What are your Dragons/Who's in Charge

Some more notes towards a coherent setting document. 

The Wyrms of the Sky

Everyone knows what dragons are. They fly, they breath fire. They are clever and ruthless. Knights killed them in ages past, and now they appear in heraldry, signifying dignity, ferocity, and clear vision. There has not been a verifiable sighting of a dragon in any recorded history in the archives of the Baroness or her academies.

The Truth 

There are those in the church who tell a story of the first days. It is not the creation myth as most people know it, and it is certainly not canonical, so it is usually described as a fantasy or children's story.

The dragons were the earth's first inhabitants. They were there when God arrived, and they lived in the upper air, for below the whole world was mixed together, earth and water and fire and wind, and nothing could survive or endure there. But the dragons didn't mind - they lived above the churning chaos and spent their time in social games, intrigues, and the debate of abstractions.

Then God came, and the dragons were its first converts. When they prayed God spoke to them, promising them dominion over the earth if they could tame it. God gave the dragons the terrible weapons and armaments of heaven, and they flew down into the chaos below and battled with it. By continent-shattering deeds the dragons forced chaos down into the molten iron centre of the earth. It was these first soldiers of God, with their apocalyptic weapons, who divided the earth out into its proper orders. 

God was pleased, and went about its work making the world, but it also saw that beneath the surface chaos still survived. So God spoke with its faithful and asked that they take up its armaments again, and it gifted to them its terrible Word, which annihilates all. To aid the dragons in their crusade to the centre God made the first men and women, and armed them likewise in the regalia of heaven. Then the whole of the host disappeared beneath the earth, beyond sight of the lesser humans left behind to pray for them, beyond even the sight of God. As the centuries wore on it became common knowledge that the dragons and their human allies had slain the churning thing at the heart of the world, and that they had themselves been slain in the contest. Then God made its angels, and no one had any need to remember or call upon dragons again.

The Worms of the Earth 

The dragons are still down there. Not all of them, many of them were actually killed in the mighty combat with chaos, but some remain. They are horrible things now. Their bodies are mangled and awful. They push themselves through rotting stone and ore deposits that boil about them, and they scream in pain; not the pain of the flesh, but the pain of separation from the sky and from their benevolent God. Many are blind, many have sloughed away their wings and other limbs. Their eyes are hateful and insane. They are wrapped in the stench of boiling metal, of bone sickness, of the decay of the soul. All dragons are insane, but all are highly intelligent. They cannot die except by violence, and there remain none in the world who might slay them. 

Dragons are kaiju sized, but you can pick your kaiju. They burrow through the deep earth like worms. They tunnel using their atomic breath, which melts stone into perfectly round, molten, poisonous shafts that honeycomb the lower chaos. Some still wear the armour of heaven, some still clutch their divine spears. Their rotting bodies pump disease into the air around them like smokestacks. Nothing survives them. Angels were made in their image (they are the reason that angels fly and breath solar fire), and fear them above all things.

Dragons cannot usually be killed by adventurers. They all possess the Breath of Annihilation (what remains of the terrible Word), which annihilates anything caught in it without a save. The Breath cuts though stone at about ten metres per second, and a dragon can exhale for about twenty seconds. There will always be a turn of obvious setup before the dragon uses this attack (it will be equally obvious which area will be affected - a perfectly straight beam the width of this particular dragon's maw, usually between 15 and 30 feet). Any air in the space exposed to the Breath will be superheated (dealing 5d6 per turn to anyone caught in it until it cools), and any tunnel cut into the bedrock this way will be poisoned with d3 random diseases for ten thousand years.

The dragon's body pumps sickness into the air like a biological furnace. Any space that they inhabit or move through will be infected with d3 random diseases for ten thousand years. Their words (all of them speak the first language of God, and they will always be understood by those that hear them) are also diseased - you can be infected if you hear them. This works at any range, and through any medium (including any recording or transmission - the words of a dragon will always spread disease). 

If you see a dragon that is still wearing its Regalia of Heaven it will never allow you to live and tell of its shame. You cannot look upon the Regalia without going blind for 3d6 days.

If the dragon is carrying a Spear of Heaven (and it still has arms to use it), it may choose to attack with the spear instead of with its jaws or claws. They can also throw them if they need to. Anything killed by a Spear of Heaven is unmade such that it has never been. There is no soul left, and none will remember the one so destroyed. All of their works will be erased as though they never were. The husk of the body does remain in the wake of the unmaking, and is one of the most cursed and unholy relics conceivable. 

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Who's in Charge? 

The corner of the world where my games take place is called the Barony, and it is (naturally enough) ruled by the Baroness. Baron/Baroness is a titled bestowed onto one of the heads of the Baronial Capital; they vote on which of their members is elevated, and the office is held for life. The heads of the city are nobility, military, academy, mercantile, and guild leaders, and there are usually around 50 of them.

The current Baroness (by custom they give up their name after being raised to the office) came from the military, where she served as a mercenary captain and then as a general in the citizen militia. She was voted in because many of the heads of the city thought that she might be pliable. Her reputation then was as a stolid, well-meaning, and slightly dim politician.

She is none of these things, and most of the city heads have slowly come around to this fact, with varying degrees of unease. She brought her staff with her from her mercenary days, and is a shrewd administrator with a good sense of how to keep the criminal and civilian populations of the capital happy. She is best known publicly for centralising much of the police power in the city into a well trained force named the Baronial Agents. They wear red armour, are expensively armed and equipped, carry writs of her authority, and are centrally trained in 'modern' police techniques (proto sherlock holmes type stuff). Most people are warily impressed by the agents, and they represent a serious shift away from the old power of the landed, regional nobility and towards visible, muscular, centralised authority. The Baroness has a professional, veteran, motivated spy network in her employ. She is also beloved by the military, who think of her as one of their own. 

The church and the academies don't hate her (she's pretty stable), but they also don't love her (she's not easy to predict or control, although she is fairly easy to buy off in various ways). From an adventurer's perspective, she is reasonable, competent, and dangerous. If she wants bad things to happen to you you will be in big trouble, but it's pretty hard to get onto her shit list without doing things like selling state secrets. 

The Baroness is a tall, thickset, middle aged woman. She wears fashionable clothes (the traditional formal wear of the capital looks a bit like a fitted tuxedo with elaborate, dropping neckerchiefs and/or chain jewellery) and expensive makeup, as do all powerful people in the capital. Her finery is carefully tailored to recall her old position in the military, the uniform and honours. She is an excellent duelist and sword fighter, and still carries the warhammer and misericorde that her armoured knights use on the battlefield (largely ceremonial), alongside a more practical (and well-handled) rapier for any emergencies. She is accompanied by bodyguards from her old mercenary company, who are all champion fighters (or fighter/specialists) with top level equipment. 

Kinda like this, but with a tuxedo jacket. Art by Carla Antonia.

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BONUS

A new pass at a Fighter D template, included here just so I don't forget before I update the pdf. Thanks to aconspiracyofravens for the productive back and forth on this.

Corpse Piler

You may take the following actions at the cost of 1 fatigue. If your equipment slots are full you may instead take an action by rolling on the death and dismemberment table.

    - Reduce the damage that you take from one non-magical hit by 3d6, to a minimum of 1. 

    - Take three attacks instead of two on your turn. 

    - Immediately incapacitate one human enemy without templates, who you are engaged with in melee. You must be holding a weapon, and you decide if they are killed or not.