Datarium - Dracomicon

From Conworld

Revision as of 12:10, 23 April 2008

//This article is mostly from Draconomicon. Wizards of the Coast.

Dragons are creatures of myth, often described as the first sentient race to appear on a world, with life spans that stretch over hundreds of years. They symbolize the world itself and embody its history, and the oldest dragons are repositories of vast knowledge and ancient secrets. This aspect of dragons makes them much more than just a challenging combat encounter: They are sages and oracles, fonts of wisdom and prophets of things to come. Their very appearance can be an omen of good or ill fortune.

Any attempt to describe them as little more than glorified lizards with wings and breath weapons is a disservice. Dragons are, by their very nature, epic forces in the world. Their actions, their schemes, even their dreams are felt throughout the world. From a wyrmling raiding herds of sheep to the mighty Ashardalon feasting on preincarnate souls, dragons do things that matter, whether on a small local scale or in the cosmic big picture. They are the embodiment of fantasy itself.

Dragons are rapacious, arrogant, and deadly — but they are also majestic, awesome, and magnificent.

All about Dragons

A wealth of material, from bard’s tales and ponderous tomes alike, has been recorded about dragons. Unfortunately for adventurers planning to confront a dragon, most of that information is wrong. The opening chapter of this book presents the truth about dragons—their types, habits, physiology, and worldview.

The Dragon's Body

At first glance, a true dragon resembles a reptile. It has a muscular body, a long, thick neck, a horned or frilled head with a toothy mouth, and a sinuous tail. The creature walks on four powerful legs with clawed feet, and it flies using its vast, batlike wings. Heavy scales cover a dragon from the tip of its tail to end of its snout. As you’ll see from the details to come, however, that first glance doesn’t begin to tell the whole story about the nature of dragons.

External Anatomy

Despite its scales and wings, a dragon’s body has features that seem more feline than reptilian. Like a cat’s eye, a dragon’s eye has a comparatively large iris with a vertical pupil. This arrangement allows the pupil to open extremely wide and admit much more light than a human eye can.

Eyes

The sclera, or “white,” of a dragon’s eye is often yellow, gold, green, orange, red, or silver, with an iris of a darker, contrasting color.

To a casual observer, a dragon’s pupils always look like vertical slits. If one were to look very closely into a dragon’s eye, however, one could see a second iris and pupil within the first. The dragon can shift and rotate this inner aperture up to 90 degrees, so that the inner pupil can overlay the outer one or lie at a right angle to it. This ocular structure gives a dragon extremely accurate depth perception and focusing ability no matter how much or how little light is available.

A dragon’s eye is protected by a leathery outer eyelid and three smooth inner eyelids, or nictitating membranes. The innermost membrane is crystal clear and serves to protect the eye from damage while the dragon flies, fights, swims, or burrows with its eyes open. The other two eyelids mainly serve to keep the inner membrane and the surface of the eye clean. They are thicker than the innermost membrane and less clear. A dragon can use these inner lids to protect its eyes from sudden flashes of bright light. A dragon’s eyes glow in the dark, but the dragon can hide the glow by closing one or more of its inner eyelids; doing this does not affect its vision.

Inside the Dragon’s Eye

Most scholars remain unaware of how complex and unusual a dragon’s eye really is. In addition to its four layers of eyelids and its double pupil, a dragon’s eye also has a double lens. The outer lens (1) is much the same as any other creature’s in form and function. The inner lens (2), however, is a mass of transparent muscle fibers that can polarize incoming light. The inner lens also serves to magnify what the dragon sees, and helps account for the dragon’s superior longdistance vision. A dragon’s retinas (3) are packed with receptors for both color and black-and-white vision. Behind the retina lies the tapetum lucidum (4), a reflective layer that helps the dragon see in dim light. A dragon literally sees light twice, once when it strikes the retina and again when it is reflected back. It is the tapetum lucidum that makes a dragon’s eyes seem to glow in the dark.

Ears

A dragon’s ears often prove indistinguishable from the frills that frame its head, especially when the dragon is at rest. The ears of an an active dragon, however, constantly twitch and swivel as the dragon tracks sounds. Not all dragons have external ears; burrowing and aquatic dragons usually have simple ear holes protected by an overhanging fringe.

Mouth

A dragon’s mouth features powerful jaws, a forked tongue, and sharp teeth. The exact number and size of a dragon’s teeth depend on the dragon’s age, habitat, and diet; however, a dragon’s array of teeth usually includes four well-developed fangs (two upper, two lower) that curve slightly inward and have cutting edges on both the inner and outer surfaces. A dragon uses its fangs to impale and kill prey, and they serve as the dragon’s primary weapons.

Immediately in front of the fangs in each jaw lie the dragon’s incisors, which are oval in cross-section and have serrated edges at the top. When a dragon bites down on large prey, these teeth cut out a semicircle of flesh. Behind the fangs in each jaw, a dragon has a row of peglike molars that help it grip prey. A dragon is not well equipped for chewing, and it typically tears prey into chunks small enough to gulp down. A dragon can create a sawing motion with its incisors by wiggling its lower jaw and shaking its head from side to side, allowing the incisors to quickly shear through flesh and bone.

Many dragons learn to seize prey and literally shake it to death. Other dragons have mastered the technique of grabbing prey and swallowing it whole.

