The Orc Moot
Every 500 years the flora and fauna in the northern part of the realm develop distinctly special characteristics. Timberwolves give birth to frost wolf young, pine cones turn silver, and people… disappear. The Guild of Avalon sent adventurers to uncover the source of these mysteries. Did they find proof of dragons, a clue to the location of Avalon, or… something worse?
HISTORY AND THE GUILD
The dragons disappeared 10,000 years ago. All of them.
Well, not the mindless drakes, the dragonborn, or other derivatives, but the True Dragons, the chromatic ones—red, black, blues, white, green—and the metallic ones—platinum, gold, silver, bronze. As well as all the others…simply vanished. Some people think they never existed. That the Elves and Dwarves have always known the secrets of forging magic weapons or rings. That the wizards of the world learned their spells and alchemy through years of trial and error. That sorcerers and the dragonborn have always had the magic in their bloodlines.
You know better. You work for the Guild of Avalon. You’re a Dragon Hunter, and the guild has evidence that magic is disappearing from the world.
More accurately, you are a “proof of dragon hunter”. No one has actually ever found a dragon, but the guild has been documenting and collecting any dragon-related information for the last 300 years. Even the guild name is an obscure reference to the disappearance of the dragons: The guild discovered an ancient tome shortly after their founding, a journal of sorts written in draconic with platinum ink. Most of it was destroyed or impossible to translate, but one passage at the end, roughly translated from the draconic, said, “We go to Avalon. The birthplace of magic. The birthplace of dragons.”
There aren’t many Hunters left in the world. There are bigger, better paying guilds out there and most adventurers have abandoned the Hunt for greener pastures – the usual stuff: litch kings to kill, rats in basements, the occasional marauding orc horde. The guild covers your basic expenses when on an expedition, but it’s just barely enough for the necessities.
While the other guilds are on caravan protection detail, you’re exploring ancient ruins hunting down clues—dragon forged magic items, draconic writing on dungeon walls, ancient scrolls and books, even stories passed down in kobold tribes. Occasionally, you get to keep a magic item or some part of a hidden treasure horde, but typically everything goes back to the guild for research and to keep it running. Why do you still do it? That’s a story for you to tell.