Green dragons are a breed of chromatic dragons from the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Like all chromatic dragons, greens are inherently evil.
Description[]
Green dragons - also known as forest dragons - are covered in tough scaly hide as green as the grass, helping them to better blend in to their preferred environment. They have a wingspan of around eighty feet, reach around thirty feet tall and up to eighty-five feet long.
Greens are considered to be the most devious of the chromatic dragons; they are highly intelligent and excel at manipulation and deception. They lie as easily as people speak, and they are good at it. They love intrigue and prefer to achieve their goals through guile and double-dealing over any other means. Any brute can hunt, but it takes skill and intelligence to trick one’s prey into offering itself for dinner. Adding this attitude to a green’s belligerent nature—to a green dragon, a weak creature is either prey or pawn, and nearly all creatures are weak—makes the creature a loathsome, conniving beast.
Greens have been known to interfere with and manipulate whole communities into serving them, whether through bribery, extortion, blackmail or merely through deceit. They are cunning negotiators and like to make bargains with lesser beings in order to acquire territory or wealth. Much of the time, green dragons may not even need to make such deals but will do so all the same simply because they can and take pleasure from cheating others out of whatever they have.
Lairs and Terrain[]
Green dragons prefer areas of thick vegetation. By far, they prefer temperate and cold forests to steamy jungles and non-forested land. They particularly favour woods with large and imposing trees—the older and more massive, the better. Greens might accept smaller woods as less desirable alternatives, as well as jungles and overgrown bogs. When a green dragon cannot find any suitable forest or woodland, it might settle for an area of rolling hills or similar terrain, using slopes and valleys for cover and concealment in the same way that its more fortunate cousins use the trees of the forest.
Green dragons prefer caves in forested hills and cliffsides for their lairs. Where they cannot find such convenient openings, they might topple the mightiest of trees into great heaps and make their homes in the hollows of these wooden hills. Some green dragons even lair inside the trunks of the largest, fey-touched trees.
Favoured Treasure[]
Although green dragons covet any treasure, they particularly like hand-crafted items ranging from sculpture and artwork to ornate swords and magic armour. They love to own anything into which someone else put a lot of work. Though a dragon might not force a crafter to create art, the wyrm takes satisfaction in ultimately benefiting from an artisan’s creative labour.
Green dragons also like to keep large supplies of coins and small gems at hand for suborning merchants or members of local communities. Though as loath to part with their wealth as any other dragons, greens might consider bribes worthwhile investments if they feel that particularly well-placed agents will ultimately bring them greater power or amusement.
Life Cycle[]
Green dragons lay their eggs after about four months of a sixteen-month incubation period. They lay clutches of three to five eggs, with an average of two to four hatching successfully under optimal conditions. The wyrmling stage lasts approximately six years. Green dragons reach adulthood around age 160 and become elders after their 950th year. A truly ancient green dragon has lived for at least 1,750 years, give or take a century. The oldest known green dragon lived for approximately 2,250 years. The environmental diffusion of a deceased green dragon results in an area of lush, beautiful, and deadly plant growth. Grasses, trees, and other vegetation, nearly all of them poisonous, grow swiftly to abnormally large size. These areas also touch on the Feywild more often than do other parts of the woodlands.
Abilities[]
- Flight
- Water Breathing
- Command Plants - Green dragons are capable of manipulating surrounding foliage, making it grow and ensnare victims.
- Dominate - Older greens have the ability to control the minds of humans and other such sentient beings like dwarves and elves.
- Breath Weapon - Like black dragons, greens can breathe clouds of poisonous and corrosive gas.