Dragon, Earthquake

Earthquake Dragon

Earthquake 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.

Earthquake dragons are slow moving and slow thinking (“the slow child of a treant and galeb duhr” goes the saying). They aren’t the brightest of the catastrophic dragons, but they are by no means stupid; they are still able to outsmart most humans. They also have slow tempers to go with their slow actions. On the plus side, they’re slow to anger, but they’re also slow to forgive, or forget. In fact, the chant goes that the only creatures able to hold grudges longer than earthquake dragons are fiends and powers themselves.

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

COMBAT: While earthquake 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 catastrophic 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 earthquake 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 earthquake dragon casts spells and uses its magical abilities at 13th-level plus its combat modifier.
• Earthquake 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: Earthquake 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. And often they are creating catastrophes.

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

Of all the Outer Planes, earthquake 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 enforced religiosity 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 that is unknown.

ECOLOGY: Earthquake dragons have little need for sustenance or even air. They survive on eating stones, even better if they are flavoured with metal ores. Earthquake dragon tunnels would be an excellent way of navigating the otherwise-solid Plane of Earth, provided the earthquake dragon isn’t still in them. Although since the Earth Plane “heals” itself fairly rapidly, this can be a risky proposition…

When comes the time for reproduction, earthquake dragons stir in an unusual manner. They tunnel through the Plane until they locate a portal or a vortex to the Prime Material Plane. These vortices usually open deep beneath the earth, perfect for their needs. The presence of an earthquake dragon causes earthquakes to happen even in seismically inactive areas. First they are but small tremors, but then they become more and more powerful and frequent. When this natural disaster reaches its peak, the earthquake dragon bursts forth from the surface and starts demolishing everything they see around them. Boulders fly everywhere, destruction ensues—everything that makes a Sinker giggle. Once the dragon has quenched its thirst for destruction, it leaves, but a brown, bumpy egg stays behind deep underground. A solitary wyrmling grows, feeding on minerals and underground creatures, until it can succesfully travel back to the Plane of Earth.

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, Margarita and Jon Winter-Holt. Canonwatch: this elemental dragon used to be simply called ‘earth dragon’ . We made a decision to combine those homebrew dragons with catastrophic dragons from 4e, who were named after natural disasters and other calamities.