Dragon, Quasi-Elemental Vacuum
Dragon, Quasi-Elemental Vacuum

Dragon, Quasi-Elemental Vacuum

Quasi-Elemental Vacuum Dragon

CLIMATE/TERRAIN:Quasi-Elemental Plane of Vacuum, Wildspace
FREQUENCY:Very Rare
ORGANISATION:Solitary
ACTIVITY CYCLE:Any
DIET:Special
INTELLIGENCE:Genius (17-18)
TREASURE:See below
ALIGNMENT:Any
NO. APPEARING:1 (2-5)
ARMOUR CLASS:-5 (base)
MOVEMENT:12, Fly 40 (B), Jump 3
HIT DICE:17 (base)
THAC0:4 (at 17 HD)
NO. OF ATTACKS:3+ special
DAMAGE/ATTACK:3d4 / 3d4 / 6d10
SPECIAL ATTACKS:See below
SPECIAL DEFENCES:See below
MAGIC RESISTANCE:See below
SIZE:G (50′ base)
MORALE:Fanatic (17-18)
XP VALUE:See below
AD&D 2e statistics

Vacuum dragons are an enigma. See berk, no one’s really sure if they actually exist or not. Oh sure, they’re the barmy in the Gatehouse who rambles on about them, there’s the Dustman who always talks about his friend “Harvey the Vacuum Dragon”, and there’s even the Guvner who’s supposedly found the loophole that lets these creatures exist. All this material here is just conjecture and hearsay, but it very well could be right, if enough people believed it.

The trouble with vacuum dragons is that you can’t see them. They’re about as easy to spot as a yugoloth’s morals. They don’t radiate no heat for infravision and detect invisibility only lets you know that there is something there, not the form of it. A few bloods have tried using a wish to see what they look like. Last one that did that, well, let’s just say he’s enjoying the Bleaker’s hospitality about now.

Seeing as how most other elemental dragons can speak other languages, it would make sense that these ones could too. They speak the language common to all elemental dragons and at birth have a 21% chance of speaking any known language. This chance increases by 6% each age category.

COMBAT: Well, if anything is known about these enigmatic beasts, it is that they can fight. Once a group of powerful bloods went looking for one of these things. No one heard from them for over a year, until a portal opened and bits and pieces of bodies came spilling through a portal into some fiendish kitchen in the Hive ward. Only one of the bodies was intact enough to identify it, although the Hardheads are still wondering what happened to the berk’s arm (chant goes a fiend ate it while no one was looking).

BREATH WEAPON/SPECIAL ABILITIES: A vacuum dragon doesn’t have a breath weapon, per se, rather, it has what can best be described as an anti-breath weapon. The attack sucks all breathable material out of a 60′ diameter. Berks can keep the air (or whatever) in their lungs (or whatever) if they pass a saving throw vs. breath weapon. If they fail, they are rendered helpless for the next 1d4 rounds while they gasp for air. If they pass, they suffer 2d4 points of damage due to the strain of trying to hold in the air. Creatures that don’t need to breath, such as undead and golems, are unaffected by this attack.

  • Vacuum dragons cast spells and use their magical abilities at 15th-level plus their combat modifiers.
  • Vacuum dragons are born immune to energy draining, cold, and air attacks.
  • Vacuum dragons are born with the ability to steal breath. This attack requires a successful to hit roll on a target, ignoring any armour. If successful, the victim must roll a successful save vs. death magic, or die from suffocation.
  • As they age, they gain the following abilities: Very Young: Void wall (the opposite of wall of fog) at will. Young Adult: Steal wind (reverse of gust of wind) three times per day. Mature Adult: Vacuum wall (reverse of wind wall) three times per day. Very Old: Control vacuum (similar to control weather, except it allows varying sizes of vacuums) three times per day. Wyrm: Summon void mephit at will.

HABITAT/SOCIETY: Not much is known about vacuum dragons. Presumably, they are some of the rarest creatures on the planes, perhaps they don’t even exist. Speculatively, they are loners, rarely leaving their home plane, and even then, only going to remote, empty regions of wildspace or other elemental planes.

Vacuum dragons’ alignment in relation to law/chaos is all most exclusively neutral (70%), with occasional lawful or chaotic bends (15% each). It seems that almost every (98%) of vacuum dragons are neutral, with the others (2%) being evil. Strangely, no good vacuum dragon has ever been reported.

ECOLOGY: Vacuum dragons do not eat. They subsist on nothing, literally. The presence of too much material will slowly cause them to starve. This is supposedly why they keep no treasure; the nearness of it would starve them.

Age CategoryBody (‘)Tail (‘)ACBreath WeaponWizard/Priest SpellsMRTreasureXP Value
17-207-170n/aNilNilNil15,000
220-3217-29-1n/aNilNilNil18,000
332-4429-39-2n/aNil45%Nil19,000
444-5639-51-3n/a150%Nil20,000
556-7351-61-4n/a255%Nil22,000
673-8661-71-5n/a2 260%Nil23,000
786-9971-85-6n/a2 2 265%Nil24,000
899-11285-96-7n/a2 2 2 2 / 170%Nil25,000
9112-12696-109-8n/a2 2 2 2 2 / 2 275%Nil27,000
10126-140109-121-9n/a2 2 2 2 2 2 / 2 280%Nil28,000
11140-154121-134-10n/a2 2 2 2 2 2 2 / 2 2 285%Nil29,000
12154-168134-147-12n/a2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 / 2 2 2 290%Nil31,000

Source: John Kastronis, Jon Winter-Holt

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