The Fourth Defender (campaign idea)
Channel:
dungeons-n-drags
The base of this campaign is a dragon civil war. Two of them, to be exact.
Thousands of years before the campaign starts, dragons are the main race on the world, with the other four major ones still evolving into the beings they are at the present day. They're seen as cute little pets to be kept around, nothing more.
The current dragon king seeks peace between all of the dragons under his control, and to abolish most if not all of the armies he's got while he's at it. This pisses off one of his main generals and pretty much all of the dragon soldiers, and starts the first war.
The general wins the first war and everybody parties a bit. Things are good for about the first ten years, a blink of an eye for dragons, and then **** starts hitting the fan. The power goes to the new king's head and he flips the kingdom on a dime from a mostly golden utopia to a complete and utter wreck, which sparks the second war.
When this one is won, there's a problem - unlike the first king, who was just executed, the second king made pacts with demons and deals with a god to get the power to take him down. Because of all that power, he's technically a god himself, albeit very far in debt to other beings. Due to this, he can't be killed that easily, and the new winners of the war aren't sure they can keep him locked up for as long as it would take to make a wepaon capable of doing the deed.
So four dragons are picked from the army, some of the best they've got, and are each given an artifact to fill with their blood - a crystalline flower, a shuriken, a druidic talisman, and the detached eye of the fourth, which was taken out by the corrupt king.
Their hearts are replaced by these artifacts in a long ritual, and all four are bound to the king before the most powerful dragon mages left in the kingdom tear open a hole into the void, and toss the king in.
The four are then sent each to a different corner of the world to protect themselves and the artifacts bound to them so that the dragon king can never be brought back until the time is right.
Around a thousand years after that, the four main mortal races rebel against their scaly overlords and get out of slavery by murdering every dragon they get their hands on. The defenders have no idea, and keep living in their corners.
At the beginning of the campaign, only one dragon remains. The other three have been found and slain by scouting parties of the other three races, and the artifacts were recovered and studied.
The last race is reluctant to send a party to kill the fourth one, since the other three preached about the end times coming in the event all four died, but they cave to peer pressure and send the party to go kill the fourth dragon.
When they do get there, they have two choices: leave the dragon and keep the dragon king bound in the void for eternity, or kill the fourth defender and then try to take down the king.
This is just a vague idea with a lot of holes in it - subplot, main races, etc. - but I can provide the names and artifacts of the dragons.
The first is Nirroth, the Northern dragon. She's the one whose artifact is her own eye, and also the only one I can't find an image I like for.
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The bearer of the flame shuriken is Ryluth, the Southern dragon. She's the one that I imagine was downed first, though it's all open to interpretation.
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Tesseleth, the Eastern dragon, bearer of the crystal flower.
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The last and only living dragon: Merrith of the West, bearer of the gem. He's the one that the party is sent to kill and the final chain holding the corrupted king inside the void.
Well, thanks for reading. I probably mispelled some things and/or didn't make the main points of the idea clear enough, but **** it, I'm tired. Have the pictures of the other artifacts (credit to rittik-designs on deviantart until I can find better pictures.)
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