I only recently discovered the Iconic Podcast, a show dedicated to my favorite edition of D&D: 13th Age. Not only do they interview the big players in the 13th Age scene including the game’s co-creator Rob Heinsoo, but it’s refreshing to hear a gaming podcast really drill down into the mechanics of a particular game in addition to bantering. Thankfully I found the podcast in time to enter their first writing contest!

There are two figures in the 13th Age core book that are only hinted at: the evil Wizard King that ruled the world before the setting’s sprawling Dragon Empire did, and the White dragon who was killed by said Wizard King for reasons unknown. The Iconic Podcast uses the White as their mascot, so they asked writers to offer their perspective on who exactly the White was and what showdown occurred.

I wanted to share my entry for the contest, which I’m very happy with largely due to Hannah hitting my fiction writing gears with a hammer hard enough to shake some of the rust off. I wanted to produce something that wasn’t just a character piece on the White, but instead was something that a GM could read and be full of and locations for their own game. It must have worked, because I manged to sneak away with second place! You can see the other entries here at the Iconic Podcast’s site.

13th Age Contest Entry: The White and the Wizard King

The oldest records we have here in Horizon suggest that this world has always been full of change and strife, even before the Ages started. The Wizard King built roads and raised forts against the monstrous wilderness, all before the Dragon Empire’s first Seal. But what could have been a glorious beginning was doomed to be a painful misstep. The Wizard King, history tells, would not be content until he controlled everything.

The Wizard King established absolute power over his growing domain through an alliance of lawful and evil Icons. Our shelves are full of tales of arcane police exacting cruel punishments for crimes not yet committed, chimeras of humanoid and beast charring those that would not bend their knee, and even idle armies of sleepless undead. The Icons that resisted the rule of the Wizard King’s dark empire fought bravely but they founds themselves bested. With broken bodies and spirits they fled to the only lands not yet controlled by their enemy’s forces. It didn’t have a name then, but we have come to call it the Howling North.

The White desired nothing but distance. Glacially large and ponderous, the white dragons were happy to be lone philosophers charting the paths of the stars while hearing the ice floes sing. However, the pleas of the fleeing Icons broke the White’s quiet contemplation. The Great Gold Wyrm cautioned the White! He said this was a foe too strong for even a single great dragon to stand against; with the Wizard King’s alliances so too would his enemies need to stand together.

With time, the White would eventually see the wisdom in the Gold’s words. The resistance and the Icons who lead it would need years to recover after their battles against the King, but the White was strong, untested, and ready to lead. Clearly the direct assaults of the past would lead them nowhere against the Wizard King’s aberrant and undead armies. The courage of the Gold and the wisdom of the White had to find another solution.

The dragons’ forces left the Howling North and marched to the Wizard King’s empire, a fact the Gold and White allowed their enemy to discover; baiting him into action. The King crafted great arcane dragon-traps in the path of the army while abominations waited in tunnels to ambush soldiers. Some suppose that the Wizard King saw the White’s defeat as his last final challenge, others are convinced he merely wanted to see if he could turn the White into an undead servant. Either way, the threat of a new Iconic dragon was too much for the Wizard King to ignore.

The trap was sprung as the resistance approached. Men, elves, and dwarves fought valiantly but were dragged away screaming below the ground. The white dragons froze entire legions of unnatural creatures, summoning blizzards and hail, but even they were brought low by the Wizard King’s trickery. With flashes of light and the breaking of runes, living lashes of force leapt from the ground to ensnare them. One by one the dragons were dragged, roaring, to the earth.

Those few soldiers that remained above ground watched as the Wizard King himself approached the bound White. He brought his Focus to eye level with the grounded dragon. As he started an incantation, the White summoned all of her power. She bent the arcane bonds to their limits to make one final snap of her jaws, severing the Wizard King’s arm and swallowing it. The Focus was quickly ground to dust between the her momentous icicle-sharp teeth.

Enraged, the Wizard King brought complete and utter destruction upon the White. He summoned now forgotten syllables that struck beyond the White’s body and into her being. Her existence was erased, the land around them blasted by the force of reality being rewritten. The destruction bled from the White and into her children, cursed to be feeble until the end of Ages. Even the arm that was within the her belly was gone, forcing the Wizard King to fashion one of iron as the Lich King.

Unknown to the Wizard King, while he faced the White’s forces, other Icons of the resistance lead a strike against the his throne of Stormmaker, called “Necropolis” in modern times. The White’s risk, the sacrifice of her life and legacy, was her plan from the beginning.

And that’s where our tale ends, sadly! Though some crude mosaics found to the North of Forge tell of a primordial Orc Lord taking the head of the Wizard King, no record remains of the strike on Stormmaker. All we know for certain is that shortly after the death of the White, the first Draconic Seal of the Dragon Empire was created. We assume that the loss of the Focus was instrumental to the King’s downfall, but we don’t even know what it was. For that matter, who were the Icons that sided with the Wizard King and what malevolent enchantments and promises remain to worry us in this modern Age? It’s a troubling thought.

