Dragons, unsurprisingly in a game called "Dungeons and Dragons", are a fairly important part of the game world - they guard hordes of gold, they can enslave or benevolently rule entire countries, and can even ascend/descend to godhood.

I am building my world on the premise that, some 800 years previous to the time people will play at, the world was purged of ancient dragons. This brought the age of the dragons to an end, and allowed the people of the world to rule themselves (and each other). It wasn't necessarily a good or bad event in history, but it has left a gap in the world which I can imagine others will have moved in to fill.

I have one plan for such a creature (an ancient giant crocodile who swore to protect his masters horde, but has now effectively become a god in his masters absence - his master having been an ancient black dragon, who was slain). I am wondering what other ideas anyone might have for this sort of thing?

I want to work it that dragon hordes have an ancient curse on them, which makes people crave more gold (not original but still effective). So I am considering perhaps a bandit king who has a dragon horde as one of the options - but I'm drawing some blanks as to what else I could use!

There are still young dragons and wyrmlings, but the older ones have all been slain and the young ones fled to the deep wilds. A few ancient dragons remain in secret as well, but for the most part they're gone.

Any ideas?

I am building my world on the premise that, some 800 years previous to the time people will play at, the world was purged of ancient dragons. This brought the age of the dragons to an end, and allowed the people of the world to rule themselves (and each other). It wasn't necessarily a good or bad event in history, but it has left a gap in the world which I can imagine others will have moved in to fill.

This may have not entirely been good to the dragons point of view.  You may want to play on the intellect of the dragons' survivors, and the even greater distrust they have with people / the world.  The idea of a curse on any who even own a piece of a dragon's hoard could be used liberally to create conflict and issues.

The idea of an ancient croc guarding over a hoard is definitely workable - A Dragon or Dragons might snort and look with disdain @ the croc for aspiring to heights it can not reach (it's not a dragon, after all), people could/would hold it in reverence and fear.  This could be a useful plot device.

Just a thought or two - your idea is interesting.

 

Well I've heard from a variety of sources that one of the Dragons' biggest rivals/enemies were Giants. And I know some Giants lean more towards the Evil alignment. So maybe the world was purged by Dragons because they were defeated at the hands of the Giants? Who have now taken over as the biggest baddest monster on the block and possibly war with one another for possession of more Dragon hoards/enslave Humanoids to dig in mines and find more wealth to add to their hoard?...Just suggestions. I'm by no means a professional 😁

I have a campaign I return to from time to time where this was the basic premise. Canonical D&D lore says in ancient history the Dragons and Giants fought a genocidal war for control of the war. Nobody won, both were beaten back so hard they now remain as dangers to others, but not the sort who can conquer the entire known world.

I started with "What if one side won?" Picked the giants, and then ran with an extended historic timeline to get to the present day for characters. The giants won, but are now lethargic as they face no challenges...

Thanks for the responses, I didn't know that there was a enimity with the giants, so I will definitely work that in there!

That enmity is Forgotten Realms only but it is still a useful concept for world building. You also have the, even earlier, FRs creator races Sarrukh, Batrachi, and Aeriee) that could still be around and be resurgent for some reason. Another option would be the early days after the the loss of dragons, again from the FRs (a ton of lore to build off of - take a look at: The grand history of the Realms) this is the period of the rise of the great elven and Dwarven realms with humans as minor distractions inside and around the edges of the elves and dwarves. In the FRs you have about a 12k year period before the elves tear their world apart with the crown wars so you have plenty of time. 

Killing the last dragon would let all-out war ensue. Giants, Aboleths, Liches, Archdevils, Demon Lords, and Titans would clash across the planes for the spot of biggest bad on the block. Some would probably reach godhood for a short time before being killed, banished, or otherwise foiled by their rivals. The rest of the world would be at their mercy.

Giant Beetles and their smaller monstrous kin. Like cicadas, they only wake and burrow toward the surface after centuries of time. And there are Ancients among them.

Treat them like waves of ants bursting up and consuming horses, people, houses, then villages onto sinkhole insect colony dungeons. Everything underground comes pouring up onto the surface world, fleeing in terror from the swarms. Like locusts, they eat EVERYthing. These are horrifying, leading up to perhaps a custom *intelligent* Tarrasque type BBEG in place of a Tiamat. Modified custom creatures abound.

I might add this possibility to my own world. A slow motion apocalyptic campaign pillar shaker that literally devours sources of power, both Evil and Good, forcing reassessments and strange bedfellows indeed.

To my mind the starting point has to be - What wiped out the ancient dragon’s 800 years ago? Answer that and you have a solid start on what the new top dog(s) is(/are). Again FR has some interesting lore. The elves actually shut down the dragon rule era by stealing enough magical skill from somewhere to create the world spanning dracorage Mythal causing the dragons to temporarily lose their intelligence periodically so they could be slain far more easily (think about the difference between trying to slay an ancient red dragon that is also a L20 sorceror in its lair or trying to slay the same dragon away from its lair when it’s a mindless raging beast incapable of spellcasting.)  it might be interesting to make the world such that something similar happens - someone has placed a Mythal somewhere that covers the continent/world such that when a dragon enters its 1000th year it is driven into a rage cursing its hoard and heading out for a rampage. Part of what has to be done periodically is put together a team of Dragonslayer to take out these rampaging dragons - the whole team could be building to be strong enough to do so  and that is the campaign. Perhaps only those that actually kill the dragon can settle the curse safely and take the hoard. 

