Velsharoon's Revenge Campaign Group: Arise, Servant

In the throes of death, Glaxenheim remembered what we all remember upon realizing our final moments…

Home.

For this young white dragon in particular, it was the Norgaard Mountains and its wintry, desolate peaks. While others of his kind laired not far from him, along with the treacherous frost giants and orc tribes, it was enough space for Glaxenheim to hunt… to soar through the frigid air… and to be free.

But the approach of a party of humanoids quickly reminded him that he was indeed, no longer free. His sinuous neck encircled by a cruel iron collar, he was bound to a stinking plot of dirt, a wasteland that stretched as far as he could see. Once the site of a futile war, death had reigned here ages ago and continued to do so... and now, starving and dehydrated and far removed from the comforting chill air of his homeland domain, his demise was also fast approaching.

Barely able to lift his head, let alone call forth his breath of deadly frost, Glaxenheim spied his captor, the wizard known as Randrok. Behind him were an assembly of figures… a gnome wizard, a human barbarian with purple hair, a bestial, human warrior of some sort and an elf…which he was surprised to see here, in this desolate pit.

But it was the other figure that made him strive to lift his head once more… walking alongside Randrok… a human female… enclosed in dark robes, her long ebon hair, gently fluttering in the foul breeze of this place. The dragon finally laid his head down, his strength depleted. At least he would die, and his suffering would soon be over.

That was until he heard a chanting of some sort… and fear gripped his heart. This was something unnatural… this was something cruel… he looked up once again to see the wizard Randrok, joined by the dark-robed woman… clearly also a magic user of some sort, as they both read from a musty tome.

Knowing real terror for the first time in his short life, the dragon bared his fangs and snarled… which ended up being nothing more than a plaintive wail of agony. Lifting his head one last final time, he breathed forth whatever wintry chill he could muster from deep within his gullet… but what used to be an incapacitating blizzard of death… was now only a sad, lonely assortment of floating ice crystals.

And then, the sorcerous clutch around his heart worsened… and Glaxenheim realized that the human female was no mere apprentice… she was also a master of the dark arts… for only this supremacy of magic could grip him thus… he hoped it would at least end soon, as he bleated out another cry of pain… unable to take heart in seeing that the elf and the purple-haired barbarian had now turned their backs to this ritual and his suffering, a silent sliver of protest.

But just as death crept over him, Glaxenheim realized one last terrible truth… that his time on this plane wasn’t yet ending. He was being hollowed out, instinct being replaced with obedience, awareness with silence… he was being turned into something truly ghastly… an eternal servant, an undead creature… and not the type these fanatics preached of, this was servitude of the foulest sort… of nothing more than decay and rot and mindlessness… and it was the human female driving this, as her will seeped into his, he understood this now.

And before his eyes, once bright with pride and daring, before they dulled into a milky glaze and his mind was lost forever to him, he shed a single, crystalline tear and he remembered once more…

Home.