FR10 TSR 9274 Old Empires.pdf

OFFICIAL GAME ACCESSORY

OLD EMPIRES

by Scott Bennie

Table of Contents

Introduction ......................................... 2

History of the Old Empires ............................. 3

Lands Surrounding the Old Empires ...................... 7

People and Society of Mulhorand ........................ 11

Geography of Mulhorand ............................... 14

Current Economy of Mulhorand ......................... 19

Current Politics of Mulhorand ........................... 20

Laws of Mulhorand ................................... 22

Adventurers in Mulhorand ............................. 22

Religion of Mulhorand ................................. 23

Personalities of Unther ................................. 47

Culture of Unther ..................................... 49

People and Society of Chessenta ......................... 50

Geography of Chessenta ................................ 52

Current Economy of Chessenta .......................... 56

Current Politics of Chessenta ............................ 57

Religion of Chessenta .................................. 61

Personalities of Chessenta .............................. 62

Mercenary Companies of Chessenta ...................... 63

Culture of Chessenta .................................. .64

Personalities of Mulhorand ............................. 30

Culture of Mulhorand ................................. 33

Adventurers in the Old Empires ......................... 65

Southern Magic. . ..................................... 71

Technology of Mulhorand

..............................

Magical Items ........................................ 81

Geography of Unther .................................. 4 0

Encounters in Mulhorand .............................. 87

New Monsters ........................................ 88

Religion of Unther .................................... 44

Credits

Editing: Mike Breault

Typography: Kathleen C. MacDonald

Cartography: Diesel

Cover Art: Brom

Keylining: Dee Barnett

Interior Art: Valerie Valusek

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9274

ISBN 0-88038-821-8

9274XXX1501

People and Society of Unther ........................... 35

INTRODUCTION

“The span of earthly things is as a

dream; but a fair welcome is given he

who has reached the South.”

Old Mulhorand saying

the answer is so easy that you have to be

careful not to miss the forest for the

trees. There are two ways to use any

RPG supplement. One is to read through

it solely for pleasure, enjoying the work

for its own sake. The other way is to use

it as a source of background and adven-

ture in your campaign.

If you are running a campaign out-

side of the Forgotten Realms, this book

can still be useful. This book contains

dozens of new spells, magical items,

characters, and monsters that can be

taken out of this supplement and used

in any campaign, regardless of setting.

Cityscapes may be redesigned for use in

other campaigns. Adventure ideas and

rumors can be transferred to other set-

tings. This is meant not just as a

Forgotten Realms book, but as a source

book for any inventive Dungeon Master

running campaigns in any world.

The other use, of course, is as a

FORGOTTEN REALMS game supple-

ment. If you are running characters

from outside the Old Empires who

travel in these reaches, please make

sure you read through the book care-

fully. Any land has its customs and ta-

boos that seem strange to outsiders,

and the Old Empires is no exception.

How a character deals with culture

shock can be as interesting as how a

character handles a new monster, as

both are unfamiliar challenges that test

his ability.

If you are running characters from

the Old Empires, be sure that the char-

acters realize that the attitudes of their

homelands are often quite different

than other places in the Forgotten

Realms. They should understand their

homelands, and be able to imagine

what it was like to be a child there,

what they were taught, and what they

were brought up to believe.

The Old Empires is known as a high-

powered area. There is lots of magic,

much of it quite strange. There are also

major challenges in obtaining this

magic, which is how it should be. The

essence of an adventure is not casually

fulfilling a quest, but discovering a ma-

jor challenge and using every resource

you have, including your intelligence,

to succeed.

As you read through

The Old Em-

The South, the ancient South, is the

place where mankind first reached

greatness in the Forgotten Realms at

the beginning of the age. The remnants

of this greatness are the three king-

doms of Mulhorand, Unther, and Ches-

senta, kingdoms of mystery and ancient

empires.

This book tells of the rise and fall of

great realms, of god-kings and ancient

magic whose power is unmatched any-

where in the Realms. This is the story of

the Old Empires.

The ancient south can be termed a

slumbering giant. It is an extremely

powerful land that wishes to be left

alone to engage in its own self-

indulgent, decadent pursuits, not car-

ing what goes on beyond its borders.

Still, many of their neighbors do not

see them this way. When a plague oc-

curs elsewhere in the Realms, you can

often hear whispers of Southern magic.

The South is considered to be a place of

twisted power, better left untouched.

Even the most reckless adventuring

parties give the South a wide berth.

Yet it is rich in magic, and on occasion

outsiders venture to Mulhorand or Un-

ther and become entangled in the laby-

rinthine politics of their gods.

Many things are unique to the Old

Empires. They have strange gods. They

wield weird and powerful magic. And

there is a hint of the weirdest magic of

alltechnology, a word that causes

hardened sages to shudder. There are

strange monsters and strange men,

great treasures and unknown delights,

and life-ending perils. In short, nearly

anything that an adventurer could

want. This book documents all of these.

you will find that this supplement

places a strong emphasis on the politics

and the personalities of these king-

doms; this book is full of strange names

and devious political factions, all schem-

ing to achieve their ends. There are two

reasons for this.

First, one distinguishing feature of

the Forgotten Realms is the number of

distinct and interesting characters that

player characters can interact with; as

it says in the Source Book of the Realms

(p. 17) more than anything, these indi-

viduals are the Realms. In the same

way, these characters are the essence

of the Old Empires.

The second reason is the nature of

high-level campaigns. Many high-level

campaigns collapse very quickly when

the emphasis is solely on monster bash-

ing and treasure snatching. The secret

to a successful high-level AD&D® cam-

paign is to get the PCs to interact with

the campaign world in ways other than

combat. There is a lot of fun in getting

involved in politics, making plans and

alliances, and outwitting truly clever

NPCs. It isnt easy to run a good political

campaign (and most players dont want

a campaign where the action consists

only of political maneuvering), but

when it works, its a real thrill.

