Wartorn Cluster

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Just musing a bit about my ongoing project, the Wartorn Cluster. I think I've got the major domains sorted out:

Southern Cluster:
Lilliend (see QtR 25) - Darklady Camille Churnstone
Conquista
Vieuxlyons
Masogan
Broken Wheel

Northern Cluster:
East- and West-Lund
Umbrash
Maldoma
Raba

Malific Ocean
Malopelagio - various islands

Surprise
Obissol

[The Lesser Evil]

So are ongoing conflicts what unite this cluster? Would you care to give a brief synopsis of each of the domains?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Each domain has its internal conflicts, is born out of conflict, and suffers some conflict with its neighbours.
And at any time, if the right conditions are met, the whole Cluster could erupt into all-out war.

I won't give a full synopsis yet (have to keep a few surprises for when I finish typing them up ), but let's look at Lilliend. Lilliend is born out of and still showcases a battle between patriarchal and matriarchal styles of rule.
Masogan and Conquista are similarly troubled, though the result is very different, leading to these three countries suffering from strife when dealing with each other.

In contrast, Vieuxlyons, the Broken Wheel and Lund are each forged in the fires of ancient and terrifying wars which have not entirely ended, and have twisted the survivors.

In Umbrash, Maldoma and Raba, the conflict is between species, rather than inner-species, as in the first grouping, but no less fierce and vile for that. Intolerance is at the root of battle here.

Malopelagio and Obissol... I'm keeping secret for now. But I'm looking forward to them very much. Obissol is going to be a significant turning point in the Wartorn Gazetteers...

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Some of the challenging bits for this project include designing new monsters and prestige classes -- and quite possibly tweaking the Spellthief for Pathfinder 1e.

I'm also going to be adapting some Pathfinder material for the Wheel of Time RPG; the existing resource is good, but doesn't quite suit my personal aesthetic.
The old 3e WoT RPG had just one Aes Sedai PrC - I'm going to have to design several, one for each existing Ajah and at least three additional ones for ... Well.

For Conquista, the upcoming domain, there will be most likely be three PrCs and at least one new archetype for the Witch class.

[The Lesser Evil]

Is it okay to ask you questions about speculations/guesses regarding what the domains might entail, or would that venture too close into spoiler territory?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Nah, I love to hear questions and speculations. ^_^
If I don't want to tell something, I just won't.

[The Lesser Evil]

Conquista is the word in a number of languages for conquest, so I'm guessing that one has an imperialism theme.

"Vieux lyons" is Middle French for "old lions". I'm guessing there's a sort of historical clash between old political rivals here, with a taste of warrior's pride/knight's honor sort of theme.

With the Mistipedia entry on the Wartorn cluster saying Ogier, Broken Wheel is undoubtedly a reference to the Wheel of Time, so the darklord must be from that world. The image of a broken wheel implies society not moving forward, and you mentioned it's stuck under the lingering effects of wars. So it can be surmised that there is some kind of conflict involving the Ogier that is keeping society from moving forward. Their entry on the Wheel of Time wiki tells me that the Ogier are mostly a peaceful people who value knowledge and wisdom. They formerly had a fierce warrior tradition, with only the Gardeners of Seanchan, which dates back to the Trolloc Wars. If the conflict in this domain is intraspecies, it's probably the Ogier fighting over whether to keep up the old ways vs. the new. If it's between species (I can't tell if you meant to include Vieuxlyons, the Broken Wheel and Lund in the first grouping with Lilliend, Conquista, and Masogan), the WoT wiki mentions the Trolloc Wars started with the destruction of an ogier city by shadowspawn, so I'm led to guess the conflict involves the ogier and the trollocs in some lingering hostilities.

Are any of these on the right track?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

The first two are sort-of aiming in the right direction, though still a bit off-target.

I will reveal that the Ogier have less influence on events in the Broken Wheel than they'd like.
But I did not know that the destruction of an Ogier city was the opening salvo of the War of Power! I kind of always saw the destruction of the Collam Daan, caused by the Dark One warping the planet's magnetic field, as the first gun fired.

