Ket (Greyhawk) - Wizards of The Coast Updates The Greyhawk Campaign (1998)

Wizards of The Coast Updates The Greyhawk Campaign (1998)

In 1996, TSR ran into insoluble financial problems related to entering the collectible card game genre, and the following year was bought by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). After the merger, the determination was made that TSR had created too many settings for the D&D game, and several of them were eliminated. However, WotC's CEO, Peter Adkison, was a fan of Greyhawk, and Greyhawk was once again revived. A team of people was put together to revive the moribund Greyhawk setting by pulling together all the previously published information about the campaign setting. Once that was done, the decision was made to update Carl Sargent's unpopular storyline. After a "prequel" adventure to set the stage was released in 1998 (Roger E. Moore's Return of the Eight), the Greyhawk Player's Guide by Anne Brown was released later the same year. This 64-page booklet moved the storyline ahead 6 years to 591 CY, and explained in a few sentences what had happened to each region in the intervening time. If Ket had been placed on the center stage by Sargent, it was returned to the periphery in this edition. In order to remove the "evil" taint that Ket had gained during the Greyhawk Wars, the plot device of making the beygraf totally responsible for the treaty with Iuz was used; Beygraf Zoltan, now the sole architect of the treaty with Iuz, was assassinated, and his successor quickly pulled Ket out of all of Bissel except the city of Thornward. Now, "no major external threat exists to this stable area." This was the first official source that delved into the makeup of Ket's society. Unlike Gygax's vision of a land of wandering Bedouin-like tribes, Ket was now "an urban-centered society based on trading it all its forms." Instead of the devious Ketites described in Gygax's Sea of Death, Ketites now followed the "Four Feet of the Dragon": honour, family, generosity, and piety.

This edition also introduced two new deities to the Baklunish pantheon, both of whom were to have a major effect on future descriptions of Ket: Mouqol, god of merchants, and Al'Akbar, a minor hero-deity.

Later in 1998, Roger E. Moore's The Adventure Begins greatly expanded on material mentioned in the Greyhawk Player's Guide. The assassination of Beygraf Zoltan was now explained as the work of a Ketite general, who had feared for Ket's future with Iuz an ally. Following Zoltan's death, the country teetered on civil war, but the new beygraf, Nadaid—it is unclear whether Nadaid was the general who assassinated Zoltan—seized power just in time to prevent an attack on Ket's forces in Bissel by Gran March, "which had been waiting for a moment of weakness." The end result was that Ket's forces were voluntarily withdrawn from Bissel, although the armies of four nations—Ket, Gran March, Bissel and Veluna—shared administration of Thornward as an open city. This did not end local resentment against Ket's actions—"Veluna and Keoland are furious with Ket even now for Ket's invasion of Bissel during the Greyhawk Wars." However, in keeping with the theme that ordinary Ketites had been dragged into the alliance with Iuz against their will: "Never mind that the beygraf who signed the deal is dead now, and Ket is more suspicious of Iuz than before."

As a further sign that Ket was to be regarded in a less pejorative light in this edition, an area of Greyhawk City home to large numbers of Baklunish merchants was called Little Ket. "The folk here are distant but friendly, and the odd smell of their mildly spicy food is everywhere."