Knights of the Platinum Dragon: A D&D Story

Prologue: Prophecy's Call

The omen of death raced across the sky, its venomous green glow illuminating the night sky bright as day. Selune, Faerun's moon, was nowhere in sight, and the light of the stars waned in the presence of the glorious harbinger – a great emerald comet, arcing through the heavens to the earth below, cleaving the constellations of the Astral Sea asunder.

Upon the ground below, a tall and mighty figure strode tirelessly in its direction. In that moment, he heaved his great bulk over a rugged crag of rock, the pistons and servos in his arms and legs whirring and grinding while his steel fingers gripped the stone and held fast.

Technus was a great heaving mass of metal and flesh both – beneath a hood and flapping robes of teal cloth trimmed with bronze, his body was layers of advanced machinery with iron plates riveted over the top, forming an outer shell of segmented steel that shifted with every step he took. Over his mouth and nose was a grill-like mask, with no mist nor sounds of breathing hissing from within, despite the freezing air that he could not feel, nor the exertion of his climb. He had one eye that was still organic – his right eye, pale and watery grey – while the other was a rotating ocular lens that glowed red against the night.

But as he lifted his gaze to view the comet, far in the distance and far above him, both his eyes gleamed green in the light of the celestial meteor.

Analysing the comet's path, his unblinking stare tracing its path across the vast swathe of snow-capped mountains that surrounded him on all sides, he could see it would land somewhere north of here.

Specifically where, he did not yet know. But he would find out soon enough, no matter the cost.

His fellow Tech-Clerics, his brothers and sisters of the Order of the Turning Cog, had sent him in search of that comet's landing site... and he would not fail them. Nor would he fail Erathis, their goddess, the lady of law, civilization, innovation and invention.

Inclining his head, Technus closed his human eye, and as wind howled, he prayed in silence.

"Lady Erathis, grant me your guidance to where this comet shall fall..." he intoned in his head. "Grant me the unrelenting strength and willpower of steel, so that I might-"

A growling cut through his thoughts, and he lifted his gaze and twisted around to see a snow leopard, grey and white as the snowy rocks surrounding it, crouching and preparing to pounce. Its blue eyes were narrowed, its ears pulled back, its teeth gleaming in the night.

The skin of Technus's face – the only skin he had left – prickled in alarm. But the rest of his body was resolute, not succumbing to fear and the other weaknesses of flesh. As the predator watched him and snarled ferociously, the cleric moved his right hand slowly around to his hip, where his weapon of choice was held in place by magnets.

A battleaxe, its leather-wrapped haft four and a half feet long, the bronze head carved into the half-moon shape of a gear. The square-cut teeth were sharpened pristinely, any wear or imperfections hewn away by his own hand.

"Nothing sudden yet..." Technus intoned in his head. "She will come to me... and I shall be ready."

And so he waited, extending his reach across the front of his torso inch by inch, and when the proximity sensor in his hand pinged, he eased his fingers slowly into a fist. He imagined himself feeling the leather-bound handle against his palm, but without looking, he didn't know it was truly there...

... but he had faith it was. The snow leopard continued to growl and snarl, as if commanding him to leave, but Technus' feet did not budge.

Erathis would not let him fall to a beast of the untamed wilds. Especially when his mission was so important.

In a blur, the hunter pounced, launching itself at him as ten curved claws unsheathed from its front paws and darted straight for his throat. And in response, Technus twisted about and hurled his shoulder forward, right into the path of the big cat's attack. There was a scream of keratin against steel as sparks flew through the air, followed by a crunch of bone shattering and a yowl of agony as the snow leopard was driven back to the dirt.

Then, Technus' feet finally moved – one stabilised his place so he wouldn't fall, while the other lifted into the air and came down on the creature's head, its cranium splintering like dried wood and the snow turning crimson all around him. Pulpy chunks of pink and blue grey were splattered across the stone of the mountainside, and soon the only sound was the gurgling of blood.

Technus' eyes surveyed the corpse closely, scanning over it as his head slowly turned back and forth. He was aware of the leopard's species, through common knowledge, and some quick analysis told him of its age and sex.

It was an adult female, of breeding age. Not that this was relevant.

What was relevant was that, without even needing to draw his axe, he had proven the superiority of steel over flesh. That his order's words stood true as it always had.

When he had left the monastery of his youth, he had doubted that what had been taught to him would hold up in full. But soon he had been proven wrong, as he hoped he would be.

Steel did not doubt, not bend or break easily. It stood firm and unrelenting in its purpose until the end, as it should. And as he should.

That was the creed of Order of the Turning Cog. That flesh, and all the emotions that came with it, was weak and unable to carry out Erathis' will to see law and order maintained. And so they sought to replace such disgusting weakness. Turn skin to bronze, blood to oil, and meat into iron.

Technus looked down at his own metallic body, bending his elbows and feeling the pistons and hydraulics shift under his armour as he did so, the whirring and thudding causing pride to warm inside his heart as he did so.

His heart...

Technus' heart was still flesh, he had to admit. As was his brain and some of his face.

Errors that would be corrected when he returned from this mission.

Turning back to the night sky, Technus's bionic lenses surveyed his airborne quarry. It was lower now – noticeably lower. Soaring beneath stars it had once towered above. And then, the bead of viridescent energy at the head of the comet dipped below a distant chain of mountains that crested the horizon like a row of dragon's teeth.

It was going to land!

Technus' whole body surged with excitement, steel and flesh both electrifying with anticipation. Wherever it landed would be his destination – it would be where the high priests of the Order of the Turning Cog would expect him to go to and return from.

The books and scrolls of Erathis, all of them crumbling into dust from the eons that had passed since they were first written, told that whatever lay at the heart of the emerald comet would usher Faerun into a new age.

Technus had been chosen to find what Erathis had sent to her servants from the heavens, and he would not fail in his task.

Steel never failed, and he would not either. Failure was not an option – it was not even a concept to be entertained.

'I will find that comet...' Technus said to himself as he gazed across the mountains, his robes billowing in the wind. 'In the name of Erathis, I will bring her new age to this world... no matter what stands in my way.'

Then, stepping over the dead snow leopard and leaving her for carrion, he began to descend the mountainside, the whirring and clunking of his metallic body sounding once again and the big cat's blood dripping off his metal feet to form a trail of red in the snow.