How to train your dragon to be a lethal weapon

I have been looking at the spells in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, and I noticed that a couple of them really work well with my game world of Alidor. In Alidor, dragons are top dog, and tortoises are man’s only hope. I have told players that there have been many wars between the people of Alidor, and the Dragons. Most notably was the Second War, where people had figured out how to sway the will of the mountainous tortoises, and used this ability to move them wherever they wanted, even across the open sea to the island of the greatest dragon of them all, Surma. The attack against Surma ultimately failed, leaving Ingersol stuck in a valley between two mountains, Jelling drowned at sea and Darra and Alice wandering the eastern lands of the Brunari leaderless.

The attack on their homeland, and the island now called Jelling, spurred the brunari people to design a new strategy to get back at the Children of the Slaves, as those who were free of dragon rule were called. A great forge was built just outside the cave mouth of Surma’s home.

Dragons stepped forth and volunteered to be transformed by the brunari spell smiths working in conjunction with the Daughters of Delarendel and the dragon Surma to create the ultimate weapon, essentially, common weapons that held the spirit of a dragon. If such a weapon was tossed into the air while speaking a word of summoning it would turn into a dragon and attack on its own. If the beast was slain in battle, it would return back to weapon shape and if the rite of ultimate death was not performed, the dragon would regenerate and be ready to fight again at a later day. All weapons forged this way bare Surma’s forge emblem on them.

There was one weapon found on a would be brunari assassin, that until recently, existed in the great hall in the tortoise city of Tudd, called Kingslayer, a long sword of remarkable quality. It was used in an attempt to kill Ian Russerson, the leader of the Children of the Slaves.

What inspired was the spell “Form of the Dragon I” from the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This spell and another called Beast Shape provide an excellent way to make cool artifacts for players to find while exploring. Plus, as you adventure in Pathfinder RPG there may come a time when you need a mount and Form of the Dragon cast integrated into a melee weapon could be one possibility. Of course, first you would have to train your dragon to let you ride it. But how do you train a dragon? One way, in my game, is that you befriend it, say with Diplomacy, and have some ranks in Fly and probably Handle Animal to help get you where you want to go. Dragon weapons can be the whole gamut of alignments, so maybe you get lucky, and find a dragon sword that is closely aligned to you. If you are not lucky, then maybe bribery will work, say, by letting the dragon start a hoard, and placing the weapon on a small pile of coins from time to time. Another might be to threaten the dragon blade with the rite of ultimate death.

The Rite of Ultimate Death

Over time, the knowledge of creating weapons with spirits in them faded. What is now known, is just tidbits gleaned from ledgers and journals that speak in particular of the dragons. To get a dragon to volunteer to have it’s life force encased in a weapon for all eternity is a difficult task to start with, but to have them give up their first item they ever hoarded to complete the spell, is even harder. The ones that did, never knew of the rite of ultimate death, where, according to the ritual, if you touched that single first hoarded item, be it a trinket, gem or a king’s crown, to the weapon that contained the dragon that originally gave it up, it would instantly snuff out the beast, rendering it and the weapon to ash. Of course at the time, this was a valiant thing to do during the war, and if the dragons had known of the rite, they would have had little to fear, because the brunary spell smiths kept the lists of the weapons, the dragons and the hoard items all safe and the brunari culture was here to stay, until oh, about 600 years ago, when that last bastion of their great culture finally crumbled. Scattered throughout Alidor are great treasures and odd little books with cryptic notes and dragon blades, there are 19 known to still exist or are unaccounted for.

I think I will have to make a dungeon using this theme…. Evil GM laugh.

Some fun things I thought of: If a player confirmed a critical with a natural 20, the weapon would release a breath weapon attack that the wielder is immune to. If it were a bow or crossbow the bolt would explode into a breath weapon attack. The number of levels that the player had carrying the weapon could be used to control this effect to avoid unwanted breath weapon attacks, or to spur one on. Say, if a fighter had the weapon for 3 levels, if she rolled a natural 20 to confirm, and did not want the breath weapon, because it may kill innocents, then she could reduce the score to less than 20, and do normal critical damage for the weapon. If her confirmation roll was less than 20, say 19, and she wanted the breath weapon to be released, then she could add to adjust her role to get a twenty. The player could only control this the number of times a day equal to the number of levels they had the weapon in their possession. The fighter in this example had the weapon for three levels, so she could use this ability three times a day.

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