Join me as I review Dragons: Worlds Afire edited by R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Keith Baker, and Scott McGough live! Share your thoughts on this anthology, released by Wizards of the Coast on July 1, 2008. You can buy a copy here: https://amzn.to/4hDGxBy 

Dragons are myths in only some worlds.

Five writers from four different settings are brought together in this beautiful trade paperback book. There is one story each from the foremost authors in the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Magic: The Gathering and Eberron worlds. Preceding each story is a gorgeous full-color plate illustration of a dragon, done in the distinctive styles of each setting by the premier artists of each line.

Welcome to another DragonLance Saga review episode. It is Misham, Darkember the 6th. My name is Adam and today I am going to give you my review of Dragons: Worlds Afire by R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Keith Baker, and Scott McGough. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members and Patreon patrons, and invite you to consider becoming a member or patron, links are in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate links. This is my perspective only, and if you have any thoughts or disagree with mine, I invite you to share them in YouTube chat.

This story is set in the Forgotten Realms. As I am mostly unfamiliar with it, I am unsure if it has any special connection with other stories. It certainly reads as if it’s the ‘bad guys’ side of a greater story.  It’s centered around the Witch-King of Vaasa, Zhengyi, a lich. He is battling for control of the Bloodstone Lands and is using the dragons in the area, promising them unlife as dracoliches when they die, if they assist him. He has already enlisted the white dragon Byphast, the red dragon Honoringhast, and countless other wyrms, though they don’t always seem happy about working with the lich. A black dragon named Urchula attacked a nearby town to his lair and drew the attention of Zhengyi. He approached the dragon and offered it the opportunity to join him, but was rejected. Then the battle against Gareth Dragonsbane began to turn against him. He sent Byphast against them but she couldn’t defeat them, and he eventually lured them to Urshula’s lair, where they went in and attacked the black dragon. They were doing it great harm when Zhengyi intervened, destroying their wizards, but that did not deter the Knights of th eOrder, they fought on and though they were all but wiped out, in Urshula’s last moments of life, he called out to the lich and accepted the offer, allowing his soul to be pulled into the dragon phylactory. After the war was won by the Knights of the Order, Byphast approached Zhengyi to report the sad state of affairs. The lich replied that he was patient and he will wait for the right time to resume his conquest. He places Urshula’s phylactery in a magical tome, knowing some adventurer would discover it and unleash the dracolich, and the war would continue on. It was an interesting story, and well written. I imagine if I knew more about this campaign setting it would have been even better with the connection to other stories.. 

I am really disappointed by this story. Well, perhaps not this story as much as this story in this collection of stories. It’s about Tasslehoff Burrfoot who comes across a town called Pigeon Falls. Curious as all kender are, he observes the town from outside, and decides to try to enter it, but is rejected due to being a kender, and that there are no kender allowed in pigeon falls. All Tas wants to do is see the falling pigeons the town is named after, so he tries to sneak in in a hay-filled wagon. The guard finds him and kicks him out again. Next Tas goes to the river and opens the grate to the pipes that funnel water out of the city. Once inside he rumages around but is discovered and is run out of town. Seemingly undeterred, he wanders around the outskirts of the walled city and discovers a sign that says Here Be Dragons. He continues on and finds a n old cave. It has lanterns all around the outside, so he takes one and enters. He discovers a blue dragon’s lair, but the blue dragon is suspended in the air like a statue, and the warriors round the floor are all dead and bones. Tas finds a dead wizard with a glowing staff and picks it up. This freed the blue dragon who has amnesia. He asks Tas if he knows who he is, and Tas says yes, you are George. We were thieves, and worked together. Tas says he is named Igor and with the confused dragon acting wounded, Tas says he will go get a poultice to help him. He goes back to the city and falls asleep in the inn, but wakes in the middle of the night with screams of Dragons. The Blue dragon has tried to sneak into the town to find Tas who never returned. Tas tells him he is sorry but falls asleep and the city starts attacking the dragon, hitting it in the head with a catapult. This knocks the memory back in the dragon who is named Thunderbolt. He rewards Tas with a necklace for saving him, and leaves the town, destroying the signs that say here be dragons. The town celebrates Tas as a hero for getting rid of the dragon and puts up a sign that says Kender welcome. Look, it was a silly and fun story, but when it is followed by a gritty fantasy story like the previous one, it feels childish and ridiculous. Not at all what I want people to connect with Dragonlance in an anthology of stories about other campaign settings.

