Drakontos, the First Terror

Description

Drakontos, the First Terror is the fourth boss encounter for Thresholds. As with all bosses, Drakontos, the First Terror can also be battled in a raid with 4 available levels: Normal, Hard, Legendary and Nightmare.

Loot[]

Name	Att	Def	AV	Ability	Obtained
Drakontos, The First Terror				Used to summon Drakontos, the First Terror (Raid)	Drakontos, the First Terror quest boss
Niraina's Ring	575	375	669	Subdue: 10% chance to deal 5,000 damage; Extra 500,000 damage against The Sight of Solus, Engine of the Ancients, Ascendant's Echo, and Drakontos, The First Terror	Nightmare Drakontos, the First Terror quest boss
Sentry Drone					Nightmare Drakontos, the First Terror quest boss
Sentry Shell				Craft Mimzy	Thresholds bosses (Nightmare)

Lore[]

Enter battle[]

Lore
You find the broken place in the world more by feel than by sight, but by the time you see it there's no mistaking it for what it is. There's no crack this time, but the feeling is unmistakably the same. Looking at it causes the same discordant judder sweeping through your nerves, assaulting you like a sickness when you open yourself up to investigate it with your more preternatural sense. It's strong here. Stronger even than in the forest. The rankling flaw looks like a spreading rot across the surfaces of a dozen of the pillars. The hissing, shifting edges are the same, but instead of a tear in the world it's a spreading speckling discoloration. Like splatters of fetid blood at a sacrifice. You hear the howling of the static chaos on the other side, each splatter on the pillars eating a tiny pinprick hole into the realm of madness and chaos and nothingness beyond the one that defines existence. You watch one of the pillars spark and its sigils waver, and the speckles of perforated existence drain the magic it pulses and spread their corruption, ever so slightly. And you realize that it's feeding. Whatever this sickness of the world is, it's sapping the power from the stones. And it's growing. You pull your sword, tearing your eyes away long enough to meet Davor's horrified expression. "What is that?" he whispers. "Nothing good. I'm going to cut the metal arcs connecting these corrupted pillars and isolate them from the rest of the network," you say, "and if that doesn't halt the decay I honestly don't know what to do. I need you to figure out how to use that ring to make the rest of these things restore the prison holding Drakontos to a functional state, and I need you to do it now." *** Liann shoves open the hatch with a grunt and gasps with pleasure as the sunlight dapples her face. She gulps in a deep breath of ocean air and pulls herself up and out of the dome to stand on its slick crystalline surface. The top of the dome rises several dozen feet above the ocean's heaving surface, and while the rise and fall of the water comes dangerously close to the hatch, a few waves sloshing over the edge likely won't do the chamber any harm. "FREEDOM!" Liann shouts with a wild cackle, then jumps back into the hatch. When she returns, it's with the end of the rope. She loops it around one of the hinges and ties it fast, then flies a few wild loops around the structure as Aelfthryth climbs out to join her in the open air. "I don't see any land," Aelfthryth notes when Liann swoops down to perch next to her. "Neither did I, but as long as we're above sea level I'm happy enough," Liann says. And then, the world tilts around them with a deep rumbling thud. More a pure concussive wave than a sound, which for a moment seems to tilt the surface they stand on at a crazy angle until Liann's brain makes sense of the situation and realizes the ocean is rising before her in an impossible swell. "Hold on!" she shouts to Aelfthryth, and scoops her up by her armpits, straining with a grunt as her wings buzz against the air and yank them both into the sky just as a massive wave swells and passes over the dome, obscuring it entirely for a long moment. Liann's muscles begin to burn with the exertion of holding the weight of an extra body suspended in the air, but the sensation is swept from her mind when the source of the wave breaks through the surface of the water. A great scaled head the size of an island lifts from the water, sweeping curved horns breaking the surface like foothills swelling across a rolling countryside. An eye surfaces, impossibly large, the narrow pupil focusing in the light as tall as a castle tower. The head keeps rising and rising as the dome clears the water once more, and Liann drops toward it. They land with a thud and gape at the monster rising from the waves before them. Its mouth rises above the waves, a canyon of scales and teeth that opens and expels a hundred waterfalls, perfectly spaced, as the seawater pours out from between teeth longer than trees grow tall. The thing with the shape of a dragon and the bulk of a mountain lifts its face to the sky, opens its mouth, and with the concussive force of an erupting volcano roars its triumph and its fury at the sky, the gods, and the memory of the hated foe that had ensnared it at the dawn of the world. "Oh no," Liann whispers, and the shadow of Drakontos falls once more across the earth.

