The Witcher D&D: Birth of a dragon

The story so far

Welcome to our adventures with The Witcher Tabletop Role Playing Game (or TRPG). Our party went through quite some adventures already. Here’s a quick recap of everything we’ve done so far:

• Running from Nilfgaard
• Killing drowners
• Meeting a strange lord
• Robbing a bank
• Discovering a murder…
• …and solving the mystery
• Hunting a dragon
• Becoming the heroes of Toussaint
• Learning magic in Avalon

Our party consists of:

• Sherga, our mage
• Spark the craftsman
• Rhay the dwarven bard
• Letho the witcher
• Alex our seductive criminal elf

The Isle of Fire

After Avalon, we sailed to the Isle of Fire. There we meet Jane who lives all by herself on the island. We learn about her ancestors, the dragon keepers of the island. There’s an abandoned dragon’s lair in the volcano on the island and legend says it holds a fire hot enough to hatch a dragon’s egg.

But Jane warns us about the lair: some time ago, a meteorite has struck the volcano. Those who visited the island since have not returned after a visit to the lair. We decide to prepare first by gathering some herbs. Jane crafts us some healing stuff, and then we’re off to the dragon’s lair in the volcano…

Abandoned dragon’s lair

We meet a confused man who takes us along through the tunnels.

After a while, we encounter a moist room filled with eggs. Suddenly one of the eggs opens, and a creature jumps out. We can just kill it before it ‘hugs’ one of our party.

At the same time, a snake-like creature bursts our of the chest of the confused man. We manage to kill it, and decide to destroy all the other eggs.

This whole situation may ring a bell with you. It is indeed inspired by the Alien movies. Let’s go further down the lair!

Deeper down the lair, we notice some mining equipment and some corpses. A note talks about ‘xenomorph’ creatures. And just a moment later, we see something crawling on the ceiling

Two xenomorphs attack our party. Whenever we hit them, acid oozes out of their wounds. Some of the party members get some nasty burn marks, but eventually we manage to kill the xenomorphs.

We apply some bandages before we continue further. In the new room, we encounter a xenomorph queen. After our previous encounter, we decide to chicken out. Sherga casts a Tallfryn’s prison spell. We make a run for the new room while the queen is entangled. She still manages to hit us a few times with her tail, but we escape with minimal damage.

The heart of the volcano

Our next room is a dead end. We’re surrounded by hot lava, and if we look up, we see the sky. We’re at the heart of the volcano. We hesitantly place the dragon’s egg in the lava.

For a while, nothing happens. But then cracks suddenly appear, and a small dragon crawls out of the egg. Its wings are stuck to its body, and it doesn’t appear ready to fly yet. The dragon starts walking to the previous room, where the xenomorph queen is still alive.

We try to communicate with the dragon, but it ignores us completely. We suddenly realize that a dragon is not a pet, and that it has a will of its own.

Run!

The dragon walks slowly through the room with the queen. It’s still a small creature, and it doesn’t appear to be a match for the queen.

We defend ‘our’ dragon as good as possible from the queen’s attacks. But once more, we let her live and run.

We make it back to the room with the mining equipment and the dead miners. Our craftsman Spark repairs an old mining cart. We force our dragon in the cart (he doesn’t seem to be too happy about it), and the rest of the party joins as well. Xenomorphs start appearing from all sides, but we escape just in time with our mining cart in true Indiana Jones style.

A tragic death

After a long and winding road, our cart crashes near the entrance to the volcano.

We notice that there’s one tunnel we haven’t explored yet. We enter the tunnel, knowing that we should probably have exited the lair as soon as possible. Our dragon follows…

We end up in a room with a floor full or blood stains. There are two chests in the room, and a big hole in the center of the room.

The first chest has some gear, but the second one is a mimic (a monster, disguised as a chest). We manage to beat it, but our witcher Letho is curious for the hole in the ground.

He jumps in, expecting treasure. But he finds death instead…

The warnings of the rest of the party came too late. We mourn for our witcher (and we’re a bit disappointed that there’s no body to loot).