Draconic and fiendish bloodline

[Newoblivion]

One of my players, play a dragon sorcerer tiefling. So I decided that it could be a cool idea to create a mini plot about her origin. Why her family have both fiendish and gold dragon blood?

What do you guys think? What can I do with her origin? A fiendish gold dragon maybe? Or maybe it was a gold dragon bloodline that was corrupted by a fiend? I would love to read your ideas :)

[Herobizkit]

Gold dragons are (historically) one of the few Good dragon types who can polymorph into humanoids and choose to associate with other 'lesser' beings.

Shadow dragons are creatures who have lingered too long in and been corrupted by the Shadowfell (a negative reflection of the beautiful and vibrant Feywild).

Perhaps a tiefling lover tricked the dragon into entering the Shadowfell. #Loki

Perhaps the Dragon went mad and came back for revenge... but not before the lover was able to have a son/daughter.

[Millstone85]

When he was almost a wyrmling still, a gold dragon convinced a devil to spare a city by entering into a pact with the fiend. The hellish taint did not seem to pass unto the dragon's descendants. Even when a dragoness fell in love with a human and gave life to a humanoid child with scales, horns and wings, it was simply believed that a half-dragon had been born into the world. But generation after generation, it became more evident that the line was one of tieflings.

[Spiritchaser]

When he was almost a wyrmling still, a gold dragon convinced a devil to spare a city by entering into a pact with the fiend. The hellish taint did not seem to pass unto the dragon's descendants. Even when a dragoness fell in love with a human and gave life to a humanoid child with scales, horns and wings, it was simply believed that a half-dragon had been born into the world. But generation after generation, it became more evident that the line was one of tieflings.

Go backwards

A shadowdragon corrupted from its former glory

A good tiefling (since there are some) bent on redeeming their lover

Don't give the player all the answers and let the player find out for themselves, give them enough hints to maybe get it right, but the weight of prejudice burdening them to get it wrong. Just before they make a critical wrong call give them one last hint...

[Biggstick]

If a Tiefling mates with anything, the end result is going to be a Tiefling. That means that this PC's parents could have been a Tiefling + Human (or Half Elf, or Elf, or Halfling, or Gnome, etc etc).

As for ideas, I'd play with this idea. Somewhere up her family tree, one of her family members made a pact or came to an agreement with a Gold Dragon. Maybe this agreement/reward from the Gold Dragon was because many generations ago, the forefather/mother of the PC saved this Gold Dragon. It could be something small like a Mouse pulling a thorn from a Lion's paw, or something much bigger and grander. This would allow for you as the DM to put a little development into the PC's family tree to see who performed this great (or small) task for the Gold Dragon. As a reward for performing this task or doing this deed for the Dragon, it agreed to grant it's blessing upon the family's line. It wouldn't be seen right away, but the boon of the Gold Dragon would be come at a time the family needed it most.

As the decades go by, the family starts to dismiss the "blessing of the Gold Dragon" as never actually going to happen. It begins to fade as the generations pass on, until no one in the family even talks about it anymore.

We're back to whatever time it is now in your world. The family line has become intermingled with Tieflings. Because of her destiny in this world, the Gold Dragonborn's blessing has finally shown itself in her family line through appearing in her. She can do research on her family line, or the Gold Dragon can make itself known to the Tiefling in some way shape or form. This can be done by the Dragon itself or any sort of messenger the Dragon deems appropriate.

The Gold Dragon can have all sorts of personality quirks, comparing this Tiefling to the forefather/mother of ages past and what not. It creates for an interesting DM NPC for the party to talk to as well.



I've been tossing around a Draconic Sorcerer bloodline story in my head for a while, and it seems appropriate for your particular situation.

[RazDelacroix]

Fun fact: Planar Dragons exist. I caught sight/wind of them back in 3.5 edition, and they were always filled with potential fun for me. Alas, 4th did nothing with them, and they have yet to be re-released into the world.

However, allow me to at least name off a few of the lower planar dragons for ya! They're fiendishly fun! Keep in mind I'm working off of memory here as my books are elsewhere and I do not want to get up just yet.

Pandamonium: Pandamonium dragon. Chaotic evil to chaotic crazy, these dragons were wise and intelligent. And insane. Thoroughly insane. If I recall correctly they are sound (thunder) damage based with a penchant for making other folks either deaf or crazy. Because being insane and alone is a recipe for making company!

Abyss: Chloe dragon. These malevolent malcontents have no wings, instead having numerous tentacles and a nasty habit of using the Black Speech to corrupt and destroy. Even demons do not try to rope these beasties into their wars. I forget what their breath weapon is.

