Charlock

In Dragon Quest I, the castle of Charlock is the final dungeon in the game, and the site of the final battle with the Dragonlord. It reprises this role in Dragon Quest III, with Zoma filling in for the role of final boss. It plays a different role in Dragon Quest II, but we'll get to that later.

Charlock Castle is on a small island at the very center of Alefgard, occupying the continent's central bay. Notably, it's directly across from Tantegel - you can see it on the map as soon as you leave the starting location, but it's inaccessible until much later, and much of the first game revolves around creating a passage to the island.

I don't think Charlock is actually a part of Alefgard, so much as it's located in the immediate vicinity of it. At least, for The Saga of the Ortegids, I would portray it as an independent kingdom in Torland. Although the Dragonlord is the final boss and central antagonist of I, his grandson appears in II, still apparently in charge of Charlock, and this time as an ally. His role is small, all things considered - he really just gives you information needed to complete a late-game quest - but he even declares the party to be friends if visited after defeating Malroth. And the fact that he's there at all is, in my opinion, a clue toward Charlock's true nature.

You would think that, if the Dragonlord was some rogue entity acting within Alefgardic jurisdiction, his descendants would not be allowed to operate the same position so openly, and not with the kingdom turning a blind eye to it. This only makes sense if we assume that Charlock is a sovereign state, and the Dragonlords are its rulers. They had opposed Alefgard at one point in time, but later forged an alliance with them and/or the three Ortegid kingdoms, perhaps out of necessity with the Children of Hargon proving to be a bigger threat.

Art by JamesRPGArt

This interpretation is actually pretty internally consistent with what we see in the games. Neither character is given a name beyond "Dragonlord," which is likely the title of the ruler of Charlock. They use the same sprites, would could be a sign that they use the same royal regalia for their position. Furthermore, the first Dragonlord is implied to be the son of the Queen of Dragons from III, which positions him as being part of a draconic royal bloodline. As I stated before, that also explains his motivation for stealing the Sphere of Light from Tantegel, because that item was originally owned by his mother, and is likely a sacred treasure of the draconic royal house. If we further pull at the strings of the Dragon Queen claiming to be a "messenger of the gods" who lives close to the heavens, the Dragonlord may well be a direct descendant of Gaius, the god of dragonkind, and would have reason to covet the Sphere if it was forged by Gaius himself. If he was born in Erdland, him retrieving the Sphere may also be a way to legitimize his rule to the dragons of Torland.

I would go as far as to say that Charlock was probably run by a different lineage of dragons at the time of DQ3. I don't think Zoma would've always been there, at least not going based on the logic I've already created for this setting. In my opinion, the power and authority Zoma displays in being able to overthrow a goddess makes the most sense if he is himself a god, and the Erdrick Trilogy shows that gods can be summoned to the mortal realm. Perhaps Zoma is in Charlock because he was summoned by the reigning Dragonlord at the time, who may have been a worshiper of his cult.

In fact, one of the bosses fought directly before Zoma is the "King Hydra." There's no real sense of significance alloted to this creature besides the name, but consider that that name combines a reptilian monster and a noble title. Where have we seen that before? I'm almost certainly overthinking this, but it makes a surprising amount of sense.

Art by Gustavo Cabral

Anyway, on to the gameable stuff. Befitting its status as the final location of the original game, Charlock's terrain is quite foreboding, consisting mainly of mountains. Uniquely, the castle itself is placed atop a series of tall cliffs, which use unique graphical assets not seen elsewhere on the map - I'd posit that it's built on the tallest mountain in the Alefgard area, if not all of Torland, which draws further parallels to the Kingdom of Dragons. Unlike the Kingdom of Dragons, though, I don't see such an inhospitable land sustaining a large population of humanoids. The bulk of Charlock's population is likely made up of dragons and their kin, like Dragovians.

It could be a place to go to battle monsters, but we also see that the draconic rulers are capable of diplomacy and maintaining friendly relations with outsiders. Negotiating an alliance with the dragons could provide a valuable asset. Further, the fact that the ruling dynasty is a foreign one could well breed tensions with native-born dragon houses. And who knows if they would approve of the ruler's decision to ally with humans...

Saga of the Ortegids: Races

The settings of the Dragon Quest games tend to be quite humanocentric. Almost all playable characters throughout the series have been human, and the ones that aren't tend to be cursed humans or tamed monsters rather than sapient humanoids. In the entire Erdrick Trilogy, there are only two nonhuman polities (three if you count Charlock), and nonhumans are not found in human realms. However, nonhuman races do appear in the Trilogy, and some play quite a prominent role in certain quests. Thus, there is room for discussion on what role the different playable races fill in The Saga of the Ortegids.

In general, nonhumans have their own kingdoms, and there is little overlap in demographics between them and human states. Mixed settlements are rare to unheard of. This is clearly a world closer to Middle-Earth than Faerun. This doesn't mean that nonhumans should never be found in human settlements - I think there's something to be said for leaning into the Blacksandliness of Ashalam and having some beastmen there, for instance - but this should be rare, and worthy of comment.

