(The following is lifted directly from my Mystaran reality and is how I originally envisioned the concept of the Defender and his L.W.M army. Characters and designs that follow are of my own design, and certainly should not be confused with a direct how-to on the creation of the Defender and their army, if they even have one with your campaign. This is merely the foundation I set forth and built upon in my own campaign and offer it to all of you with the hope that many of you enjoy the ideas and concepts therein. Note that all characters have had stats intentionally left out.
This is to keep from being aligned to one edition. The descriptions of each of the characters should give any DM a good idea how to designate each character.)
Date: 1029 AC
The Fortress: A floating island 2-miles in diameter kept aloft via magic in almost all areas. Inside of the floating island is enough Blackmoorian engineering to use thrusters to keep the island afloat should magic fail. A small castle merely three stories tall sits in the center, with numerous barracks, magic studies, and crafting buildings are to the right of the castle's entrance. An airship port is hidden underground in a tunnel that houses numerous airships. Some of the piping is designed to emit clouds at the bottom as a means of non-magical vision obstruction.
Magical activators in the war room of the castle can activate invisibility, mirror image, or any number of protective spells on the island itself. The war room itself contains computers and designs from ancient Blackmoor that have been stabilized and engineered to be useful without self-destructing.
The Legendary Artifact - The Masamune Sword: Throughout legends over not only Mystara, but so many other planets and their cultures, legends tell of a great sword. The name of the sword is often varied - Excalibur, Muramasa, Hrunting, Durendal, Masamune, Caladbolg. The truth is far more complex than what each legend offers it. The real name of this sword is as unknown as the form it carries.
The artifact is a spirit and not a sword, it merely takes the shape of a sword.
Throughout the Multiverse, this soul travels and imparts its wisdom upon those who would discover it. It places itself in an area where it is needed most and becomes tangible for a hero to wield. It can exist in numerous places at once, offering a hero the means to save the people behind them. All
of these swords were known for being a heroes blade that fought evil at every turn. The names change, but the purpose always the same. Often, it is created with a protective armor that kept the hero safe while they fought, and all the time the sword took the form of what the wielder wished, provided that form was a sword.
The Defender had heard the legend of a great sword known as "Masamune" on Mystara and took a team of his finest friends to find it. They traversed from Mirros to Darokin, to the great libraries of Glantri, a sunken and forgotten library in the Alphatian sea (even before Alphatia sank no less), to the uncharted continent of Davania and Skothar, and eventually to the Cave of the Masamune hidden within the sands of the red coast.
The cave’s trials tested all the Defender-to-be had in him. He and his friends fought through a maze nearly two miles long, another, deeper layer filled with the undead of the desert, and yet a third layer that shifted them through different planes and realms. At the very end of the bottom layer lay a long path.
His allies were instructed to watch from a rock balcony above while the pre-Defender was challenged to a race with the spirit of the sword. It was no regular race, as the cave layer began to crumble behind he and the spirit.
Rocks spat forth in explosive force as the cave itself did its best to stop the man from reaching his prize. The race through the last layer pushed the man to his limits, but in the end he drew the legendary Masamune sword from its place in an altar. The sword took the form
he desired most and cloaked him in armor of his own minds choosing, gold to symbolize purity and not opulence as most assume. The man even took the name of the sword, Masamune, from that day forward.
The Defender "Masamune": Wearing gold armor from head to toe and a gold open-faced helmet with a ruby gem in the center at the forehead, Masamune stands as the planet’s current Defender. His real name, much like his allies, was changed at their inaugural meeting. From that night forward, he and his
"Commanders" swore to never use their real names again. The title of Commander in the L.W.M. was to signify that they were all leaders, not a one of them higher than the other. Though Masamune held the title of Defender, he would not use it to override the others and hence gave himself a military rank of Commander along with them.
Masamune stood through entirely too many fights during the Wrath of the Immortals, though never against the Immortals themselves. He instead intercepted a team of Alphatian professionals that almost blew Glantri up from under the grounds it sat on.
He, conversely, led a team to beat back the
hordes of the abyss that were pouring through a huge gate opened by a hidden Glantri war mage team on Alphatia. Masamune was in Sundsvall with his entire team when the great Maelstrom struck and barely escaped. He has seen the Wrath of the Immortals and for that he has become disdainful of their presence.
His adventures have taken him from Karameikos, where he became good friends with the King, to Glantri...an empire that has branded him, several
times, with a kill-on-sight order for the local militia.
