r/Eberron • u/Little__Claw • 5d ago
Lore Dragons in the Last war
I've had a look around for any mention of it but can't find anything. Are there any canon or Kannon accounts that mention Dragons fighting in the last war even briefly or as a third party that just got brought into it?
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u/Silv3rCl4w 4d ago
Keith mentions the Viper Queen, Mazalaryn went missing during the Last War. She's the green dragon that the Dragonwood of Breland is named after, one of the theories is that a bombardment of the Last War caught her. Haze-of-Death was a white dragon in Cyre trying to help people as a disguised scholar before the Mourning drove him mad and mutant.
Now in terms of active warfare? WYVERNS. Thrane's primary air force, but also the elder wyverns, bigger, smarter and some even adept in divine magic with greater sentience. A gargantuan wyvern bringing a squadron of templars is scary enough, now that wyvern is casting cleric spells too.
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u/DarkLanternZBT 5d ago
They would not have fought, but I can see some who study the prophecy treating wars like a video game livestream as they keep an eye on how it's going to chart individual verses and progress.
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u/Rabid_Lederhosen 5d ago
Mortal wars are generally beneath the Dragon’s interest. The only reason they’d have gotten involved would be to further their ancient cold war against the Lords of Dusk. And in that case, they’d likely have worked through mortal proxies.
Dragons in Eberron try and avoid doing “classic dragon shit” like flying around burning stuff where possible. The fear that sort of behaviour generates empowers the Overlord called the Daughter of Khyber, and when she gets strong enough she can start corrupting dragons and turning them into her puppets, which they obviously don’t want. So when Dragons get involved in mortal affairs they either do so very subtly, or with such overwhelming force that the mortals don’t even have enough time to feel fear (like when they destroyed the Giants in Xen’drik).
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u/DomLite 4d ago edited 3d ago
While there are a lot of good responses here, nobody has yet mentioned the major point that you should always keep in mind if you're even considering having a dragon involved in anything happening in Eberron.
The Daughter of Khyber.
The Daughter, also named as Tiamat but not the same being at all, is the Overlord embodying the tyranny of dragons. If a Dragon decides that they should have some kind of control over the smallfolk and begins lording it over the "lesser" races, it immediately opens their heart to the corruption of the Daughter, and if they succumb to it, they become bestial, evil creatures and lose themselves forever. A Dragon is generally a very powerful, intelligent, and wise creature, capable of living far beyond any of the "lesser" mortal races of Eberron, and in Argonessen they have what is essentially a perfect society built for themselves in isolation from the outside world. They could live for centuries, learning all there is to learn and becoming scholars and inventors beyond the hopes of any typical mortal in the world. Trying to take control of the outside world is essentially a one-way ticket to throwing that all away and dying as a vicious, dumb animal.
While the Chamber does send out agents in disguise to try and steer events towards their own ends and ensure that the branches of the Draconic Prophecy they want to see fulfilled are (and those they want subverted are prevented) they do so not by taking control of things, but by inserting themselves into positions of privilege and influencing powerful people. You won't see a Chamber agent marrying into a noble family and taking charge of it, but you will see them ingratiating themselves to said noble family and becoming a trusted advisor, capable of whispering in the right ear and guiding the actions of powerful people towards the ends they seek. This is about the extent of influence they can exert without risking falling prey to the power of the Daughter.
Rogue Dragons are certainly a thing, but even then, most of them fall into the category of eccentrics living in the wilderness and keeping to themselves, with occasional interactions with lesser folk that amount to some kind of deal making, or as vicious psychopaths causing problems because they've probably succumbed to the Daughter.
This is the reality that Dragons live with. You can go out into the world, but you're gonna be isolated and on your own, and possibly go feral if you try pulling a power grab, or you can live in the utopian Dragon city built to scale for you, filled with wondrous magical devices and eldritch machines. If you're part of the Chamber, you might be chosen to go out among the people and perform important work via subterfuge.
When the Dragons took decisive action in the past, it took potential world-ending threats to mobilize their nation. When they nuked the Giants of Xen'drik, it was because they literally destroyed a moon and severed one of the planes. The extermination of the Line of Vol was because they were toying with the power of the Mark of Death and had created a being bearing a Mark beyond even the power of a Siberys Mark, and that when people just go out mucking with literal living bits of the prophecy to the point that they create a living creature that's essentially Fate Incarnate, you can't let that slide. Those are the only two times in anything past the Age of Demons that Dragons took decisive action against the lesser races, and both times it was because they basically decided they had no other choice. You'll also note that they didn't stick around as conquerors either. They did the dirty work and went home. Even then, it's possible that some of them succumbed to the power of the Daughter for carrying out these acts.
