Finally, like a dream come true, I was at the shores of a great body of water again,
and I tell you what, as someone who enjoys living on the coast the great lake of Gbor
Nor, also known as the Sea of Semphar or Brightstar Lake, is a beautiful sight.
It glimmers in the bright sunlight with crisp breezes of intoxicatingly fresh air forming
rippling patterns on the surface.
Brightstar is a large body of water that encompassed the western border of Semphar and the southern
border of Murghôm.
I didn't know it at the time, but Murghôm was almost nothing like anything I had read
about the place, which turned out to be a good thing, even though it plunged me far
too deep into the great game of dragons than I ever wanted to be.
My great uncle Trazquenyobar would be so proud.
Securing passage across Brightstar lake was not that difficult, I still had things to
trade and there were plenty of sturdy fishing boats in small towns along the shore, but
they all directed me to the rough and tumble city of Zindalankh, officially part of the
nation of Murghôm, it has had quite a riotous history of late and is currently under the
control of a band of pirates, but that will probably change by the time you are hearing
about the place, it's that volatile.
The good thing about volatile towns where the cutthroats are in charge, is that the
cutthroats are largely concerned with the goings on of the other cutthroats, so keeping
a low profile, spending a little coin, staggering your way through public spaces like you are
on a booze bender, you are almost invisible to the local authorities and can just do your
trade and arrange private passage on a swift ship for a good price.
I didn't know that the lake was even more dangerous than the cities surrounding and
fighting between each other over it, but no more than six hours sailing out of Zindalankh
and the ship was stopped dead in the water by an extortionate Dragon Turtle that was
demanding the captain and crew pay it money they simply didn't have or it was going to
sink the ship.
I was plucking up the courage to speak to the massive creature when I spotted streaking
white arrows trailing steaming water behind them, circling the dragon turtle and our ship
at great speed in the water, well out of range of the dragon turtle's claws and fangs, it
let loose a huge blast of steam but it had no effect on the darting shapes at all until
they suddenly swerved and revealed their draconic heads, blasting jets of super scalding steam
right back at the dragon turtle.. which it seems the dragon turtle is also quite resistant,
but not entirely immune to and the combined assault of several of these mysterious, sleek
white and silvery gleaming dragons was too much firepower for even the dragon turtle
to withstand, so it plunged down into the deep and the three incredibly rare pearl dragons
just swept past our little ship with not so much as a glance and were gone, just like
that.
I was astounded, I had never heard of more than one pearl dragon ever having been encountered
in one location, but I had no way to find out more, or to thank the dragons for whatever
inspired them to save our lives.
It must have just been sheer spite for the dragon turtle.
I did manage to sketch a Pearl dragon, they are aquatic nomads, but they still have wings
and can fly, the three we encountered all seemed to be of similar size and age, large
but not huge, Pearl dragons start life around two feet long and can end up centuries later
as great wyrms, something like eighty-six feet long.
Thankfully they are rarely aggressive or violent, they have little interest in humanoids at
all and avoid civilisation, preferring to live in isolated peace and quiet, totally
self-sufficient.
A pearl dragon's head is created by a row of spines that run from the back of its head
all the way to its shoulders, gradually shrinking as they make their way down.
A small bunch gather around its chin in what almost looks like a bristly beard.
Webbed feet and smooth scales help the dragon swim along with its undulating body and tail,
the wings remain folded in tight to the body to increase their swimming speed.
A pearl dragon possesses a semicircular throat pouch, also lined with tiny spines down the
middle, their very long snout is stocked with a lot of fangs and they have quite a lot of
bite force.
They prefer to hunt for sharks and fish, never eat humanoids and often gather up hundreds
of lobsters to take back to their lair to eat.
The scales of a pearl dragon wyrmling are white and shiny.
Its scales become more lustrous and iridescent as its ages, resembling its namesake gem.
Its scales are so smooth and tightly packed that it's hard to tell where one scale ends
and the others begin, lending even further to their pearl-like appearance.
Its scales may also change color as it ages, usually becoming a different shade of white
or cream, though in rare cases the dragon's scales will darken until they become black.
Black pearl dragons are considered more attractive by others, and are most likely to find a mate
during breeding seasons.
Have fun with your player characters who assume black pearl dragons are some sort of evil
hybrid.
An adult pearl dragon has an armor class of 18 and 16d12+64 for between 80 and 256 with
an average of 168 hit points.
Pearl dragons have a speed of 50 feet per round in the water, but are also very fast
on land, moving at 40 feet per round, and despite their love of the water, they do dwell
mainly on steep, rocky coastlines or sometimes along sandy beaches, as long as they are near
the water.
They are agile flyers who cover 70 feet per round.
Despite being very strong, formidable creatures, like the other so-called lesser gem dragons,
the pearl dragons prefer to attack from range with their scalding steam breath and an impressive
arsenal of spells.
About the only time, they attack humanoids is when they are getting pestered by far-ranging
and desperate pirate ships or some adventurers have shown up, probably by mistake, looking
for something else and stumbling across a very rare coastal dragon instead.
