Safely across Brightstar lake, I looked with sadness at the distant shore of the nation
of Semphar, which I has always wanted to see, but now I was so close to it,
I knew there was simply no way I could make my way over there and survive,
plus, I had very unexpected company now in the form of a long, serpentine Jade dragon
named Gryxlgarandyl who had hunted me down as a favor to my great uncle Trazquenyobar
in order to transport me from brightstar lake all the way to the Sea of Fallen stars and from there,
well, we headed underwater to a secret location in the nations of Seros and a magic portal that led
directly back to candlekeep, but I can't tell you much more about that for obvious reasons.
Jade dragons are another of the so-called Neutral true dragons, they speak their own language and
generally avoid the company of annoying little humanoids. I was informed by Gryxlgarandyl that
I was in no danger of being eaten, but that he was there only to repay a debt to my great uncle and
was not interested in conversing with me, I was simply to shut up and not bother him as he took
me rapidly through the water all the way from one mouth of the Ruathenflow river to the other
and down to the portal site in the Sea of Fallen Stars. He certainly did a lot of talking though,
and what he told me about the recent history of Murghôm was so shocking, I was largely speechless
anyway. I should also mention that the voice of a Jade dragon is so loud, he would barely
have heard me trying to as any questions, their breath weapon is literally just their breath,
they release a sonic boom, or more precisely, a sonic wail that is quite deafening, blasting
out in a 90-foot radius from their impressively large mouth. Its a hell of a thing to witness, the
Jade dragon has a long and serpentine body, more like the lung dragons of the lands of Kara-Tur,
or perhaps the vicious linnorms, except, the Jade dragon does have a set of perfectly functional
wings, they just keep them tucked in so closely to their body when not in flight that its easy
to think they are not there. They also move very differently from other dragons of faerun, coiling
and twisting as they run, their shorter limbs function more to just keep them from slithering
or rolling along the ground, the motion is mostly from the mighty strength of their entire body. So,
when on the go, which seemed to me to be fairly constant, it was like Gryxlgarandyl 's head was
trailed by a serpentine spring, his head almost flew across the land, just as he did in the sky.
This gave him a tremendous speed under the water, but, jade dragons are not aquatic dragons,
they developed these amazingly flexible habits from living in dense forests and Gryxlgarandyl
actually called the tropical jungles of Chult, Mhair and the Black jungle his home. That
explained exactly why I had never even heard of the Jade dragons before, those jungles,
particularly the last two, are basically death traps for humanoids who are not native to them.
He told me that Murghôm was once populated by a series of semi-autonomous communities that
gathered into collective government only in times of war. They were excellent horse breeders and
riders with leaders called Ataman, however, as recently as 1409 DR, a plague swept through the
dragon population of the Copper Mountains, causing many dragons to flee. A very powerful blue dragon
named Skalnaedyr flew to Murghôm and stopped to rest near a small village known as Phannaskull.
The frightened villagers didn't know anything about the plague and assumed the dragon was there
to terrorize them so they just surrendered and pledged fealty to the surprised dragon,
who agreed to rule the village. He didn't really have much interest in being a tyrannical
overlord so, his rule over the villagers was fairly peaceful and prosperous,
causing the village to grow into a city that they named after him. Since then other dragons sought
to emulate his example, and eventually, many wyrms dominated the lands of Murghôm and Semphar.
Populations of displaced and harrassed dragonborn flocked to the new kingdoms of the so-called
Princes of Murghôm, although the dragon princes don't trust the dragonborn too much, knowing most
of them had no love for draconic kings, a few of them overcame those prejudices and employed
dragonborn as their servants, which worked out very well, so now the dragonborn have found a new
home nation for themselves, or what is shaping up to be the beginings of a new empire that I can't
see much standing in the way of. In many ways, this is exactly the return to the old state of the
world before the impact of the Dragonrage Mythal. You see, although of course the dragon princes
fight among themselves to increase their holdings and eliminate rivals, no one of them seeks to
conquer all the lands and rule over them all as their king or queen, even Skalnaedyr, considered
to be the strongest of all of them. Instead, they have created a Council of dragon princes
who hold court over all the lands surrounding Brightstar lake from some twenty thousand feet
in the sky aboard a stable earth mote, floating up there for who knows how long. Its an unspoken
rule among them that neither dragon princes or landless wyrms attack any other dragons directly,
as they want to make their subjects believe that the princes are untouchable and invincible.
This is directly thanks to the influence of the Game of Xorvintaal and the power of the dragons
who play that game in the shadows I suspect, and perhaps the moderate influence of the dragonborn
themselves. Not many humanoids have or ever will be permitted to travel five miles into the sky
above the Great Wild Wood in Murghom to visit the castle built near the center of the earth mote
named Dracowyr, it is essentially sacred neutral ground for all true dragons, where they
can meet to discuss conflicts and such without resorting or worrying too much about violence.
Any dragon who breaks that rule will most certainly be killed by other dragons very shortly
after. As I have often said, the thing one should fear most is when dragons start to cooperate with
each other, and it seems I was quite correct. Another point of concern is that the nation
of Semphar is the location where the first dwarven population appeared on Toril, so under the land
now ruled by dragons lies untold treasures and powerful magical artifacts that could shift power
even more in the dragons favor, however there could also be mind breaking horrors buried deep
under there which have until now been lost to history, but you can be sure that legions of
kobolds are excavating under the dragons new territory with fanatical intensity,
seeking to enrich their master's hoards. I know this has to deeply bother every dwarf
on the planet, so hopefully word of this has reached them and brings this situation to a head.
I don't wish for such a war, but I can't see how there can be any other outcome.
Neither can Gryxlgarandyl. Unlike the emerald or green dragons,
the Jade dragons have scales that have a random, swirling pattern of different shades of green,
when twisted around the canopy of a lush jungle they blend into the foliage
perfectly and when they release that blasting shockwave of sound from their maw, it causes a
blizzard of leaves that are torn from the trees, acting like a smoke cloud that again, conceals
them like it was a cloud of smoke. They will use the cover to stay distant and hard to see,
while they unleash a barrage of spell magic. They only close in with bites and claws when a
victim has been mostly incapacitated. this is very effective against those fools who would
try and hunt such a magnificent creature and to my knowledge, no Jade dragon hide has ever been taken
and sold, if one did appear on the market it would fetch an outrageous sum of coins, as the patterns
of it are really quite beautiful to behold. Typical dragons, the Jades love to collect
treasure, particularly the stone they are named after. In alchemy, powdered jade has an affinity
for illusionary spells and is the ingredient of choice when mixing magic inks to scribe
such spell scrolls. The best time of day for mixing jade dust into a magical preparation
is candleglass time. I'm not sure why, but it's a standard part of alchemical training.
Although Jade dragons do not have the innate ability to shape change and polymorph like
the metallic dragons, they can learn the spell magic to perform the same task and Jade stone
is often used as a material component for the Kara-Turan version of the shape change spell.
Jade dragons are part of the D&D basic world of Mystara and can be found in the 2nd edition
Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix. They are also found in the 2nd edition
Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume One and Dragon magazine #158
Coming up next, another instalment in the Dragon Tales series and coming next month,
we are diving deep into Spell Jammer and lots of videos on cosmic monsters and probably more
than you would ever really need to know about sailing the oceans of the multiverse! as always
my name is AJ Pickett, thanks for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon.