The Masters’ Return
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A Spellblade campaign by Josh Jarman
Player Background:
(Editors note* some of the names are taken from the 4th edition core rules in an attempt to make the campaign transferable into any homebrew campaign setting. This text is a reference for the players representing common knowledge of the world they live in. It condenses many lore cycles, bards’ tales and historians’ treatises.)
Legend of the Spellblade
A hundred years ago the Nerath Empire came to crashing ruin. It was the last of the great human empires, each one more despotic, and militaristic than the last. At one point, the Nerath Empire covered all the known world, with colonies flung across the untrackable seas. The Empire was a place of rigid order and inflexible bureaucracy. In an attempt to consolidate their power, succeeding generations of emperors sought further and further control over the lives of their subjects. So it was, barely a half century before the Empire’s fall that the unlawful use of arcane power was outlawed and punished by death. All magic use was to be performed under license from the empire. Sorcerers, those born with innate magic, were outlawed, and mage-testers were sent to all the corners of the land in order to test the children of the empire to determine if they possessed the unsavory trait.
Those discovered to have the talent were taken from their families into the schools of the Arcana-Dorum, the empire’s vast academies of wizardry. There they were taught how to use their craft and and magically bonded to only use it in service of the Empire’s army. Those who rebelled were destroyed.
The Emperor was aged, and he turned the affairs of state over to his son, a violent and power hungry youth who had been trained in an esoteric form of magecraft known as Blade Arcana. Users of this lost art channeled powerful arcane energy through their swords, transforming themselves into superhuman fighters.
It was the son, Aragus IV who first made a move against the high elves of the court of Eladrin. He demanded they turn over their magic tomes and spell lore, for it was well known that the elves of Corathian lo Eladrin’s court possessed magic thousands of years older than any known in human lands. The elves rebuked the young emperor-in-waiting and withdrew to their ancestral homes deep in guarded forests. Incensed, Aragus sent the legions marching into the fabled woods, only to lose thousands to the sharp arrows and arcane fury of the elves. Those of elven descent living in human lands were arrested and locked in caverns beneath the capital city. Few survived to tell the horrors of that imprisonment.
The siege caused riffs between the humans and the other races. Both the wild elves of the frontiers and the stalwart mountain dwarves saw their kingdoms were next for plunder by the greed of the empire. In a rare moment of cooperation between the dwarves and the two elven houses, the free races plotted to kill the Emperor and his son. Knowing Aragus’s power, they sought the help of an ancient school of assassins who train their whole lives in Blade Arcana. The attack was swift, but only partially successful. The aged emperor was killed quickly, but his son bested the assassin and took his father’s mantel as the 15th Nerathian Emperor. His vengeance was swift, from the bowels of the Arcana-Dorum, the twisted sorcerer-children marched on the assassin guild’s mountain home. Channelling terrible energies they tore the mountain right from the bedrock of the earth and smashed it against the foothills. The energies unleashed in the attack killed many of the sorcerers outright, while others would never cast again.
One of the Dorum’s teachers was a “wizard” who hid her natural sorcery from the empire, and joined the order to protect her own daughter from the testing. She was discovered when her powers were used up in the blast and she was put to death for her treachery. Her husband, an empire sergeant, fled with his infant daughter into the wilderness trying to escape to the farthest reaches of civilized lands. He raised his daughter in a small village on the border of the dwarven kingdoms for 15 years until war came again to his home. Aragus, only bolder in the years since taking the throne, had declared war on the mountain dwarves because they would not turn over their artificers to him. As Aragus wished to wrap the empire soldiers in impenetrable suits of magic armor.
The sergeant had raised his daughter the only way he knew, and that was to fight. Even at 16 years of age she was an accomplished swordswoman, but she also possessed her mothers innate magic ability. After empire troops garrisoned in their small village, her father’s identity was discovered and he was killed by a lieutenant he’d once commanded. Vowing revenge, the daughter attacked the lieutenant where her powers first manifested. She was a Spellblade, someone with innate skills of Blade Arcana and suddenly the greatest threat to the empire.
She was hunted, but with a group of companions found her way to the capital city where she confronted Aragus. The battle that followed was titanic, with each of them harnessing arcane might never before seen in the world. At last though, the young Spellblade, who had everything taken from her by the empire, slipped past Aragus’s guard and drove her blade deep into his body.
What happened to the Spellblade and her companions next has passed from memory, but the empire, already crumbling, collapsed completely. War broke out as various dukes and lords sought to consolidate power around their own ancestral homelands, and mages, freed from the yoke of empire control built towers to wizardry vowing that access to the arcane arts would never be sealed again. This is the world you know, a rough place where city states fight and trade with each other always looking to gain an advantage that will let some power hungry king ascend to the throne of a new Empire of his or her own devising. With the disbanding of the legions, the frontiers have grown wild and dangerous, and adventurers again walk the land.
General Knowledge
(What characters need to know about races etc. )
The elven races are broken into two houses. The High Elves of house Eladrin, who led by Corathian lo Eladrin, retreated into their vast forest homeland with the encroachment of the Nerath empire. And the Wild Elves of house Sylvain, led by Corathian’s sister Caraslantia tel Sylvain, the twilight empress. The wild elves chose to remain active in the world and sought to help those who fought the empire’s rule.
Since the fall, Eladrin, as they’ve become known, have slowly returned to the world establishing new links with the human world and their wild cousins. Relationships are still somewhat strained between the two groups to this day, however.
Dwarves, who were common for most of the empire, only withdrew from the world for a decade or so during the short-lived Artificer War. They’ve returned in number to ply their trades in human lands and extend the boundary of their kingdoms.
Halflings watched the rise and fall of Nerath with a sort of detached interest. Throughout the empire’s rule they continued to serve as merchants and traders, amassing fortunes by following the rules and staying out of trouble for the most part.
Dragonborn mercenaries formed a few elite bands of empire soldiers and were well rewarded for their battle prowess and vigor. They were sent to the farthest reaches of the empire to bring order to the uncivilized world. At the limit of the human empire, some Dragonborn uncovered artifacts that hinted at their own once great empire. Divisions formed among those Dragonborn who were content to work as the muscle of the empire, and those who sought a return of Dragonborn dominance in the world. With the fall, most Dragonborn returned to a life of wandering adventure. Still, some secret cults of Draco continue to work toward a day when they will retake their place as masters of the known world.
The capital of the empire was destroyed and looted in the succession wars that followed the empire’s demise. It lies in shattered ruin, and dark things are said to have crept into its crumbling halls since men abandoned it long ago. Still, tales of wondrous artifacts of the last empire lure treasure hunters to its haunted halls, often to their own demise.
The two greatest cities of the current age are the brother cities of Coras-Telenth and Coras-Telark, both on the easternmost coast of the central continent. Telenth is ruled by an aged archpriest of pelor, who some believe has the ear of the God and represents his will on earth. It is a bastion of enlightenment in an otherwise dark world, holding vast libraries of knowledge otherwise lost in the land.
Telark is ruled by the archpriest’s brother, a warlock of terrifying power. The city is a haven for the arcane arts, but the warlock rules his city kingdom with an iron fist. Nothing happens in the city without his approval and though many come there to learn the way of the arcane, many more flee its oppressive climate and harsh laws.
