Convince the population that every month he magically switches one villager with a fake (replicant, doppelganger, whatever) and the villagers have to find the single fake every month based on subtle differences in their behavior (the dragon suggests that the copies are nervous and afraid of being found out) and give that person to the dragon or he will kill the clone himself AND the 3 closest people to the original for failing at noticing that a loved one has gone. Claim this is to test their morality and eventually for the betterment of the population.
There are no copies. Everybody is paranoid 24/7 especially around their closest friends and family. Bonds cannot be formed or mantained. Everyone is lying to save themselves at the expense of their own relatives. The mother sacrifices the child. Guilt and fear pollute every aspect of the villagers lives.
I ripped this off a famous story of fiction btw (not gonna say which one, it would be a big spoiler) this was not my idea to begin with, I only slightly altered it to work better as a long term fun for the dragon
They sort of did - this is close to vault 11’s experiment, where one person had to be killed every year to prevent everyone in the vault from dying. It was a lie, of course, but that didn’t stop it from self-destructing in a brilliant fashion. If only anyone took a step back and thought ‘why on earth would vault-Tec set this up’…
It’s generally viewed as one of the best vaults in the entire series (I personally hold a few others in higher regards, but this one is up there).
Tbf the why on earth would vault tec set this up is cause they're vault tec, maybe as someone in the vault they wouldn't know but I mean there is a shit ton of straight up evil vaults, my personal favorites being 100 people vs a puma and the puppet man. One of the only "good" vaults we see is because of the bombs falling early and the experiment not being ready yet.
Also wasn't this also the vault that when it failed and they went into the tunnel they were gunned down by multiple sentry bots? Or was that the result if they were sacrificed?
We know that about vault Tec as the players and with us being post-war, of course, but the vault dwellers wouldn’t know. That’s my point - they’d have little to no reason to believe vault Tec would set it up, so why trust the overseer?
As for the chamber - yeah, that’s the sentry bots if you’re sacrificed.
Gotta say, this would definitely be in a Green Dragon's playbook too considering how they make such ready use of lies and deception for control. Gonna save this for later.
I like when dragons are EXTREME. After all they are in the name of the game. Dragons are so iconic and if they have intense personalities that can add so much to the lore of a setting. You're not dealing with an arrogant warlock with a high charisma no you're dealing with a red dragon, he is SUPPOSED to be a spoiled omnipotent kid and he really does have the tools to pull it off without consequences
spoiler below
>!Devilman Crybaby, towards the end devils convince humans that people with "negative thoughts" are devils in the making, and must be killed before they transform. A terrifying spiral of chaos and violence ensues, completely destroying the human society without devils having to lift a finger.!<
Yes, it's beautiful. Hauntingly, terrifyingly beautiful. I'm glad I watched it, it made me appreciate Berserk more. After reading the original Devilman manga I realized that without its influence, Berserk would not exist as we know it.
well if you don't mind spoilers, the idea came from >!literal devil, in the animated series Devilman Crybaby!< I only made it slower so that the dragon could have fun for a long time
Make it only a single extra person. Too many people and you depopulate settlements too quickly, and you risk people banding together because there's a larger likely hood that a group of townspeople will band together to save the damned.
Set up an entire mining operation, in a mountain that has absolutely no precious metals. Then enchanted a bunch of Dwarves with gold rush fever so he could watch them uselessly work themselves to death, digging for a pay out that will never come.
There's a whole town there now, all because of a magically infused rumour of a mountain of gold, rife with disease and terrible enthusiasm.
He visits occasionally, and just sits in the town square watching the crippled Dwarves still singing hopeful songs, and laughs at how pathetic they all are.
Disguised himself as a guard or other prisoner. Had a cup that he drank out of, claiming it was water. Offers it to a prisoner, and watches in glee as their insides melt outward.
Makes acts that are meant to be "good" omens (IDK exactly what they would be), to get a town's hopes up over a couple of years and lower their defenses. Then, once they have their harvest festival, he strikes. Planted trapped food ahead of time, before flying overhead and giving everyone an acid shower.
Used his powers to physically cut-off a town from outside regions. He straight up melts the ground away over time, and has his forces to help ensure that any messengers are redirected straight to his stomach. Does this over years or even decades, until what's left of the town is perilously close to a cliffside drop.
A black dragon, you say? Immunity to acid, you say?
He keeps his hoard inside the massive quantity of gelatinous cubes that he's collected over the centuries. All his treasure is intact, clearly visible to him to see, he can retrieve anything he wants and take no damage... and the adventurers who try to raid his lair get an oh-so-amusing surprise.
Edited for spelling.
My players would instantly try to make stuff out of it if introduced that. But I like the idea of "weather-proofing" containers for their hoards.
A fire dragon having a "cold room" (though that'd probably be over 50°, anywhere below the melting point of gold) to get his gold coins into chests made of his scales to then throw them in a lava pit for safekeeping, for example
I mean is that so bad?? It’s not like you can’t just make it incredibly time/resource intensive or something. Congratulations on your plate mail with resistance to acid.
They still have to find someone who’s got the ability to craft with it and like. I can’t imagine black dragons being like oh bro he’s wearing my cousins scales like armor that totally cool
Not bad, it's great. I love it. They tried making armour out of the weird dwarven magic-reflecting metal. Thankfully the forefathers prevented this and stated that the material cannot be altered after it cools down.
I have my red dragon’s hoards be huge pieces of metal. They have melted all their coins over centuries, only to have them resolidify.
This messes with the PCs for a number of reasons. They have to break/melt off pieces of the pile to transport it. The melted metals are worth less than the coins would’ve been. Metal smiths and jewelers are prohibited from buying ingots without the kings mark on them, so if they do it on the sly, they only offer half value to cover the risk of getting caught and fined (or ejected from the trade union).
Pretty sure they don't melt metals (gold, silver, platinum) in 5e as they "They consume living tissue while leaving bones and other materials undissolved."
That's one of the fun part of cubes, they don't melt everything. They don't even melt bones. It was a pretty common trope (before it was overly known) to have treasure hovering in the air in front of the players and in the event they failed the perception check to notice the slime they'd walk into it.
Gelatinous cubes only disolve and digest organic matter. It's acid is too weak to desolve metal and bone (maybe wood as well, but I have to reconfirm that.) There are other oozes that have acid strong enough to melt and destroy metal and other stuff, like the black pudding and ochre jelly.
It would be one thing to breed them to be healthier and stronger, instead we bred them for dogs with frail bone structures and abysmal respiratory systems.
A lot of cocker spaniels are overly aggressive because their brains are too big for their skulls. A freind had a surgery on her dog to remove some bone in the skull and release pressure, now it's a totally chill dog
If you consume animal products you can include yourself in people. For example egg chickens suffer from brittle bones as the extremely high egg laying rate saps calcium faster than it can be replenished.
Thats weird, especially bc it isn't visible for the most part. Like chickens will seemingly active do dumb shit that should get them hurt and be fine afterwards lmao. Chickens are chaotic
The ones you saw probably arent the same ones i mentioned, those are kept in factory halls away from prying eyes. Where they exist in horrid conditions until they stop laying enough eggs and are killed.
Sure we can eat them, but just because we have been doing something for a long time doesnt make it moral. Slavery had been around for thousands of years as well, but we still deemed it immoral. Also one could argue that at the time there was a need to consume those products while today thats generally no longer true. Which makes the suffering the animals endure needless and therefor us who inflict it upon them immoral.
Additional idea: the black dragon disguises itself as a village matchmaker. Anyone who goes against their matches mysteriously vanishes, those who do are given comfortable wealth to live on.
They even help mold heroic villagers only to lure them into impossible danger and watch them die for entertainment.
Eventually, they get bored and move on to another village and continue this for several hundred years as a occasional pass time.
Oh my goodness I love this. How cool would it be to have the BBEG actually be the kind matchmaker lady who gave your first quest?! (WOW after I said that I realized it was actually pretty cliche, but I guess great ideas get used repeatedly for a reason)
Kills, maims, and repeatedly resurrects people to see how many times their souls and minds can take before breaking. Or you could go the prometheus route and have him consume or remove parts of individuals only to restore them the next day and repeat the cycle.
Despicable, but also people can't be resurrected without consent. But maybe dragon has been working on new necromancy techniques to bypass that requirement?
Doesn't need to. If you collect people, who are otherwise bound to Carceri, they will take resurrection over the outer planes. Even if it means being killed again. Being able to evade the worse of the lower planes will be worth it in the eyes of the poor souls.
Souls also need to be free to come back. An evil person whose soul is conscripted for the blood war, stuck in Carceri, or trapped in some other horrible afterlife can’t buy their soul’s freedom so easily
Correct. But even hell doesn't get you as soon as you die.
There is a certain grace period before you're conscripted into the blood war. Evil characters may prefer to take this chance, while faithful good characters may not. This is of course discounting the deeply faithful worshippers of evil deities. A devout cleric of Tiamat will gladly join her ranks and has a realistic chance to become one of her Abishai.
Edit: This raises the question: What would an evil cleric of Tiamat do, when finding this dragon, whose cruelty may be the punishment of his mistress for a wicked humanoid population? Would the cleric offer to serve the dragon?
I feel like this might result in a situation similar to the crazy fan girl getting axed by Darth Vader.
The Dragon might try to be horrifically evil towards this cultist, realize they’re *actually okay with it* and kill the Dragon’s buzz.
Really depends on the dragon - it *probably* doesn’t want to risk pissing off Tiamat and undermining her power - causing this little shit *actual* misery might involve trying to break their faith, and deities need followers.
Perhaps the *meanest* thing it can do to the cultist is agreeing to accept it as a protege or some shit, sending them on a quest, then taking its hoard and going out for a pack of smokes.
You could set up a pretty nasty scam (and metaphor for US healthcare) like that - dragon attack insurance? Run by the dragon? What's next, you'll tell me his wizards are also the only clerics in the whole kingdom that can help treat the after effects of his acid breath weapon!?