[The Lesser Evil]

Maybe not the opening salvo, here's the passage I was looking at from the wiki:
The wars began with a series of increasingly heavy raids by Shadowspawn into the then-Borderlands of Jaramide and Aramaelle. What triggered this occurance was never discovered, but the intensity of the threat became clear when the city of Barsine in Jaramide was destroyed by Trollocs. At this point the Aes Sedai and the Ten Nations rallied to face the threat, but were unable to contain it. The Trolloc armies struck deep into the Westlands, destroying the great Ogier-built city of Mafal Dadaranell in Aramaelle amongst many other fortresses and settlements.

from here: https://wot.fandom.com/wiki/Trolloc_Wars

So I guess it was more "ogier built" and later on?

In any case, on the Viuex Lyons thing, it's interesting that the first cave paintings of lions come from France, according to wikipedia:
The earliest known cave paintings of lions were found in the Chauvet Cave and in Lascaux in France's Ardèche region and represent some of the earliest paleolithic cave art, dating to between 32,000 and 15,000 years ago.[1][2] The zoomorphic Löwenmensch figurine from Hohlenstein-Stadel and the ivory carving of a lion's head from Vogelherd Cave in the Swabian Jura in southwestern Germany were carbon-dated 39,000 years old, dating from the Aurignacian culture.[3]

from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_ ... depictions

That's probably just coincidental but you could have some kind of REALLY old influence there.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Huh. Yeah, that really is a coincidence... but now it's giving me ideas...

[Rock of the Fraternity]

An idea I had for the Wartorn Cluster, on which I would appreciate all of your opinions.


The Counter-Core Directive (CCD)

The Centurions of the Night (see Mistipedia) have plans to spark off a war that will tear through the Core and spread beyond. As part of this plan, they have been causing events in the far-off Wartorn Cluster that are camouflaged to look like invasions, acts of aggression and sabotage, committed by order of the Dark Lords and Ladies and government heads of the Core. People, both those in power and common people, are growing afraid. They are growing angry. There will be suffering.

In the face of mounting fear of aggression from the Core, the more civilized Domains of the Wartorn Cluster have - very grudgingly - founded an organization with a unique license to operate across territorial and political borders with impunity: the Counter-Core Directive (CCD).
The idea behind the CCD is that:
* It should be a secret intelligence agency that reports its findings equally to the major political blocks of the Wartorn Cluster - the Talcine, Onyx and Marble Thrones - but is not wholly beholden to any of them.
* In concept, the CCD has full access to all information gathered by national security agencies, and is meant to compile and analyze it in order to prevent further acts of terrorism instigated by the Core.
* The CCD can recruit new agents from national intelligence groups, police and military forces.
* The CCD has dedicated offices in such facilities as are reserved for national security and intelligence agencies in order to make it easier for CCD personnel to access documentation.
* While the CCD reports to the major political blocks, it does not answer to local authority. Rather, its policies and activities are determined by a board of senior agents by means of a simple vote.

The idea was that the CCD should have a clearer, wider view than national intelligence agencies. As it is meant to operate for the benefit of the whole Cluster without having to answer to any one group, it was meant to be trustworthy to everyone. In a way, the founding of the CCD was a major peace initiative between the Talcine, Onyx and Marble Thrones.
Certainly, the group was founded and started with a certain measure of optimism. Many of the field agents and data clerks who make up the workforce are idealistic and dutiful men and women, who want to make the Wartorn Cluster a safer place for everyone to live.

The first problem is that the CCD was founded on lies, fearmongering and deception. Almost no one in the Core even knows the Wartorn Cluster exists. There is no evidence to be found of Core-funded terrorism because none exists; all the acts of terror and invasions have been instigated by either the Centurions of the Night or the Dark Powers. (Because why would the Dark Powers miss an opportunity to sow fear and hate, just because the Centurions want to kill and replace them?)
As dedicated as the field agents and clerks are, they are looking for evidence that does not exist -- unless it is fabricated. Some members of the CCD are so paranoid about Core-funded aggression that they regularly forge such evidence, dropping relatively innocent people in the pot for the sake of keeping the CCD relevant and paranoia high.

