Group Patrons

Part of the Inspiration Series

David Foxfire

May 28, 2022

Trigger Warning

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While there are plenty of other books that are lined up in the Inspiration Series, Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy has so much material to use. The next two articles in this series will remain here. The next one is on Villains, and this one deals with Group Patrons.

A Group Patron is a replacement for the Factions that appeared early in the first campaigns in Fifth Edition. We’re talking about the Lord’s Alliance, The Harpers, The Emerald Enclave, and so on. Not only is the use of Factions somewhat clunky with the renown and added complication to the Adventurer’s League, but it is also not setting agnostic. All five factions are locked into the Forgotten Realms, and while they’re a perfect part of Lathander’s world, it doesn’t fit well, if at all, in other settings. Especially homebrew settings like Penumaria. But you can whip up a Group Patron and have it fit into any setting with no problem.

A Group Patron works by providing something that links all the characters together. It could be the one who passed out that ‘Looking for Group’ flier (with all those tear-off tags cut on the bottom) or it could be the one who took them all in when they were children and raised them. They could be an employer, they could be a common church or orphanage, they could be some aristocrat or military order, all they must do is to be the person or organization that binds the party together, providing them with adventure leads, support, a home base, and plenty of other benefits.

With The Sunken Fortress, there is only one patron, Castle Chronicla. Of course there are others, and one of those will be in the supplemental document. (I’ve been told to branch out from Castle Chronicla and Amaunator, and while I can’t so a clear break now, I can go Amaunator-adjacent and start there.) I’ll list some other possible Group Patrons in Penumaria after I show the template I’ll use to depict them in the publications.

The Group Patrons Template

By looking at the group patrons that existed in the three sourcebooks I listed, I could find a pattern that I will use on all Group Patrons, something I can keep in a format to put the material in. It starts with the Introduction of the Patron as a whole, with its origin, its history or recent history, or the purpose it has for this setting. Or at least the campaign or module involved.

What follows is the listing of the Important Members of this Patron, the leaders, the organizers, and the contacts. They’ll be at least three stat blocked characters in this part. After these three characters, the rest of the organization will be broken down with general descriptions of the various subgroups of these Secondary Characters. Of course, being that they’re generalizations, they aren’t intended to be used as a cookie-cutter. Feel free to make each of your characters an individual. In fact, I encourage it.

After that, there is a listing of the Rivals and Enemies of the Patron. Every Patron has been through life, and because they did, they’ve bound to have at least some competition, or at most they have some people with enmity with the Patron.

Then there is a list of Operatives which the Player Characters will become, broken down by character class. There might also be some added options for those who qualify for an additional case. Then come the Perks that come with membership in this Group Patron, what the Patron can do for you for your services. This goes on top of being rewarded and compensated for your time and efforts, of course. And finally, a shortlist of general Quests that the Patron has for the Operatives.

Example Group Patrons

Castle Chronicla

The main Group Patron in The Sunken Fortress, since it would be Amaunator (I still have to write about him) who will give the party the quest and send them on their way. While the party can be normal adventurers who answered Ama’s job listing over at the Blood of the Vine, there is an option that the adventurers are all servants in Castle Chronicla. Amaunator is known to take some of the maids and butlers he took in and then train them into becoming adventurers and would build a party with all the necessary members. It could be possible that novice players would choose a precon character (which will be in that campaign’s Vault) who is such a servant turned adventurer.

The Spellcaster’s Guild

This Group Patron was around long before Amber showed up in Amber of the Woods. And although this group doesn’t look for adventurers, there are times when they’re needed. Oakroot is surrounded by a lot of farmers and merchants, a good number of them who, due to the proximity of the Forest of Magic, has the potential of being spellcasters, but they don’t have the desire. The most they want to use is a non-attacking cantrip, or maybe a ritual like [Tenser’s] Floating Disk or Comprehend Languages. Even if it’s something like Mage Armor or Misty Step, they wouldn’t go beyond 4-5 spells and only need no more than a dozen Spell Points. As these Hedge Wizards learned these spells and wondered how they were able to live without them, they found out that, even with their limited number of spells they used, they needed some sort of support system to help with maintaining a spellbook, brew potions as they dabble into Herbalism, look into buying some magic item, and so on. The Spellcaster’s Guild was created by Gary Badillo, the proprietor of the Wizard’s Roots Magic Emporium. Since he has ownership of the entire building (and put the front door to the inside of the block for discretion reasons,) he used the upper floors for the Guildhall.

As mentioned earlier, the Guild has a standing library, several places for study and instruction, a few ritual circles, and some other rooms that I’ll think up when I make the map of that building.

The Adventuring Guild

This one will be formed during Amber of the Woods. Mara Levitsky, the head of the school, was surprised by how educated Amber Merichello is, passing the assessment test she gave with a 100%, something she has never seen before. But it was Amber’s reaction to passing that test (“How in God’s name can I do that? I’ve was kicked out of school at the 6th Grade!”) as well as hearing why Amber was so cold and wary toward her that tugged at her heart. Mara insists that Amber has more than just book learning, even if it is under the tutelage of the Witch of the Woods. She needed some social contacts, Mara would say. She needed to make some friends. She also would need to learn some extra skills if she’s going to become an adventurer.

But Amber would flat out refuse to step one foot in that school. She just won’t join them. That scar dug too deep.

Mara needed another way to get to Amber. But since adventuring skills aren’t her forte, she did know people who can teach them. And since she knew that there were other students who wanted to adventure at least once and would love to have Amber join them, she decided to touch base with some of her friends, including The Thornwatch and Nalladrie, into creating a guild—a group patron officially—who would train youth adventurers using practice dungeons and campaigns designed to be less than lethal. The theme of this guild is “There’s no shame in failure. Try, fall, learn, get back up, try again, repeat till you get it.”

I’ll be working on this later when we get to that point in Amber of the Woods.

Keepers of the Feather

This is the subject of the worldbuilding supplemental document and is available at this URL: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AjNYReLtj6OIoDUqvnuR4nLC3P_G .

What was once a Ravenloft-spanning watch group for all Domains of Dread is now—as far as Penumaria’s section of the Keepers is concerned—a think tank of the supernatural activity going on in this real betwixt and between. Pippkin Ducaine, of Tablelake Arisen, is part of this group.

With their headquarters centered in the Barony of Chronicla, the Keepers keep an eye out for Supernatural Activity, which now includes Celestial Activity as well as Ghostlights and reincarnation, and by reason and logic, we can throw in them looking for when Yeshu shows up. Of course, this means that they began to dabble in mysticism and spirituality, in relation to the spirits, ghostlights, and reincarnations of Penumaria.

ANIMA

“Someone needs to keep watch over the spellcasters, especially when there’s always some spellcasters using their spellcasting for evil, malice, and destructive purpose. Especially the ones who are doing damage to The Weave. But…as the saying goes…Who’s watching the Watchmen?” – Amber Merichello, when she was the Witch of the Woods (sometimes in the future after Amber of the Woods.)

Whenever you have spellcasters, you get the occasional asshole who does bad things to magic. I’m not just talking about people using magic for evil purposes but also those who abuse magic which causes damage to the Weave. It could be a single event as nefarious as Karsus’ Avatar. (Even though magic’s first and only attempted twelfth level spell was cast in the Forgotten Realms, the story of Karsus’ Avatar is known in every campaign setting in The Realms. It was that destructive.) It could also be a death by a thousand papercuts as magic is overused. To be effective spellcasters, you should respect the flow of the energy you draw in to cast the spells. Nalladrie will harp this part into Amber. There will always be the asshole who doesn’t do this, however.

When you have asshole spellcasters doing bad things to the Weave, you get groups dedicated to the protection of the Weave so that it continues to work for all spellcasters. And when you get such a group, you get people in that group that step over the line.

Or in other words, “Who Watches the Watchmen?”

In Penumaria, ANIMA is that Watchmen. Who must be watched.

ANIMA stands for Autonomous National Investigators of Magical Affairs. ANIMA is an inter-kingdom group of spellcasters, artificers, and adventurers tasked with monitoring the use of spellcasting by the public. While they do not have arrest capabilities, they do work with local law enforcement to bring those who abuse the weave to justice, using various tools and items specialty designed to restrict a spellcaster’s ability to cast spells, including disrupting the flow of the mana going toward the caster or even severing the caster’s connection to the weave itself. (Note that this only works on Arcane Casters. Divine Casters and Warlocks are beyond their capability, due to the nature of their connections. ANIMA has to assume that the Celestials and warlock patrons know enough to keep their casters in line.)

Of course, with all these tools, it should come as no surprise that there are some within ANIMA who would go the route of the Knight Templars or go like Mordo and start stripping spellcasters of their ability to cast magic. Some ANIMA members met rather gristly ends because of that.

ANIMA is a new group to be discovered, as they appeared in a Role Play I was in. There are already several characters involved, and the developments on this group are becoming quite interesting.

Acquisitions Incorporated

Come now. Do you really think that Omin Dran wouldn’t consider a branch in Penumaria once he is aware of it, long before Jerry Holkins even thinks of it? I mean, he has franchises Faerun, Nerath, Krynn, Oerth, Ravinca, Sigil, Avernus, and even Gaia for Christ’s sake. And in some timeline, Omin even knows Ama intimately, because when he was still Matthew Christopher he was an Acq Inc intern!

Amaunator’s origin story, Ashes of the Dawn, is in two formats: a Waterdeep version, and a Watercradle version. It’s still in the air over which one will be cannon. It’ll be discussed in a later article. In the Waterdeep version, Matthew Christopher often shadows Omin and ends up an Intern at the Home Office in Waterdeep. Omin ended up putting him on the payroll when he showed the CEO of AI something that made him drop everything and investigate the event personally. “Thanks for letting me know about this, Matt. I’ve gotta look into this myself and it looks like I can depend on you for backup. Here’s a Wildcard License. Welcome to Acquisitions Incorporated.”

But regardless of what storyline comes out on top, It’s not if there’s going to be an Acq Inc franchise on Penumaria, but when.

By the way, The Gaia franchise doesn’t adventure per se, but they do acquire the occasional item that ends up in the Home Office. Their real purpose, however, is to watch Wizards of the Coast and inform Omin Dran if they’re doing anything screwy there. Because the crap they pull with their publications has a nasty tendency to have an effect in The Realms. Somebody needs to keep an eye on Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, and since Jerry Holkins is nearby, might as well be Acquisitions Incorporated.

More groups to come

These are the group patrons I know of at this time. There will be more to come, and I will delve into these groups once they are discovered. After all, I’m only focusing on an area no more than 100 Miles Squared (check this, please, I’m guestimating.) in a continent the size of North America. I’ve only hinted at three major cities, and at that, most of them are only abstract. Another one will pop up, and I’ll worry about the group when it does.

In future Articles

The very next episode would be my first Kaizen file. That’s when I take the updates to a good amount of material, be they people, places, or things, and update them. I did tell you that I’ll be constantly working on and improving material (which is what Kaizen means in Japanese) and I want to make sure that the improved material is in one place for easier reference.