Campaign Resolution

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Anselm just gave me a wonderful idea on how to wind up the campaign:

Ah. Here's my point. Maybe there is a widget that gives the villain the power to prevent a small portion of the world, maybe a specific region, from being affected by the disease. He has, in fact, the Egg of the next Great Dragon of the Land.
By keeping the egg cold, he keeps his own section of the land free from taint. However, if the PCs can get the egg to hatch, then the Great Dragon can die, and be replaced.
...
It also gives you an alternative climactic scene, in case the PCs do something stupid. Like, say, cornering the villain in his lair, with nothing to lose, instead of neutralizing him. The villain, in a fit of "If I can't have it, you can't either," attempts to destroy the Egg. This proves to be, ahem, a Mistake. No, make that a MISTAKE. Of the kind usually committed by Indiana Jones villains. :)
He and the PCs learn at the same time that the person whom the new Great Dragon imprints upon becomes the sire of the new Imperial House.
That's why the Emperor has been able to perform this ritual to restore the land temporarily.
And so the Emperor dies at exactly the point when the Land needs a new dragon and the kingdom needs a new royal house.
...
So the villain has been using the Egg as a talisman to keep his lands free from taint, but now he begins preparing a way to hatch the egg, and the PCs can sweep in just in time to watch the egg hatch, and one of them gets to be royalty.
Ooh. I even have a legendary artifact that's a ruby the size of a basketball that burns with an internal flame...

So the ruby that I'd called the Dragon's Heart is really the Egg of the Great Dragon. One great way the campaign could end would involve hatching a new Dragon from that egg. Wow. That would be so fantastic and so powerful. (This post was private until 2016)