Brass Dragon villages

[Beldar]

Brass Dragon Villages
aka Kingdoms of Glass
aka Friendship is Magic

The D&D game designers set up a bunch of conditions and descriptions of things in their game design. But they left it static. They never thought through what would happen if they hit "play" to see how their starting conditions would work out over time (ie, what the denizens of their game would likely do with those starting conditions, just in the course of living their lives as best they could, and what the results of ordinary approaches to living would be, in those extraordinary conditions).
This is an attempt to do so, in one small area.

The Brass Dragon is the weakest of the good-aligned dragons.
They share a habitat (deserts and arid wastes) with Blue Dragons - the 2nd strongest of the evil-aligned dragons.
The blue dragons would gladly wipe out the brass dragons, easily can in one-on-one matchups of similar sizes or ages, and the brass dragons know that.

Many animals, in such a situation, would hope that hiding and running would be enough to save them, but the brass dragons are smart enough to see that is a losing proposition in the long term.
The brass dragons thus have a strong motivation to gain something extra to help them defend against the blues - something the blues can't simply duplicate.
Enter the fluff text, which says that brass dragons are gregarious and love to talk and make friends.

Friends come with quite a bit of potential.
And a dragon of any type comes with a lot of advantages if you can befriend them, so many folks would be very willing to befriend such.

Asking if a dragon is smart enough to take advantage of that seems like asking if a dehydrated man would take a drink of water if he could.
Brass dragons like having friends and are very focused on it anyway. And they have need of friends and allies to counterbalance the combat advantages their bitter enemies have.

So from a brass dragon's perspective, it is all benefit and no cost.

Here is an example to illustrate.
A Wyrmling brass dragon, call him Bob, is size tiny with 4 hit dice, an 11 str, +6 attack bonus, AC 15, and a 1d6 breath weapon. He fears the wyrmling blue dragon, size small with 6 hit dice, a 13 str, +8 attack bonus, AC 16, and a 2d8 breath weapon, who lives nearby.
And rightly so. Barring extraordinary luck, the blue would handily win a fight and kill him, and the blue sees himself as an inherent implacable enemy.

The brass wyrmling, Bob, is also feeling a need for friends to talk to, so he goes and finds a community - a village or something along those lines.
Here he has people to talk to and be friends with. And he would tend to act as friends do - doing favors for his friends. They would then feel a need to do favors back for him.

What favors could a wyrmling do for them? Quite a few, even apart from the obvious ones of helping them combat things within his capabilities.
He has a fiery breath weapon.
He could sit in the blacksmith shop (historically this was already a place where folks would tend to gather and talk) and provide the fire for the blacksmith to work with.
This saves the blacksmith fuel, and the time to gather more and blow it with a bellows.

If there is a glassblower, the dragon could similarly provide the heat for him to ply his trade.
And there is plenty of sand in the desert to turn into glass.

He could even have ranks in those skills and set up shop himself (using his mouth as a hand, or special tools in his front claws, or the Alternate Form feat from DragonLance Legend of the Twins page 13, which gives him the ability to change into a human form, though this feat is unavailable until he is an Adult).

Some would argue that Bob's breath is not yet hot enough to melt sand into glass, even given that the sand doesn't cool immediately and therefore multiple heatings can combine to help raise the temperature. Be that as it may - in the worst case he can at least greatly reduce the need for combustible fuel.

Whatever form his contribution takes, productivity increases and with it, so does prosperity.

He also has a burrow speed.
So he can dig basements, root cellars, sewers, defensive moats (which are still defensive aids even when not full of water) and similar things for them, fusing the walls of his burrows into glass to stabilize them and shore them up if needed.
Glass the thickness of a window-pane is not strong, but if you have ever seen one of those walls built of glass blocks (usually 6 or 8 inches square and 4 inches high per block), you know that thick glass can be quite strong.

Bob could even dig underground dwellings for them, and, in the hot desert, these are far more desireable than above-ground dwellings since they tend to stay cooler.
The principle difficulty of living inderground is that it is dark, but in stabilizing the walls by fusing them into glass, it seems likely they'd discover that glass pipes in sunlight just fine, lighting their dwellings admirably, and just as much or as little as they want, since the glass can be covered, whether in part or entirely, to adjust how much sun gets in.
The first few basements whose glass walls poked above-ground would easily teach them this principle - that light will flow in through the glass.

Bob could also dig wells for the villagers. This is of great value in a desert, and by itself could lead to greater prosperity across the board.

Another thing Bob could do is scout. He has a fly speed of 200, making him one of the fastest things out there.
A couple flights a day could give the village plenty of warning of approaching monsters or armies.
It could also find caravans or travelers lost in the desert, or wild animals moving through the area.

And in cases of wild animals, Bob really shines. He can spot them, go back and inform the villagers, return, swoop in, and put the animals to sleep with his alternate breath weapon. Then the villagers can haul them to the village, put them in pens, and become ranchers.
So, wild horses, camels, goats, sheep or whatever become livestock.
And they can similarly collect hyenas, jackals and the like - whatever they encounter. They can try domesticating them if they wish, or can just fry them up and eat them.
In fact, if they concentrate on clearing out predators like that, then any other wild animals have a population surge, as predation on them slows or ends. They are then available to be predated upon by humans.

And any attempt to work with animals, even domesticate animals not normally domesticated, becomes easier given that Bob can cast Speak With Animals 3 times per day.
Training your mule becomes simple when you can tell him exactly what you want and what signals you will use.
Training a pack of hyenas to act as guard dogs may be possible if you can spell it out to them clearly what the deal is, and that it is that or be eaten.

So the food supply for the village surges, as does the useful work they get from their animals, as do the numbers of those animals, and the people prosper.

Bob is good aligned, and good people take pleasure in helping others, especially their friends.
The blue dragon is evil aligned, and evil takes pleasure in hurting others. Evil does not have friends, though it may have minions or slaves.
Bob is good to those around him, and so, in general, they will be good back to him. This includes loyalty, trustworthiness, bravery and even self-sacrifice sometimes when needed.
The blue dragon is a solitary beast, but if he was around others, he would be evil to them, and they in turn would be evil back to him - though they'd be careful to do it in ways so as not to be caught.

So Bob, in helping his village full of friends (and it may take a whole village to satisfy his immense need to talk), would find himself helping in their defenses too - fighting alongside them in defending against orc raids and whatever other dangers his friends face.
And in return he would ask the same - not to inappropriate levels: he does not see his friends as expendable cannon-fodder (as the blue would see his minions). But even a little bit of help in a not-too-risky manner would make all the difference. Even a "fire just two shots for me, then run" doctrine should be enough.

So, when the blue finds Bob and attacks him, the situation would be at least this, assuming Bob has had even a couple weeks in the village:

The village has a couple new wells, and some animal pens (even if the pens are simply wide shallow pits due to lack of other building materials) filled with captured formerly-wild animals who are well on the way to being domesticated due to Speak with Animals.
The town's work animals, chickens etc are easier to handle and work with since they know what is expected of them.

Some underground buildings have been dug, and their uses explained and demonstrated.

And Bob the brass dragon spends most of his days making the blacksmith's life easier by breathing fire, while talking to everybody in what has become the favorite town hangout.

So the village is rapidly becoming more prosperous because of Bob, and now that prosperity is threatened, as a blue dragon shows up to kill Bob.

Bob only asks them to take two shots each, from cover, while the blue is not looking.
Modern people are not used to facing mortal dangers, so have not often developed their courage in the way ancient people had. D&D villagers face not only attacks from nature such as hyenas and lions, but also from many kinds of monsters. If they live anywhere but in the biggest cities, they have to be familiar, to some degree, with mortal danger.
So Bob's friends are willing to take two shots before hiding.

