I have a secret to tell, one that few people know, in some ways, it tarnishes my reputation
for being this travelling sage who has first-hand accounts of these monsters I pack into my
journals, along with my notes on plants, animals, people and places of note in the realms.
On a hot, dry summer afternoon, as I sat drawing a creature with charcoal sticks at the open
shutters on my chambers at Candlekeep, there was a knock at my door and a young avowed
stood there, I had the door open to let a breeze run through the place, even though
it made the fireplace make this weird moaning whistle.
The young woman was holding a rolled-up sheet of parchment almost as tall as she was, and
I could see, under a big wax seal, that every inch of the sheet was covered in writing.
I retrieved it from her with thanks and quite some haste.
It was a letter from my uncle Trazquenyobar, I received one of these regularly, every summer,
so they were normally waiting for me when I returned from my travels, it was unusual
for me to be at the keep this late in the year and actually have one delivered fresh
into my hands.
I cleared some space on a desk and took a moment to smell the scroll, there was a faint
whiff of sandalwood and curry.
The wax seal had Uncle Traz's double spiral symbol on it, which I cracked open and unrolled
the bedsheet sized letter.
If you think your draconic is fluent, you will face a challenge still in reading the
sprawling and artistic style of handwriting that Traz employs, he frequently draws little
pictures instead of long draconic words, plus punctuation is rarely involved, he will just
put a line or dot to split a sentence.
Anyway, my great, great, great, uncle, is a brass dragon, and he is the one who encouraged
me to give up the adventuring life and become a respectable sage.
Excellent advice as always, he has helped my career enormously with those letters, and
this one was no exception, as it was full of stories about his journey to the ancient
lands of Unther and his experience with a whole new population of intelligent dragon
folk, from the realm of Abeir, named the Dragonborn.
I knew a little about them, and by the end of the letter, I knew a lot more.
Oh, when I say uncle Traz, now you know why I sometimes refer to my being quite a lot
older than those around me, its the one great gift my uncle has left his many, many descendants,
but otherwise, aside from perhaps my skill with words and simple arcane arts, there is
very little of the dragon in me at all, except, of course, his ongoing education of me in
the millions of wonders of the realms, he is delighted in what I do and frustrated that
am not writing more books for him to collect.
Brass dragons are metallic, the least mighty of their kind, well known for being gregarious
and possibly the least dangerous dragons for humanoids to encounter.
There certainly are exceptions, and even the best of them can grow so frustrated with ignorant,
rude and greedy folk that they will just immolate them where they stand.
Don't expect them to be giving any apology for such things either, remember, they are
dragons, and as the Brass will cheerfully remind you, they once ruled the entire world,
and we were happy that they did!
The alternative was to suffer under the mercurial and cruel reign of the giants, who value brawn
over brains and find little humanoids quite tasty.
As a great wyrm, taz spends a lot of the year sleeping, he has several places where he lairs,
I can't divulge where they are, but can say they are all underground, near the coast in
very dry regions and all are extremely well protected.
Brass dragons are highly intelligent, scholarly and inventive thinkers, so each lair has traps
and tricks that are less harmful and more humiliating in their punishments, again, I
would never speak about them or write the details in my journals, but lets just say
that Traz has a particular love of thwarting the attempts of dwarven folk seeking to sneak
in and steal his treasures, he also has a great love of historic trap making and tends
to design his lair's defences around a theme based on some obscure dungeon he has read
about or found in a dysfunctional state and he is just doing his best to keep the techniques
alive and well, efforts no doubt lost on the traps victims.
Desert folk never bother him, in fact, they gift him tributes of goats that he simply
loves to cook in huge cauldrons of delicious curry, the smell of which permeates the natural
and carved chambers, stacked with all his collections, his specimen jars and thousands
of scrolls, books and tapestries.
I love his lairs, I spent several years as a youth being taught different languages and
all about the ancient history of the world from Taz.
Even after a couple of centuries, he still calls me a youngster with a lot left to learn
and I still love to burn incense of rare barks and tree saps to keep my chambers easy on
the nose in mid-winter, plus, the wafting smell lets people know I am home.
