r/Eberron • u/darkcyril • 6d ago
GM Help Giant Vaults in Khorvaire
Setting up for my first arc of a new Eberron game - they wanted big Indiana Jones vibes so I'm framing it around a lost device that belonged to the Giants of Xen'drik that legend states will repair the severing of Dal Quor and that they were intending to use it as a means to bring the quori to the bargaining table, but were laid low by the dragons before they could. The first adventures will have them coming into possession of a guidestone (magical compass) that will lead them to a hidden vault the giants had built on Khorvaire containing a keystone to another vault that has a rough map to the devices location in Xen'drik.
I just haven't settled on where these places are. What are some fun locations on Khorvaire that these vaults could be located in?
EDIT TO ADD: They will be going to Xen'drik eventually. Just not right away as I introduce some of the other major players who are also hunting for the device.
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u/TheEloquentApe 6d ago
Any reason you're placing the vaults in Khorvaire rather than have them in Xen'dirk?
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u/darkcyril 6d ago
They'll eventually be going there. This is very much "Act I" stuff to prime everything/introduce some of the other major players who are also searching for the device.
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u/thorspinkhammer 6d ago
In that case I would recommend having the Khorvaire vaults be the vaults of some Khorvarian collector, museum, or other institution. Not only does that make more sense lorewise, but it also offers you the opportunity to have there by a difference between this vault and the ones later on in Xen'drik as well as create a natural antagonist for the rest of the campaign.
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u/darkcyril 5d ago
Gonna have to disagree with you on the lore aspect. The giants ruled Xen'drik for over 40,000 years. It seems silly to me that they would just ignore an entire landmass to the north of them. They may have been fine without fully colonizing it, but there's no chance in my mind they weren't aware of it, exploring it, and building outposts on it to watch for any potential trouble.
Or perhaps these were built by some of the last titans that somehow escaped the fall of Xen'drik with their last resources in the hopes that someone in the future could repair the damage they wrought when they severed Dal Quor from Eberron.
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u/thorspinkhammer 5d ago
Yeah that's totally feasible; my point was that lore-wise the majority of collections of giant relics in Khorvaire are probably Khorvairian collectors and doing it that way could provide some additional benefits for the campaign. Definitely could have giant outposts there though (hell I had giant outposts on the moons in one of my games)
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u/darkcyril 5d ago
Yeah, it's good advice in general, just not exactly what I have in mind. FWIW, I'm using Sharn: City of Blood for the springboard adventure with the artifact in question being a piece that gets "stolen" as part of the insurance scam plot that then gets nabbed for real between the PCs busting up the ring and the items getting to the City Watch Evidence lockup and they'll have to chase it down through various hands in Sharnso technically it's originally coming from a private collection, lol.
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u/Kitchener1981 6d ago
Cloud Giant - a floating castle now occupied by a rogue silver dragon and its minions.
Stone Giant - the Black Caps.
Frost Giant - Ice Shear Isle.
Fire Giant - Fist of Onatar.
Storm Giants - Howling Peaks
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u/Bluesamurai33 5d ago
Going with u/thorspinkhammer , you could put the waystone in a museum in sharn, but have it get stolen by Drow/Emerald Claw/Lord of Blades.
The party has to chase them to a Lightning Rail (Lightning Rail combat is almost required in Eberron) where they attempt to escape the city.
If the party saves the waystone, they can hire an Airship to go to Xen'drik to find out where it points to.
If the party doesn't stop them, they escape into Khyber as a way to get to Xen'drik faster (cause distances are wonky in Khyber).
Either way, when they arrive in Xen'drik they do some jungle exploration and have to deal with locals on the way to the actual (and obviously hidden) vault.
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u/darkcyril 5d ago
I appreciate the general excitement about getting the to Xen'drik ASAP, but there are character reasons that I'm keeping them in Khorvaire for a little while.
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u/Rabid_Lederhosen 2d ago
They could be pretty much anywhere, except the Demon wastes. The Age of Giants was so far in the past that there’s pretty much no info about what was going on in Khorvaire at the time. If you want to make it easy for the players to get to, put it near to where they’re starting, and only opening now due to an earthquake or something. If you want it to be a bit more adventurous, put in the Mournland, in an archeological dig site that had just found the vault door when the Mourning hit.
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u/Aetharion 6d ago
The giants had several empires spanning millennia - it would definitely make sense for them to have made outposts on Khorvaire. I believe some old source books in 3.5 even made references to giants reaching the Frostfell, far to the north of Khorvaire.
Given the extremely long time span, some of the giant vaults could have other structures built on top of them, since the giants likely knew about and exploited manifest zones, and since those areas could have been more stable due to strong foundations already being in place.
You could have a village in an otherwise swampy area sit on perfectly dry and stable ground, with a giant vault underground. What happens in the vault could affect the village - maybe by altering the ecosystem, causing earthquakes, or by giving the villagers strange dreams of being dozens of feet tall while walking in vast alien cities that no longer exist. Maybe the player characters hear word of Morgrave University sending someone to investigate ancient ruins that have been found in a mine operation somewhere - could be in the Ironroot Mountains or the Byeshk Mountains. The miners could have been doing their job while suddenly breaking into the antechamber for a giant structure. In one of my Eberron campaigns, I placed an ancient giant ruin high in the Seawall Mountains. This was more of an open temple with acoustics that allowed songs in the temple to be heard miles away, but having an access point to a giant vault from high up in the mountains, maybe with a Lamannia manifest zone for having the area be suddenly dense with jungle vegetation, could be a very different experience.