[Glorantha] Dragonslaying

        In my old RQ3 campaign, I ran a serious long term plot that involved the PCs re-enacting the Aroka slaying myth, and eventually taking on a dream dragon (the one in the Puzzle Canal). A lone PC
(taking the Orlanth part) had to fight the dragon, but with the
assistance of numerous (laboriously collected from allies in the four corners of the world. Well, the four corners of Prax) sylphs from the bag of winds he had equipped himself with as part of the quest. Both the dragon and the praxian Thunderbird spirit had been captured by the Seaslaver artifact (enhanced by Lunar magic) in the Puzzle Canal
(the one that contains Nuckleavee normally), so slaying the dragon
released the Thunderbird (in place of Heler) who brought rain to end the drought.

         The players spent a lot of time preparing for the initial confrontation by collecting winds and other magics from the four quarters/six directions, along the way tracing out a giant storm rune across Prax as they spiralled back in towards Pavis.

        The whole thing was conceived as Lunar magicians learning about the Orlanthi mythology of Daga as son of Yelm and using this myth (and their slight understanding of the Puzzle Canals EWF magic, with some unintended consequences) to engineer a drought that would weaken all the Praxian tribes, and the Orlanthi resistance recognising that the best hope for ending the drought lay in re-enacting the Orlanthi dragon-slaying myth. So they first set out to re-enact Orlanths ritual preparations. This conception of the conflict working separately on political, military and mythic levels worked very well in practice, and led to some great campaign moments such as the Wind Lord fighting the dragon alone while the rest of the
(really rather powerful) party fought off the Coders outside. And the
intertwining of Orlanthi, Solar/Lunar, and Praxian mythology was fun to write. They had interesting dealings with trolls, I got to have a lot of fun with a recurring Gagarthi villain

        So, anyway, I ran a dragon slaying scenario and it worked very well, even despite being run using RQ rules that make confrontations with dragons and such rather difficult to run. And the Orlanthi dragon slaying myths made for a very satisfying campaign framework, making dragon slaying seem, as it should be, possible but only as the end point of a concerted heroic effort.

        I'd probably run a true dragon fighting story in a very similar fashion, but on a much larger scale - seeking the magical aid of several whole tribes at least, collecting the necessary items would require taking on major Gagarthi and troll opponents, etc.

	Cheers
		David