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arrowhen
2010-09-16, 09:25 PM
A powerful evil dragon plops down in a remote corner of a large human empire and announces it's taking over. It demands monetary tribute from the single mid-sized city there, but in such exorbitant amounts that it has to know they're unable to pay. It attacks trade caravans, razes crops, destroys infrastructure, basically does everything it can to drive people out of the area. Refugees stream out of the area and eventually the empire just writes the whole territory off as a loss.

The dragon "rules" its territory for a couple of centuries, never seeming to really do anything with the place except kill any humans or other civilized races who are foolish enough to try and settle there. It specifically doesn't do typical dragon stuff like gather an army of kobolds that worship it as a god or anything like that.

So what the heck does it want?

There's no right answer here. This is background brainstorming for a campaign where the dragon serves mainly as a plot device, a way of creating a frontier area for the characters to explore with a bit of mystery behind it. The dragon will not be an active participant in the campaign; in fact, it's dead before the campaign even starts.

I have a couple ideas in mind for what it was doing, but they're not very good. I'm hoping someone will have more inspirational ideas, as well as giving me a sense of the sorts of things the players will guess the dragon was up to.

WarKitty
2010-09-16, 09:27 PM
Well my initial idea was that the dragon was prepping for some sort of ritual.

Pie Guy
2010-09-16, 09:29 PM
Maybe there was a huge treasure vein in one of the caves, and he just wante a good place to sleep.

The-Mage-King
2010-09-16, 09:31 PM
It was bored, and decided to take over a piece of land for no good reason.

Alternatively...

It found a nice, {oppsite gender from original} dragon and settled down, having a flight of kids that now occupy the area.

Or...

It was doing weird magical experiments, eventually creating some hyper-powerful monsters to occupy the area.

The_Admiral
2010-09-16, 09:33 PM
That dragon is crazy no really it may be delusional

Rainbow Servant
2010-09-16, 09:34 PM
The dragon's favourite food-source (animal or vegetable... though berries might be a tad silly) is found exclusively in that area?
The weather is more comfortable there...
Basically I'm seeing a grumpy old man type dragon wanting to be comfortable and telling those dang kids to stay off his lawn.

arrowhen
2010-09-16, 09:39 PM
Basically I'm seeing a grumpy old man type dragon wanting to be comfortable and telling those dang kids to stay off his lawn.

I love these forums.

The-Mage-King
2010-09-16, 09:42 PM
Basically I'm seeing a grumpy old man type dragon wanting to be comfortable and telling those dang kids to stay off his lawn.

"And it looks like the monster was really old dragon Jenkins all along!"

"I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wern't for you meddling adventurers and your druid..."

Tetrasodium
2010-09-16, 09:44 PM
looking for an artifact of some sort or working on activating it.

The_Admiral
2010-09-16, 09:48 PM
"And it looks like the monster was really old dragon Jenkins all along!"

"I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wern't for you meddling adventurers and your druid..."

I LOLed:smallamused:

JoshuaZ
2010-09-16, 09:53 PM
The dragon is neutral leaning towards good with an ends-justify-the-means attitude. There's something very dangerous in that area (either an evil artifact or an imprisoned elder evil or an archfiend or what have you) and the dragon doesn't want anyone poking around it. But the dragon realizes that people, especially humans, just love to poke around that sort of thing. So the dragon instead is acting like a mean stereotypical dragon to keep people from finding out about the object while keeping them well away from it.

FirebirdFlying
2010-09-16, 09:57 PM
The dragon was very old, maybe as old as the empire. Long before this little corner was taken over by humanoids, it had found a mate and a lovely little cave to gather gold and raise pretty little wyrmlings. When human settlers finally came, the dragons brushed them off as just another food source. The settlers didn't like being a food source, and dragon-slayers were sent to kill them.

The dragons managed to fight these brutes off, and the humans despaired, until a hero came - not the fighting sort. This person went to the dragons, and offered them a deal, something secret, to leave. They did.

No place was ever quite like their original home. Over time the dragon's children left to seek their own way, and over a long, long time the news filtered back of their deaths. Our dragon gets steadily more depressed, moving from one place to the next, whatever deal it made no longer worth it - and one day, its mate, as old dragons do, departed in a shadowy semblance of death.

So our dragon decides to turn back. The deal-giver is dead, it's family is dead - it made few friends over the course of its lifetime - and so while it has no ties to bind it to this world, it wants to go back to the place it was happiest.