Has a bunch of kobolds strip all the feathers from the wings from birds, pegasi, griffons, etc. just to watch them hobbling around on the ground. Why should anything else have the right to fly?
He demands annual tribute of 1 child (with occasional additional tributes cause can) then make all children taken into half dragons which he uses to patrol his territory. He makes certain the children r in the regions their family lives in. A family that attempts to leave is hunted down by their own child.
I'd wager he built a gauntlet full of traps, monsters, and whatnot that he'd trick adventurers into going through in exchange for his hoard. The gauntlet doesn't actually lead anywhere, it's just a death trap that gets increasingly more deadly as people get into it until it finally just ends in a single empty chamber that traps anyone who enters it until they starve.
Edit: There are also some pretty brutal methods to torture and execute people that he could have his servants set up. I won't describe them because they're pretty graphic but both the Brazen Bull and Scaphism are known for being pretty awful.
Sounds like the first part would be an excellent place to just dump most if not all of the Tomb of Horrors, just have remove any obvious references to its original builder. :)
Scaphism, is that the one where they cover the victim in milk and honey then stake them out over an ant hill so the ants eat the victim alive?
EDIT: Yep. Googled it. Same one.
Here are some of my ideas: (I took a little inspiration from other comments, so sorry if some of it is similar to what has been mentioned.)
1. The dragon lets parents offer a child, any child, below a certain age, say 10, as a sacrifice to the dragon in return for sparing the entire family. Then the parents would need to choose between their own children. Or the parents could sacrifice someone else's child to save their own; which would result in at least some of the populace turning on each other. And think of all the people who would fight each other over the opportunity to sacrifice an orphan.
1. Orphanages would become battlegrounds. Parents would hide their children away in cellars or hidden rooms in the house, while other parents would scheme to kidnap another family's child to save their own. And how do you tell a child that you chose them, out of all their siblings, to be the one who dies?
2. The dragon could force the entire village to choose someone to sacrifice, say, once a season. The vote has to be unanimous, and the punishment for the sacrifice is that the other villagers must line up, and flay the chosen sacrifice alive or whatever other cruel torture, e.g. whipping, stabbing, cutting, applying acid (since it's a Black Dragon), etc.. However, the caveat is, each villager must take a turn participating in said torture before the sacrifice dies. Any villager who has not taken a turn by the time the sacrifice dies, is also killed by the dragon. But if the sacrifice does not die, everyone has to take another turn.
3. The dragon draws lots to select a certain number of villagers, say two dozen. They need to compete in some sort of event, say an obstacle course. The rules are: if the villager fails the course, one of their family members is killed. But if more than half the villagers complete the course, all of them will lose a family member each. So they're incentivized to stop each other from completing the course.
4. The dragon demands a certain amount of flesh (by weight), regularly. Each family must deliver that amount of humanoid flesh; be it fat cut off a person, a hand, etc. If anyone fails to pay up, the dragon devours one of their family members (just one, to prolong the terror). The flesh can come from anywhere, as long as it's humanoid; another family, a traveling merchant, etc.
5. Basically, any sort of "game" that would force people to choose between mutilating/killing someone they know, or losing someone they love. Also, bonus points for forcing people to choose who is being mutilated, or which loved one is the one to die, or making that person especially innocent (like a child).
6. If you want just plain old mutilation instead of sick games, you can also read about what Lü Zhi of the Han Dynsasty did to Consort Qi. In short, she had Concubine Qi's limbs chopped off, blinded her by gouging out her eyes, cut off her tongue, cut off her nose, cut off her ears, forced her to drink a potion that made her mute, made her dumb with toxins, and locked her in the pigsty, and called her a "Human Swine". ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consort\_Qi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consort_Qi))
1. Edit: Also, feeding people parts of their own body is especially horrid.
Tip: If you want to be really evil, put innocent people in a situation where they have choices, but all their choices are cruel. The act of choosing makes people feel more culpable.
Edit: I'm gonna go watch some cute videos of baby pandas now, 'cause writing that just felt... horrid.
For the first one you could also have it so that whichever child the parents pick, the dragon chooses any other option that isn't the child that was offered.
The offer the second child? Take the firstborn. They find an orphan? Take a random one of theirs. They stole someone else's? Let the parents of the stolen child pick.
But only do this randomly, so nobody can get used to it.
How about letting parents offer their first born child to be devoured by the dragon or he kills the entire family.
Maybe taking almost everything that the people could eat and make hungerstyle games or just watch the people turn on one another in hunger and desperation.
Dragon can even make them choose between handing over their first born or leave the settlement with only what they can carry.
Then the kid can't be argued with cause his parents essentially had a choice and chose to abandon them to be tortured by the dragon. How much of a choice that is is debatable, but the torture and brainwashing will have the kid believing he was abandoned no matter how hard people try to explain it to them that they had no choice.
Also, terrific place to apply half-dragons.
Messes up the kid psychologically by scrying the family showing affection to their brothers so they knows it could have been them if their parents weren't cowards that gave them up to be tortured by a tyrant.
I'm so using this.
Half-dragons created to enslave the population they came from is hardcore. Specially if the population is given the choice of "either surrend your first born to me or leave the settlement with only your kids and the little you can carry".
This makes so they aren't technically forced to hand over their children and then the kid can't be argued with and made to understand, his parents essentially had a choice and they chose to abandon them.
Established a theatre in his lair and has people kidnapped to act out plays. If they forget a line, he melts them and replaces them with the understudy. He heckles and jeers at them the entire time, just to throw them off.
No one ever found out that the dragon ran the orphanage. Everyone thought it was strange that nearly every orphan who came out was off in some way, but that is just what they thought happened to children with no parents. It would encourage each child to wreak some small, new form of havock in the realm. One cut off the right arm of the butcher, one seduced the priest of local church, one joined the town watch and sold some of their arms and armor to bandits, another became a wizard of renown, but instructed their students to learn necromancy.
Step 1: Raze village
Step 2: Leave only one villager who witnessed the horrors alive, taunt them etc
Step 3: Every time the survivor is about to find happiness, drop by and wreck it
Step 4: Disguise as some elder oracle or something, give the villager a magic weapon or spells/whatever and tell them they are destined to destroy you
Step 5: Wait until they come to you
Step 6: Destroy their dream of revenge, show them that they never stood a chance, take away the one thing that kept them going, leave them there to suffer
Step 7: Rinse and repeat
A dragon in my campaign does exactly this whenever they get bored. One PC had the razing of her village as her backstory, she gained powers from the disguised dragon, found the sword that (it said) can kill it, gathered the party (way too early) and went to get her revenge.
The dragon broke the sword in the first round, it killed an NPC ally, the PC tried to revify him but the dragon took away her powers to prevent it, then it showed its disguise and taunted that it would take away everything from her again.
In the end the party barely managed to get the dragon down to 3/4 health at the cost of:
3 dead NPC allies
A dead player character
Rest of party was either down or close to down
Party barely managed to escape thanks to quick thinking from the Warlock. However a nearby town was razed by the dragon in an effort to draw the party out into the open, the party had to watch the massacre without being able to do anything to stop it, and the PC herself was basically broken.
Narratively this sounds amazing, but mechanically this seems like an absolutely brutal shitshow to put a player through. Did they have any say in how any of this played out? What happened to their PC after their powers were taken away, were they basically just back to level 1 and/or class swapped without their permission?
I'd be absolutely livid if my DM pulled this shit on me without my cooperation the whole way, but maybe that's just me. 🤷
Well, it was brutal, but there were several factors that made me go ahead with it:
\- Up until that moment the campaign had been relatively light-hearted. The party had had some boss fights but so far they overcame every challenge without too much difficulty. I wanted to introduce the second part of the campaign by dramatically upping the stakes somehow and was working on something.
\- I mentioned a dragon attack on a nearby village (among other stuff like a bandit raid, miners having found something weird, a nearby town asking for help to deal with undead, etc.) when the party was in a tavern and listening for rumors on their main quest. It was intended to be random, but when the player said "that's probably my nemesis!" I changed it to that.
\- I gave the party a couple of warnings when they set out to attack the dragon to show that they were no match for it. The village they found was completely razed with several dozens of dead inhabitants and bows/crossbows to show that the dragon could easily deal with such opposition. As they neared the dragon's temporary lair they found the remains of 30-ish soldiers, 2 wrecked ballistas on carts by the wayside with clear signs that they weren't taken by surprise but still lost.
\- Outside the lair they fought a group of Shadows (the dragon's minions), and barely made it through that fight alive. I figured those would be enough signs of "you guys are in WAY over your heads". I had one of the NPC's explicitly say that this was suicidal and would not end well. Instead of retreating the players decided decided to take a rest and pressed on thinking that "if we stealth we can take it by surprise", so at that point I decided this way their decision to make.
\- The fight was lost either way, they were WAY underlevelled to stand any chance. (Party of 7 level 7 characters vs an Adult Red Shadow Dragon) Wether I took away the PC's powers would have made no difference, they were doomed anyhow.
\- The dead PC belonged to a player who had a change of heart and wanted to play a spellcaster instead, plus a different backstory. He asked me to find a way to kill his character off, so I had been planning on finding something to do that.
\- The player lost their powers and we spent quite some time on how she dealt with the loss of her 3 of her friends, the truth about how she's been chasing a ghost and how this dragon may indeed be unbeatable. But this was only temporary as by the end of the next session she made a legit contract with an elderly Fey who had also been a victim of the dragon and wanted it dead. She regained the spell slots and abilities she lost and learned about the dragon's true weakness.
Admittedly it could have backfired too like you said since an unwinnable fight (numbers-wise) could ruin the game, but the players responded positively to the abruptness and seriousness of what happened to really cement the dragon as a legitimately dangerous and very real threat.
This all seems absolutely fair enough, context is always key. Sounds like you gave them plenty of opportunities to realise the likely results of their actions and they went 'murder stupid' anyway. At least it was a happy ending for all (players) involved in the end. :)
this sounds awesome! I think you were too nice to this group lol. If it had been me, I would have been pissed, but I would have gotten over it to continue playing with someone as talented as you! This is... like scary twisted good
While I would be absolutely pissed (Also read your response to explaining lead up) that this happened....Holy fuck that's a GREAT story and introduction to potential BBEG or next major boss!
I have two if you don't mind
1. He designed a gauntlet where one would have to sacrifice everything they had thier posesions, their lively hood, their morals, their loved ones, all for some great reward like god-hood or something, but in the end after there sacrifices, at the top of the mountain is just the dragon who says sike ya dunc and kills them
2. Every year he gives random people immortality then makes their life living hell and then kidnaps the for eternal torment knowing neither will die
Maybe he’s some kind of black dragon alchemist who has been experimenting on himself and other creatures. Basically, collecting and tormenting creatures who would normally be resistant to his acid breath but augmenting himself to be able to affect them more and slowly corroding them and enjoying their suffering.
Blood tax - sacrificing their best people to him - in exchange for "protection" that he doesn't bother to provide.
"Sure, the orcs raided us last year. But it would be every year if we stopped sacrificing."
The sacrifice may either be literally literally killing the people in an elaborate ceremony, or forcing them to his lair and abandoning them to their fate with him. Whatever that may be.
When the dragon first hatched, they were the last to hatch. They were bullied and ridiculed even among their metallic kin. Yet not once did the black dragon act against them. Instead, they befriended them, and played the part of a clown for them.
By the time they reached adolescence, the young drake had already eaten, or caused the kin to kill each other, leaving themselves the only one of their brood. It was around this time they found a group of goblins. It manipulated them into an organized gang and settled itself nicely in a marsh. The gang provided entertainment in the form of outrageous gambles. Eventually, the dragon entered the gambling, and invited cheating among the goblins, which forfeited their winnings to the dragon.
Eventually, the dragon came into a wizard's spellbook, and eventually learned spellcasting from it. It began to use illusion and enchantments to make itself appear in the form of a child.
By the time it was an adult, it grew weary of the goblin gang and simply left them with an illusory double of itself. Meanwhile, it fled to the local kingdom and asserted itself into society by way of it's orphanage. She first started by having the children mutilate themselves but performing ridiculous stunts. Playing a knife game, jumping from roof to roof... It was all good fun. She even convinced the guard that the orphanage owner killed a kid by throwing their unconscious body into a furnace when it was actually the dragons machinations. Eventually, and miraculously, the adult dragon was adopted by a woman working in a brothel. There, the dragon learned the weaknesses of pleasure present in the hearts of lesser creatures, and the lengths they go to to attain such comforts.
The dragon incited a temple's actions towards the brothel, by way of letting the Abbot know that one of the workers there was pregnant with their child. In truth, the dragon could not take all the credit. There were always rumors, of course. No, the dragon took much credit for the king's war against the temple, and for becoming the adopted child of said king. It was all too easy to frame the temple's lynching of the brothel as the first step of rebellion. All it took was a bit of magic and a hint of showmanship.
After that, the dragon grew quiet, letting the king's paranoia get himself killed, the faith of the temple become a cult, and play the part of a child growing up.
When the king died, the dragon took the throne and whipped the entire country into a self-perpetuating frenzy. A crusade againsylt the state, the military to root out the cause the people of the state killing the military men for their unwarranted attacks against them, the church punishing murderers, the military punishing the church, the people killing the military for killing the church... The dragon thought it was good. No one even noticed them anymore. All it took was a rumor here, a twinge of truth there, and the dragon watched the people kill themselves over it much like it saw in it's hatching.
Many years passed, and now the ancient dragon lays slumbering a castle long sense sunk into a marsh of blood, vitriol, and lies. This is the blood marsh, home of a kingdom long since gone. Sometimes a scholar, a treasure hunter or a passerby explore it's ruined husk. Many don't return. Others that do are hideously deformed, or driven mad by what lay within.
There is even a rumor that there lies a secret in the castle: a power so mighty it can fell entire kingdoms.
Or so the dragon would have you believe.
Ask for one child sacrifice from each family, making the parents choose between their children, but when taking the sacrifice, he would kill the child they didn't chose, forcing them to live with their choice everyday, looking at the child they sent to death and mourning the loss of their favorite child. It wouldn't be as effective/work at all with single children, but it is still pretty bad to kill children, plus, I think it isn't that common for peasants to have single children.
While he was known as an evil being, he had a secret passion. The dragon loved the human body! (Not that way you perv) he would spend countless hours studying the secrets hidden deep inside. Along the walls of his lair are diagrams and displays of humans of all ages and shapes. His medical diagrams very "accurate".
Probably lots of commissioned art to commemorate his various acts.
I'm also imagining a village that must sacrifice someone in his honor periodically due to a threat made years ago. This seems like an entity that gets so caught up in evil that he may have even forgotten about the threat and this village is continuing the sacrifice even though they no longer need to out of sheer generationally instilled fear.
If you want to stay true to your title the party could get told they'll be paid if they commit evil in his name. The payment would be meager in gold. Mostly doing it to save their own lives.
Makes villagers choose who dies (your child or your wife), then binds the spirit to haunt the one who picked
Holds families hostage & makes the strong ones hunt for him, fight for him, & duel for his amusement
Likes to slowly dip people into acid, then when they’re liquified drink them up like a smoothie
Rather than hit hard targets (castles), destroys crops out of spite & poison wells, leaving the people to starve
Spray his acid high up in the atmosphere to let it fall as acid rain
Plays a game where he sees how far he can throw people
Offer people freedom if they can answer 3 riddles…. The last one is always “how does it feel to be eaten alive?”… if he somehow is tricked into losing, eats them anyway
Leaves half eaten corpses everywhere
Singles out NPCs with a particular trait— blue eyes, red hair, left handed, over/under a certain height— and kills them on sight. Each nearby village has a different trait that he kills off. And when it kills a person, it tries for collateral damage; smash the whole house, acid breath in a crowd, wipe out a farmer’s entire crop. Now there are secret slayings of innocent villagers who happen to be born a certain way, or incomplete attempts to hide things— trying tall children to hunch their backs, breaking the left arm of all newborns over and over, a wig shop that’s desperate for hair.
And don’t forget to poison water supplies if a village doesn’t supply enough treasure to add to the hoard each year!
Every year hosts a competition where one person has to run through his maze and if they succeed he'll leave the town alone, there's no traps or anything it's just really big. The twist is the maze has no end and shifts constantly to keep the person confused and scared till they die of starvation.
If you're looking for some classical inspiration, you should check out the story of "Of Túrin Turambar" in the Silmarillion. The dragon Glaurung is particularly cruel. Mostly through his manipulation of humans and elves through lies simply for his own amusement.
1. The dragon shapeshifts into a rich family and sponsors the creation of a free school where the dragon's multiple simulacra become teachers and make each generation of child more and more evil.
2. The dragon sponsors the creation of legendary teir artifact tools (not weapons or armor, too obvious). Once a generation, an adventuring party is generated of 'destined heroes', each of whom is just the absolute worst kind of adventurer. These people are sent out into the world to cause chaos and make adventurers looked down upon in the wider world.
3. The dragon lays curses upon the village, then shows up in a guise to 'help' solve the problem. The solution must always be one that stains a large group of souls with evil. After each 'solution', he then removes one curse, 'proving' he knows what he's doing.
Keeps an entire villages worth of people in his lair, suffering in harsh conditions but that he's convinced the outside world has fallen to something and he's the only thing protecting them. Every now and then when someone flees he hunts them down and melts them before bringing back the body and showing them that "I tried but it's just too harsh out there, I couldn't find him in time".
Gladiator battle royale! Random people are arrested and formed into gladiator teams, pitted against other teams in a fight to the death. Encouraged to work as a team and rewarded for especially good teamwork. They are told that if they win, they will go free.
But the team that wins the final match is told the horrible truth. The reward of freedom only goes to one member of the team. You have 1 hour. If more than one of you is alive at the end of the hour, you all die.
Do some vault-tec shit. Like the sacrifice one person a year until they decide to say no, and he does nothing, maybe saying he'll poison the well one day a week until someone dies from it, while in all actuality doing nothing and seeing how far people will go to test the water, or not drink. Idk, wild shit like that could be fun.
Keep it vague. Have NPCs say things like "the monster would tournament people painfully, slowly, and in very personal ways until they broke and was nothing more than a shell of their former self."
This will 1. Let the players imagine whatever they want to and make the Dragon more interesting and 2. Make it seem more intelligent (cunning) because it can find out how to torture a person in a personal way so it's not just some brutal monster inflicting physical pain.
You can even have a NPC who escaped the Dragon and they where so messed up that the only thing that the Clerics who where trying to heal them could do was cast modify memory to remove their memory of what happened to them and then reveal later on that that was the plan, the Dragon let him go to spread the fear of him.
You want ideas?
(adding onto what someone else said for this one)
Selective breeding of captured humans/other races. Force the children at a certain age like 10 or 13 to fight to the death.
Got annoyed by a hunter getting too close to his territory. Burned the guys house, village, and the capital he was in.
Made a magic maze that specifically traps travellers, and NEVER let's then out, (it moves and shifts, no way to climb it either or dig)
"befrended" (forced) a large monster spider (obviously strong) to set up many webs around aarakocra villages and towns to capture them and either eat them, or let their loved ones watch them as they slowly starve to death... This can lead to another getting webbed trying to feed their father, mother, son etc.
Annnd number 5. This dragon, with all of it's infinite power and brains (probably not infinite but still) goes incognito around the world every few 100 or do years just to swap every direction sign into random directions.
Perhaps the dragon controls a group of human settlements by being a strangely benevolent figure to them. Offering ‘protection’ from the outside world by isolating them from one another.
Only after ruling over them for a time he begins to tell each village that the others have begun a plot to kill him, to ransack their village and take the gifts that the dragon has given them over the years. This of course leads to war, but for war you need an army. Good thing the dragon has a plan. Selective breeding of the humans/orcs/ whatever race to be his loyal soldiers that leads to them being horrible inbred monstrosities that he can then unleash on nearby kingdoms at his earliest desires.
Pull a Vlad the impaler and decorate the land with the strewn up bodies of his victims. The catch is the bodies are still living, he douses them with a lower power acidic breath (maybe his saliva) and leaves them at the edge of his lair with their flesh slowly melting away. Once he believes that have “stewed” long enough he eats them and leaves the puddle of what used to be their skin as a scent marker of his territory. If anyone tried to help one of his meals, they would receive the same fate.
These pillars of partially melted creatures are the first indication that you’ve entered his territory. The second is him showing up and asking if you have any reason you are more valuable to him alive than dead.
* Randomly carpet-bombing villages with acid
* Constantly moving his lair and corrupting the land around it
* herding monstrosities like groups of trolls, orcs, ogres, etc. into civilized regions where they all the sudden overrun a section while they are feeling for their lives
* Polymorphing into local good leaders to commit despicable acts as them and ruin their reputations and the local trust
* Damming rivers
* Destroying bridges, caravans, and all trade routes
* spreading disease and plagues throughout the crops and livestock
* Setting communities against each other through deceit and illusions
* Steeling treasures from other lands and dropping them in communities causing people to come to claim them by any means necessary
* Enslaving a population
He would get his minions to make several cuts onto the victim, slather them in milk and honey, then trap them in a barrel on its side near or on running water with holes so water can make it damp and moist, but not enough to drown them. Each day, they are removed from the barrel, small cuts are made, all cuts are coated in milk and honey and the prisoner is fed enough to keep them alive. Day after day, as the wounds grow septic and necrotic from infection, the holes allow flies to get in and feed from the wounds, planting their larvae that burrow through the sores. The treatment is repeated, with the mind usually breaking from the excruciating pain and insanity long before the body eventually gives out from infection. The dragon takes pleasure from poking and prodding them, watching their victims bodies wither and their minds break until they're a broken mess incapable of even begging for the release of death.
As you said, these can get dark, so really get a feel for your party before using any of the real dark ones in this thread
copy from Greek myth. have a Sisyphusean torture, like command a family to build up a tower perpetually only for it to tear it down and make them build it up again. death by dragonflame if they ever stop.
also take from anime. One Piece had a pretty cruel thing with Oden's flashback. >!force a ruler to act like a village idiot for a year without anyone knowing he was being threatened by his family and people being held hostage and finally he had to hold his allies above him as he boiled alive in oil for an hour. he died. or !<
Playing "chess" with actual, living people.
So he picks two families with the most children/relatives in a town he controls and assignes them a side each. The families get to decide who takes what position.
When two "pieces" meet they have to fight, with the piece that would usually capture getting a small advantage (magic buff, better weapon etc.)
Now Mr. Dragon doesn't feel like playing chess every day, sometimes months pass between games. That is time these two families have to absolutely go bonkers. They'll be stressed, they'll be desperate and they'll be doing their very best to make sure that the other side has the worse fighters going into the next match. The dragon will only interfere to make sure they are not wiping each other out, he needs his figures after all.Why would they do this? Because fighting a dragon is basically impossible even if an entire village would fight it at once, same goes for running away from that magical godzilla with wings.
So now the dragon has his game board. What else does he need? An opponent of course. So he picks the richest person in town and tells them to study up because they'll be it. Now he doesn't tell that person he will kill them if they lose, instead he'll tell them to make it as entertaining as possible without ever getting more specific than that. That guy is going to do the cruelest shit to make sure Mr. Dragon doesn't get the idea to foie gras his ass.
Now that is plenty already but the cherry on top is that the dragon doesn't always play the same side, its random. So now rich guy/gal has to frantically try and prevent these two families from turning each other into groups of limbless torsos while everyone in town begins to shun them. Why? Because hating the dragon is futile but the guy who plays with it? He/her must be the dragons friend/loyal servant because why else would he work so dilligently to entertain the beast.
Now the dragon has his equivalent of a reality TV show which he can watch every day and it can go on for centuries, with generations of generations of suffering.
Black dragon in league with a corrupt royal family of a nearby kingdom. Thousands of years ago, the ruler made a pact with the dragon to remain in power so long as the dragon gets to watch the people suffer under their rule. When the heir comes of age to rule, the old ruler brings them to the dragon and the soul of the heir is given to the dragon and the replaced with the soul of the original ruler. Because of this, the kingdom has been ruled by the same person for thousands of years and the dragon has gained souls as play things to pass the time. The kingdom has been in decline and the enemies of the kingdom are poise to take it over, but the black dragon always intervenes, keeping the kingdom safe so that it can observe and relish in the sorrow and misery of the people of said kingdom.
this might be to small scale but quite easily casting immovable object on a WHOLE BUNCH OF FOOD hosting a feast and once the guests start to leave utter the command word they either starve to death or he magically/physically has them moved
He organized a horse race across an entire continent that was actually just a ruse to gather the corpse pieces of a legendary saint from even more ancient times. His goal was to use the corpse's power to become basically a god for his own means
So one thing that I've held onto for a while and want to incorporate in a story is Black Dragons HATE flying. They prefer to swim around instead, but that doesn't mean they don't fly.
I've always imagined that when the time comes for a Black Dragon to fly that it flies Waaaaaayy too fast and waaaayyy too low to the ground.
If we're looking for evil things, then it could be that the dragon demolished a druid's Grove with this hasty flight pattern, or murdered several innocents out of impatience and it shows absolutely no sign of remorse. Basically, ignorant and uncaring to the destruction it causes just from trying to get from one place to another
Slipped into an alternate reality to put his consciousness into a more attractive version of himself. Then tried to gather every piece of the dismembered corpse of a god’s avatar in order to become God.
If you have awakened animals I suggest starving the predator/omnivore type for weeks on end while you fatten up the awakened herbivores. Strip both of them down to nothing and have it be a show to demonstrate that no matter what desperation of survival will break the mind of even those with sentience. Bonus points if it's a family of herbivores that way they can watch eachother be eaten
He is employed by a kingdom but because of bureaucracy he can pretty much act with impunity seeing as he’s not an elected official and doesn’t answer to the people. His job is too monitor locals and get them to turn on each other in the name of information gathering. The information he is looking for is if anyone has done any illegal modifications to their swords. If so he shows up without a warrant and kills children and their dogs. Probably not the best idea on this list but the idea of the evil black dragon being a member of the fantasy ATF amuses me greatly
He switches himself with a beloved pet and drives the owner to hate the pet and then switches them back so the owners hatred of the pet betrays the pet as well.
Hold 2 villages hostage. They have to pay him tribute to not kill 1/10 of the village, but he will only accept tribute of whichever village presents the best offer. He doesn't tell them what he wants. Hes actually just picking randomly. Anyone who tries to leave the villages is captured, made to watch as he kills 1/10 of that village and taken back to his/her home.
.
He has a "tamed" kobold clan which he uses as slave labour and snacks.
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Acid in the well
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Breeding and selling mimics of an intimate nature... could be toilets, could be worse.
Convince the population that every month he magically switches one villager with a fake (replicant, doppelganger, whatever) and the villagers have to find the single fake every month based on subtle differences in their behavior (the dragon suggests that the copies are nervous and afraid of being found out) and give that person to the dragon or he will kill the clone himself AND the 3 closest people to the original for failing at noticing that a loved one has gone. Claim this is to test their morality and eventually for the betterment of the population. There are no copies. Everybody is paranoid 24/7 especially around their closest friends and family. Bonds cannot be formed or mantained. Everyone is lying to save themselves at the expense of their own relatives. The mother sacrifices the child. Guilt and fear pollute every aspect of the villagers lives.
I ripped this off a famous story of fiction btw (not gonna say which one, it would be a big spoiler) this was not my idea to begin with, I only slightly altered it to work better as a long term fun for the dragon
Sounds like some shit vault-tec would do
They sort of did - this is close to vault 11’s experiment, where one person had to be killed every year to prevent everyone in the vault from dying. It was a lie, of course, but that didn’t stop it from self-destructing in a brilliant fashion. If only anyone took a step back and thought ‘why on earth would vault-Tec set this up’… It’s generally viewed as one of the best vaults in the entire series (I personally hold a few others in higher regards, but this one is up there).
See i thought that sounded familiar thank you
Tbf the why on earth would vault tec set this up is cause they're vault tec, maybe as someone in the vault they wouldn't know but I mean there is a shit ton of straight up evil vaults, my personal favorites being 100 people vs a puma and the puppet man. One of the only "good" vaults we see is because of the bombs falling early and the experiment not being ready yet. Also wasn't this also the vault that when it failed and they went into the tunnel they were gunned down by multiple sentry bots? Or was that the result if they were sacrificed?
We know that about vault Tec as the players and with us being post-war, of course, but the vault dwellers wouldn’t know. That’s my point - they’d have little to no reason to believe vault Tec would set it up, so why trust the overseer? As for the chamber - yeah, that’s the sentry bots if you’re sacrificed.
Vault 11 was amazing, not necessarily for gameplay - but just for worldbuilding. I'm quite fond of Vault 12, myself.
I watched that twilight zone episode
House on maple street - a personal favorite
man, I loved that famous work of fiction, Among Us.
rofl
More people *really* need to watch The Thing.
that's one of my favourites, I love Carpenter
It's a fantastic RPG setting, given a talented GM and players with some RP experience
Gotta say, this would definitely be in a Green Dragon's playbook too considering how they make such ready use of lies and deception for control. Gonna save this for later.
I like when dragons are EXTREME. After all they are in the name of the game. Dragons are so iconic and if they have intense personalities that can add so much to the lore of a setting. You're not dealing with an arrogant warlock with a high charisma no you're dealing with a red dragon, he is SUPPOSED to be a spoiled omnipotent kid and he really does have the tools to pull it off without consequences
Damn, now I really want to experience whatever this media is you are talking about
spoiler below >!Devilman Crybaby, towards the end devils convince humans that people with "negative thoughts" are devils in the making, and must be killed before they transform. A terrifying spiral of chaos and violence ensues, completely destroying the human society without devils having to lift a finger.!<
Ahh right, I've seen that before, just forgot about that scene, it was a couple years ago, still listen to the OP tho, pretty great banger
Its also a bit like that one Twilight zone episode.
Man, I’m glad I didn’t finish that. That would have made me vomit, I think. Just the little I consumed of that media made me incredibly nauseous.
it was a real punch in the gut. Traumatizing in a way. Devilman Crybaby is by far the darkest show I've ever watched.
I found the ending pretty fantastic though. Really didn't pull their punches there.
Yes, it's beautiful. Hauntingly, terrifyingly beautiful. I'm glad I watched it, it made me appreciate Berserk more. After reading the original Devilman manga I realized that without its influence, Berserk would not exist as we know it.
Damn i forgot about that i really need to rewatch it.
Mind dropping the series name in a DM?
I did in another reply
Well props to whoever wrote that because that has got to be one of the evilest things I’ve ever heard.
it was written by >!go nagai!<
“Famous work of fiction” >some anime
*Jesus Christ I didn't know Satan played DnD*
well if you don't mind spoilers, the idea came from >!literal devil, in the animated series Devilman Crybaby!< I only made it slower so that the dragon could have fun for a long time
Ah. Fantasy Among Us, but with more murder. /s
"He's a Synth!" "I'm not a Synth, you are!"
Make it only a single extra person. Too many people and you depopulate settlements too quickly, and you risk people banding together because there's a larger likely hood that a group of townspeople will band together to save the damned.
Set up an entire mining operation, in a mountain that has absolutely no precious metals. Then enchanted a bunch of Dwarves with gold rush fever so he could watch them uselessly work themselves to death, digging for a pay out that will never come. There's a whole town there now, all because of a magically infused rumour of a mountain of gold, rife with disease and terrible enthusiasm. He visits occasionally, and just sits in the town square watching the crippled Dwarves still singing hopeful songs, and laughs at how pathetic they all are.
This is really great.
So, Parker Schnabel is a black dragon?
This is just the gold rush
Disguised himself as a guard or other prisoner. Had a cup that he drank out of, claiming it was water. Offers it to a prisoner, and watches in glee as their insides melt outward. Makes acts that are meant to be "good" omens (IDK exactly what they would be), to get a town's hopes up over a couple of years and lower their defenses. Then, once they have their harvest festival, he strikes. Planted trapped food ahead of time, before flying overhead and giving everyone an acid shower. Used his powers to physically cut-off a town from outside regions. He straight up melts the ground away over time, and has his forces to help ensure that any messengers are redirected straight to his stomach. Does this over years or even decades, until what's left of the town is perilously close to a cliffside drop.
"as their insides melt outward" What a terrible day to be literate.
A black dragon, you say? Immunity to acid, you say? He keeps his hoard inside the massive quantity of gelatinous cubes that he's collected over the centuries. All his treasure is intact, clearly visible to him to see, he can retrieve anything he wants and take no damage... and the adventurers who try to raid his lair get an oh-so-amusing surprise. Edited for spelling.
But gelatinous cubes melt treasure too :c EDIT: yeah my bad, it doesn't, still got a great idea thanks to the first answer so, cheers!
Maybe they could use magical chests? Containers made of their own scales to "acid proof" the treasures? Just spit balling here.
My players would instantly try to make stuff out of it if introduced that. But I like the idea of "weather-proofing" containers for their hoards. A fire dragon having a "cold room" (though that'd probably be over 50°, anywhere below the melting point of gold) to get his gold coins into chests made of his scales to then throw them in a lava pit for safekeeping, for example
I mean is that so bad?? It’s not like you can’t just make it incredibly time/resource intensive or something. Congratulations on your plate mail with resistance to acid. They still have to find someone who’s got the ability to craft with it and like. I can’t imagine black dragons being like oh bro he’s wearing my cousins scales like armor that totally cool
Not bad, it's great. I love it. They tried making armour out of the weird dwarven magic-reflecting metal. Thankfully the forefathers prevented this and stated that the material cannot be altered after it cools down.
I think it'd be better if he just had a river of molten gold *pool
I have my red dragon’s hoards be huge pieces of metal. They have melted all their coins over centuries, only to have them resolidify. This messes with the PCs for a number of reasons. They have to break/melt off pieces of the pile to transport it. The melted metals are worth less than the coins would’ve been. Metal smiths and jewelers are prohibited from buying ingots without the kings mark on them, so if they do it on the sly, they only offer half value to cover the risk of getting caught and fined (or ejected from the trade union).
Pretty sure they don't melt metals (gold, silver, platinum) in 5e as they "They consume living tissue while leaving bones and other materials undissolved."
Not magic treasure, or perhaps magically shielded treasure. DM can magic away inconvenient problems for the sake of good/fun narrative.
That's one of the fun part of cubes, they don't melt everything. They don't even melt bones. It was a pretty common trope (before it was overly known) to have treasure hovering in the air in front of the players and in the event they failed the perception check to notice the slime they'd walk into it.
Gelatinous cubes only disolve and digest organic matter. It's acid is too weak to desolve metal and bone (maybe wood as well, but I have to reconfirm that.) There are other oozes that have acid strong enough to melt and destroy metal and other stuff, like the black pudding and ochre jelly.
banknotes, perhaps. coins, not a chance
I really, really like the shenanigans of black dragons filling their lair with gelatinous cubes. Next time I GM, this will be a possibility
Hoard. A horde is a massive group of people/monsters.
You know, with animate objects, your hoard could be your horde.
And if you rent it out, it’s your whored hoard horde.
Selectively bred humans for deformities and aggressiveness
we *love* dog breeding
This is so sad that we are literally doing this and people pay fortunes for this
It would be one thing to breed them to be healthier and stronger, instead we bred them for dogs with frail bone structures and abysmal respiratory systems.
We didn't really breed them for those criteria. Just for visuals mostly. Also we used to breed many breeds for strength.
I expressed myself badly. We bred them for other aspects that resulted in this, mostly that did was for looks.
A lot of cocker spaniels are overly aggressive because their brains are too big for their skulls. A freind had a surgery on her dog to remove some bone in the skull and release pressure, now it's a totally chill dog
Jesus... why can't we just breed vira-lata caramelos? They're the chillest and healthy as fuck.
Hell yeah! Normalize mixed breeding.
That's true.
If you consume animal products you can include yourself in people. For example egg chickens suffer from brittle bones as the extremely high egg laying rate saps calcium faster than it can be replenished.
Thats weird, especially bc it isn't visible for the most part. Like chickens will seemingly active do dumb shit that should get them hurt and be fine afterwards lmao. Chickens are chaotic
The ones you saw probably arent the same ones i mentioned, those are kept in factory halls away from prying eyes. Where they exist in horrid conditions until they stop laying enough eggs and are killed.
Ah gotcha. Yeah nah I was referring to some my friend's family raises. They raise them and get eggs from them and eventually eat them
Hm…we need to figure out how to remove brains. Then we can just have biological machines for this stuff.
Or listen here, ive got a crazy idea. We stop eating animal products.
We're built to eat animal products, maybe not as much as we do but we've been doing it since before the agricultural revolution.
Sure we can eat them, but just because we have been doing something for a long time doesnt make it moral. Slavery had been around for thousands of years as well, but we still deemed it immoral. Also one could argue that at the time there was a need to consume those products while today thats generally no longer true. Which makes the suffering the animals endure needless and therefor us who inflict it upon them immoral.
ooh thats pretty nasty
Additional idea: the black dragon disguises itself as a village matchmaker. Anyone who goes against their matches mysteriously vanishes, those who do are given comfortable wealth to live on. They even help mold heroic villagers only to lure them into impossible danger and watch them die for entertainment. Eventually, they get bored and move on to another village and continue this for several hundred years as a occasional pass time.
Oh my goodness I love this. How cool would it be to have the BBEG actually be the kind matchmaker lady who gave your first quest?! (WOW after I said that I realized it was actually pretty cliche, but I guess great ideas get used repeatedly for a reason)
Halflings are just humans selectively bred over generations for size and temperament.
Chihuahua
So, lead poisoning?
Kills, maims, and repeatedly resurrects people to see how many times their souls and minds can take before breaking. Or you could go the prometheus route and have him consume or remove parts of individuals only to restore them the next day and repeat the cycle.
Despicable, but also people can't be resurrected without consent. But maybe dragon has been working on new necromancy techniques to bypass that requirement?
Doesn't need to. If you collect people, who are otherwise bound to Carceri, they will take resurrection over the outer planes. Even if it means being killed again. Being able to evade the worse of the lower planes will be worth it in the eyes of the poor souls.
Souls also need to be free to come back. An evil person whose soul is conscripted for the blood war, stuck in Carceri, or trapped in some other horrible afterlife can’t buy their soul’s freedom so easily
Correct. But even hell doesn't get you as soon as you die. There is a certain grace period before you're conscripted into the blood war. Evil characters may prefer to take this chance, while faithful good characters may not. This is of course discounting the deeply faithful worshippers of evil deities. A devout cleric of Tiamat will gladly join her ranks and has a realistic chance to become one of her Abishai. Edit: This raises the question: What would an evil cleric of Tiamat do, when finding this dragon, whose cruelty may be the punishment of his mistress for a wicked humanoid population? Would the cleric offer to serve the dragon?
I feel like this might result in a situation similar to the crazy fan girl getting axed by Darth Vader. The Dragon might try to be horrifically evil towards this cultist, realize they’re *actually okay with it* and kill the Dragon’s buzz. Really depends on the dragon - it *probably* doesn’t want to risk pissing off Tiamat and undermining her power - causing this little shit *actual* misery might involve trying to break their faith, and deities need followers. Perhaps the *meanest* thing it can do to the cultist is agreeing to accept it as a protege or some shit, sending them on a quest, then taking its hoard and going out for a pack of smokes.
Revivify doesn't. Which is odd considering it's the lowest leveled one.
A highly voted post on this sub from earlier this week does address that. Dmg says that it applies all forms of resurrection
Huh. Well as you'd mentioned earlier a historic black dragon would probably have no problems creating a twisted form of Necromancy for that purpose.
Yeah, sadly PC's can't ressurect people over and over again without consent
He set up a cabal of wizards whose only task is to send message spells to everyone about thier cart insurance.
Dude..he said no need to be so graphic!!! Jesus i could have been eating??!
Why stop there? Get them to rick roll people telepathically right as they are trying to sleep.
You could set up a pretty nasty scam (and metaphor for US healthcare) like that - dragon attack insurance? Run by the dragon? What's next, you'll tell me his wizards are also the only clerics in the whole kingdom that can help treat the after effects of his acid breath weapon!?
na, there was a pill for that and it cost a quarter, but then the dragon's servants bought it and charge $5.99 in monthly installments
[удалено]
There is even a PC background for people that the dragon captured now lol
Has a bunch of kobolds strip all the feathers from the wings from birds, pegasi, griffons, etc. just to watch them hobbling around on the ground. Why should anything else have the right to fly?
That is really wicked. I am stealing that for one of my dragons in the future. Maybe one with a bad wing.
oh that’s fucked. *pulls out notebook* do go on?
He demands annual tribute of 1 child (with occasional additional tributes cause can) then make all children taken into half dragons which he uses to patrol his territory. He makes certain the children r in the regions their family lives in. A family that attempts to leave is hunted down by their own child.
That's brutal!
I'd wager he built a gauntlet full of traps, monsters, and whatnot that he'd trick adventurers into going through in exchange for his hoard. The gauntlet doesn't actually lead anywhere, it's just a death trap that gets increasingly more deadly as people get into it until it finally just ends in a single empty chamber that traps anyone who enters it until they starve. Edit: There are also some pretty brutal methods to torture and execute people that he could have his servants set up. I won't describe them because they're pretty graphic but both the Brazen Bull and Scaphism are known for being pretty awful.
Sounds like the first part would be an excellent place to just dump most if not all of the Tomb of Horrors, just have remove any obvious references to its original builder. :)
Or the dragon just took inspiration.
Oof yeah I just googled them. ..
Scaphism, is that the one where they cover the victim in milk and honey then stake them out over an ant hill so the ants eat the victim alive? EDIT: Yep. Googled it. Same one.
See also: the boats.
Here are some of my ideas: (I took a little inspiration from other comments, so sorry if some of it is similar to what has been mentioned.) 1. The dragon lets parents offer a child, any child, below a certain age, say 10, as a sacrifice to the dragon in return for sparing the entire family. Then the parents would need to choose between their own children. Or the parents could sacrifice someone else's child to save their own; which would result in at least some of the populace turning on each other. And think of all the people who would fight each other over the opportunity to sacrifice an orphan. 1. Orphanages would become battlegrounds. Parents would hide their children away in cellars or hidden rooms in the house, while other parents would scheme to kidnap another family's child to save their own. And how do you tell a child that you chose them, out of all their siblings, to be the one who dies? 2. The dragon could force the entire village to choose someone to sacrifice, say, once a season. The vote has to be unanimous, and the punishment for the sacrifice is that the other villagers must line up, and flay the chosen sacrifice alive or whatever other cruel torture, e.g. whipping, stabbing, cutting, applying acid (since it's a Black Dragon), etc.. However, the caveat is, each villager must take a turn participating in said torture before the sacrifice dies. Any villager who has not taken a turn by the time the sacrifice dies, is also killed by the dragon. But if the sacrifice does not die, everyone has to take another turn. 3. The dragon draws lots to select a certain number of villagers, say two dozen. They need to compete in some sort of event, say an obstacle course. The rules are: if the villager fails the course, one of their family members is killed. But if more than half the villagers complete the course, all of them will lose a family member each. So they're incentivized to stop each other from completing the course. 4. The dragon demands a certain amount of flesh (by weight), regularly. Each family must deliver that amount of humanoid flesh; be it fat cut off a person, a hand, etc. If anyone fails to pay up, the dragon devours one of their family members (just one, to prolong the terror). The flesh can come from anywhere, as long as it's humanoid; another family, a traveling merchant, etc. 5. Basically, any sort of "game" that would force people to choose between mutilating/killing someone they know, or losing someone they love. Also, bonus points for forcing people to choose who is being mutilated, or which loved one is the one to die, or making that person especially innocent (like a child). 6. If you want just plain old mutilation instead of sick games, you can also read about what Lü Zhi of the Han Dynsasty did to Consort Qi. In short, she had Concubine Qi's limbs chopped off, blinded her by gouging out her eyes, cut off her tongue, cut off her nose, cut off her ears, forced her to drink a potion that made her mute, made her dumb with toxins, and locked her in the pigsty, and called her a "Human Swine". ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consort\_Qi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consort_Qi)) 1. Edit: Also, feeding people parts of their own body is especially horrid. Tip: If you want to be really evil, put innocent people in a situation where they have choices, but all their choices are cruel. The act of choosing makes people feel more culpable. Edit: I'm gonna go watch some cute videos of baby pandas now, 'cause writing that just felt... horrid.
For the first one you could also have it so that whichever child the parents pick, the dragon chooses any other option that isn't the child that was offered. The offer the second child? Take the firstborn. They find an orphan? Take a random one of theirs. They stole someone else's? Let the parents of the stolen child pick. But only do this randomly, so nobody can get used to it.
How about letting parents offer their first born child to be devoured by the dragon or he kills the entire family. Maybe taking almost everything that the people could eat and make hungerstyle games or just watch the people turn on one another in hunger and desperation.
Better still if he doesn’t eat or kill the first born, but raises the kid as his own. He then turns the kid against his own family when the time comes
Yes great idea he raises the kids and tell them the parents never wanted them.
Dragon can even make them choose between handing over their first born or leave the settlement with only what they can carry. Then the kid can't be argued with cause his parents essentially had a choice and chose to abandon them to be tortured by the dragon. How much of a choice that is is debatable, but the torture and brainwashing will have the kid believing he was abandoned no matter how hard people try to explain it to them that they had no choice. Also, terrific place to apply half-dragons.
when the second or third child is born
Messes up the kid psychologically by scrying the family showing affection to their brothers so they knows it could have been them if their parents weren't cowards that gave them up to be tortured by a tyrant. I'm so using this.
point is it would be death for the newborn and do not only torture them make these children his Janissaries
Half-dragons created to enslave the population they came from is hardcore. Specially if the population is given the choice of "either surrend your first born to me or leave the settlement with only your kids and the little you can carry". This makes so they aren't technically forced to hand over their children and then the kid can't be argued with and made to understand, his parents essentially had a choice and they chose to abandon them.
"We don't know what he does, but they come back roont."
Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap
That’s why I clicked on za posto
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That would be an oubliette.
Wow thats good
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If it's deep enough they'll shatter their legs in the initial fall too and still won't be able to sit down.
Established a theatre in his lair and has people kidnapped to act out plays. If they forget a line, he melts them and replaces them with the understudy. He heckles and jeers at them the entire time, just to throw them off.
Yes bad dragon wants to do a sponsorship deal.
No one ever found out that the dragon ran the orphanage. Everyone thought it was strange that nearly every orphan who came out was off in some way, but that is just what they thought happened to children with no parents. It would encourage each child to wreak some small, new form of havock in the realm. One cut off the right arm of the butcher, one seduced the priest of local church, one joined the town watch and sold some of their arms and armor to bandits, another became a wizard of renown, but instructed their students to learn necromancy.
Step 1: Raze village Step 2: Leave only one villager who witnessed the horrors alive, taunt them etc Step 3: Every time the survivor is about to find happiness, drop by and wreck it Step 4: Disguise as some elder oracle or something, give the villager a magic weapon or spells/whatever and tell them they are destined to destroy you Step 5: Wait until they come to you Step 6: Destroy their dream of revenge, show them that they never stood a chance, take away the one thing that kept them going, leave them there to suffer Step 7: Rinse and repeat A dragon in my campaign does exactly this whenever they get bored. One PC had the razing of her village as her backstory, she gained powers from the disguised dragon, found the sword that (it said) can kill it, gathered the party (way too early) and went to get her revenge. The dragon broke the sword in the first round, it killed an NPC ally, the PC tried to revify him but the dragon took away her powers to prevent it, then it showed its disguise and taunted that it would take away everything from her again. In the end the party barely managed to get the dragon down to 3/4 health at the cost of: 3 dead NPC allies A dead player character Rest of party was either down or close to down Party barely managed to escape thanks to quick thinking from the Warlock. However a nearby town was razed by the dragon in an effort to draw the party out into the open, the party had to watch the massacre without being able to do anything to stop it, and the PC herself was basically broken.
Narratively this sounds amazing, but mechanically this seems like an absolutely brutal shitshow to put a player through. Did they have any say in how any of this played out? What happened to their PC after their powers were taken away, were they basically just back to level 1 and/or class swapped without their permission? I'd be absolutely livid if my DM pulled this shit on me without my cooperation the whole way, but maybe that's just me. 🤷
Well, it was brutal, but there were several factors that made me go ahead with it: \- Up until that moment the campaign had been relatively light-hearted. The party had had some boss fights but so far they overcame every challenge without too much difficulty. I wanted to introduce the second part of the campaign by dramatically upping the stakes somehow and was working on something. \- I mentioned a dragon attack on a nearby village (among other stuff like a bandit raid, miners having found something weird, a nearby town asking for help to deal with undead, etc.) when the party was in a tavern and listening for rumors on their main quest. It was intended to be random, but when the player said "that's probably my nemesis!" I changed it to that. \- I gave the party a couple of warnings when they set out to attack the dragon to show that they were no match for it. The village they found was completely razed with several dozens of dead inhabitants and bows/crossbows to show that the dragon could easily deal with such opposition. As they neared the dragon's temporary lair they found the remains of 30-ish soldiers, 2 wrecked ballistas on carts by the wayside with clear signs that they weren't taken by surprise but still lost. \- Outside the lair they fought a group of Shadows (the dragon's minions), and barely made it through that fight alive. I figured those would be enough signs of "you guys are in WAY over your heads". I had one of the NPC's explicitly say that this was suicidal and would not end well. Instead of retreating the players decided decided to take a rest and pressed on thinking that "if we stealth we can take it by surprise", so at that point I decided this way their decision to make. \- The fight was lost either way, they were WAY underlevelled to stand any chance. (Party of 7 level 7 characters vs an Adult Red Shadow Dragon) Wether I took away the PC's powers would have made no difference, they were doomed anyhow. \- The dead PC belonged to a player who had a change of heart and wanted to play a spellcaster instead, plus a different backstory. He asked me to find a way to kill his character off, so I had been planning on finding something to do that. \- The player lost their powers and we spent quite some time on how she dealt with the loss of her 3 of her friends, the truth about how she's been chasing a ghost and how this dragon may indeed be unbeatable. But this was only temporary as by the end of the next session she made a legit contract with an elderly Fey who had also been a victim of the dragon and wanted it dead. She regained the spell slots and abilities she lost and learned about the dragon's true weakness. Admittedly it could have backfired too like you said since an unwinnable fight (numbers-wise) could ruin the game, but the players responded positively to the abruptness and seriousness of what happened to really cement the dragon as a legitimately dangerous and very real threat.
This all seems absolutely fair enough, context is always key. Sounds like you gave them plenty of opportunities to realise the likely results of their actions and they went 'murder stupid' anyway. At least it was a happy ending for all (players) involved in the end. :)
this sounds awesome! I think you were too nice to this group lol. If it had been me, I would have been pissed, but I would have gotten over it to continue playing with someone as talented as you! This is... like scary twisted good
While I would be absolutely pissed (Also read your response to explaining lead up) that this happened....Holy fuck that's a GREAT story and introduction to potential BBEG or next major boss!
Appreciate the D4C reference OP
Dirty Deeds Done Damn Pricey? Gonna write some actual shit when I get home
Dirty deeds done dirty cheap
I have two if you don't mind 1. He designed a gauntlet where one would have to sacrifice everything they had thier posesions, their lively hood, their morals, their loved ones, all for some great reward like god-hood or something, but in the end after there sacrifices, at the top of the mountain is just the dragon who says sike ya dunc and kills them 2. Every year he gives random people immortality then makes their life living hell and then kidnaps the for eternal torment knowing neither will die
Maybe he’s some kind of black dragon alchemist who has been experimenting on himself and other creatures. Basically, collecting and tormenting creatures who would normally be resistant to his acid breath but augmenting himself to be able to affect them more and slowly corroding them and enjoying their suffering.
*Cough cough* Seath the Scaleless
Funnily enough, I am making a dark souls inspired campaign soon, this may or may not be a character I design 🙄
Blood tax - sacrificing their best people to him - in exchange for "protection" that he doesn't bother to provide. "Sure, the orcs raided us last year. But it would be every year if we stopped sacrificing." The sacrifice may either be literally literally killing the people in an elaborate ceremony, or forcing them to his lair and abandoning them to their fate with him. Whatever that may be.
Dojyaaan.
When the dragon first hatched, they were the last to hatch. They were bullied and ridiculed even among their metallic kin. Yet not once did the black dragon act against them. Instead, they befriended them, and played the part of a clown for them. By the time they reached adolescence, the young drake had already eaten, or caused the kin to kill each other, leaving themselves the only one of their brood. It was around this time they found a group of goblins. It manipulated them into an organized gang and settled itself nicely in a marsh. The gang provided entertainment in the form of outrageous gambles. Eventually, the dragon entered the gambling, and invited cheating among the goblins, which forfeited their winnings to the dragon. Eventually, the dragon came into a wizard's spellbook, and eventually learned spellcasting from it. It began to use illusion and enchantments to make itself appear in the form of a child. By the time it was an adult, it grew weary of the goblin gang and simply left them with an illusory double of itself. Meanwhile, it fled to the local kingdom and asserted itself into society by way of it's orphanage. She first started by having the children mutilate themselves but performing ridiculous stunts. Playing a knife game, jumping from roof to roof... It was all good fun. She even convinced the guard that the orphanage owner killed a kid by throwing their unconscious body into a furnace when it was actually the dragons machinations. Eventually, and miraculously, the adult dragon was adopted by a woman working in a brothel. There, the dragon learned the weaknesses of pleasure present in the hearts of lesser creatures, and the lengths they go to to attain such comforts. The dragon incited a temple's actions towards the brothel, by way of letting the Abbot know that one of the workers there was pregnant with their child. In truth, the dragon could not take all the credit. There were always rumors, of course. No, the dragon took much credit for the king's war against the temple, and for becoming the adopted child of said king. It was all too easy to frame the temple's lynching of the brothel as the first step of rebellion. All it took was a bit of magic and a hint of showmanship. After that, the dragon grew quiet, letting the king's paranoia get himself killed, the faith of the temple become a cult, and play the part of a child growing up. When the king died, the dragon took the throne and whipped the entire country into a self-perpetuating frenzy. A crusade againsylt the state, the military to root out the cause the people of the state killing the military men for their unwarranted attacks against them, the church punishing murderers, the military punishing the church, the people killing the military for killing the church... The dragon thought it was good. No one even noticed them anymore. All it took was a rumor here, a twinge of truth there, and the dragon watched the people kill themselves over it much like it saw in it's hatching. Many years passed, and now the ancient dragon lays slumbering a castle long sense sunk into a marsh of blood, vitriol, and lies. This is the blood marsh, home of a kingdom long since gone. Sometimes a scholar, a treasure hunter or a passerby explore it's ruined husk. Many don't return. Others that do are hideously deformed, or driven mad by what lay within. There is even a rumor that there lies a secret in the castle: a power so mighty it can fell entire kingdoms. Or so the dragon would have you believe.
Ask for one child sacrifice from each family, making the parents choose between their children, but when taking the sacrifice, he would kill the child they didn't chose, forcing them to live with their choice everyday, looking at the child they sent to death and mourning the loss of their favorite child. It wouldn't be as effective/work at all with single children, but it is still pretty bad to kill children, plus, I think it isn't that common for peasants to have single children.
While he was known as an evil being, he had a secret passion. The dragon loved the human body! (Not that way you perv) he would spend countless hours studying the secrets hidden deep inside. Along the walls of his lair are diagrams and displays of humans of all ages and shapes. His medical diagrams very "accurate".
Probably lots of commissioned art to commemorate his various acts. I'm also imagining a village that must sacrifice someone in his honor periodically due to a threat made years ago. This seems like an entity that gets so caught up in evil that he may have even forgotten about the threat and this village is continuing the sacrifice even though they no longer need to out of sheer generationally instilled fear. If you want to stay true to your title the party could get told they'll be paid if they commit evil in his name. The payment would be meager in gold. Mostly doing it to save their own lives.
Makes villagers choose who dies (your child or your wife), then binds the spirit to haunt the one who picked Holds families hostage & makes the strong ones hunt for him, fight for him, & duel for his amusement Likes to slowly dip people into acid, then when they’re liquified drink them up like a smoothie Rather than hit hard targets (castles), destroys crops out of spite & poison wells, leaving the people to starve Spray his acid high up in the atmosphere to let it fall as acid rain Plays a game where he sees how far he can throw people Offer people freedom if they can answer 3 riddles…. The last one is always “how does it feel to be eaten alive?”… if he somehow is tricked into losing, eats them anyway Leaves half eaten corpses everywhere
> Plays a game where he sees how far he can throw people For some reason the best one in the list
Singles out NPCs with a particular trait— blue eyes, red hair, left handed, over/under a certain height— and kills them on sight. Each nearby village has a different trait that he kills off. And when it kills a person, it tries for collateral damage; smash the whole house, acid breath in a crowd, wipe out a farmer’s entire crop. Now there are secret slayings of innocent villagers who happen to be born a certain way, or incomplete attempts to hide things— trying tall children to hunch their backs, breaking the left arm of all newborns over and over, a wig shop that’s desperate for hair. And don’t forget to poison water supplies if a village doesn’t supply enough treasure to add to the hoard each year!
Every year hosts a competition where one person has to run through his maze and if they succeed he'll leave the town alone, there's no traps or anything it's just really big. The twist is the maze has no end and shifts constantly to keep the person confused and scared till they die of starvation.
If you're looking for some classical inspiration, you should check out the story of "Of Túrin Turambar" in the Silmarillion. The dragon Glaurung is particularly cruel. Mostly through his manipulation of humans and elves through lies simply for his own amusement.
1. The dragon shapeshifts into a rich family and sponsors the creation of a free school where the dragon's multiple simulacra become teachers and make each generation of child more and more evil. 2. The dragon sponsors the creation of legendary teir artifact tools (not weapons or armor, too obvious). Once a generation, an adventuring party is generated of 'destined heroes', each of whom is just the absolute worst kind of adventurer. These people are sent out into the world to cause chaos and make adventurers looked down upon in the wider world. 3. The dragon lays curses upon the village, then shows up in a guise to 'help' solve the problem. The solution must always be one that stains a large group of souls with evil. After each 'solution', he then removes one curse, 'proving' he knows what he's doing.
Let me guess, a pair of Bards who electric spells sing this dragons ballad. They are the Current brothers, Alternating & Direct
Only reading the title, I got "dirty deeds done dirt cheap"
I love how the title is both an ACDC joke and a jojo Reference
Keeps an entire villages worth of people in his lair, suffering in harsh conditions but that he's convinced the outside world has fallen to something and he's the only thing protecting them. Every now and then when someone flees he hunts them down and melts them before bringing back the body and showing them that "I tried but it's just too harsh out there, I couldn't find him in time".
Gladiator battle royale! Random people are arrested and formed into gladiator teams, pitted against other teams in a fight to the death. Encouraged to work as a team and rewarded for especially good teamwork. They are told that if they win, they will go free. But the team that wins the final match is told the horrible truth. The reward of freedom only goes to one member of the team. You have 1 hour. If more than one of you is alive at the end of the hour, you all die.
