Renaming true dragons, revisited

So a feature of the D&D jargon that I've never been fond of is it's idiosyncratic taxonomy of dragons. I've ranted about this at length in previous posts, years ago. I guess it's time to revisit that with what I've learned in the meantime.

Basically, my problem is this: as of 5e (but a variation of this is true for all editions), the term "dragon" is used both for the general creature type as well as a subset thereof. 

The most recent 5e SRD offers the following idiosyncratic descriptions:

[A]n arrow of dragon slaying deals extra damage not only to dragons but also other creatures of the dragon type, such as dragon turtles and wyverns. [...] Dragons are large reptilian creatures of ancient origin and tremendous power. True dragons, including the good metallic dragons and the evil chromatic dragons, are highly intelligent and have innate magic. Also in this category are creatures distantly related to true dragons, but less powerful, less intelligent, and less magical, such as wyverns and pseudodragons.

I don't like the "true dragon" jargon because it's arbitrary, provincial, and confusing, especially to people who aren't D&D buffs. They're not true dragons, they're what folklore classification systems label "Western dragons" (although it doesn't actually make sense to call them that in the fantasy settings) plus a bunch of D&D-specific baggage like a Smaug-esque intelligent disposition and magical powers that vary by edition. Furthermore, the D&D canon includes a bazillion varieties of true dragons, much less their "lesser dragons" and "dragon-kin" cousins. 3pp like Legends & Lairs: Draconic Lore, Octavirate Presents Vol #4: The Forgotten, Pathfinder et al have introduced a bazillion more. At the very least, 5e could have used a slightly less confusing terminology like Witcher's "draconid" for the entire taxonomy including both "dragons" and everything else.

D&D can't even keep its own taxonomy straight, either. This is especially frustrating because it's not just an in-universe taxonomy, but actual game rules with implications for in-universe physics. Why is a dragon turtle considered a dragon but a hydra isn't? Why does an arrow of dragon slaying work against the former but not the latter? What's the criteria being used here? Hydras are giant reptiles with multiple heads and the magical ability to regrow severed heads. They're labeled dragons in folklore classification systems in reality.

The problem stems from trying to mash together myths from all over the world and pretend that they make sense together. In reality, dragon myths varied from region to region. No culture that I'm aware of had myths where the dragons were divided into different kinds based on their anatomy. Western dragons, eastern dragons, lindworms, etc didn't coexist in mythology, so nobody needed special terminology to distinguish them. They were all dragons. Not true dragons, not lesser dragons, not dragonkin... just dragons.

Even Tolkien didn't bother to develop elaborate taxonomies for his dragons. At most he offered functional and practical names like "fire-drakes" (dragons that could breathe fire) and "cold-drakes" (dragons that did not breathe fire).

Given all the various changes across the many editions and spin-offs, the distinction doesn't even provide much meaningful information anymore. It's an artifact of unplanned game development that later developers tried to retroactively justify and make sense of. Trying to keep track of the bazillion varieties of dragons by arbitrarily sorting them into categories based essentially on body type of all things is pointless. As Overly Sarcastic Productions points out, they're not products of natural evolution and their nature varies wildly between stories (such as "Prince Lindworm").

As far as I'm concerned, dragons are dragons. They can look like anything the storyteller wants and don't need a special invented name for every possible configuration. I think it's perfectly fine to use functional descriptive names like "winged quadrupedal dragon," "winged bipedal dragon," "wingless limbless dragon," "wingless bipedal dragon," or "wingless quadrupedal dragon."

Signing off...

Uses for dragon’s blood and other body parts

Stumbled upon some interesting articles on the use of dragon’s blood and other body parts as ingredients. Hopefully this might inspire anybody who reads this.

• https://www.blackdrago.com/topics/parts.htm
• https://mythenthusiast.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/the-uses-of-dragon-parts-in-mythology-and-folklore/amp/
• https://intothewonder.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/twelve-uses-of-dragons-blood-plus-some-other-useful-dragon-parts/amp/
• http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2014/10/on-what-to-do-with-dragon-corpse.html?m=1

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The grootslang is not an elephant/snake hybrid

Addendum 9/3/2021: You can read an academic style write-up about the grootslang at A Book of Creatures.

So I learned of another legendary creature, the grootslang from Dahomey. Its name literally translates to "great snake" and it basically behaves like the traditional treasure hoarding dragon. Some things never change, even across continents. Several explorers claimed sightings of it over the centuries.

