Pre story:

The dragons thought they could trust the mortals after the mortals saved three of their kind, and in a months time, they made their lands accessable to them. Then the events of that fateful day occurred, and the mortals, in their greed, took something of significant value to the dragons, when the dragons were in their hour of need. This item is actually the reward for the upcoming event in the dragon lands, the players at the time will not be aware that the reward will actually be the key to the dragon quest. When the dragons found what the mortals had done, they cut the connection between the mortal realms and the dragonland permanently. (or, depending on what happened as a consequence of the event, the entrance to the dragonlands has been destroyed). Now, the dragons care not for the mortals, but now that they know the extent of the mortal's greed, they believe that they can turn it against the mortals in an effort to get their very important item back, so they make it so that the gate to the dragonlands can only be opened again by one who has that item. In order to to become a dragon, the player must retrieve the item, either by making one themself, retrieving it from the event originally, or killing a player that has it and taking it from them. There will also be a long quest that a player can go through to create this item, it will be an exact replica of the original event reward and will allow a player to initiate the dragon quest. There must be some incentive for the player not to tell other players that it is possible to create the event item, or for the players of the MUD to otherwise believe that they will be unable to become a dragon for a good time period without that specific item, as a big part of the quest will be that other players will attempt to kill that original player to get that egg from him.

Details:

Ironman has specific ideas that pertain to how we could scatter the materials required to re-create this event item so that the requirements to create it would change each time somebody tries to do it, which would make it impossible for somebody who has already done the quest to tell somebody else how to do it.

The event item is just the beginning of the quest, however. Once the gates to the dragon lands is open, an event will start that will inform the player and the entire MUD of the predicament that the dragons are in, and that there is a rogue player who has this sacred item which must be returned to the dragons. Throughout the quest, the player's actions will constantly be measured. There will be opportunities for players to perform character-defining actions left and right, with some examples below. Based on what the character of a person would have to be to carry out that action, their chance of becoming each different color will change. When they enter the dragon lands, they will have three 'alignment' variables, {red, black, white}, all of which will be set to 0. When they perform an action, these values will go up or down depending on the action. For example:

examples of alignment-affecting decisions:
Return a quest item that was not created by the player, implying that they have killed another player to get the item. (Black+, White-)
Show a love for battle by blindly killing the occupying force in the dragon lands. (White+, Red+, Black-)
Show a love for battle by blindly killing the dragon force in the dragon lands. (Black+, Red+, Black-)

The player will not be informed that their alignment is being calculated from what may seem like inconsequential actions to them, so although their final color is a result of every single mini quest they accomplished the entire time, the entire story will seem linear to them, even though there will be multiple possible endings, as well as multiple possible paths to get to those endings. Throughout the process of the quest, monsters will be told to do different things to the area. The area will be a destructable environment, where monsters can do things like <jam door> to make doors not open, <collapse ceiling> to block off an entire exit, that sort of things. The monsters will do these things in random time frames, rather than at the same time, so that the paths you take to get to event nodes will change each time. It's important to make sure that the player cannot fail the quest by waiting reasonable periods of time, but they can fail the quest by attempting to do things too quickly (before an event has triggered) or too late (after a good period of time, monsters could destroy the path to a quest-critical area, or could kill somebody you need to talk to). It's also important to note that, depending on their actions, these monsters can accidentally kill each other and players can kill the monsters, so a monster that was destined to do something that would be required for the quest or which would make the quest impossible to accomplish would not end up doing that.


At the end of the quest, the player's body will be destroyed as a result of their own actions. Their final action will count strongly towards which color dragon they will become, but it is still up to their quest alignments to decide which of the three races they will become -- whichever alignment has the highest value is what color dragon they will become. For example, if their alignment values are {red: 54, black:-23, white:19}, then they will become a red dragon. If there is a tie between the top variables, the color dragon they become will be picked randomly from one of the variables with the highest values. The culminating final action which destroys the player's body may be different based off of how the story progressed. Even if the storyline progressed towards one ending, a player could still end the story in a contrary final act. For example, a player may have followed the path of the white dragon throughout the entire event, doing only good deeds and helping out the dragons, which may lead them to the dragon's holy room, where the player is invited to replace the special item on the altar. The player may then choose to place the item back on the altar, which may turn them into a white dragon, or they could at the last minute kill all the people in the room and take the item for themself. As they go to leave the room with it however, the item may sense what the player has done and explode, destroying the player and embuing them with dragon magic, turning them into a dragon. This will give them a significant black dragon boost and white dragon reduction, and they may turn into a black dragon, but if this action was not enough to overcome their previous white dragon actions, they may still turn into a white dragon.

In order to become a blue dragon, the player must seek their own path to becoming a dragon, ignoring the primary quest structure almost entirely once they enter the dragon lands. Their culminating action may not call for their body to be destroyed in such a dramatic way, and may instead involve a slow deliberate process of stripping their powers (reduction in levels and with each stage), their class and subclass, and finally their race, as they wander around as a spirit, eventually making themself into a blue dragon. There is a very real danger to this process, and the player may have his soul destroyed in the process. The player will do this to himself during his jouney however, and all the books and knowledge that he reads will inform him of this. There is a very real reason why there are so little blue dragons. Unlike the other three dragons, who dragons of the dragonland will know as a mortal, this player will be greeted by the dragons as one of their own, a natural born dragon, as they can see the dragon-like wisdom and experience of the player's eyes. The dragons will not recognize this player as one of the mortals who originally betrayed thim, and his possession of the sacred item will cause them to believe that he slayed the one who previously held the item. If, at any point, the dragons see this player being kind to other players within the dragonlands, or the player alludes to his origins in say (such as "I've become a dragon!") The dragons will begin to question him, and if he continues, they will find out who he really is and he will be treated as the other three dragon types are, as a mortal who has betrayed dragon kind by stealing this knowledge.

There may be future dragon-specific quests where dragons must seek to earn the favor of the dragons of dragonland, or for black dragons where they must seek to destroy the dragon lands. Perhaps the dragons will be informed of the existance of this quest when somebody new tries the quest, so as not to add to the incentive of telling people how to accomplish the quest.

