A Kingdom of Twilight and Snow: DM's Block

I now know what you mean by eyeball planet. This makes so much more sense!

So, you've got a large island nation. You've got multiple tribes that are being united. You've got the name of the antagonists of "The People of the Dragon" but you seem to be sidestepping the obvious "Dragonborn" antagonists.

Picking apart the name, it sure sounds like it would be pointing towards Dragonborn. However! you have opened it up a few ways.  First, it's "The People", meaning it could really be anyone, so figuring that out is something that needs to happen, which is what it sounds like you are stuck on.  But the interesting part is "of the Dragon". Singular. Meaning, to me, that whoever "The People" end up being, they are either born from or subjects of a single dragon. So, Dragonborn, Goliaths, whatever would fit, or even a combination of both.  Goliaths and Dragonborn working together en mass to thwart the protagonists?  I would find this intriguing as a player because it immediately bears the questions "Ok, why are these two races together, and only these two races?" and "Who is in charge of them and why?"

Also, where did they come from? They are near the frozen area, so maybe they find their home in the glacial lands of the north. And what sort of dragons come from frozen wastelands? Sure sounds like a white dragon.  However, what if it wasn't your typical white dragon?  What if this white dragon was actually quite intelligent and strategic, who would want to command armies of followers?  If people knew the monster manual, they would know White Dragons are typically more animalistic, but perhaps some process changed it at some point to make it super intelligent.  And, being more intelligent, it knows to not put itself in danger when not necessary, so it slowly amassed a following among those who would share its morals.  A few tribes of white Dragonborn that live on the coast of the frozen wastes would easily follow it if they feared, or revered, its power and intellect.  Goliaths, too, would share this penchant for battle and would find living in the wastes a challenge.  The promise of power and glory would be a perfect motivation for them to join The People of the Dragon as well.

Now, motivation for the dragon? Could be as simple as world domination. Could be riches. It could even be that it knows it is special among dragons and dragonkind, and so they want to eliminate the competition by removing all other dragons, maybe finding another white dragon to mate with to create a better race of dragons, in their eyes.  Maybe they have a beef with dragons that might live in the huge desert and just need resources in this kingdom to fight them more intelligently instead of brute forcing it.

Just some thoughts, though! Hopefully some of it helps.

Something that I did once, a pretty young (relatively) obtained tremendous political and personal power through alchemy. At 55, this blue dragon would fight and kill many dragons much older than him with his intelligence and potions. In addition, he devised an alchemical formula that when used on humanoids altered them and turned them into loyal servants/henchmen.

The People of the Dragon could be Vallaar that were altered by the dragon ruling over them, either a dragon from another region or a mutant from a local variety. Either way I'd recommend subverting the expectations of the PCs in someway with the main antagonists.

Alternatively, the People of the Dragon could be a militaristic cult that worship a dragon god. Just what came to me as I was waiting for the wifi to reload.

Randos away--

People of the Dragon does sound much like a cult as 00dlez & Neptune explore, but what if the People of the Dragon experienced a schism, a conflict that separated them into two separate Cults of the Dragon, each mirroring one of the uninhabitable quadrants (hot & cold). If you have a flame/fire/sun cult in struggle against a frozen/cold/moon cult, well that will take care of your antagonists problem. The cults are in conflict over the land of [scrolls down] Valkaar, and your tribes are almost beneath the notice of the mystical or monstrous belligerents. As neither cold nor hot faction can operate well in the zone of their adversary, the temperate region is the natural battle ground. If the conflict razes the homelands of the human tribes, so what? Neither side of cultist would care to spend more time there than absolutely necessary.

I think this will work well for a fantasy setting, as there is no shortage of creatures/species/races acclimated to live in purely frigid or purely scorched zones. If there is a triangle of conflict, it provides opportunity for intrigue as your humanoids of the temperate zone attempt to play the heated sides against one another. Or perhaps the tribes are the '3rd world' and there are factions in a grand proxy war where you are loyal to hot or cold-- frozen diplomats in Raelghr's capital using influence to stymie the efforts of the golden skinned heliolisks of the Golden Cult, for example.

As far as agenda for your antagonistic cults, there is simply no shortage of fantastic apocalypse to choose from. What immediately came to mind thinking up divine patrons for your cults to worship are the Dragons of Revelation - creatures so horrific and otherworldly, their description in holy text are confused as metaphorical or political allusions. Personally, my own setting is a multi-faceted conflict amongst civilizations, all trying to bring about their own chosen version of Armageddon so this is relevant to my interests. In Biblical revelations, the Dragon is a stand in for a creature of end times, and lucky you get to choose the form of your destroyer.

When you mentioned Norse, I immediately thought of Fenrir-wolf. Wolves, in my personal opinion, hybrid with dragons quite well. This is clear given how dragons to my knowledge can mate with darn near anything.

Norse Ragnarok, as you now, features Fenrir finally capturing and devouring the sun. This is obviously one of the objectives of the Cult of Ice, as it would acclimate the entire world to ice and dark as they prefer. Utterly destructive and crazed, I can see the agenda of the ice cult to be one of violence and murder, ritual sacrifice to Fenrir the Wyrmwulf, growing his stature and power until he can simply devour the last light.


For whatever reason, I have cast the Cult of Gold as mystical, learned, scientific lizard folk fully energized by life in utter sunlight, the constant rays infusing their eldritch blood with power. Mystical approaches to solar end times are fun to think through if you treat magical systems as extremely advanced versions of science. "The Midnight Sun" is an old Twilight Zone episode, where characters deal with a world pushed subtly off its axis, spiraling ever closer to the sun with each passing day. This could manifest in your temperate zone as the sun rising in the sky, the parching of the southern band, the extension of the deserts through fertile lands. One sci-fi short story I read (but can't remember the title) was premised on eartlings launching so many rockets, so much mass into space, that the lighter earth took on a slightly closer orbit to the sun. This small change cause vaporization of the oceans and lakes of earth, making it more and more uninhabitable. This could be accomplished by huge magitechnical installations, huge pyramids built to do nothing but disintegrate matter pushed in-- slave labor would drag huge blocks of marble quarried from the earth to be vaporized, chipping away the mass of the world piece by piece and bringing the sun closer. (this approach is not valid with Kepler mathematics, but you know-- magic). I should note, that even a cult dedicated to an enlightened gold dragon might see the destruction of humanity as a worthwhile sacrifice to the security of the enlightened races' domination of the earth.

Third option: resolution. Some people believe that Jupiter by its celestial size and placement relative to earth, blocks many large asteroids and galactic radiation waves from reaching earth. Perhaps there is some powerful artifact hidden in the land that can rearrange this celestial placement. Maybe it is some sort of asteroid lightning rod. Maybe, maybe, an asteroid striking your temperate zone, striking a glancing blow on the edge of the world, could strike an impact that it would impart a slight rotation, that so much momentum could be imparted that the world could be unlocked from its tidal alignment. This would be quite a weighty considerations for PCs to make-- do they complete the ritual, bring a deep impact down on their homes, knowing their obliteration is the beginning of a new dawn, a new chance for life all over the newly rotating world? Revolutionaries who soldier through revelation that the better world they seek will never be one they personally know is a theme that goes back at least to Moses.
As Captain Planet says, 'The Power is Yours'.
Go Planet.