Of course, the internet misinformation machine had to screw it up. It's commonly depicted as an elephant/snake hybrid in modern art, even though I couldn't find any primary sources describing it as such. There's also a story circulating about its origins as the ancestor of snakes and elephants, which I could not find in any primary source either; in fact, I suspect this story originates from the Pathfinder RPG directly. Some sources claim the grootslang has a red gem or diamond in its forehead, or even that it has such gems for eyes and/or bewitching powers over onlookers. These are similar to some other stories of dragons, particularly the French vouivre I blogged about before.

There's a bunch of other misinformation floating around too that I can't source either. I suspect the artistic depiction of an elephant/snake hybrid originated as a misunderstanding of it being "elephant-sized." Somewhere along the line an artist or writer misunderstood this as "elephant-shaped" and we got our modern elephant-headed snake. Again, I wonder if Pathfinder originated this too, as I can't find any older art on Deviantart.

Funnily enough, Final Fantasy depicts it as a generic giant snake.

Basically, it's a very typical example of the terrifying treasure-guarding dragons. One detail that is often omitted is that grootslang is the Afrikaans name for the creature and may be more description than actual name. Other accounts call it "Kiman."

Sober accounts tell of a great snake called Kiman cruising the remote canyons between Augrabies and the Richtersveld, preying on stock. The colourful ones claim the snake has a diamond embedded in its forehead, that it entices young girls into the water and knocks men down with its breath. (p258. Dicey, William. Borderline. South Africa, Kwela Books, 2004.)

At Groot Derm I first learnt of the Groot Slang, the Big Snake of the Orange River. The Hottentots believed this snake had a diamond in its head which scintillated in the moonlight, and was brilliantly visible for long distances during the day. (p127. SWA Annual: SWA Jaarboek. SWA Jahrbuch. Namibia, South West Africa Publications, Limited, 1973.)

Enticing girls? Yeah, that's obviously omitted by a lot of the elephant hybrid stories. As you might have noticed by the "colourful" appellation, stories of the great snake are subject to embellishment. Learning more about the actual accounts is very difficult because they're in books that aren't freely available on Google Books. Darn copyright laws.

So Kiman is a very typical dragon all things considered: giant snake, lives in water, hoards treasure, hunts livestock, seduces women, terrifies men, beautiful gem in its forehead, etc.

Dragon metamorphosis

I enjoy the opportunities opened by the concept of monster evolution, as much or even more than that opened by spontaneous generation. Curiously, there are already number of stories from around the world in which an animal or a person becomes a dragon.

• The dwarf Fafnir became a dragon as a result of the curse on a treasure hoard.
• A Chinese story recounts that a koi fish spent a century trying to jump a waterfall: when it succeeded it ascended into a dragon, and thus the waterfall was named the Dragon's Gate.
• A Korean story recounts that a serpent found a fallen star, which granted his wish to become a dragon.
• Chinese myth says that pearls are tears of the Moon, and some were taken by dragons. One Chinese story tells of a boy who found a magic pearl that could produce endless rice. When he accidentally consumed it, he became a dragon.
• According to Serbian legend, several animals including carp, snake, ram, and rooster could metamorphose into dragons when they reached a certain age.
• In more modern fantasy fiction like Elizabeth A. Lynn's Dragon's Winter or the Dragon's Gate MUD, dragons are born resembling human beings and become recognizable as dragons as they mature.

On a related note, D&D and derivatives often depict dragons as having age categories. The older the dragon, the higher its CR. Dragons that don't have age categories are screwed out of luck. With monster evolution, that limitation is gone. Now the lowly wyvern can evolve into a higher CR dragon, and high CR dragons may be weakened and reverted to lower CR dragons.

I can't wait to do more thinking on this subject!

What is an amohaji?

The amohaji is an obscure dragon that appears in Green Ronin’s Monsters of the Mind and Expeditious Retreat Press’ Malevolent and Benign.

MotM describes amohaji as small aquatic dragons, dwelling in sewers and catacombs. They have natural camouflage and a mischievous demeanor. Their powers include breathing fire, telepathic powers, charm and compulsion effects, (un)locking doors remotely, shapeshifting, and magic armor.

 

M&B describes amohaji as small cousins to cloud dragons, masters of illusion and mental manipulation, breathing steam and forgetfulness, and living in migrating cloud lairs. If you kill them, then you can dig a magic pearl out of their skull that lets you cast some of their magic for the next 24 hours until it dissipates.

