Jacinth is a transparent fiery orange gem worth usually one to five thousand gold pieces
to most merchants who know their gems on the world of Toril.
Many people know that dragons are a lot more variable than they appear in story books and
its mainly the efforts of sages and historians to correct the misconception that all red
dragons act this way, or all black dragons live in these sorts of places and so on.
Many folks accuse sages of just inventing more and more dragons because the books and
lectures about the species do tend to earn better coin from the public.
I have had some doubts myself, until I went travelling to the great desert of purple dust
and actually ran into the territory of one of the most rare dragons you can name on the
whole planet.
As is often the case, I have no idea I was about to die when I met the dragon, I was
at deaths door already, out of water, food, my pack animals dying or dead, no hope of
rescue, I could maybe scrape a few more days out of my provisions by literally scraping
the containers with my knife.
I was just staggering, leading my camel, sucking in air that felt like it was wafting out of
the door of an open oven when something other than gritty, purple sand met my footstep,
I heard and felt the distinct sound of my boot breaking a dried twig and I looked up
and around suddenly.
It was an oasis, an actual pool of water, surrounded by palm trees and such, with a
large rock in the middle of the pond that was on fire... or it seemed to be, but was
actually the light of the sun reflecting off this spectacularly brilliant dragon.
My natural instinct to lower my eyes and clap a hand over my face to soothe my eyes was
probably what saved me, as the dragon may have seen this as a sign of instant respect.
Honestly, if the dragon notices you, dropping into an instant posture of supplication is
never a bad idea.
Even the very best, most noble and benevolent dragon naturally enjoys being praised, worshipped
and shown the utmost respect.
It could be that the dragon was just bored though, they had seen me coming from miles
away and this whole oasis was nothing but illusionary magic.
I kind of knew it at the time, but I appreciated that it was actually cool and shaded, thanks
to the magic, despite there being no real plants or water.
All of my attention, of course, was focused on the dragon, which was staring at me like
I was some unique little morsel and it was deciding to either eat me right away, or take
the time to prepare me into a proper fancy meal.
Then the dragon started talking, and honestly, its a bit fuzzy what happened next, thanks
to the little known hypnotic powers of the Jacinth Dragon.
The rarest of the already elusive gem dragons, the jacinth dragons are a bit smaller than
their typical metallic or chromatic dragon cousins, but they live a very long time and
keep growing over the decades, so while they may start out as 2 foot long wyrmlings, they
can become enormous, 73 foot long great wyrms.
They are quite an ancient offshoot of dragon kind, along with the Jade and Pearl dragons,
some scholars speculate that the gem dragons did not branch off from either metallic or
chromatic dragon bloodlines but all the way back to protodragons, they are also unable
to shape change like the metallic dragons, yet they are often so well versed in both
arcane and divine magic that their innate abilities hardly matter, still, they do have
some.
First, they can survive in total solitude, without water or food, for weeks at a time,
they would be totally unknown if it were not for their curiosity about creatures that they
find wandering around their deserts.
They keep their distance at all times anyway, like most gem dragons, they prefer to hang
back and use spells and their breath weapon to deal death, at close range, their blinding
and hypnotic scales do most of the work for them, but they can tear a person apart with
claws and fangs just like any other true dragon.
Second, they are highly intelligent, they have their own language, and keep in mind
this is a species of dragon where there are at most, twelve adults alive and active across
the entire planet, in very remote desert regions so, their language is very old and has not
changed very much from what the protodragons would have spoken, none the less, they communicate
mostly through arcane writings and telepathy.
The telepathy only works between creatures of very high intelligence, so all the jacinth
dragons have intelligence scores of 18 and higher.
A good way to handle playing a creature that is smarter than most people, is to give them
more creative legendary actions, for example, while casting a spell of up to third level
is a good use of one legendary action, another might be triggering a trap that only the dragon
knew was already part of the encounter area, like an AHA!
moment, the dragon reveals that it predicted exactly where the player characters would
be and set up a series of traps and such in the area long before this combat even started.
Another is to roll initiative order each round, and have the dragon resolve its actions only
at the very end of the round, but assuming it had highest initiative so its actions can
actually counter or prevent the actions of the player characters.
Like the genius dragon is two steps ahead of them at all times.
That's entirely optional of course, but worth a try at your table.
An adult jacinth dragon has an armor class of 17, 17d10+51 or between 68 and 221 with
an average of 144 hit points, its brilliant red and orange, gem-like scaled hide lights
up like sparkling fire in strong sunlight, any creature that starts its turn within 30
feet of the active dragon's scintillating hide must make a DC 15 Constitution saving
throw or be blinded until the start of its next turn.
Unless surprised, a creature can avert its eyes to avoid the saving throw at the start
of its turn.
If the creature does so, it can't see the dragon until the start of its next turn, when
it can avert its eyes again.
If the creature looks at the dragon in the meantime, it must immediately make the save.
The jacinth dragon does still have a weaker kind of draconic frightful presence, so each
creature of the dragon's choice that is within 60 feet of the dragon and aware of it must
succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute, save ends
and provides immunity to the dragon's fright for 24 hours.
The dragon would much rather be further away than 60 feet but that is a pretty good range
for their most potent offensive abilities, not only do they have a scalding breath weapon
of superheated air that blasts out in a 50 foot cone that is twenty feet wide at its
far end, they also spend a lot of their time studying both arcane and divine magic, so
they will have prepared a wide range of rays and orbs, bolts and shields and, they do have
the ability to blink, as per the spell, and cast dimension door, without need of special
components.
