Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - A discreet investigation
Galanoth asks the Hero for discretion about a delicate problem. Their camp was established to confront a growing dragon threat, with the Seven Deadly Dragons reserved for their own missions and lesser dragons assigned to other members of the Order. Gibbs has reported finding several of his targets already slain. The Hero initially sees no reason for alarm until Galanoth explains that the dragons' treasure hoards have also been stolen.
To Galanoth, that treasure belongs to the villages from which it was taken, not to the Dragonslayers. He describes a selfless desire to protect as the purpose that unites the Order, whatever brought its members there individually. A rogue member enriching themself through the cause would betray that purpose and damage the Order's name. The Hero agrees to help investigate quietly. Their first destination is Aeryck Wood, the scene of the most recent crime.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - Boxes, puddles, and dangerous chests
Sneevils are looting the first cave after its dragon's death. Looting is for Sneevils asks the Hero to recover eight Sneevil Boxes in the hope of finding a clue. Most of the contents are only the supposed thief's discarded rubbish, but one box holds a note. Galanoth thinks its directions and the puddles of water will lead to a treasure room. Jumping in Puddles records that room's discovery, though something there immediately seems wrong.
The apparent treasure chests are mimics. Galanoth remembers that one seemed to contain something when they arrived, but can no longer tell which one. Pick the Right Chest calls for one Find a Clue. Its warning about the wrong chest costing an arm expresses the danger, rather than recording an injury to the Hero. The associated selection game asks the player to follow a shifting target and choose among nine positions, with three attempts; the scene's purpose is recovering the clue, not a confirmed payment of real gold.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - A frozen witness
The next discovery is a Sneevil Looter frozen solid. Galanoth proposes thawing him so that he can explain what happened. Once able to speak, the looter says he was digging through gold when he was suddenly frozen from behind. He never saw the attacker. He guesses that whoever killed the dragon had returned for the rest of the treasure, but cannot identify that person.
A frozen Sneevil and melting ice suggest ice magic to the Hero. Asked whether the Order includes any mages, Galanoth says none that he knows of. Dedara's books contain some spells and information, but he calls them the Order's only magical resource. That is not much of a lead, yet it directs the Hero's attention toward her collection. The investigation moves to another raided cave in Idarr Valley.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - The wreckage in Idarr Valley
Jelly-like Cubes threaten to dissolve any evidence left in the second cave. The Hero must slay ten, then complete five Cave Explored objectives to establish what happened. Everything has been smashed and destroyed. Galanoth takes the damage as evidence of extraordinary strength. The last corridor is still blocked by a trap, which Disarm the Trap requires the Hero to unlock before finding Clue #2 in the chamber beyond it.
Inside, a dragon has been skewered by an icicle. The pair believe this supports their ice-mage theory, but the condition of the traps adds another problem. Most were smashed; the final trap had been reset, as if intended to catch the next Dragonslayer who investigated. Galanoth considers the possibility that the culprit knows they are being followed, yet insists that the people of his Order are family and would not do such a thing. The Hero is much less willing to dismiss the suspicion.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - A trail through ice and gold
A chamber covered in ice and gold looks like a place where the thief might be storing the stolen hoards. Crystal-eyes requires five Ice Crystal Slain and ten Glacial Horror Slain before the search can continue. Gold spilling from the treasure room has attracted kobolds. Galanoth insists that it must be returned to the robbed towns, so Go-bolds? requires ten Recovered Gold from the kobolds and five Gold Recovered from the surrounding floor.
Human footprints appear in the cave. Galanoth assumes that, because they are not the pair's own, they must belong to the thief. Follow the Trail records three Follow the Footprints objectives. The trail brings the Hero to Dedara, Gibbs, and Senna. They say they have been investigating the dead dragons and missing gold themselves, taking care of the problem while Galanoth and the Hero handled larger threats. The Hero instead announces that a rogue Dragonslayer has been caught in the act.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - Dedara, then Gibbs
The Hero begins with the ice magic and the spells in Dedara's books. Galanoth immediately challenges the implied accusation. Dedara protests that she is a Loremaster, not a banker, while Galanoth's earlier conversation emphasizes that knowledge rather than greed motivates her. The Hero then asks who else had access to the books. What sounded like an accusation against their owner becomes a way to widen the theory.
The next target is Gibbs, strong enough to smash the traps in a dragon's den. Gibbs calls the accusation slanderous and reminds Galanoth that he lives minimally, with no need for that wealth. Galanoth has described him as the strongest member of the Order and one of the most selfless people he knows. The Hero accepts that Gibbs needs no fortune, then shifts attention to someone who might need it for a reason other than personal luxury.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - The theory that explains everyone
Senna becomes the supposed motive behind the crime. The Hero argues that the Order's shortages of food, supplies, armor, and weapons would have put pressure on her to find gold for its struggling members. In this reconstruction, she wanted the treasure for the Order rather than herself. This remains the Hero's explanation of the evidence, not a confession or an established account of what Senna did.
