The Dragon Pyramid

The pyramid was build millennia ago , the exact date is lost. It was built over the lair of a dragon to protect it , and benefit from it ‘ s knowledge . The dragon spent more and more time in a comatose slumber , until it finally crawled into it ‘ s lair for the last time . The caretakers waited for years , but finally sealed the lair and abandoned the pyramid .

The Dragon Pyramid was found many times over the millennia , used for several centuries , and each time abandoned for various reasons. Traces of the later users of the structure litter the complex . Most notably , the steps of the pyramid h ave been developed , and are fairly covered in ruins . The most notable feature of the pyramid, besides it ‘ s size , is that there are no joints to be found in the entire structure . It seems to be made of one huge block . Its material is also impossible to damage by any normal means.

Tier One

The large (180x250m) chamber was originally the living space of the dragon. Now it houses the Dragonblood refinery . This chamber soars up through the structure , ending in a 110m hole in the top . The huge hole in the floor leads into the dragons original lair .

The two middle- sized chambers were originally used for raising lifestock as food for the dragon and it ‘ s caretakers . They are more recently used as living quarters for the refineryworkers . The smaller chambers are warehouses , both originally and currently

Tier Two

This area was the living areas for the caretakers . In addition to the residential areas ,there are common areas , and what amounts to town hall. The entrance to Tier three is in the town hall area . For some reason (locked panel , forcefield , whatever , only force – wielders can get to tier 3.

Because of the inconvenience of dragging things up the ramps , the refinery has not made much use of the tier .

Tier Three

This is where the Jedi who organized the whole effort lived . In addition to his residence, there are all kinds of cool jedi stuff. You can fill in the details

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I recruited a friend to help me design an epic level fort for this campaign and saved the email conversation about it.

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What terrain is the stronghold in? how large do you want it to be?

Mountainous tundra – siberia like.

Set strategically so that the enemy can only approach from one direction something built partway into the end of a jagged, narrow canyon.

A narrow, winding canyon would make artillery and aerial attack very difficult. The walls need to be blaster proofed and armored in some way, but if they take enough beating they’ll start to crumble.

Around 30 to 40% exposure, but well camouflaged. Walls, and battlements.

What will keep the attackers from just bombarding the fort from 3 miles away?

Mostly terrain, shielding, and weather.

The stronghold … It has a Force-user related history before it was converted to a processing plant.

And will it be a military post, or a fortified residence, or what? Ancient monastery?

Military. It’s has to be big. It was converted from an ancient (fantasy) castle stronghold to a special processing plant and it holds a space dragon within it’s bowels captive.

Is the processing plant still in operation, and how large is the dragon?

Recently abandoned but operational. The dragon is Huge to Gragantuan

How many people occupy, or more important, defend the place?

It’s totally abandoned at this point, with automatic defenses and sensors offline. It held 100+ people for the processing (harvesting the dragon’s blood). I would say 400 to 500 different droids are running about doing the harvesting. Abandoned, with a dragon in the basement.

Is it loose in the basement?

No, dormant, they harvested a lot of the blood and left the harvesting process going in hopes that it ·would kill the dragon. It’s held in a huge cage system.

The PCs. will be defending from the fort. Resistance will has less. The PCs/Resistance will be expected to Drive off The attackers … but it’s doubtful.

The defenders will have less than so-so odds, but the stronghold gives the the advantage. However, with some interesting battle engineering, creative thinking with what they have at their disposal, a little luck- they will hold long enough for the big surprise at the end.

Meanwhile, The players will try to free the Dragon and fight off 3 chaos dragons and their riders using dragonslayer tech.

The units – something like that. Everything is divided out into units. I have worked up Infantry, cavalry (seeder bikes), Ranged (Light artillery), Ranged (Medium Artillery), Ranged (heavy Artillery), Armor (light), Armor (heavy), and Anti-units (like anti-tank units, anti-walker units, anti-air units), air speeders for strafe and bombing attacks.

