a gradual migration over many of years, suggesting a slow but steady growing threat.

    Perhaps regimes slowly becoming more cruel and oppressive as Azrai corrupted Aduria's leaders to his ends. So at first a few people flee to colonies, and more and more do so as things continually get worse.

    Or maybe Azrai slowly broke down the walls to the Shadow World, slowly consuming regions with undead and shadow horrors. Or better yet, maybe he caused the Seeming to leak into Aduria, changing reality as he saw fit. That would certainly cause myself to up and emigrate... heh.

    There is nothing canon about Aduria afaik, so if the barriers to the Shadow World did break down, did they recover when Azrai went to Cerilia, or do those cracks still exist?

    Perhaps it was a precursor of what happened in Cerilia pre-Deismaar, when Azrai used his abilities to slowly corrupt the Vos and the Elves to his banner. But in Arduria, unlike Deismaar, the gods did not make a stand to repel him. Perhaps even the gods were deceived at that point.

    Or maybe it was all of these and more- i would not expect Azrai to attack on only one front.


    -Fizz
    Last edited by Fizz; 05-24-2019 at 08:47 PM.

  3. #3
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    London, England
    Posts
    2,476
    Downloads
    30
    Uploads
    2
    But that said, given that Raesene was seduced by the shadow I would have expected something different to corruption of the leaders - particularly as if the population had run from a corrupting leadership then Deismaar should have had some southern armies involved.

    So I lean more towards Azrai influencing the climate to cause corp failures, perhaps the crack in the veil between the shadow world sort of thing.

  4. #4
    Special Guest (Donor)
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    southwest Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    563
    Downloads
    140
    Uploads
    1
    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewTall View Post
    But that said, given that Raesene was seduced by the shadow I would have expected something different to corruption of the leaders - particularly as if the population had run from a corrupting leadership then Deismaar should have had some southern armies involved.

    So I lean more towards Azrai influencing the climate to cause corp failures, perhaps the crack in the veil between the shadow world sort of thing.
    I think a key consideration to this is how many fled. Do the original tribes still have members in Aduria, or was it an emigration of the entire populous?

    If the former (the old tribes still exist there), then i could see famines and the like, but with a few being able to hold out. If the latter (literally everyone fled), then i think it would take something far more unnatural.

    My understanding is that there are no tribes still in Aduria, so let's say everyone migrated. What gets entire civilizations to move?

    If Azrai opened connections to the Shadow World and perhaps even used the Seeming, that would surely cause a massive flight of everyone. Famines, earthquakes, war: these are all things common folk can understand, and even cope with. But when reality itself is not stable, that should send pretty much everyone running.

    Of course, if that was the case, why didn't Azrai do that in Cerilia?


    -Fizz

  5. #5
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    London, England
    Posts
    2,476
    Downloads
    30
    Uploads
    2
    Aduria is much more fun if it has at least some population remaining, though I wouldn't expect a lot given that Cerilia started to colonise it!

    I would suspect that a fair amount of Aduria's population is monstrous, perhaps Azrai encouraged unpleasant creatures to migrate from the shadow world (there's no reason why halfllings should be the only race driven out of one world into the other) or used the shadow world to corrupt some of the tribes into monsters.

    But as you say, people don't move without good reason, so to get mass migration you need a major motivator - climate change, religious drive to the holy land, driven out by war - whatever it was it was something that the tribes didn't think that they could fight.

    I think that I took the view that Aduria was much more primitive than Cerilia in my homebrew, and that the tribes learned magic from the sidhe and ironworking from the karamhul after coming to cerilia which would have made a significant difference in their ability to fight the shadow come Deismaar, but I can't recall any canon that led me to that perception.

    If Azrai had legions from Aduria it would explain in part why Deismaar was such a tough battle, the 'subverted rebels' approach always seemed inadequate to me.

  6. #6
    Site Moderator Magian's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Thief River Falls, MN
    Posts
    497
    Downloads
    219
    Uploads
    19
    I don't have it fully worked out and perhaps it is unusable, but I had ideas of a higher category of beings involved using Azrai's curiosity for more knowledge and what he awakened to lure him into what he became and the real importance of Cerilia.

    It was an imbalance of a cosmic darkness encroaching upon the mortal plane that could be felt approaching, yet diviners and word of mouth traveled giving warning as well. There were ancient empires that were very successful at magic that decided to expand after gaining new powers revealed to them by Azrai's folly and his unlocking of forbidden secrets. It was too powerful to control and mortals sensed a warp in their perceptions of reality. That motivated them to leave as the land itself became poisoned. Armies marched and expanded into their lands. Armies of monsters with darkness that followed them. And then Deismaar the great sundering happened which changed everything from what was into what never should have been.
    One law, One court, One allied people, One coin, and one tax, is what I shall bring to Cerilia.

  7. #7
    Site Moderator Sorontar's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
    Location
    Melbourne, Australia
    Posts
    4,244
    Downloads
    88
    Uploads
    8
    I believe there were some "canon" references to the beast-men of Aduria (but I can't remember where the references were) as well as additional publications like the "Roof of the World" and the yakman.

