The One God with Mina as her prophet conquered Krynn, until her identity was revealed. Let’s learn more about the War of Souls. Buy the Age of Mortals sourcebook: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/557/age-of-mortals-3-5?affiliate_id=50797
Transcript
Cold Open
The One God would bring hope and then despair to Krynn.
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to talk about The War of Souls. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members, 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 links. I am referencing the War of Souls trilogy, the Dragonlance Campaign Setting and Age of Mortals sourcebooks for this information. If I leave anything out or misspeak, please leave a comment below!
Discussion
The backstory to the War of Souls is convoluted at best, as the Fifth Age was created by TSR in order to revitalize a dying IP in Dragonlance. At the time they asked Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman to write a story about the loss of Magic through the Chaos War, and then summarily kicked them back out of the project after Dragons of Summer Flame. When the Fifth Age was released and began floundering, Wizards of the Coast, the new owners of Dungeons & Dragons called back Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman to correct course and they completely ignored all of the story beats that the Fifth Age team were working on and brought it back to their own wheelhouse. You see, in the original Fifth Age creators’ plans, Mina had a different trajectory and the gods were truly gone, but the original Dragonlance authors decided to bring back the gods… eventually. And it was all through a reimagining of the end of the Chaos War, a reframing of the Fifth Age and the reintroduction of the old gods… again. What’s that proverb? Everything old is new again.
So while Mina was first introduced as a poor child and lone survivor who was caught in a storm and washed up on the shore of Shallsea, a fisherman brought her to the Citadel of Light. She quickly became the surrogate child of Goldmoon who would regale the child with stories of the old gods, and how she and her friends brought them back to the world. This last story beat would be picked up by the authors, and reframed. Now, to get the newly reimagined version, Mina would be a god of light who was born in the Age of Starbirth. Paladine, Mishakal and Majere knew this would upset the balance, so Paladine appealed to Majere to hide her away. Majere took the fledgeling god and put her into a deep slumber underneath the ocean.
Cut to the end of the Age of Despair and the Chaos War. While the original ending was Paladine telling Palin Majere that the gods had to abandon Krynn, and with them magic would fade. This was the beginning of the Age of Mortals, and if there was magic to be discovered, they would have to find it themselves. The reimagined version was that when Chaos was threatening to destroy Krynn, Takhisis decided to make the biggest gamble she had ever considered. In the chaos of the conflict, pun intended, Takhisis stole the world away the moment Chaos or Ionthas was defeated. She posed as Paladine to Palin, saying the same thing, and then, weakened from stealing the world away from Chaos and her fellow gods, she retreated to the depths of the Abyss to regain her energy.
She maintained a small shadow of herself in the form of a reimagined Shadow Sorcerer, so that she could keep tabs on Krynn while regaining her strength. Then the Dragon Overlords came, and interrupted her plans. She was still far too weak to confront them, even as an immortal, so she had to come up with a plan. But being a vindictive god with a resume that is far more impressive than I think most give her credit for–her last act of revenge was to take the future lineage of Huma Dragonbane who banished her from Krynn and corrupt him into her first true cleric as Verminaard of Nidus. So Takhisis decided to set her eyes on Goldmoon, and get back at the woman who brought back knowledge of the gods, ruining her last bit for world domination.
Mina was awoken by Takhisis in a great storm and thrown into Schallsea, where Mina’s story unfolded much the same way. But now Mina would be leveraged against Goldmoon, with the exact same ambitions Goldmoon had in her youth. To discover the knowledge of the gods in their absence in this Age of Mortals. And when she was about fourteen in four-hundred and eighteen Alt Cataclius, Mina heard the call of Takhisis, now calling herself the One God. Mina would be instructed by this divine being for the next three years. Mina was far from the only one Takhisis was leveraging. She was manipulating a former priestess of Sargas, a dark dwarf desiring the throne, and a black robed wizard craving his lost power.
During this time, Takhisis was also using the souls of the dead. As she removed their chance of leaving Krynn into the afterlife, she promised to aid them if they aided her. She sends the souls of the dead to collect magic and channel it back into her. This caused magic to begin failing all over Krynn, and magical items were drained as they were used. No one understood what was happening, but with every death, Takhisis grew stronger, vying for the day she could destroy the Dragon Overlords. She taught a select few about Necromancy, and used them all to bring her power.
Takhisis used Mina as a figurehead to perform miracles on behalf of the One God, and as followers were drawn to her and her miracles, the One God would grow mighty and eventually be able to reenter Krynn. When Mina finally gave Takhisis her soul, it was in trade to give Goldmoon eternal youth, Takhisis needed a vessel to inhabit upon entering Krynn and the irony was not lost on us readers. The One God sent a global storm to scorch Krynn, foreshadowing the return of her prophet Mina. The storm foretold her enemies of their doom, and others heard the returned voice of a god. Mina appeared to a group of Knights of Takhisis in Gamashinoch and within months, Mina and the One God, with the power of her living and dead armies, brought down the shield around Silvanesti, killed three Dragon Overlords, Goldmoon, and Lord Soth, retook control of the Knights of Takhisis, and conquered cities all the way to Sanction.
With every life lost, more souls were drawn to Takhisis, giving her power. Mina had the dragon totems brought and used to channel the power which brought Takhiss into the world once and for all. And as one can guess, it all turned against her. You see, most of the One God’s followers were actually devoted to Mina not the One God. Her followers were blinded by her beauty and her miracles, and when they learned the truth about who the One God was, let’s just say it didn’t go over well. As Mina forsook her followers for her God, her followers rejected the God. While this was all happening, Goldmoon was searching for the truth, Palin and Dalamar had been killed and trapped by Takhisis and Palin and the dragon Mirror were actively working against her, Tasslehoff Burrfoot used the Device of Time Journeying just before Chaos killed him and ended up in this new timeline, working to reconnect Krynn to the old gods.
Eventually Paladine heard the call from Goldmoon, and Raistlin Majere aided Paladine and the gods to discover Tasslehoff and Krynn. As Takhisis manifested in Krynn, the gods finally discovered it as well, and stripped her of her immortality. As Takhisis turned to attack Mina in a rage, Silvanoshei plunged a broken Dragonlance into Takhisis, killing her. Mina picked up Takhiss sword and slew Silvanoshei in revenge and Paladine stepped down from being a god to maintain the balance, becoming Valthonis. Not one god shared the truth about Mina with her, leaving her to be tormented with the loss of both Goldmoon, her surrogate mother, and her One God, Takhisis, Mina would remove the corpse of Takhisis from the world and hide it away in the mountains. And the War of Souls ended with Krynn being returned to its place in space-time, and the spirits being allowed to pass through the Gate of Souls.
Outro
And that is all the time I have to talk about the War of Souls. What do you think of the war and its conclusion? Would Takhisis have made a good sole god of Krynn? And finally, did you like what Mina was revealed to be in the Dark Disciple trilogy? Leave a comment below.
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