Oh my, I’m sorry, I have completely went off on a tangent. You asked a simple question about a dragon and I’m afraid you got more than you bargained for. Adventurers are a rare sight in this library and I allowed myself to get excited.

But why were you asking about ancient history again?

Game Hooks

The actions of the White and her climactic bait-and-switch could have immediate application to adventures in the 13th Age. If your campaign involves the Lich King, the complex relationship of unaging dragons, or the ancient histories of the Ages themselves, the White and the Wizard King could be central players.

Losing Focus

The most obvious question is how the Wizard King came to power in the first place. The presupposition that his power was tied to a Focus object allows your game to revolve both around it and those others that would also seek it. What the Focus is, of course, depends on you and your players. Don’t rule anything out, nothing says that the focus has to be an inanimate object.

A Deal with Dragons

The White worked with the Gold to make a plan that would allow a strike at Stormmaker. What other Icons were involved, and are there any other debts that need to be paid? Deals with dragons are magical things that transcend death and time. If your campaign’s primary villain is the Lich King, even an Icon as slippery as the Prince of Shadows could be made an ally if the party could clear some pre-Ages debt he inherited from a predecessor in the process.

The Land Before Time

Injecting a myth like this into your game is begging for your players to question it, plumb its secrets, and create One Unique Things based around it. Threats and player elements that reach back to the time before Ages gives your story an epic scope without changing much about the game’s mechanics. They also gives you carte blanche for creating whatever bad guys you want. The Wizard King had beholder cavalry that are still waiting to be released from the Underworld and now the Lich King’s agents have found them? Why not?

Locations

Evidence of the conflict between the White and the Wizard King lies hidden deep below layers of dirt and history. Those locations that still remain in the world are well hidden, potent, and a complete mystery to most.

The Dragon Graveyard of Moonwreck

If this myth exists in your game, Moonwreck is certainly the site of the battle that spelled the end of both the White and, ultimately, the Wizard King. While the body of the White was destroyed, the bodies of her powerful children remained trapped in the arcane bonds the Wizard King created. Dragged down over time, the skeletons of dragons are scattered all throughout the underworld beneath Moonwreck.

A different flavor of Underworld: The underworld is already a dangerous place where all bets are off. But such a concentration of dragon remains gives you the ability fill the caves beneath Moonwreck with all sorts of arcane surprises. All manner of beasts could be given the gift of draconic magic given enough exposure.

Rumors from the Dragon Empire:

• The Archmage believes that a scale of an ancient white dragon could be used to make a powerful scrying focus, if his tall tale telling subordinates are to be trusted. A curved scale filled with freezing water reflecting the stars could potentially answer any question. Any.
• Some say the now-covered tunnels under Moonwreck are filled with ancient combatants and monsters from a forgotten war. Under the right astral conditions the bodies rise and do battle once again. It would be wise to stay out of that part of the Underworld. Unless of course you wanted to ask an ancient general something.
• I heard gibbering before I could see them, but it was unmistakable: derro in the tunnels under Moonwreck. But they weren’t the normal, crazy, murderous kind. They were working together to mine chunks out of a skull the size of a tavern poking out of a cave wall! I had no idea what they were planning to do with those chunks of bone, but if it was worth derro working together I didn’t want to stick around to find out!

The Howling North

The White’s domain was far from the verdant, temperate lands that her more ambitious brethren lusted after. Frigid glacial planes, killing winds, and natural ice caves extend for miles beyond count. This is nothing like the frozen but populated slopes of the Dragon Empire’s mountains. Now that the White is gone the Howling North consumes the life of all living creatures that choose to stay within its bounds.

A dangerous trek: If you want to put a perilous journey between your players and anything ancient that they need to find, you can’t get much more dangerous than this. Journeys should require preparation and a few good background tests, lest the party show up to their intended destination with a quarter of their normal recoveries!

Rumors from the Dragon Empire:

• Ancient ruins from an unfathomable alien culture lie beyond the frozen mountains. Not even the White approached these monolithic structures.
• Everyone knows that sheets of colorful energy can be seen waving in the skies over the Howling North. But no one knows how they interact with ritual magic.
• For what little is written about the Howling North, a singular ice fortress jutting up from the middle of a glacial plane is a recurring tale. The North is all but lifeless since the Ages began as far as we know, what is the castle’s purpose?

Magic Items

Scales of the White’s Heart (any armor, robe, shirt, or tunic; champion/epic)

Bonus: +2 AC (champion); +3 AC (epic)
Effect: If you have been reduced to 0 hit points at least once during a battle, increase the bonus of this armor by +1 until the end of that battle. (Champion would become +3 AC, epic would become +4 AC.)
Daily: You can use this power as a free action after you’ve rolled a death saving throw that you’re not pleased with. If you do, act as if you had rolled a natural 20 on the death saving throw. (Allowing you to spend a recovery and take your turn normally.)
Quirk: Someone changing your mind is as easy as changing the course of a glacier. That is to say, not very easy at all.

Badass featured image is White Dragon by Sandara, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).