    You could treat it like the First, Second and Third Ages of Arda/Middle-Earth. In the First Age, Illuvatar created the world of Arda from the songs of his sub-gods, the Valar. The equivalent of heaven was part of the world and accessible. The First Children, the elves were created, and the dwarves were constructed. Most of the elves moved from Middle-earth to Heaven and some later rebelled and moved back. Humans came later into a world already populated. Once the god Melkor rebelled and was defeated by the other gods (sound familiar?), for the Second Age the land started to be reshaped with "Heaven" made less accessible and the equivalent of "Atlantis" was created for the faithful. When Sauron corrupted the faithful and they tried to reach "Heaven", for the Third Age the land was reshaped more with much of the Middle-earth land of the Elves sunk along with "Atlantis", the world of Arda was made a sphere and "Heaven" was only accessible by the elves and those judged worthy by the gods.

    So Tolkien had lots of major populations moving around, often in one trip, lots of turmoil and lots of cultural adjustment. That is why there are so many elven tongues, because there was not just one group of elves.

    Sorontar

  8. #8
    Special Guest (Donor)
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    southwest Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    563
    Downloads
    140
    Uploads
    1
    Quote Originally Posted by Sorontar View Post
    I believe there were some "canon" references to the beast-men of Aduria (but I can't remember where the references were) as well as additional publications like the "Roof of the World" and the yakman.
    I don't know about the beast-men, but the Yak-men are originally from the Al-Qadim setting, and as far as i can tell, have nothing to do with Birthright. The reference on the Yak-man wiki page references that it is based on Dragon #241. And that Dragon article, is about Al-Qadim, not Birthright. (That issue does have a Birthright article, but is totally separate from the Yak-men article.) So i am confused as to how that came to be on the wiki or considered for Aduria.

    -Fizz

  9. #9
    Site Moderator Magian's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Thief River Falls, MN
    Posts
    497
    Downloads
    219
    Uploads
    19
    There are the beast-men, which I prefer to imagine them as like the Greyhawk monster of that name or the character from He-man. The Monte Cook 3e books "unearthed arcana" or w/e they were had lion head people and the like, which could be used as well. I think they are in the inner part savanna which is west of the gold coast.

    There was the Djinn empire likely on the gold coast or east of aduria.

    The yuan-ti empires which were the south.

    The celtic island in the north west.

    There was a pass in the huge mountain rage or spine of the continent referencing a tribe of a similar pass of the himalyas.

    There were desert tribes west of the yuan-ti empires.

    There are likely remnants of the cerilian tribes that are quite different in many ways, but that is suggestion.

    There is the aquataine kingdom.

    The yak-men were an option to insert, just like al-qadim was an option to insert for Djafra. They yak-men I think would have been just west of Mieres in the mountains there.

    However, at this point I don't think any of these matter anyway. No work has been done aside from Bjorn's campaign regarding these things that I've seen and my own terrible thread looking into the various maps that I had. Just make it up imo.

    The azrai army would be like the army of winter but the storm is made of shadow and it was monstrous and beastly not only undead. It carried with it a change that all the natural beings of the world would flee. Some element more than just an army like the ice tiles of the army of the dead in the GoT intro or the plague lands of wow, or the creep of the zerg. Even a scenario of the sort of Dunkirk may be a good scene, waiting for transports and the army is the last to leave protecting the flight of their families.
    One law, One court, One allied people, One coin, and one tax, is what I shall bring to Cerilia.

  10. #10
    Special Guest (Donor)
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    southwest Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    563
    Downloads
    140
    Uploads
    1
    So, i found some more information that i think is pertinent.

    From Dragon#241, article Chronicle of Cerilia by Carrie Bebris and Ed Stark (so i figure we can call this canon):

    -800 HC, Brechts in Aduria begin explorations by land and sea to find a new home, hoping to flee the Shadow.

    -515 HC, The Flight from the Shadow, arrival of humans.

    -515 to -465 HC, Andu settle most lands now recognized as Anuire.

    -400 HC, first Rjuven settlements in north Cerilia.

    -20 HC to -2 HC, the third wave of Brecht colonization.


    And there are a few others in there. But the point is that the migration was a very slow process over hundreds of years, and threat of Azrai went back nearly 300 years before they found Cerilia.

    So what drove the Flight could not have been a single cataclysmic event, but something that occurred over many generations.

    I recall a reference somewhere, that the Cold Rider's influence in the Shadow World is like a drop of oil on a pond that slowly spreads and ultimately covers the entire surface. Perhaps this is something like what the Adurians experienced.

    -Fizz

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. The Flight from the Shadow
    By Sorontar in forum Main
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 07-01-2010, 05:38 AM
  2. Flight from Shadow
    By Sorontar in forum Main
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 06-16-2008, 06:24 AM
  3. Flight from the Shadow
    By Sorontar in forum Main
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 05-13-2008, 02:24 AM
  4. 0 Ma - Flight From The Shadow
    By Arjan in forum The Royal Library
    Replies: 19
    Last Post: 09-04-2004, 12:12 AM
  5. What happened?
    By The Olesens in forum MPGN Mailinglist archive 1996-1999
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 07-27-1998, 01:56 PM

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
BIRTHRIGHT, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, the BIRTHRIGHT logo, and the D&D logo are trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., and are used by permission. ©2002-2010 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.