Very few individuals across the Realms can claim to wield a weapon so notorious as Dragonfall. Forged by the Dwarves of Nidavellir and pasted through generations of Norn, the battleaxe Dragonfall is the Hammerlands answer to the destructive, invasive dragons that have torn their home asunder.
A Weapon of One Purpose
Dragonfall is an impressively ornate yet functional weapon. Its handle is carved from the magical stone-like wood of the Hammerlands enormous hilt and the blade is forged of Mjolnir’s elusive metal fragments. The weapon is a study, 4ft example of master craftsmanship, and a true testament to what the races of the Hammerlands can achieve when they unite under a single cause.
Dragon’s Bane
The Haft seems scratched and scarred at first glance, yet upon closer inspection, this rich, brown wood is marked with hundreds of tiny magical runes, all designed to guide the semi-sentient properties of the wood. It has long been known by the Dwarves that the unique wood that makes up the Hammerlands towering handle holds a strange magical phenomenon that causes the wood to be able to detect and react to its wielder’s intentions. Due to this woods gift, the Dwarves have crafted many powerful magic items that respond to their wielder’s intent, as well as no small number of impressive constructs. When crafting Dragonfall, the Dwarves manipulated the magic within the wood to give the weapon a burning hatred of Dragon-kind equal to that of its intended wielder.
The blade of the weapon is a brilliant silver metal, shaped into a dangerous edge of points designed to pierce a Dragons tough scales. The Dwarves used an extremely rare resource, Mjolnir Shards, to forge this blade. Unbreakable and extremely susceptible to enchantment, it was crucial for stacking multiple magical capabilities into the weapons arsenal.
Between the sentient rage of the wood and the overloaded enchanted blade, Dragonfall is a weapon designed with one purpose, to end the race of Dragons.
5 Generations of Hatred
Dragonfall was crafted 243 years ago for the Ursaborn Jarl of the time, Halfdan Ursaborn. After taking many losses at the hand of Nidhogg, Halfdan fell before the immortal Dwarven king Nordri and begged for the power to defend his people. Unbeknownst to his surviving family, a deal was struck that the Ursaborn bloodline had five generations in which to kill Nidhogg or Nordri would claim the souls of those 5 generations. In exchange, the Dwarves crafted one of the most powerful weapons they could muster and bestowed it on the Ursaborn family. Since that day, with the passing of each Urasborn family member, Nordri has placed their soul into a series of well-guarded jars and with Bjorn and Bo making up the 4th and 5th generation, time is running out for the clan and they don’t even know it.
Dragonfall
Legendary Magical Battleaxe
Requires Attunement
You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon.
Eyes On Me:
As a bonus action you channel magical light through Dragonfall. For 1 minute, creatures with Blindsight or Tremorsense see you clearly, however, the creature has a -4 penalty to perceiving creatures further than 15ft of you. This increases to -8 for creatures further than 30ft of you. Once the effect ends, you go blind until the end of your next round. Once you’ve used this feature, you cannot do so again until the next dawn.
Raid Triggers:
Raid Triggers are unique magical effects that are triggered under very specific circumstances. They remain dormant until the trigger is achieved during combat and then instantly apply as required. Once combat ends, the activated Raid Triggers return to a dormant state.
| Raid Trigger | Trigger | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Fall | You must land a melee attack from above on a hostile creature that is currently flying. | The creature’s fly speed is reduced to 0. In addition, you gain a 30ft fly speed. |
| Choke | A hostile creature with a breath weapon successfully recharges it at the first available chance. | The creature that triggered this ability must roll 2 dice and take the lower when attempting to recharge. |
| Distract | A hostile creature with either Blindsight or Tremorsense finishes 3 turns without attacking you. | The affected creature loses its Blindsight and Tremorsense. |
| Trivialise | You take minimum damage from a hostile creature’s attack or deal maximum damage to a hostile creature with the Frightful Presence trait. | The creature loses its Frightful Presence trait and any creatures that are scared of it, are no longer frightened. |
| Rend | Critically hit a creature that has previously reduced a friendly creature to 0 hp. | The creature’s AC is reduced by 2. |
Cursed: This weapon has been imbued with an insatiable hatred of Dragons and all related creatures. While attuned to this weapon you gain the following Personality Trait:
“I hate Dragon-kind completely and will always pursue their destruction. I will never flee from a Dragon and will never negotiate with them.”
Design Thoughts & Parasitic Design
This weapon went through quite a few iterations. Even now, after finishing the design I kinda hate it. The design brief I gave myself was “A magical battleaxe that can seal the powers of a dragon” and while I feel like I’ve achieved that, what we’ve ended up with feels like parasitic design in hindsight. Having to create an entirely new system just to achieve the desired results feels like a failure to me. Strong design will allow for natural interactions between systems but the Raid Trigger mechanic instead relies on other systems to function, without giving anything back to those systems. A better design would allow for mechanics to react to, and directly influence, the Raid Triggers. Whether that’s by changing the trigger, allowing reactions to Raid Triggers or even introducing a way to re-seal an active Raid Trigger. To do this though, the mechanic would need much more fleshing out, and would have to be introduced to many items and ingrained in creature stat blocks, which is more effort than I’ll willing to put in at this time.
Between me and Twitch chat, we’ve spent more than enough time on this single weapon and have decided to embrace the fact that you can’t chase perfectionism forever and eventually just have to settle with what you have. Having said that… I’m pretty sure I’ll return to this at some point to revise the design so look out for that!
Final Thoughts
This is the first post I’ve felt a pang of disappointment in releasing but I want to be honest with you guys and show that everyone can have failures. I don’t want to hide my challenges and hide behind a wall of confidence. So here you go. Hopefully, the lore is still worth the time reading and maybe you can learn from this failure. You can help with these blog designs on my Twitch channel or by joining my community discord!
Have a great day and may your next session be filled with glory!
Veneon Reforged 
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