Monks in the Dragonlance Setting - A new spin on old material.

Monks!

Didn’t exist when the OG was published. Weis and Hickman didn’t include them in the game, but they did include one unique group that I think the Monk class would fall into nicely. 

But to flesh this out we need to do a bit of retcon to the Seekers and see how Monks fit nicely into their ranks. 

Here is what we know about the Seekers. They were founded in the Age of Despair when the true gods left and people were seeking new gods to replace the old ones. Unfortunately no new gods showed up.

In the books characters recall charlatans fleecing people and pretending to be true clerics. While the Seekers may have started off like this, they evolved into something more and became established in some societies as governmental organizations.  

The City of Haven is known as the “Lords City of Haven” as it is the headquarters of the Seeker faith. They came to power in that city after ousting another false faith the Belzorites. They then expanded and at the start of the game have Theocracies in parts of Abanyasia. 

The problem is that the Belzorites were using magic to prop themselves into positions of power. The Seekers in the OG had nothing that did this. They were just really well organized and offered an alternate religion of false gods that never delivered on any miracles or prayers. 

So lets retcon the Seekers a bit to fit in with 5E. 

Instead of having them Seeking new Gods to worship, let's make them into scholars and Seekers of the Truth. This means the Seekers have an active reason to go after charlatan religions and expose them. Eliminate the competition via exposing their lies and bring them into the fold of Seekerisim…. But again replacing on false  ideology with another doesn’t seem to fit in with the Monks as in the books. 

Seekerisim will instead be about rejecting not only the false gods of charlatans, but all gods. After all the true gods left Krynn and took the clerics just prior to the cataclysm. Either one of those events could have been disastrous to the world as it was, but both together was absolutely devastating. 

This wasn’t just an act of one god, or the gods of evil, but all the gods, good and neutral deities are all equally guilty for the devastation, chaos and carnage that followed. 

Therefore the Seekers will recognize that the gods may have once been present on Krynn, but they never truly cared about the people as they claimed. Thus none of them are worthy of worship or veneration. Mortals are far better off without the fickle gods who wage wars at the cost of millions of lives of all races on Krynn. 

Looking at the first and second Dragon Wars is proof positive of this. It is an unacceptable argument to the seekers that the Kingpriest was solely responsible in his arrogance for the Cataclysm. The Gods could have not thrown a mountain at Istar which led to global level catastrophes and instead could have denied the Kingpriest his divine power, thus humbling him.

The Seekers instead turn to three tenants or disciplines as a way of life. Knowledge, Self Discipline and Ki. Using these core values as pillars of Seekerisim they are able to obtain a place of relative respect and offer stability that the long lost religions once did. 

While the old religions had iconic temples and churches with elaborate designs, Seekerisim instead turned to setting up theocracies. Maintaining law and order to promote the values of Self-Discipline and thus creating environments ripe for learning and obtaining knowledge which will eventually lead to enlightenment and the ability to draw on Ki. 

The ability to use Ki isn’t dependent on a deity and thus would be very appealing to the Seekers as a source of power and to prove that the people of Krynn do not need gods to do apparently miraculous things. 

So with this in mind I’ll create the Half-Elf Monk for the party, Theoden the True.

I’m going to go with a Sage Background as knowledge being important to the Seekers would make this a logical choice. 

Being a Sage makes him proficient in Arcana and History. Both useful things if he comes across a charlatan that he needs to expose. Additionally these skills will be useful in exploration of ruins, ancient temples and usage of magic items. As a Half-Elf he gets proficiency in two skills of choice as well. The Monk class gives him the option of Acrobatics, Athletics, History, Stealth, Insight and Religion. 

Well History would be a duplicate choice, so I’ll go with Religion, and Acrobatics. Stealth and Insight would seem to be the best fit for the character. While Athletic is nice, the party does have a barbarian and will have a dwarf who should be able to do all the heavy lifting. 

There is another BIG benefit to this character. The backgrounds provide a lot of capacity for communications. Two languages of choice from the Sage Background, being a half elf grants him Common, Elven and one additional language. So five languages total, which is more than enough for this character to do well in almost any situation. 

In the end Theoden ended up with Elven, Common, Dwarven, Gobblinspeak, and Draconic. This covers all the basic languages of Krynn and Draconic would be needed in researching ancient history of the early dragon wars. 

So with this done I’d say we have a good fit for Monks in the world of Dragonlance 5E and can have Theoden join the group with a reasonable backstory and motivations. 

What are your thoughts on the retcon for the Seekers? Was there a better direction to go in, or do Monks not fit into the Dragonlance Saga at all?