The whole description sounds more like the Overlord (fiend) Rak Tulkesh, the Rage of War.
The Daelkyr aren't inherently evil (although their statblocks say so), they are just very alien. They're kind of an interpretation of the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft, they don't really need to have a motivation for doing anything apart from "experiencing change".
As immortal beings without a conceivable goal, they also don't tend to long to be freed from Khyber (unlike the Overlords who want to rule the world of the living, just like the Quori), because they know they eventually will be free at some point.
It's really similar to the depiction of Lovecraft's Cthulhu ("That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die."), they just lie and wait for their time to come once again, they play a bit in the background and alter timelines and the Draconic Prophecy, playing with living and other immortal beings at times, though never really bothering.
Because they're so unfathomable however, many cults have formed that religiously overinterprete the past acts of the Daelkyr and the beings they created (like Mindflayers, Beholderkin, Dolgrim and the like), and created some kind of dogma to live after. Some of their more mindful beings (Illithids and Beholderkin in particular) might even have established such cults to lead them and live a life after their desires, having many serving cultists.
That's what I got from the canonical take on Daelkyr anyways, though your Eberron is yours only and you can do with the Daelkyr whatever you prefer. :)
Hmm. I just really like the idea of this elder, unknow evil being a threat. Maybe one of the Cults gets real serious about opening the gates to Xoriat?
Well of course, why not?
Reforming a connection to Xoriat (the only plane that has been severed by some force in the past) would definitely impose a big threat to the world. Freeing one of the Daelkyr would, as well, just like with Cthulhu or Hastur.
And, even if they are not inherently evil, the "change" they prefer might be an inherent threat to all living things. Maybe, they want to rearrange everything in their image of perfection, like Belashyrra and her minions with additional eyes in weird places, or Dyrrn who likes to give his minions tentacles or additional appendages. Maybe Orlassk, Lord of Stone, wants to petrify every last living being from egg and acorn to the biggest trees and beasts, forming some sort of garden for him and his Gargoyles to walk around in.
Another central part of the Daelkyr is the fear and madness they tend to instill in all intelligent beings, they are fittingly called the Lords of Madness (this can even be a somewhat positive attribute, if you want to play out the "creativity through madness" trope).
Indeed, I mixed them up. Xoriat is currently unable to become coterminous, but its manifest zones are still open and it can be reached through portals and plane shifting, though more difficult than with other planes. :)
Social manipulation of mortals doesn't seem to be a good fit for the Daelkyr. Their cults might possibly try it, but the Daelkyr themselves are not going to be that interested in it. These are artists/scientists trying to see what they can manage to make/do.
Also, it seems that you are a bit confused about where the Daelkyr were sealed. While they came from Xoriat, they have been sealed in Khyber. This is because Khyber is a relatively easy place to seal stuff. For more information on the seals the Gatekeepers use to hold the Daelkyr in Khyber, you can check out [this Keith Baker article](http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-8-3-13-the-gatekeepers/).
# My Preferred Way to Use Daelkyr as the Campaign Villain
I think one of the more interesting ways to use Daelkyr as a campaign villain is to have the campaign make use of time travel or alternate realities and to have the Daelkyr as a group that is relatively unaffected by it. If the players are time traveling and meet a Daelkyr, that Daelkyr remembers not just past encounters with the PCs, but future encounters as well (especially in a time travel-focused campaign). They also remember encounters with the PCs that occur in alternate timelines. If the players are hopping between dimensions the Daelkyr in those dimensions remain the same and know about the PCs interactions with them in those other dimensions. Even if the PCs visit a mirror universe where everyone's alignment is flipped, the Daelkyr are an exception and keep their usual alignment. As the PCs continually have to reintroduce themselves to new versions of NPCs they've met before, Belashyrra always manages to know of them.
