BEHIND THE CURTAIN:

WARFORGED IN THE
FORGOTTEN REALMS
SETTING?
The FORGOTTEN REALMS® and EBERRON® cam-
paign settings can accommodate every one
of the core D&D® rules. However, a campaign
setting has a particular set of stories to tell,
and sometimes the best stories are those that
are proscribed in some fashion. For instance,
in our published games and novels, you might
never see a warforged character in the FORGOT-
TEN REALMS setting, or a genasi character in the
EBERRON setting. However, with the release of
the EBERRON Campaign Setting, you’ll have the
option of choosing a warforged as a character.
You might even have that choice sooner, if your
by Matthew Sernett DM allows you to use the rules for playing war-
forged released in DRAGON® #364. Likewise, with
the release of the FORGOTTEN REALMS Campaign
Setting, you have the choice of choosing a genasi
as a character. However, in a vacuum of official
support for a race not described in a campaign
setting, you might wonder how your nonstan-
dard race came to exist in the campaign. If so,
this article aims to provide you with a list of
several official possible origins for your game
character.

Origin Stories T
he FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign set-
ting spans Faerûn, Returned Abeir,
and other continents of the world. This
place of many extremes also has numerous
races, including the energy-embodied genasi
who manifest fire, lightning, and other ele-
ments by mere desire. Genasi are most likely
by Bruce R. Cordell
encountered in Akanûl or Calimshan.
The EBERRON campaign setting features
swashbuckling action and dark fantasy, and the
illustrations by Gonzalo Flores impact of the Last War yet reverberates across

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 Origin Stories

the world, tangling destiny’s skein. One of the many and then, you find golems that approach your com-
repercussions of the Last War are the warforged, a One-Off Wizard Experiment plexity, but you are disappointed. None seem to be
race of living constructs sculpted of iron, stone, and You are the ritual-born creation of a long-dead alive in the way you are. Someday, you hope, you will
wood designed to be soldiers. With the Last War experimenter, stored away in a wizard’s tower and discover another warforged.
over, the warforged wander the land, struggling to forgotten for who knows how many years. Your Roleplaying Option: Though considerable knowl-
find acceptance. Warforged were born in vanished designer, apparently a fine artificer and golem sculp- edge was pre-implanted in your mind, such as
Cyre, now the desolate Mournland, but except for tor, disappeared long ago and never returned to her language and some in-depth skills and abilities, you
some that congregate there, they exist all across tower of wizardry. You only recently gained con- are naïve about the world in some ways. This either
Khorvaire. sciousness when the tower was ransacked by a team makes you very curious and eager to learn new
For all the extremes of the FORGOTTEN REALMS, of adventurers who won their way past the formi- things from anyone willing to engage, or perhaps
it is a world not known for its warforged. And for all dable tower defenses only to find your half-organic, standoffish and afraid to reveal your terrible igno-
EBERRON’s magical marvels, genasi apparently never half-metallic cocoon. The adventurers accidentally rance; when you don’t understand something, you
came there. woke you, perhaps for the very first time, believing shrug as if you couldn’t care in the least.
But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in your you to be a toy they could sell or golem they could
game. command. Soon enough, they realized your true
nature and invited you to join them. Lantan’s Remnant
You remember the crashing waves that rolled in
PLAYING A Character Motivations from all sides as the world shook and shuddered.
WARFORGED IN TORIL One or more primary desires might inf luence you. You saw birds in their thousands take f light as if of
The Fate of Your Creator: You have an overrid- one mind and then arrow into the east. You heard
Most races in Toril have one or two specific back- ing curiosity to learn more about the one who gave the ominous roar from the coast and saw the moun-
ground stories that account for their presence in the you form and spirit, what purpose she had in mind tain-size breakers smash over the docks as if they
world. However, warforged are too rare in Faerûn, for you, and why she left you inactive and alone for were kindling. You were there when the tsunami hit
Returned Abeir, or lands eastward to have any one several years. Did she create you as a guardian? A Lantan nearly a century ago. And that’s the last thing
common origin. This section describes likely origin companion? A messenger to a harsher clime where you recall.
stories for your warforged character. mere flesh might fail? You have no way of knowing, Then you opened your eyes in the dank hold of
As a warforged who originated in Toril, you are though you constantly imagine with scenarios that a salvager’s vessel. Struggling free of nets and sea-
not part of a collective race—you might be one of a might explain your creation. You also try to chase weed and breaking free decades of barnacles from
kind, or perhaps one of a few unique specimens. down every last clue about your creator, hoping to your skin, you gave the crew quite a scare when
Others assume you are related as much to golems as one day find her decades-old (or longer?) trail and dis- you heaved yourself up into daylight. Whether you
to living creatures. This means you can’t necessar- cover who she was and what you were meant to be. soothed the crew’s fears or were forced to swim for
ily rely on the stereotypical racial attitudes to help Another Like Me: When the adventurers woke the safety of the nearest shore, you learned that time
define your behavior, because in the FORGOTTEN you from your cocooned slumber, they told you (or had passed since your last watery memories. You
REALMS setting, too few warforged (perhaps only you saw for yourself ) that another half-living, half- learned that when the water receded, the island land
you) exist to allow anyone to draw conclusions about metallic cocoon lay right beside your own. However, was nearly gone. All its machines, its technology,
what’s normal for you. this one was empty and open. It was either never and its people were drowned. The land is reduced
Once you choose an origin story for your war- used, or whoever once occupied it emerged years in area, and its golemwork marvels lie rusting below
forged character, you can work out the fine details of before you. If so, why did your fellow not wake you? the waves. Supposedly, a monster sinks any ship that
your history with your DM. Was it taken away by the wizard when she left? You draws near.
must know—the thought that another like you walks You are a marvel of spirit-infused clockwork that
Toril is an idea you can’t get out of your head. Now surpassed all Lantan’s previous craft. You were con-