At the end of the day, his only concern is that Mystara exists for years ahead. He, himself, stood and attempted to divert the meteor that crashed into Glantri, using every spell he could conjure to divert it from its real target of Glantri City.
Though not often seen with him, due to his reckless nature to try and tackle problems himself, Masamune’s personal division of the military is the fabled "Golden Guard". They are often
with him on large military campaigns and other fights in which the Defender realizes its just too big for himself to handle. The Golden Guard specialize in overall efficiency, where masters of all disciplines are present. Magic Users, Rogues, Melee and ranged warriors, Clerics, Paladins. All experts of their fields are accepted into the Golden Guard, and while the team itself does not specialize in one specific discipline, they have the talent to field all manner of problems as the need arises.
Commander "Blackplague": Taking his name from a disease of legend, he has been rumored to have killed more people in his life than that ferocious epidemic. At some point in his life, which some say was as a high commander in the Heldannic military, he saw that killing for a nation was not as honorable and helpful to the citizens as he thought. He changed his name long before he met the Defender, but turned his mercenary sword to aiding those who were being oppressed instead of those who just had the coin.
Sporting the furs of the Ostlanders and the black leather armor of the Heldannics, his northern Known World influence is apparent. His body is a collection of muscles and standing at a large six feet and six inches, he is an intimidating man to behold. He brings brute force tactics to the LWM and is often sent with his arm of the military "Alpha Squad" to the front lines of any major conflict.
Commander "Wyvern": With blue hair on pale white skin, it is no wonder that he attracts the most attention when he is seen.
This is something he welcomes, as his Half-Nymph blood loves to revel in parties and enjoyment. He was once known as one of the finest demon hunters of Mystara, having tracked down liches, death knights, and even fought an arch-lich from the nethers of the abyss when it snuck into Darokin during a really bad deal one day.
He carries the name Wyvern in honor of one of his greatest fights, a fight which landed him his trademark "Fang" and "Claw"; his dagger and shortsword respectively. Hewn from the creature he killed for it and then enchanted to perfection, his fighting style is quick and sharp. His care-free spirit often clashes with that of Blackplague, but at the end of the day, the two find peace in the lives they help save.
His specialties are in city-urban fighting where civilians are thick. He trains his team, the Mystaran Special Forces, to protect all civilians while forming defensive points for them to hide in. An outbreak of the orcs from the broken lands saw a city in Glantri nearly destroyed. An hour after the some-thousand orcs came through, only a hundred or so townspeople were dead. The rest credit their lives to the quick reactions of the man with the blue hair, and his mercenary force.
Commander "Mage": Simply taking the name
"Mage" in an attempt to stay as humble as possible, Mage came from a dark background of training from a man he had no choice but to accept. Orphaned at infancy, he was discovered by a traveling necromancer who had been studying in the mountains of the small farming town. The necromancer took him and trained him from a young age to be a blight upon Mystara, but in a fight with the Defender, Masamune saw there was good in him and that he had been misled for far too long.
Accepted into the L.W.M. as their newest Commander, Mage fights in a modest red Glantrian robe enchanted with protection.
This misleading armor is intentional, as his arts are with the mind and the human psyche far more than physical. He is the L.W.M. master tactician and advisor, though often it falls on him to talk to the governments and groups
that discover it was the Light Warriors that were involved in something. He tasks himself with making sure his team, "Magestorm", can drop magical might upon any opponents that have grown too large in numbers for a mere clash of militaries. In AC 1025, at Mirros, a huge construct known as "The Red Steel Tank" sought to destroy the empires capitol, Blackmage organized his team in an attempt to rust and destroy the machine. A construct of steamcraft and magic, the tank itself was a huge 6-legged walker with a spell resistant shell of red steel. When direct spells proved impossible due to enchantments and high defenses, his team set about making the weather fierce for the tank, creating huge mudslides with transmute rock to mud, and otherwise slowing the walking death tank long enough for the rest of the Light Warriors to hit it hard and dismantle it.
INTRODUCTION
Koskatep, the mega-dungeon featured in Threshold Issue #1, sits atop a lonely hilltop along the upper course of Achelos River. It has been occupied by various forces throughout the eons, even before the Great Rain of Fire, and is still an active ruin even in modern times.
The first level of Koskatep, the Mountain of Bones, lies on top of the hill itself. It is partially exposed, and is composed of the upper remains of an abandoned ogre city, Kotesh, which has been inhabited by bandits and Traladaran freedom fighters in past centuries. The Debris have little treasure, except for the weapons and possessions of the ogres and the giants that dwell here.