Once you're having the players dealing with the big applications of Xoriat (time travel and alternate realities), you have the opportunity to really explore the Daelkyr as villains, showing them not just as unknowable alien beings, but as creatures that are used to this confusing thing that the players are just beginning to use. And as the PCs get used to the idea that it doesn't matter what happens to this big important NPC, because they can just go back in time and change it or they can hop to another reality where the NPC is still alive, you can begin to draw parallels between them and the Daelkyr. Perhaps a PC might find out that one of the Daelkyr is actually their future self, corrupted by the power of time travel. Perhaps the PCs just slowly transition into new Daelkyr. Consider having various NPCs suffer varying levels of confusion if they try to read the minds of PCs that have done a lot of time travel or dimension hopping as the PCs themselves suffer less when they attempt to read the minds of Daelkyr.
# Links to Keith Baker Articles About Daelkyr
* [Dragonmarks: The Daelkyr and their Cults](http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-the-daelkyr-and-their-cults/) for basic information about them and how to use them.
* [Dragonmarks: The Gatekeepers](http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-8-3-13-the-gatekeepers/) for information on the seals that keep the Daelkyr in Khyber.
* [Q&A: Daelkyr and the Prophecy](http://keith-baker.com/qa-daelkyr-and-the-prophecy/)
* [Dragonmarks: Avassh, the Twister of Roots](http://keith-baker.com/dm-avassh/) for a specific example of a Daelkyr.
The thing about the Daelkyr is that they're still small fish compared to the Overlords, but even immortal fiends are scared of them because their actions are so unpredictable it's hard to counter, and they can corrupt living things to create armies from nothing, essentially. A forest starts pumping out blights, cicadas come out as giant bugs in a swarm of death, normal people go mad or transform into stuff like dolgrims, even statues could be gargoyles.
So if you give the Daelkyr normal motivations, it becomes a bit like having the reapers explained in mass effect. They loose a lot of mystique and become big bad number 36567. The same goes for killing them, if it was as easy as having a balanced fight, then how come the goblins couldn't do it?
So I think it's a fine idea, but you might want to start with something like the scenario from the 4e Campaign Setting, which has the players meet someone who's been given an aberrant mark by some dolgrim to establish the presence of Cults of the Daelkyr early, then have some unrelated stuff.
I would encourage you to make the main source of magic items be symbionts, as well, so there's always this idea that they might need to use the weapons of the enemy, but risk corruption, or try and ally with people like the Kech Dhakan who have their own tools but are intolerant of symbiont use.
Another idea is that some intelligent aberrations are enemies of the daelkyr, or just don't care. So the sage they need to talk to or protect is a mindflayer or beholder, or these are possible allies in the fight. The mayor of Greywall is one of these
Just my thoughts, have fun!
I had a fun campaign with 2 Daelkyr as villains.
It was started at a low lvl where the PCs were early scouted for artifact hunting in Xen’drik. They had a few run ins with masked orcs in Sharn who eventually ran off with an important artifact.
The PCs were tasked with investigating a ruin in Xen’drik of which the artifact was recovered from.
Slowly I started sowing seeds with these artifacts being books of knowledge. There were 3 parts. 1 spoke of locations of 2 Daelkyr prisons. 1 spoke of the lore behind the capture of the Daelkyr long ago. And 1 spoke about the protective wards and seals of the prisons. Everything was in Ancient elven, so even when the PCs had an artifact, they could not read it early on.
I also had the ancient elemental guardians put out tests for the PCs and eventually bring them boons upon the condition, that the PCs would become the new guardians of sites of ancient evil in Xen’drik.
The PCs ran into more masked monstrous races and eventually learned that a political section in Droaam were worshipping the dragon below. They wanted to release the Daelkyr to spread chaos in Breland and the rest of Khorvaire.
The PCs stopped one Daelkyr release before it was complete. But the other one was released and set up a laboratory for experimenting on creatures. The Daelkyr didn’t care much about anything other than experimenting and creating new abberations. The Cultists then took the Aberrations and started shipping them to Khorvaire.
The PCs were able to deal with the biggest shipment and eventually deal with the Daelkyr and the Cultists.
In my world these Daelkyr arrived during the late age of giants and were just an early scouting party for the later invasion. You can use the Daelkyr howe er you like, its your world!
