Five Banners Burning

Long-brewing tensions between rival nations boil over, threatening all-out war.

Designed by Mike Underwood

Complexity Rating: ••

The Pitch

Read this section to your players to introduce them to the campaign.

Five years into an armistice that ended a decade of warfare, the threat of renewed conflict looms over the continent of Althas. Five nations in a delicate web of alliances and rivalries seek to exploit the opportunities granted by this period of rapid magical, political, and social change. All five nations deploy agents to strengthen alliances, sabotage foes, and tip the balance of power in their favor. In a Five Banners Burning campaign, you’ll play heroes caught up in the twisting and ever-escalating conflict between nations, contending with competing loyalties, generational grudges, and opportunistic villains.

Tone & Feel

Adventurous, Dramatic, Intimate, Political, Serious, Sweeping

Themes

Divided Loyalties, The Nature of Power, The Price of Ambition, Tradition vs. Innovation

Touchstones

A Song of Ice & Fire, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Babylon 5, Friends at the Table’s PARTIZAN, Born to the Blade, Court of Blades, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Eberron: Rising from the Last War

Overview

If your group decides to play this campaign, give your players the following information before character creation.

The following five nations comprise the continent of Althas:

Armada is a federation of city-states founded by pirates-turned-merchants. Uninterested in paying back the fortunes stolen by their forebears, they seek strength and recognition through naval superiority. Armada is allied with Jesthaen and is disliked by Voldaen and Hilltop.

Hilltop is a rich theocracy that exerts a monopoly on access to the gods, giving them holdings in the other nations’ settlements from capitals down to villages. Hilltop is an old ally of Voldaen and is unfriendly toward Armada and Jesthaen.

Jesthaen is a young republic recently independent from Voldaen after a bloody but short war. They seek to prove their strength through displays of military might. Jesthaen is allied with Armada and allies of convenience with Polaris.

Polaris is a progress-focused magocracy at the beginning of a magical industrial revolution. They are ideological rivals with Voldaen and allies of convenience with Jesthaen.

Voldaen is a proud monarchy with traditional authority and riches, recently shaken by Jesthaen’s secession. They are an old ally of Hilltop and ideological rivals of Polaris.

These five nations once flew under one banner. In the age of gods, the divinities protected their mortal creations, clashing with primordial powers of chaos and striking them down. With victory secured, the peoples of Althas crowned their first queen—a dwarven seraph named Arvold—and founded the nation of Voldaen. Meanwhile, the gods established their seat in what is now known as Hilltop, but departed centuries later to fight otherworldly foes.

Over the next several centuries, factional differences within Voldaen grew untenable. With the gods absent, their priests asserted their authority as divine regents of Hilltop. Later, a group of scholars and mages who wished to push the boundaries of arcane knowledge broke off and founded the nation of Polaris. Alliances of pirate navies began settling down in trade cities, forming the federation of Armada. And just fifteen years ago, groups of workers and anti-monarchists declared independence from Voldaen to establish their own nation, known as Jesthaen. This bloody revolution consumed the continent, with Hilltop coming to Voldaen’s aid while Polaris and Armada supported the Jesthaen rebels. Active combat ended five years ago with an armistice, but the peace remains tenuous.

The emergence of Jesthaen as a nascent military force has redrawn the lines of power, challenging Voldaen and Hilltop’s traditional authority. But the alliance between Polaris and the upstart nations of Armada and Jesthaen is fragile, and there are many in both Voldaen and Jesthaen with unfinished business from the war. Minor border clashes and trade disputes threaten to boil over. Many believe that war is coming again—it’s only a matter of when and how.

Five Banners Burning is an emotionally intense campaign with a large cast and sweeping scope, where the characters will find themselves in the crucible that forges the fate of nations. The campaign leans toward a nuanced moral landscape, with morality and ethics in tension with duty and allegiance. Heroes may do terrible things that weigh upon them, and most villains are motivated by love and loyalty as often as ambition or vengeance.

Communities

All communities are available, but some have unique aspects within a Five Banners Burning campaign. As needed, provide the following information to your players and choose one or more of the questions to ask them during your session zero.

Highborne and Orderborne

Althas’ highborne and orderborne communities play an especially central role in this campaign, as they are most strongly associated with the centers of power in the five nations. Highborne characters are likely connected to the ruling class of the five major nations of Althas.

• Are you a member of the aristocracy or nobility, or the scion of a prominent merchant or priest family?
• What expectations does your community have of you, and do you intend to live up to them?

Defined by their relationship to strongly held tenets, orderborne communities are most common in Hilltop and Voldaen. An orderborne character will have their community’s ideals tested by the conflict between nations—those that live by a code will be called to die for it.

