Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5635360" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997part 5/8Fiction: Innkeepers solution by Steven Piziks. One of those stories that shows us that the big damn hero method is not always the wisest way to get things done. If you're lucky, you'll get the glory. If not, then a fate worse than death may well await you. So it proves here, when an attempt to take a dragon as a familiar results in the dragon making a familiar of them instead, resulting in a lifetime of isolation, broken up with being a stalking horse for it's appetites. Not a very pleasant thing to happen, but when you can't disobey them or even kill yourself, what can you do? There is an ending, but it's pretty bittersweet. With quite solid worldbuilding that makes it clear this isn't our world, while setting up it's own rules quite clearly and then working from them, this manages to be a pretty good story, without making comfortable reading at all. It's another reminder of how arbitrary, unglamorous and fragile life can actually be. It makes me want to find a way to get around my own mortality on my own terms. Living in an entropic universe sucks. Wyrms of the north: Ahh, red dragons. The real iconic bastards. Ed gets round to giving us one of these at last. They have pretty decent magical abilities anyway, but Ed just can't resist giving this one even more, to keep up with all the other superpowerful monsters and wizards he's already added. Not that he's quite on the same level of some of them, merely being a seeker of immortality where they've successfully attained it. And for all his paranoia, he falls victim to that great draconic vice, spending decades at a time asleep, which can leave you open no matter how many traps and constructs you protect your lair with. I suppose that the important thing is that while competent, he doesn't seem unbeatable or a mary-sue, which is quite significant when you're intended primarily as an antagonist. The new spell is interesting but underpowered, which further makes him seem fallible despite his plentiful treasure and magic items. So this isn't the most inventive creature Ed's ever given us, but still useful, and not as cheesy as he has been known to get either. Middle of the road for him is still a well above average article for anyone else.</blockquote>

Verification