Quote from Wi1dBi11 >>

To my mind the starting point has to be - What wiped out the ancient dragon’s 800 years ago? Answer that and you have a solid start on what the new top dog(s) is(/are). Again FR has some interesting lore. The elves actually shut down the dragon rule era by stealing enough magical skill from somewhere to create the world spanning dracorage Mythal causing the dragons to temporarily lose their intelligence periodically so they could be slain far more easily (think about the difference between trying to slay an ancient red dragon that is also a L20 sorceror in its lair or trying to slay the same dragon away from its lair when it’s a mindless raging beast incapable of spellcasting.)  it might be interesting to make the world such that something similar happens - someone has placed a Mythal somewhere that covers the continent/world such that when a dragon enters its 1000th year it is driven into a rage cursing its hoard and heading out for a rampage. Part of what has to be done periodically is put together a team of Dragonslayer to take out these rampaging dragons - the whole team could be building to be strong enough to do so  and that is the campaign. Perhaps only those that actually kill the dragon can settle the curse safely and take the hoard. 

So, in my world the ancient dragons were each hunted down and slain by an elven hero and his ever-growing army. The dragons had been ruling the world (more or less) for a long time until then, and this hero decided to hunt them down. I've not decided yet what powerful artefact or deity/patron they might have had backing them up for this yet, but that's the premise of it. There are just 3 or 4 ancient dragons left, and those only because they went into hiding. I like the idea of an artefact which reduces them to beasts, I will have to consider using that premise in mine!

Anyway, the hero killed the dragons and freed the people, so logically I suppose it would be kings, tyrants and emperors which filled the gap. There is likely to be a deal of encounters with this sort of thing, as there is an order of monks (which one of the players belongs to) who are trying to recover the treasure horde of the last Golden Dragon, who was the last dragon slain by the hero - so chances are the treasure will have made its way to those greedy souls who already own a dragon horde!

I am also in favor of Giants because of the Lore of the great struggle between dragons and giants.  Giants are quite interesting with their caste system.  They even trickle down into ogres.

You could work in a Cabal of elvish mages as a part of their defeat. The rest of the humanoids lust for some of the magic, power and political influence that they have seized from the dragons. The Cabal is made up of 13 powerful mages that worked together to overthrow the dragon's rule, but now they suspect that each is vying to usurp power for themselves or their faction. These mages are trying to bolster their position by gaining allies from others: monsters, devils demons, giants, etc.

The PCs might need to either find a more benevolent mage to assist them or choose a side to mitigate violence. Perhaps one of the mages sees the problems that are forming and realizes that the elimination of the Dragons was a mistake. They may be trying to bring them back, through time travel, advancing the current wyrmlings  to a more mature state or gating benevolent Dragons from another dimension etc.

Quote from WilsonJ >>

You could work in a Cabal of elvish mages as a part of their defeat. The rest of the humanoids lust for some of the magic, power and political influence that they have seized from the dragons. The Cabal is made up of 13 powerful mages that worked together to overthrow the dragon's rule, but now they suspect that each is vying to usurp power for themselves or their faction. These mages are trying to bolster their position by gaining allies from others: monsters, devils demons, giants, etc.

The PCs might need to either find a more benevolent mage to assist them or choose a side to mitigate violence. Perhaps one of the mages sees the problems that are forming and realizes that the elimination of the Dragons was a mistake. They may be trying to bring them back, through time travel, advancing the current wyrmlings  to a more mature state or gating benevolent Dragons from another dimension etc.

Thanks for the thoughts!

The current (loose) story is that the ancient greatwyrms were hunted down by a band of heroes led by an Elf called Olbanor the Traveller, some 1000 years ago. This means that there are now dragons approaching ancient level again, but the world moved on in their absence! Dragons are also much rarer and more reclusive now than they were before Olbanor.

I could certainly work some mages into his group, and will be working out some magical method which ensured his success!

Off-the-wall idea, but what about nature? Supposing that eliminating all the dragons caused some kind of imbalance. Nature being what it is, you would only start to see this hundreds of years later. What if your world started seeing great natural events, hurricanes, volcanoes etc and somehow they were controlled by or actually were sentient beasts  - a bit like elementals? 

Quote from Enslore >>

Off-the-wall idea, but what about nature? Supposing that eliminating all the dragons caused some kind of imbalance. Nature being what it is, you would only start to see this hundreds of years later. What if your world started seeing great natural events, hurricanes, volcanoes etc and somehow they were controlled by or actually were sentient beasts  - a bit like elementals? 

Ooh, I like that idea! I am already working hard to make sure that the world feels right, ecologically, so removing huge beasts would logically cause spikes in some populations - perhaps massive herds of giant wildebeest which would have fed the dragons are now mor common, that sort of thing. Also love the idea of weather being affected by them - I imagine that a palce populated by dragons would be warmer, so perhaps an ice age... depending of course on the type of dragon!

Also gives you scope for some kind of eco-warrior cult, or druid sub-class depending on what you want to do with it. I.e. someone somewhere has noticed that something is wrong or different. Are people listening to them? Are they considered to be conspiracy theorists? Is there someone somewhere who is convinced they need to bring back the balance and is doing some dodgy magic? Perhaps that assumption and tinkering has made a small problem even worse and is what has caused the weather phenomenon? 

Or perhaps natures response is a horde of dragon eggs scattered around as it tries to replace the missing dragons as soon as possible.