The theory then joins all three friends together: Senna persuaded Dedara to lend her books and reset the second cave's trap, Gibbs supplied the strength, and Senna herself killed the dragons with clumsy ice magic. The Hero triumphantly accuses everyone. Senna rejects the story, while Galanoth protests that he has known these people for years and does not believe they would do this. The apparent completeness of the theory has made the Hero more confident than its evidence warrants.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - The secret hoard
The Hero promises to prove the accusation by revealing the friends' secret hoard. The discovery that follows is spectacular: a mass of gold so dazzling that the investigation gives way to delight in its beauty. For a moment, the person investigating another's greed is absorbed by the treasure itself. The scene turns the Hero's certainty into a different kind of distraction.
Gibbs repeatedly tries to get the Hero's attention, and Senna begins a warning about what the Hero is on. The Hero is revealed on the head of a huge blue ice dragon, turning the delight in the hoard into a startled question: a dragon? Goregold emerges as the case's real danger, declaring the gold his own. Calling himself Lord of Ice, he threatens to freeze the intruders and smash them into shards if they try to take it.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - The culprit outside the theory
Senna points out that the culprit is an ice dragon and that the Hero owes the accused friends an apology. The Hero now sees another explanation for the ice, the strength, and the cunning needed to reset the trap for pursuing Dragonslayers. Dedara adds that ice dragons are known as the greediest breed. The qualities used to build the elaborate accusation never required the culprit to be human.
The Hero asks why Goregold would kill his own kind simply to gain their wealth. Goregold answers by comparing his actions with what humans have done for centuries. He then suggests that the Dragonslayers should be grateful for all the work he has done for them. His attempt to equate shared enemies with shared purpose exposes how differently he and Galanoth understand the hunt.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - What the Order stands against
Galanoth refuses gratitude to a creature he sees as an embodiment of selfishness, greed, and destruction. Goregold is everything the Order opposes. The dragon boasts that he has killed beasts far more powerful than the people before him and tells them they have no chance. Galanoth's relief that the thief is not one of his companions does not diminish his determination to stop the actual culprit.
Get Rid of Greed requires one Goregold Defeated. Galanoth condemns the dragon for killing other dragons to acquire their treasure and asks the Hero to help end the threat. The investigation has finally led to one of the deadly dragons it had seemed to set aside, with the supposed rogue Dragonslayer replaced by a thief whose magic and strength explain the damage in the caves.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - Who deserves the treasure?
Defeated, Goregold accuses his opponents of being no better than he is and asks whether they think they deserve the gold more. Galanoth says no. The people from whom it was stolen deserve it: villages made destitute by this dragon's greed and the greed of others. He promises that the treasure will be returned to them and that the Order's good name will be restored. The promise concerns restitution, rather than claiming the hoard as payment for the hunt.
The closing confrontation follows Galanoth's answer with a finishing blow, staged in stark silhouettes against white and red. Galanoth's sword is directed down toward the prone Goregold. The story then turns from the dragon to the people falsely accused of his crimes. Returning the treasure and clearing the Order are the outcome Galanoth declares; no count of gold actually delivered to individual villages is supplied by this scene.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - The apology the Hero owes
The Hero apologizes to Dedara, Gibbs, and Senna for suspecting them. An aside notes that Galanoth never considered those three culprits, even though the investigation had begun with the general assumption that a Dragonslayer was responsible. The Hero admits that they had never seriously considered anyone outside the Order and that the theory had seemed to make sense. The apology acknowledges how that assumption shaped the reading of every clue.
Dedara says that she suspected a dragon from the beginning. The greed and destructive violence recalled an obscure incident she had read about in the Order's history. Gibbs explains that their own investigation had brought them to the cave, and Senna observes that the Hero would have learned this by listening to them. Her concession that the elaborate theory was interesting does not make its accusation correct.
Seven Deadly Dragons: Greed - Hemlock Bones and the next case
The Hero wonders whether to give up being a detective. Dedara reassures them that the deductions made sense and claims that even the great Hemlock Bones could not have done better. Asked who that is, she identifies her favorite fictional detective and offers to lend some books. The joke returns books to the case as a source of stories and learning after the Hero had treated Dedara's collection chiefly as evidence against its owner.
Galanoth turns attention back to the remaining Deadly Dragons now that the case is solved. The Hero hopes the next will be less mysterious. Greed's resolution has defended the Order's stated commitment to the robbed villages, while giving its investigator a lesson in the difference between a convincing reconstruction and the people it wrongly implicates.