Raising Dragons

I’ve mentioned Merrick before and I’ve said that I would explain her story. Well, this is it!

During the first campaign I ever ran the party stumbled upon a cave.  Being the good adventurers that they were, they decided to scour the cave for anything neat and useful.  They spotted a second level of sorts and went up there to check it out.  Turns out that it was another entrance to the cave system as well as a dragon’s nest.  Sadly many of the eggs had been destroyed by a nomadic tribe within the area.  About that time the owner of the nest came home, a rather large Red Dragon.  The group panicked because mommy dearest thought they had destroyed her nest and, well, she wanted revenge.  Grendal’s character (who is actually a dragon himself, but cursed in the form of a female Drow Naga…type creature) sprang into action and managed to explain what had happened, thus saving the party!

As the party is debating what to do one of the characters, a female surface Drow, notices an intact egg and decides that she wants to take it along.  Grendal’s character agrees and the two take turns carrying it, though the Drow demands that she take most of the brunt.

After an unfortunate accident with the story’s bad guy (a lich) the group is shunted to the Plane of Fire but, since they’re PCs, all is well!  One of the group’s NPC members worships a demi-god that lives in the Plane of Fire.  The group searches for the deity and are granted sancturary until they can figure out what to do.  During this time the egg begins to hatch.  The Drow makes sure she is right there for the ‘birth’ and, in part, so the baby would imprint on her.  Eventually a baby Red Dragon is born and she does imprint on the Drow.  Grendal’s character comes up with the name Merrick (I changed the spelling by accident and it stuck, but it sounds the same), which means Song.

Over the course of the campaign Merrick identifies the Drow as her mother and Grendal’s character as, as she puts it, mommy-daddy.  It was odd coming up with that, but Merrick knew there had to be a mother and a father and, well, since the two argued like a married couple and Grendal’s character was more masculine it fit.  So not only did the party have to figure out how to get back to the Material Plane but they had to properly raise a baby Red Dragon.  She learned to speak rather well but couldn’t learn all the ‘dragony’ stuff just yet.

Merrick attempted to fly in one realm (inspired by the Onimusha games) and ended up crashing into a character now lovingly known as Birdie, a large bird character (Renny’s very first character and a bird race that I don’t remember).  Birdie wasn’t the character’s actual name but I couldn’t remember it for the life of me and it stuck.  Merrick took a liking to Birdie because he had wings and was conned into teacher her how to fly.  Eventually Merrick told Birdie he was part of her hoard since all dragons had one.  Birdie was worried but since she was still a youngin’ there was no harm in it.

After a point the group made it into the Spell Jammers universe (D&D in space!) and they got themselves a ship.  Merrick claimed she was captain and that they were all pirates.  Again, the group humored her going as far as refereeing to her as Captain Merrick.  She was eventually banned from using the word ‘booty’ because Birdie found it disturbing.

In the end the group made it back to the Material Plane, keeping the ship and those who joined them.  Merrick remained captain and Grendal’s character was granted his original form, which meant Merrick could begin her ‘training’ as a real dragon.

I had the PC characters make random appearances in other games, which made the group happy because it has been our longest game to date (roughly over a year).  It brings back happy memories.  Hell, I have a neat little red dragon figurine I painted that I refer to as Merrick.  She is my baby and always will be, and I highly doubt I could ever create another character like her.