Diamond Throne

The Diamond Throne is Monte Cook's and others', mostly Mike Mearls', setting for Arcana Unearthed.

The Lands of the Diamond Throne span most of the northeast of the continent Terrakal on the planet Serran. Southwest is another land full of not-nagpa called "Harrids". Across the ocean eastward are giants; waaaay overland westward are dragons, or so people say.

The AU worldbuild started in its own book separate from the AU book, but was inlined in Arcana Evolved. The latter expanded the known parts of Terrakal bigly: Skaraven for the harrids, Pallembor for the dragons or at least draco'djacent.

Serran (unlike Praemal) sports additional ties with the Monteverse, albeit mostly retconned by way of Beyond Countless Doorways. These run particularly through the warped land of Thartholan, across the Bitter Peaks westward. BCD details an Earth elemental plane, Deluer; also there is the hell Kin-Li'in. Sticking with the AU book is Kaleknos also hellish. No heavens tho'.

Backstory

The lands of the Diamond Throne, retconned

You know how AU is one of those We Don't Alignment Here settings? DT makes clear that on this world Serran did once used to be such a thing as eeevil.

Lord Foul was played by the dramojh, something like "our scions" in Draconic. Some asshole dragons got into their scaly horny heads to juggle some demon-testes or something. Thereby were spawned these nightmarish mixes of dragon and spider (because creepy) who subsequently took over THE WORLD, at least the northeast side of their continent.

After centuries of tyranny and body-horror throughout this book's map, the Giants got loose from Donaldson's book and anchored off the coast. The liberated humans sided with them; the lore is less clear on the Litorians, who might have rebelled by themselves first, but they too rallied to the giant-human alliance. Subsequently ensued a war to the knife, eradicating the dramojh, much to everyone's surprise. The humans soon found themselves under new management - Giant management. Suckers!

Prestige Classes

DT suggests Arcane Archer, Assassin, Dwarven Defender (for giants!), loremaster, shadowdancer. From Eldritch Might 1-2 (but not 3...): Embermage, Mirror Master, Eldritch Warrior. The Scarred Lands' Relics & Rituals series get a shout-out in the Vigilant and the Spirit Walker.

Specific to DT are: Beast Reaver, Crystal Warrior, Darkbond, Giant Paragon, Mage Priest (to replace the cleric), Ollamh Lorekeeper, Rune Lord (who replaces the EM1 Graven One), Somnamancer.

The Giant Paragon will be extended to several other races in AE, in the form of racial levels.

Monster, Monster, Mo-mo-mo-monster

• Alabast are alien Noldor from elsewhere (but they're Not Elves because reasons).
• Chorrim are militaristic hostile humanoids from the caves but aren't orcs or hobgoblins because.
• Cyclops, you get it. Of interest to the giants because they look like they might be evidence that the giants are not, as everyone says they are, aliens here.
• Dark Warden aren't Forestals from The Illearth War. In this context they are an undigested prestige-class of NPC druids so redundant.
• Harrid aren't nagpa but quit bugging me. They live over on Skaraven and subsist on magic.
• Inchon aren't bullywugs.
• Radont aren't the sentient horses from Lord Foul's Bane.
• Shadow Troll well you know.
• Rhodin are scavenging thieving humanoid scum but aren't goblins because - oh never mind. There's something like 'em in Ptolus. (Ed. = The whole AU / DT universe never was as original as it wanted to be.)
• Slassan are about as close to dramojh as you're likely to meet. Half snake, half spider, all nasty.
• Xaaer aka death ooze are Dark-infused big slimes.

Later Mearls & Monte put out Legacy of the Dragons for more new(-ish) monsters, and NPCs. This retconned dramojh origins: from "Tenebrian Seeds". The Dread Helminth here wandered over to other planes in Beyond Countless Doorways.

Supporting Literature

All this had to be playtested, and new puntersplayers had to be convinced it could be fun to play without getting paid.

FREE SHIT!!

Three short adventures were posted gratis on the Malhavoc.com site.