Some dragon hunters boast that they can hold a dragon’s mouth closed, preventing the creature from biting. It is true that a dragon applies more force when closing its jaws than it does when opening them; however, holding a dragon’s mouth closed still requires prodigious strength. Even if an foe were to succeed in clamping its jaws shut, the dragon is likely to throw off the opponent with one flick of its head, claw its attacker to ribbons, or both.

Spines, frills and other projections

The spines, frills, and other projections that adorn a dragon’s head make the creature look fearsome, and that is their main function.

A dragon’s horn is a keratinous projection growing directly from the dragon’s skull. A dragon with horns that point backward can use the horns for grooming, and they also help protect the dragon’s upper neck in combat. Horns projecting from the sides of a dragon’s head help protect the head.

A dragon’s spines are keratinous, but softer and more flexible than its horns. The spines are imbedded in the dragon’s skin and anchored to the skeleton by ligaments. Most spines are located along the dragon’s back and tail. Unlike horns, spines are mobile, with a range of motion that varies with the kind of dragon and the spines’ location on the dragon’s body. The spines along a dragon’s back, for example, can only be raised or lowered, whereas the spines supporting a dragon’s ears can be moved many different ways.

The frills on a dragon’s back and tail help keep the dragon stable when flying or swimming.

Limbs

To a scholar who knows something about the natural world, a dragon’s powerful legs are decidedly nonreptilian, despite their scaly coverings. A dragon’s legs are positioned more or less directly under its body, in the manner of mammals. (Most reptiles’ legs tend to splay out to the sides, offering much less support and mobility than a dragon or mammal enjoys.)

A dragon’s four feet resemble those of a great bird. Each foot has three or four clawed toes facing forward (the number varies, even among dragons of the same kind), plus an additional toe, also with a claw, set farther back on the foot and facing slightly inward toward the dragon’s body, like a human’s thumb.

Although a dragon’s front feet are not truly prehensile, a dragon can grasp objects with its front feet, provided they are not too small. This grip is not precise enough for tool use, writing, or wielding a weapon, but a dragon can hold and carry objects. A dragon also is capable of wielding magical devices, such as wands, and can complete somatic components required for the spells it can cast (see Spellcasting, below). Some dragons are adroit enough to seize prey in their front claws and carry it aloft.

A dragon can use the “thumbs” on its rear feet to grasp as well, but the grip is less precise than that of the front feet.

Skin

A dragon’s skin resembles crocodile hide—tough, leathery. and thick. Unlike a crocodile, however, a dragon has hundreds of hard, durable scales covering its body. A dragon’s scales are keratinous, like its spines. Unlike the spines, however, a dragon’s scales are not attached to its skeleton, and the dragon cannot make them move. The scales are much harder and less flexible than the spines, with a resistance to blows that exceeds that of steel.

A dragon’s largest scales are attached to its hide along one edge and overlap their neighbors like shingles on a roof or the articulated plates in a suit of armor. These scales cover the dragon’s neck, underbelly, toes, and tail. As the dragon moves its body, the scales tend to shift as the skin and muscle under them moves, and the scales’ free ends sometimes rise up slightly. This phenomenon has led some observers to mistakenly conclude that a dragon can raise and lower its scales in the same manner as a bird fluffing its feathers.

The majority of a dragon’s scales are smaller and attached to the skin near their centers. These scales interlock with neighboring scales, giving the surface of the body a pebbly texture. The scales are large enough to form a continuous layer of natural armor over the body even when it stretches or bulges to its greatest extent. When the body relaxes or contracts, the skin under the scales tends to fold and wrinkle, though the interlocking scales give the body a fairly smooth look.

A dragon’s scales grow throughout its lifetime, albeit very slowly. Unlike most other scaled creatures, a dragon neither sheds its skin nor sheds individual scales. Instead, its individual scales grow larger, and it also grows new scales as its body gets bigger. Over the years, a scale may weather and crack near the edges, but its slow growth usually proves sufficient to replace any portion that breaks off. Dragons occasionally lose scales, especially if they become badly damaged. Old scales often litter the floors of long-occupied dragon lairs.

When a dragon loses a scale, it usually grows a new one in its place. The new scale tends to be smaller than its neighbors and usually thinner and weaker as well. This phenomenon is what gives rise to bards’ tales about chinks in a dragon’s armor. These tales are true as far as they go, but one new scale on a dragon’s massive body seldom leaves the dragon particularly vulnerable to attack.

Tail and Wings

A dragon’s long, muscular tail serves mainly as a rudder in flight. A dragon also uses its tail for propulsion when swimming, and as a weapon.

A dragon’s wings consist of a membrane of scaleless hide stretched over a framework of strong but lightweight bones. Immensely powerful muscles in the dragon’s chest provide power for flight.

Most dragons have wings that resemble bat wings, with a relatively short supporting alar limb, ending in a vestigial claw that juts forward. Most of the wing area comes from a membrane stretched over elongated “fingers” of bone (the alar phalanges; see Skeleton, below), which stretch far beyond the alar limb.

Some kinds of dragons have wings that run the lengths of their bodies, something like the “wings” of manta rays. This sort of wing also has an alar limb with phalanges supporting the forward third of the wing, but the remainder of the wing is supported by modified frill spines that have only a limited range of motion and muscular control.