Ep. 8 Eberron Reviewed 2

## Listen

Ep. 8 Eberron Reviewed 2

—Jeff

Jeff, Eric, and Philip get together to discuss the past arc and take a deeper look at Beric's powers and backstory.

## Synopsis

### Farlan

The gruff dwarf was taken from Eric's DM Spellbook - a book full of ideas meant to be pulled from whenever needed. He was already set up as a dwarf druid who was a brewer, so it was perfect to place him in that first scene with the bar fight. Once Eric had decided Acko would die at the end of the first arch, there was also a need for a healer, and Farlan, being a druid, could be that replacement.

### The Mournland

On the lightning rail to New Cyre and Sharn, the party passes and can just barely see the Mournland. The Mournland is unsettling to Beric; being connected to the aristocracy he has a good idea of the devastation that happened and has seen the fallout from it. He got these new powers that he doesn't understand around the same time of the Mourning, and he worries that it's somehow connected to what happened in Cyre.

### Train Fight!

Everyone loves a train fight, and when you train fight there are dangers involved. One example is when Dex fumbled on his attack and had to make a save to stay on the train. He rolled pretty high, but if he failed Eric had something in mind. One of the advantages of playing theater of the mind is that the placements of characters and things aren't set in stone; instead of falling under the car and being killed by the train, Dex could have fallen onto one of the earth sleds. He would then be surrounded by five angry warforged in a sled that was on fire, but that's better than being dead.

"Any interpretation of Beric that doesn't explicitly look like a vampire would be incorrect."
"Yeah, it's super cool. And really Dex is just Calvinball. You can make him look any way you want, cause literally all interpretations are correct."
"He would have to wear a name badge and a picture for you to know that it was Dex."
"You draw it, or think it, whatever you're thinking when I'm being Lyle or Dex, you're right because I could do that. Because I can shape—I can't shapeshift. That'd be neat. But Dex can. I'm Jeff.">
*—Eric and Jeff*

### Prince Oargev

After being pulled off the earth sled by Beric's Lightning Lure, Prince Oargev seemed like a very down to earth guy. If we're being fancy, and we always want to be fancy, he has a sense of noblesse oblige. It paralleled nicely with Oargev putting his hand out for them to shake after they saved him and Ruken looking like he wanted to wash his hands immediately after greeting Dex. It made Dex start to think maybe he should work for him instead of Ruken.

An interesting backstory for Oargev is that he was very much like Ruken in his youth, but after the Mourning happened and much of his family and county getting destroyed humbled him, and made him realize there's more to life than your station or gold. For some people the Mourning made them go down a dark road, but it made Oargev much more magnanimous and generous.

### Beric's Pact

The nature of Beric's pact isn't something Philip was aware of while creating the character; he left it completely up to Eric, trusting that he would have an interesting story out of it. What Beric knows is that it was a power his mother, who was a soldier in the Brelish army, had and used it to help win her battles in the Last War. After she died Beric inherited the journal she kept, which was only partially written by her. Through reading the journal he started learning the magic, though he didn't really know what it was that he was messing with. He understood that it was odd and not like other magic, but doesn't fully grasp what he's been drawing on.

He started reading the journal as a comfort to feel close to his mother after she passed, but there came a point that he realized he was actually able to use the power he was reading about. He was training at the time to use magic at the Church of the Silver Flame in Breland, but saw this as more powerful and it didn't come with all the restrictions that his teachers gave him. It was a sort of short cut to becoming a magic user, and as everyone knows, short cuts in magic are never harmful.

Though Beric has an aristocratic background, it's not in the typical sense of many generations past being rich nobles. His family grew in status through serving in the Last War, and that keeps him a little more down to earth than most would be. His mother was a controversial figure in the last war and not particularly liked and he didn't know anything about his father's side, so he was usually a little on the outside of the proper social circles. He's also from Sharn, so working with a tiefling like Draconos and a changeling like Dex isn't something that's incredibly foreign to him.

## Trivia

* Vor ir'Talan, Beric's half-brother, works as Ruken ir'Clarn's personal assistant.
* Urik Rowan, Beric's mother, was pulled from The Forge of War.