While Bokken may be the first artisan you can recruit, Dragn will be the first to actively seek you out, albeit in a fairly confrontational manner. Don’t let his entitled attitude put you off, however, as you’ve nothing to lose by granting Dragn’s demands, which mostly just boils down to building Dragn’s Armor Shop in your Southern Narlmarches village.

Build Dragn’s Armor Shop to recruit him automatically, at which point he’ll start crafting you your first item. As the game’s armorsmith artisan, you may be surprised to find out that only about a third of the items he can create are actually armor. Instead, you should view him more as the “stereotypical dwarven craftsman”, as he specializes in axes, hammers, “dwarven items”, crossbows, and yes, plate armor and shields. If you ask him to craft something specific you can choose between the following categories:

• A one-handed hammer.
• A one-handed axe.
• A crossbow.
• A metal shield.
• Plate armor.
• …something in the dwarvish style.

His masterpiece is Onslaught, a suit of +5 mithral full plate which grants is wearer a +8 bonus to Strength and increases their movement speed by 20, in addition to having a higher maximum Dexterity bonus (+3) and lower Armor Penalty (-2) than normal suits of full plate.

Recruiting Dragn¶

To recruit Dragn you’ll need to complete the main quest Troll Trouble, after which you’ll be able to claim the Southern Narlmarches. Do so and found a village anywhere in that region, which will prompt Dragn to visit you in your throne room and ask for you to pay reparations on the roads his ancestors built. These reparations come in the form of building him a workshop in your village in the Southern Narlmarches. Agreeing to his demand will recruit him as an artisan, while building Dragn’s Armor Shop will cause him to start crafting his first item for you.

Onslaught - Dragn’s Masterpiece Quest¶

Talk to Dragn in your village in the Southern Narlmarches and he’ll ask you to recover three pieces of heirloom armor sold by his delinquent brother to three merchants across your domain. This will start the quest Onslaught, which will task you with recovering these pieces of armor.

Recovering Onslaught from Bandits¶

This quest will resume some time later, after Dragn finishes crafting his first item for you (see Dragn’s Artisan page for more details). What he crafts doesn’t matter, and the time it will take can vary, so you’ll have to be flexible when it comes to advancing this quest. Once the aforementioned conditions are met, Dragn will deliver his item and inform you that the armor you recovered for him has been stolen by bandits who have holed up at Thorn Ford. A popular spot for bandits, it seems.

Thief at Thorn Ford¶

You doubtlessly visited Thorn Ford earlier in Chapter 1, so returning there now should be a trivial matter. From your capital, just follow the river northeast, then northwest until you’re just across the river from Thorn Ford. As its name implies, there’s a ford here, so you can just cross the river to reach your destination.

It’s not much trouble to reach your destination, and it’s even less to secure the object of your quest, as you’ll run into Dragn’s wayward brother Kergan (another time, MacLeod!) trying to pawn off his family relic as soon as you enter. Thankfully the deal falls through, after which Kergan will turn to deal with you, making all sorts of excuses for his failures, both economic, moral and fraternal.

Assuming you don’t outright attack [Chaotic Evil] you’ll eventually come to three options:

• Pass a [Diplomacy 22] check ([Lawful Good]) and he’ll surrender the armor to you and himself to justice.
• Pass an [Intimidate 18] check and he’ll hand over the armor.
• Agree that Dragn is the root of Kergan’s problems, allowing him to keep the armor and botching the quest.

If you picked the [Lawful Good] option, everything will be tied up rather well; you’ll get the Incomplete Onslaught Armor pieces, Kergan will submit to justice and hint at future reconciliation with Dragn. On the other hand if you just [Intimidate] the stolen armor from Kergan you’ll get three more options:

• [Lawful Neutral]: Consigns Kergan to prison with the implication that he’s being set on the path of reformation.
• [Chaotic Neutral]: Promises to keep Kergan’s theft secret from Dragn and banishes from your lands.
• [Neutral Evil]: Attacks Kergan

Furthermore, if you side with Kergan against his brother you’ll get the same three options should you talk to Kergan again, albeit at the cost of botching the quest. You can actually get the Incomplete Onslaught Armor from Kergan this way and give them to Dragn, apparently completing the quest… but this won’t remove that red X from your journal. Honestly, you might as well play it safe and pick one of the other routes available to you to ensure the quest completes successfully.

As for fighting Kergan, he’s a pushover, and the best loot you’ll get from him is a Masterwork Longsword. Not really worth the trouble.

Onslaught Returned… Again¶

Return to Dragn in your village in the Southern Narlmarches and pick the option “I’m returning the armor to you. You may finish your work.” to finally complete this quest. You can also complicate matters by saying “Kergan told me your family didn’t treat him very well.” to prompt Dragn to defend himself, leading to two alignment choices. If you pick [Chaotic Good] you’ll botch the quest, while the [Lawful Neutral] option will have no greater impact than shifting your alignment slightly.

Craftable Items - Dragn¶

Below you’ll find lists of all the items Dragn can craft:

Artisan Tiers - Dragn¶

Below are the various ways to increase Dragn’s artisan rank, hence the tiers of items he can craft: