Thenol may be the largest nation on Taladas, it is also the most disfunctional being ruled through ruthlessness and scheming rather than consistent order. Let’s learn more abou the Thenolites. Buy Time of the Dragon: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16960/Time-of-the-Dragon-2e?affiliate_id=50797
Transcript
Cold Open
If you want a Game of Thrones style campaign, you would be right at home in Thenol.
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to talk about The Thenolites of Taladas. I would like to take a moment and thank the members of this channel, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate link. I am referencing the Time of the Dragon boxed set for this information. If I leave anything out or misspeak, please leave a comment below.
Discussion
The Kingdom of Thenol is not a place for the faint of heart. It was initially a small knot of lands, but has grown by conquest. This is not to say it is as mighty as the Imperial League of Minotaurs, or as defensive as the Confederation of Armach, because it is not. But what it lacks in military precision, it makes up more than sufficiently in mass. Mass of living and dead soldiers that care less for the significance of loss or the ultimate outcome of domination. This has, as one might expect, drawn the most crafty and cunning of leaders to its fold. The kingdom stretches to the marshes of the Blackwater Glade in the South, to the Steamwall Mountains in the East. Its Western border is the sea itself and its Northen borders are shared with Armach and the League.
Founded by exiles of Styrllia, a province of the prae cataclius Aurim Empire of Taladas, and led by Guidan after the Great Destruction, or the Cataclysm, they traveled great distances. Guidan treated the myriad of malcontents and rebellious in his group with kindness. He ultimately resorted to granting titles to the exiles which ultimately undermined his authority, and these nobles became the true rulers, for a time. Tired of journeying, the nobles demanded an end to their exodus and against Guidan’s better instincts caved to public opinion, not that he had authority to do otherwise. New Aurim was thus founded, and the nobles took to seizing lands and struggling with each other for territory. Each wanting to rule as king, but none being able to see it done, they ended up as a tenuous united kingdom of Thenol, and forming the Senate of Lords to exact some semblance of control over each other.
The position of king was passed down to the progeny of Guidan, and up to the Secondus Catacluus, fourteen of his family had reigned. The true power lay with the Lords of the Senate however, and then only with the great lords, those with the largest land holdings. And thus the game or ruling continued, secret agreements to usurp weaker lords, or treaties to stand against the great lords were enacted, all with the end desire of power and control. The most talented and effective of these ambitious men was Bishop Trandamere. He first came into power as the head of the Temple of Hith, or Hidukel. And began the small cult, and was blessed by the god, ending up working in secret among the lords to seize power without alerting any to his true ambition. This required him to be masterful in his diplomacy and at times eliminating those who saw the truth of his schemes. Trandamere ruled for more than forty years in what became the age of true power in the kingdom of Thenol.
His once small cult grew to the national religion, with temples erected in Hith’s glory. They performed miracles that havent been seen since the time before the Great Destruction. He would provide military might to those lords who swore fealty in the form of fanatics and the Undead! The great lords continued to underestimate him in his rise to power, so much so that once he seized control on Dragon’s Night, no one dared to try and stop him. The true beauty lay in the fact that Bishop Trandamere holds no official title or position in government, but he rules as if he were the King and Senate as one, all through the brilliance of his machinations and blessings of the dark god he worships.
With his army, Trandamere is able to keep Thenol under his control, though to be fair, he desires much, much more. He has sent his armies to press on his neighbors, in a seemingly unending campaign. From Armach, to the League, he presses the borders with an unquenching ferocity. But he is not always wielding his hammer in his goal of continental control. Agents of Thenol are found among the Armach, Legion, Marak Kender and the Steamwall hobgoblins as well. Even the dragonmen are converted to soldiers, and with the continent as the ultimate prize, only the Second Cataclysm would stop him. The Army of Thenol is used as an instrument of diplomacy as much as a face of terror to would be userpers. Second only to the Temple of Hith in power, it is divided into three distinct groups. The Undead, the fanatics, and the companies of the Lords.
In the same way as Bishop Trandamere has no governmental title, he also has no military rank. That doesn not stop him from being the supreme commander of the army however. He controls the senate, which controls the officers, which controls the army. Unlike the Legion, the Thenol Army is pretty lax with its organization. Everyone participates either by being compelled in life, religion or lord. Command is based on seniority and general agreement. The lords command their troops which are built from their citizens, and they are the most well equipped. The Undead are controlled by the Temples priests, at the squad level, but as one might suspect, the Undead can as easily turn on their masters as decimate the living forces they are ordered against. Special care must be taken when handling them. Their forces consist of Skeletons, zombies and Ghouls, who are most active at night. They only obey basic commands such as attack or defend and even then, they can get confused
The fanatics are even more flighty than the undead if you can believe it. The problem with Fanatics is that if your goals or orders do not line up with individual interpretations of the Temple of Hith, they are just as likely to rebel or abandon their post as continue fighting. They are fervent individualists that believe in the greater glory of Hith, not the priests that present his teachings; so great care and selective orders must be given to continue the appearance of Hith’s domination, rather than throwing numbers at a fearsome force to overwhelm them. Fanatics are led by charismatic men, not necessarily well educated tactical thinkers, which only exacerbates the problem. If failure is repeated, fear and superstition seed and grow into dissention. The biggest problem with the Command of Companies, is that they are loyal to their lord, not the clerics, and they are as likely to strategically change orders to prove a point or showcase a weakness, as stand and fight for the Kingdoms glory.
After the Second Destruction, the clerics had to fake the presence of Hith, which they did successfully until the Godless Night. With Hith once again backing the clerics, the latest leader, Bishop Ondelos sent his armies in full force against the Legion, After three years of open war and atrocities that cannot be spoken in polite society, the Legion defeated the army and killed Ondelos, though they were forced to retreat to their capital before creating any permanent change in Thenol. As it stands today in the Age of Mortals, the game of control over the kingdom remains as active and skillfully played as ever with the next ambitious ruler yet to emerge.
Again, if you want a campaign set deep in politics with an open contention between monarch, senate and church, there is no better time and location than Thenol in the Age of Despair or the Age of Mortals. I would make a contentious statement about Istar, but even that holy empire can’t hold a candle to the Temple of Hith, in my opinion. Too bad we never saw those two empires face off, separated by a cataclysm and nearly half a century.
Outro
But that is all the time I have to talk about The Thenolites. I hope you enjoyed the information. Do you enjoy politics in your campaigns? Were you aware of the Thenolites on Taladas? And finally, have you played a campaign on Taladas? Leave a comment below.
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White follows the light and black the darkness, but red wavers too much in the middle, a friend who might suddenly become a foe!
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