Dreki Corpse-Eater is an immense dragon that lives atop a mountain of frozen corpses. The corpses are those that have died outside of battles. He is Nidhoggur and Beowulf's dragon at once, the spawner dragons. The players couldn't really hope fight him, and he wasn't interested in fighting. After Dreki gave his speech, the players fought some of Dreki's children.
I did my best polish accent, inflected all the words wrong, and went with it. The words are partially derived from John Gardener's nihilist dragon, and partially from TS Eliot's The Wasteland. The main thrust of it is that Dreki is aware of the future and what The Tree wants to do with island: kill the dragons, end magic, and supplant the nature of reality in the campaign setting.
I don't expect it looks like much on paper, but despite its nonsensical nature and what I'll charitably call "poetic logic" it made an impression on my players.
"We've been expecting you. I am Dreki Corpse-Eater, world-wrecker, fatal my fang, hungry my horde, father of Goin Dreki and mother of Murrain Dreki."
Because you will one day not exist you do not exist now. You are neither living nor dead. And you know nothing. You see nothing. You remember nothing. You don't see Island, the nymphs departing, thunder screaming out of bells in the distant sunrise.
I heard what The Thunder said. I heard it, but have not heeded it. Dry sterile thunder. Wrongful thunder, bad bad bad thunder. A world of rock but no water, a world of sound but no word. That is what I was to make. What I have given to man to do instead.
You come to me here in this dead land, death's other kingdom. You think you can crush the multifoliate rose of death's true kingdom. That is the only hope for empty men. For thine is the kingdom.
It was my job, but I have given it to man. This capacity to destroy. no part of it want I. Mankind's time on Island is no more than a swirl in the stream of time, but I have prolonged it.
I am killed not by you, but by one like you. Shantih shantih shantih."
No comments:
Post a Comment