The Overlord and its armies
by LoZompatore.I'm posting here most of the info about the Overlord and its minions from Book III of the Dragonlord Trilogy.
The Overlord armies invade Rockhome and Glantri (it was called "The Highlands" at that time) sometime around 500-506AC . The armies come through magical gates from another plane of existence (Veydra, which was the last stop of the Flaemish migration before coming to Mystara and where the Overlord has the seat of its power).
I keep my comments to a minimum, the info below come directly from the book:
1) The true shape of the Overlord (it is encased in a magical construct similar to a huge mechanical dragon-dinosaur dut, once destroyed, the true form of the Overlord is revealed):
Floating in the air where his body has been was the source of his will and power, the true self he had kept hidden inside the shell of the Overlord. It didn't even seem alive. What Diamond saw was a strange, utterly alien entity of crystal, bristling with quartzlike spikes of rose and gold and blue and green. This was a creature of the most remote of the outer planes, where all things where utterly different from the familiar life of the mortal realms. Long ago it had wandrered through the planes, wheter by chanche or misfortune or by deliberate choice, coming at last to a world where its unearthly powers had made it seem like a god. But mortal life was deadly to it, so he had to create the protective form of the Overlord in which it could hide.
2) The Overlord fortress (it was moved from Veydra to Mystara -somewhere in the Adri Varma plateau - trough a huge magical gate in order to support the invasion armies. the ruins of this huge complex still possibly stand in the plateau):
There is a vast area west of Wendar and the Highlands where few seldom go, not even many dragons, and all the kingdoms of dragons in that region have long since been summoned to war in the east. I was fairly certain the Masters had a stronghold there somewhere.
Do you wish to know the true strenght of the Masters and their army? They have built themselves a fortress as large as any city in your own world in the wilderness.
The stronghold itself was actually an entire complex of great fortresses, neatly arranged in the same carefully laid grids as the fields, centered around an immense paved square that was probably nearly a mile long on each side. The fortresses were all nearly identical in form, solid, almost featureless structures built of gray stone that had been cut into vast, smooth sided blocks... Thelvyn realized that each fortress was nearly the size of a small town, covering an area of nearly a square mile.
But it was the activity in the central square that caught his attention. A great arch of black stone in the very middle of the square, an oval that was large enough for both Kharendaen and he to have flown through side by side. The archway opened into a pit of utter darkness. Thelvyn... had no doubt it was a worldgate of tremendous size... The Masters had lost perhaps 100.000 warriors and fighting beasts in their sieges of Rockhome and the Highlands. Ten times that number were gathered in the square below and in hundreds of companies waiting in lines miles long on the roads leading through the two main passes of the ring of mountains.
3) The Overlord strategy (a bit pretentious, but who knows. The Masters are gemstone dragons enslaved by the Overlord who act as officers and commanders of its armies through telephatic links):
The Masters reckoned that they might need as long as a year to enslave the western continent before moving step by step across the islands of the sea to Alphatia and finally to the uncharted continents of the far east and distant south.
They had fought their way across a hundred worlds, enslaving many and utterly destroying a number of them. In all the centuries they had come to serve the Overlord they had never lost a war.
4) The Overlord armies (five armies. Four of them are just vanguards, two in Rockhome and two in Glantri. They attack Stahl, Karrak Pass, Braastar and Braejr. The fifth army is the true overlord expeditionary force to Mystara; it is divided in five small sub-amies that march together. They erupt from the Overlord fortress in the Adri Varma and direct straightly to Braejr, in order to seize control of the Radiance. All these armies are defeated by the Mystaran chromatic dragons and their allies).
Vanguards of Rockhome:
Thelvyn guessed that there were at least 20.000 or 25.000 troops in all, and he was privately amazed that the Masters had been able to summon a large force through the gate in such a short time.... There were at least 20 of them, their company composed mainly of large amber and ruby gemstone dragons.
Vanguards of Glantri:
Suddenly he had to deal with a main army north of Braejr and a secondary force at Braastar, well over 60.000 beings of numerous races, some not even remotely human.
Main expeditionary force:
We have some drakes in our company, small enough to go places we cannot go and act as spies. We cannot expect their reports to be perfectly accurate... but they tell us that there are some 500 gemstone dragons, about 40 metal warriors and an additional army of at least 1.000.000, consisting of monsters and creatures of various kinds... That was of yesterday evening, a full day ago.
5) Description of some of the Overlord monsters (there is nothing more than these description in the whole book. Interestingly, it seems that the beholder race was enslaved to the Overlord and it came to Mystara around AC500. Notice that also many Flaems were still enslaved to the Overlord, and they were kept to Veydra until the Mystaran invasion of AC500).
