The Plague of Dragonhame

The Plague of Dragonhame

In Dragonhame, An'Desi's first solo flight begins as a celebration. Then he coughs, grows dizzy and falls. The young dragon barely survives. Warlic cannot identify the illness, and an ancient plague recalled by a healer offers little help as other dragons become comatose, die or disappear. Warlic calls you back. After the war with Desoloth, you’re reluctant to return, but Warlic insists that Dragonhame needs you.

His former student Drakor receives you warily, knowing your reputation for death and destruction. Recovering Hs'Sakar's stolen Golden Flame Sigil earns the priest's blessing and helps win Drakor's trust. Driving off undead from Shadowfall proves you are willing to defend the city. Around you, Ll'Ara and her apprentice Shi'Nah struggle to care for the sick while Phelan searches for medicines. Dragon armor and carefully fitted weapons can prevent other injuries, but not this illness. Even the city's craftspeople wonder how many customers will remain.

Questioning Fotia's cultists yields no culprit. The local elementals are affected without dying, so you bring uncorrupted cores from Gilead for comparison. The apparently healthy Merdraconians suggest another lead, but the Scroll of Salubris reveals something worse than the absence of a cure: someone made this plague to harm dragons. While the healers investigate unfamiliar magic and consult the knowledge of Dragonrune Hall, you gather Dragonhame's eggs beneath protective wards.

An infected young dragon escapes quarantine in a delirious rampage. Drakor asks you to contain it without harm, but the dragon is beyond curing and cannot be allowed to spread the plague. Bringing it down leaves Drakor mourning the cruelest demand of the plague yet. He sends it toward the DragonPlane in hope of purification, but the wards cannot protect everyone and the dead begin to rise. Galanoth agrees to help before the infection spreads through Lore, perhaps even beyond dragonkind. You gather healthy draconic samples and recover the Red Dragon's account of the Last Great Dragon Plague. It describes a different illness, but Warlic finds useful information in it. Artix helps obtain undead dragon bones from the Temple of Light. Comparing these with elemental and necromantic samples, Warlic finds the connection he feared.

Back in Dragonhame, zombies have overtaken the Infirmary. You put them down, then defeat an elemental dracolich in quarantine. Before its body can be studied, Dr'Rader sends the fallen Earth Dragon, Ferus, to the DragonPlane. You protest that the remains might explain the plague. The priest answers that Ferus lived longer than you ever will and deserves to be honored, not dissected. His bones will become crystal and sing for thousands of years. Warlic apologizes, explaining that you seek knowledge to save the living, but the urgency has again set you against the priests' reverence for dragon life.

The evidence points to Desolich. A mysterious letter delivered to Warlic by someone he believed to be Drakor's messenger helps connect the army to its commander: the plague kills dragons, and Desolich raises them as elemental dracoliches. Drakor knows nothing of the letter. Elsewhere, Drakath reveals that he arranged it. Desolich built his army believing his master distracted. Drakath expects you to destroy much of it while spending time on the disaster. He warns his mount that created life, or unlife, cannot always be controlled. Desolich privately turns that warning back upon him.

To reach all the dragons, you must return to the Heart of the DragonPlane and sever Desolich's hold. Warlic's wards contain the infected regions while you knock recoverable dragons unconscious so they can be taken home for treatment. You cleanse the realm's tainted columns and break the elemental dracoliches' connections. Purified Water helps cleanse Fire, purified Fire restores Earth, and Earth's cleansed stones carry the work into Air.

Deluge, Tempest, Inferno and Granite still connect Desolich to the Heart. Slaying them releases more of the corruption, leaving one final avatar: a proud Fire Dragon killed and raised to act for Desolich through a bond between their spirits. Drakor believes Drakath's hold prevents Desolich from leaving the Chaos Realm himself. You defeat the avatar and shatter the last connection. As the energy sustaining Desolich's renewed life drains away, Drakath pulls him back through the Chaos Portal to watch and wait.

Drakath congratulates you, pleased by the rage and disorder the struggle has created. You strike at his watching portal and it vanishes. The DragonPlane is clean, and Drakor names you Dragon's Champion, promising you a home among the dragonkin. Desolich has not been destroyed, but he can no longer create elemental dracoliches through the Heart.

Six weeks later, Dragonhame's infected survivors have recovered and the city mourns those it lost. An'Desi tries his first flight again. He rises, spins and falls as the crowd watches, then swoops upward and cries out in delight. He is flying again.