It drives all the stinking humanoids away, and for two hundred years dreams of an ancient time when the grass was greener, the fire was brighter, and it was in love.

---sort of a combination of Mage King's 'settled down' thing and the 'grumpy old dragon' thing.

Doomboy911
2010-09-16, 10:08 PM
I had this campaign idea about an evil city (Lawful evil) that was attacked by a good dragon (gold) in an attempt to destroy it for the sake of good. The city fights back sending an evil warrior to curse the dragon by putting it to sleep (imbuing a sword with the sleep spell and permanency so when the sword is in someone they sleep until it's removed) and generally avoiding the dragon.

A few hundred years later the dragon has still not moved with moss growing over it until it looks like a giant statue. A good kobold comes in to remove the sword but finds it's cursed so only someone who's done something terrible can remove it (the city dwellers for example) So thinking the kobold may bring the dragon back to life they hire a good party to remove the kobold.

The kobold does his best to defend his spot (making him a wizard) but once you kill the good kobold and find the ancient sword someone would try to remove it thinking it's their reward and boom the dragon awakens to destroy the city. The party members think they've done something wrong and try to kill the dragon when everything is finally settled. The campaign shifts from saving the city to helping the good dragon destroy it.

Nanoblack
2010-09-16, 10:14 PM
Maybe it was driven mad? I always find an excuse to drag the far realm into things...

Seffbasilisk
2010-09-16, 10:15 PM
I'm actually thinking a botched Handle Animal check. Or a few.

Imagine. Some adventurer slays a dragon, and heave-ho, in the nature of all adventurers, begins to loot everything he can.

Include the dragon's clutch of eggs.

Now the majority of these are broken in the scuffle, the transportation attempts, and the tough life of an adventurer. A few more are addled, and even more die because, frankly, most adventurers aren't the brightest bunch, and even those that know, rarely put in the time to do something like raise an animal.

So, the adventurer tries to raise the dragon, not knowing how. Long since retired, he still tries. In his secluded manor, the growing senile old human attempts to 'take a twenty' on the check.

The young dragon is afforded books, but only those of the sort that amused the fighter type, and as such, the only dragons he has to look up to, are those that are written of by humans, as unfeeling, unplotting monsters.

Finally, the dragon either can take no more mishandlng, or his human 'handler' dies. Breaking free, he girds himself in what gear he can, and sets out, to become a 'true' dragon, as he's self-taught...

Crow
2010-09-16, 11:50 PM
The dragon wasn't really an actual dragon to begin with. Rather it was a metaphor (or the name?) for an evil that led to the downfall of the city and drove it's people away. Over the hundreds of years, as the legend was passed down, the dragon as told in the legends came to be known literally as a huge fire-breathing dragon.

Savannah
2010-09-17, 01:16 AM
There is a prophecy that if [insert event here] happens in that area, [insert horrible consequences here] will happen.

Since dragons are among the longest-lived creatures, they are the keepers of the prophecies. Once they found out about this, on of their number set out to prevent the event from taking place by driving out all the people in the area.

Of course, the PCs' investigation causes the event to happen. Of course, if the dragon hadn't come, the PCs would never have been there. See what happens when you try to mess with prophecies?

Noircat
2010-09-17, 01:23 AM
It wasn't really a dragon.

Dun dun dun.

Stone Heart
2010-09-17, 01:36 AM
I was thinking maybe it was just going somewhere nice to die. Do dragons just die of old age? and if not perhaps this one was diseased and knew it was going to die? Or maybe it was trying to make the place inhospitable so as to prevent the spread of the disease.

Roc Ness
2010-09-17, 02:30 AM
A mountain fell on its head and went into a coma 1209 years, during which time the mountain was settled by humans? And then it woke up old, cranky, and slightly brain damaged? :smallconfused:

BobVosh
2010-09-17, 05:46 AM
A mountain fell on its head and went into a coma 1209 years, during which time the mountain was settled by humans? And then it woke up old, cranky, and slightly brain damaged? :smallconfused:
Rip van Scaly?

The territory was declared as bonus for the great game so holding it was vital for a century or so. After he got settled in, he spent the first century holding it vs other rivals. Then got used to the place, and stuck around. Eventually some uppity youngsters got to him, but had to go into hiding so their master doesn't get fingered for setting them onto it.

