Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Flame Drake

Things not to like about the Bestiary 2’s drakes: They’re usually packaged as the “degenerate cousins” of true dragons (a stigma the Bestiary 3 drakes escaped).  Things to like about them: Everything else.  Drakes are a great way to insert dragons into an adventure at low to mid-levels without detracting from the majesty of true dragons.  (There’s something depressing about sellswords calling themselves dragonslayers for knocking off a white wyrmling.)  The fact that their packs are called rampages tells you everything else you need to know.

Panicked reports of dragons cause a town to call for aid from anyone who will grant it.  A renegade order of cavaliers answers the call.  By the time the dragons are revealed as flame drakes, the knights have declared martial law and instituted harsh social and religious “reforms.”  Meanwhile, the flame drakes still threaten outlying farms the knights have deemed not worth preserving.

Long infertile, a red dragon bears her first clutch in a century.  The small weak eggs bear only flame drakes, however, not true red dragons.  Rather than reject or kill her stunted offspring outright, the red dragon coddles them and exhorts them to greater acts of violence in her domain.

Flame drake mating season takes place over a village’s thatched roofs, causing mayhem and destruction.  One fireball hits an orphanage, exposing the children to danger—and exposing a child slavery ring with ties to the skulks.

Pathfinder Bestiary 2 106

Finally, the Fetchling entry is up and the Fey Creature entry is in the right place!  Check them out (especially the Fetchling).

1 comment:

  1. Oh wow I'm just realizing that I used adventure seed 1 in an adventure years ago, definetly inspired from here. It's still talked of highly with my players, though they were a bit bummed that the drake was an illusion instead of a monster.

    ReplyDelete