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Thread: Decorate a Bronze Dragon's Lair
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2020-07-12, 04:31 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2017
- Location
- US
- Gender
Re: Decorate a Bronze Dragon's Lair
I do assume mercury gets labeled by Detect Poison, or whatever other equivalent you'd have available.
Second, humans are omnivorous and most of the meat we eat is from primary consumers. There's a reason mercury is considered a bigger problem in tuna than in venison. When you eat something containing mercury, it builds up in your system. Particularly if a creature is eating a lot of large fish, its mercury levels are going to build up a lot faster than they do in a typical human. And of course dragons also live a lot longer, so there's more time for it to build up.
Of course, all of this can be hand waved for a game setting. I just figure a lot of parties are going to start wondering about what a dragon (particularly a metallic) is doing with a bunch of mercury.
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2020-07-12, 04:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2011
Re: Decorate a Bronze Dragon's Lair
Mercury is poisonous to humans, but what do you expect? They are killed simply by breathing water!
How do you know dragons, especially metalic ones, are harmed by it at all? Perhaps to a bronze dragon it's a spice.
"Garcon, the lady will have the emerald neclace in muratic acid, and I'll have the pearls garnished with quicksilver, please."
Mercury in the oceans is the result of low-tech gold mining along rivers and some older industrial processes. Absent these, fish are as likely as chickens to be saturated with mercury. Though with dwarves and kobolds around low-tech mining just might be an issue...
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What in the dark appears to be a bumpy floor turns out to be a 3d map of the continent.
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2020-07-12, 09:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2009
- Location
- In a castle under the sea
- Gender
Re: Decorate a Bronze Dragon's Lair
Granted, modern man would be displaying trophies made out of supermarket packaging material, but the same held true when people did hunt their own food. Some people are proud of the animals they've killed, others just want to eat some meat and don't care who knows about it afterwards.
(And, of course, most hunters past puberty don't keep trophies of rabbits they've slain. It's easy to argue that most anything a dragon hunts would be as insignificant as a rabbit it to a guy with a gun.)
On a related note, why do kobolds almost exclusively work for chromatic dragons in published material? I mean beyond their default status of antagonist, is there a lore reason?
There is a room in a far off part of the dungeon containing a large beautiful crystal on a pedestal. As it turns out this crystal is an egg. What is in it. A Lhurgoyf?
I guess negative traits are more fun to think of than positive ones. So let's come up with some positive traits.
- If the dragon loves nature, it might maintain a sort of underwater "national park" around its lair, complete with dragonblooded tritons or something as park rangers. Its lair would have the rangers' base of operations/village where they lived.
- If the dragon loves a specific type of animal (whales, say), it might have a graveyard where it buries them in the draconic equivalent of a shoebox, complete with simple gravestone.
- If the dragon is inquisitive, it might maintain some kind of observatory, perhaps with a periscope to look above the waves or a moon pool for scrying.
- If the dragon is amusingly absent-minded, the area around its lair is probably littered with half-furnished lairs that are probably inhabited by other things now.
- If the dragon is artistic, its entire lair might be a massive statue garden.
- If the dragon is cosmopolitan, its lair might be surrounded by attempts at creating underwater versions of surface creatures' settlements.
- If the dragon is charitable, it might have a mine of some kind and open barrels of gemstones or lumps of metal labeled "Take one". This policy is loosely enforced; you might be able to get away with taking two or even three, if you're the scum of the earth, but take four and spill the rest on the floor and...well, who knows?
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2020-07-14, 01:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
Re: Decorate a Bronze Dragon's Lair
The dragon is a pack rat and has filled the cave with completely useless stuff.
Some areas are actually packed to the point the dragon can't get in.
Nasty creatures (that are not nasty to a dragon) live in some of the detritus.
So, the "collect pirate ships" -- there will be a cave filled with pirate ships. Like, top to bottom. Space filled. With some jammed in and broken. The entire place is a maze of pirate ships.
Those pirate ships contain treasure maps, pirate booty, etc. The dragon always meant to fish it out, but got distracted, and put more pirate ships on top.
Oh, and the dragon initially flooded the cave by opening a gate to the plane of water, so it is colonized by water elementals creatures. And one ship had a pair of breeding mimics, which have spread over most of the place.
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A garden, full of plants that the dragon found interested, decorated by various garden-statues. Many of the statues are gargoyles, many of the plants are hostile to mere mortal life.
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Pet owlbears. The dragon has been breeding them for a few 100 years, and has managed to get them to play fetch.
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2020-07-17, 07:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2011
Re: Decorate a Bronze Dragon's Lair
An aquatic elf Expert Class NPC serves as the dragon's castellian. S/he is also devoted to the dragon. The degree to which the dragon returns the affection is up to the DM and the comfort level of the players. (There may even be some half-dragon youngsters swimming around.)
A suite is set aside as the elf's quarters near the dragon's lair with comfortable 'waterbeds' (which are pools of clean seawater, complete with barber shrimp, cleaner rasps and other oceanic groomer species.)