Dragon, Tornado

Tornado Dragon

Also known as air dragon, hurricane dragon

The smallest of all catastrophic dragons, tornado dragons are perhaps the most tenacious as well. They are incredibly quick of wit, and can come up with a solution to near any problem. They know how to use their speed, spells, and abilities to overcome nearly any situation.

Tornado dragons cannot normally be seen. They are all but invisible to the naked eye, and they radiate no heat, making them invisible to infravision too. A cutter can perceive a general outline of one if he concentrates hard (and the dragon isn’t moving) for several minutes. If magically viewed (through detect invisibility or similar spells), the dragon will appear as a glass-clear mist dragon.

Tornado dragons speak their own tongue, the language of air elementals, and a language common to all catastrophic dragons. They have a 17% chance of understanding any sentient tongue at birth. This chance increases by 6% per age category.

COMBAT: Tornado dragons know how to employ their natural talents to the best of their abilities. They seem to have the uncanny ability to anticipate the actions of their enemies, perhaps stemming from their great intelligence. While not terribly physically challenging (compared with other dragons, that is!), tornado dragons can make mean opponents, especially when they can’t be seen.

BREATH WEAPON/SPECIAL ABILITIES: A tornado dragon’s breath weapon is a funnel of wind that is 5′ wide at the base, 30′ wide at the end, and extends 60′ forward. Creatures caught in the funnel are picked up off the ground and thrown 6d10 feet up into the air, and up to 4d20 feet backwards, taking any falling damage that may occur as a side result (as well as damage from slamming into objects behind them). Creatures who pass their save vs. breath weapon are merely knocked to the ground and stunned for one round, after which they may get back up.

When on the Plane of Air and away from solid surfaces or gravity, a victim of a tornado dragon’s breath weapon is liable to be blown many miles away. There’s nothing to stop his fall and the wind envelope isn’t slowed easily either. Air dragons usually use this as a convenient time to escape.

• A tornado dragon casts spells and uses its magical abilities at 16th level plus its combat modifier.
• Tornado dragons are born immune to air- and wind-affecting spells and abilities (such as control weather, and wall of wind) and energy-draining. They take half damage from electricity and cold.
• Unless detected magically, tornado dragons are invisible to most creatures. Air dragons can alsodetect invisibility as per the wizard spell at will.
• As they age, they gain the following abilities: Very Young: Wall of fog at will. Young Adult: Gust of wind three times per day. Mature Adult: Wind wall three times per day. Very Old: Control weather three times per day. Wyrm: Summon air elemental three times per day. Great Wyrm: Incendiary cloud three times per day.

HABITAT/SOCIETY: Tornado dragons, like all other catastrophic dragons, very rarely leave their home plane. When they are encountered on other planes, they are usually found living amongst cloud or storm giant castles, or with cloud dragons, or in their own clouds. Tornado dragons are known to get on well with the mortai of the Beastlands, though dwelling as far apart as they do, encounters between the two races are rare. It is said that tornado dragons come from those dragons, who allied with Akadi in the Dawn War.

Any treasure an tornado dragon might acquire is usually kept well hidden in a nest-like construction of steel-strong gossamer thread. These semi-transparent objects look more like large eggs than anything, and their owners take great care in hiding them in inaccessible (to non-tornado dragons) locations on the plane, such as inside, well, tornadoes.

Many (55%) tornado dragons are neutral. The remaining are either good (25%) or evil (20%). Similarly, the majority of air dragons (60%) are neutral, while the rest are usually chaotic (35%). Only a very few are lawful in alignment (5%).

ECOLOGY: As far as can be determined, tornado dragons survive on particles in the air, or on pure air itself. They never seem to consume anything solid, at least. Like other catastrophic dragons, they get the urge to reproduce by sewing chaos on other planes. In this case it’s devastating tornadoes and hurricanes, that leave behind not only devastated settlements, but also bluish tornado dragon eggs.

A few major hurricanes have been attributed to tornado dragon influence; though only one of these can actually be confirmed as having been caused by an tornado dragon. Chant tells, however, of a burg deep in the Plane of Air called Bellows. Apparently, it’s infested with tornado dragons who work in teams to pump a colossal set of bellows made from spider webs and giant hair. The great gusts of wind emitted by this weird contraption stir up the Plane of Air and keep it fresh and breezy. If they pump hard enough, the dragons can create storms which blow across the Ethereal and into the Prime too. So the chant goes, at least…

Occasionally, visitors to the Elemental Plane of Air have seen tornado dragons and air elementals in physical contact with one another. The exact reason or effects of this union have not been found, and there is very little solid evidence to theorise upon.

Age Category	Body (‘)	Tail (‘)	AC	Wizard/Priest Spells	MR	Treasure	XP Value
1	3-6	2-5	-2	Nil	Nil	Nil	18,000
2	6-14	5-12	-3	Nil	Nil	Nil	19,000
3	14-22	12-18	-4	1	30%	E, R	20,000
4	22-31	18-24	-5	2	35%	H, R	22,000
5	31-41	24-34	-6	2 2	40%	H, R	23,000
6	41-52	34-44	-7	2 2 2	45%	H, R	24,000
7	52-64	44-54	-8	2 2 2 / 1	50%	H, Rx2	25,000
8	64-77	54-64	-9	2 2 2 2 / 2	55%	H, Rx2	27,000
9	77-91	64-74	-10	2 2 2 2 2 / 2 2	60%	H, Rx3	28,000
10	91-105	74-84	-11	2 2 2 2 2 2 / 2 2 2	65%	H, Rx3	29,000
11	105-121	84-94	-12	2 2 2 2 2 2 2 / 2 2 2 2	70%	H, Rx4	31,000
12	121-138	94-104	-13	3 3 3 3 2 2 2 / 3 3 2 2	75%	H, Rx4	33,000

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