D&D: How ‘Dragon Delves’ Reminds Us That Dragon’s Lairs Are Adventures Unto Themselves
In the upcoming adventure anthology Dragon Delves, WotC shows off how even just getting to a dragon’s lair is an adventure.
Creeping into the lair of a dragon is an iconic part of many of our favorite fantasy stories. Confronting a dragon where they live is a big rite of passage for many D&D adventurers. After all, dragons are among the most powerful monsters in the manual. As long as their lair isn’t just a small cave where they can’t fly and can instead get cornered and curb-stomped by a bunch of murderhobos hopped up on healing potions.
And in Dragon Delves, WotC hopes to remind players that dragons-even little ones-leave their mark on the world. And a dragon’s lair is a dangerous, magical place.
Dragon Delves – A Preview Of Lairs And How To Make Them Exciting
One of the things I love about the book is the way it highlights each dragon’s lair as not just a place where the dragon lives, but as a force in and of the world itself. It gives a lot of context for how a DM might think about a monster’s lair. It’s not just a bunch of interlinked caverns – it’s a dangerous, supernatural place.
Kind of like how the Mirkwood out of the Hobbit was once Greenwood the Great Forest, before it fell under the corrupting influence of the Necromancer (aka Sauron). The fell tower of Dol Guldur was constantly awash in dark sorcery, clouds hung over it, and its evil leeched into the ground and the trees. And centuries after the Necromancer’s defeat, the forest is still treacherous to travelers who stray from the path. Also it’s full of giant spiders.
And similarly, in Dragon Delves, you’ll get several examples of how a dragon’s lair shapes the land around it. In fact that’s the heart of the very first adventure in the book, Death at Sunset. The adventure shows how a dragon’s presence can linger, even long after the dragon that created it has departed from the world. It’s quite clever for a 1st-level Adventure.
“Centuries ago, six quarreling elven families reconciled. Each family planted a redwood sapling in a circular grove to represent their newfound harmony. Decades later, after the saplings grew tall and mighty, an ancient green dragon dug a lair in the redwoods’ roots, poisoning the grove and surrounding forest. The elves called the dragon Death-at-Sunset, for twilight was always when the dragon descended on her prey. The dragon adopted this name, reveling in the terror it inspired and bellowing it just before rampaging.”
And that’s not spoiling much of anything – that’s the intro text for the adventure. But read through and you’ll find out how the forest changed after Death-at-Sunset’s reign of terror. It really did poison the forest. And, like the Mirkwood, the dragon’s power has changed the forest.
What I really like about this adventure is how detailed it gets. It’s not just a table of “forest effects” though that is there, prominently. But many of the encounters you’ll have are because of the corruption of this dragon, who, like Jacob Marley in a Christmas Carol, was dead to begin with. It’s a holistic experience that takes you through how this dragon’s lair warps and twists the land.
What’s In A Lair Anyway
And that’s just the first adventure. The whole book is full of different ways that dragons ways of warping reality around them. In the ninth level adventure, you’ll find the impact a red dragon can have on an extraplanar pocket somewhere in the Astral Plane. Or face down a potent white dragon whose lair has afflicted the area around it with extree cold, a freezing river, reflecting light crystals, and more.
Again and again, you’ll find out how a dragon changes the ecosystem. Whether it’s actual weather/environmental effects or just creating the right sort of situation for creatures that are particularly aligned with the dragon to show up, the presence of a dragon is a weight in the world. One that, when done well, adds a lot of narrative heft.
To that end, the adventures go out of their way to point out just how far reaching these dragons get. Though, I think it does pull some of its punches. Because you don’t really see the big dragons – the ones that could wipe out lesser parties – until towards the very end of the book. But that’s kind of how it is with D&D. You don’t fight the real scary stuff until either just about the end of your campaign.
But that’s why I think seeing how even a young dragon can leave a mark on the world is important. You don’t have to wait for the most powerful dragons to come along to start saying, “no but these guys are big supernatural things that leave a lasting impression.”
You can find out for yourself next week, with the release of Dragon Delves on July 8th!
Of course if it was me, I’d just throw a big ol’ dragon at a party and see what they do, because why wait? But that is definitely not for everyone!