*Begin story arch here*

Wanted a really quiet, defeated nation to sit in and make an epic spell. It cost a lot to do so. He asked for the total straight out as the tribute, before attacking when they couldn't deliver. Then he starts developing his epic spell. Where upon in an attempt he fails and dies.

*begin story arch here*

These both assume you want to explain why hes dead as well.

Runestar
2010-09-17, 06:45 AM
The consciousness of an ancient evil trapped underground sent out a psionic call in all directions, and lured a dragon there, deeming it to be the best vessel to transfer its consciousness into.

This process isn't instantaneous, it slowly keeps the dragon there and uses it to drive all other possible meddlers away. Granted, a few centuries does seem a tad long, but I am sure you will figure something out? :smalltongue:

Calmar
2010-09-17, 06:54 AM
A powerful evil dragon plops down in a remote corner of a large human empire and announces it's taking over. It demands monetary tribute from the single mid-sized city there, but in such exorbitant amounts that it has to know they're unable to pay. It attacks trade caravans, razes crops, destroys infrastructure, basically does everything it can to drive people out of the area. Refugees stream out of the area and eventually the empire just writes the whole territory off as a loss.

The dragon "rules" its territory for a couple of centuries, never seeming to really do anything with the place except kill any humans or other civilized races who are foolish enough to try and settle there. It specifically doesn't do typical dragon stuff like gather an army of kobolds that worship it as a god or anything like that.

So what the heck does it want?

I know dragons mostly from myths and faerie tales, rather than fantasy stories, so gathering armies of some creatures and being worshiped as a god is absolutely not typical dragon stuff to me. :smallsmile:
Depopulating an area, on the other hand, definitely is. That's what dragons do. They conquer an area, stay there, terrorize the region, get tributes from kings and lords who want to make sure the dragon stays where it is, and kill knights and heroes who venture into the desolation to rid the realm of the beast.

I'd the dragon would leave its lair and take what it wants, if it indeed wanted something else.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2010-09-17, 07:22 AM
There was something extremely ancient and extremely powerful buried in the area that had been forgotten about thousands of years ago. The dragon, in its acquisition of treasure and knowledge, probably discovered some ancient writing that mentioned it. After further research and divinations, he became dead set on obtaining it. Maybe a device of titanic proportions lay buried beneath the earth, once capable of terraforming the entire continent. Perhaps an ancient ruin housing the remains of a long dormant god lies hidden there, and he sought to either awaken it or steal its power for himself. There could be an archfiend or elder evil imprisoned somewhere in the area, and he wanted to either free it or gain some power from it.

The most obvious and easiest solution is that there's something there that he wants but nobody else knows about it. He's probably extremely secretive about its existence hence no intelligent followers or civilized outsiders. I would definitely give him some kind of minions based on the nature of what he was looking to unearth. If it was something divine perhaps he created undead workers/guards, or summoned/crafted elemental creatures to aid him. If it was arcane in nature he could have created constructs, or used undead imbued with magical abilities. An imprisoned elder evil or archfiend who spoke to him in his dreams and drove him to a mad obsession with freeing it would probably constitute a variety of pseudonatural animals, outsiders, oozes, etc. in the area.

Rising Phoenix
2010-09-17, 08:22 AM
It simply wants peace and quiet.

Or humans (noids) are the cancer of creation, bent on destroying the order and beauty of the world. The Dragon, being wise, knows that it cannot save the world but at least it can save this corner of this continent.

...:smalleek:... I forgot what I was typing...nm...

Cheers,

R.P.

Heliomance
2010-09-17, 09:43 AM
The dragon was very old, maybe as old as the empire. Long before this little corner was taken over by humanoids, it had found a mate and a lovely little cave to gather gold and raise pretty little wyrmlings. When human settlers finally came, the dragons brushed them off as just another food source. The settlers didn't like being a food source, and dragon-slayers were sent to kill them.

The dragons managed to fight these brutes off, and the humans despaired, until a hero came - not the fighting sort. This person went to the dragons, and offered them a deal, something secret, to leave. They did.

No place was ever quite like their original home. Over time the dragon's children left to seek their own way, and over a long, long time the news filtered back of their deaths. Our dragon gets steadily more depressed, moving from one place to the next, whatever deal it made no longer worth it - and one day, its mate, as old dragons do, departed in a shadowy semblance of death.

So our dragon decides to turn back. The deal-giver is dead, it's family is dead - it made few friends over the course of its lifetime - and so while it has no ties to bind it to this world, it wants to go back to the place it was happiest.

It drives all the stinking humanoids away, and for two hundred years dreams of an ancient time when the grass was greener, the fire was brighter, and it was in love.

---sort of a combination of Mage King's 'settled down' thing and the 'grumpy old dragon' thing.

This is a beautiful story, I love it.

Psyx
2010-09-17, 09:54 AM
Insanity?

Toothache?


Typically, an unreasonable ransom is requested when either stalling for time, or because of someone else putting pressure on. Maybe it's own siblings were held ransom by a bunch of adventurers / an evil wizard / whatever. It tried to raise the required ransom, but couldn't. The attempt at extortion was a desperate attempt to raise the funds, and the town's destruction simply frustrated wrath. Perhaps the adventurers had a link to that city, so it was partially vengeful. Or perhaps the link was unknown, but when the dragon destroyed the place, the adventurers / evil wizard / whatever killed the hostage, also out of revenge.

The following 200 years of destructive behaviour was a venting of frustration. Meanwhile, it spent the time attempting to have its revenge.

I should branch out into dragon psychology.

Arcane_Secrets
2010-09-17, 10:02 AM
The dragon cut a deal with an extremely powerful demon or devil for something that it desperately wanted. However, the catch was that the fiend actually didn't want money in exchange. What it wanted was pure, raw, destruction for its own malevolent purposes. Possibilities include that the region was just scheduled to be destroyed based on its higherups because there was something good that could've happened there that needed to not happen, or in order to obscure some potential direct threat to the fiend involved (perhaps there's an artifact there that could have actually killed it, or the person who would make such an artifact would eventually come to reside there).

Considering that you said that the dragon's dead now:

1) What if the dragon's relatives find out that the 'deal' encompassed them as well-and the requisite amount of destruction wasn't completed?

2) What if the fiend itself or its mortal minions come looking for whatever the dragon was supposed to obscure through its destructive actions?

Edited to add:

The idea that the dragon has relatives concerned or tasked with its unfinished business could also be used in combination with the idea that it mated and settled there. Perhaps its hatchlings are coming back-but this is a side plot compared to the main issue, which is why the dragon was originally forced into its seemingly irrational reign of terror.

Drakevarg
2010-09-17, 10:05 AM
Because it's borderline-omnipotent, knows it, and is just kinda bored. So, for ****s-and-giggles, he plops down, harasses the locals, and gets them to leave. Figuring that by now he's certaintly kicked up enough dust to get the local adventurers up in arms, he decides to camp out there and let the adventurers come to him.

If they actually serve as a challenge, great, something to do. If not, well, this place is plenty cozy. If they actually kill him? ...Feh. He's like 2000 years old. Might as well start touring the afterlife anyway.

FelixG
2010-09-17, 10:09 AM
The dragon is xenophobic, the other sentient races in the area just scared the dragon so it drove them away the best way it could!

nothing quite like a huge flying reptile being scared of a little pink monkey man :P

BlckDv
2010-09-17, 10:27 AM
Maybe there was a huge treasure vein in one of the caves, and he just wante a good place to sleep.

This gives me a mental image of a cave with tapestries, magical swords, old coins, etc. embedded in the walls, and stalagmites dripping into pools of potions instead of water.

Makes me wonder about some ancient catastrophe that destroyed a major city or an archmage's extensive lab and research compound. leaving them buried in rock.

Maybe the Dragon learned of this from an old tome or another dragon? Maybe the Dragon *caused* this, and came back to keep people away from whatever secrets he buried in the first place?

Tichrondrius
2010-09-19, 04:14 AM
The dragon was very old, maybe as old as the empire. Long before this little corner was taken over by humanoids, it had found a mate and a lovely little cave to gather gold and raise pretty little wyrmlings. When human settlers finally came, the dragons brushed them off as just another food source. The settlers didn't like being a food source, and dragon-slayers were sent to kill them.

The dragons managed to fight these brutes off, and the humans despaired, until a hero came - not the fighting sort. This person went to the dragons, and offered them a deal, something secret, to leave. They did.

No place was ever quite like their original home. Over time the dragon's children left to seek their own way, and over a long, long time the news filtered back of their deaths. Our dragon gets steadily more depressed, moving from one place to the next, whatever deal it made no longer worth it - and one day, its mate, as old dragons do, departed in a shadowy semblance of death.

So our dragon decides to turn back. The deal-giver is dead, it's family is dead - it made few friends over the course of its lifetime - and so while it has no ties to bind it to this world, it wants to go back to the place it was happiest.