They also master quite a few spells of suggestion and charm which they use in conjunction with
their hypnotic hide as it grants advantage on their spells of suggestion and charm while
they are bouncing light off their body and moving around at range, catching the eyes
of their victims and disabling them one after another with enchantment magic, or simply
whittling them down to bloody heaps with barrages of magic missiles.
Its highly likely that players will seek cover and get out of the open, where the dragon
clearly has quite an advantage.
But, confined spaces and shadows are what the dragon calls "out of sight, out of mind"
and the dragon may actually just up and leave combat as soon as it has the upper hand, bored
with the momentary distraction, its draconic urge to hunt and kill, fairly weak to begin
with, now satisfied, the dragon will have much better things to do with its time.
The situation is not the same if the player characters actually stumble across the lair
of a jacinth dragon though.
All dragons covet something, most covet everything, some desire very specific things, and the
Jacinth has a great love for the gemstone they are named after, plus spell books and
religious writings of course but any sort of complicated book of information is likely
to get their interest.
They do live in hot, dry conditions, so they tend to have a very well preserved library
of old books and quite a collection of beautiful jacinth jewels that are about the only thing
they will go out of their way to hunt down and acquire.
Jacinth dragons can be found flying very high above their territory, around twenty thousand
feet, still able to make out the ground below as clear as we could read a newspaper, if
hunting by air they use the sun like a weapon, reflecting it off their hide in hypnotic and
blinding patterns then blinking and suddenly attacking from an unexpected direction, feel
free to recharge their blink ability in the same way you would roll a D6 to recharge their
breath weapon on a result of 5 or 6.
Flight speed is normally 80 ft per round but they do a lot of swoops and dives that can
see them drop altitude really fast, they rarely attack with claws or bite, both are +7 to
hit, the bite inflicts 2d10+3 piercing damage, the claws inflict 2d6+3 slashing damage, a
tail strike inflicts 2d8+3 bludgeoning damage, wing attacks only take place on the ground,
cost both the dragon's legendary actions for the round, but each creature within 10 feet
of the dragon must make a DC 15 Dexterity save or take 2d6+3 bludgeoning damage and
be knocked prone, with the dragon taking off in its desired direction, covering 40 feet
of distance.
Jacinth dragons are totally immune to fire damage, so they can survive on the elemental
plane of fire as long as they have oxygen to breathe, quite of lot of the deep plane
of fire has all its oxygen consumed by the raging inferno, anyway, the jacinth dragon
has no interest in staying in the place, its simply too crowded and busy with very fast
and boisterous elemental life forms.
It is a convenient avenue of escape though, most creatures simply combust if they try
to follow a jacinth dragon through one of its escape portals, one of which will certainly
be located in its lair.
They may have to leave behind a fortune in very flammable books though.
Much like blue dragons, the jacinth tends to create a lair of artfully melted sand using
their heat breath on the sand dunes they burrow through.
They do have lair actions, they can create swirling vortexes of stinging sand and cause
part of the roof to collapse on specific individuals the dragon targets within 120 feet of itself,
Dexterity save DC 15 or take 3d6 bludgeoning damage along with being knocked prone and
buried.
digging oneself out requires a DC 10 strength check otherwise the character is restrained
and can not breathe until they are exhumed.
The region surrounding the dragons lair, out to a distance of up to five miles, is generally
hotter than the environment normally is.
Any creature exposed to the heat and without access to drinkable water must succeed on
a Constitution saving throw each hour or gain one level of exhaustion.
The DC is 6 for the first hour and increases by 1 for each additional hour.
Creatures wearing medium or heavy armor, or who are clad in heavy clothing, have disadvantage
on the saving throw.
Creatures with resistance or immunity to fire damage, or creatures naturally adapted to
hot climates are still susceptible to this effect.
Beasts within 1 mile of the dragon's lair feel a strong compulsion to stay away from
the area.
A creature must make a successful DC 14 Wisdom (Animal Handling) check to coerce a beast
to move within 1 mile of the lair.
Oh yes, Jacinth dragons can automatically detect any magic cast within their lair as
long as it is of the Arcane type, plus all the regional effects fade away almost immediately
when the dragon is killed.
You may want to include a blindsight range of 60 ft, this is part of the dragon's ability
to burrow and rest below the surface of the desert, the many slender horns and spines
running along the top of the dragon's body are very sensitive to vibrations and they
have excellent hearing.
Their skills of Perception, Deception, Persuasion and Stealth should all be +8, they cast spells
as at least a 7th level wizard with a spell save DC of 16, +8 to hit with spell attacks
and an arsenal of spells and prepared scrolls if they are within their lair.
Jacinth dragons never keep the company of kobolds or other minions, the only companions
to be found will be the occasional golem or perhaps an intelligent magic item that doesn't
talk much.
If a determined foe actually did manage to kill a jacinth dragon, the market value of
its body is only speculative as nobody has ever done so before to anyone's knowledge.
The hide of a relative of the jacinth, the Pearl dragon, has been sold for at least sixty
thousand gold coins, the hide of a jacinth dragon would be worth quite a lot more.
That being said, its unlikely to ever happen, the lesser gem dragons
are seriously elusive and will always know the best time to retreat from a real threat,
even if it means they can only take their stash of precious jewels with them as they
head to an alternative lair site.
Coming up next, the coastal dwelling, somewhat nomadic and also exceptionally rare Pearl
Dragons, but for now, my name is AJ Pickett, I make videos about Roleplaying Game lore,
particularly monsters and exotic planes of existence, thank you for joining me and as
always, I will be back with more for you, very soon.