Editing Dread Metrol (section)

==Part 3: Queen Dannel: Darklord of Metrol==
[[File:DreadMetrol_Dannel.png|200px|thumb|left|'''Dannel is Watching''']]
Ever since she was a child, Dannel has heard a voice whispering to her from the dark. The voice told her of her destiny, that she and she alone could lead Cyre to victory. And it revealed the secrets of the people around her—revealing just how weak the people she trusted and respected truly were. At first she had doubts, but everything the voice told her proved true, so she gradually began to trust and believe it. She could see that King Connos was failing to lead the nation to victory as it deserved. While she loved her father, she also saw all of his flaws — and decided to take Cyre’s future into her own hands. While the people believed that Connos’s death on the battlefield was by enemy hands, in truth his squire Marson killed him on Dannel’s orders and according to her plans, allowing her to rise to the throne. In the public eye, Queen Dannel was charismatic and brilliant. But the voice still whispered to her, revealing the weaknesses of those around her and reminding her of every betrayal. It promised that she alone could lead the nation to victory — but only if she was willing to walk a bloody path.

A masterful Artificer, politician, and military leader, Dannel truly and honestly loves her people and wants to lead them to greatness and prosperity, and was beloved by her people in turn before Metrol was taken by the mists. But faced with an endless and unwinnable siege, her refusal to admit defeat and absolute certainty that she alone can save them all has caused her to become the iron-fisted tyrant she is now -- quite literally, since an attack by a blue dracolich forced her to replace several of her body parts with magical prostheses. She does understand, on some level, that she is feeding the people she loves to a terrible war machine and it would probably be better for them to just surrender at this point, but her own arrogant pride and desperate pursuit of victory at any cost means that she largely ignores this fact. 

Dannel is explicitly immortal. Even if her body is destroyed, a new, fully-mechanical one will just be built in one of her workshops. Even if all of those are destroyed, some heretofore-unknown workshop hidden under the city would do it instead. The only way to truly defeat her is to break through her obstinate ignorance and force her to recognize that the price of her victory would just be too high, making her understand the cost of her actions and realize that the survival of her people means more to her than victory. Doing so would likely cause the mists to lift and Metrol to return to Eberron, and though that would mean the city would be dumped right in the middle of the Mournland it would still be a massive improvement.

While she has done many terrible things in pursuit of victory, exactly how far she'd gone before the Mourning is up to the DM. Maybe it takes hundreds of Cyran souls to power a Warforged Colossus, or perhaps the death of her first son -- the infant Prince Brusst -- was part of some scheme by her. She may have been responsible for the Mourning, whether accidentally causing it due to her recklessly ignoring the dangers of her actions or even intentionally -- that inner voice showing her her a path that would mean she would never have to surrender even if it meant destroying all of Cyre.

The identity of the voice she's heard all her life is up to the DM, and there are three possibilities specifically brought up by the book. The first is that it's truly only Dannel's inner voice, and that she and she alone is responsible for her own actions. Another is that the voice is that of Tul Oreshka, known as the Truth in the Darkness — an overlord known for revealing secrets that unhinge even the strongest minds. If that's the case, its possible it was manipulating Dannel as some plot to free itself, which may have been what caused the Mourning. The strangest possibility presented is that it's the voice is that of a future Dannel, guiding her younger self to become the Darklord she is now.