It drives all the stinking humanoids away, and for two hundred years dreams of an ancient time when the grass was greener, the fire was brighter, and it was in love.

---sort of a combination of Mage King's 'settled down' thing and the 'grumpy old dragon' thing.

Great story. :smallfrown:

NeoRetribution
2010-09-19, 05:07 AM
My first instinct was to recommend that the humans had forgotten that the dragon-kind actually owned the land first. But Firebird's version was much more elaborate in my opinion. For the sake of the campaign it could just as easily be that some business called the dragon away for a small number of centuries before they returned.

Everyone seems to like the idea of wyrmlings, but some dragons took lessons from Scrooge McDuck...simply laying on their hordes of treasure and whispering sweet nothings to the wealth that can not follow them into the afterlife.

Hm. Maybe this dragon was a little crazy after all?

Dust
2010-09-19, 05:28 AM
I have to second (third? fourth?) the grumpy elder dragon simply trying to find a good place to settle down and not get harassed by those annoying, constantly underfoot humans. And even colossal CR20 monsters in their old age need to stay in shape.

Firebird's story is fantastic.

Thrawn183
2010-09-19, 12:40 PM
When the gods forged the world from chaos, they first created dragons to keep the chaos from returning to their creation through meditation, each dragon an anchor for a different region of the world. They then created humanoids to serve the dragons' every need. The pairing eventually evolved to the point where dragons could survive needing only a hoard to be provided to them during their meditations.

These people were lazy. Having forgotten their ancient duties they squandered their wealth rather than save it for the dragon, its rightful owner. The lack of a hoard resulted in the dragon's slow death and decay. Now the world, creation itself, is falling apart.

Urpriest
2010-09-19, 01:54 PM
The dragon was a host for one of the BoVD diseases that makes you really angry. The disease had just appeared in the world, and the dragon was its first victim. Now the plague is breaking out among humanoids, and the players must race to stop it!

DanReiv
2010-09-19, 02:15 PM
The dragon is neutral leaning towards good with an ends-justify-the-means attitude. There's something very dangerous in that area (either an evil artifact or an imprisoned elder evil or an archfiend or what have you) and the dragon doesn't want anyone poking around it. But the dragon realizes that people, especially humans, just love to poke around that sort of thing. So the dragon instead is acting like a mean stereotypical dragon to keep people from finding out about the object while keeping them well away from it.

Best suggestion so far imo, with a nice twist and lots of room for adventure in this forsaken land.

Dragons don't think like regular peoples after all, for some more complexity you could toss Xorvintaal in the lot. The draconic great game described in MM5. Infinite possibilities.

grarrrg
2010-09-19, 02:35 PM
The dragon thought it was opposite day?


If you REALLY wanted to mess with your players though, try this:

A weak good dragon plops down in the center corner of a small human villiage and announces it's settling down. It provides monetary compensation to the many varied-sized cities there, but in such tiny amounts that it has to know they're not doing much. It protects trade caravans, raises crops, buoys the infrastructure, basically does everything it can to bring people to the area. Refugees stream into the area and eventually the empire just makes the whole territory its capital.

kestrel404
2010-09-19, 02:51 PM
It's sitting on top of a tear in the planar fabric. It just kind of stumbled onto it one day while hunting tasty people, but once it spotted the darn thing, it couldn't just ignore it. If one of those stupid short-lived races ever found something as dangerous as a planar tear, they'd try to do something foolish like repair it, or worse, use it for transportation!

Crunch: The Planar Tear is a wormhole between the Prime Material and the Astral plane, passing through the Ethereal. If you agitate a planar tear with strong magic or frequent (more than once a century) use, it widens. As it widens, it sucks more of the prime material into it. As it sucks more of the prime material plane into the astral plane, it widens.

While the tear is 'small', this happens at a less than 1:1 ratio, which means it is a self-damping process and will eventually stop expanding. But as the tear gets bigger, the ratio gets closer to 1:1, and eventually goes past 1:1 - meaning that the bigger the tear gets, the more it expands any time something agitates it, and eventually it just won't stop growing. When that happens, the whole Prime Material gets sucked into the Astral plane at roughly the speed of light. This is how entire races have ended up on the astral plane in the past.

The Dragon knows this, but can't be bothered explaining the seriousness of the problem to the short-lived races. So he just kicked everyone out of the countryside surrounding the tear so nobody stumbles onto it by accident and is now on babysitting duty - guarding it because if it doesn't, the darn thing will kill him along with just about everyone else.