The scouts also brought back reports of strange creatures that had been set loose in the woods and hills of the Highlands, unwordly creatures that posed strange and unexpected dangers. Thelvyn had heard such reports during the invasion of Rockhome, tales of monsters with many eyes on short stalkes, eyes that did not see but which possessed various magical weapons that could slay from a distance; flowing, formless creatures that hid in the shadows to trap the unwary; and huge insects with deadly bites and stings. Many types of monsters had been seen, creatures that had never before existed in Mystara, gathered by the masters from many strange worlds.
Describing the huge magical constructs that are used in the Overlord armies. One of these beasts - larger and more powerful than the average - hosts the true Overlord form.
In the book one of these monsters is someway deactivated and sinks in the swamps outside Braejr (IIRC in the Vesubia river) mostly intact. It could be a nice adventuring idea to have this monster reawakening some five centuries later...
Later the same morning a dragon hurried to Braejr with the warning that he had seen a dragon of tremendous size, a strange, wingless dragon that appeared to have metal armor... Finding the strange dragon in the wilderness proved to be easy, even from miles away, since it stood taller at the shoulders than the tops of many trees. It was like some strange, alien draconic form, with a long, serpentine body carried on four sets of legs. Its extended face had eyes that burned like red jewels from the deep shadows of protective horns and spikes, and its long tail was armed at the end with a massive weight like a crushing club, lined with ridges of sharp edged plates that glittered like metal. The very size of the metallic beast was alarming. It was easily a 100 yards from its nose to the end of its tail and 20 yards at the shoulders, making it several time the size of even the largest gold dragon...
Thelvyn had no idea how he could fight such a thing, but he was now certain there was no living creature inside that armor.
Describing the main expeditionary force of the Overlord. I think that the Levelers could be well included among the animals that are used to pave the road for the rest of the army. (The Areste river is the old name of the Isoile river).
Their entire invasion force moved slowly across the land, five entire armies marching side by side a mile apart, each army advancing in a column 200 yards across.Swift, stealthy scouts, Veydran and other warriors, advanced well ahead of the columns, seeking out spies and traps. Great beasts gathered from many strange worlds led each army, tearing out trees and stones and tossing them aside like playthings, while other massive animals followed behind to trample the torn ground into a hrad packed road. After that came the soldiers, rank upon rank, drawn from many different races, interspaced with trains of supply wagons, great wains the size of small ships drawn by horselike beasts nearly the size of dragons, supplies enough to keep even this huge force in the field for months.
And above the armies of the Overlord flew the Masters, hundreds of gemstone dragons of every color. Others led the humbering hulks of the metal warriors, who stood like mountains of iron over the ranks of the armies. The metal monsters had beed marching slowly outward from the secret stronghold of the Masters for the last six days, and ranks of soldiers and supply wagons were still coming through the great worldgate, taking their places at the ends of columns that now stretched for nearly a hundred miles. They would reach the mountains bordering the western frontier in another five days, although their intention was to head south to the great spur of the Wendarian Mountains to enter the Highlands through the wide valley of the Areste River.
6) Fate of the overlord minions (after the Overlord defeat many monsters were brought back to their original homeworld. Some of them settled peacefully in Mystara, while others escaped in the wilderness):
With the help of the gemstone dragons, the dragon sorcerers reopened the great worldgate to the main stronghold of the Overlord in his own world, and from there they were able to locate many of the lesser gateways into other worlds that had been invaded. In this way, many of the slave races of the Overlord had returned to their own worlds, homes that most of them had not seen in generations. There were some who could not be sent home, either because their worlds had been destroyed or the gates were lost. After some negotiation, many of the nations of the Grand Alliance agreed to take in these wanderers, so they came to settle in the Highlands, in nearby Darokin and Traladara, and even in distant Alphatia.
The beasts were also a problem, not only in the mountainous west, but also in places like the Highlands and Rockhome, where large numbers of them had escaped during previous battles. Most were of exotic breeds, too dangerous to be allowed to run free in this new world, and there was nothing else to be done but to have the dragons hunt them down and slay them. Those that could be captured were returned to the worlds of their origin whenever it coud be determined. Inevitably, some escaped into the wild despite the best efforts of the dragons.
...the Flaems were joined by many of their kinsmen who had been held in slavery by the Overlord. Some other captive races settled here as well, and the newcomers worked very hard to rebuild their new homeland.
That's all. Hope you enjoyed it ;)