Writer's Block

And then have it "grow" into this if they can keep it alive long enough.

Interbreeding with humans.

I actually excluded cockatrices from my canon to include basilisks and avoid confusion in the party about what the differences are.

They were a bunch of assholes and didn't want to fug each other.

Or they had all their eggs in one basket, literally. And something so very bad happened to that basket.

Natural decay. Dragons started going into slumber and less and less of them managed to rouse from their sleep.
Dragons are not actually extinct, they're hibernating for some reason

The humblest of God's creatures
The Tyrannosaurus Rex

This would imply a dragon culture and hierarchy. I'm not sure if I want to go that route. But it's up there in ideas, right next to The only problem is that gods in my canon are also not very strong. My players have already killed a lesser God and given his Minor Godhood to an NPC that was a player in a previous campaign of ours, because that campaign was cut short by player attendance and the character's primary motive was to achieve Godhood. So I did it for him, even though he wasn't playing that character anymore.

They became so old and powerful they left the material plane.

I like it. I think I can work it into the campaign main story as well. Something about forced to keep sleeping because they could easily stop the impending monster invasion from another realm.

youtube.com/watch?v=4lmEqpgg3B4

Lesser races banded together and genocided them.

Two very powerful and ambitious individuals ascended to godhood and purposefully destroyed and disfigured the rest of their kind with their newfound power so that no more could ever rise to challenge them and usurp their place. They are now the sole deities of the world and have largely shrouded their origins, fooling the mortals into believing them to be a singular god and now take turns setting mortals upon the path of ruin and self-destruction disguised as religious zeal. Any leftover dragons have mostly deteriorated dramatically, appearing as mere shadows of the race they once were...scarred forever by the acts of the gods.

Laziness.

Wyverns out competed them for resources.

They discovered another world and went to live there instead because the current world sucks. Or, they created the first fantasy mega nuke and blew themselves up.

Pollution

Dragon king rose up by beating all other dragons into submission. Was actually a fair king
Used his vast power and treasure to form a single, colossal city where all dragons could live with their kobold servants.
Eventually, through means arcane and divine, he and his followers Ascended, becomming lesser gods of some world far away.
Before they left they weaved instructions for all their creations throughout the world so others may follow.
The kobold, hurt by their masters departure understood the runes not, too stricken by their grief and rage.

There you go. Massive city of dragons as a super dungeon. Dragonic markers as places of interest. A sad story for the normally villainous kobold.

Hyperborean paladins slaughtered them

Best intro. Really captures that 'Age of legends" feel

The eruption of the great volcanic chain released an ancient and virulent spore that made even the antiquated dragon species look like mere babes. The spore invaded the hardened carapace that the whole species shared, causing them to become heavy with fungal growths from wingtip to tail.

At first they grew heavy and their wings gave in, then they grew heavier still and any prolonged exertion became an unbearable challenge.

Then they stopped moving all together.

When all the dust had settled and the spore blew into nothingness by years of winds, there was nothing left of the Dragons of old.

Stealing this.

the elves hunted them to extinction

Extinct? No, my son. The dragons just went home. Every star in the sky is a dragon’s den, shining by the light of the flames in their gullet and the cosmic treasures they hoard. One dragon decided to stay close by to remind us of his brethren’s legacy, and guard us as his personal treasure. He drags his den across our horizon every day to show off his glorious mass of rubies and gold, and we live our lives under his light.

