In honour of the new dragon book coming out, and which I 100% plan to buy, here’s another pair of dragon NPCs for D&D 5e. As people may have gathered by now, I really love white dragons. I really, really love them. As heroes as well as villains. So. Here’s an unlikely pair, brought together by shared pain, and the unexpected mercy of a white dragon:
Hoarithandask & Yuidmivrak: Dragon NPCs (D&D)
In the lands in the shadow of the high, glacial peaks, there are legends of a pair of dragons known as Hoarithandask and Yuidmivrak. Mother Hoarfrost and the Grey Lady. Two dragons who should have been enemies, one white and one silver, save that fate, tragedy, and mercy unlooked-for intervened.
Once upon a time, the stories say, there was a beautiful town in the high valleys. No great city, no centre of learning or power, but a simple, well-loved and welcoming hamlet where any who travelled the mountains could find healing, rest and welcome. This town, though few knew it, was the beloved home and community of a silver dragon, Yuidmivrak, who had carefully nurtured and defended it over the course of several generations. She walked the town in several guises over the years, as visitors, travellers, and beloved aunties, and loved her little enclave with her whole heart. She had watched the growth of families, waved children of her town off as they ventured out to become adventurers, and mourned the passing of venerable grandfathers and grandmothers alongside her people. Though her lair was elsewhere, high in the glacial peaks, her heart lay in her little town, with the people who had become, in many ways, her children.
And so, when she returned one day from tending to her high lair, only to find her village massacred, razed and in flames, her children slaughtered or fled, her devastation was … unfathomable. Beyond her comprehension. She didn’t understand, at first, what had truly happened. She wandered the ruins for several days. Half in humanoid form, when she could remember to disguise herself, and half in dragon form, looming dazed and heartbroken over the ashen and smouldering houses. Rumour sprang up of her, then, of the grey, ghostly dragon seen haunting the razed valley. Stories began to spread of the ghost of a dragon’s vengeance.
But Yuidmivrak’s thoughts were not on vengeance. They couldn’t be. Not yet. Her devastation was too complete. Her chest felt hollowed. Crushed. Her heart carved from between her ribs. All she could feel was loss. Emptiness, hollowness. Grief. For a moment, touching blackened, crumbling wood with her claws, all she could picture was a vast eternity spreading out before her, all the lifespan of a dragon, empty and hollow, where all that she loved and might build over years and decades and centuries could vanish, taken in an instant, and only ashes remaining.
When she moved, finally, days or weeks later, it was not to hunt down those who had ravaged her home and her heart. It was, instead, towards the high peaks. Not her own home, the beautiful lair she had made for herself. She turned instead towards the far side of the mountain range. Towards the rumoured home of a much fiercer, much more unforgiving dragon.
Hoarithandask. Mother Hoarfrost. The white death of the high valleys.
She meant to die. It is … unequivocal. She meant for Hoarithandask to kill her. The white dragon was known to be territorial, ferocious, unforgiving in the extreme. An enemy as bitter as frost for which she named herself. Yuidmivrak, with the husk of her heart in her chest, flew blatantly into the other dragon’s territory. She made no attempt to hide herself. And, when Hoarithandask emerged, roaring fury and vengeance, no attempt to defend herself. Hoarithandask was her elder, but only by some few decades. Yuidmivrak could well have defeated her, if that was her aim. But it wasn’t. She fully intended to die at the white dragon’s claws, and follow her frailer children into death.
And Hoarithandask … realised this. Mid-battle, mid-blow. She realised that the silver dragon was not fighting her. She realised that the interloper had come, not to kill, but to die.
There were stories told of Hoarithandask too. Before ever Yuidmivrak went to her. There were stories of … a clutch of three eggs, grey-white and marbled, hidden in the ice. Of a young mother dragon, fiercely proud and fiercely protective, presiding over her three treasures as though they were all the diamonds in all the mines in all the world. She was Mother Hoarfrost, as fierce as winter storms in defense of her planned-for brood.
A brood that never emerged. A brood that never had the chance. A great scar marred Hoarithandask’s neck, savage and tearing, the legacy of the titanic fight she had offered up in defense of her eggs. It slashed straight across the underside of her neck, large and deep enough to have almost severed her throat. She almost died in their defense. Perhaps, for a long time, the fearsome dragon wished it had not been ‘almost’.
Perhaps she saw a similar, invisible wound on Yuidmivrak. Perhaps she scented the echo of her own ancient pain from the silver dragon. Perhaps she only knew a mother’s ravaged grieving and despair when she saw it. Whatever it was, she did not kill Yuidmivrak. She bowled her over. Struck her unconscious. And dragged the wounded, hollowed dragon back to her own lair.
And there, over the course of two decades, she slowly but surely nursed her back to health.
She fed her. Hunted for her. Listened to her stories of all she had lost. Ventured over the mountains to the now abandoned valley and ruins to bring back trinkets, mementos towards a salvaged mother’s hoard. Kept her safe, let her sleep through the worst of the despair. Then bullied her up, drove her out with claws and teeth to take the air again, to live and fly and fight. Protected her, from any who would come for her, as fiercely as she had protected her own children. And fought with her, as uncompromising as winter, until she regained her own strength and determination.
She offered to aid Yuidmivrak in her vengeance. All her claws and might for the silver dragon’s cause. Do they deserve to live, those who have slaughtered our children? To Hoarithandask, it was not a question. To Yuidmivrak, a little more of one, but perhaps not much so. As gentle a soul as she was, even silver dragons may own to a mother’s fury. There are some who consider that Hoarithandask’s corruption of her. Others point out that anyone who slaughters innocents under a silver dragon’s care, under any dragon’s care, may expect what is coming for them. The Grey Lady, the Ghost Dragon, visited her justice upon them in due course. With a white shadow, a life-stealing breath of winter, fast and ferocious at her side.
And now they travel together, the legends say. The length and breadth of their mountains. Two dragons own the high peaks, one white and one silver. They lair together, even still. Split time between Yuidmivrak’s high, elegant eyrie, and the carved comfort of Hoarithandask’s caves, where once they both regained themselves, painstakingly rebuilding the gutted hollows in their chests.
Yuidmivrak is still gentle. Travellers may call on her to guide them through treacherous passes, and there are villages and outposts in the high valleys who may see some blessings from her love and her guidance, though none as deeply and thoroughly as that long-lost village in that abandoned valley. Hoarithandask is still fierce, and proud, and territorial. None may pass unscathed through the highest, iciest valleys, for she will not tolerate trespass. Even less so now, when she has someone once more to protect. She is the wrath of winter, even still.
But perhaps they are a little different now as well. Perhaps Yuidmivrak is a little harder and quicker with her claws in defense of what she loves. Perhaps Hoarithandask is a little gentler, more likely to weigh the innocence and motives of an interloper. Perhaps.
Either way, they are together. Two broken hearts, joined together. Two dragons, bound by a shared grief, and a shared recovery, and the companionship born of unlikely mercy.
Yuidmivrak and Hoarithandask. The Grey Lady and Mother Hoarfrost.
