Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness / Greif Playhouse
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - An unfinished thesis
The Darkness investigation extends Aria's search for Lore's Great Elemental Dragons. Her Dragonrune Hall project has no fixed deadline; she treats it as a thesis and an animal lover's commitment to learn, even if meeting every Dragon proves impossible. The Hero and Valencia accompany her, with Argento ready to carry them to any location they can establish. This is another research trail, separate from the four already followed through the greenhouse.
Valencia's interest in a Great Dragon's treasure sits beside a more personal obligation to keep Aria safe. She has known Aria's family since traveling with her father, and still values the warmth of returning to their inn. Aria remembers Valencia indulging her childhood curiosity about adventures, spiders, and snakes. That closeness helps explain why the search continues when its subject begins threatening the people around them.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - Bones that remember
In I Don't Know Your Name, Aria seeks Professor Mueran's help finding Dekanor, the Great Dragon of Darkness coveted by necromancers. The Hero retrieves one Gel-encased Bone from Gell Oh No. Mueran meant bones preserved in mud, but slime works even better: some Slimes share a hive mind linked to a larger body, and he can raise dead ones to communicate with that network. The resulting note begs for Dekanor's painful death, accuses him of treating Slimes like cat litter, and directs the search toward frogs in a swamp.
I Still Don't Know You requires eight Frogdrakes from Mudluk Village. Aria uses the animal-language lessons Maedoc taught her, only to be met with screaming. Their note says Dekanor has hunted them for generations, lining them up and crushing them because he finds the noises funny. They say Dreadspiders suffered the same treatment. These are the creatures' accusations, carried into the research through their accounts.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - Directions with a warning
For I Heard You're Looking For Me, the Hero gathers seven Baby Dreadspiders from Abaddon Cave. Their account accuses Dekanor of tearing off legs, leaving one speaker to feed both parents by hand. The same speaker also accuses the visitors of hurting them. Its directions point toward Doomwood Forest, but Aria considers the advice dangerous and wants to stop before the Hero or Valencia is harmed. She compares cruelty toward small animals to children she has fought, while allowing that very young children may not understand better.
Valencia urges them onward: they have faced worse than bullies, even if this one is a Great Dragon. I'm Looking for You requires one Dekanor's Clue from a Weakened Ectomancer in Doomwood Forest. A strange skeleton with pitch-black bones has been watching them. Its receipt lists a funfetti cake, eighty pounds of bones, and a wheel of nylon rope. The accompanying note raises the possibility that a Dragon has been sending Undead minions shopping at a mall.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - The search becomes personal
I'm Getting Closer follows the grocery clue to three Ecto-Shoppers in Chopping Maul. Aria marvels at the idea of Dekanor using necromancy for errands, while Valencia briefly distracts her with a Flowering Treant-scented candle. The next warning shifts attention from shopping to loved ones. Its speaker says their Dragonlord would have loved the place, threatens to find the researchers' own loved ones, and announces a first stop in the tropics where they sought the Great Dragon of Nature.
I'm Getting Even Closer requires three Stuffed Reptiles from Quicksilver snakes in the Yokai Isles. Letters have been put in their stomachs. A sailor reports Undead emerging from the sea to catch the snakes while apparently searching for something else; people hid in their ships. The soggy note taunts its reader about how Yokai react to being crunched, asks whether the reader would scream or grow angry, and threatens the white-coated researchers they know. It names another target rather than establishing that those friends have already been eaten.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - What Fa experienced
Valencia suspects the warnings could be bait, but Aria will not ignore friends in danger. I'm Right Behind You requires speaking to two terrified researchers in Ashray. They say Fa saved them before the monster dropped them and carried her away. Their report quotes the creature's taunt to its 'stalker': they are 'running' somewhere hot, where the search had concerned the Dragon with the supposedly ugly girlfriend. Aria asks whether this must be Dekanor, feeling that his shadow has tainted the beach.
