Hey everyone!

So with the recent announcement of Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, it got me thinking more about what part dragons play in my own homebrew world of Salvera. I have a lot of cool things planned for my favorite monster in D&D within my worlds lore. So, I wanted to ask my fellow Forum goers…..

 What’s are the dragons of your own worlds like? 

In the homebrew world I just started working on, dragons are extinct due to a dinosaur-meets-meteor style event in the distant past, leaving their fossilized bones behind. However, dragons still play a huge part on the world's stage. It's in my lore that dragon bones are basically just massive receptacles of magical energy, so there are huge mining operations performed in order to dig them out and use them as batteries for new necromantic superweapons the countries of my world are putting together to wipe each other out. Some dragon fossils also liquified into a golden oil called ichor that is used as fuel for airships, and just like with oil dependencies on Earth, it's a source of conflict among the various fantasy nations who want to harness this resource. So essentially, the dragons of my world are both nuclear power and petroleum put together. 

Quote from Crystallomancer >>

In the homebrew world I just started working on, dragons are extinct due to a dinosaur-meets-meteor style event in the distant past, leaving their fossilized bones behind. However, dragons still play a huge part on the world's stage. It's in my lore that dragon bones are basically just massive receptacles of magical energy, so there are huge mining operations performed in order to dig them out and use them as batteries for new necromantic superweapons the countries of my world are putting together to wipe each other out. Some dragon fossils also liquified into a golden oil called ichor that is used as fuel for airships, and just like with oil dependencies on Earth, it's a source of conflict among the various fantasy nations who want to harness this resource. So essentially, the dragons of my world are both nuclear power and petroleum put together. 

 Magical nuclear fossil fuels. That’s really cool!

So far as the contemporary world knows, the last of the dragons just rose a few years ago in one last display of might, and just as quickly blew away, never to be seen again.  The dragons more or less built the world, importing creatures from various crystal spheres as favored servants for uncountable thousands of years, but they destroyed themselves in a civil war in a time before even the elves remember.

The one remaining dragon - Sophia, the Orichalcum Dragon - was hatched only 2 years ago, in fulfillment of ancient dragon prophecy.  Today she lives incognito in the human city home of her deceased dragon mentor.  Her current plan is to give herself a thousand years looking after the place to grieve and then to travel the planes finding a future for herself.  This is a little monologue I wrote for her in a notebook:

Do I feel greed?  I suppose the only answer I can give is - not yet.  I’m aware that I have access to a hoard, but it seems to exist as a series of zeros in a ledger.  It seems quite astonishingly huge to me.  If I understand the size of it correctly, I’d analogize the duchy to his garden.  Essentially a labor of love.

Do you know it strikes me that I may be greedy.  I don’t want to lose what he left me.  

We were never supposed to be creatures of greed, you know. Dragons evolved to be creatures of wishes; and dreams; and auspices; and augury.  

You may have noticed that between the world that exists and the world as we wish it to be, there is a cliff.  An often dauntingly high cliff.  This isn't just a metaphor.  This is an actual topographical feature of the Astral Plane.  When hopes, dreams, aspirations, hit this cliff, they travel upward, like a current of warm air which a dragon's dream form can ride like a condor soaring on a thermal updraft.  When she reaches a high enough point, gravity suddenly reverses, everything turns upside-down and she hurtles through the aether, faster and faster.  Then at the last moment she spreads her wings and BANG! she is skimming at the speed of light over the shimmering rainbow Sea of Primal Magic.  And there she hunts, or maybe gathers, or maybe pollinates.  That part's a bit complicated.  The point is that that journey is important for knitting together the worlds of lightning and chemicals and stardust.  That's what a dragon is supposed to be.  Anywhere there is life and magic, you can find a dragon.

Kobolds, dragonborn, half dragons, drakes, dragons… they’re all the same species, actually. Not pseudo dragons and wyvern, though, they’re related to each other, but only distantly related to draconians(which is the term I use for all these guys). Each draconian begins its life as a mere kobold. Hatched in the hundreds then soon left to fend for themselves by their dragon parents, kobold warrens spring into existence quite quickly, as they mature quite quickly.