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 Origin Stories

structed just in time to be the island’s swan song. cities of the Sea of Fallen Stars, as well as in the until you have sufficient funds to finance the whole
Sometimes, the screams of the dying Lantanese echo Moonsea region. In addition to dealing in magic endeavor out of the gate.
again in your mind during the quiet night hours items, some enclaves have a reputation for produc- Roleplaying Option: You are a master of disguise;
when your mind wanders. ing goods of a particularly outré nature. One enclave you are constantly looking into new techniques
even dallied in limited production warforged. and wardrobe to further perfect your skills. What
Character Motivations Your first memories are of the interior of a Red started out as a simple precaution against potential
One or more primary desires might inf luence you. Wizard enclave, where you learned language, basic Red Wizard bounty hunters looking for “free-willed
A Century Gone: You were somehow rendered skills, and the arts of your chosen profession. You constructs” has blossomed into something of an
inert for more than ninety years. You resent that were told you had been “commissioned” by a power- obsession. Disguise, sleight of hand, and similar
stolen time and wonder at all the changes that ful lord of a foreign city-state to serve some secretive tricks for fooling the senses are amazing to you
occurred during it. New cities and nations have role. However, at some point during your indoctrina- because of the fact they do not require magic, merely
sprung up; old ones have fallen—not the least being tion, you determined that you’d prefer a freer hand. skill, to pull off.
the fall of your own nation, Lantan. What other One night, you escaped into the dark, determined to
crazy changes have sprung up in that time? For make your own life.
instance, you’ve heard rumors of a new continent Stranger in a
appearing out of the mist west across the Trackless Character Motivations Strange Land
Sea—a place some call Returned Abeir. With no One or more primary desires might inf luence you. You followed clues and f leeting visions to creep
homeland to call your own any longer, you decide to On the Lam: Apparently, your commission was behind the world, which is when you discovered
travel the world and see what there is to see. quite pricy and required some hard-to-come-by Sigil, the City of Doors. You couldn’t imagine who
A Nation Reborn: You are not interested in components. Thus your sudden f light ruff led the could have created it or how, and Sigil held portals
hearing, for the hundredth time, that Lantan is gone feathers of not only the enclave where you were uncounted, leading to other planes and even other
for good. You believe you can bring it back. Some- forged, but also severely angered the court of the one worlds. It was a wondrously strange place whose
how. The details are hazy at the moment. But first who paid for your exclusive birth. Thus, although sprawling streets looped around inside a miles-
things first: Your goal is to locate any other survivors you live a life of freedom, full and glad in your abil- wide ring so they met where they began. Creatures
(or their descendants, in most cases) and share with ity to go where you will and do as you wish, every so beyond count teemed in those streets, and you were
them your dream. Others might have survived the often you are forced to f lee or fight bounty hunters one of them, but only brief ly. Out of your element
cataclysm. Right? that show up unlooked for and attempt to capture and unsettled by the sudden appearance of a woman
Roleplaying Option: Your speech is riddled with you and return you for “reprocessing.” Some day, you bristling with living blades, you stumbled through a
anachronisms and out-of-date references, but hey, know you’ll have to deal with the enclave, or better strange portal and fell into a strange land.
you grew up in a different era. This might lead some yet, the person responsible for your creation in the
people to believe you are dim-witted and not “alive.” first place. Character Motivations
You sometimes reconsider your actions, but in the A Business of Your Own: Having “grown up” in One or more primary desires might inf luence you.
meantime, you don’t mind taking advantage of those the trading compound of the Red Wizard enclave, Return to Eberron: Though you were excited
who underestimate you. something of the life must have imparted itself to to find Sigil and even to travel to Toril, an entirely
you. You think you have what it takes to one day alternate world to your own dragon-prophesied
become a merchant power. All you require is a little home, you were dismayed to discover that no easy
Red Wizard Exclusive seed capital. Given your situation and the state of the way back immediately presented itself. When you
A Red Wizard enclave is usually a small mercan- world, adventuring seems the easiest way to attain picked yourself up from the cobbles of a Waterd-
tile manor sited within the walls of a city large that end. You’re not certain if you’ll begin invest- havian alley, nothing remained of the passage. It
enough to support robust magical trade. Red Wizard ing your proceeds immediately into a likely looking went one way only.
enclaves can be found in many of the major coastal business that has already started, or if you’ll wait

