Trolling for Ideas for Shadow Dragon Threat

[Haltherrion]

The players have embarked (by their choice) on an arc that will involve fighting a "shadow dragon" threat. I've been working up some thoughts on these but will eagerly pillage any one else's thoughts.

The brief back story:

The shadow dragons were created by a god who wants to use them to both threaten the surface world directly and drive some of the underworld creatures to the surface to also cause mayhem (why is part of a longer term plot arc; the players don't know of the god's role yet). The players have already come face to face with "Lubgrubbers", a type of demon that was driven from the depths by the shadow dragons. They have taken things far enough that they know why the demons have come near the surface and want to deal with the causitive agent more than the lubgrubbers.

For the shadow dragons, I'm not thinking of using the D&D version. These are creatures corrupted by the good from a root, deep world dragon. I'd like this whole arc to have a dark, dread mood.


So far, I have the following:

• The dragons will create an shadow aura that lasts for days that reduces vision and has a minor penalty for folks without necrotic (read unholy for earlier versions) resistance.
• The dragons can create shadows as well as zombies from corpses.
• They can also create from one corpse a skeleton-grue combination. The grue is the flesh of the creature, something like an unholy pudding. The grue can detach from the skeleton and try to engulf (counting on a certain "ew gross" factor here.
• There's limits on what the dragon can create in terms of undead but not necessary to worry about that here.
• I think I'll toss in some unusual zombies like maybe a zombie ooze

Any thoughts, suggestions, what not on how to work with this shadow dragon theme (already introduced to the players) and a dark, dread mood?

 

[Gilladian]

You need a small, meek, helpless race of creatures that the PCs can find, relate to, sympathise with, rescue from the demons or other shadow creatures, and then assist to find a new place to live.

Later, the PCs can discover that their wonderful rescuees are really shadow creatures themselves, or possessed by them, and have been betraying their secrets all the time.

perhaps they can hear rumors of another deep-dwelling race of warriors, go to attempt to ally with them, and discover that they are all dead, gone with hardly a trace, but a few of their rescuee people are found, huddling in the deserted homes of the once-great warrior people.

Other sad, mysterious setback could occur; they could have trusted allies go missing, ambushes be expected, etc... until finally they have no other option than to face the fact that their rescuees are their enemies...

Nothing like betrayal to set up a mood of darkness, grim loss and fear.

 

[Rune]

One match of the Fall Iron DM 2002 Tournament featured a Shadow Dragon as one of the ingredients. If you want to pillage ideas from it, both Griswold's entry and mine can be found on this page.

 

[Haltherrion]

Nothing like betrayal to set up a mood of darkness, grim loss and fear.

Betrayal is very good. The setup for the current arc already had the race of small, downtrodden folks (not so cute though). One of the PCs even picked up a minion who eventually betrayed them so can't quite do that again so soon.

But I'll play around with some of the other concepts; some good directions to explore, thanks!

 

[Baveboi]

You can also introduce a bit more dept around the betrayal/grimdark mood.

What if the small and helpless race was actually good, but driven insane by the madening whispers of the Shadow Dragon?

I imagine the elder asking for help for they have ill younglings dying and they need help with medicine/cure/something from outside.
They could be normal when the pcs leave them to do the quest and when they get back with whatever help they could find they are for a surprise.
They don't attack at first, no. They are just seated there, around dead corpses of the young, chewing on their raw meat, tears dripping from their mad eyes. They would invite the PCs like it wasn't a big deal, they wanted to believe it wasn't, but they were sooo hungry and the voices, always the voices. When the PCs act with disgust/rage/outrage they attack, furious at themselves and them, they turn into abominations, monsters twice as big as they were.

Throw in some relationship with the PCs and some "But we can't kill them! They are still there, inside those things!" and you have moral dillema enough to make a paladin fall.

Other good sources are Dragon Age, Berserk and Warhammer Universe.

 

[Haltherrion]

Other good sources are Dragon Age, Berserk and Warhammer Universe.

I had already introduced the shadow dragon concept but it was a trip a few days ago through the Orphanage in Dragon Age that reminded me how fun a dark, dismal, gruesome scenario can be

 

[Baveboi]

I had already introduced the shadow dragon concept but it was a trip a few days ago through the Orphanage in Dragon Age that reminded me how fun a dark, dismal, gruesome scenario can be

It's way better than the "Xp, xp, xp, loot, loot, loot, build, build, build" approach that many players nowadays have. I REALLY wanted to see Pun-Pun put a fight against Guts or the Grey Warden.

It also gives more feeling to the game. "A bit of thrauma helps to build character" _Edy, from Cartoon Network

 

[thejc]

theres an awesome encounter with Paul S. Kemp's "Erevis Cale" series. this shadow dragon was covered in wraiths, could use something called the black speech wich was so wicked and blasphemous it induced vomiting, pain, and bleeding from ears.