Carceri: Tarterian dragon. I am now banging my head against my desk trying to figure out what makes these dragons so dangerous beyond their penchant for making prisons and the lives of their 'guests' miserable.

Gray Waste: Gloom dragon. If they eat you, it grows a tombstone along it's back. With your name on it. Your birthday and moment of death. And it keeps your soul so long as it lives. So toss a fiend or corpse to it AND RUN FOR IT!!!

Gehenna: Pyroclast dragon. Likes lava, and tormenting others. Bit of a cruel streak.

Baator: Hellfire Wyrm. Are you immune to fire? Too bad, IT WILL BURN YOU WITH HELLFIRE! Think the torments of Baator are enough? Too bad, IT WILL INTRODUCE NEW FORMS OF PAIN! Think devils are all you have to worry about? Too bad, PREPARE TO BE DEVOURED IN A FEAST TO HONOR TIAMAT!

Elysium: Elysian dragon. Neutral Good dragons of a very jolly disposition. Whenever they acquire wealth, they are prone to spend it all on ale, fine foods, beer, cakes, whiskey, chocolates, wines, and that keg your dwarven friend thinks he's clever in hiding the good stuff. They love to hold parties and invite EVERYONE to join in! With their size-shifting, they can even get into your local tavern comfortably! Just like they can comfortably fit into a bed with your soon-to-be-very-happy-mommy-fiend. No joke, of all the planar dragons, half-elysian dragons outnumber all other planar-half-dragons COMBINED! Elysian dragons like to make people happy.

[Zorku]

It almost feels too easy to just have some very distant draconic blood hidden in your family tree and then get mixed in with tieflings, so let's pull the combo off in one generation, then bring the mundane races in later.

I have a hard time seeing gold dragon blood and demon blood not repelling each other like oil and water, but with a devil at least you've got the lawful alignment lining up. With a little bending of the rules or contriving of plot, I could see a gold dragon willingly conversing with some devil, and in time, rather liking the easy access to that kind of view point. What better Devil's Advocate than an actual devil?

Devil's are happy enough to play the long con, so this one really downplays their nature, and is charismatic enough about it to act like they're being swayed by talking points and losing some of the arguments, even setting up little debate topics to pretend to lose at times. Still, they are a devil, so it's hard not to engage in certain kinds of behaviors, and just to ease things along the dragon is willing to gamble and make bets on the affairs of mortals, as they both sit back and watch what's going on in the world. Thanks to that devil's views the gold dragon even seems to be having greater than normal success influencing a few nearby monarchs to make their kingdoms more lawful places and on and on this all goes for centuries.

To keep things interesting the bets gradually started to include substantial pieces of treasure from the dragon's horde (which now includes some rather extravagant items, since the devil intentionally loses a little more than half of the time,) and one fine day they're watching some mortal stumble into grave danger. Goblins, bandits, maybe both, this guy is really in a bad situation. It's been quite a few years since this happened, so the exact details are hard to pin down, but the Devil put something fabulous on the line if the mortal won, and requested "what you could least bear to share with me."

One warlock pact and a couple of smoldering corpses later, and now the dragon finds out that that this wasn't a question of what item of their horde they have to share. No, now what they have to share, is their bloodline.

Rumor has it that particular dragon is still kicking around somewhere, and if you end up in negotiations with them you had really better not use the word "contract."

[Biggstick]

It almost feels too easy to just have some very distant draconic blood hidden in your family tree and then get mixed in with tieflings, so let's pull the combo off in one generation, then bring the mundane races in later.

Why do you think that's easy? The potential history built up between the family line and a Gold Dragon could be extremely interesting. This becomes even more interesting if the Gold Dragon isn't a fan of what's become of the family line (intermingled with the blood of Asmodeus), but is still faithful to the commitment made ages ago.

I think attempting to pull off this combination in one generation is a lot more to try and swallow.


To keep things interesting the bets gradually started to include substantial pieces of treasure from the dragon's horde (which now includes some rather extravagant items, since the devil intentionally loses a little more than half of the time,) and one fine day they're watching some mortal stumble into grave danger. Goblins, bandits, maybe both, this guy is really in a bad situation. It's been quite a few years since this happened, so the exact details are hard to pin down, but the Devil put something fabulous on the line if the mortal won, and requested "what you could least bear to share with me."

One warlock pact and a couple of smoldering corpses later, and now the dragon finds out that that this wasn't a question of what item of their horde they have to share. No, now what they have to share, is their bloodline.

Rumor has it that particular dragon is still kicking around somewhere, and if you end up in negotiations with them you had really better not use the word "contract."

While I like what you're trying to do story wise, I'm not seeing how a Dragon, and a Gold Dragon at that, is getting tricked by a regular devil. A Golden Dragon wouldn't allow the terms of a bet to be as open-ended as "what you could least bear to share with me," especially on something as swingy as a mortal living or dying.

