d6 Sites of the Long Wars (GLoGtober 2)

Taking a prompt from the list on GLoGtober '22: Under New Management we discuss "Cycles of violence" from a promptlist by Phlox

I was thinking about the 'father fights the war, son keeps the peace, grandson goes back to war' rule of thumb on how the value of peace fades with time and how that compares with the widely varying lifecycles of various fantasy races. My hypothesis is that different groups are going to switch between 'warlike' and 'peaceable' at different times, based on their longevity and time elapsed since the last Great War of All Against All. These societal states can be used as hook generators. If you want to just get straight to the d8 sites, scroll down to the bottom.

Taking four common 'conquering threats' as our anchor points: giants, dragons, elves and 'everyone else' essentially.

Dragons live between 2100 (white) to 4400 (gold) years and generally hit adulthood around the 100 year mark, plus or minus a decade or two. So roughly - they all hit adulthood at the century mark, chromatics start to die just after the 2 millenia mark and the metallics get another 1000-1500 years after that.

Giants have a wider range from Hill giants at 200 years to Stone giants at 800 years with a significant range within that. Storm giants live 600 years, so as the rulers we take their lifespan for this.

Elves across all their various varieties mature at the century mark and live to ~ 750 years.

I am going to set aside gnomes, dwarfs and other long lived groups - the points for elves will apply for them on a shorter timescale and we typically hear less often of them as regional conquerors.

Everyone else broadly matures at 20 years and dies ~ 100 years later.

So more or less the short-lived humans are going to drive the cycle of violence, with generations who have no memory of previous wars deciding to raise their banners against giants, dragons and elves who all *personally recall* the previous great wars.

Each elf and giant generation will watch the humans do this twice - so does that mean that there are no peaceable times for all the long-lived races? Is every generation plagued by the quick-to-violence humans and their ilk?

I suggest the truism holds, that the heirs of the giant and elf rulers who last took their kingdoms to general war recall the tales of the old sovereign and keep the peace as much as they can, but the generation after that can point to a rule plagued by the wars of the short-lived small-folk, where peace-seeking did not bring peace, and decide that the solution is to go on the offense.

This becomes an especially dangerous time as the elf and giant realms should be changing hands at broadly the same time, so where before humans had the initiative to wage wars of choice for generations, now the rest of the world rises against them. One could well see this as a 'humans incursions have gone too far, we will drive them back to the old borders' which could be perceived as perfectly reasonable for long live races, insisting on how things stood in their grandparents day - a status quo ante from ~ 1500 years ago. Equivalent of arriving in the Courts of the King of France, of Castilla y Leon, of Hungary and in the Ottoman Empire and telling them that they are to go back to the borders of the Roman Empire. For the short-live races, history gone some ~ 8 generations.

From a practical basis, to a giant or elf monarch, one cannot trust the short lived races - they appear to never keep their word and it seems like you are never dealing with the same one twice. The giants may be better at dealing with this as some of their internal groups live shorter lives - the frost and fire giants will see succession once or twice within the reign of their storm giant monarch, who in turn will have stone giant hold-overs from the reign before him.

Throughout this all, the dragons are the same dragons who saw the last Great War of All Against All. Whether they get involved to exploit the chaos or as any sort of unified force is one question but certainly they recall what happened last time and may well choose to sit out the hostilities then pounce once everyone else has fought themselves to exhaustion.

The vastly different time-scales that all these groups are operating under also explains why there are dungeons to explore and treasures to be had - strongpoints expected to be needed for future conflicts, monster-infested spoilers to block foes from certain locations, forward caches of weapons - all these could be reasons for such locations to be created. The attrition of such wars also explains why they become forgotten and go wild or haywire.

All of this reckons without the many puppeteer's - mad wizards, illithids, aboleths, beholders, liches - that could be sticking their oar in to manipulate things. The above is what I reckon could pass for strategic wisdom and kingly knowledge passed on between the rulers of the long lived groups.

d6 Sites of the long wars

1. Elf ranger observation station - disguised as something else, full of magical arms and equipment, guarded by automatons, dryads and other such sentinels

2. Dragon shrines - seeded throughout the land, a particular big red dragon has laid shrines where their aid can be called upon by lighting a pyre and leaving offerings. The dragon has been using this as an early warning system for trouble and sometimes does turn up to breath fire all over an army on the march if they think it will benefit them

3. Giant traps - it is known that the giants have trapped the great bridges and viaducts that lead through their realms, ready to collapse on invaders and block off their realms. A scouts report of the nature of the traps would be worth a fortune, especially if it included information on how to disarm them

4. Unquiet cairn - a battlefield of the last Great War - scavenged over by the short-lived victors but returned to by the long-lived a century after. The bitter dead prowl their tombs and spectres roam the battlefield. There may be some last treasures here but mostly this is a hazard to all who might trespass

5. The Restored Forest - the last king of the giants rode out and swept all before him. This was a thriving city that was within the old borders, now ruins, purposefully tumbled and with nature busily reclaiming it all. The giants took nothing, all the wealth that once was here remains, but it is now the giant kings hunting preserve and a thriving wilderness

6. The High-Ceilinged Hold - a giants outpost now being claimed by humans. The 'vanquished giants' who dwelled here were the caretakers and the humans are busy exploring and converting this great keep for their own purposes. Problems have arisen when the tombs below the keep have been disturbed and giant undead have awoken. All this before the current giant lords return.