Journal Entry: The Well of Dragons

Overview

Once little more than a volcanic caldera littered with bones of ages past, the Well of Dragons has transformed into a sprawling fortress-city — the beating heart of Tiamat’s rising empire. What was once a desolate graveyard for dragonkind now teems with life, industry, and oppression.

The city sprawls across the inner basin and its surrounding ridges, built from obsidian, basalt, and blackened steel. Great towers shaped like dragon fangs pierce the skyline, each devoted to one of Tiamat’s chromatic aspects. Five colossal bridges span the molten rifts that divide the caldera, converging upon the central temple — a spiraling monolith known as the Sanctum of the Five-Headed Queen.

City Structure and Factions

• The Upper City: Reserved for wyrms, high cultists, and their chosen lieutenants. Lavish but cruel, this area gleams with hoarded treasures, chained servants, and temples dripping with molten gold.
• The Shanty City: A vast sprawl of slave markets, forges, and barracks built into the cooled lava flows. Midnight banners of the Dragon Queen hang over cramped streets patrolled by dragonborn fanatics.
• The Undercity: Hollowed tunnels run beneath the magma veins, housing smugglers, dissidents, and agents of rival powers. Rumours speak of a hidden resistance forming in these depths, aided by outcasts of kobold, goblin, and human descent.
• The Outer Encampments: Army formations, war dragon stables, siege engines, and cultist supply lines surround the caldera, as commanders prepare for the next conquest — the march upon Waterdeep itself.

Culture and Atmosphere

The air hangs thick with heat and fear. Slaves hammer armour beneath dragonfire forges. Priests chant in a dozen tongues as dragons wheel overhead. Every sound — every heartbeat — resonates with restless zealotry. To dwell here is to believe in conquest or perish beneath its weight.

Each dawn, crimson banners unfurl across the terraces, and the bells of devotion ring through the city, marking the hour of supplication to Tiamat. Draconic sermons echo through the squares, promising power, gold, and vengeance to the faithful. Those who doubt are offered another promise — one of flame and ash.

Notable Figures

• High Wyrmlord Vaerazhul: Black dragonborn governor of the Shanty City, answerable only to the Red Hand Council. Cruel, calculating, and obsessed with rooting out spies.
• Archseer Ixthara: The blind blue dragon who oversees magical fortifications of the Sanctum. Her mind links to every rune in the city’s warding network.
• Remnant Skrix: A lowly smuggler turned informant, running the postern tunnels used by thieves and rebels. Unknown to most, he serves multiple masters — some not of draconic blood.
• The Fanatic Overseer, Vertharim: A red-scaled dragonborn who demands all entrants display “work papers,” ensuring only the devoted reach the lava forges below.

Current Condition

Rumours whisper that the dracolich once bound to this place still lingers beneath the lava tubes, its phylactery pulsing somewhere in the deep chambers. Some claim that the ritual to summon Tiamat anew continues in secret even after its supposed failure years ago.

The city stands poised on the edge of war — a dragon empire in the making. Should Tiamat’s armies solidify their rule here, the Well of Dragons will become not simply her birthplace, but her throne upon the mortal plane.