• Elves are your typical willowy magically-inclined forest dwellers. From what we see of Elvenham in Dragon Quest III, they don't have much in the way of permanent structures, which may imply a semi-nomadic lifestyle, or else they live in the trees and we can't reach their dwellings. I'd be inclined to rule them as wood elves, rather than high elves, but they do tend to be fiercely xenophobic and look down upon humans. They have one kingdom, Elvenham, located in the forests in the far north of the Romalian Empire. I would give them multiple such realms in wooded areas throughout the worlds. In particular, I think it makes sense for them to have a heavy presence in the Worldforest.

• Hobbits appear a few times in DQ3,mostly as one-off NPCs. Of note, the series consistently uses the term "hobbit" rather than "halfling," and I'm going to be keeping that - this project is already an act of copyright infringement anyway, so Tolkien lawyers can't stop me. Curiously, these hobbits tend to be quite solitary; the only two with significant dialogue both live alone in the wilderness, in contrast to the typical bucolic villages we expect of halflings. For The Saga of the Ortegids, I would run hobbits as typically being loners and hermits dwelling far from civilization, leaning into a more fey vibe. Ironically, more Tom Bombadil than Frodo.

• Dwarves do not actually appear in the Erdrick Trilogy, but it feels weird to have elves and hobbits without them, especially if translating the setting to D&D. I would add dwarven strongholds to the mountainous regions of the worlds, likely as self-sufficient and isolationist holdouts that trade little with the outside world to explain their absence from the games. The fact that the world is hollow does have some interesting implications with a subterranean race. There may be dwarves who maintain tunnels linking Erdland and Torland, allowing for travel between the two worlds - though this would, of course, require gaining the trust of the dwarves involved. There is a considerable overlap with hobbits here; one of the hobbits in DQ3 lives in a cave in the mountains, and some translations of the game use the term "dwarf" instead of "hobbit" for these characters. However, the term "hobbit" is used in the GBC release, which is what I'm most familiar with, and the Japanese script specifically uses the word "hobitto," so I'd like to keep them as halflings.

• Beastmen, also referred to as Orcs, would take the place of orcs, goblins, and other monstrous humanoids, and would be represented by their stats. This is a catch-all term to encompass the various humanoid monsters encountered in the Erdrick Trilogy (at least the ones that don't appear to be actual humans, and there's far more of those in earlier games than one familiar with later entries would expect). The series uses anthropomorphic animals more than it uses humanoids with odd skin tones and bestial features - orcs are consistently pig-faced, for instance. So if the Caves of Chaos exists in Torland, it's inhabited by wolf-men, swine-men, bird-men, ape-men, rat-men, and lizard-men instead of orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears - which is quite satisfyingly pulpy anyway. There aren't as many of these sorts of monsters in 3 compared to the first two games, so I'd say that beastmen are native to Torland, but they've no doubt established populations in Erdland as well from past excursions. Beastmen tend to be brutish, barbaric, and degenerate, but in the interests of portraying a more realistic ecology than what's in the video games, they would have some degree of society, with villages and fortifications scattered throughout the worlds.

• Dragonborn, or Dragovians, actually fit pretty nicely into the setting. The Dragon Quest games have a number of NPCs who are dragons capable of taking human form, and having dragonborn be playable would represent similar characters. In the interests of game balance, these would have to be lesser descendants of dragons that cannot take the form of a true dragon, but still possess draconic powers. They look mostly human, but may have horns, patches of scales, unusually-colored eyes, or other such features. Their primary realms are Charlock in Torland, and a small kingdom north of the Worldforest in Erdland.

• Tieflings aren't specifically present in the games either, but I would allow them as a playable race anyway. A number of villains in the series have monstrous features that are never really explained, and the amount of demonic incursions into mortal domains would make it quite believable that some interbreeding would occur. Tieflings would be very rare, appearing only sporadically and often being shunned by society, and would not have much in the way of their own civilizations.

• The Drokkarim are something of my own creation. In DQ3, the villain Baramos looks like some kind of saurian humanoid. He's probably supposed to be some kind of demon, but due to technical limitations, they reuse his sprite a few times, including as a generic monster in Zenithia. And one boss, though portrayed in recent releases as Baramos's ghost due to a mistranslation, is actually supposed to be his brother seeking vengeance. Based on this, I've interpreted Baramos to be a member of an entire race I've called the Drokkarim. These creatures are twice as tall as humans, with dragon-like heads and wings and three-fingered claws. They were originally created through the experimentations of the mad wizards of Old Aliahan by breeding humans, demons, and dragons together, and the knowledge behind their creation is long since lost, but scattered populations of them still live on. Drokkarim would be very rare, solitary creatures and would not be available as PCs.