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 Origin Stories

Either because you left someone or something fortress detonated, nothing remained but fragments
behind in Sigil or Eberron, or because you dislike the and the occasional piece of strangely animate metal- SHIFTERS IN TORIL
idea of being trapped in any one world, your ultimate lic sculpture. Of course, other races not officially described in
goal is to find a path back to the world of your birth. The first thing you recall is being hauled through the FORGOTTEN REALMS source material can also be
To do so, you’ll have to spend some time adventuring metallic tunnels out into bright sunlight on some- chosen by player characters if DMs allow it, such
where old magic once held sway while seeking paths thing you later learned was a sledge. You were as shifters. One place naturally suited to shifters
perhaps erased by a shaken cosmology, but you are dragged into the stone stockades of Rimlost on the is Dambrath because lycanthropy flows in many a
confident that in the end you will prevail. edges of Glaur Lake. Taken for just another oddity Dambrathan’s veins. Across the continent, Luruar
Draconic Prophecy: You are a scholar of the of metallic, stone, and wooden sculpture, salvag- also serves as an ideal homeland for shifters. In the
draconic Prophecy. You believe that despite your ers extracted you from some nameless dungeon of Glimmerwood, the “skinchanging” People of the
presence in a world that doesn’t know the names the Glaur Barrens. When you begin to move and Black Blood live with lycanthropy. Though shifters
of the three progenitor dragons, Khyber, Eberron, talk in a language you later learned was outlawed are not lycanthropes, it’s not too far a stretch to
and Siberys, the draconic Prophecy still holds true! in Returned Abeir (Primordial), you caused quite imagine shifters living in either region.
Before you fell to Toril, your research revealed a stir in the compound. Some there wanted to wor-
Khyber and Siberys learned of a secret tied to the ship you thinking perhaps you were an envoy of the
fate of the universe, and that they fought to control Primordial whose fortress towered over the region there must be some connection between them and
this power. It was on the trail of one of the many about ninety years ago, and others wanted to destroy yourself. Why else would these hunting parties,
shards of this Prophecy that you sought Sigil. Can you, fearing you were a particularly sneaky anaxim, apparently out of the ruins of Gontal, keep finding
it be any accident you came to Toril? Of course not! a kind of golemlike monster commonly encountered you? Your choice is to keep running farther and far-
Thus you are content to stay in this world, seeking in the ruins. You slipped free of the bewildering situ- ther afield, perhaps all the way to the new continent
the Prophecy that illuminates the future, while ation by stowing away on a riverboat heading down of Faerûn that “appeared” across the sea, or to return
striving to keep in mind that understanding rarely the Orlaphar. From Gontal City you joined a trading to the place where your first memories were born, to
presents itself while following a single path. caravan heading across Esmur Flats into the Dusk find out the truth (if any can be had).
Roleplaying Option: Seeing as much as you have Ports. In Tarsith, you learned what it meant to be a Patriot: The land you finally settled in and called
across the face of more than one world, it’s all too living, thinking creature, and that life can be a won- your own adopted you, for the most part, with open
easy to adopt a world-weary demeanor. Thus when drous if daunting challenge all its own. arms. You know it as your homeland in your heart.
something new catches your attention, you enthu- Though you might sometimes travel far from it and
siastically follow it up—sometimes into danger you Character Motivations perhaps only rarely visit, you keep alive the memory of
know you shouldn’t discount. One or more primary desires might inf luence you. it by adopting its traditions and regaling your compan-
Get to the Bottom of Things: Every so often, ions with its stories (but not to the point of annoyance,
you are attacked, usually when you least expect one hopes). If your adopted homeland ever has need of
Vestige of Gontal it. The attack often takes the form of one or more you, you’ll be the first in line to answer that call.
Gontal hunkers behind its mountainous border golemlike constructs possessed of a murderous Roleplaying Option: On more than a few occa-
in southwestern Returned Abeir. It reveals little pseudolife, though nothing as sophisticated as con- sions, your trust in others has been betrayed. You’ve
of itself to outsiders except for irregular trade that sciousness (you tell yourself ). Called anaxims, these learned to be cautious, and though you cooperate
includes specialty commodities, magical elixirs, and creatures appear to be random conglomerations of with others and are civil in disagreements, you
sometimes, oddly ornamented golemwork toys. For iron, gears, shearing blades, and metallic hides jut- harbor a spark of suspicion regarding the motives of
millennia, a primordial’s brooding, metallic fortress ting with too many cutting implements and rusted other people. It is best to be on your guard in a world
sprawled across this land’s northern reaches, an surfaces; they possess none of the humanoid sym- where most creatures are made purely of f lesh and
area now referred to as the Glaur Barrens. After the metry of your own polished form. Still, you suspect you are not.

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