We Make Our Own Fate
Some heroes kill dragons. Many more die
trying and failing to kill dragons. And then there’s this guy, who
died trying to thwart the draconic menace that he’d created.
That escalated quickly. |
Our hero for this story is Roran, a
barbarian from the far south. We’re playing Hoard of the Dragon
Queen and have just finished looting a cave complex with several
dragon eggs inside, which we promptly stole. My character has headed
north to report our success and hand over some documents we acquired,
while Roran has created a cart to lug the dragon eggs back to
Greenest. He gets there and decides to hide the eggs until we’re
ready by burying them, at which point one of them hatches.
So Roran has a baby evil dragon on his
hands, and he has an idea. He takes it off the road a way and begins
trying to raise it. Firstly, it’s obviously hungry so he heads off
into town to get some food for it. The town has been raided, its
livestock rustled, and Roran had killed off all of the town’s
hunters (long story), so there wasn’t any meat for sale. Opting for
a second best choice, Roran gets a pack horse, leads it back to the
dragon, and kills the horse for the dragon to eat. Now the baby
dragon isn’t happy with this, as it wants live prey. So Roran goes
back to town and buys some puppies. With big eyes that look up at him
with nothing but love and devotion, so happy to meet someone new and
kind. They lick him and nuzzle him.
The baby dragon is a Black Dragon, the
outright most sadistic type of dragon out there. Roran goes off and
gives the dragon the puppies to eat. It’s a drawn out process, but
eventually the dragon is finished with the poor puppies and puts them
out of their misery. I would like it noted at this point that Roran’s
alignment is supposed to be Chaotic Good.
You might want to get your alignment checked. |
Next the dragon demands a drink, which
Roran supplies. Now it wants a hoard, so Roran gives it all his ready
cash. Finally it wants a lair, so Roran heads out to find it a
suitable home. Throughout all this, Roran’s player is convinced
that he’s got this dragon wrapped around his little finger.
So he takes the dragon to its new lair
at the bend of the local river and it likes it. So exhausted, Roran
goes back to Greenest and heads to the nearest inn. The next day he
gets up, does some chores around town, picks up some more puppies and
heads out to the dragon’s lair. The dragon wants more loot, and
Roran’s picked up a lead on some bandits in town. So the pair go
out to kill bandits and take their stuff. This doesn’t go as well
as it could due to the action economy being somewhat against Roran
and the dragon not being interested in putting its life on the line
for him, and eventually he goes down. Now while it would have been
funny for the hero to die in service of an evil dragon our tale
doesn’t end there. See the bandits keep him alive in order to sell
him off as a slave or the like, and that night the dragon returns,
curbstomps the remaining bandits, and frees him. Why? Well, Roran’s
been a good slave for the dragon so far and it doesn’t want to lose
such a valuable asset just yet. So Roran is sent back to town to
recover and gets a message from up north saying “Shit just got
real, come up north ASAP.” He recovers from his beating and heads
out to tell the dragon where he’s going. The dragon is nowhere to
be seen, so he waits for a few hours until it returns with a group of
kobolds in tow.
It’s at this point that Roran begins
to realize that he might be slightly in over his head. He tells the
dragon that he’s heading north to follow up a lead on some treasure
for its hoard, and the dragon lets him go with the promise of a
horrible death should he betray it.
Roran regroups with the rest of the
party and lays it out bare, omitting the parts about puppy killing.
This is a problem, as the plot at this point is running on a
timetable and we can’t afford to backtrack several days to deal
with the dragon problem he’s created. So Roran decides to head back
and deal with it himself, while I go off and inform the local paladin
of what’s happened. Roran heads south to Greenest, picks up the one
guy the guard can spare to act as backup, and goes back to the
dragon’s cave. By this point the dragon has a tribe of 20 kobolds
along with drakes and assorted cultists at its disposal, and is a
significant threat to the region. Roran goes in and gets into a
disagreement with the cultists guarding the lair, which he then
escalates into a fight. The guard he brought along with him flat out
flees because he’s not getting paid enough for this, and Roran
suffers a rather nasty end getting mobbed by the dragon’s servants
and breathed on by the dragon itself. We haven’t yet found out what
happened to the region, but it’s fairly obvious that the locals are
in more danger after we left than when we arrived!
In conclusion: Sometimes you create
your own villain by accident. Other times, you really have to work at
it. You can read the full story of our party’s misadventures right here!
Not All Adventures Scale So Well!
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It kinda sucks that the DM ran the baby as being born inherently evil no matter what.
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