Dragon-Slaying Short Sword
A +2 short sword of dragon slaying, found still buried in the skull of the Deep Skeleton Dragon at the bottom of the deep Menagoles Mines (Session 53). Someone ran up under the dragon's chin, drove the blade through the soft of the lower jaw and out the middle of its forehead, killed it — and left it there. Given the angle, the GM's read is that a bite would have taken that person's arm and half their torso in the same instant: an exchange of killing blows.
Identified by Fenric on a single touch, using his Spellbreaker instant Identify with the tiniest tip of one claw hooked round the grip (Sleight of Hand 16 with advantage and one of Lash's dice, against the sleeping dragon's Perception 6).
Properties
- +2 to hit and damage with any target — not only dragons.
- Double damage against dragons and other draconids.
- A normal-sized short sword despite its host, so Silithane or Fenric could wield it. Lash could eventually upgrade it toward legendary once she levels.
Session 53 — found, identified, unreachable
Fully embedded in the skull of an animate undead dragon. The GM: "you're not taking that out of it while this thing is, air quotes, alive… it'd be like pickpocketing somebody's liver." Every retrieval scheme the party floated — a 200-ft rope on the hilt, Mage Hand, Magra's grappling claw, Silithane charming it as a fellow dragon, driving the boring machine in — foundered on the fact that the handle is inside its mouth. The party left it and resolved to come back and fight for it.
Session 54 — claimed by Magra
- The dragon died (Session 54), and the skull settled half-submerged in the lair's water with the sword still through it.
- Silithane could not draw it. He planted his feet on the skull and heaved, and nothing happened at all. "Come forth, King Arthur — noodle arms."
- Magra solved it by inverting the problem. On an Athletics 16 against a lower DC, the GM reframed the task: "it's not about pulling the sword from the skull, it's about pulling the skull from the sword." She braced either side of the crossguard, tore the skull off, and tossed and caught the blade. It has good weighting.
- It is hers. "You can just keep this forever. Nothing he can do to stop you" — Silithane being, in the GM's words, too small and too noodle-armed to take it off her. Valued in play at roughly 4,000 gold.
- Its sibling relic — the +3 dragon-slaying arrow buried where the dragon's heart would have been — went to Jex on a coin-flip. Between them they are the only two things from the dragon's first killing that survived the centuries, which is how the party knew both were magic.
- Lash can still upgrade it toward legendary once she levels far enough.