The second problem is that the CCD is not trusted by the national intelligence agencies. Consider: these local groups have a mandate to serve the interests of their own nations by keeping its secrets and finding out the secrets of potential enemies. From their point of view, the CCD is a major security risk which they are being ordered to aid by providing top-secret information. Any personnel offered a position in the CCD which accepts tends to be treated as traitors by their former colleagues.
There is a great deal of resistance to providing the CCD with the resources it needs to do its work of keeping oversight, which CCD leadership has picked up on. Currently, there is a kind of information war going on between the CCD and local agencies, with both trying to access files the other is keeping secret. Although both the CCD and the majority of national agencies are pretending to play nice in front of the three Thrones, the conflict has already escalated in many Domains to the point that the CCD has set up its own secret bases, rather than rely on their 'dedicated' offices in buildings held by local agencies.

The third problem is that the CCD as a body is unknown to the common people. If anyone mentioned an international group of spies who keep track of everything everyone is doing all the time, your average citizen would not feel comforted: they would only feel more afraid.
CCD agents and data clerks need to hide their affiliation from everyone except fellow CCD and the superiors who had to sign off on their recruitment, not only because this is policy, but because they would likely be killed if enough people found out what they do.
National security agencies, police officers and soldiers might be able to rouse the support of the citizens under their protection, even if this is 'protection'. The CCD as a body can not. Individual agents might be able to find allies, but they would have their job cut out for them, either keeping secrets from their allies, or else to hide from or justify to CCD leadership that they've betrayed the organization's code of secrecy.

The fourth problem is that CCD leadership, which is meant to equally represent all contributing nations and thus come to decisions which benefit all equally, has been thoroughly infiltrated and corrupted.
Not all members of the Board of Directors are quislings, but enough are that CCD policy has been nudged and warped to the point that several very bad groups are flying under the radar.
* One Director has been supplanted by a Dread Doppelganger in service to the Darklord of an island in the maritime Domain of Malopelagio. A Darklord who is an Umbra for a splinter sect of the Fraternity of Shadows.
* At least one Director has actually gone insane from something they learned from a report about the island of St. Aleister. They're putting a good enough face on it that no one has noticed, and they have eliminated both the report and the clerks that submitted it, but it is anyone's guess what the Director will do next. Maybe they will even try to awaken the Beauty of Oblivion, which dreams in the seas around St. Aleister by inciting mass-slaughter in CCD headquarters...
* One of the Directors has fallen prey to the temptresses of the Body Politic of the Broken Wheel, and has been feeding them secret information.
* Working as a CCD Director can be stressful work. Several Directors are seeing an therapist to help them cope with their work... unaware that said therapist is an agent for the Centurions of the Night, who has been subtly influencing their decisions.
* One Director made the mistake of liaising with Queen Katherine Lavonie of West-Lund in person, and is now fully in her thrall. He has only been passing secret information in his dreams so far, but is ready and eager to do more to please his Queen. So much more...
* Perhaps the most benevolent subversion is the Director who oversees agents' counter-magical training. A member of the Heartseeker mystics, this Director has been trickling information about some very bad things to local groups - like adventuring parties - in hopes of curbing evil that the CCD ignores.

All the tampering has had some bad effects.
* As one result, although the CCD specifically trains its agents to resist mind probes and enchantment, it tends to ignore predominantly occult and mystical societies' activities as being unimportant to realpolitik. This allows groups like the Fraternity of Shadows or the Centurions of the Night to operate with relative impunity. Field agents and data clerks may pick up on these groups, but can never cause the full wrath of the CCD to come down on them. They might incite local agencies, but only if those are inclined to trust them. And only if they survive long enough; any reports they file about occult or mystical enemies might find its way into the hands of a corrupted Director.
* Many field agents are genuinely well-intentioned, regardless their alignment. Sadly, CCD operational procedures make it impossible for them to rally rapid response to things they discover, no matter how badly these matters need to be handled. Data has to go from field agents to the data clerks, who then must correlate and analyze the data and report to the Board of Directors, who must then vote on what action - if any - to take. Agents who pass information directly to local agencies and armed forces may well be disciplined or even executed if they are not able to convince enough members of the Board that their actions were necessary and do not constitute a risk to the CCD.
* Another result is a policy that boils down to: Whatever It Takes. Field agents are given full license to lie to, steal from, torture and murder anyone who is not CCD, if this advances the organization's stated goal of gathering and analyzing information to prevent the Core from harming the interests of the Wartorn Cluster. They may have to file full reports afterward, but disciplinary measures for harm done to non-CCD are beyond rare these days.
* There is a growing sentiment among the Board of Directors that the CCD is being too passive. Preventing the Core from launching attacks is not enough, and the Wartorn Cluster should take the fight to its enemy beyond the Mists. Although the Board as a whole has so far voted against directing the three Thrones to launch a united assault force, the motion keeps coming up. Small wonder, given the fact that the Centurions of the Night are responsible for the CCD's founding and have taken a gleeful interest in guiding its steps...