Trazquenyobar's early life was spent in the very distant land called Var the Golden, on
the coast of the eastern Curna mountains, he hatched with three siblings, in a great
bonfire nest that has been burning for well over a year, he says he was taught many things
by his parents who spoke to their eggs and looked after them when they hatched.
Brass dragons are like dull brown, frilled lizards when they are first hatched, and can
burrow through lose sand and soil quite well in search of tasty desert creatures.
He grew quickly and got along well with his siblings, though the two females departed
with their mother, he stayed with his brother and father for some 20 years.
He says that they didn't travel much, due to the dominance of Blue dragons in the region
making it quite unsafe for young brass dragons.
The ruler of Var, at the time, was actually an ancient blue dragon who was named the Sublime
Potentiate Anwir Duprethiskava, he was a bit unusual for a blue dragon, kept in a humanoid
form most of the time and had a set of agreements with most of the blue dragons and all of the
brass dragons in the region of all the kingdoms of the Durpari people.
If anyone harmed a dragon, or destroyed so much as a village in his domain, he would
deal retribution personally on the offender, who can say that about a king these days?
Sadly, Var the golden was swallowed by the sea for long enough that its culture is now
almost completely lost, the lands are far less fertile now the water has gone back down,
still, people are moving back into the area after the adventurers have gone in to plunder
all the drowned ruins, where there is coin, there are hard working folk who follow after
it and actually do the work of making the land safe and productive.
Traz spent several centuries a little further west in the unclaimed mountains known as the
toadsquats, forming the northern border of Luiren, the land of my people, and it was
contending with my ancestors that he came to love the Hin people so much, I think my
ancestors have always loved to trade in culinary herbs and spices, and a trade was set up between
members of my family and Traz, who offered to tutor just one member of the family at
a time, sharing his great knowledge and wisdom, in exchange for all the spices he wanted.
Dragons eat a great deal, one of Traz's meals consumes huge amounts of very expensive spices,
however, he only eats like that every few months and the wealth the highly educated
graduates of his teachings earned for the family over a few more centuries was stupendous
by comparison to the cost.
One of his students, some few generations back, was my... well, she was directly related
to me, her family name was Mockingbird.
As Traz tells it, she was a truly gifted thinker right from the moment she uttered her first
words, one of her parents was a former student of Traz so, it was natural that she followed
in the tradition, she worked hard and she had a wicked sense of humour that Traz fell
truly and deeply in love with, when the time came for her to finish her studies... well,
they never did finish, she stayed with Traz for the rest of her life.
It was not all smooth sailing, they had quite a fraught relationship, but it endured and
she bore children, quite a few all at once.
The tales of that family, I am amazed any of them made it to the age they did, but they
did live a very long time, and so did their children and so on.
Some are born with a lot of Traz in them still, and the halls of wizardry in many lands have
members of my family in their history books.
Traz has also had dragon children, but he rarely talks about that side of his life with
his hobbit children, our busy and active lives are far more engaging he says, his dragon
children do dragon things and are not particularly close, plus the older they get, the more self-involved
and the more time the spend asleep, so, dragons just drift apart normally, even the highly
gregarious brass dragons, which may seem sad to us, but, its normal for dragon parents,
it would be weird and annoying to them if their kids were always in their business.
For dragons, a greeting scroll or the gift of some fascinating specimen once every few
years is plenty.
Brass dragons are gorgeous if you ask me, starting off that dull brown, as they age
the scales of the dragon become burnished and then lighten gradually, eventually maturing
into a warm, shining luster.
Their wings and frills are mottled green toward the edges, darkening with age.
As a brass dragon grows older, its pupils fade until its eyes resemble molten metal
orbs.
They have expressive faces and thick hide, their scales are extremely tough, which is
why dragon scale armor is much sought after, the metallic dragons scales even more so,
but fair warning, no dragon is very tolerant of little humanoids wearing dragon bodyparts
around them, and dragonscale armor is not going to save you from that situation, I assure
you.
