Top 5 Devastating Moments

There are a lot of truly devastating moments in Dragonlance. They range from globe shattering events, to intimate moments between characters. Let’s take a look at some of the most devastating moments in Dragonlance and I will share my top five! Buy the Dragonlance Adventures sourcebook: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/162788/dragonlance-adventures-1e?affiliate_id=50797

Time Stamps:

0:00 Intro
0:45 Foreword
3:29 #5 The Cataclysm
5:54 #4 Lord Soth
7:54 #3 Lorac Caladon
9:46 #2 Flint Fireforge
11:39 #1 Sturm Brightblade
13:39 Outro

Transcript

Cold Open

With so many to choose from, how can I possibly rank my top 5?

Intro

Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to talk about my top 5 most devastating moments in Dragonlance. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate links. I am referencing the entirety of the Dragonlance Saga for this information. If I leave anything out or misspeak, please leave a comment below!

Discussion

With a fantasy setting like Dragonlance, steeped in war following a massive cataclysm that devastated the planet of Krynn, there is no loss of devastating moments. Not to mention the hundreds of novels and short stories depicting tear jerking moments of love, loss, friendship and family. It’s enough to leave you emotionally scarred, and it should if you open yourself up to it. But much like the bookseller Carl Conrad Coreander in The Neverending Story telling Bastian “Your books are safe.” We don’t have to suffer the scars of the events we read about, though in the moment they feel as real as anything in life. We become invested in these stories and more importantly these characters. For some it’s the tragedy of Huma and the silver dragon Heart. Others connect with the duality of Raistlin and Caramon. Or the love triangle of Tanis, Laurana and Kitiara. And let’s not forget the backdrop of humor with Tasslehoff and Flint.

With each of these types of character we see a little of ourselves in them. We connect with them on a deeply emotional level and when something happens to them, we feel affronted, as if it happened to a piece of ourselves. It’s easy for me to immerse myself into a story, especially a well crafted one like the Dragonlance Saga, with all its conflicting events and timetables. It’s still my favorite fantasy setting, and that may be because I feel it when I read its stories. I resonate with the world and events in a profound way, and I don’t think I am the only one. Dragonlance and its morals and perspectives have definitely helped shape my own, and it’s because of this that I would like to give you my top five most devastating moments.

It is understandable that everyone will have their own, and they may have some overlap or be completely different from the ones I am going to give. That’s okay! If Dragonlance has shown us anything it’s that different perspectives make a whole better. This saga had an incredible amount of contributors and characters who saw the world differently. And while most of the time, the world of Krynn was engaged in dramatic conflict, ours doesn’t have to be. We can draw lessons and examples from this fictional world to actually make ours better. And in the end isn’t that what life is truly about? Sharing our world and our dramatically different and at times diametrically opposed views with each other? It makes our lives richer, fuller and full of context and perspective that we would never have if we indulged in bigotry, hate or just shut down other’s opinions simply because they are different from our own. So please share your top five devastating Dragonlance moments in the comments below.

#5 – The Cataclysm

For me, my favorite era of play for its danger and difficulty is the Age of Despair, and nothing sets that off quite like the Cataclysm. This earned its place in my top five most devastating Dragonlance moments simply because it set the stage for the dystopian wasteland that we were first introduced to, and informed the motivations of all of the peoples of Krynn, setting them against each other in the absence of the gods. In fact the more you read about what caused the Cataclysm you begin to understand what this campaign setting is truly about, balance. Most worlds are about good overcoming evil, but Dragonlance is about maintaining balance between good, neutrality and evil. The Kingpriest of Istar was a holy ruler. He was the personification of good that did everything he could to eradicate evil. He even challenged the gods because he believed they were not strict enough. His hubris and the population’s willingness to go along with it was what caused the gods to throw a mountain into the nation of Istar, breaking the world apart, and sending the people of Krynn plummeting into a dark age unlike anything we could imagine.

The aftermath of the Cataclysm caused brothers to turn against brothers. The people of the world turned against their protectors with the Solamnic Knights. Disease spread across the land devastating entire regions. Famine afflicted the majority of the world, not to mention the climate and terrain changes. Whole oceans rose up where none existed before in the Blood Sea of Istar and the New Sea. And oceans receded from areas known for their vibrant coastal life, drying out the southern hemisphere in unimaginable ways with Tarsis and the Plains of Dust. Massive chunks of once mighty nations were ripped from the mainland with Northern and Southern Ergoth. There was no healing, replaced with regional and racial hatred. There was no safety, replaced with marauding bandit lords and scavengers. This is truly a devastating time for Krynn that would last for nearly four hundred years! Imagine all of the generations that only knew this fallout? Lived, and died never knowing the glory of Solamnia, Istar, Thorbardin, Ergoth or Silvanesti. Not to mention the bottom of our hierarchy of needs like consistent food and safety.

#4 – Lord Soth

A large part of what makes Dragonlance so real to me, is its rich and detailed history. Characters like Lord Soth who could have been paragons of virtue and heroes that saved the world, instead gave into their baser instincts in selfishness and possession. This mirrors the real world all too well, and perhaps that is why I see Lord Soth’s fall as my number four most devastating moment in Dragonlance. Let’s not pretend that Lord Soth was a holy and pious man in life, but he did feel sorrow and regret at times for his actions in having or killing his first wife, and his weakness in his affair then marriage to the elven maiden he rescued from ogres and had a son with. He was granted an opportunity by the god Paladine to purify his soul and save the world by confronting the Kingpriest of Istar and stopping the coming Cataclysm. A task that he willingly if not excitedly took up.

