Path of Dungeons and Dragons

So because I thought it'd be a lark, I started GMing a few games of D&D set in the Path of Exile universe, and this has lead me to a few interesting perspectives on lore and setting I felt like rambling about, so here I am.

The first is Theopolis and Oriath in general, and a spot where I knowingly deviated the most from established lore. I always found it really odd that Oriath was as small as it is. The game tends to represent it as a fairly large group, there's many cities listed in the Letters of Exile, people are exiled by the thousands (for perspective, 1328 Paris has an estimated population of about 200K, much of which where out of the city walls)

I expanded this to a landmass roughly half the size of Wraeclast and a bit further away, and set it up as an early era colonial effort by the Eternal Empire as a way to remove the more vocal adherents of Cult of the Twins (before the full rise of the Templar as a common element in Sarn). I'm aware this is somewhat clashing of offical lore, but it works better in a D&D type thing. This allows me to have lower level content of parties doing stuff in Oriath with standard adventure fare, before setting their sights on Wraeclast.

The other major change was to Templar leadership. The game's offical narrative had a single High Templar at a time, in recent succession, Venarius, Dominus and Avarius. I had changed this a bit to include some high end politicing, having all three exist at once, as a council of high templar left in the vaccum after Voll's death in the Cataclysm which has self elected its replacements since the era of singular rule. This allows the three of them to but up against each other, conspire for their own ends, and have their own sphers of infulence (Before this system collapses after the disapperance of Venarius during the events of Synthsis, allowing Dominus to make overt efforts into Wraeclast, and Avarius to consolidate power and a fanatical cult before his death during Awakening).

I also knowningly relocated the Mutewinds and Redblades and recolored them as the native population of Oriath trampled over during the original colonialization of the land.

But here's some of the interesting bits I've had to deal with;

The lack of horses is the first interesting note. In all of Path of Exile, I can find no support of a horse anywhere. There are large wagons you see in Sarn and the Blackguard camps, and the Temple of Lunaris during Peities stay, as well as in Theopolis when you go into the streets. But never a horse corpse or living steed, present only as vanity pets (And even those are only wierd magic horses like the Stygian Steed). Sarn has the odd bull-taurs as a mob, and some of the mosaics of Innocence have him riding a Chariot pulled by some wierd horse monster (it's not a horse, having fangs, evil looking eyes, and clawed forelegs, but it's roughly the same shape). As far as I'm aware, Rhoas are native to Wraeclast (Nessa seems unfamiliar with them), and Rhexes native only to Vastiri (Rather than imported from other parts of the world).

I've taken this as a way to atttempt to justify the Karui enslavement in Oriath (if you don't have beasts of burden to help pull plows and do heavy labor, people work, as seen in pre-invasion Mayan and Aztec cultures), with a few odd large oxen that work for some cases, but lack the temperment and domesticaion for real implimentation.

The heavy use of gold (nearly all currency, tons of construction works, armor and weapon designs for the templar, etc) suggests to me a region with enough of it to mine, assuring a mountain range or two (another thing the offical island version of Oriath would likely need to import).

Which brings me to Pondium and Trathus. Pondium, home of the Brinerots, clearly has at least under the table, trade ties to Oriath, there's plenty of characters who interact with Brinerots (Lilly has known ties to Tarklegh, Kratyn, Alira and Oak, other people know of Weylem, etc), so clearly they sail in similar waters.

We don't offically know much about Trathus, other than there are 'flesh pits' (I assume figaruative, like heavy slave mines, but given the Beast is largely that, it could be literal), and that it's cold (from a unique commenting on the freezing bite of a Trathus spider), and that Oriath and Sarn both seemed to have controlled it at different times, given there is an alchemical powder used in mining (Trathian Powder) from there and we know Oriath uses its fleet to exert its power over the few places in the world with people in it.

I assume the trip to and from Wraeclast is extremely difficult (We have a sailors account that it took them nearly 3 months, and struggled to find a point they could land), either due to geography, magic or both. We also know it happens sometimes (Daresso returned once, Fairgraves claims at least one expidition). I operate under the assumption while against temple law, Pondium and other entreprising people do make the trip to try and get their hands on high value artifacts sold to the highest bidder.