* Adventurers could encounter CCD agents in the field, be it as antagonists (if they are from the Core and suspected of being saboteurs) or allies (if a benign field agent has picked up on something they can't handle alone and desperately need assistance).
* They could meet a CCD field agent or data clerk on the run, after they uncovered some piece of information that has clued them in to the corruption of the Board of Directors, or because they have come to believe the CCD is based on lies by a clever enemy.
* They could also be recruited by a national intelligence group to investigate CCD activities, unaware that they are being used as disposable flunkies.
* Or the adventurers could even be in line to be recruited by the CCD, because a Director has recognized their skills and thinks they could be an asset to the group. It will be up to the party to decide whether they feel comfortable with working for a group like the CCD, not to mention whether they want to believe that there is a concerted effort by the Core to subvert and eventually conquer the Wartorn Cluster.

= = = = = = = = = = = =

Please give me feedback. ^_^ If you have any ideas to improve or add to this concept, I'd love to read those as well.

[tomokaicho]

The part that is difficult to suspend disbelief is the idea of a supranational intelligence agency that operates with the approval of the member states. That's difficult to achieve even in the modern world. Since the average citizen doesn't know that CCD does not exist, what is to say that CCD has the authorization of the member states? Maybe the agents of the CCD believe they are authorized, but perhaps they are not. CCD as HYDRA instead of SHIELD.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

It's parts fear - 'We're under attack by an enemy beyond the Mists and we never seem to see it coming; we NEED better intelligence' - realpolitik - 'If our power block doesn't join this pact but the other two do, they can pool their intelligence resources to undermine us' - and a bit of optimism - 'If we can all work together on this, maybe we can work together on other things as well and end our hot-and-cold wars'.

Also, note the CCD was meant to be a data-analyzing group and to provide early warnings of incipient terrorism to local authorities. It turned into a spy ring with license to kill due to all the Evil messing with the Board of Directors, as well as the national intelligence agencies refusing to give sufficient trust to the initiative. That, and the rampant paranoia.

[Pizza]

The first two are sort-of aiming in the right direction, though still a bit off-target.

I will reveal that the Ogier have less influence on events in the Broken Wheel than they'd like.
But I did not know that the destruction of an Ogier city was the opening salvo of the War of Power! I kind of always saw the destruction of the Collam Daan, caused by the Dark One warping the planet's magnetic field, as the first gun fired.

The resource he was referencing was talking about the start of the Trolloc Wars not the War of Power. The first event there was the destruction associated with making the Bore, and I think there was a period of a few months or years of nothing after that as Lanfear and some of the other early Darkfriends went over to the Dark One that no one else knew existed at the time.

[brothersale]

Mmm, well without knowing more about those domains, i can't suggest much. But if those domains have previously been at war with each other, and decide to work together, then you are not likely to get a cohesive agency, but rather 3 conflicting and infighting factions all operating under one umbrella name. Each faction would likely be loyal only to their domain and would be seeking to undermine the others and optimise their domains status.

You can see simlar things in the real world in international cooperation where one side is working with another but does not trust them as far as they can throw them - examples i can think of off the top of my head are the EU's deal with South America (scuppered at the final step by one country, despite the benefits to the others) and the division of Berlin after WWII, not to mention the various intelligence agencies that spy on allied or friendly countries all the time.

The other problem i forsee is that in the event that the agents do genuinely work together in cooporation with them being idealistic and dutiful to the cause, is that no one in the nations that they are reporting to would fully trust them. They would be likely viewed as compromised at best, traitors and subversive inflitrators at worst