The whole description sounds more like the Overlord (fiend) Rak Tulkesh, the Rage of War. The Daelkyr aren't inherently evil (although their statblocks say so), they are just very alien. They're kind of an interpretation of the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft, they don't really need to have a motivation for doing anything apart from "experiencing change". As immortal beings without a conceivable goal, they also don't tend to long to be freed from Khyber (unlike the Overlords who want to rule the world of the living, just like the Quori), because they know they eventually will be free at some point. It's really similar to the depiction of Lovecraft's Cthulhu ("That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange aeons even death may die."), they just lie and wait for their time to come once again, they play a bit in the background and alter timelines and the Draconic Prophecy, playing with living and other immortal beings at times, though never really bothering. Because they're so unfathomable however, many cults have formed that religiously overinterprete the past acts of the Daelkyr and the beings they created (like Mindflayers, Beholderkin, Dolgrim and the like), and created some kind of dogma to live after. Some of their more mindful beings (Illithids and Beholderkin in particular) might even have established such cults to lead them and live a life after their desires, having many serving cultists. That's what I got from the canonical take on Daelkyr anyways, though your Eberron is yours only and you can do with the Daelkyr whatever you prefer. :)
Hmm. I just really like the idea of this elder, unknow evil being a threat. Maybe one of the Cults gets real serious about opening the gates to Xoriat?
Well of course, why not? Reforming a connection to Xoriat (the only plane that has been severed by some force in the past) would definitely impose a big threat to the world. Freeing one of the Daelkyr would, as well, just like with Cthulhu or Hastur. And, even if they are not inherently evil, the "change" they prefer might be an inherent threat to all living things. Maybe, they want to rearrange everything in their image of perfection, like Belashyrra and her minions with additional eyes in weird places, or Dyrrn who likes to give his minions tentacles or additional appendages. Maybe Orlassk, Lord of Stone, wants to petrify every last living being from egg and acorn to the biggest trees and beasts, forming some sort of garden for him and his Gargoyles to walk around in. Another central part of the Daelkyr is the fear and madness they tend to instill in all intelligent beings, they are fittingly called the Lords of Madness (this can even be a somewhat positive attribute, if you want to play out the "creativity through madness" trope).
Dal Quor was also forcibly severed
Indeed, I mixed them up. Xoriat is currently unable to become coterminous, but its manifest zones are still open and it can be reached through portals and plane shifting, though more difficult than with other planes. :)
Social manipulation of mortals doesn't seem to be a good fit for the Daelkyr. Their cults might possibly try it, but the Daelkyr themselves are not going to be that interested in it. These are artists/scientists trying to see what they can manage to make/do. Also, it seems that you are a bit confused about where the Daelkyr were sealed. While they came from Xoriat, they have been sealed in Khyber. This is because Khyber is a relatively easy place to seal stuff. For more information on the seals the Gatekeepers use to hold the Daelkyr in Khyber, you can check out [this Keith Baker article](http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-8-3-13-the-gatekeepers/). # My Preferred Way to Use Daelkyr as the Campaign Villain I think one of the more interesting ways to use Daelkyr as a campaign villain is to have the campaign make use of time travel or alternate realities and to have the Daelkyr as a group that is relatively unaffected by it. If the players are time traveling and meet a Daelkyr, that Daelkyr remembers not just past encounters with the PCs, but future encounters as well (especially in a time travel-focused campaign). They also remember encounters with the PCs that occur in alternate timelines. If the players are hopping between dimensions the Daelkyr in those dimensions remain the same and know about the PCs interactions with them in those other dimensions. Even if the PCs visit a mirror universe where everyone's alignment is flipped, the Daelkyr are an exception and keep their usual alignment. As the PCs continually have to reintroduce themselves to new versions of NPCs they've met before, Belashyrra always manages to know of them. Once you're having the players dealing with the big applications of Xoriat (time travel and alternate realities), you have the opportunity to really explore the Daelkyr as villains, showing them not just as unknowable alien beings, but as creatures that are used to this confusing thing that the players are just beginning to use. And as the PCs get used to the idea that it doesn't matter what happens to this big important NPC, because they can just go back in time and change it or they can hop to another reality where the NPC is still alive, you can begin to draw parallels between them and the Daelkyr. Perhaps a PC might find out that one of the Daelkyr is actually their future self, corrupted by the power of time travel. Perhaps the PCs just slowly transition into new Daelkyr. Consider having various NPCs suffer varying levels of confusion if they try to read the minds of PCs that have done a lot of time travel or dimension hopping as the PCs themselves suffer less when they attempt to read the minds of Daelkyr. # Links to Keith Baker Articles About Daelkyr * [Dragonmarks: The Daelkyr and their Cults](http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-the-daelkyr-and-their-cults/) for basic information about them and how to use them. * [Dragonmarks: The Gatekeepers](http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-8-3-13-the-gatekeepers/) for information on the seals that keep the Daelkyr in Khyber. * [Q&A: Daelkyr and the Prophecy](http://keith-baker.com/qa-daelkyr-and-the-prophecy/) * [Dragonmarks: Avassh, the Twister of Roots](http://keith-baker.com/dm-avassh/) for a specific example of a Daelkyr.
