Rime of the Frostmaiden
Lore of the Great Wyrms
Octavian is readingThe Wyrms
Ashardalon, the Undying
Ashardalon
A traditional song called The Coming of Ashardalon describes the depredations of this red dragon of immense power and self-importance. Ashardalon is well known for his tenacious clasp on life, no matter his injuries and setbacks. When he was struck a mortal blow, the dragon bound a demon into his breast as a second heart. But when that too threatened to fail him, Ashardalon left the world to find the sustenance he required to live forever.
Dread Ashardalon
Ashardalon resembles an ancient red dragon in its prime, but certain odd features stand out. He has a demonic visage, and on his chest is a gruesome scar in the shape of a large winged humanoid — a Balor. The dragon’s eyes are twin beams of burning fire, and tiny bolts of lightning constantly play between his claws and fangs.
Ashardalon was a creature of great fury and power even before he achieved his legendary status or gathered a cult following. Ashardalon’s rampages brought sorrow and misery to the land. The red dragon was worshiped by a cult that built a citadel for the great wyrm to serve as his lair. The cult’s zealous leader, Gulthias, served as the intermediary between Ashardalon and his delusional followers.
At least a century prior to the wound that ultimately paved the way for his demonic heart, Ashardalon and his red dragon mate hunted a lush green land called the Golden Plain. The Golden Plain was ruled by a human king who dwelt in a many-towered fortress. As Ashardalon grew more reckless with his power, he came into direct conflict with the kingdom and its king.
Thinking to show the dragon a monarch’s true might, the king sent a secret force of his knights to slay Ashardalon’s mate. Upon learning of his mate’s death, Ashardalon went on a rampage so fierce and so extended that the land itself finally buckled, pulling the cultist’s fortress beneath the ground. The once-lush region was renamed the Ashen Plain, and the sunken fortress was rechristened the Sunless Citadel.
During his reign of destruction Ashardalon slew a cult of druids affiliated with the Church of the Elements, save for Dydd the Wise who manged to escape. To protect future generations from such devastation, Dydd magically infused the druids’ stonehenge with spells, including one she used to transform wild animals into humans. “Dydd’s people” eventually married each other and gave birth to a new generation of inhabitants in the region.
Once powerful enough, Dydd and her children hunted and challenged Ashardalon, and Dydd found her revenge by carving Ashardalon’s heart out of his chest, believing it destroyed mortally and mystically.
The Cult of Ashardalon
Remnants of the cult survived this disaster, and it reconstituted itself around a relic of its dragon liege: Ashardalon’s heart. Gulthias sensed a “residual potency” in Ashardalon’s Heart and with a magic born of equal parts skill, faith, and dark desperation, rekindled the heart — but not to life. At the exact moment when Ashardalon’s Heart beat, Gulthias and the cultists took their own lives. The suicide “enlivened” the heart, though other tales suggest mysterious extra-planar Dark Powers were responsible for suffusing the heart with negative energy.
Gulthias’ proximity to the Heart during the ritual raised him as a vampire. Gulthias new undead power was privileged with a certain link to the zombified Heart; he could raise cultists to unlife and hold sway over them. Many scholars believe Gulthias deluded himself into believing that the Heart retained some life, when in fact he was the one who gave it “life” by imbuing it with necrotic energy, while guided by those Dark Powers.
The ritual infused Ashardalon’s Heart with the energy of the Shadowfell and transformed it, reborn in undead darkness, into the centre of faith and necromantic power for the cult. The cultists hoped to resummon Ashardalon, but the dragon never answered their call.
The Fate of Gulthias
After Ashardalon’s continued absence led the cult to dwindle into insignificance, Gulthias returned a final time to the Sunless Citadel.
Scholars disagree as to why Gulthias returned. Most believe he was searching for an artifact he believed would summon Ashardalon. Others have simpler reasoning: Gulthias sought only to recover magical lore buried in its depths. Or maybe he thought the Citadel’s magic – which preserved an undead Elf condemned to spend unlife as a troll – held necrotic energy strong enough to empower the Heart.
Gulthias never succeeded in resummoning his Lord, and he was eventually slain in the Twilight Grove that lay beneath the ruined citadel. A unnamed adventurer staked the vampire Gulthias to the ground, which transformed him into a skeletal tree. Gulthias’s necromancy extended beyond his death, and so-called ‘Gulthias Trees’ have since spread to many realms, from Faerûn to Shadowfell realms such as Barovia.
