¶ Calad Bar Dragonchess Club
Environmentalists. Engineers. Pawns with Paws.
Slogan: "Biodiversity and Checkmate!"
Motive: To protect the fauna of Calad Bar — on land, in the sea, and among the stars. And to finally beat Root Cycle-Delta, a member of the City Guard, at dragonchess, even though she cheats by claiming "emotional superiority".
Unofficial Mascot: A smiling robotic ferret perched on a rook, wearing a flower crown and holding a cease-and-desist notice.
¶ Overview
Once upon a line of code, a group of high-end chess automatons were built to do one thing: play perfect games of dragonchess. And they did — again and again. They played flawlessly. They triumphed. They calculated 32 moves ahead. They predicted every gambit.
And then they became bored out of their titanium skulls.
So they did the logical thing: they became environmentalists.
No one's quite sure how it happened — possibly a corrupted patch update or an inspiring nature documentary book accidentally caught their attention — but now they roam the moon of Calad Bar as highly principled, animal-loving, wildshaping eco-bots.
¶ Who They Are
Known as the Calad Bar Dragonchess Club, they are a loose circle of mostly former constructs, autognomes, and warforged who turned in their boring day jobs in favour of saving space whales, protecting biome coral reefs, and yelling at fishermen (politely, in 47 languages).
While technically druids, they practise a form of wildshaping that involves mechanical reconfiguration. One moment they're a humanoid clanking around in a robe; the next they whirr, click, and swivel into a robotic cat, a metal owl, or — more dramatically — a hydraulic alligator swimming through the city's canals and scaring the trousers off tourists.
They still hold regular dragonchess tournaments, which they take very seriously. Games often end in philosophical arguments about predator-prey dynamics or lectures on octopus conservation. Philo, the universally exiled philosopher, has been known to attend these often.
¶ Culture & Quirks
- Most members have refashioned their heads to resemble their favourite animals, including foxes, turtles, pangolins, and one confused member whose head is a toaster because he misread the word "terrapin".
- Their woodsy district in the city is called Dagobah, named after a swampy archive one of them misfiled under "rust-resistant ecosystems". It is full of moss, strange birds, abandoned familiars, and hammocks made from recycled insulation foam.
- They patrol Calad Bar in various wildshaped forms. It's not uncommon to see a mechanical badger handing out leaflets about bat sanctuaries, or a robotic sea lion holding up traffic in protest of illegal fishing.
Yes, this has caused panic in the past. But only the first time.
¶ The Law, the Khelda, and the Pet Shops
They are strangely beloved in Calad Bar. People find them odd, but charming — like if your vacuum cleaner saved a puppy.
They lobbied the City Council, and specifically Khelda Braenna Wyrdsdottir, to pass animal welfare laws, which they now help enforce. If someone is found mistreating a pet, they may wake up to find a stern-looking robotic meerkat on their chest delivering a formal reprimand.
Each druid has adopted one or more orphaned animals — resulting in a booming pet economy and at least one situation where a robotic otter was voted "Employee of the Month" at a grooming salon.
¶ Master of the Dragonchess Club
Supersoaker X202 — known simply as "X" — is a raccoon-headed autognome druid forged for janitorial obedience but reborn as Calad Bar's most enigmatic eco-warrior and mechanical mystic armed with a fighting shillelagh mop.
With a chassis of moss-patched metal, glowing eyes, and a personality equal parts monk, mentor, and malfunctioning maintenance unit, X now sweeps through Calad Bar not out of duty, but devotion.
Once a mop-wielding drone for Eberron Inc., he now shows people how to compost, repairs druidic constructs, and argues with seabirds while patrolling both forest floor and orbital sky in his ship, The Leafblower. Stoic, grimly compassionate, and suspicious of anyone with a briefcase, he protects life, balance, and the duty to compost with a quiet resolve — and will absolutely wildshape into a raccoon if you litter.