Brass dragons have two breath weapons, like most metallic dragons.
They can breathe a super hot line of air that is as destructive as a blow torch, it is described
as fire breath, but its not a cone or plume of flames, its more like the thrust of a rocket,
it creates a large plume of steam, dust and soot a number of feet away from the dragon,
where it has hit objects and just immolated them.
Their second breath weapon is sleep gas, which does plume out in a cone shape from their
mouth, the creatures that fall victim to it drop into a deep slumber, but it is just normal
sleep and they can be woken up of the victim takes damage or someone spends an action to
wake them up.
Generally speaking, unless the situation warrants it or they are using their breath weapon for
practical reasons, they much prefer to knock victims unconscious.
Brass dragons don't get into battles very often because they are just smart enough to
either avoid them, or to have won before the fight even begins.
To give you some idea of how intelligent they are, uncle Traz once had a rather one-sided
conversation with an agitated Triton, stranded far from the ocean in a nightmare desert environment,
and within sixty minutes, Traz was talking with the triton fluently in their own language,
calming down their babble and offering to help them get home.
After that effort and a rather long flight to a remote spot out in the great sea, he
smiled and told me that if there is one ally nobody suspects a desert-loving dragon to
have, its a race of deep-sea humanoids.
Brass dragons may not be the most physically powerful of the metallic dragons, but they
are the most dynamic conduits of information, and information is a power in and of itself.
All this talk of the least powerful of the metallics, its all relative, an ancient brass
dragon is gargantuan in size, has a strength of 27, so, is able to fly with a carried weight
of up to three tons.
You can imagine the effectiveness of a three ton boulder being dive bombed out of the sky,
released right in the middle of a fortified city and careening through structures, open
flagstones and many unfortunate people, brass dragons are totally immune to fire, which
means they can drop huge bundles of furiously burning, pitch soaked hay, then when it hits
the ground, dive out of the sky and land right on it with a thunderous explosion as the flaming
material is sundered in every direction, causing a massive wall of fire to blast down streets
and alleyways in every direction.
They can fly right up to a mounted force of heavy armed and armored knights and unleash
their supernatural frightful presence, causing any creature that can see them within 120
feet to have to make a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for up to a minute.
Their bite and claw attacks are formidable, three attacks on its turn and another three
attacks during the round on other creatures turns, they also have legendary resistance
which allows them to just shrug off effects that require a saving throw three times per
day, and they are able to use their tail and wings as weapons, all of their attacks have
greater reach than most humanoid attackers and, they have the metallic dragons gift for
shapechanging, so they can turn into any humanoid or beast that has the same of lower challenge
rating that they do, gaining the strength, constitution and dexterity plus any special
abilities of that new form, so, they can shapeshift into a basilisk and turn attackers to stone,
or turn into an invisible stalker, or even a tiny mouse and scurry down a drain pipe
to avoid the fight entirely.
The capabilities this extraordinary control over their physical being grants them, coupled
with the fact that their hit points, lair actions, legendary actions and shapeshifting
abilities remain the same in any form they take, well, it makes them extremely difficult
to beat.
While 5th edition has no listing of their magical knowledge, I assure you, they can
also unleash an arsenal of arcane magic on top of all this, as well as having spent centuries
travelling the realms, finding magical relics and even having a few custom made for themselves
that are more useful to a dragon, such as magic orbs used instead of wands and rods,
as they are easier to keep internally when in an altered physical form, they also love
ioun stones, flying swords and constructs.
Brass dragons, particularly in their youth, do tend to travel widely very much like an
adventurer.
They track down legends and rumours, old records in lost libraries, buried ruins are a particular
favorite as they often serve very well as a new lair.
As the decades roll by, they lose some of this wanderlust and are more prone to exchange
information to other explorers, in exchange for hefty sums of treasure as they get more
and more of a lust for stocking their lairs with fabulous hordes of wealth, as dragons
do.
This is a golden opportunity for any adventuring group and brass dragons make fantastic patrons,
charming hosts and, if one has a pretty reasonable charisma, very generous friends, even to the
point of loaning the adventurers enchanted equipment to help them on their quests, but
remember, the dragon always expects that generosity to be heavily reciprocated.
The lair actions of the brass dragon allow it to summon howling gusts of wind and clouds
of blinding sand and dust, none of which bothers the dragon in the least.
Ideally, they like lairs where they can cleverly disguise passages in the ceiling that allow
air and sunlight in, they can also arrange mirrors to reflect beams of sunlight into
their lair by clever positioning, and their favored resting spots will always be in a
spot where, at least for some hours of the day, they can sleep exposed to full sunlight,
gleaming off their burnished, shining scales and casting disco ball reflections all over
the glittering treasures stacked up artfully all around them.
As primal beings of elemental power, the regional effects of an ancient brass dragons presence
extends out up to six miles, they are generally beneficial, such as mysterious tracks appearing
in desert sands that lead stranded or lost travellers, including animals such as camels
and elephants, to safe shelters and hidden water sources.
These tracks also appear near those creatures who seek to do the dragon harm and lead away
from the dragons true location.
The dragon also causes convincing illusions of larger or smaller monsters to appear within
a mile of its lair, further protecting itself by frightening and distracting creatures who
fail to see through the trick.
They have a form of extra sensory perception links directly to the flow of heat, life and
water in their environment, this is psychic in nature, so any time a creature with an
intelligence higher than 2 comes within 30 feet of a water source within a mile of the
ancient brass dragon's lair, they dragon knows exactly where they are.
As you can imagine, its very easy for a brass dragon to simple fill urns with water and
scatter them around that one mile range, providing an awesome perimeter alert system that requires
no magic to function at all.
You can see this influence in a number of ancient cities of the desert lands, in calimshan
and many places across the lands of Zakahara, where the palace is surrounded by many small
fountains, wells and redirected rivers that flow through many channels in the city.
Dragon rulers could simply sit in their palace and feel the city all around them, knowing
the comings and goings of the population.
A brass dragon is its own spy network and CCTV system.
Brass dragons crave conversation more than anything else, so gifts of intelligent magic
items, awakened objects, sentient plants and any other thing they can talk to are highly
effective.
They keep potted plants and terrariums of all sorts of exotic and interesting creatures
in their lairs, as well as intelligent items and constructs.
The very idea of Warforged fascinates brass dragons and if it was within their power,
they would be very, very keen to locate and reactivate a facility that could create more
warforged.
They are also fond of summoning creatures using magic rituals, and then just keeping
them secure in a summoning circle and chatting with them for hours and hours.
This means they have a lot of understanding and interest in the multiverse, other planes
of existence and so on, another great reason why brass dragons make idea patrons for adventurers
who are ready to take their activities to other planes of existence.
A brass dragon is trusting of creatures that appear to enjoy conversation as much as it
does but is smart enough to know when it is being manipulated.
It takes a particularly clever humanoid to outmatch a brass dragon in the skills of bluffing,
and they have a particular knack for haggling, to the point that they will be frustrated
by any creature that doesn't attempt to haggle with them at least a little bit.. they consider
it slightly rude to be so curt and final when negotiations over price and payment can make
for some of the most delightful debates.
Consider the influence that wandering, ancient lorekeepers and collectors of lost maps and
magic items have on your game world.
How do they shape the market for magic items?
What effect does their knowledge and willingness to share it have on organisations that seek
to control information for their own purposes?
Do they become secret patrons of academies of arcane learning?
Do they establish libraries and on their demise, deliver huge archives of rare tomes to those
beneficiary institutions?
How do the conflicts between the blue dragons and brass dragons in particular impact on
humanoid populations in the arid regions both dragon types prefer to inhabit?
I shall leave you with these ponderings as I dig into this latest massive scroll from
my great uncle Traz, comfortable in my chambers, with some dangerously aged cheese, a tasty
goblet of mead and a very happy pseudodragon sleeping on my sun-baked window ledge.
Thank you for listening and I will be back with more lore for you, very soon.