Chemicals in pesticides that humans started using weakened shells in eggs, making them prone to breakage and other issues.

the fukken jews took all their gold nigga

OP Here

I've decided that the monsters invading the realm used a strong magic to force the dragons into a deep hibernation, because dragon magic is extremely powerful against the nature of their dimension and its beings (who hope to invade and conquer), which leaves them nesting and sleeping. They are seen once in a great while when they get up to eat and then return to their slumber. Their journey for food is the dragon equivalent of a half-awake shamble to the fridge and they will not acknowledge anything that isn't an immediate threat to them. They will simply return to their slumber. This has led to many of the larger ones being found and slain in their sleep. My characters are going to stumble upon a Moon Dragon hunting off the Eastern Coast of the continent they are on (haven't fleshed out a kingdom yet, but I'm working on it) and it's going to Kingfisher style snatch a whole fucking whale and return to its den. Should they manage to track it, one of the dragon's hatchlings will just so happen to be unaffected by the Hibernation Magic and accompany them on their quest.

The Old Empire who manufactured these living war engines eventually collapsed and the knowledge was lost in the mists of the murky, pagan past.

>Extinct
>Actually just sleepy and a newborn

Fuck you OP you massive faggot.

The Superhero Party cornered the Masked Man who was spreading havoc in Veneza. Where is a good place for a confrontation between them?

On gondolas and barges on the canals?
Jumping, balancing and all that swashbuckling goodness?

that was the first half of the fight, the second one is when they get a chance to finnaly lay the beatdown on him.

A big rock

How about inside a gorgeous and vast palazzo then?

Maybe with fancy drapings and tapestries and priceless statues of ancient sculptors etc.?
Really ham it up on the surroundings.

A deity cursed them to only perform anal sex with each other, and they stopped producing hatchlings.

Thanks, I was undecided between the palazzo ducale or the cimiterio di san michele since that villain had been influenced by the eldritch bbeg

Honestly, “parasitic fungi”, “pollution”, “DDT”, and “severe social dysfunction” are all superior to this explanation.

Reduction in atmospheric oxygen content due to the race of men chopping down the old forests. However there are still pockets of the old woods that man cannot penetrate, even with their fire and their iron. Who knows what lurks in those woods...

Go for the biggest, most opulent one.

Make make it the Brian Blessed and Tim Curry of settings!

what are some good powers for the magical spear of the Sunchild- Sangnimbolge

Any wound inflicted by the spear will never heal

maybe also make it vorpal? the current artifacts it has to go against are- a magic bow or airstrikes, arm of edge-powers, sword which turns souls into lightning, sword which kills ghosts dead and gets strong in the moonlight and hammer of standing still

>Disease
A strange disease started by sapping their strength. The race died out from the bottom up: Eggs became infertile, then the yougnest dragons died, and up and up until only a few elders dragons survived. They sequestered themselves away with their hoards and passed from the world as long-forgotten legends.
>Civil War/Feuding
In-fighting left them weakened, and they were exterminated by their traditional enemies (probably Giants)
>Uprising
The dragons kept slaves to serve them, to build temples and stroke their egos. After millennia of this, a Prophet appeared among the slaves and led them in a massive rebellion against the dragons. Though initially unsuccessful, it planted the seeds for the downfall of the dragons. Maybe that’s where magic comes from.
>The Aboleths did it
The ancient society of Eldritch Horrors under the sea connived to have the greatest being on the planet killed so that they might reclaim their ancient empire. They managed to kill the dragons, but the plan didn’t progress any further. Or maybe it has, and no one has noticed yet.
>The Gods are Angry
The Dragons are a form of divine being. Their pride struck a chord with some of the gods, who saw it as a violation of the sumptuary mores. Thus, the Gods led an extermination of the lizards.

Really, it depends so much on the setting that I can’t give a good, creative, thematically appropriate answer.

I've never thought of spears as having vorpal ability, for me that's usually for slashing weapons. My original thought was to play off its name and have it leave burning wounds (Sun/Sanguine = Burning Blood) but that's a bit derivative of the Salamander weapon from Berserk

I just thought that wounds not healing is a tad, well, weak I guess

what about it causing the blood of the target to boil?

A series of volcanic eruptions caused an ice age, and dragons are only found in deserts and rainforests in the Southern hemisphere. You could have a cultural memory of this in the form of a legend of the god of fire, and then the god of ice driving out the dragons.

Yeah that's what I was going for with the second post, any cuts made by the spear cause the blood to boil, so a cut to the arm would cause the person to drop everything and try to take care of their burning wound/boiling blood in their arm where a stab to the stomach would cause organs to boil and would almost always be fatal. I wouldn't want to make it too OP, unless that's what you're going for

Why have dragons in first place, worst creatures.

Overuse of fleshcrafting magic. Dragons originated from a much less powerful reptilian race going completely transhumanism-crazy and augmenting themselves into the familiar, super-high-stat dragons we all know about. But they didn't stop there. Every dragon customized themselves based off their personal preferences and consequentially from a biological point of view, they're all effectively too different to create viable offspring with each other.

that sounds good

the magical artifact so far arent too strong (apart from the ones that are, but those are mcguffin tier)

Nothing. No single point of failure, no big cause, no terrible catastrophe. They simply fragmented into warring clans, then warring families, then warring individuals. Then mortal champions and banal accidents finished them off. Every other race has a different myth about how the dragons went extinct and where the survivors may be hiding but they are all wrong.
Simply no race lives forever, no matter how strong or intelligent their individuals are, especially when they lack the society and the cohesion of mortals.

I like un-twists.Give players something to ponder about, how not even dragons are beyond fucking things up permanently.

Bigger Dragons

Someone cursed their eggs so that ferocious dragon slaying monsters hatched instead of wyrmlings

That reminds me of how those dragonborn became a thing in Dragonlance

A great dragon hunt conducted by the giant kingdoms.

They're not actually extinct, they are hiding out and watching while letting everyone believe that they are.

Draconians.

Long ago dragons were ruled as a class 2 alien threat by a race of advanced aliens. If they continued to develop their magical might and power would be a threat to the Intergalatic Federation of Cooperating Peoples.

As a result, the aliens engineered a retrovirus that targeted only dragons and released it in large quantities. This disease was known as "the sickness" by dragons, and they were utterly terrified of it. Of course, the aliens were fairly benevolent, so it was a fairly good death that generally killed you quite peacefully in your sleep, but that doesn't make the rapidly advancing extinction of your species any less frightening.

If you want to have "survivors," that's because it recently became the policy of the IFCP to no longer cause mass extinctions, and they're trying to right their wrongs by reintroducing them. The hatchlings your players might find have a vague memory of shadowy figures handling them very gingerly right after they hatch, but with no knowledge of what actually happened.

Khaz the minotaur best boy. Also I was sad when Tasselhof and flint died.

As a paleobiology student, “reduction in atmospheric oxygen” made me laugh hard.

I fucking love this thread.

A really aggressive scale fungus

Elves. But not before dragons unleashed x which decimated elves who are too this day in decline.

I never read the Kaz-stories. So they were good?

Widespread disease with little medical care. The isolationist dragons eventually die out individually in their hordes, reluctant to receive help from others.

Some guy comes out of nowhere and slaughters them with their only weakness.

fpbp

The Dragons were created by all of the gods to be used as a perfect weapon against the Titans, being blessed with amazing strength, endurance and elemental power. Maybe they even used dead titans corpses in their creation.

The plan worked. Too well. Soon after the defeat of the Titans, the gods each started making their own races in the world only to find out the Dragons were using them as food and slaves. The Dragons ordered the mortal races to stop worshipping the gods and worship them instead.

Angered by this, the gods blessed mortal champions in their rebellion against the dragon overlords, many millenia ago. Most dragons that exist now are slumbering but some are planning their vengence in the shadows

Really angry (canada) Geese.

...

Eons ago dragons of the 5 noble bloodlines were feared across the world, tyrants and almost gods to those unfortunate to live in their lands. It was a dark time for humanity. Fey lords hunted humanity for sport, the goblin king's tricks afflicted all mortals, and the giant clans enslaved the remainder of humanity as pets and workers. But then the Great Ancestor sealed the enemies of Humanity inside the feywild, cutting off its connection to the world. And there they wait for the opportunity to return.