I'm Breathing Down Your Neck leads to Fa in LavaRun. She is safe but scratched, and Aria offers to clean and patch the injuries. Fa's own report gives a different emphasis from the apparent abduction: she and the Dragon ended up roughhousing, and she got carried away. Flying over Termina Temple, she glanced toward something below. Dekanor noticed and smelled someone familiar. The glance gave away a connection she regrets exposing.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - A map left as an invitation
Now I Know Where You Live asks the Hero to recover one Letter in Termina Grove. Aria wonders whether Dekanor is heading where she fears, then reports that she and Valencia checked on Volgritian: he is agitated and snarling, but unharmed. Dekanor has disturbed the grove and discovered the Great Dragon's vulnerability. The note threatens to break Volgritian's neck and eat the friends nearby, including an unnamed 'creepy pale Lady.' It boasts of what its speaker could do, then invites the reader to visit a home supposedly better than theirs.
The map appears to have been traced by an Undead minion, making a trap an obvious possibility. See You Later, Stalker directs the Hero to Argento's travel route to Greif Playhouse. Its sole objective is finding 'Greif's Little Brother' by inspecting a doll in the second room. The object is a doll bearing that quest name. The quest belongs to Aria's research; the playhouse itself does not become a new quest-giving hub, and this objective requires no defeat of Dekanor.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - A temple made into a dollhouse
The Hero calls Dekanor out, but Aria asks for a plan: they have learned little about fighting him. Valencia supplies the reported cruelty to animals, while the Hero insists the threats against their friends and Volgritian cannot be ignored. They acknowledge snooping into his business but say he should confront them rather than uninvolved people. Aria rejects judging him simply for being the Great Dragon of Darkness. Valencia bases her unease on the place itself: an abandoned temple whose inside resembles a dollhouse, and a trap they have casually entered. Toys, blocks, and draped fabric fill the ruined interior.
Valencia lifts a damaged doll and observes that something chewed off its face. She regrets bringing ruin-excavation equipment instead of her haunted-house kit. A giggle interrupts her. The following view shows her recoiling with a hand to her head while the toy lies overturned below her. The scene then cuts through darkness before the doll begins playing a message. No fight with a physically present Great Dragon follows the challenge.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - A recording answers the stalkers
The recording begins with Dekanor testing the toy and explaining that it should play affectionate phrases, making his chosen message more unsettling. He greets the 'stalker' looking for him. Aria recognizes his name. He says his Dragonlord died recently and he is mourning, then qualifies 'recently' as a couple of hundreds of thousands of decades, a short span in Great Dragon years. Aria starts to explain herself, but Valencia reminds her that a recording cannot hear her, leaving an uneasy 'unless' unfinished.
Dekanor says he has neither seen nor heard from Voidstar since Greif died, and that the other Greats scarcely deal with their Avatars either. He mentions the dead dragon named 'Akirloth' in the recording as a possible exception. Unless the visitors concern an Elemental War or Voidstar begging forgiveness, he wants them gone. Aria's status as Champion of Nature entitles her to no more of his time than the necromancers hoping to turn him into a pet Dracolich. He threatens to leave for another continent if the harassment continues. The message clicks off without showing that departure.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - Research and an unanswered gaze
The Hero reassures Aria that she means well, but she accepts the criticism: she has been barging into homes without knocking and may have let being Champion go to her head. The native quest completion likewise has her reconsidering her research ethics. The Hero still thinks Volgritian and the other Dragons have needed these wellness checks, and suggests discussing it over ice cream at Dragonrune Hall, with some ice spells to share. Aria accepts the comfort. Concern for their welfare and respect for their boundaries remain in tension.
As their conversation continues, the image moves outside the temple. A huge pair of glowing purple eyes hangs in the darkness above its roof and gnarled branches. No caption names the watcher. The ending leaves that silent presence beside the recording's demand for privacy, without confirming that Dekanor has departed or that the party has seen his physical form.
Great Elemental Dragons: Darkness - The toys left behind
The community item page for the quest reward, Dekanor's Chew Toy, gives the abandoned doll a further history: Dekanor gnawed off its face and grew fond of toys through his first and only Dragonlord. The same description warns that the doll will unlock doors and windows while its owner sleeps. The warning describes what taking the doll home might entail; the investigation does not show that return home.
The linked Giant Chew Toy is separately listed as an Undead Hatchling drop. Its description promises another recording, with Dekanor imitating a baby screaming for its mother and asking to go home, frightening the neighbors of whoever takes it home. The screaming is described as his imitation, not the testimony of a captive child. This second toy is optional reward context alongside the ten quests that form the main investigation.