Even if Bob's village is small and ony contains about 50 people, and even if only 20 of those are able and willing to take a couple shots for him, he is saved.
20 attacks, with no bonuses of any sort, will hit the blue dragon's Armor Class an average of 5 times per volley. So, with two volleys, we expect 10 hits in total. They could be using bows, slings, or whatever they have, but we will assume an average of javelins, which do 1D6 damage.
So Bob's friends do 10D6 damage (average 35) to a creature that has only 6D12 hit points (average 45hp counting his Constitution bonus) - more than 2/3 killing it.
Bob has been expecting ranged support, so would have stayed out of melee until that arrived, which he can do because he is faster than the blue. After the second volley, Bob can take care of the rest and finish off the blue.

And then he can help even more, by harvesting the body of the blue as magical or alchemical reagents, usable by local wizards or alchemists if there are any, or using his great fly speed to go deal with some wherever they are.
He can also try to track down and claim the blue's treasure hoard.

So Bob's approach of making friends and mutual aid works at the lowest levels and abilies. And it scales up just fine.

Availability of magical reagents attracts those who can use them.
These reagents are available not just from what Bob and his friends kill, but Bob himself can spare some.
Every part of a dragon is magically useful, and Bob won't miss and can contribute the equivalents of hair, eyelashes, fingernail clippings, saliva, tears, dandruff etc. with no cost.
Not that he has hair, but there are similar things, like shed scales, for his type of creature.

When he gets wounded in battle, he can contribute blood, if only from his bloody bandages.

And if you use magic to do the equivalent of elective surgery, he can contribute much much more.
With spells to eliminate pain and rapidly heal wounds, Bob could contribute just about any body part as a magical reagent, especially once regeneration becomes available.

Would he want to?
In the real world, people do things like donate kidneys to strangers who need them, even though that constitutes a permanent loss for themselves, with consequent vulnerability and painful healing. They do it because they are good people and they see a need.
Bob can do similarly, yet it costs him no pain, no disability, no downtime while healing.

So when he sees a need, such as a Decanter of Endless Water to really help his village of friends thrive, why wouldn't he go through a procedure with no real cost to himself in order to fill that need? He can sell some blood, hide or whatever, to wizards and such who want it for making magic items, and with the proceeds buy himself some treasure (a Decanter of Endless Water, a Lyre of Building, or whatever) which both increases his hoard (always dear to a dragon's heart) and also helps his friends.

Consequently Bob's village grows more prosperous, his hoard grows, wizards move in to take advantage of the supply of magical reagents, clerics move in because Bob is willing to pay for healing spells, and all of them prosper and become Bob's friends.

So as Bob grows, his friends are also growing in power.
His "just two shots" request remains the same, but its power grows as does the power of his friends. Soon those "two shots" include some Magic Missiles, Sneak Attacks, Smite Evil or similar support, and can take down bigger threats.

All dragons gain abilities as Sorcerors, and the familiarity with magic that comes with it.
And all dragons have Knowledge: Arcana as 'class skills', and dragons get 6 skill ranks per hit die. So It is likely that Bob has some ranks in Knowledge Arcana.
Therefore it is arguable that he should be able to teach what he knows - in this case, magic.

So any of Bob's friends who have 11 intelligence or higher could be taught as wizards if they wish (which would give Bob whole new things to talk about at length).
This is advantageous to both Bob and them. They need not go adventuring, though they can if they wish.

Such of Bob's friends as learn a level of wizard gain a spell or two (or more if they have high intelligence and pursue more levels), which can greatly help them in their ordinary lives.
Picture a blacksmith who has Endure Elements. Or a glassblower or desert scout for that matter.
Picture a farmer who can cast Mount to help plow his fields. He need not feed nor care for the beast, but gains its effort daily.
Picture an orchard owner who no longer has to haul a ladder around to pick the highest fruit on his trees - he just casts Unseen Servant to do it.
And anyone could save time cleaning things by casting Prestidigitation.

Bob has one condition on this teaching - he will teach those who are willing, every other day, to have one combat spell (non-cantrip) such as Magic Missile ready for defending the town (which includes defending Bob).
For those with 11 intelligence, this means using their 1st level spells for useful work only every other day, which is still a huge advantage.
For those with a 12 or better intelligence, their bonus spell can cover that obligation and leave them a useful spell every day.

