Monthly Encounter #22: Diplomacy with Dragons
Art from Faeria Card Game
Here at Tribality, we’ve decided to provide our readers with Encounters ready to be added to your table. I’ll be creating new ones monthly for you to have a big collection to look through when you run out of ideas for your game. If people end up liking them we may start releasing them in easy to print PDF format.
Don’t forget to comment feedback or possible variations for others to see and/or possibly implement when running this encounter. Without further ado, hope you enjoy it:
Setting: Agnostic
Location: Anywhere
Lvls: 11-16
Encounter background
Zadregarosz the Resplendent, a golden dragon, decided with a group of three other dragons to cooperate and conquer a small territory for themselves. They took over a region and plan on taking fees from those who decide to travel through that pass.
Diplomacy with Dragons
Adventure Hook
The adventuring party can get into this encounter in a multitude of ways:
- A king/noble/someone of importance asks the PCs to get rid of the dragons blocking the way
- The PCs are interrupted by a dragon that asks them for a fee while traveling
- A hunters’ guild puts a bounty on one of the dragons, but not the other 3
- While escorting a noble(wo)man in an airship one of the dragons appear
The Territory
This encounter is built to be a social one, with a chance of turning into a battle that puts the PCs at a high disadvantage. Tactical reasoning and/or diplomacy are vital for this encounter to be successful.
The territory can be easily altered to your need. For this encounter, in order for it to have a higher level of difficulty, I will have it occur 320ft above ground level near a mountainous region.
Flying atop the tree tops the silhoette of a mountain marks a waypoint in your travel, as a checkpoint to your final destination. A blue shine lights reflecting the sunlight to show a draconic figure soaring through the air to your location.
The adult blue dragon plans to intimidate the adventurers enough for them to pay a good fee or face a fall to their inevitable death. The dragon makes sure to let the player characters know she is accompanied by the other 3 dragons. “Defying us is fruitless as this is our domain” -she states if provoked.
Ikkaris, the blue dragon isn’t scared to close distance with the player characters to chat. That’s the way she marks dominance over her subjects. If attacked, she plays the battle safe while not retreating unless absolutely necessary. She roars to alert the others and tries to save time as the second dragon arrives 1d4 rounds later, the third one 1d4-1 rounds later than that, and 1d4-2 extra rounds for the fourth one to arrive.
The dragons
You can find the dragons’ personalities below.
Ikkaris, the Talker
adult blue dragon (she/her)
- Personality Trait: Ikkaris considers herself to be the center of the world and is extremely narcissistic. She is the patient one of the group and the one that is normally sent to do the talking.
- Ideal: Leave her victim’s bodies as undisturbed as possible to impale them in the treetops as bodies that can act as a warning to others. She sees beauty in that display.
- Bond: She’s fallen in love with Zadregarosz, but won’t ever admit it. However, one can perceive it with a successful DC16 Wisdom (Insight) check as every time someone speaks badly or attacks Zadregarosz she reacts.
- Flaw: Insults and telling her she can’t achieve something pick her nerve, causing Ikkaris to fully confront whoever is talking her down. It’s easy to convince her when gems are involved in the conversation.
Vikran, the Brute
adult red dragon (he, them)
- Personality Trait: While not dumb, Vikran doesn’t like to think things through and loves combat
- Ideal: Kill, people, steal their things to have a greater hoard than Zadregarosz.
- Bond: Vikran has a “friendly” rivalry with Zadregarosz. They compete to see who gets the most loot. If it’s a magic item, they may fight against each other for it.
- Flaw: Vikran is highly hyperactive and doesn’t like being still nor quiet. He’d rather negotiations ended in fights.
Radkronos, the Wise
adult copper dragon (he/him)
- Personality Trait: Radkronos talks as little as possible, trying to move through the shadows when possible. He never makes eye contact. When he does talk, he usually offers a wise comment or solution.
- Ideal: Become the leader of the 4 without heavily damaging the others. Radkronos does care about them after all.
- Bond: Once very talkative in the past, Ikkaris proved to be better at doing the talking. Radkronos is scared of her and of Zadregarosz, the latter having ordered Vikran to heavily punish Radkronos on previous occasions.
- Flaw: Despite being the most approachable of the dragons, he only talks when entirely necessary. Powerful spells may scare him, making the dragon act without thinking.
Zadregarosz, the Resplendent
ancient gold dragon (they/them)
- Personality Trait: Zadregarosz is a bit of a showman and unnecessarily talks with big words.
- Ideal: Get the most amount of wealth and treasures harming as few people as possible. With time, use the wealth to have people come over to their territory and treat them as benevolent gods.
- Bond: They can easily detect powerful magic items when they see them. Zadregarosz wants those items all for him and may force the player characters to give those items to them if they want to stay alive. Zadregarosz may threaten to attack nearby cities and towns if they aren’t given those magic items.
- Flaw: Zadregarosz is fixated on this location being their territory and there’s no way to make them leave unless offered something that is incredibly good for them. They think they need to always be the center of attention.
Additional information
- Aside from Vikran, none of the dragons like resorting to combat.
- Even though both Radkronos and Zadregarosz can shapeshift to human form, Zadregarosz considers their draconic form too beautiful to ever leave it. Radkronos, on the other hand, feels more comfortable in his elven cloaked form when forced to talk with the PCs
- The dragons have each their own treasure hoard inside tunnels in the mountain that were carved by Ikkaris. Combined they all have enough riches and content that would make any adventurer want to retire adventuring.
Want more encounters?
If you liked this encounter and would like to see more check out the index I created with all the monthly encounters I’ve created so far, listed by tier lvl and environment:
