Dragon Plague: Dragonhame and the Infirmary
A first flight interrupted
Dragonhame gathers to celebrate An'Desi's first solo flight, a rite that should mark the young dragon's progress toward learning Fire magic. He runs, rises and delights in flying by himself. Then coughing and dizziness interrupt the joy. Dridek calls his mother's attention to the danger as the dragonling loses control and begins to fall.
Adult dragons rush to help, but the celebration has become a vigil. An'Desi survives, barely. Warlic cannot identify the illness; a healer recognizes a plague from sparse, ancient records. Whatever those records preserve, the city now faces a sickness it cannot readily cure.
Called back to Dragonhame
Warlic summons the Hero urgently. Dragons are becoming comatose, dying or disappearing, and the people who protect their young need help. The Hero remembers how badly the previous visit ended and doubts that assistance will be welcome. Warlic dismisses that hesitation: Dragonhame needs defending, healing and saving now.
Before leaving to research the plague, Warlic introduces his former student Drakor. Drakor knows the Hero's reputation for death and destruction and is wary, but will accept whatever help he can get. The Hero insists on learning what they are facing first. Around them, Dragonhame's Dravix, Dravir and human residents are trying to preserve the elemental dragons to whose service they have devoted their lives.
The Golden Flame Sigil
Warlic's trust is a beginning, but Drakor asks for a further sign that the Hero can be relied on. Hs'Sakar's sigil will speak for them. In Firestorm, the Fire Priest is willing to lend it, except that a Sulfur Imp has stolen it. The Hero recovers the Golden Flame Sigil and brings it to Drakor, who regards that blessing as strong proof of the trust they have earned.
Drakor then offers a chance to defend Dragonhame directly. Undead from Shadowfall have taken advantage of the city's weakness to try to claim its land. Driving them back demonstrates a willingness to fight for the community rather than merely arrive in its hour of danger. Drakor begins to understand why Hs'Sakar vouched for this outsider.
The healer and her apprentice
The city's ordinary work continues alongside the emergency. Shi'Nah hopes to become a Master Healer like Ll'Ara and works hard at draconic medicine. In optional errands, the Hero can replenish healing crystals with varied shards from Earthstorm's gemstone golems, or gather local Balmblossom flowers for the salves and medicines she is researching for her teacher.
Ll'Ara has been too busy with the sick to replenish supplies herself. She teaches Shi'Nah to use elemental life force in Dravix healing, calling for material from Living Fire, Water, Earth and Air in the DragonPlane. Yet neither the old techniques nor magic has cured this plague. She and Phelan keep seeking new medicines without success, while Ll'Ara tries to preserve her apprentice's hope.
Armor and weapons for dragonkin
Il'Lar outfits Dragonhame's many kinds of dragonkin, even making tiny plate for wyverns. His optional requests explain the craft: dragon armor must survive extraordinary heat, so forging it needs Living Magma intensified with Imp Embers. Fireproof Elemental Stone provides the cauldrons and casting molds. Armor will not stop the sickness, he admits, but it can keep another source of injury at bay.
Aniya makes weapons whose balance and grip must suit hands and claws unlike a human's. She asks the Hero to test a blade against Earthstorm's minerals, confident in its strength and sharpness. The plague lends her work a darker uncertainty: she wonders how many customers will remain, and whether she should learn to make more weapons for human hands.
Bottles, hats and a commissioned dress
Phelan's trade extends beyond mana and healing, though his mixtures may behave differently with human physiology. His optional ingredients include Marsh Lurker eyes, Frogdrake warts and Fishwing musk for a dragon's love potion. Lightning, an Eye of the Storm and Imp Sulfur go into Red Drake Energy Potions; he confides that those are for himself, because potion-making is exhausting. None of this solves the failure of the healing recipes he and Ll'Ara are testing.
Sha'Riel wants soft Marsh Stalker hide and silvery Fishwing fins for hats, then asks for hats lost to Airstorm's winds. Kl'Ing, a tiny wyvern with a fashion studio, needs opaline scales, crystalline tentacles and Sulfur Imp horns for an unnamed client's special dress. The sickness worries these makers too. Kl'Ing chooses sewing and a raspberry smoothie over constant fear, while Sha'Riel blames mercury in the felting for troubles with memory and emotion.
A plague made on purpose
Drakor's first inquiries do not reveal the culprit. Cultists of Fotia have troubled the dragons before, but questioning them yields no knowledge of the plague. The elementals provide another lead: they are affected without being killed. The Hero gathers cores from Gilead for Ll'Ara and Phelan to compare with the corrupted local ones.
The apparently unaffected Merdraconians of Natatorium offer hope of protection. The Hero recovers the rumored Scroll of Salubris for study, but Drakor discovers something different from the expected protective scroll: evidence that someone created this plague to harm dragons. Finding the person responsible now joins the search for a cure. It changes their understanding of the crisis without making the sick any safer.
More knowledge, and shelter for the eggs
Ll'Ara and Phelan find a form of magic in the recovered scroll that differs from what they know. Lotus Spider petals and Talismans of Renewal from the Cave of Wanders may help them understand it. The Hero also visits the professors of Dragonrune Hall, bringing back information for the priests and alchemists. Drakor remains hopeful, though studying the material will take time.
Research cannot be the only defense. Drakor asks the Hero to gather Dragonhame's eggs in the center of town, where the healers can watch over them together. Protecting the young has become the immediate priority while the city searches for an answer to the illness.
The mercy no one wants to grant
Then an infected young dragon escapes quarantine, delirious and destructive. Drakor's appeal asks for containment without hurting a creature already weakened by pain. The assignment also warns that the dragon is beyond curing and cannot be allowed to keep spreading the plague. The Hero takes it down, leaving Drakor to mourn what he calls the plague's most tragic demand yet.
Drakor sends the dead dragon toward the DragonPlane in the hope of purification, unwilling to leave it in that state even after death. Shi'Nah and Ll'Ara tend the gathered eggs beneath protective wards. The Hero asks about those already ill: they have wards in the Infirmary too, but protection is only as strong as the city can make it. Drakor turns the search toward Galanoth, whose knowledge may help even though he is a DragonSlayer.
The failing quarantine
The Hero kills more infected dragons outside the hospital so a ward can protect the rest of Dragonhame. Drakor knows Galanoth is not the secret author of this disaster: he would attack directly. Something more sinister is at work, and the spreading zombie plague makes the journey to the DragonSlayer urgent.
The plague's spread unfolds in an ominous sequence. Sick creatures cough and sneeze, three zombie dragons appear, and Drakor intervenes. The Hero also encounters a small creature before an anonymous sneeze closes the sequence. The ending leaves the extent of the danger uncertain.
The DragonSlayer's knowledge
Galanoth agrees to help. A plague that spreads beyond Etherstorm might infect the rest of Lore's dragons and possibly cross into other species. In Lair, the Hero gathers uninfected material from Water Draconians, Venom Draconians and Wyverns for Warlic. Dark Draconian Essence supplies another practical aid: DragonSlayers use it to calm and subdue dragons.
The Red Dragon may know more about old dragon plagues than anyone else. Defeating it yields a scroll about the Last Great Dragon Plague. Galanoth sends the Hero onward with those samples and records while he watches the local dragonkin for signs of illness. Drakor directs the next stage toward Artix and the undead specimens Warlic still needs.
Bones from the Temple
Artix cannot abandon the people of Swordhaven while undead threaten them. The Hero helps him finish defending the town, earning his promise of assistance. Their next journey is to the Temple of Light, where the Dracolich can provide undead dragon bones for Warlic's investigation.
After the battle, Artix sends the Hero back with the bones before they lose their freshness. He stays behind in case the Dracolich rises again. The evidence now brings draconic life and draconic unlife into the same inquiry, ready for the elemental comparisons Warlic has planned.
Four kinds of evidence
The Red Dragon's scroll describes a different plague, but Warlic finds useful information in it. Before naming a cause for the present sickness, he wants to be certain. Pure essences of Fire, Water, Earth and Air from Gilead provide the elemental side of his comparison; if his suspicion is right, all of them face a long and dangerous battle.
Marrow from Skeletal Fire and Ice Mages shows what happens when elemental and necromantic magic combine. Runes from a lich add a purely necromantic sample. Warlic now has the four categories he sought: dragon, undead, elemental and elemental-undead. His findings confirm his fear, and he urges a return to Drakor before it is too late.
The Infirmary overtaken
While the Hero has been away, more dragons have died, and the dead are rising as zombies. Drakor sends the Hero into the Infirmary to put them down before they threaten everyone else. He can hardly bear having ordered dragonkin killed, but resolves to carry on for their sake.
A still more alarming creature waits in quarantine: an elemental dracolich. Drakor has never seen such a thing in Dragonhame and wants it subdued so they can learn how the plague produced it. The Hero defeats the creature, bringing the investigation to a painful disagreement over what should happen to its remains.
Ferus is not a specimen
Dr'Rader returns the fallen Earth Dragon to the DragonPlane with a blessing. The Hero protests that they needed the body to discover how such a creature was made. To the priest, that demand treats Ferus—a dragon who lived longer than the Hero ever will—as something to dissect instead of someone to honor.
Ferus's bones will become crystal and sing for thousands of years, Dr'Rader says; his spirit can leave the polluted shell behind. He was neither a monster nor a failed experiment. Warlic apologizes for the offense, explaining that the Hero seeks knowledge to save as many dragonkin as possible. Reverence for the dead and the urgency of protecting the living have collided.
Back to the DragonPlane
Each dragon lost or vanished leaves less evidence and greater danger. The Hero names Desolich as the enemy they believe must be behind the crisis: the great Elemental Dragon now turned dracolich. Ll'rillor answers with images of catastrophe gathering strength—waters drawn back before a tidal wave, crumbling stone, raging winds and consuming fire.
The immediate goal remains saving those not yet transformed and protecting the healthy, while denying Desolich more followers. Drakor sees a terrible waste in a dragon who might have brought millennia of draconic glory, but may instead leave Lore without dragons or hope. He identifies where the Hero must go next: only by returning to the DragonPlane can they hope to reach all the dragons at once.