Page 224 - Eberron -Rising from the Last War_Neat

M O U R N L A N D TRI N K ETS The project succeeded beyond Cyre's wildest dreams.
When the original warforged colossus took its first
dlO Trinket
thunderous footsteps, it was met with a reaction of equal
The favorite childhood toy of one of the adventurers,
parts awe and horror-and it was almost immediately
floating in midair sent north toward Metro!, where armies from Karrnath
2 A tin whistle that makes beautiful colors and patterns were menacing the Cyran capital.
magically appear when it's played
C
3 A toy lightning rail car OPERATING A O LOSSUS
A warforged colossus is part warforged and part vehicle.
4 A glass eye
It stands between 200 and 300 feet tall. For optimal per­
S A silver lapel pin of a finely detailed gorgon's head formance, a colossus required an active crew including
with ruby eyes a captain with the Mark of Making, a weapons officer
6 A monocle that can be used as a telescope with the Mark of Storm, and a helmsman with the Mark
7 A six-inch-ta l mechanical marmoset in need of minor of Passage. When absolutely necessary, though, the
l
repairs colossus could direct itself but at diminished power. A
8 A small medallion made of silver, depicting a tower colossus also carried a sizable contingent of elite troops,
with an eye at the top of it and other smaller eyes em­ who could ride in safety within the colossus while it
bedded in the sides crushed through enemy lines or smashed through a
wall, then pour out through hatches once the colossus
i
9 A cloak pin made of r on in the shape of two hammers
was in position.
joined by a semicircular haft
Docent N e twork. Controlling a construct of such size
10 A wooden dinosaur toy that has movable legs proved to be a great challenge for the Cannith artificers.
The solution entailed creating a large number of docent
W A R F ORGED C O LOSSUS nodes and joining them together in a single network
Mere weeks before the Day of Mourning, House Cannith distributed throughout the body of the colossus. Docent
unleashed its mightiest creations: the warforged colossi. nodes are modeled after the ancient docents found
Hundreds of feet tall, these gargantuan warriors thun­ in Xen'drik (described in chapter 5), and though they
dered across Cyre, crushing everything in their path lack the full sentience or functionality of a true docent,
and leaving ruin in their wake. Meant to end the war collectively they can guide and control a colossus. The
decisively, these arcane war machines could pulverize network converged at one place, where the captain
soldiers beneath their feet and incinerate entire legions could stand and control the colossus's every movement
with beams of red light radiating from their mouths. But through the use of a mithral helmet with hundreds
as the colossi were beginning to turn to the lands out­ of semi-organic tendril-wires attached. By way of the
side Cyre, the Mourning came, and the colossi perished. central master docent-a true docent recovered from
Now their remains lie, like mountains, in the Mourn­ Xen'drik-the whole network fed information back to
land, filled with secrets and waiting to be explored. the operator. Several smaller "hubs" of the network
gave other operators access to the relevant parts of that
H I STORY OF THE COLOSSI information and enabled them to control parts of the co­
House Cannith spent much of the war working on var­ lossus as well. The techniques and tools used to create
ious kinds of constructs that could serve as soldiers, docent nodes were lost in the Mourning. The various
siege engines, or other weapons of war. Their earliest ef­ branches of House Cannith are sending adventurers
forts, which lumbered onto Cyran battlefields in the late into the Mournland in hopes of salvaging some or all of
930s YK, were barely more than golems with limited the network inside a fallen colossus.
sentience, difficult to command in the field. The war­ Colossus Power Core. The power source of a colos­
forged titans were developed over the next twenty years, sus is a Khyber dragonshard of unusually large size, cut
and the modern warforged-often perceived as the pin­ into a specific pattern that allows the dragonshard to
nacle of Cannith engineering-first saw battle in 965. contain raw magical energy without exploding. A single
Successful as the warforged were, though, House power core is about the size of a wine barrel, hooked up
Cannith never lost interest in building a better titan. to an elaborate harness that distributes power through­
Cyre didn't lose its desire for deadly weapons that out the colossus.
M
could give it an edge over its enemies, and tremendous W e apons of a ss Destruction. Warforged colossi
amounts of gold flowed from Cyre's coffers into the were physically powerful, but their principal weaponry
vaults of House Cannith as research and development involved the use of bound elementals. Some expelled
continued, working toward a new kind of warforged that blasts of elemental fire from their hands or mouths;
would bring an end to the war once and for all, and es­ others wielded adamantine swords they could wreathe
tablish Cyre's martial supremacy for centuries to come. in flame. Some colossi also used bound elementals for
With Cyre's immense wealth fueling its effort, House defense: manifesting shields of elemental rock, blasting
Cannith called upon the ingenuity of its best artificers out elemental air to deflect ranged attacks, and so on.
and magewrights. Construction began on enormous The captain of the colossus could control all this weap­
new creation foundries, hundreds of feet tall, carved onry through the docent network, but for optimal perfor­
into the sides of mountains or secretly nestled within mance the captain relied on a weapons officer with the
remote canyons. Mark of Storm to employ this elemental weaponry.

CHAPTER 4 I BUILDING EBERRON ADVENTURES