I feel woefully unprepared to recount this story, even as I am reading it and writing this. I know nothing about Eberron, and reading this makes me feel like I know less than that. The story starts with a massive dragon attacking an airship. Tolar, an old man is rescued from the airship by Zaer, a female shifter. The dragon is killed in the explosion, and the two go about to discover where the dragon came from and why it attacked the ship. They determine that it was in the guise of a humanoid prior to changing into the dragon, already aboard the airship. They are hired by Lady Solia d’Lyrandar to discover the truth and they meet with her nephew Lord Dantian in his home. His seneschal Kestal Haladan meets them and brings them to Dantian, who clearly doesn’t want them there, and is hostile toward them. They remind him that it is his aunt who hired them and they discover that one passenger is not listed in all manifests, Adaila Lantain from Morgrave University. She must have been the dragon. THey continue their investigation, coming across fire creatures who want to stop them and defeating them, only to be defeated by some fire elemental blast. The investigation led on to Stormwind Keep, where Tolar insisted he go alone but Zaehr snuck in with him. They discovered dead bodies and Haladan revealed himself as the murderer, insisting that he would kill them both. He revealed himself to be a Demon and the source of conflict between houses Tharashk and d’Lyrandar. As Zaehr faced off against the Demon Haladan, Tolar turned into his true form, a dragon, and defeated the demon. After bringing him to Dantian and forcing a confession, Zaehr woke to realise she was knocked out by the dragon who had confessed that they are protecting the mortals and houses from the demons, and then he wiped her memory. But her memory returned in the end. It was an interesting steampunk-like fantasy detective story, which actually interested me in the setting. It’s also the largest of the novellas and makes me think the DL story was better to live up to these stories all the more.

This final story is interesting now that it’s over, but I was itching for it to end throughout reading it. It is based around a pixie named Vaan who is a slave to a dragon. He is Geased into service so he cannot overtly go against his master, but he has worked in secret assembling a team to kill the dragon for him, thus setting him free. It is revealed throughout the story that the dragon Zumaki of the Bottomless Pool had many of the pixies around him, but the pixies have all been killed except for Vaan. The team consists of Potionmaster Donner Rus, his apprentice, Tania Cayce, an anchorite named Kula, Captain Allav Hask, his soldiers and his stone golem Boom. They all head out to kill the dragon together and the potionmaster decides to choose life and puts everyone to sleep then brings his apprentice to the dragon’s entrance. He tells her to run in and grab scales or teeth or anything she can safely find and they will leave and become wealthy selling them. Tania enters only to be discovered and the dragon attacks, as she flees. He breaks the entrance apart and it kills Donner. She is forced by the pixie to return to the group who force her to take them to the dragon. After the battle the dragon has no skin, and it’s revealed he is a mechanical dragon. This changes their tactics but they still try to kill it. It is then revealed the mechanical dragon can heal itself, and thus needs to be slain all at once, meaning that which powers it and its body. After the fight is going south Captain Hask draws his special artifact, a sword called The Hand of Righteous Retribution. It is believed to only be drawn twice. When drawn it destroys the dragon. Tania is knocked unconscious and presented to the dying pixie how to kill it. She has to wield the sword and in one song kill the dragon and its bones. It was once the dragon Zumaki, but it battled with a living engine of destruction called fak mawa, which took it over. It was also testing on the pixies which is why only Vann survived. His death is weakening the Geas which is why he can share the information. Tania wakes, takes the sword and defeats the beast. She passes out from the blast and wakes as she and the other survivors are leaving the mountain. Then it is revealed that Vaan and the dragon survived, and Vaan will have to find more adventurers to destroy this dragon. It was a good story, but really long, and I know nothing about the world of Magic: The Gathering, so I wasn’t familiar with the classes, locations or races. It made the whole story awkward as I just wasn’t invested. But it was good.

If you are a Dragonlance completionist, you should read this anthology, just for the Weis and Hickman story, though it is underwhelming. If you are just a fantasy fan, I would say skip this one. There are only 4 stories and none of them are amazing enough to justify the aftermarket purchase price of over $70. If you want to read it digitally, it is free on the Internet Archive, so maybe that is the best way to go.

And that’s it for my review of Dragons: Worlds Afire by R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Keith Baker, and Scott McGough. What did you think of the anthology? Do you think 4 novellas are worth making a single anthology? And finally, after reading all of the Dragon based anthologies, do you feel their existence is justified? Feel free to email me at [email protected] or leave a comment below. 

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This channel is all about celebrating the wonderful world of the Dragonlance Saga, and I hope you will join me in the celebration. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time Slàinte mhath (slan-ge-var).