Massed Magic Missiles can do a scary amount of damage.
So the town (and Bob) are now much better defended.

Similarly it is in Bob's interests to pay for promising young people to be trained as clerics, even if they can never advance far in that line. Having a bunch of people in your growing town who can cast Cure Light Wounds once a day is a transformative thing. It changes things all out of proportion to the investment it took.

This is even more true if they can choose the right clerical domains. Several of the domains allow the cleric to command animals or monsters of certain sorts just as evil clerics command undead. Seat them on a fast horse so they can get away if it doesn't work, and basically take 20 on the check to command something. Eventually most clerics will succeed, even without any bonuses, if they are not aiming too high (ie, trying to get a particularly powerful target).
Such commanded creatures can be helpful in combat.
But arguably they can be more helpful in other ways.
Giant spiders, common in the desert, commanded in this way can weave webs as you like, resulting in a silk and weaving industry.
Snakes and scorpions can be milked for poison, to be used in alchemy or as combat enhancers (your "just two shots" have more effect when every javelin in the armory has a blob of poison on the tip, covered by bees wax to keep it safer).
And there are many types of plants, elementals, animals, and vermin which can be commanded and used for primarily economic pursuits.

These clerics can also cast other useful things, such as the Create Water cantrip.

Half dragons exist, and while Bob isn't going to rape anyone like evil dragons would, it is possible he will fall in love with someone, get married and have offspring, especially after he reaches the age necessary to get Alternate Form and seem human.

And whether Bob does or not, some brass dragons will have a number of half-dragons living in their community, as well as the sorcerors descended from other half-dragons.
All of these are family, and treated as such, and so quite protective of their dragon friend and ancestor.
This greatly helps the combat power of the town or city that Bob's village has grown into.

Bob will almost certainly have a de-facto leadership role in this town or city, no matter how it is officially ruled, simply because it is a fact of human nature to recognize real power in such ways. Bob has real power: from being a dragon, from having a hoard of useful magic items, from having many friends including some powerful individuals.
This will tend to keep the town good aligned - any evil folks will find themselves opposed by Bob's potent forces.
Evil shopkeepers trying to shortchange folks or sell shoddy goods will sooner or later offend one of Bob's friends, even if he is no more proactive than that. They will get spoken to, warned, and eventually will change their ways, get driven out, or eaten.
Evil folks striving to take over so they can have power to oppress others will speedily meet with forceful opposition, since Bob looks out for his friends, and he and his friends work together and like to help others.

Eventually this prosperous place will grow into all kinds of potentials.
There may be glass houses, with mirrored roofs and smoked-glass walls to keep out excess sunlight.
Or maybe many of the glass blocks will be colored, or shaped as prisms in order to have cheerful colors everywhere and play with the light.
Maybe, in playing with mirrors, they will discover fun-house style distorted mirrors, and try things like making buildings look much bigger, or much smaller, than they really are.
Maybe the cities will be mostly underground, lined with glass that both holds up the walls and pipes in as much sunlight (possibly colored in festive ways) as is desired.
Maybe they will even have underground greenhouses or ranches.
Maybe they will seal the greenhouses to prevent the escape of water, add a lot of water, and end up with tropical rainforests in or under the desert, with internal rainstorms several times daily due to condensation.
Some would be surrounded by dry moats and walls. Some would find ways to fill the moat with water (and maybe defensive monsters or fish living in it). Some would find ways to fill their moats with that extremely fine dust that flows like water but looks like solid ground (from the Sandstorm supplement), and thus have moats that acted as quicksand.

Bob's hoard would contain a high proportion of useful things and would get loaned out to friends at need.
So his cities could be defended by half-dragon fighters, with dragonbone bows, dragonleather armor granting them resistance to fire and heat, and spears tipped with dragon fangs or dragon claws.
They'd be backed by an unusually high proportion of wizards, sorcerors and clerics as mentioned previously.
They'd be assisted at need by some higher level types who chose to live here and became Bob's friends, or who even got their start as adventurers with Bob's help and came back here to retire once they'd reached the level of success they wanted.
Some of these would have their own animal companions, familiars, commanded creatures, constructs etc.
Things like Lyre's of Building and Decanters of Endless Water, not to mention simple things like numerous Continual Light spells on streetlamps, would make it a rich and fantastic place.