He knew he would not live through the ordeal, but his salvation and the world his wife and son were to be left with was more important in that moment. That is until that dark and conniving beast called jealousy reared its ugly head. He was confronted on the road to Istar by elven maidens who convinced him that his wife was being unfaithful back at home, and the thought that she could be anything but his alone, his possession, drove him to blind rage. He returned and arrived home as the mountain struck Istar, and he stood and watched in hatred as his truly innocent wife and child were burned alive in the wreckage of the Cataclysm. The very fires that burned them alive consumed Lord Soth, and Paladine cursed him to be a Death Knight for eternity to reflect the pure evil in his soul. Lord Soth would grow to accept his fate as a lesson for others if not justified in his own mind. And his constant reminder and torment in death is unbearable.

#3 – Lorac Caladon

My number three most devastating moment is a bit of a surprise for me. Because the more I think about it, the more devastating it becomes. That is the tragedy of Lorac, the Speaker of the Stars. Lorac was raised in a time of peace and prosperity. He was passionate about magic and took his Test of High Sorcery in the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar. There he was contacted by a Dragon Orb which begged him to remove it from Istar. Which of course he did. It was removed to Silvanesti where it was held in secret for hundreds of years after the Cataclysm struck. But even as the rest of the planet was destroyed and suffering, the elven kingdom of Silvanesti was largely untouched, and the peace he knew in youth was maintained. Until the Dragonarmies came knocking at his doorstep. They made a treaty that Silvanesty would stay out of the war and the Dragonarmy would leave it in peace. But the Dragonarmy reneged and burned much of the forest.

With little options left, Lorac decided to be the leader the moment demanded and sent his people to Southern Ergoth as he stayed and unleashed the ancient power of the Dragon Orb in a last ditch effort to save his people and his homeland. Unfortunately he was not strong enough and the Dragon orb called Cyan Bloodbane, an ancient Green Dragon from before the Third Dragon War and trapped Lorac in his own mind. Cyan used this opportunity to gain his revenge on the elves for the first two Dragonwars where the elves stole their forests and trapped and murdered countless dragons. Cyan used Lorac and the Dragon Orb to twist the forests and its inhabitants into a nightmare. The land was poisoned and it would be decades before it was truly cleansed. The long standing peace and prosperity ended in ruin and destruction for the land and its people.

#2 – Flint Fireforge

Flint Fireforge was the surrogate father for the Innfellows and when he went chasing after Berem Everman into Godshome and had a heart attack, it earned its place as my number two most devastating Dragonlance moment. Tanis came upon the scene to see Berem hovering over a dead Flint, his best friend and the only real father he ever knew, and lost his mind, murdering Berem on the spot. Fizban, Paladine’s avatar picked up Flint’s body and delivered him into the afterlife in the most devastatingly sad scene I have read. I was crying when I typed it. The companions lost a curmudgeonly old dwarf and the best friend, companion, protector, advisor and father any of them had . Flint incessantly complained about Tasslehoff, but beneath his genuine frustrations, he loved that Kender dearly and considered him one of his truest friends.

This is proven out in the epilogue of Dragons of Spring Dawning where Fizban is comforting Tas and Says: ”Beside the forge of Reorx is a tree of surpassing beauty, the likes of which no living being has ever seen. Beneath that tree sits a grumbling old dwarf, relaxing after many labors. A mug of cold ale stands beside him, and the fire of the forge is warm upon his bones. He spends all day lounging beneath the tree, carving and shaping the wood he loves. And every day someone who comes past that beautiful tree starts to sit down beside him.

“That place is saved,” the dwarf grumbles. “There’s a lamebrained doorknob of a kender off adventuring somewhere getting himself into no end of trouble. One day he’ll show up and admire my tree and say, “Flint, I’m tired. I think I’ll rest awhile here with you.”

#1 – Sturm Brightblade

I suspect this will come as no great surprise to anyone, but my number one most devastating Dragonlance moment was the Death of Sturm Brightblade. Sturm was raised in the shadow of the Knights of Solamnia, an organization that had fallen out of favor with the very population it protected, and was blamed for the Cataclysm. He lived his life in aspiration to the Knighthood and living up to the legacy of House Brightblade. He was a boy without a father, and lived as a true knight when it wasn’t fashionable, safe or logical to do so. He was a paragon of virtue, gallantry and honor. He lived in a time when none of those ideals meant anything, and it made him strong. When he went off to find his father he returned five years later with only his fathers armor and sword. He wanted more than anything to be a Knight and when he finally saw what they truly were through Derek Crownguard, he still fought for the greater purpose, the people of Krynn.

Sturm took the beatings to his name and honor and for it all was given grace by Gunther Uth Wistan. He refused to let the knighthood’s ideals fail just because its members did, and pushed for an evolution in thinking when the Measure which was supposed to guide the Knights ended up stifling them. When the hour was darkest and defeat was inevitable, he stood on the ramparts of the High Clerist’s Tower face to face with the Blue Dragon Highlord and her Blue Dragon, distracting them by himself because there was no one else who would or could, as Laurana and Tas went to try and use the Dragon Orb in the towers base. In the end he stood against the best of the Dragonarmies and fell. But his death allowed the tide of the battle to turn, and his legacy reformed the Knights of Solamnia and redeemed them in the eyes of the people of Ansalon. His sacrifice was felt for generations and that is why it is truly the most devastating moment in Dragonlance for me.

Outro

And that is all I have to say about the most devastating moments in Dragonlance. What is your most devastating moment? Do you disagree with my rankings? And finally, do we love Dragonlance for its devastation or for the time between those moments? Leave a comment below.

I would like to take a moment and remind you to subscribe to this YouTube channel, ring the bell to get notified about upcoming videos and click the like button. This all goes to help other Dragonlance fans learn about this channel and its content. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time, remember:

Threats are for the fearful. I merely state facts.