• How do you see the tenets you grew up with being changed or broken as tensions rise?
• What lines are you willing to cross to protect the people you love?

Ridgeborne, Underborne, and Wildborne

Althas is a mountainous continent, and Ridgeborne communities are common in every nation, often feeling more kinship with one another than the lowlander communities. Underborne communities can be found beneath mountaintops, in oceanside caverns, and deeper still. Wildborne communities are more rare, often founded by people interested in escaping the larger conflicts of Althas.

• What resources or assets does your community have that other nations might want to take for themselves?
• Who from your community was conscripted in past conflicts, and what tales do they tell of their battles?

Loreborne

Loreborne communities are especially prominent in Polaris—including magic academics, engineers, architects, and other scholars—but these communities exist in every nation. For example, priests safeguard religious histories and knowledge in Hilltop, while sages advise families and maintain the continuity of knowledge in Voldaen.

• What kind of knowledge does your community prioritize, and how does it influence the powerful figures in your home nation?
• What secrets does your community protect or control? What impact would those secrets have on the burgeoning conflict?

Seaborne

Seaborne communities are common across Althas, save in landlocked Polaris. They are home to the continent’s most accomplished sailors, navigators, and fisherpeople, torn between a life lived tide-to-tide and the pull to duty in serving nations once more on the brink of war.

• How is naval power being exercised in your community?
• What do you fear will happen if the conflict comes to your community by land?

Slyborne

Slyborne communities are found across Althas, but are especially prominent in Jesthaen and Armada. There, criminal organizations have been instrumental in improving their nations’ fortunes, from smugglers supporting the Jesthaen revolution to the tight-knit pirate families that founded Armada with goods taken from Voldaen, Polaris, and Hilltop.

• What is your community’s relationship to their nation? How are they using the political instability to their advantage?
• What communities from other nations does your community do business with? How are those connections strained?

Wanderborne

Wanderborne characters belong to no single region of Althas—but though they may consider themselves outside the authority of the five nations, it will be very difficult to avoid the brewing conflict.

• Are your people claimed as subjects of one of the nations?
• How has the growing conflict altered your community’s travels?

Ancestries

All ancestries are available, but some have unique aspects within a Five Banners Burning campaign.

Classes

All classes are available, but some have unique aspects within a Five Banners Burning campaign.

Player Principles

If your group decides to play this campaign, give your players the following information before character creation.

Make Your Actions Reflect or Refute Your Allegiances

You will be implicated in the actions of your superiors, who may, at times, give questionable orders and condemn you for any signs of dissent. Consider your character’s loyalty to those they serve—every action they take is a chance to strengthen their reflection of an ideal or stand against something they oppose. Weave your character’s arc through bold choices until there’s a clear, compelling difference between where they once stood and where they now stand.

Stick to Your Principles or Break Them for Good Reasons

Decide where you draw your lines and what it will take for you to cross them. Share your character’s struggle with the party as they try to reconcile their actions with the ideals they profess.

Take Small Actions That Have Big Implications

Find your moment to make a difference, to push back against the overwhelming external forces that strain the people of this continent to their breaking point. Build the future you want one step at a time—a small gesture for you might mean the world to someone else.

Grapple with the Impact of Your Actions on Everyday People

Treat every person as important and foster hope in places where fear moves people to wrath or despair. When your character becomes a symbol people look up to when things are dire, explore whether they embody that heroism or reject the lionizing.

GM Principles

Keep the following guidance in mind while you GM this campaign.

Force Them to Choose Between Their Loyalties

Put allies at cross purposes and force the characters to take a side. Make it impossible to keep everyone happy, forcing the characters to pay the price of compromise, whether personal, political, or both.

Entangle Them in a Web of Old Grudges and New Schemes

Show how people are motivated by both inherited ideology and personal ambitions. Highlight the rising tensions and dramatize the breaking points. Pull on the characters with the weight of history and the gravity of ambition.

Put the Party in the Crucible of History

Manifest dramatic moments through drastic action. For example, create a historic opportunity for compromise and peace, then fill the room with NPCs who will do anything to stop it. Position the party so they can always impact these major events—that they are the catalysts and fulcrums of history.

Zoom In and Out to Show the Far-Reaching Impact of Decisions

Show the wide impact an individual’s actions can have, and draw the line of influence from their motivations to the consequences. Whether that be an adversary’s zeal influencing their militant government to battle, or the character’s bold decisions, make their actions reverberate, playing out cause and effect like a stack of falling dominos.

Distinctions

Use this information to prepare your campaign. You can also share it with your players as needed.