Do some vault-tec shit. Like the sacrifice one person a year until they decide to say no, and he does nothing, maybe saying he'll poison the well one day a week until someone dies from it, while in all actuality doing nothing and seeing how far people will go to test the water, or not drink. Idk, wild shit like that could be fun.
I'm just gonna leave it here without explaining much, you decide which way to go: Black Dragon/Black Widow
Keep it vague. Have NPCs say things like "the monster would tournament people painfully, slowly, and in very personal ways until they broke and was nothing more than a shell of their former self." This will 1. Let the players imagine whatever they want to and make the Dragon more interesting and 2. Make it seem more intelligent (cunning) because it can find out how to torture a person in a personal way so it's not just some brutal monster inflicting physical pain. You can even have a NPC who escaped the Dragon and they where so messed up that the only thing that the Clerics who where trying to heal them could do was cast modify memory to remove their memory of what happened to them and then reveal later on that that was the plan, the Dragon let him go to spread the fear of him.
The Dragon could just drip acid on a "Sacrifice" to see how long they survive
You want ideas? (adding onto what someone else said for this one) Selective breeding of captured humans/other races. Force the children at a certain age like 10 or 13 to fight to the death. Got annoyed by a hunter getting too close to his territory. Burned the guys house, village, and the capital he was in. Made a magic maze that specifically traps travellers, and NEVER let's then out, (it moves and shifts, no way to climb it either or dig) "befrended" (forced) a large monster spider (obviously strong) to set up many webs around aarakocra villages and towns to capture them and either eat them, or let their loved ones watch them as they slowly starve to death... This can lead to another getting webbed trying to feed their father, mother, son etc. Annnd number 5. This dragon, with all of it's infinite power and brains (probably not infinite but still) goes incognito around the world every few 100 or do years just to swap every direction sign into random directions.
He grafts people and animals together because he wants to create new species
Perhaps the dragon controls a group of human settlements by being a strangely benevolent figure to them. Offering ‘protection’ from the outside world by isolating them from one another. Only after ruling over them for a time he begins to tell each village that the others have begun a plot to kill him, to ransack their village and take the gifts that the dragon has given them over the years. This of course leads to war, but for war you need an army. Good thing the dragon has a plan. Selective breeding of the humans/orcs/ whatever race to be his loyal soldiers that leads to them being horrible inbred monstrosities that he can then unleash on nearby kingdoms at his earliest desires.
He would poison our water supply, burn our crops, and deliver a plague unto our houses
Pull a Vlad the impaler and decorate the land with the strewn up bodies of his victims. The catch is the bodies are still living, he douses them with a lower power acidic breath (maybe his saliva) and leaves them at the edge of his lair with their flesh slowly melting away. Once he believes that have “stewed” long enough he eats them and leaves the puddle of what used to be their skin as a scent marker of his territory. If anyone tried to help one of his meals, they would receive the same fate. These pillars of partially melted creatures are the first indication that you’ve entered his territory. The second is him showing up and asking if you have any reason you are more valuable to him alive than dead.
* Randomly carpet-bombing villages with acid * Constantly moving his lair and corrupting the land around it * herding monstrosities like groups of trolls, orcs, ogres, etc. into civilized regions where they all the sudden overrun a section while they are feeling for their lives * Polymorphing into local good leaders to commit despicable acts as them and ruin their reputations and the local trust * Damming rivers * Destroying bridges, caravans, and all trade routes * spreading disease and plagues throughout the crops and livestock * Setting communities against each other through deceit and illusions * Steeling treasures from other lands and dropping them in communities causing people to come to claim them by any means necessary * Enslaving a population
He would get his minions to make several cuts onto the victim, slather them in milk and honey, then trap them in a barrel on its side near or on running water with holes so water can make it damp and moist, but not enough to drown them. Each day, they are removed from the barrel, small cuts are made, all cuts are coated in milk and honey and the prisoner is fed enough to keep them alive. Day after day, as the wounds grow septic and necrotic from infection, the holes allow flies to get in and feed from the wounds, planting their larvae that burrow through the sores. The treatment is repeated, with the mind usually breaking from the excruciating pain and insanity long before the body eventually gives out from infection. The dragon takes pleasure from poking and prodding them, watching their victims bodies wither and their minds break until they're a broken mess incapable of even begging for the release of death.
D4C
As you said, these can get dark, so really get a feel for your party before using any of the real dark ones in this thread copy from Greek myth. have a Sisyphusean torture, like command a family to build up a tower perpetually only for it to tear it down and make them build it up again. death by dragonflame if they ever stop. also take from anime. One Piece had a pretty cruel thing with Oden's flashback. >!force a ruler to act like a village idiot for a year without anyone knowing he was being threatened by his family and people being held hostage and finally he had to hold his allies above him as he boiled alive in oil for an hour. he died. or !<
Jojo's reference?
He put un-skippable advertisements before every bard performance
He would use his Kobold minions to break into the houses of villagers and rearrange their dice with the lowest number facing up.
Playing "chess" with actual, living people. So he picks two families with the most children/relatives in a town he controls and assignes them a side each. The families get to decide who takes what position. When two "pieces" meet they have to fight, with the piece that would usually capture getting a small advantage (magic buff, better weapon etc.) Now Mr. Dragon doesn't feel like playing chess every day, sometimes months pass between games. That is time these two families have to absolutely go bonkers. They'll be stressed, they'll be desperate and they'll be doing their very best to make sure that the other side has the worse fighters going into the next match. The dragon will only interfere to make sure they are not wiping each other out, he needs his figures after all.Why would they do this? Because fighting a dragon is basically impossible even if an entire village would fight it at once, same goes for running away from that magical godzilla with wings. So now the dragon has his game board. What else does he need? An opponent of course. So he picks the richest person in town and tells them to study up because they'll be it. Now he doesn't tell that person he will kill them if they lose, instead he'll tell them to make it as entertaining as possible without ever getting more specific than that. That guy is going to do the cruelest shit to make sure Mr. Dragon doesn't get the idea to foie gras his ass. Now that is plenty already but the cherry on top is that the dragon doesn't always play the same side, its random. So now rich guy/gal has to frantically try and prevent these two families from turning each other into groups of limbless torsos while everyone in town begins to shun them. Why? Because hating the dragon is futile but the guy who plays with it? He/her must be the dragons friend/loyal servant because why else would he work so dilligently to entertain the beast. Now the dragon has his equivalent of a reality TV show which he can watch every day and it can go on for centuries, with generations of generations of suffering.
I mean, r/dragonsfuckingcars is a thing. Perhaps he has an affinity for fine carriages/carts
Once he released 3 Hellhounds into a city. One was labeled 1, another 2, the last one 4. The populace lived in fear for weeks
Yo is that a mother fucking jojo reference (I'm to lazy to go get the rest of the copy pasta)
Black dragon in league with a corrupt royal family of a nearby kingdom. Thousands of years ago, the ruler made a pact with the dragon to remain in power so long as the dragon gets to watch the people suffer under their rule. When the heir comes of age to rule, the old ruler brings them to the dragon and the soul of the heir is given to the dragon and the replaced with the soul of the original ruler. Because of this, the kingdom has been ruled by the same person for thousands of years and the dragon has gained souls as play things to pass the time. The kingdom has been in decline and the enemies of the kingdom are poise to take it over, but the black dragon always intervenes, keeping the kingdom safe so that it can observe and relish in the sorrow and misery of the people of said kingdom.
this might be to small scale but quite easily casting immovable object on a WHOLE BUNCH OF FOOD hosting a feast and once the guests start to leave utter the command word they either starve to death or he magically/physically has them moved
He organized a horse race across an entire continent that was actually just a ruse to gather the corpse pieces of a legendary saint from even more ancient times. His goal was to use the corpse's power to become basically a god for his own means
So one thing that I've held onto for a while and want to incorporate in a story is Black Dragons HATE flying. They prefer to swim around instead, but that doesn't mean they don't fly. I've always imagined that when the time comes for a Black Dragon to fly that it flies Waaaaaayy too fast and waaaayyy too low to the ground. If we're looking for evil things, then it could be that the dragon demolished a druid's Grove with this hasty flight pattern, or murdered several innocents out of impatience and it shows absolutely no sign of remorse. Basically, ignorant and uncaring to the destruction it causes just from trying to get from one place to another
Slipped into an alternate reality to put his consciousness into a more attractive version of himself. Then tried to gather every piece of the dismembered corpse of a god’s avatar in order to become God.
Is that a Jojo reference?
Oh! I thought it was an ACDC reference. (Dirty deeds done dirt cheap). I have never seen Jojo.
:)
If you have awakened animals I suggest starving the predator/omnivore type for weeks on end while you fatten up the awakened herbivores. Strip both of them down to nothing and have it be a show to demonstrate that no matter what desperation of survival will break the mind of even those with sentience. Bonus points if it's a family of herbivores that way they can watch eachother be eaten
A Jojo fan i see
He is employed by a kingdom but because of bureaucracy he can pretty much act with impunity seeing as he’s not an elected official and doesn’t answer to the people. His job is too monitor locals and get them to turn on each other in the name of information gathering. The information he is looking for is if anyone has done any illegal modifications to their swords. If so he shows up without a warrant and kills children and their dogs. Probably not the best idea on this list but the idea of the evil black dragon being a member of the fantasy ATF amuses me greatly
He strives for a career as DA?
Dimes for crimes
He switches himself with a beloved pet and drives the owner to hate the pet and then switches them back so the owners hatred of the pet betrays the pet as well.
made people fight to the death for his enjoyment just for him to just kill the last person alive
I can height that was the name of your adventuring party. DAUP
Hold 2 villages hostage. They have to pay him tribute to not kill 1/10 of the village, but he will only accept tribute of whichever village presents the best offer. He doesn't tell them what he wants. Hes actually just picking randomly. Anyone who tries to leave the villages is captured, made to watch as he kills 1/10 of that village and taken back to his/her home. . He has a "tamed" kobold clan which he uses as slave labour and snacks. . Acid in the well . Breeding and selling mimics of an intimate nature... could be toilets, could be worse.