DRAGON RULES

Dragons are beings that were originally born completely from the magical power that the entire world is steeped in. Legends say that their origins go back as far as the original forming of the planet where primal forms of the beasts held dominion over the even more primal elements of a forming world. Today, dragons are still powerful beings, their exact origins shrouded deeply in times long past. Now, a dragon is born once every few thousand years. In their place of birth, a node of matter appears, vaguely in the shape of an egg and almost always matching the surroundings. For instance, a dragon egg in the mountains would be craggy and rock-like, cool to the touch. A dragon egg in the desert might be sandy and rocky, or take the form of a sand dune that does not shift with the wind. Normally the place of a dragon’s birth is indicative of its nature. A dragon born in from a burning forest will most likely hold dominion over flame and ash, while one born deep in the frigid seas may hold the power to freeze with its breath and cause great floods.

All dragons hold some sort of power over certain elements of nature. They can manipulate this element to a far greater degree than most mages, though they are by no means limited to just these magical abilities. A dragon’s ageless nature means that they can master many schools of magic throughout their lifetime. However, a dragon’s innate abilities do not seem to match magic of any kind. A fire mage manipulates fire. A fire dragon is fire. Where a mage may be able to hurl balls of flame from thin air, a dragon breathes them forth from its mouth or has tongues of flame burst forth from vents in its armor. Above all, do not be afraid to be creative with your dragon and its natural abilities.

As far as old age goes, dragons do not seem to die of it. The more ancient a dragon gets, in fact, the more powerful it becomes, never seeming to reach the peak before decline. Most dragons are born small, though small to a dragon might be a different story to a person. On average, a dragon is about the size of a dog when born, though this is by no means a baseline or an absolute. Their size when fully grown is impossible to predict as it changes so completely from dragon to dragon. In fact, dragons vary so much in size shape and abilities that it is hard to tell that they even all come from the same type of creature. One dragon may have feathers mingling with its scales, another may be as wooly as a bison. Some are large and bulky, some are thin and lithe. Once again, let me stress creativity when making your dragon; you will probably never be graded down for implementing original ideas in your dragon.

Dragons do share some traits, however.

- Dragons all have specific elements that they hold power over. This is usually one and never more than three.

- Dragons all have the ability to take a human, elven or half-elven form. This form normally reflects their nature somehow. In this form, they are for all intents and purposes human. They retain their magical abilities, but in many cases lose some of their innate ones. A fire dragon in human form cannot breathe fire, for example, but still has powerful control over the element. A dragon in human form dies from injuries that would kill a human, as well. The transformation into a dragon is a smooth, easy process, unlike a werewolf transformation, but it still tends to destroy clothing. This is curbed by the fact that most dragons have enough magical ability to form clothing out of thin air, usually using a pinch of their base element as material. Please note that any given dragon only has one humanoid form! They don't get to pick and choose, they only have one form which is either human, elven or half-elven.

- A female dragon in human form can get pregnant from another human/elf. However, reverting into dragon form kills the child, which cannot survive in the womb of a dragon. A male dragon in human/elf form impregnates women with a human/elven baby, though this child is normally an exceptional magic user with a predisposition to the father’s magic. This includes a child born of a dragon mother as well. A dragon in dragon form mating with a dragon in dragon form creates a completely dragon child.

- A dragon is normally quite powerful, but not overly so. A fully adult dragon is normally more than a match for a mage, one on one, but a particularly powerful mage might be enough to threaten a dragon. The older a dragon gets, the more powerful it is, but keep this reasonable, with the most powerful dragon being about three times as powerful as the average mage.

- Injuries in human form or dragon form cross over to the next form. They scale for size; a dragon with a gash in its shoulder does not turn into a human with the same size (probably fatal) gash in the shoulder, but a smaller version appropriate to the size. The transformation is smooth enough that it does not aggravate the wounds.