Setting Seeds: After the Forges
The world of Thrae is not like most others. It is a barren land, still on fire from a war generations past, where the living huddle in small enclaves to hide from extermination.
When mortal artificers designed the first creation forge, it was heralded as a triumph of magical ingenuity. For the first time, sentient beings could be created wholesale from inert materials.
Among the first of the warforged created, some even say the first, was a particularly shrewd one known as Tensyk. Tensyk pleased his masters, but secretly worked behind their backs to establish his own creation forge. Tensyk took control of his parentforge using his own homegrown soldiers as well as forgebrothers whom he’d convinced to defect with him.
After taking control of the first forge, he turned on his forgebrothers, slaughtering them. Tensyk then altered the original forge to be more like his own creation, ensuring that he would be the only warforged imbued with free will.
Tensyk began a campaign of conquest, establishing new forges frequently so that his unliving army swelled exponentially. Before long, no mortal civilization remained. Formerly great cities and castles crumbled into ruins, immense tombstones for dead kingdoms.
Warforged outnumber mortals by dozens if not hundreds to one, and each warforged is easily a match for several humans, elves or dwarves. Thrae is a world slowly dying.
The few survivors exist in meager numbers, fighting a guerrilla war not even to retake their former lands but for simple survival. Food, water and shelter are all scarce and fiercely contested; sometimes the warforged are not your most immediate enemy, but your best friend.
Cool terminator fantasy flavor. I’d be interested to see it in play.
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Tensyk’s an anagram of Skynet
This is actually a potential future in my current game, depending on what the players do… They’ve just accidentally unleashed an army of warforged on the world…