Victory[]

Lore
The last impact sends you reeling to your knees, and you know the bindings have failed. You hear shouting from close by, and from afar, and the world is shaking and darkness and terror. You hear the guttering roar of water crashing into the room and splashing across the floor in a torrent, but only for a moment, and then a shadow blocks the light again and dims the entire dome. You wonder if the others have been washed into the sea. You can't imagine how they would have avoided the water that swept over the dome. You're just picking yourself up from the floor when you hear a furious explosion of noise, a sound louder and more full of hate than you dreamed possible. "Drakontos," Davor whispers, slumped against a pillar. His blue face has turned ashen grey with fear, and his eyes are wide and staring. "The enchantment. Restore the enchantment. Hurry," you blurt to him, "I'll be back." And then you're on your feet, sprinting and sliding over the wet ground to the hatch. You leap and grasp onto the soggy rope and haul yourself up, adrenaline drowning your weary muscles in frantic energy. You lift yourself into the open air, and see Aelfthryth staring into the distance, her mace held loosely in one hand and her shield slung over the other. Liann hovers uncertainly a few feet above her, and both are looking up at an enormous sheer cliff rising from the water. A massive yellow orb in the cliff rotates, and your brain realizes that the cliff has an eye. And then it accepts what it had been denying, and the rocky cliff resolves into tarnished scummy scales and scarred flesh. "Queen's beard," you breathe, and Aelfthryth turns and notices you for the first time. "How can we fight that?" she asks, and for the first time since you've met her, you recognize true fear on her face. You have no answer. "Something's happening!" Liann shouts, "look at the water, there's something in the water! You clamber onto the surface of the dome and drop your gaze to the water. She's right. In the water around Drakontos is a constellation of lights below the water, evenly spaced around him. And they're growing brighter. Suddenly, dazzling cables of light erupt from the water at each of the points and shoot into the air, arcing a half a mile into the sky and curving toward a central point. Drakontos sees them and roars with fury, struggling to rise from the sea and escape, but he's too slow. The cables meet above him and split, and split again, and you realize they've begun to form a massive net of primal energy, and it settles over the massive elder dragon. Where it touches his scaled skin it clings and glimmers like spider silk made of sunlight. Drakontos flings his head and bellows, but the more he struggles the tighter he is bound. All at once, the lines of light become taut, snapping tight and pulling downward. The First Terror attempts to open his jaws, but he is muzzled by the enchantment. He thrashes, but his eye is sliding shut, and the strength is gone from his bulk. The lines draw ever tighter, pulling insistently. As you watch, Drakontos is pulled down and sealed below the waves. The three of you stare in shocked silence at the ripples spreading across the ocean, and then at each other. Disbelief hangs in the air that something so terrible in its might and so impossible in its size could be contained. But you'd seen it with your own eyes. Somehow, Davor had done it. "Davor did it," you realize with a start, and race for the hatch. The pillars within the dome are alive with light as they had been in the memory the Ascendant shared with you, all but an isolated section cut off from the rest of the magical engine. The sunken city of the Ascendants was alive once more. When you find Davor, he's sprawled on the ground among the pillars, where the light is brightest. The ring pulses and glows in his hand. All around him is a spreading pool of blood, shot through with threads of light that trace across the puddle, up his arms, mingle with a jagged wounds, and pour into the ring. "I did it," he mumbles when he sees you, "I deciphered the binding enchantment." "Oh, Davor," Liann says, and kneels beside him to pluck the ring from his hand and place it on the ground. "It was what you said the Ascended told you," he continues, "it's why Niraina had to fall. It asked if we would sacrifice the same. All things...must pass in..." And he slips away. *** On your way back to the door to the Crypt, You stop in the relic room to lay Davor among the mementos of heroes and champions of a lost age, and cover him in a cairn of red crystal pulled from the ruins. You stand silent over him for a time, and when it's time to move on you make a silent oath not to forget the lesson he'd grasped. Champions aren't the strongest or the most skilled with the blade. Heroes aren't born, or forged. They choose. The worthy are the ones willing to step forward and pay the price.

Flee/Defeat[]

Lore
The First Terror is far beyond the scale of anything you've ever faced, and the ancient enchantments that bind him are forged in magics beyond your understanding. The fear is overwhelming. Can you really stop the Elder Dragon from rising to lay waste to the world?

HP & Max Damage[]

Normal - 9,500 hp
Hard - 10,000 hp
Legendary - 10,500 hp
Nightmare - 11,000 hp