For dragons this is a particular humiliation. The feywild siphons off the energies of the mundane plane, taking with it all that is too bright, too colorful, too humorous and creative. And its effects are slowing twisting the children of the dragons into something else.

A dragon's hoard is his pride, his claim of strength and value. But the isolated dragon spawn, surrounded by the energies of the fey, have turned to odd choices for their lairs. Instead of plundering and murdering for gold the new generations of dragons instead fill their hoards with the interests of their own deranged minds. Kittens, toads, cook books, whittlingknives, smooth rocks from river beds, etc. Each unique to the young dragon and ultimately very embarrassing to its parents. Instead of stealing princesses and eating them as a way to instill fear into the local populace one young dragon has instead created a hoard of princesses and fair maidens. They dance in the hot springs in his cave complex and sing in the moonlight. So wonderful is this getaway that young maidens pure of heart sing in the night, calling the dragon to them for a relaxing getaway.

The manner in which their children have fallen enrages the older dragons, who neither understand nor wish to try. They scheme and plot to return to the mundane world free of the silly magics of the feywild where they can reap vengeance on mankind.....

>TL;DR The dragons are stuck in the feywild where the magic of that plane is slowly turning young dragons into weirdly obsessive neets. Their enraged parents will stop at nothing from returning to the mortal plane and killing all humans to wipe away this embarressment

Not OP, but figured this would be a good thread to ask in anyways.
What are some good options to convince a God to let his only son die? His son was born flesh, and all of his sisters were consumed by natural means ages ago. This God is sentimental and bitter, and refuses to let his heir go. He's now ancient and wants to die, but cannot convince his father to let him go peacefully. The last person that tried to just outright kill him with a sword was struck by a lightning bolt on the back swing.

Convince the god to have another son, or give the god a grandchild.

He has plenty of great-great-grandchildren (which frankly he doesn't care a whole lot about).
The God is just being difficult because of how violent the world turned out. He feels bad not doing enough for his daughters, so he refuses to let his son go. He also doesn't want to go and make more children because then he'd have to eternally protect them as well.

Is this a capital G big kahuna GOD or is it the god of a certain domain like water kind of god.

Absolutely patrician

He is A god. There's like half a dozen of them in a pantheon, none of which are specific to any themes. At least, I haven't decided it as such yet.

Look up the name "Sjachthurkearverthichaoposs" on Google. Go to the first non-Veeky Forums result.

I make no apology.

How is this relevant to anything your players will actually encounter in a meaningful gameplay sense?

The Dragon Hunter
At first it was out of necessity, he cut the beasts down to halt their tyranny over man and beast
But soon it became something more horrifying, we tried to stop him, we all did, we did not wish for dragons to be gone from this world, just not so mighty.
But now there are none left. He cut them all down, as if he were possessed, he devoured all dragons in this world with his murderous, insatiable hunger.
Now the dragons are gone, and the Dragon Hunter still lives, and he seeks a new quarry.

Dragons have/had been waging a secret war against [insert bigger bad] for millennia. As the strongest natural creatures, they took it as their duty to protect the world at all costs, though many expected (and took) payment.
However, the Dragons weren't winning all this time. Their numbers have dwindled over the years, and now they are virtually, if not actually extinct.

Whatever it was that the Dragons were fighting is cautious, but eager to finally claim their prize in a world.

they could have gone the way of Haast's eagle. They had a specific prey that sustained them that was also very easily exploited by early humans. Prey goes extinct, so do dragons eventually.

The bit about greed making them larger tipped me off but the quote is good.

A small ice age
Meteor
Humans (Advancements in magic, gunpowder, etc.)
Barriers between dimensions weakens, and so dragons as very magical beings were the first to burn up and to punch holes in dimensions dying in the process.

>haasts eagle
Scared.jpg

Acid