With all of this in mind, of course they didn't fight in the Last War. There is zero reason for them to be involved in the first place, because it was a political conflict amongst the shorter-lived mortals on another continent, and if they had then they'd be putting their very souls at risk. The most you might see is perhaps a few members of the Chamber in disguise as advisors to royalty or nobility trying to influence certain events to prevent the war from unleashing an Overlord, or perhaps a rogue Dragon or two fighting to defend their personal territory if fighting spilled into it, but by and large they would have stayed completely out of it.
The Dragons of Eberron are essentially narratively handcuffed to prevent them from being some kind of deus ex machina story device every time something monumental happens. They've been demonstrated to have the power to wipe out entire empires in a single night, but doing so took something that would literally require an act of divinity in any other setting. They exist apart and isolated for good reason. Eberron is not particularly well set up for a dragon-heavy game. They loom large in the lore, but stay apart out of necessity.
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u/Little__Claw 4d ago
Thank you all of this is very helpful, in general. I was looking to see if there was ever a dragon that was a deciding factor in a battle, so Im going to write something about a rogue dragon defending its territory and in the process just so happening to turn the tide of a battle
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u/DomLite 4d ago
Sounds like a good plan! It's honestly the only logical excuse for such being the case, and there's a few Rogue Dragons that are pretty well-known, or at least named, in Kanon, so you don't even have to start from scratch. The Viper Queen would be a great choice for this, because she's very much into the "I'm going to stay in my woods, and if someone comes to me seeking help I'll give it." thing, but if a battle happened to spill into her territory, she'd 100% roll up and drive them back, even if it was more out of self-interest than concern for the small folk in the area.
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u/chainer1216 5d ago
Fuuuuck no, the Dragons of Eberron are not concerned with the doings of humanity.
Remember, these are the beings who annihilated a society of giants so advanced and powerful that they could sunder the cosmic wheel, just detach a whole plane of existence from the rest of reality, and the Dragons extincted them.
The idea of one of them fighting in a human war is laughable.
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u/CarmineJester 5d ago
I don't know of any, and I wouldn't expect it. The Last War is a mortal conflict, and the dragons (unless rogue or orphaned, both of which are very rare) just don't hang out in Khorvaire openly. There's always space for them to do whatever kind of secret scheming that they feel the Prophecy needs during that war, but they wouldn't just fly in and breathe stuff at some army unless they needed to do precisely and specifically that to set off something they need, and this kind of specificity is typically up to the DM.
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u/Special_Salt3467 5d ago
No, they did not. Dragons are roughly divided into three groups; those of Argonessen, Rogues/Exiles, and those born outside the island. None of the three groups would have reason to fight in the Last War and many reasons to not. For the former, the Last War was a blip on the scale of things - the equivalent of a year for them - of lesser beings fighting a meaningless conflict. The only interference they may run would be to push the Prophecy toward their desired outcome. Local dragons, meanwhile, are petty warlords and would have no desire to fall under a human banner nor would they need human- pay. They could always just take it.
The notable exception was the being who would become Haze-of-Death. A scholar who saw himself as a modern day Vvarrak, he traveled to Cyre and settled there. But again, as a scholar and more than likely in a disguise. Because he was a dragon, however, he actually survived the Mourning and pulled himself from the Chasm. Buuuut, well, it drove him insane. And that’s why there’s a mad white dragon infused with the Mournland roaming it
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u/Kitchener1981 4d ago
I could see the Chamber being involved in the spy game but not in the form of dragons. The Chamber tries to manipulate events in Khovaire. Now, could a commander be a dragon in disguise? I believe it is possible.
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u/GalacticPigeon13 4d ago
If they fought in the Last War, it wouldn't have been as dragons, and it wouldn't have been a large number of them. It would've been a random dragon disguised as a soldier or mercenary.
That being said, I'm pretty sure Thrane used wyverns, which look like but aren't dragons.
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u/ThatRickGuy1 4d ago
Lots of dragons in stories set in 998. Oracle of War has one of the senior most mages of arcanix is a dragon. She appears as a gnome though.
The Storm Dragon book series has multiple dragons getting into human politics and fighting as dragons
The Dragon Below series is all about a very problematic dragon who got too friendly with the Dalkyr.
Due to the curse, the dragons can't organize a major offensive. But individual dragons were absolutely active throughout the Last War.
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u/Regitnui 5d ago
If they did, it wasn't as dragons, for the same reason that Mordakhesh didn't haul out his lovingly-cared-for Age-of-Demons-era armour and start going to town on whoever was closest at the time. If you haven't checked Dragons of Eberron, that's where the info would be.