While I do agree that the story you've laid out would be interesting, I'm not seeing how it translates to a Tiefling being a Draconic Sorcerer. Is the Golden Dragon supposed to willingly impart a portion of it's blood into a Tiefling (or some other race) bloodline of the devil's choosing? Does the devil itself gain some of this Draconic Blood? Why would the devil in question care to grant any mortals it's fairly won prize of a Golden Dragon's blood? What does the devil have to gain by giving away this newly won power? What's to keep the Gold Dragon from doing everything in it's power to negate the verbal "contract" with the devil by going over the devil's head?

[DizzyWood]

I like the idea of blurring the lines a bit. A feind that looks at evil as part of the job but is more neutral at heart and a gold dragon with a naughty bent end up thrown together in one of those wacky D&D situations where to creatures with different alignments need to work together Eventually these two become not friends but drinking buddies maybe. They respect each other and can bitch about their day together but do not trust each other at all. Eventually they run into each other out in public each with their mortal offspring in tow they get along annnnndd... bamn! Feindish/draconic bloodline is born! Now Goldie and the Feind are family and still get along really well (mostly due to a shared love of Dwarven ale) but they have vastly different plans for this weird little family they share. Two powerful ancestors manipulating you from the sidelines. Sure one will eat you if you get out of line and the other will damn you for eternity but they both still care for you in a weird twisted perverted way... but witch path will you choose. Are you strong enough to forage you own way. Now that you know about these ancestors are you expected to invite them to your holiday party?

[CaptainSarathai]

One of my players, play a dragon sorcerer tiefling. So I decided that it could be a cool idea to create a mini plot about her origin. Why her family have both fiendish and gold dragon blood?

What do you guys think? What can I do with her origin? A fiendish gold dragon maybe? Or maybe it was a gold dragon bloodline that was corrupted by a fiend? I would love to read your ideas :)

Remember - in the current editions, Tieflings are just another race. All the sexual subtext has been removed from the races; Half-Orcs don't mention anything about slaves or rape, and Tieflings are not the result of people consorting with demons. It's all very PC now. Hell, they spend a whole paragraph telling you that gender and sexuality are entirely up to the player. Wow! Such progressive!

So really, all you need is a Tiefling with dragon blood. Not a human with dragon and demon blood.

[Zorku]

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I think attempting to pull off this combination in one generation is a lot more to try and swallow.
"A lot to swallow" was almost synonymous with what I meant by "not easy."


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{complicated minutia}
That a gold dragon wouldn't let this happen in the first place and wouldn't abide by an open phrase in a contract mostly go to show that this was a better devil than that and that the actual details of how it happened aren't well known. Many of the other answers depend a lot on details I don't have about the PC and I don't think it's necessary to take that much control over every little detail, but the passage of time deals with most of this. I was just going for getting these two aspects together in one step, but you could still have a rather long family lineage of lukewarm devils that intermittently develop some extra sorcerous powers.

Beyond that it's really open on purpose, to allow for whatever kinds of plot hooks will work with the story. Maybe this was just a small step in some large prophecy, and that devil is going to try and get the PC to perform some particular action when every other unlikely condition is met, or maybe it was mostly about being cruel and the party can try to invalidate the contract to allow the aged dragon to have any other kind of offspring (say, by getting that now much more powerful warlock killed by a small number of goblins somehow.)

I know very broadly what kind of pieces the puzzle is made with, but I'd need a lot more detail before I could put it all together the way it will finally be used. If this is ultimately completely out of character for the gold dragons of this setting? Fine, true polymorph was involved and the now gold dragon hadn't even thought about the implications of breeding true.

[Addaran]

One of my players, play a dragon sorcerer tiefling. So I decided that it could be a cool idea to create a mini plot about her origin. Why her family have both fiendish and gold dragon blood?

What do you guys think? What can I do with her origin? A fiendish gold dragon maybe? Or maybe it was a gold dragon bloodline that was corrupted by a fiend? I would love to read your ideas :)

Since it's a fire dragon sorcerer and most fiend are also very fire resistant/immune, he could just play the fiend aspect without much change.

He's a "fiend" sorcerer, his power come from having fiend blood not far away in his ancestors. Instead of dragon scales, he has demonic scales or skin. Fire elemental affinity works well (fiend warlock gets lots of fire spell) and he's already resistant to fire anyway. Wings can be demonic and a fear aura fits the theme of a powerful demon/devil. Only thing left to change is the free language and expertise with social skills with dragon. Switch to abyssal and/or infernal, and social skills with devil and/or demon.