The Sunless Citadel itself is long since lost.
Ashardalon the Undying
Such was Ashardalon’s power that he was not killed by Dydd’s revenge, but the blow received was so grievous that his heart was damaged beyond repair. The dragon, calling on all his craft and knowledge of ancient rituals, managed to survive long enough to replace his heart with a magically bound demon, a Balor: Ammet the Eater of Souls. But so terrible was Ashardalon’s wound that even Ammet’s enchanted labour began to fail the dragon’s body. Ashardalon sought instead a source of life energy so pure that nothing could ever again threaten to kill him.
Ashardalon’s new lair is a mysterious domain in the Astral Sea called the Bastion of Unborn Souls. He has ensconced himself in the centre of the Bastion, bathed in a stream of raw soulstuff to keep his faltering life steady. Like a boulder in a stream, the dragon’s body interrupts the flow, which beads across him like water. Creatures who stay within the confines of the Bastion of Unborn Souls do not noticeably age — the raw soulstuff keeps them young and vibrant. If indeed its points of light are preincarnate souls upon which Ashardalon feeds, creatures of the world might be born as soulless husks, shambling vestiges of what they might otherwise be, and open to malign influence. He could conceivably live forever there, though new dragon cults will no doubt rise who seek to summon again the great wyrm Ashardalon.
Voaraghamanthar, the Black Death
Voaraghamanthar
In the heart of the Mere of Dead Men, the vast saltwater swamp that lies along the Sword Coast between Leilon and Waterdeep, dwells the savage black dragon Voaraghamanthar, the “Black Death.” This wyrm is said to have strange powers and avoids other dragons who intrude into the swamp or claim it as part of their domain. Most tales say the Black Death can burst from beneath long-placid swamp waters, read and reason intelligently, and be in two places at once.
This latter power is due to the true nature of this dragon: “Voaraghamanthar” is, in fact, two identical twin, adult male, black dragons who pose as one dragon in their dealings with both intruders and allies, the latter of which includes the Cult of the Dragon. Their twin’s name is Waervaerendor, who impishly styles himself “the Rapacious Raider”. The two dragons share an empathic link and work together with unshakable loyalty.
Faerûn, however, knows of only one deadly, legendary Wyrm of the Mere: a flitting black ghost of claws and jaws that strikes out of nowhere. The black swamp waters hide the dragons and the rotting bodies of victims they wait to dine upon – or keep prisoner, helpless in the cold muck, for fell purposes.
Draconic twins are rare indeed (one typically kills the other in the egg before hatching), but Voaraghamanthar and Waervaerendor share an empathic link that bonds them into an unshakable duo. Together the hatchling twins slew their siblings and fled before their parents could in turn destroy them. After many years of lurking in swamps and moors throughout Faerûn, the Brothers found a “home” they deemed fitting and took the Mere of Dead Men as their domain.
The twins have long striven to increase their power by acquiring magic, specifically spells leading to a means of creating loyal, formidable servitor creatures to serve them as warriors, guardians, and drudges. Waervaerendor is more outgoing, preferring to acquire information face-to-face, while Voaraghamanthar prefers to study and deduce from dusty tomes and ancient ruins.
Like most dragons beyond youth, thoughts of their own deaths weigh ever more heavily on the brothers, and they’ve begun – earlier in life than many wyrms – to seek immortality energetically. They share the fear that the death of one of them might render the other insane through their empathic link.
Both brothers see undeath (dracolichdom) as a fool’s road, doomed to fall shy of immortality and unworthy of consideration. Nevertheless, when approached by the Dragon Cult, they forged an alliance in hopes of gaining lore amid the details of dracolichdom that might provide a means of prolonging their lives and preserving their (living, vigorous) bodies. Cultists are also “useful tools” to spy and work for the twins outside the Mere. They still pretend to be tempted by dracolichdom but are completely insincere about the alliance.
The brothers resent intrusions into their affairs or domain. When they let self-control slip, they fight with unbridled fury. While cunning and amoral, they’re never needlessly cruel or destructive. They’ve little interest in displays of power or acquiring territory, considering discretion the better part of valour and their lives more important than victory.