With all those alchemists and all that glass, maybe they'd even try things like glass arrows.
Glass weighs about 100 pounds per cubic foot, 60% what oak does (168 pounds), and could arguably stand the force of firing but shatter on impact, embedding fragments in the target. This hasn't been done in the real world since such arrows would be used up in one shot (assuming they worked) and glass is expensive. But arrows in D&D are used up in one shot anyway, so who knows what folks would experiment with and discover.
The point is that they have resources and prosperity and could stockpile things that work, like alchemists's fire, and experiment to find what else may work.

Those who came to try to steal such a town's wealth would have a serious fight on their hands, even just from minions such as animated skeletons (animated as sources of free labor but also useful when orc armies attack). Not all good-aligned types would animate skeletons, but some would think that a tool is no more good nor evil than what you use it for, so go ahead. Plus in some editions, skeletons have been neutral-aligned.

When Bob grows a size category, he can either work to dig new wider tunnels, or maybe he will choose to start over in a new town (and come visit the old one often too - he has friends there).
This could lead to networks of such towns, all allied under the protection of one dragon, or even families of dragons.
And Bob and his immediate relatives are not the only brass dragons. With other brass dragons, we could get kingdoms of glass cities.
Good-aligned creatures work well with others.

TL;DR you miss out on stuff when you are unwilling to read except in small chunks. And dragons are cool.

[Gavinfoxx]

Personally, I always consider the 'highly social' dragons kind of a breed apart in general. You know, Steel, Brass, Mercury, and Song, and I suppose Silver (though Silver is borderline). They're the ones that you'd most find living in villages or towns with humans and the other 'civilized' races, whether they can shapeshift or not.

[Particle_Man]

Ok, but Blue dragons can do alliances and organization too, and as Lawful creatures might be better at it.

[Palanan]

This really is one hella wall of text. When your post is just shy of 4000 words, it helps everyone to break it into sections, ideally with subheadings.



That said, there are some interesting ideas in here, but also some assumptions that might not work as well in practice.

First of these being, in a desert or arid waste—already harsh environments, and extremely difficult to survive in—adding dragons to those environments makes it much less likely there will be any villages to begin with. This is especially true if the dragons were present long before humans or related races arrived.

Also, as Particle_Man points out, there's nothing to stop the blues from organizing as well, especially if they trade their services to a militaristic humanoid society interested in expanding into desert regions.

As for the specific services a brass could provide—their breath weapon isn't continual, so it would be difficult to maintain a constant temperature, which is important for both metallurgy and glasswork.

And a burrow speed means the creature can move through a medium, but not necessarily excavate it. Especially in sand, which will likely collapse directly behind a burrowing dragon.

[Gavinfoxx]

You also find Brown Dragons in deserts as well, not just Blue and Brass.

[Beldar]

I'll take just a moment for a couple bits of further explanation.

Modern steelworking and glasswork control everything, including temperature, with precision, for maximum output.
But have you ever seen medieval-style blacksmithing done? I have.
The smith builds up the fire, pumps the bellows to get it hotter, and shoves the end of the piece he is working on into it. He waits while the workpiece heats up, watching its color and pumping the bellows as needed.
When it looks right, he pulls it out, moves it above the anvil, and gives it a few blows until it needs heating again.
Then he shoves it back into the fire, waiting and pumping the bellows as needed to get the temperature high enough again.
This repeates until it is done.
This is not a primer on blacksmithing - I've left out a lot of details.
But the point is that the work-piece heats up at whatever speed it will, then as it gets worked on, it goes through many periodic cycles of heating in the forge then cooling as it gets beaten on.
The dragon breathes fire every d4+1 rounds. 2-5 rounds is 12-30 seconds. I don't believe I have ever seen a blacksmith put the workpiece back into the forge within 30 seconds of having taken it out - it takes a bit longer to position it right for each blow, then get in a few blows.
So periodic heating by dragon should be more than adequate, probably better than the forge does, in fact.

