White Dragon's Lair
Buried deep in the snow and ice a white dragon’s frigid lair is a terrifying locale.
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Outside the Lair
Huge furrows and chunks of bloodied ice show where something huge landed on its prey before flying off. Blood stains the walls of the crevasse where the dragon has dragged its prey down to its hidden lair. Channels have been ploughed through man-high drifts of snow. Obvious tracks in the snow show where some huge and clawed walked. Icy cliffs and drifts give way to deep, pitch black crevasses.
What’s Going On?
Chunks of ice collapse into the crevasse and crash to the distant floor. The dragon mutters and curses to itself, its voice echoing around the frozen halls, as it drags a large corpse deeper into its lair. The crevasse crumbles sending a frozen whale corpse tumbling down into the darkness where it shatters into a thousand icy chunks. The dragon moves large boulders away from the walls into the centre of a sagging chamber.
Major Lair Features
A frozen waterfall cascades down the wall of this chamber and into a mirror-smooth frozen pool. Light from the crevasse above filters through the ceiling of this chamber providing a myriad of reflections and pools of faint light around the room. Mammoth tusks, human bones and bear skulls are embedded into a huge ice pillar. The dragon has constructed this frozen monolith, as a tribute to its many glorious victories. A stone altar lies partially buried in the snow. Dragons and carvings of primitive humans worshiping them cover its surface.
Minor Lair Features
A hand holding a broken sword juts from the floor. A robed human is impaled on a jagged chunk of ice high on the wall. It was hurled here by the dragon’s tail slap during a recent battle. Magical braziers from ancient civilisations line the walls of this corridor and fill it with wan blue light. A narrow shaft in the ceiling admits and focuses a blazing shaft of intense sunlight into the lair.
White Dragon’s Appearance
This dragon has an old injury in its mouth that makes it lisp when talking. The dragon flies into a berserk rage, if its lisp is mocked or even mentioned. The dragon’s horns and spines are adorned with tribal offerings and glinting charms of bone and copper. The charms glimmer in the sun and softly tinkle as the dragon moves about. This dragon has taken on the colours of the frozen ice; it has patches of blue and green scales dotted all over its mighty frame. This female dragon has a look of inscrutable wisdom mixed with boundless cruelty upon her face. She licks her lips, at the sight of her next meal.
Treasure
A heavy-bladed sword with an intricate demon-skull hand-guard and pommel is thrust deep into the ice. It seems to resists all attempts to free it. A purse made from a bear’s scrotum contains several odd green stones and a bright red feather. A suit of leather armour with hundreds of crow feathers sewn into it lies near a similar, but torn cape. The horn of a narwhal tips this long spear. The bloodstained end looks like it was impaled at least three feet into something before being cast aside.
Trinkets & Trash
A broken-tipped climbing axe lies just beneath the wall where it was last used. A single seal fur boot is still attached to a snowshoe. Blood stains the inside of the boot. A ring of copper still encircles a frost-bitten finger. This coil of fine fishing line has a carved bone hook at its end. No other fishing gear is evident.
Credit
This is a short system-neutral extract from Monstrous Lair #51: White Dragon’s Lair by Steve Hood.
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