Ajadea
2010-09-19, 03:23 PM
The dragon was very old, maybe as old as the empire. Long before this little corner was taken over by humanoids, it had found a mate and a lovely little cave to gather gold and raise pretty little wyrmlings. When human settlers finally came, the dragons brushed them off as just another food source. The settlers didn't like being a food source, and dragon-slayers were sent to kill them.

The dragons managed to fight these brutes off, and the humans despaired, until a hero came - not the fighting sort. This person went to the dragons, and offered them a deal, something secret, to leave. They did.

No place was ever quite like their original home. Over time the dragon's children left to seek their own way, and over a long, long time the news filtered back of their deaths. Our dragon gets steadily more depressed, moving from one place to the next, whatever deal it made no longer worth it - and one day, its mate, as old dragons do, departed in a shadowy semblance of death.

So our dragon decides to turn back. The deal-giver is dead, it's family is dead - it made few friends over the course of its lifetime - and so while it has no ties to bind it to this world, it wants to go back to the place it was happiest.

It drives all the stinking humanoids away, and for two hundred years dreams of an ancient time when the grass was greener, the fire was brighter, and it was in love.

---sort of a combination of Mage King's 'settled down' thing and the 'grumpy old dragon' thing.

I love this. Really beautiful story.

Perhaps the dragon leaves sometime during the campaign, taking all it's treasure with it. He's (for some reason I envision this dragon as a he) dying, and he wants to die next to the grassy hill that was his mate (there's something in the Draconomicon about dragons becoming bits of land). Except someone built a town over it. He again drives the stinking humans away, and the adventurers come to attack the dragon who has destroyed so much, only to discover that the dragon's just lying there waiting for death.

They go back to the valley, and discover swirls of draconic writing, hidden throughout the territory. The dragon is trying to bring back his mate, despite the fact that (a) he can't cast cleric spells and (b) his mate died of old age. He was willing to pay any price, because he hasn't been truly happy since he left this valley. And he failed. His attempts at bringing back his dead mate, however, have awakened beings long forgotten, things that should remain hidden, powers that should not be meddled with. The valley is becoming unsynchronized with the Material plane, becoming a demi-plane in it's own right. Ripping a hole from reality into the Ethereal and Shadow Planes, a la Rifts and Snarl.

They can't figure out how to stop the Material Plane fraying like a Were-Porcupine's holiday sweater until they figure out how it happened. As the humans return to the valley, they scuff out the Draconic writings across the ground, and are slowly warped into something unnatural. Ethereal travel stops working, the blend between Shadows and Reality become more and more indistinct, the valley is collapsing, and the PCs have to figure out what is happening even as the returning humans destroy all knowledge of how this happened.

Thajocoth
2010-09-19, 03:59 PM
He's just hungry, and humans are delicious.

Xiander
2010-09-19, 04:57 PM
What does the dragon want?

The dragon wants to leave, it wants to return to itīs home and its hoard and ints army of kobolds who worships it as a god. Only it canīt.
The dragon having grown exeptionally powerful and gotten used to being worshipped as a god, had started to believe that it actually was devine. It had begun to set plans in motion to invade and terrorrize, but they were cut short when a human aproached it.
The human being no threat was allowed to come before the aspirering god. He explained to it that he was a follower of *insert relavant god here* and that he had come to end the dragons ambition.
The dragon laughed at him and asked him how he would go about doing that, but the human was not shaken. He said calmly that he would challenge it to a game of skill and intellect (chess or any similar game would work), and the looser would have to obey one command given by the winner. Completely sure of the humans inferiority and of itīs own ability, the dragon accepted the challenge.
They played for days, the human contemplating each of his moves for hours, and slowly but surely robbing the dragon of any chance to win. When at last it was clear that the human had won, and he had only to make the final move, he looked at the dragon and said: You must abandon this home of yours and go to *Relevant area*, You may never leave that area alive, your folowers may not know that you are there or in any way contact you, nor may you gather new folowers there. He then made the final move and sealed the game.
The dragon killed him.
But the dammage was done, he had given his word and was bound by it. So he left for his new home, which he ravaged in his anger and laid to waste so thoroughly that the empire declared it lost.
Only after his death has the area again become safe enough to enter for humans and other sentient beings.


This only works for lawful dragons, but it puts a fun twist on the whole "what does the large reptile want?" question.