D&D 5E Dungeons of Drakkenheim (or should I say Mordheim)

[TheSword]

So it is a well known secret that the city Drakkenheim written by the dungeon dudes is heavily inspired by the city of Mordheim in Warhammer Fantasy’s Old World. The city was popularized by a tabletop skirmish game in the early 00’s by the same name that featured factions fighting over a ruined city. A city destroyed by a meteor of glowing stone that caused strange mutations and empowered magic. Some of those factions include an ’academy’ of amethyst wizards and an order of Wizard hunting templars. Sound familiar?

They’ve done a brilliant job filing off the serial numbers to bring this non-linear, faction and location based sandbox campaign to the gaming world. However, for those like me, that love the style and feel of the old world I thought it would be good to pull the campaign back to Mordheim (Which means murder home if you were wondering). I’m going to be as spoiler lite as possible and use spoiler tags to preserve this for players as well as DMs.

While I will fit this into the official timeline of the Warhammer world some poetic license will be required to match things up. I’m also going to make some assumptions to fill gaps. I’m trying not to do anything that will mess up an existing campaign but it will mean making changes to a few dates mainly.

NB: The adventure also has heavy Bloodborne vibes - a city plagued by mutated monsters and otherworldly forces in evocative locations across the ruins. If you want to run a Bloodborne campaign in the ruins of Yarnham you could do a lot worse that run this adventure.

So without further ado I’ll crack on with placing Mordheim in a space and a time.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Funny thing, I was considering running this campaign in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay instead of d&D.

 

[TheSword]

I think it could definitely be ran in WFRP. The social interactions and exploration elements are very strong.

 

[TheSword]

Location and Timeline

In the official timeline the City of Mordheim was struck by a twin tailed comet at midnight at the start of the year 2,000. A play on the Y2K fears that were around when the first box was released in 1999. Unfortunately it was also razed to the ground on the orders of the Grand Theogenist well before the current year.

There are some other troubles with this date. Chiefly that the Colleges of Magic and particularly the Amethyst College wasn’t founded until the time of Magnus the Pious 2204. This is a pretty pivotal date for reasons I’ll come on to later. The Wizards War has just ended and the Cult of Sigmar has just gone full witch hunter with the Obsidian Edict which while very on point for Warhammer doesn’t really fit with the campaign.

Place is a bit easier. Mordheim is well detailed as straddling the river Stir on the border between Stirland and Ostermark. Very close to the vampire haunted county of Sylvania. Described as the greatest city and the capital of the duchy of Ostermark. (Just N of the S in Sylvania on the map below)

The principle of going back before the current timeline is sound. Just maybe not as far as 2000. The Age of Three Emperors is the period from 1547 to 2304. The Empire was split with multiple Elector Counts (Each a ruler of a large chunk of the Empire) each declaring themselves Emperor. What’s more while the number of imperial claimants at any given time ranged from 2 to 7, there were three main centers. The south and western claimant supported by the cult of Sigmar. The Northern claimant supported by the cult of Ulric and the eastern claimant supported by the cult of Taal (more on him later). Conveniently the eastern provinces include Talabecland and conveniently Ostermark. It also technically includes Sylvania and covers a huge swathe of territory.

A twin tailed comet is also mentioned as the sign from Sigmar that Magnus of Nuln took to begin his uprising against the demonologists that had infested his city. A precise date isn’t given but it is somewhere around 2,300 - 2303.

Here’s my proposal. Magnus of Nuln saw a twin tailed comet in the sky in the year 2300. While he took it is as a sign of Sigmar’s blessing the comet actually stuck the City of Mordheim. At that time the seat of the Emperor of Ostermark and Talabecland - Ulrich von Kessel IV. The comet destroyed the city as described in the campaign book and the Emperor was lost. His younger siblings also acted as described in the campaign book, relocating the capital to Talabheim and dying from assassination and sudden death. Only to be succeeded by lesser claimants. Ostermark is fractured into multiple small baronies and fiefs and becomes the League of Ostermark.

Meanwhile Magnus of Nuln unites the Empire over the course of the next three years and goes on to defeat the great incursion of chaos. He is crowned emperor and founds the eight colleges of Magic in 2304. The Great War decimated the armies of all the elector counts and left them under strength, hungry and with all the problems that usually follow large scale warfare. Not least are disaffected soldiers left shaken by what they witnessed in Kislev and unwilling to return to their farms.