Aquatic species are more likely to have seen one of them, since the dragons spend so much
of their time underwater, hunting for pearls and the marine life they love to eat.
If suddenly and unexpectedly faced with combat, pearl dragons can attack with bite and claws,
first unleashing a someone weaker form of draconic Frightful Presence common to the
lesser gem dragons.
So, each creature of the dragon's choice that is within 120 feet of the dragon and aware
of it must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute.
A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect
on itself on a success.
If a creature's saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is
immune to the dragon's Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours.
Bites and claws are both +10 to hit, the bite enjoys a ten-foot reach and inflicts 2d10+5
piercing damage, the claws inflict 2d6+5 slashing damage, slamming with the tail is also +10
to hit with a longer 15 foot reach to the target which takes 2d8+5 bludgeoning damage,
so they have all the basic damage types covered for their physical stikes, however their breath
weapon and spells are more formidable.
Recharging on a roll of 5 or 6 on a D6, the dragon can exhale a scaling steam blast in
the form of a 60-foot long cone.
All creatures within that area must make a DC17 Constitution saving throw for half the
12d6 fire damage, also, note that this works underwater as well as out in the open air.
Much like their cousins the Jacinth dragons, the pearl dragons learn a lot of charm spells
and a few spells such as shape water and ice knife, that can have a lot of utility in the
water.
They are not as skilled at spell casting, only counting as a 4th level spell caster,
their intelligence is 16 so the spell save DC is 16 and they are +8 to hit with targeted
spells.
Somewhat unusual for such a well-adapted aquatic predator, but like the big marine mammals,
the Pearl dragon can't breathe water, they can hold their breath for over an hour, but
still, its quite a limitation that has a lot of bias from fully aquatic species, who see
air breathers as having no welcome in their underwater domains, so Pearl dragons are just
as likely to stay well away from them as they are anyone in the air-breathing world.
As I mentioned, Pearl dragons are totally immune to heat and fire, have 120 ft darkvision
and blindsight out to 60 ft thanks to their sensitive spines and very sharp senses, they
speak their own unique language and communicate telepathically with each other, other dragons
and exceptionally intelligent individuals from other species.
Since your character will need an Intelligence of 18 or higher just to talk telepathically
with a pearl dragon, they will assume anyone who can't understand them is too stupid to
be worth talking to anyway.
Pearl dragons are absolutely masters at pearl hunting and know a technique for harvesting
wild pearls without killing the shellfish who make them, so they have their own convoluted
migratory path they travel over the years, slowly moving from one rich harvesting ground
to another, the main reason it takes them so long is that moving all their pearls and
arcane study library from one lair to another is a secretive and painstaking process since
pearl dragons never associate with or keep minions, such as kobolds and the like.
With a sufficiently impressive bribe of pearls and some careful negotiation, a pearl dragon
may be persuaded to drive off camps of Sahuagin who are bothering remote fishing villages,
but they are just as likely to refuse to take anyone's side unless the Sahaugin are already
a bit of a thorn in their side.
Sahaugin eating all the lobsters in a region is actually all it takes to royally piss off
a pearl dragon, but they are just as likely to murder a whole bunch of lobster fisherfolk,
they don't see the humanoids of the land as much different from the Sahaugin or other
aquatic civilisations, but its less likely, much less, that they would ever work with
the sahuagin against humans, for example.
They just don't like the sahuagin, also, they eat a lot of sharks, so the sahuagin are not
big fans of theirs either.
There are plenty of other species to deal with, the scraggs, the mottled worms, Ixitxachitl,
sea giants, merfolk, sea elves and kraken, the pearl dragons will establish very well
concealed lairs, usually half in and half out of the water.
A sea cliff cave with submerged chambers is perfect and in this space they will tend to
carelessly leave their non-pearl treasure just laying about in the open, the pearls
will be stored in a secret compartment closer to the lair's exit, in case the dragon needs
to beat a hasty retreat, it will always try to grab the pearls, but usually leaves its
other treasures in the abandoned lair.
Inside its lair, the dragon can cause water to splash into the cave from outside or below,
affecting an area within 120 feet, making the floor super slippery.
Any creature within 30 feet of that point that walks more than 10 feet in a single turn
must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or fall prone and take 1d4 bludgeoning damage.
This effect lasts for 1 minute.
Another technique is manipulating the water in the lair into a thick fog cloud, same as
the spell, which the dragon can summon until the start of the next turn.
Within a mile of the pearl dragon's lair, oysters and such are much more likely to produce
higher quality pearls, plus, aquatic creatures (beasts and animals) become more aggressive
within that one-mile area and once per day, the dragon can conjure a one-mile radius sphere
of fog that will linger for up to three hours, with the same effect as the fog cloud spell.
The dragon never does this in it's lair and all these legendary regional effects slowly
fade after the pearl dragon has been killed.
Coming up next, is the Jade dragon, another lesser gem dragon cousin, 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.