Glass blowing was similar - heat it enough at your heat source, then take out the blob of glass and work it until it cools too much, then heat again and repeat.

Also, do not mistake "burrow" for "Earth Glide" the magic ability that xorns and a few other creatures have to swim through earth as though it was water, leaving no tunnel behind.
Burrow simpky means they dig, and do so fast enough to have a measurable movement speed through dirt.
All the real-life burrowing creatures I can think of do with the dirt as they please - meaning they leave a tunnel if they wish (the default) or fill it in again if they prefer (like prairie dogs, gophers and similar occasionally do to fill in tunnel entraces to keep things out).

As for tunnels collapsing, the dragon has many skill ranks available to spend. A couple ranks in Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering should give him plenty of ideas on how to shore things up as needed in varying conditions.
We had mines, tunnels, dug-out homes etc hundreds and even thousands of years ago and managed to shore them up successfully using technology that's available in a D&D setting. The dragon can do all of that, plus fuse things into glass.
He should have no problem.

As for the specific objection of tunneling through sand...
True, sand will not stay up, but flows around immediately when dug (Unless it is wet. Look at some of those beach sandcastles and the amazing things they do there. wet sand can hold its shape long enough to be fused, but the dragon can only get it sufficiently wet later, when he gets a decanter of endless water, so leave that aside for now).
There are still techniques for handling this situation.

For instance, choose a nice spot of sand, flatten it, then melt it to glass.
Then once it has cooled enough to keep its shape, dig under it.
Dig more under one side than the other, so as it settles into the space you dig out, it settles at an angle.
Do several passes and end up steepening that angle until it is 90 degrees - now it is a wall.
Make another wall similarly, then more to match the building shape you desire. Then bury it all (it mostly is already, since the sand flows around easily and will fill in areas it can) so nothing moves, then fuse a roof onto it all, not just providing something above to keep out sand, but also linking the walls and providing structural integrity.
Then dig it all out, fuse a floor if you wish, and Viola!, you have a house built of thck glass, in a sand dune, covered by sand as much as you wish (until the wind blows, then the covering will be as the wind determines - some standalone retaining walls can help with that later, after you learn where they are needed).

As for "the blue dragon can do all this too": yes, but not as well, and therefore this is an advantage to the brass dragon.
Why not as well?

The brass dragon is making friends because it likes people (especially talking to them). It is good aligned, so it offers gifts (such as the various services I mentioned) and reciprocal agreements. He gives folks reasons to want to work with him. He does not force them.
He is chaotic, so doesn't fuss about carefully spelled out laws, but even still, a deal is a deal (ie, he'd do a verbal summary of the gist of something, and seal it with a handshake rather than spelling out everything in a long contract, but either way it's a deal).

The blue dragon is evil aligned, he can get minions or slaves by threats, bribes, promisies (which he won't keep any more than he has to) and similar. But nobody wants to be friends with evil, because evil takes pleasure in harming others - ALL others. Nobody is immune (though many dearly love to hope they would be). All around him Will be abused to greater or lesser extent.
That limits the extent of the value he will get from his minions.
Just think - if you have an absolute jerk of a boss at work, and he asks you to do something inconvenient, would'nt most of us react by thinking of ways to dodge it if we could (ie, "Oh, sorry I missed your page - my battery was dead" or "Oh, I can't do that then, I have a dentists appointment" etc etc.).
And thats just the tip of the iceberg. If he's been mean to you, many of us would be mean back (in whatever ways we think we can get away with). For example, go ahead and proofread his presentation as he asked you, yet 'accidentally' miss the same typo he did, so he gets a little bit of public embarrassment, etc.
Or neglect to tell him that the toilet is backed up, in hopes it causes him grief.
And on and on and on.

Hitler, for example, got absolutely lousy service from his slaves (because he was far worse than a world-class jerk). The enslaved factory workers would frequently do things like knock the teeth off of gears, then weld them back on and grind the weld flush. So it looked fine and would pass inspection (that's the "getting away with it" part) but when that engine or transmission was put under stress by actual use, the tooth would come out, the gear would strip, and the engine may seize up and potentially be a total loss.