The campaign itself is set 15 years after the meteor struck and I see no reason why this can’t be the same. The colleges of Magic have been established for 10 years (relatively new) and everyone has had other things on their minds dealing with the aftermath. It gives the factions time to have become established but not so long that the Mordheim problem is resolved. The city still sits there on the Northeastern edge of the Empire - a dark stain on the surrounding lands waiting to be explored.

 

[TheSword]

The Amethyst Academy (The Amethyst College)

One of the Five Factions in Dungeons of Drakenheim is the Amethyst Academy and the Old World conveniently holds an Amethyst College of Magic.

The Colleges of Magic were founded by Magnus of Nuln (later Magnus the Pious) at the conclusion of the Great Incursion of Chaos. During that war elven mages led by Teclis, trained hedge wizards, elementalists, and witches in a safer use of magic, by having each wizard concentrate on one wind. Each wind had its own affinity - Chamon for metal; Ashqy for fire; and Shyish the Amethyst wind focused on the spirit.

At the time I’m suggesting for the campaign, 2315, the colleges have only been around for just over a decade, and a lot of that period would have been spent learning the new techniques. All very new, lots of change, moving from small localized centers of power to Empire wide institutions. That’s a huge area to oversee. The Amethyst College has an affinity and interest in spirit and naturally death, but also dreams and time. So wizards interested in these themes would be drawn to the school. Slightly sinister, definitely beyond the ken of most folk and generating a natural suspicion and distrust. Exactly as Warhammer wizards should.

It also happens that Mordheim lies close to the borders of Sylvania - a disreputable place where the vampire aristocracy exemplified by Vlad, Isabella and Mannfred von Carsten dabbled with necromancy and dark magics - as did their necromancer pupils and servants. There is a natural overlap between the Amethyst wind and necromancy leading to suspicion and fear.

The time before the founding of the colleges and the licensing of wizards was filled with witch hunters, necromancers, chaos cults, and demonologists. Along with the more benign magic users (a bit like after the founding) but before there was less central control and certainly less oversight. Wizards were a law unto themselves, though organizations did exist like the Middenheim Guild of Wizardry and Baron Henryks Guild of Magick in Marienberg. Drakkenberg has its own school of mages - the Inscruitable Tower - a huge structure dwarfing the height of other buildings, that exists in a similar vein to other wizard guilds, albeit destroyed just before the great incursion. Still, many of its members would have been out of the city at the time and later joined the ranks of the College wizards and would still consider the contents of the tower theirs by right.

It could also explain why the von Kessel Dynasty moved its capital to Mordheim. Further from the church of Sigmar’s center of power in Altdorf - away from the resources of the witch hunters. Clearly the von Kessels worked with the Inscruitable Tower to strengthen the city and to enchant many items and protections that would never be tolerated in the heartlands. It also seems like the von Kessels came to an agreement with the wizards where they would be protected from persecution provided they held no lands or titles and served the realm.

Now the Amethyst College has risen, several of its members seek to reclaim the knowledge lost in the city. Knowledge that they accumulated in the great library of the Inscruitable Tower - which was hit by a shard of the meteor - a library said to the greatest collection of magic in the Empire (and by extension collection of dark magic and necromancy). As experts in the manipulation of the spirit, no doubt the Amethyst College would be fascinated by the strange radiances of Wydrstone (Delerium) and it’s potential to empower magic.

 

[TheSword]

The Silver Order (The Holy Order of the Templars of Sigmar)

Not every sorcerer joined the colleges. Some had no interest in going to war for the Empire and others wished to actively hasten its destruction. Others had little motivation to give up old ways and fight for people who had persecuted them. These rogue, unlicensed wizards were a threat and the Witch Hunters of Sigmar denied the authority to sanction licensed wizards turned their full attention to unlicensed practitioners, those that dabbled in necromancy, daemonology and other forbidden lores. And if a licensed wizard met a sticky end far from prying eyes, so be it.

The order of the Templars Sigmar converts over almost exactly as a militant arm of the Church of Sigmar. No changes required. They are pret a porter! Heck. Even keep the name, they can just be a division of the Templar’s that is based in the eastern Empire.

Interestingly one of the first two emperors to be crowned at the start of the Age of Three Emperors was the Eastern Empress Ottilla of Talabecland. With a rival crowned by the Grand Theogenist in Altdorf. Perhaps Ottilla was crowned with the original imperial crown worn by Sigmar in times past and the western Emperor had to make do with a replica. In which case the true crown of Sigmar would have been lost in the city with the death of von Kessel IV. I’m sure the Silver Order would love to return that relic to the new Emperor Magnus.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Loving this stuff so far, worldbuilding meshes oh so very well