If the details in the political sections

seem too trivial, you can feel free to ig-

nore them, but you might want to give

it a try. It can be a lot of fun. The politics

of the Old Empires, like its characters,

operate on a grand scale.

How to Use this Book

This may be the hardest section of this

supplement to write, perhaps because

pires,

HISTORY OF THE OLD EMPIRES

Toward the end of the previous age,

tribes of humans were pushed out of

the Great Kingdoms of the southeast,

which were covered in desert. Legends

speak of a great war in which powerful

humans fought against the gods to

wrest away their power. The humans

won and became god-kings, but the war

destroyed their kingdoms. These god-

kings, Re and Enlil, led the shattered

remnants of their peoples into Mulho-

rand and Unther. The two god-kings

and their spouses became the leaders of

the royal houses of these two nations.

The people of Unther, who prided

themselves on the purity of their race,

warred against barbarian peoples and

drove them from their lands, but the

god-kings of Mulhorand, who were

openly worshiped by these people, took

them in as full citizens. Since then, the

peoples of Mulhorand have primarily

been racially mixed Turami and Mulan

(the race of Unther and Mulhorand).

Two thousand years before the start

of the current age, Mulhorand and Un-

ther began to develop huge cities in the

river deltas of their lands. Magic in-

creased the fertility of the already rich

soils and the two nations prospered.

Prosperity enabled the god-kings to

build larger states and, over the course

of centuries, large empires were estab-

lished. The two lands clashed occasion-

ally, but the rulers of Unther and

Mulhorand both realized that warfare

would result in mutual destruction, so

all conflicts were carefully limited and

the border of the Alamber Sea kept the

peace.

Mulhorand expanded to the north

and east, conquering the Priador Pla-

teau (which is modern Thay), Thesk,

and beyond even into Ashanath and

Rashemen.

Lands farther north paid tribute to

Mulhorand and its god-kings. At its

peak, the Mulhorand Empire stretched

as far east as Semphar. While the em-

pire was not the kindest of masters, it

did bring laws, culture, and magic to

thousands of people who had not

known these things before.

Unther was somewhat less kind to its

conquests. It expanded north as far as

Yuirwood, where it warred for centu-

ries against the elven tribes. It reached

west as far as Chondath, swallowed

most of the eastern Shaar, and even

went to war against the southern

dwarves in the Great Rift. Unther

gained a reputation for having fierce

and ruthless warriors who were hated

by those they conquered.

At their peak, 1,000 years before the

start of the current age, the First Em-

pires of Mulhorand and Unther were at

a level that has never been equalled

since. Their magic was extremely pow-

erful, and they had learned a new

sciencetechnologythat gave them

greater power.

Two events brought the first great

Age to an end. One was the rebellion of

the archmage Thayd (after whom the

later-day Red Wizards named their

kingdom), who challenged the might of

the god-kings, along with that of many

of the most powerful wizards of Mulho-

rand and Unther. Thayds goal was to

overthrow the god-kings and unite the

empires into a single grand Overempire

that would be able to achieve limitless

dominion over the Realms. After much

destruction, the god-kings triumphed

and the wizards were slain. After that

time, in Mulhorand, the god-kings

placed magic under their strict control,

and created a bureaucracy of priests to

maintain its control. Mulhorand be-

came the bureaucratic theocracy that it

remains to this day.

The people of Mulhorand and Unther

might have rebuilt their losses, except

for the Orcgate Wars. Five years after

the deaths of the wizards, a huge gate-

way opened in southwestern Thay. It

was a gateway from a world of orcs.

Millions of orcs had come from another

world, seeking a new place to live. They

immediately clashed with the empires

of Mulhorand and Unther, and overran

their northern and western posses-

sions. The god-kings themselves stirred

into battle, and orc-shamans sum-

moned their pantheon in response.

Gods died, cities were laid waste, and

entire regions were devastated. In the

end, the orcs were either slaughtered

or driven into the far north, but the

holds of Mulhorand and Unther on

their far-flung provinces were broken,

and the two empires dwindled. The

god-kings withdrew into their towers,

creating continually reincarnating in-

carnations to lead their cities. Thus the

First Empires of Mulhorand and Un-

ther ended.

The lands lost by the southern em-

pires were quickly retaken, but not by

them. Instead, two new powers rose to

prominence after the Orcgate Wars, the

powers of Narfell and Raumathar.

These were warlike nations that coa-

lesced out of the migrating northern

tribes that were paid to fight as merce-

naries in the Orcgate Wars. They had

weapons of iron (as opposed to the

bronze weapons that Mulhorand and

Unther used at the time) and soon de-

veloped powerful magic of their own.

They quickly subdued large tracts of

land, replacing Mulhorandi culture

with their own.

Unther was never able to regain its

southern empire after the Orcgate

Wars, and soon its holdings in Chon-

dath collapsed.

So proud Mulhorand and Unther

were now reduced to small kingdoms,

once-great powers that were twilight

kingdoms in the brilliant shadows of

Narfell and Raumathar, the two new

great powers.

And, for the most part, the two na-

tions were content, for both still pros-

pered; their rulers still built great

monuments, and their peoples never

starved, and wise men prophesied that

the fiery powers of the north would

soon consume each other.

The prophecy came true. Eventually,

Narfell and Raumathar went to war. It

was a bitter and bloody struggle, full of

the tales of great heroes: Rauthok, Jes-

thren, Halduplac, and many others who

were naught but names to the king-

doms of the south.

Several times, the two northern gi-

ants tried to convince Unther and Mul-

horand to join in the war, but the lords

of the south merely shook their heads

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