The Spirit Dragon Whistles

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Artifact Requires Attunement Weapon
Weight Less than 1 lb (each)
Cost Not for sale; the Conclave's classification of the Whistles and their location is among the most restricted information in the Orders. The value of even one Whistle to a party seeking to compel or ally with a Great Spirit Dragon is incalculable. The information about where they are kept is itself treated as restricted.

Magical Properties

Unique Artifacts. A set of whistles produced by the unified Orders of Wizardry during the Spirit Dragon Wars, each tuned to one of the five Great Spirit Dragons. How many survive, and where they are, is restricted to the highest levels of the Conclave. See full description for properties.

Each Whistle is a finger-length instrument of worked bone and silver filigree, unremarkable in appearance and surprisingly light. They do not look like weapons. They do not look like anything that should have turned the tide of a war against beings of near-divine power. This is, scholars who have studied the period note, consistent with how the Orders of Wizardry have always preferred their most dangerous work to appear.

The Spirit Dragon Whistles were produced during the Spirit Dragon Wars -- the catastrophic late period of the Empire of Venn, when the five Great Spirit Dragons, their original purpose of opposing giants long fulfilled, turned their ideological certainty against the mortal peoples they had been gifted to protect. The Wars were not a conflict of equal parties. The Spirit Dragons were Solgarde's own creations, forged by the god Vorathem, living weapons of near-divine scale. Conventional military force had proven insufficient. The Orders needed something else.

What they produced was the Whistles. The precise arcane methodology behind them is not recorded in any document outside the Conclave's restricted archive, and possibly not recorded there either -- the original makers died during the Wars, and what institutional memory survived passed through the chaos of Venn's final years into a form that later scholars have been unable to fully reconstruct. What is documented is what the Whistles did: they gave the armies of Venn a means to summon and compel the Spirit Dragons, to force them into direct confrontation on terms the mortals could manage rather than on terms the Dragons chose. This was the difference.

The production of the Whistles was also the event that turned the Orders from a loose coalition of aligned practitioners into the unified Conclave. The cooperation required to make them -- White, Grey, and Black Robes working in concert toward a single purpose, setting aside the doctrinal hostilities that had defined their relationships for centuries -- was unprecedented. It was also, by all accounts, extremely uncomfortable for everyone involved. The Conclave that emerged from it was built partly on the memory of what unified action had accomplished and partly on an institutional determination to never again need to cooperate under that kind of duress.

The Five Whistles

There are five Great Spirit Dragons: the Gold, the Silver, the Copper, the Brass, and the Bronze. Each Whistle was tuned to one of them specifically. The tuning process -- whatever it involved -- made each Whistle useless against any Dragon other than its intended target, with one exception noted below.

The Names recorded for the Whistles in accessible Conclave documents (non-restricted) are functional descriptors only: the Gold Whistle, the Silver Whistle, and so on. Whether the Whistles themselves have names, or whether the Spirit Dragons have names beyond their metal designations, is information the Conclave does not share with non-members.

Current Status

Unknown. The Conclave's records on the Whistles are restricted to the highest levels of the organization, accessible only to the three Masters and the Head of the Conclave. What the restricted records actually say -- whether the Whistles were destroyed after the Wars, secured in the Towers, distributed, lost, or something else -- is not known outside that group.

What is known, because it cannot be concealed: the five Great Spirit Dragons exist. They are not dead. The Spirit Dragon Wars ended with the Dragons subdued, diminished, and withdrawing from mortal affairs, not with their destruction. Where they are now is as restricted a topic as the Whistles themselves, and the two restrictions are almost certainly connected.

In Year 2368 FW, Charoth the Corruptor is free. The Conclave has not publicly acknowledged any connection between Charoth's release and the status of the Whistles. The Conclave does not publicly acknowledge most things.

Properties

Attunement

Each Whistle requires attunement. Attuning to a Whistle is not a simple rest process -- the instrument resists attuning to anyone it assesses as unworthy of the responsibility. The GM determines the nature of this assessment; suggested approach is a DC 20 Charisma saving throw with advantage for characters who have demonstrated meaningful opposition to draconic tyranny, and disadvantage for characters whose motives are primarily personal gain.

Sounding the Whistle (Action)

The wielder sounds the Whistle. The sound is not loud -- it carries no further than normal speech in the physical world. It does not need to. The target Spirit Dragon hears it at any distance, on any plane, regardless of any magical silencing or planar barrier short of a divine ward.

The target Dragon must succeed on a DC 25 Wisdom saving throw or be subject to a Compelled Duel effect with no range restriction, compelled to move toward the wielder by the most direct route available and to prioritize the wielder as a target. This compulsion lasts for 1 hour or until the wielder is incapacitated, whichever comes first. A Dragon that succeeds on the saving throw cannot be targeted by that Whistle again for 24 hours.

The Whistle can be sounded whether or not the wielder knows where the target Dragon currently is. The Dragon knows where the Whistle is. This asymmetry is intentional and was, by contemporary accounts from the Wars, the source of considerable tactical anxiety for those holding the Whistles.

Secondary Effect (Non-Target Dragons)

Against any dragon of CR 10 or lower that is not the Whistle's specific target, sounding the Whistle functions as a Suggestion effect (DC 20 Wisdom saving throw). The suggestion must be a command relating to movement, withdrawal, or cessation of hostilities -- the Whistle cannot compel a non-target dragon to attack or perform complex tasks.

Resonance (Passive)

A Whistle in the presence of its target Spirit Dragon -- within 300 feet -- vibrates faintly and continuously, audible only to the attuned wielder. This property functions through walls, magical silence, and invisibility. It does not identify the Dragon's precise location, only its approximate presence.

Limitations

  • Each Whistle functions only against its specific target Spirit Dragon at full power. The secondary effect applies to other dragons of CR 10 or lower.
  • Sounding a Whistle is not subtle. The target Dragon knows immediately that it has been sounded and by whom.
  • The Whistles were made to compel the Spirit Dragons, not to harm them. A Whistle grants no bonus to attack rolls, damage, or saving throws against the target Dragon.
  • A Spirit Dragon that has been successfully compelled by its Whistle retains full memory of the experience and the wielder afterward. The Wars produced at least two documented cases of a Spirit Dragon that, once the compulsion lapsed, immediately resumed hostilities against the Whistle's holder with considerably more focus than before.