Dragon fight

[kigmatzomat]

Claws, teeth, horns, and spines should make decent decorations or components for magic items nor do they require any significant preservative skills. If they have any skill I'd take a couple of bones; the skull at the very least.

The hide is well known for it's value as an armor. I'd recommend preservation of the key organs (eyes, tongue, heart, liver) as they could be very useful in various magical processes.

In an Earthdawn game we'd preserve the wings intact and use them as a collapsible pavilion tent, with leg/arm bones as supports. Okay, we never killed a dragon but we killed plenty of big, bat-winged creatures.

 

[The_Gneech]

Okay, so how much extra loot do you want to give them? (In terms of GP.)

-- N

Actually, when the group I played in was faced with a similar problem, we ended up giving most of the dragon's loot over to the smith(s) who were going to be crafting our neat new dragonscale armor and dragonbone weapons.

Extra loot? We'd have had more if we just left the carcass there to rot!

-The Gneech

 

[Nifft]

Actually, when the group I played in was faced with a similar problem, we ended up giving most of the dragon's loot over to the smith(s) who were going to be crafting our neat new dragonscale armor and dragonbone weapons.

Extra loot? We'd have had more if we just left the carcass there to rot!

That's excellent. In my next homebrew, smiths and tanners are going to be the best sources for information regarding the lairs of nearby dragons and beasties.

Thanks, -- N

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

My players once sold the meat of a dragon to a tribe of earth faeries in exchange for their help working the bones and hide into weapons, decorations, and cloaks.

 

[werk]

Another thread mentioned RoleAids and one of their publications was a book called Dragons (I think you can get it crazy cheap if you follow the link in that thread).

In there it had a lot of nifty or quirky things for using a carcass. Most of them required a bit of preparation prior to the actual slaying of the dragon, due to some supernatural spoiling quality that I agree should come into play.

If I kill an animal, and plan to use it, I dress it almost immediately and then continue the preparation. Field dressing a (huge?) dragon would take how long? Skinning it could take days, but stink and rot will start in hours. The blood is going to clot and coagulate quicker than you can say 'wha happen?' and forget about hanging it up to drain...

I've kept a lot of those old ideas in my game. Harvesting a dragon is a lot more work, and requires a lot more preparation and forethought, than simply killing one. YMMV.