Dragon, Elemental Earth

Elemental Earth Dragon

Earth dragons are slow, lumbering creatures. They look like a cross between a brown dragon and an earth elemental. At first glance, they could even be mistaken for statues, until a person sees the dragon’s eyes following them around, and its muscles gently rippling across its body.

Earth dragons are slow moving and slow thinking (“slow as a treant and galeb duhr combined” goes the saying). They aren’t the brightest of the elemental dragons, but they are by no means stupid; they are still able to outsmart most humans. They have slow tempers to go with their slow action. Happily, they’re are slow to anger, but they’re also slow to forgive or forget. In fact, the only creatures to hold grudges longer than earth dragons are fiends and powers themselves.

Earth dragons speak their own tongue, as well as the tongues of earth elementals and that common to all elemental dragons. At birth, 10% of earth dragons can speak with any intelligent creature. This chance goes up by 3% per age category.

COMBAT: While earth dragons are slow and not manoeuvrable, they more than make up for in physical power what they lack in speed and wit. Perhaps the most physically imposing of all the elemental dragons, they can inflict massive damage with their claws and bite. They can also make use of their innate spell abilities and breath weapon when needed, but the prefer to fight claw to hand.

BREATH WEAPON/SPECIAL ABILITIES: An earth dragon’s breath weapon is a cloud-like spray of rock shards and fragments that is 50′ long, 40′ wide, and 30′ high. Creatures caught in the cloud must save vs. breath weapon or be turned to stone. Creatures who save suffer 1d20 points of damage from sharp edges and pebbles.

• An earth dragon casts spells and uses its magical abilities at 13th-level plus its combat modifier.
• Earth dragons are born immune to energy draining, stoning, fire, and cold. They can also meld with stone at will.
• As they age, they gain the following abilities: Very Young: Create earth at will. Young Adult: Transmute rock to mud three times per day. Mature Adult: Move earth three times per day. Very Old: Stone shape three times per day. Wyrm: Summon earth elemental three times per day. Great Wyrm: Disintegrate three times per day.

HABITAT/SOCIETY: Earth dragons, like all other elemental dragons, very rarely leave their home plane. When they are encountered on other planes, they are usually found living in (via their meld with stone ability) mountains. Sometimes they can be found in deep caverns.

Nearly all (90%) of earth dragons are neutral. There is an equal (5%) chance that they are either evil or good. All earth dragons are neutral in relation to law and chaos.

Of all the Outer Planes, earth dragons are drawn to the mountains of Gehenna and Mount Olympus itself; there are said to be at least half a dozen earth dragons dwelling on the slopes of the plane-spanning pathway. The creatures aren’t known on Mount Celestia; presumably they find the atmosphere of Lawful Goodness too oppressive. Chant also goes that a great wyrm named Gor’rok dwells at the foot of the Spire itself, gnawing away at the great pillar of stone. What the rilmani think of this is unknown.

ECOLOGY: Earth dragons have little need for sustenance. They survive on eating stones and metals. Earth dragon tunnels are a good way of navigating the otherwise-solid Plane of Earth, provided the earth dragon isn’t still in them. Since the Earth Plane “heals” itself fairly rapidly, this is often a risky proposition…

Age Category	Body (‘)	Tail (‘)	AC	Wizard/Priest Spells	MR	Treasure	XP Value
1	18-30	17-28	-3	Nil	Nil	Nil	18,000
2	30-42	28-39	-4	Nil	Nil	Nil	19,000
3	42-54	39-49	-5	Nil	20%	H, Q	20,000
4	54-61	49-61	-6	Nil	25%	H, Qx2, E	22,000
5	61-78	61-71	-7	Nil	30%	H, Qx3, E, S	23,000
6	78-91	71-81	-8	Nil	35%	Hx2, Qx4, E, S	24,000
7	91-104	81-95	-9	2	40%	Hx2, Qx4, E, S, T	25,000
8	104-117	95-106	-10	2 2	45%	Hx3, Qx5, E, S, T	27,000
9	117-131	106-119	-11	2 2 2 / 1	50%	Hx3, Q, E, S, T, U	28,000
10	131-145	119-131	-12	2 2 2 2 / 2	55%	Hx3, Q, E, S, T, U, V	29,000
11	145-159	131-144	-13	2 2 2 2 2 / 2 2	60%	Hx4, Q, E, S, T, U, V	31,000
12	159-173	144-157	-14	2 2 2 2 2 2 2 / 2 2 2	65%	Hx4, Q, E, S, T, U, V	33,000

Source: John Kastronis and Jon Winter-Holt