This is a story about discovery and conspiracy and trust.
By the time the expedition returned from the depths of darkest Xen'drik, the world had changed. It carried an artifact of great and terrible power--yet before that artifact could be exploited, the world had changed. It had learned secrets which threatened to overthrow generations of conventional understanding--yet before these secrets could be told, the world had changed. When the expedition had left Khorvaire, the Last War had raged; when it returned, the War had been brought to a shuddering halt by a catastrophe of previously unimaginable proportions. A halt, but not yet an end, for no nation dared continue the strife when another Mourning might yet be unleashed by some as-yet undeclared adversary. The questions of the War had been many and varied--how to break the siege, to win the battle, to break the supply lines, to detect the enemy's spies--but now, on all sides, they were compressed down to two overarching queries of terrible importance: who, or what, caused the Mourning? And could it happen again?
That's maybe a little vague, so let me break character and just explain OOC. People seem to want an episodic structure which eases them into the full insanity of Eberron instead of being thrown into the deep end right away, which is perfectly fine. There also seems to be a desire for something that's mostly focused on mysteries and discovery but that has an opening for non-(magical)scientists. And people expressed a desire for more of an overarching plotline/goal than just "let's do science and slowly improve things."
Hopefully this structure provides all of that. The idea is that the PCs are some preexisting group (from an organization yet to be determined, which we can pick depending on what kind of characters people want to play) who return to Khorvaire after an expedition to find that the Day of Mourning has happened and for whatever reason (having to do with the organization they're from, their particular skillsets, whatever they learned on the expedition) take it upon themselves to figure out what happened. There are several different possibilities for how we do the expedition itself--we could either play out the dramatic bits first to let people get a feel for how their characters work, like a "season premiere" or the opening scene of a James Bond movie, or we could start with everyone returning to Khorvaire and flash back to it when dramatically appropriate.
Ooh. I like it. I could totally get a StevenChainsaw into this.
I vote in favour of playing out the "season premiere" straight, because I bet it will make it way easier to understand how our characters relate to one another, particularly if they assembled for the expedition having mostly not known one another beforehand.
I'd prefer chronological order as well. I think it will make all our characters' reactions to the Big Reveal more interesting if we're more comfortable with them and their relationships when it comes.
I'm inclined to play something from my go-to set of [changeling|halfling|half-elf][bard|spy|cartographer|naturalist|dialectologist]. I'd like to know more about those races in Eberron, about how those occupations might fit into the setting/story, and about the Houses, because I think I might like to be attached to one.
The easiest way for me to fit a StevenChainsaw into this is probably to take the Hawke backstory as a starting point, so something along the lines of "non-rich person (perhaps from a formerly rich family, but without access to those resources, whether through previous hardship or estrangement or a combination thereof) who has just gone through some sort of local disaster and is now rather poorer than they started, attempting to achieve financial security by finding lucrative work in the violence field". Almost certainly a human.
I am in favor of chronological order, but if possible with the intro bit heavily abbreviated.
I'm inclined toward a Sam, probably with an aberrant dragonmark that gives him small luck magic, probably an adventuring journalist type. Stats would be bard/rogue, though if this was actual D&D mechanics, he would insist on taking the Extreme Explorer prestige class.
Oh, that reminds me; how stupendous of badasses should we be thinking? Fairly new to this risking-our-lives-for-glory-and-cash thing, larger-than-life adventurers, wuxia-like minor celebrities who walk out of burning buildings with minor clothing damage? (These would roughly map to levels 1-5, 6-10, and 11-15, respectively. I'm assuming we're not 16-20-like demigod-tier.)
Still waiting for some more people to check in, but it looks like this structure is working for people. I am sympathetic both to the desire for chronological order and the desire to abbreviate the prologue somewhat--will think about the best way to do it, but certainly I wouldn't want to start actual play until at least the point the expedition sets out into the jungles of Xen'drik.
Re power levels: because I've already promised that this campaign is going to be light on the actual combat, I think this matters less, but to the extent that it helps in visualization I'd guess around level 4 or so (in D&D 3.5 levels), i.e. the point where the characters are basically competent at their jobs but not far beyond that. Badassery level is basically zero, at least as Hollywood defines it: Y'all should succeed by teamwork and knowledge, not dramatic quips and brute force.
It's good that people are starting to think about characters, but maybe hold off for a little bit on actually fleshing out the precise details of the concepts. As I've said earlier, I think it's important that people create characters semi-collectively, or at least with an eye to making them function effectively together as a group (or function dysfunctionally, but if that's the case it should be *intended* dysfunction. :p). I deliberately left open *which* organization mounted the expedition, but that is certainly something we need to work out. An obvious choice would be the Twelve, but there's also the possibility to be affiliated with a particular nation or religion or university, say, if that appeals more.
To help with that choice, I think I owe you guys another infopost, with more on the Houses/dragonmarks and on Xen'drik, plus other questions people have (Tamien's are already on the list). Not sure when I'll have time to do that--it's possible it'll come in pieces--so continue the discussion in the meantime!
