Was doing a search on Vorakesh and found this nugget-rich mine of data from the older Runebound games, might give creatives some more ideas for stories, enemies and even heroes as it mentions a few I'd not known of until today:

Sir Gareth the Black (some people may prefer to rename him- many see the association of black with evil as somewhat implicitly racist, can see their point, I often substitute things like shadow/darkness etc)

Cardinal Koth (which for some reason sounds a bit Star Trek )

Jirta the Fierce

Runemaster Baras

and @rugal - wonder if the earlier versions of the Margath story differ to the current edition- I like the idea of a Vorakesh link- I've decided my 'Wandering orbits.....' campaign will be set in the fifth darkness so may work the Margath's return story into a campaign preceding it set around the fourth darkness

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/62445/collected-histories-terrinoth

Story was rewrote many times, so things may have changed a bit

I'm currently liking the idea that the fourth darkness before the campaign I'm working on will be Lord Vorakesh playing a part as the arch-nemesis bringing back aspects of the other three previous darknesses- Beastmaster Th'Uk Tar to aid him in bringing Margath and the dragons linked to the third darkness into his evil plans and also to bring back the legacy of the Uthuk from the first darkness, and of course Waiqar, the source of the second darkness - this will play nicely into FFG's adventure 'The Haunted City' being part of events before my 'Wandering Orbits....' campaign as that too has Vorakesh as the baddie-in-command as it were.

@rugal - so if you can play with any of those ideas in your campaigns and adventures they'll gel even better with the RPG versions of them I hope to work on as we've talked about- the plan now is that at least some of these, including the Margath story, will be formed into elements of an RPG campaign based on the fourth darkness to befall Mennara, bridging the gap between the third darkness and the Mennaran lore and history prior to events of the current games and my 'fifth darkness' campaign 'Wandering Orbits...'

and @verdantsf - maybe this is also a way we could bring 'Dreamwalkers of Mennara' together into a collection of campaign-connected adventure modules- this could work quite well as that adventure kicked off with 'The Haunted City' which has some potential for tying things together. Maybe split it so there are two 'fourth darkness' campaigns- Dreamwalkers being one (so it's still a standalone campaign) and something that includes the projects I'm working on with Rugal and others.

I got a bit sidetracked from Dreamwalkers of Mennara after the realisation I needed to learn the Genesys system more and get faster at using it before continuing as a player/Gm (some life stuff meant I had a break from all things Terrinoth anyway, I've recently started working on things again) but shall pick up where I left off at some point, p.s. if those writeups still need doing (I've not been logging into the discord) let me know as I can finish them off or maybe do one that needs doing- I can also help with module write ups and creation (great work with 'The Malady Melody' shared module by the way, you did a good job on putting that together for other players. I regretted having work that day as I'd really have enjoyed that session), although I'm juggling a lot of Mennaran spheres at the moment (which is actually a good thing as it's really helping cement the ideas for my campaign together and join up the jigsaw pieces). Life remains challenging at times- I'm still dealing with the post-move hassles of a rushed move due to an eviction a few years back and some other 'life headaches' so have to work on my Mennaran projects as and when time and work and life allow- but then all creations require putting in the work and take patience and dedication! It's often worth it for the end result.

So, the big vilain to you is Vorakesh ?

I like the idea that there is no such vilain in theses background stories, but as far as I did my campaign, it there's nothing that contradict this fact either.

2 hours ago, rugal said:

So, the big vilain to you is Vorakesh ?

I like the idea that there is no such vilain in theses background stories, but as far as I did my campaign, it there's nothing that contradict this fact either.

My campaign ideas have lots of major 'villains', but the darknesses referred to in Realms of Terrinoth tend to have a main villain behind them-

the first darkness was Llovar's doing- a dream walker of ynfernael origin,

the second was rooted in Waiqar's betrayal

and

the third was the dragons collectively (initially sometimes against each other) although Margath seems to move to the fore of this as events unfold

There's not a fourth in the lore but it's directly suggested the fourth may be on the horizon- as FFG's first adventure for Genesys has Vorakesh mentioned as the 'lead' adversary (archnemesis) and as he features as one of the main enemies in Runebound and has that bringing Margath back connection I quite liked the idea of playing with this- he's previously been a servant of Waiqar and has aspects of his character that might suggest ynfernael influences too (it's thought that Waiqar maybe became under such powers after fighting the Uthuk also), and my idea of him using an Uthuk beastmaster to help gain control of Margath also gives him a potential Uthuk link, so he was perfect for an idea of echoes of the three darknesses returning because of his actions.

Thinking about it I maybe shouldn't make it too much about just one enemy ruling all others- that suggests all evils have one origin point, so maybe this focal character (or group) is just the catalyst that brings about a chain of events, I'll have to think about this more as I develop my ideas.

What do other people think on this aspect of the story development?

@rugal It could be a hook to transition from your Margath campaign into the Uthuk campaign you're keen to do- Vorakesh has played a part in Margath's return (or the attempt to bring this about if it failed thanks to the heroes) even if it's quite abstract or indirect, and he's also led to the Uthuk once more being a threat to Terrinoth.

This might help you if you are not aware of it already:

Thing is, FFG with every game and edition has re-written stuff, many times with discrepancies. Most annoying I found to be that the Dragon Wars are sometimes something that was thousands of years ago and sometimes 30 years ago. Also,

Yeah, personally (but others may of course like it) I hope they don't go back to the alien suggestion (intended or otherwise from the sci fi feel) I found when researching the lore that was in the second Runebound's icy expansion. For my preferences don't mix a fantasy set game and sci fi stuff (the ancients- sci fi fighting machines in a fantasy game, who had that flawed idea, even if it's one of the awesome creatives behind the other ideas that was just wrong.)

Steampunk and fantasy can mix in a limited way (there is at least one steampunky Terrinoth image with airships) if done very very carefully, fantasy feel airships, a clockwork being or clockwork dragon wouldn't feel too out of place- but alien/sci fi war mech-machines like in futuristic wargames, just no, underlined, a lot.

They may have to rewrite things sometimes though for backstories and game elements to make sense, for example if somebody's still alive maybe it can't be thousands of years ago.

Plus I don't think they've ever really fully collated the lore until Realms of Terrinoth came out for Genesys, although there's still oddities- Lord Hawthorne is dead in that but very much alive in the games!

But a bit like the ROT sourcebook for RPG players the lore is only a toolkit- doesn't have to be the same for every game and that might get a bit boring. I'm not sticking fully to canon for my projects- if I did I couldn't do anything interesting or tell any exciting new stories so I'm using the lore for inspiration and telling my own stories - tied into the lore but with the odd twist here and there to keep it fresh.

Anyone shouldn't be afraid to have that creative freedom with the adventures they create for the games, for example Lady Farrow doesn't have to be a vampire if you don't want her to be, you can decide who the enemies are and what they are up to and so on, if you've seen or own the Genesys Terrinoth sourcebook there's so much lore you can tell whatever story you want with it, if you and your gaming friends like alien fantasy mashup or futuretech fantasy mashup you can even use entities like the ancients, just because I dislike that idea doesn't mean everyone would! Obviously it makes sense to mostly root things in the lore so they still make sense in the context of whatever stories you tell and you need to communicate any departures from the canon to your players in the narrative of your creations somehow, but as long as it's a good story and most importantly makes for a good game any fan creatives shouldn't have to feel everything has to be vanilla Terrinoth, which as we've said is in itself sometimes contradictory.