JWBarry Weaves a Tale

Got Lore?



I love the amazing little nuggets that can be found when perusing the
official Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) forums.
Developer jwbarry gives us a little background on the Necropolis:

The
storyline for Necropolis has been a lot of fun to write and put
together.



Yes, we are aware that the Silver Flame and Emerald Claw hate each
other. If you go through the various NPC's, both ones who give quests
now and ones who don't, I believe they convey that information. In
fact, this area has one of my favorite lines of NPC flavor dialog. One
of the Emerald Claw guys says "YA? WELL YOUR MOTHER'S A HELLHOUND! Oh,
sorry, I was talking to the Silver Flame guys across the road." One of
the more fun parts of putting together the Necropolis story has been
arranging a situation where these 2 mortal enemies would put their
differences aside for one place, one time, due to what could happen if
they don't.



Here are some details of what's going on here, and why all of this
actually makes sense within Eberron.



The Black Abbot, who is the founder of the Necropolis and leader of all
the undead there, was formally the leader of a cell of the cult of Vol,
many many years ago. At some point, he realized he had some ambitions
of his own that were quite large. He was sick of working for Vol, and
spending all of his effort for her to become a god, it wasn't fair. He
wanted to become a god. So he split off from the cult, brought his cell
with him and left for Xen'drik. This was a while back, during the early
days of Stormreach.



Over time, with the help of his followers the Abbot became a lich and
increased the scope of power of his cult. The Necropolis was
constructed as a fortress, where he and his followers would be left
alone until the necessary rituals for his ascension were complete. As
each vampire finishes his part of the Litany of the Dead, his crypt and
the tombs of his guardian open.



The Silver Flame is present because quite obviously, a lich becoming a
god, and an evil force rising to a position of enormous power is
against their interests.



The Emerald Claw is there for a less moral reason. They're angry. Vol
is going to become a god, not some runt who used to worship her.
They've been tasked, directly from Vol herself, with stopping the
Abbot's ascension, and obtaining anything his forces had developed that
would prove useful to her.



The Abbot himself is extremely powerful, as are the Black Prophets, the
3 vampires who are writing the Litany of the Dead. More powerful than
either of the contingents that the Silver Flame or Emerald Claw could
spare for this mission to the jungles of Xen'drik. Due to that, the
Silver Flame and Emerald Claw have called a one time truce between
them, recognizing that the Abbot becoming a god is worse for them than
their current enemies are.





Going out of game lore here for a moment to touch on the favor thing.
We did in fact have several discussions about how we wanted to deal
with favor in the Necropolis. In general, we want to keep limited the
number of factions that we have. If every time we use a different
organization we make a new faction, we end up having dozens of them,
with the large majority not going to get a lot of quests, support, or
enough favor to actually be able to attain a rank with them. When we
add a new faction to the favor system, we want it to mean more than
that. We want to be able to support them, feel we can add lots of
quests for them, and have the players be able to eventually advance
through several ranks, not just partially to the first one.



Since the Emerald Claw is an evil organization (although as above, in
this specific case their end goal aligns with the side of good) and as
of now we are not supporting players being of evil alignment, it
doesn't make sense to make them a faction.



So for simplicities sake, and since we already had the Silver Flame as
a faction in the favor system, we decided to put it all under the
Silver Flame.



I think the full story we've established for the area supports this
decision as being reasonable and also satisfies why the Silver Flame
and Emerald Claw aren't ripping each other apart.





*EDIT* Oh yeah, forgot to mention. Yes, the quest background and story
is something that is very important to us. We know not everyone reads
it or cares, but we know it makes a very large impact and difference
for those that do. So we do spend the extra time necessary on the story
for those folks.