Evil can get service out of its minions, but only as much as they can enforce. And even that may be sabotaged in subtle ways.

On the other hand, for a friend, you will go above and beyond simple duty, because they are your friend and would do the same for you. You may even voluntarily risk your personal well-being for them, unasked, if you think the situation justifies it.
Good poeple will do things like help a friend move at 2 am in -5 degree weather in a snowstorm, even though you have to get up early for work the next day, because the friend is in need and the situation demands it (if that example seems oddly specific, it's because a couple of us did exactly that).
Would I have done that for my jerk of a boss (even if he said my job required it). No. I'd have had a plumbing emergency of my own, or some other excuse.

That is why the blue dragon is at a disadvantage here. He is evil.
Sure, he is also lawful, but that just means he is organized and has rules, and enforces them. Think Mafia or Yakuza for examples of Lawful Evil - they ignore society's rules, but strictly live their own, including things like voluntarily cutting off your own finger when the mob boss demands it to punish you for something.
All his lawful alignment means is that his minions - beyond being weighed down by his evil (he oppresses them when and how he feels like it), but also by a long list of rules, possibly to the point (he IS evil) of "everything that isn't required is forbidden".
No, a Lawful alignment, when combined with an evil alignment, is another problem, not a bonus or mitigating factor.


Note also I am not saying that all brass dragons would defeat all blue dragons, or that this is a complete primer on how to defeat blue dragons or anything of the sort.
I am only saying that, given the conditions they state in the rules, I could see a response such as this developing more often than not.

I offer it, not for your approval as a sort of a stand-in DM, but only because, having written it for our game group's use, I thought maybe some of the rest of you would find it useful.

[Goaty14]

Well sure, but you're making an awful lot of assumptions in saying all of this. To name a few kinks in our favorite Brass Dragon's master plan:
-That there's a Blue Dragon nearby he has to compete with, for starters.
-That he's not also a haughty aloof jerk, which is also something in dragon lore
-That the town of humanoids he finds will gladly accept him as one of their own, and that a great and mighty dragon such as he would stoop to such lows!
-That alignment works exactly how you think it does (Fact: No two opinions about alignment are alike!)

Here's a question: If a Wyrmling Brass Dragon can have a whole town of humanoids at their disposal because their fluff text says they like making friends, is my Lvl 1 Half Elf Bard/Binder/Warlock best friends with a Demon Lord because I wrote it into his backstory that he likes befriending demons? :smallamused:

It particularly hurtsl to see how incompetent you think the opposing Blue Dragon is. Like c'mon, the statblock just says "Evil" and you've already compared it to Hitler?! You mean there's no opportunity that it finds an ally that shares goals, no impressionable mooks to intimidate into service, no dragon cults to become center of, no creatures that are just happy to serve someone bigger than them? That's just the easy stuff I can take from the top of my head too, mind. If being evil really is such an all-around-bad situation, then how do evil deities exist? Is everyone just too dumb to worship a good deity, or could there really be something that they can gain from obeying an evil being greater than them?

[Palanan]

OP, you have an interesting premise, and I think the idea of a wyrmling/human partnership has merit, but there may be some practical issues with the examples given here.



Originally Posted by Beldar
He waits while the workpiece heats up, watching its color and pumping the bellows as needed.

…Then he shoves it back into the fire, waiting and pumping the bellows as needed to get the temperature high enough again.

This sounds like the blacksmith has very fine control over his temperature, due to many years of apprenticeship and work experience. I’m not convinced a blacksmith would want to hand over this control to a creature that doesn’t have those many years of apprenticeship and experience.


Originally Posted by Beldar
All the real-life burrowing creatures I can think of do with the dirt as they please - meaning they leave a tunnel if they wish (the default) or fill it in again if they prefer (like prairie dogs, gophers and similar occasionally do to fill in tunnel entraces to keep things out).