Between Life and Death, by Monte Cook. This was how the AU rules and DT got introduced to his readers. That might explain why the plot revolves around two massive electrodes between Green and Dark, where the latter anode is considered the Pillar of Death. That is, of course, not how AU / DT in published form works; death is a natural part of the Green, where the Dark is undeath. Also the Council of Magisters is active which they are, canonically, inactive in DT - although there's a fanclub trying to revive it in one of the magisters' old universities. But maybe we're judging from an early edition because we're just that damn old. We do get to see some undead in this world. Archived Here

The Depths of Hunger, by Tom Lommel. Lommel, a playtester for this series, composed this as "Fate of the Iron Witch" which he ran at Gen Con 2003. AHOY, MATEY as your party moves a macguffin from Ka-Rone to Shana, one of the Free Cities southward. There's a time limit because tournament. Archived Here

The Thrice-Cursed Crown, by Mike Mearls. The crown of "Varran" here is dramojh or maybe pre-dramojh, acting like Sauron's Ring in that it has its own opinions as to who gets to wear it. Luckily, the last owner realised what a bane she had and locked herself in a castle at the Harrowdeep up north. Unluckily, some nosy mojh has found her vault. If you've played WGR3: Rary the Traitor or GAZ13, you get the idea: no matter how bad your hairline is getting, this is not your hat. Archived Here

Children of the Rune

The setting got a short-story collection, as White Wolf settings did; following the pattern of Champions of the Scarred Lands (2002). This collection takes its theme from those marysues marked by runes. Such books, mostly we read for lore, but some gems are buried in here.

Here we learn about the Nightwalker mafia (Lucien Soulban, "Stone Ghosts"; more so Will McDermott, "Child of the Street"); about those two redundant runecults (Fleshrunes: Bruce Cordell and Keith Strohm, "Hollows of the Heart"; Runepriests: Wolfgang Baur, "Name Day"); about old city Sormere (Ed Greenwood, "Fallen Star"). Greenwood features thieves, McDermott an assassin.

Richard Lee Byers did well in "The Silent Man" expositing on the difference between Death and The Dark, honestly better than Cook himself had done in, you know, an actual adventure module on that topic. We will further credit Miranda Horner's "Clash of Duty" for a real moral conflict given the AU focus on oaths and life - and the lorefags among us will appreciate the time granted to those quickling extremists called Darkling.

Then there's Mike Mearls' "The Pebble Before The Avalanche". Like "Child of the Street" some gangsta shit is goin' down; except that the Nightwalkers aren't present to organise the crime. Here's a character labeled "Champion Of War, Herald Of Battle" which entity had gone undetailed in AU. As to that redundancy, some might smell a Cook-Mearls debate as to what name for the "Champion" would be coolest which Cook won because - who owns Malhavoc press, suck it.

Mystic Secrets... Revealed!

Diamond Throne accumulated a few splatbooks in 2004. Mike Mearls did Mystic Secrets, that it "draw logical conclusions from the tone and feel of the core book". To put it politely, much here constrains (at least) the mysteries of the Diamond Throne.

Mystic Secrets offered that runechildren become runechildren because of a backstory, including REVENGE. It further proposes a Spock Goatee Universe runechild, Herald Of Annihilation, serving the Dark. In the spirit of The Nexus, it outlines three magical settings. These are: Bone Cathedral, an ancient meeting-place within the ribcage of a dead dragon; Infinite Library, which stores in manuscript form all the Akashic Memory; and Roof of the World, on "Arathamis" on the Bitter Peaks, with awesome teleport powers.

If runechildren can be made from some past trauma this implies (further) they are not messianic forces of good, but are branded by some powerful outside force for its own shits n' giggles. The Herald herein joins the Dark Champion and the Darkbond, maybe superceding both. As a creature of the Dark, he (further) marks the dramojh as not being of the Dark intrinsically. The dramojh perhaps fought the very undead they'd raised themselves in Verdune; and was Vahr of Verdune - Legacy, 122 - a Herald?

Arathamis vies with Herrosh as the tallest of the Peaks, but maybe that's its dragon name. Within this mountain, the Hall of Kings has several portals to Verdune... which is interesting in that Verdune was to be the NON magical realm of this continent until the dramojh got there, contrast Thartholan.

Above all (as it were) The Infinite Library is structurally incompatible with the lore of akashics, which is pre-literate; and one must wonder about something so powerful here. The DM may wish to limit its scope, say to Terrakal only. Or is it another plane in conjunction?

Your mileage with Mystic Secrets, to sum up, will vary. A lot.

Other

Also the minor publishers Fiery Dragon and Mystic Eye offered some adventures around Ebonring Keep, nigh on the Floating Forest between the two north/south mountain-ranges.