A World on the Edge

Five Banners Burning features a setting on the verge of open warfare. When that war will break out depends on you, but it is almost inevitable. The conflict between nations will be fought in ballrooms and back alleys as much as in castles and valleys, and people from all backgrounds will be caught in the growing conflict despite their best efforts.

Tipping the Scales of History

The party will be in a unique position to have a significant impact on the conflict between these nations. Ensure they’re connected to the major players, factions, leaders, or other catalysts so they’re always in the thick of the conflict.

Big Questions

To best engage with the thematic elements of this campaign, keep these questions in mind throughout each session:

• Does power always corrupt?
• In what ways is the road to disaster paved with good intentions?
• What does just governance look like?
• How do you decide who to protect and uplift with limited resources?
• How do you manage divided loyalties without betraying someone, including yourself?

Collateral Damage

As conflict escalates, it will displace monsters from their ecosystems, upset the natural and magical balance of Althas, and drive people from their homes to become refugees within or beyond their nation’s borders.

The Inciting Incident

You can use the prompt below to start your campaign, or create your own.

Clover of Towers (orderborne firbolg, they/them), the child of Jesthaen revolutionary hero Adamant Towers (orderborne firbolg, she/her), was kidnapped on the way to a political marriage to Enchanter Kalashae (loreborne orc, she/her), a rising star in Polaris’s High Circle of mages.

Polaris is wary of Jesthaen’s claim that Clover has been kidnapped and demands that Jesthaen follow through with the political marriage. Voldaen denies all involvement and sends a diplomatic investigative party to Lightning Valley, a border town known both for the giant lightning rods that protect the town from magical storms and for hosting the talks that ended official hostilities between Voldaen and the revolutionary faction. However, days later, reports tell of some kind of “disaster” during the initial meetings between Voldaen and Jesthaen’s representatives.

The party is sent to Lightning Valley to investigate what happened. There, they find representatives from other nations doing the same—the apprentice of a disappeared mage-inquisitor, a divine seeker from Hilltop investigating potential divine implications, a Voldaen judge who once served as the town magistrate “returning to visit family”, and a merchant-diplomat from Armada.

The following NPCs comprise the cast embroiled in this mystery:

Clover of Towers wants to make their mother proud and find a way to be happy far from home. Before their kidnapping, they were last seen drinking with city guards at the Three Poles tavern, built between several lightning poles. They were too young to fight in the war, and they have a sense of inferiority about not having bled for the freedom they now enjoy.

Oziver of Storms, sheriff of Lightning Valley (ridgeborne simiah, he/him), is trying to keep the peace but is quickly becoming overwhelmed by the attention and stakes. Oziver is eager for help but needs reassurance of any outsider’s goodwill. He knows that a city guard was the last to be seen with Clover, but he’s convinced the still-missing guard isn’t to blame.

Cerulean Prism, apprentice Mage-Inquisitor of Polaris (loreborne clank, he/him), is quiet and diligent, though worried by Clover’s sudden disappearance. While working for Enchanter Kalashae, Cerulean managed correspondence with Clover during the marriage negotiations. They’ve fallen for the firbolg and will take reckless action to find them.

Kostren, Seeker of Hilltop (orderborne halfling, she/her), is a formidable presence used to being obeyed. She takes over the local temple as her base of operations, conscripting the clergy for a divination ritual that will locate Clover. She tells anyone that will listen of her vision that “proves” foul play by the mages of Polaris. Kostren is exaggerating the certainty of this vision to stoke renewed conflict so that Hilltop can claim more fertile land.

Zeshthon, County Judge of Voldaen (highborne dwarf, they/them), is an elderly dwarf with a compelling silence about them that people can’t help but fill with conversation. They volunteered for the inquiry so they could visit their grandniece, a cobbler residing in the town. A dedicated art collector, Zesthon hopes to procure embargoed tapestries from Goledraelle, which could lead to exposing the merchant’s true identity as a spy.

Goledraelle, merchant of Armada (seaborne elf, he/him), is a charming but hapless-seeming textiles merchant. This image of incompetence is a cover he deploys to throw off suspicion of his true agenda; in truth, Goledraelle is an Armadan spy dispatched to ensure the marriage happens as planned.

The original investigators arrived two days after Clover’s disappearance and set out into the hills to the east, but have not checked in for over a week. Did they suffer the same fate as the firbolg? What help from the townsfolk did the kidnappers have, and who else knows about it? Which enemies of Jesthaen, Polaris, or Armada were in position to sabotage the marriage? Was the marriage sabotaged by someone within Jesthaen for other reasons?

Did some danger or threat lead Clover from the town without their escort? Or was this part of Clover’s plan all along, a chance to live free of their mother’s expectations?

Which of the second wave of investigators will be the first to learn where Clover went? Who escalates to violence first, and what version of that story catches on like wildfire?

Campaign Mechanics

The following mechanics are unique to this campaign.

Faction Relationships

Use a campaign sheet to track the relationships between the nations, as well as their major assets and problems. Each nation has a relationship rating with the other nations, ranging from Nemeses (−3) to Close Allies (+3). The more intense the relationship, the more the nation will act for or against the other nation, even at risk to themselves. Nations that are Friendly (+1) will render help if it does not require much effort or risk, but nations that are Nemeses (−3) will go out on a limb just to see the other suffer.

Armada

Relationships: Allies (+2) with Jesthaen, Friendly (+1) with Polaris, Unfriendly (−1) with Voldaen, Enemies (−2) with Hilltop

Assets: Large and powerful navy, superior maps of ocean & wind currents, allied water monsters

Problems: Small land area, limited overland access to the main continent, lingering reputation as pirates and thieves

Major Objectives: Build friendly port infrastructure in Voldaen and Polaris for trade

Minor Objectives: Acquire airship technology, deploy privateers against adversaries

Hilltop

Relationships: Allies (+2) with Voldaen, Enemies (−2) with Armada, Enemies (−2) with Jesthaen, Nemeses (−3) with Polaris

Assets: Wealth from tithes, a devout army, priests and seraphs, divine power and authority, influence and intelligence through temples and shrines

Problems: Surrounded by adversaries, negligible navy, scarcity of domestically produced food

Major Objective: Bring the Armadan miscreants back into the fold and redeem them

Minor Objectives: Beseech the gods for a bountiful harvest, implicate Polaris as the supporters of a Fallen cult

Jesthaen

Relationships: Allies (+2) with Armada, Friendly (+1) with Polaris, Enemies (−2) with Hilltop, Nemeses (−3) with Voldaen

Assets: A strong land-based military, natural resources, large amounts of arable land

Problems: Political instability as a new nation, remaining conservative elements loyal to Voldaen

Major Objective: Take revenge on Voldaen for injustices across centuries

Minor Objectives: Secure enduring trade partnerships with Armada and Polaris, take control of local temples from Hilltop

Polaris

Relationships: Friendly (+1) with Armada, Friendly (+1) with Jesthaen, Enemies (−2) with Voldaen, Nemeses (−3) with Hilltop

Assets: Skilled mages, magitech innovations, airships, magical creatures

Problems: Lack of workers, poor quality and scarce raw materials

Major Objective: Perfect magical servitor enchantments

Minor Objectives: Secure new mines and quarries, foster immigration through job programs

Voldaen

Relationships: Allies (+2) with Hilltop, Unfriendly (−1) with Armada, Enemies (−2) with Polaris, Nemeses (−3) with Jesthaen

Assets: Traditional political and cultural authority, seemingly boundless wealth

Problems: Strategic vulnerability due to major settlements close to large borders with Polaris and Jesthaen, political upheaval following Jesthaen’s separatist revolution

Major Objective: Reclaim key resources from Jesthaen without starting another war

Minor Objectives: Turn Armada against their allies, steal magical talent and technology from Polaris

Objective Countdowns

Due to the large scale of this campaign, you’re encouraged to use special long-term countdowns to track each nation’s efforts to exploit their assets, address their problems, and pursue their major and major objectives.

Each in-game week, pick one countdown for each nation to advance (step down the countdown by one tick) as they make progress on their goal. These countdowns can also tick up or down if their progress is influenced by the fiction.

A completed countdown represents a nation gaining access to an asset, removing a problem, developing new technology or initiatives, changing political or social fortunes, or acquiring an equally useful benefit. When a countdown is completed, pick a new objective based on the fiction and start a new countdown. Each nation can have one major objective countdown and up to two minor objective countdowns at a time.

Completing major objectives requires a 10-step countdown, while minor objectives have 4 to 6 steps depending on the scale of the endeavor. Stagger the nations’ countdowns so that as they start completing, only one or two are reaching an objective and changing the political landscape each week; if you trigger all five nations’ countdowns at the same time, there will be weeks of inactivity afterward, lessening the tension of the brewing conflicts.

The party may often be dispatched or mobilized to complete or block these objectives. Meanwhile, completed countdowns generate major narrative shifts for the party to respond to.

Session Zero Questions

Ask any of these questions to your players, or make your own.

• Should all the characters come from and/or have allegiance to the same nation? Why are they allied and traveling together?
• How big of a role will war play in this campaign compared to other elements like diplomacy, intrigue, or mystery?
• How much conflict do we want between PCs? What safety tools will we use to negotiate those conflicts when they occur?