Prairie dogs and gophers tend to live in temperate climates with firmer soils. The habitat specified here is desert, and while there are certainly rocky deserts and icy deserts, the assumption here is a hot desert with “lots of sand.”

For burrowing in sand, a better example is the pink fairy armadillo, which is able to “swim” through sand. But it can’t make tunnels through this medium, because the sand fills in behind it as the fairy armadillo swims along. That's going to hold true for a wyrmling as well.


Originally Posted by Beldar
A couple ranks in Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering should give him plenty of ideas on how to shore things up as needed in varying conditions.

Given that this is a desert, where is a dragon going to get the materials to “shore things up”?

And how is a wyrmling in a desert going to learn anything about architecture? That seems like quite a stretch.


Originally Posted by Beldar
For instance, choose a nice spot of sand, flatten it, then melt it to glass.

If you’re trying to melt sand into a section of glass, you’ll need some sort of mold. Otherwise you’ll just get a drippy mess as the molten sand trickles down through the unmelted glass below.


Originally Posted by Beldar
It is good aligned, so it offers gifts (such as the various services I mentioned)….

The basic concept has promise, but I think the services you’re describing may not be that useful to the people the dragon wants to be friendly with.

Blacksmiths in small communities like this tend to have a lot of prestige, and I can’t imagine that most blacksmiths would want to share that with some random oddball creature. And I don’t think the glass concept will work out that well.

What the chatty and chaotic little dragon can help with is delivering messages over a wide area. Communication through nonmagical means is a challenge for any small, isolated community, and more so for those trying to survive in a desert. Having a small dragon shuttling messages back and forth could be a tremendous help, because communication that took days or weeks now takes just hours. And it’s a perfect fit for the dragon, because he gets to be flitting all over the place and sharing information, which fits “chatty and chaotic” to a T.

He can also be useful as an aerial scout, watching for both allies and possible intruders, as well as searching for any game and keeping an eye on the weather. And, if he's feeling especially good-aligned, he might even be able to help if a blue wyrmling comes by. He has 150% of the blue's flight speed, and while it's not guaranteed, he could give a middle wingclaw to the blue and lure it away from the settlement, outracing the blue and leading it on a wild draco-goose chase before giving it the slip and circling back. That's a little riskier than just watching for bandits, but leading hostile dragons astray would certainly endear him to the community.

[Particle_Man]

Also, in defence of the blue dragons, when The OP says "Think Mafia or Yakuza for examples of Lawful Evil", I don't see how that makes the blue dragon's organization weak. The Mafia and Yakuza and active, dangerous and organized. They are notoriously difficult to deal with, especially in their countries of origin. A Blue dragon organizing something similar around its home base would be terrifying.

[Remuko]

Evil can be nice and have friends and love. Evil isn't this comically mustache-twirling as you're suggesting.

[liquidformat]

If you’re trying to melt sand into a section of glass, you’ll need some sort of mold. Otherwise you’ll just get a drippy mess as the molten sand trickles down through the unmelted glass below.


This really isn't accurate and doesn't hold up at all. Molten glass is very viscus and doesn't flow very well. You are making a bad assumption that there is a lot of 'air space' between the grains of sand to flow through which is rarely true (there are some weird cases where you can get super aerated quick sand but those are odd edge cases). Finally, with so much surface area the rate of heat dissipation is quite quick. You put this all together in conjunction with a breath weapon which is a very quick and sudden burst of fire (assuming it is hot enough to melt the sand to begin with) and you end up with a thin layer of molten glass being created then quickly mixing with the sand just below it (we are talking millimeters here) before it hardens into a thin crust of sandy glass.

Even in a situation where you had a prolonged flame melting a large area of sand into glass the bottom would quickly create said sandy crust and you would end up with a pooling effect where as you heat the top it continues to slowly melt deeper and deeper. Once you stop heating it the bottom cools and solidifies the fastest so you end up with a piece of glass staying at the top not some weird trickled glass running deep into the sand.

The only time you get such a trickled glass is when lighting strikes a sandy area, however, in that case it is because of the discharge of the lighting not the 'trickling' of the molten sand...