dragon-magic-oef

CHAPTER 5
DRACONIC
CAMPAIGNS
Illus. by D. Bircham
138
wants to be able to reach every area of its domain and forbids
its servants from pushing the borders too far. Even a nomadic
ruler that leads a clan or tribe across the steppes will not allow
its forces to spread out so far that it can no longer oversee
them all personally.
Similarly, dragon thugs want to deal with as few people as
possible, having little interest in other levels of authority. A
white dragon ruler of a land that includes a tribe of gnolls
deals with only one gnoll, be that the chieftain, the shaman, or
just the first gnoll
it encounters. The
dragon doesn’t care
how the tribe organizes
itself. The
gnolls can have
lesser chieftains,
warlords, battle
leaders, and orders
of priests if
they wish, but the
dragon deals only
with a single chosen
representative.
This arrangement
allows dragon
thugs to bully large
groups by threatening
the people
in charge, but it
also means that
the groups aren’t
being put to their
best use.
Dragon thugs
tend to be straightforward
in their
requirements
of underlings.
A tundra landwyrm
that rules
a stretch of frozen
plains demands
the villages within
provide it with a set tribute each season, consisting of
large quantities of food and small tokens of treasure. It
outlaws anything it sees as a threat to its power, including
heavy strongholds, large standing armies, powerful
churches, or academies of magic. The landwyrm designates
sections of its territory as areas where only it can hunt.
It assigns a single humanoid to rule over each village or
town and deals with no one but. If anything goes wrong
in or near a settlement, the community’s speaker must explain
or face the consequences, and the landwyrm doesn’t
care about extenuating circumstances. If the speaker satisfactorily
explains who or what caused the problem, the
landwyrm destroys or banishes the culprit. If, however,
the speaker fails to provide a suitable target for the landwyrm’s
wrath, it takes out its displeasure by appointing a
new speaker—possibly after disposing of the old one.
Different dragons use different methods, but the basic
guidelines remain the same. A spiked felldrake that declares
itself the guardian of a territory might be more tolerant of
those it assigns to watch over certain villages, but it still
requires the speakers to keep their explanations simple. A
transgression rooted in ignorance or accident might be forgiven,
but someone
who violates the
felldrake’s laws
willfully is driven
into exile. On
the other hand, an
evil abyssal drake
would likely execute
someone
for even minor
infractions. But
all these dragons
keep their rules,
organization, and
solutions simple.
Thus, while
dragon thugs do
make use of the
creatures in their
realms, assignments
are general.
A band of ogres
might be charged
with guarding the
dragon’s lair, but
they are left to determine
on their
own the best way
to do that. Similarly,
a sea drake
might demand
that the residents
Less intelligent dragons choose a single individual
of the islands
to represent each community under their rule
within its territory
reduce the level of piracy in the waters, but it makes no
effort to suggest how. Successful speakers are often smarter
than the dragons that rule them, and they’ve learned to be
quick when offering solutions to problems. A speaker who
tries to outsmart his overlord must be clever enough to succeed
in a single attempt, for the dragon won’t allow a traitor
to live once any betrayal is discovered.
When dealing with dragon thugs, the PCs can expect no
cooperation from the locals, who usually refuse to talk about
their overlord or help the characters contact it. Characters
who look like troublemakers are made unwelcome, in the
hope that they’ll depart quickly and be far away before the
dragon discovers them and looks for someone to blame. Deal-