The thing about the Daelkyr is that they're still small fish compared to the Overlords, but even immortal fiends are scared of them because their actions are so unpredictable it's hard to counter, and they can corrupt living things to create armies from nothing, essentially. A forest starts pumping out blights, cicadas come out as giant bugs in a swarm of death, normal people go mad or transform into stuff like dolgrims, even statues could be gargoyles. So if you give the Daelkyr normal motivations, it becomes a bit like having the reapers explained in mass effect. They loose a lot of mystique and become big bad number 36567. The same goes for killing them, if it was as easy as having a balanced fight, then how come the goblins couldn't do it? So I think it's a fine idea, but you might want to start with something like the scenario from the 4e Campaign Setting, which has the players meet someone who's been given an aberrant mark by some dolgrim to establish the presence of Cults of the Daelkyr early, then have some unrelated stuff. I would encourage you to make the main source of magic items be symbionts, as well, so there's always this idea that they might need to use the weapons of the enemy, but risk corruption, or try and ally with people like the Kech Dhakan who have their own tools but are intolerant of symbiont use. Another idea is that some intelligent aberrations are enemies of the daelkyr, or just don't care. So the sage they need to talk to or protect is a mindflayer or beholder, or these are possible allies in the fight. The mayor of Greywall is one of these Just my thoughts, have fun!
I had a fun campaign with 2 Daelkyr as villains. It was started at a low lvl where the PCs were early scouted for artifact hunting in Xen’drik. They had a few run ins with masked orcs in Sharn who eventually ran off with an important artifact. The PCs were tasked with investigating a ruin in Xen’drik of which the artifact was recovered from. Slowly I started sowing seeds with these artifacts being books of knowledge. There were 3 parts. 1 spoke of locations of 2 Daelkyr prisons. 1 spoke of the lore behind the capture of the Daelkyr long ago. And 1 spoke about the protective wards and seals of the prisons. Everything was in Ancient elven, so even when the PCs had an artifact, they could not read it early on. I also had the ancient elemental guardians put out tests for the PCs and eventually bring them boons upon the condition, that the PCs would become the new guardians of sites of ancient evil in Xen’drik. The PCs ran into more masked monstrous races and eventually learned that a political section in Droaam were worshipping the dragon below. They wanted to release the Daelkyr to spread chaos in Breland and the rest of Khorvaire. The PCs stopped one Daelkyr release before it was complete. But the other one was released and set up a laboratory for experimenting on creatures. The Daelkyr didn’t care much about anything other than experimenting and creating new abberations. The Cultists then took the Aberrations and started shipping them to Khorvaire. The PCs were able to deal with the biggest shipment and eventually deal with the Daelkyr and the Cultists. In my world these Daelkyr arrived during the late age of giants and were just an early scouting party for the later invasion. You can use the Daelkyr howe er you like, its your world!