The majority of kobolds are wingless, but a few are lucky enough to be born with flight. These are the ones who are destined to one day become mighty dragons. While winged kobolds are protected, others are fairly expendable, and all kobolds are quite weak. As time goes on, a warren’s numbers will diminish, until only a fraction of the original clutch remains. Hopefully the wingless ones have done their job well, protecting most of their winged siblings. 

When they reach a certain age, around 15 years old, a kobold undergoes a transformation. Their scales harden and thicken, growing around them in a larhr protective shell that resembled an egg, as they begin a transformation. When they emerge from this first metamorphosis, during their second “hatching,” they are new creatures. No longer small, brutish, idiotic and short-sighted, the drakeborn(dragonborn) that emerge are more intelligent, reasonable beings. Winged kobolds emerge even more magnificent as they were before, as powerful dragonborn(half-dragons).

Now much more capable of fending for themselves, possessing innate elemental weaponry that they did not have before, the draconians typically part ways. Many years later, at around 300 years old, a second metamorphosis occurs, drakeborn “hatching” as drakes(the drakes in my setting are intelligent, not dumb and brutish like 5e ones), and dragonborn as… you guessed it, dragons. Legend speaks of a mythical third metamorphosis, but none has ever been recorded in history, nor has the creature that might emerge ever been witnessed.

They aren't dragons. They're phoenixes. But they pretty much use dragon stat blocks unaltered so far. The party has encountered an ice phoenix and a fire phoenix, which were a Young White Dragon and a Young Red Dragon.

The remaining phoenix types are life phoenix, sun phoenix, thunder phoenix, and earth phoenix. Life phoenix and thunder phoenix are pretty easy. They can be reskinned green and blue or bronze dragons. Sun phoenix can probably be a dragon with its breath damage type changed to radiant, and maybe a legendary action with a save against Blindness. I can probably steal some abilities from a Solar.

The earth phoenix will be the least dragon like. I imagine it as flightless. Think giant ostrich rock monster. Acid breath could work, but I'm thinking it's more of a physical attacking phoenix, with brutal stomps. Probably an earthquake legendary action that can knock you prone.

I'll just say I really like mention I've heard in some press for the Fizban's book that some Dragons become aware of themselves as echoes in other worlds, and a truly awesome accomplishment for some dragons is to unify those echoes into a coherent being.  It resonates well with what I do with Dragons in my game.  

Basically. much of the prime material plane is caught up in the Bahamut/Tiamat dichotomy.  However there are some (actually. in some regards inline with the Cult of the Dragon in FR before it became a Tiamat cult) who recognize that as a ordering imposed by Bahamut and Tiamat, but it's a containment of draconic essence, an imposition on what dragons actually are.  Beyond B+T, dragons and instances of dragons have a role in shaping reality (it's why their lairs have such powerful environmental effects) beyond what B+T have imposed, much in the way that mortal souls are integral to the functioning of the universe regardless of the ordering gods have tried to impose on reality.  No dragon is "simply" mortal, though they're different from gods too.

Their are dragons who have been players in the Bahamut and Tiamat feud that are getting jaded or by the nature of their role in the war have discovered a different way for their kind.  Bernie, from DiA is key here, basically being in what intelligence/spy speak is a "listening station" on Avernus for centuries gave her a lot of time to think in an environment that begs one to contemplate futility and what else could be done if futile endeavors were abandoned.  So on certain landings of the Infinite Staircase outside the notice of a pit in Avernus (where a queen can hear nothing but the echoes of her furious will) and a blinding palace in Mount Celestial (maybe so bright it's occupant doesn't really see anymore) ... conversations happen.  And sometimes adventures may "stumble" into such conversations and have favors asked of them regarding planar shards and procuring similar artifacts of cosmic significance.  Of course someone's stumble could easily be a scripted pratfall, Bernie's a copper dragon and her jokes are elaborate.

Oh, fire, acid, and lightning spewing dragons can use their breath weapon to turn sand into strong volcanic glass ... because black pyramids like the Luxor in Vegas are integral to my game's mythology.  Haven't figured out how the cold/gas sprayers play into that.  

On hoarding, whether it's a universal truth or a new enlightenment, or a recovered enlightenment, evil dragons possess things as a form of dominance over what a thing is.  Good dragons cherish things for what possibilities they may hold, and have a hard time letting things go to the possibility eroding forces of time.