A Matter of Trust

It's not enough for me to write a novel for Eberron. I have to play in the setting, because it's just that cool. I even run an online play-by-post Eberron campaign, and have for a few years now. But that's still not enough, really. So after mucking about with some one-off dungeon-crawl-style adventures, a solid, story-based D&D tabletop game is coming together. I'll be running a [pseudo]-weekly, open-ended Eberron campaign at The Brooklyn Strategist for seven guys, and I'm tentatively titling the campaign itself The Winter Coalition. This blog, if I can keep it going consistently enough, just might become a rough chronicle of the campaign and perhaps serve as a useful tool to bring players up to speed.

Does the picture up there have anything to do with it? Maybe. Stick around and find out.

This campaign begins in the land of Zilargo, and the metropolis of Korranberg, headquarters of The Korranberg Chronicle and home of the vaunted Library of Korranberg. It's a city of a million whispers, a lot of friendly gnomes, and the subtle but implied threat that things will not bode well for the visitor who crosses them.

Korranberg is the ancestral home of House Sivis and one of the larger cities of the gnomish nation. The Bookbinder's Quarter houses the offices of the Chronicle, while the Street of a Hundred Temples boasts more temples and shrines than any other city in Khorvaire. But of course the Library of Korranberg is the city's true prize, an edifice of knowledge and higher learning and the largest collection of lore anywhere on Eberron (so they say).

"Nope. No skullduggery going on here."

It's a gentle night on the last day of Aryth (November), nearing the end of 998 YK. It's been a pretty crazy year. The tension of the Last War is still hanging the air, charged like the breath of a blue dragon, and the clamor for peace or renewed fighting continues to contest with every other cry filling the civilized world. But in Zilargo, things are quiet right now. Peaceful. Even friendly. The post-war tension feels like old news. Korranberg is a good place to find some much-needed rest, recreation, and research for those who want it.

And in one little corner of the city, near the northwestern edge and just across a quaint little park from the Lyrandar airship docking tower, is a quiet little establishment known as the Bookmark Inn.

So, a dwarf, two humans, a shifter, a drow, a half-orc, and a warforged walk into a bar....