Light artillery – grenade launchers and missile launchers

Medium artillery – Mortar

Heavy artillery would be cannons and perhaps some orbital help (that won’t last long)

Defenses Prep time where they can jury-rig some anti-seige machines, booby traps, etc. Then the assault starts.

The dormant automated defenses

• Most of that is old Republic tech
• mostly detection equipment
• Droids with stun devices
• The Stronghold might have AA equipment and Possible shielding that is down and probably sabotaged

Reviving and releasing the dragon is one of the major parts.

The essence of the “keeper” is their and to unlock his secrets, the player’s have his helmet. They can unlock the keeper’s secrets which bring up even older defensive systems he had placed and hidden.

Anti-siege defenses: Light repeater in a hidden op-up mount out in front. Plasma mines. These defenses probably save them from a bad situation. Like a line breaking from the assault.

Walled enclosure, several buildings, and the Processing equipment built into an existing chamber underground.

Make it one big stronghold building .. very star wars style … one huge fortress enclosure. The wall is part of the structure, courtyard.

Maybe some traces of people who have taken shelter there before.

I was thinking the fortress walls and some internal buildings old, with some new additions linking them all so maybe newer wings on an older structure. Maybe filling in the steps in a stepped pyramid.

How big you want it?

Pentagon size. I was picturing the pentagon squished in two opposing sides with sloping battlemented walls on the outsides.

Maybe something slight smaller than the Pentagon but something as impressive.

Design down to parts of the building being used for certain things, rather than each room. Abstract a lot of it. Big hallways. Doorways are scattered here and there, and someone in the past built add-ons to some of the doorways. Lots of empty space inside. Almost like a domed city.

That’s cool. I keep going back to the Pentagon set up, where from above, you see down into what beyond the first walls. The add-ons will be in much worse shape, and obviously different material/construction.

So we are talking about 4-500m across, and as far as the PCs can see, it is all one piece.

Then a wall about 100m out from the pyramid? fairly low aspect to the building. 500m wide, but only 100m tall. That still gives 5-8 steps.

Did that ancient Jedi build the thing? And was the dragon there when the building was built?

If so, maybe the fort was built over the dragon’s lair. Yes, the “Jedi” built it over the Dragon’s lair.

And was it originally just a monument protecting the dragon, or was it a living community?

Only a community of trained dragon keepers trained by him and the dragon … 100 or so at most so the dragon was active at the time of the construction. She was semi-dormant, telepathically communicating with the “Jedi”

How does it sound for the purpose of the fort to have been lost and forgotten for centuries. The people who added on to the fort never even knew the dragon was underneath.

They have to know … they are processing her blood of course, the dragon would have to be fully dormant for much of that time.

The Fortress was built to protect her, and hidden from most .. very few knew of it’s existence.

Then fairly recently, within the last century, someone stumbled upon the dragon, and started harvesting the still-dormant dragon.

The Recent colonist figured it out over a generation and figured a way to trap her and use her blood to turn part of their population immortal with in the last 30 to 40 years

The main structure was created an arbitrary long time ago, largely as a dragon stable. Then later peoples used it for a variety of things, adding on to the basic structure. To them it was just an abandoned building.

Maybe the dragon influenced them telepathicly, maybe not. The building could have been found and forgotten many times over the milennia or legendary. Lots of people say it doesn’t even exist. So, the original structure will have a few very large chambers to deal with the dragon, maybe even open to sky in case it wanted to leave, and then a relatively
sma 1 numbers of chambers for the caretakers’ housing.

The bulk of it is the fortifications. It looks like the pyramid will be mostly solid. A starship could probably ram it without serious damage.

How big is the dragon? wingspan, length, body width? Mass?

I don’t have that kind of size …. I just know buy d20 standards … he’s huge to Gargantuan. That’s roughly 20-30 m long, wingspan up to 40m.Roughly 2000 tons.The· center was originally open, but someone roofed it over afterwards.

And that had partially fallen in over time, and may or may not have been repaired when the refinery was built.