The two couldn’t be more different. However, the backstory of MotM states the amohaji migrated to the underworld after humans hunted them down ages ago. Perhaps those presented in M&B represent the amohaji before they migrated and adapted to the underworld.

Dragon spiders and spider dragons?

A concept I found while googling are the dragon spiders aka spider dragons. Dragons with arachnid (or other arthropod) traits, arachnids with draconic traits, or some horrible hybrid of the two? Who knows! They’re just plain creepy and I like it that way.

Spidragon © 2016 Crowsrock

Some examples of spider dragons include:

• The arachnidrake from Book of Drakes. It is a winged dragon with arachnid features, and has a swarm of spiders living on its skin.
• The draconid from Tome of Horrors. It is a giant arachnid with two dragon heads on serpentine necks. No relation to the similar looking slassans below, but you could always posit a connection.
• The slassan from Arcana Evolved. It is a giant arachnid with a dragon head on a serpentine neck; it is an intelligent creature with mystical abilities. In The Diamond Throne campaign setting, the slassan and mojh were hybrid descendants of the dramojh (fiendish dragons). 
• Reprinted as aqrabuamelu in Monsters of Porphyra 2. "Aqrabuamelu" is another name for the scorpion-men spawned by Tiamat in Mesopotamian myth. In addition to OGL constraints, the new name was presumably used because girtablilu was already taken by Pathfinder Bestiary.

I haven't really worked out any kind of background or theology for it, but I wanted to indulge in some brief world building ideas. I'm thinking that Tiamat, the primordial dragon of chaos and salt water, spawned a number of aberrant dragons. When they entered the mortal world, they appeared in the forms of spiders (a la Ungoliant) but their dragon nature showed through their new forms. And that's where the spider dragons come from.

I had ideas for other connections too. I was thinking of substituting Arcana Evolved's dramojh, slassan, and mojh with the manalishi from OSRIC, aqrabuamelu from MoP, and dragonborn from SRD 5. No firm idea of their relationship yet, maybe in later posts after I defined what the heck a dragon even is supposed to be.

Links

• https://wanderingmoonsword.tumblr.com/post/153494310794/draconid
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/184120
• http://fav.me/d98ysed
• http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/races.htm#Dragonborn
• https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/aberrations/draconid-tohc/
• https://koboldpress.com/arachnidrake/
• https://dragon-story.fandom.com/wiki/Spider_Dragon
• http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=7664

The vouivre, a weird wyvern/woman thing

The vouivre is a she-dragon from French folklore. The name derives from the Latin for "viper," and refers to the wyvern of heraldry or a mythical dragon inhabiting Lorraine, Jura, and other regions of France. In English, I suppose the idiomatic translation would be viperess or wyverness.

The following two pages from the comic book Vouivre: Thunder of Fury helpfully summarize the tales of this particular dragon:

The dragon is described as fond of bathing in her private cave and capable of assuming human form. This invites comparison to another French dragon, Melusine. Melusine became a dragon once a week and at this time bathed alone in her private quarters. A Book of Creatures calls the vouivres her spiritual descendants stripped of human form, with later accounts conflating the two to give the vouivre her womanly qualities where originally she lacked such attributes entirely.

Various regions of France and neighboring countries put their own spins on the myth. Traits include appearing as animals or balls of fire, greedily guarding treasure, dependence on magic gems (compare draconite from other folklore), and so forth. Your typical weird folklore stuff.

Modern sources put further spins on the monster:

1. When she was imported to the video game Megami Tensei, the vouivre appeared as a demon with features of both woman and dragon. Indeed, the left half of her body appears human but the right half appears monstrous!
2. When she was imported to the tabletop game Pathfinder, perhaps influenced by Megami Tensei, the vouivre became a bizarre creature resembling an amphisbaena with one end of the body appearing as a lovely woman. One wonders what was going through the writer's head, but I find it delightfully weird!

I like all these ideas so much. If I wanted to have the monster appear in all these forms, then I would use a simple explanation: the viperess' is a shape changer. Her power is flawed, however, and always reveals some obvious hint of her true nature. For example, the right or lower half of her body still appearing as a dragon, or she is followed by an entourage of vipers, or even that she sheds her dragon skin to bathe and is at the mercy of whoever steals it (echoing tales of the mermaid wife).

Research links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guivre
• https://www.blackdrago.com/species/vouivre.htm
• http://www.blackdrago.com/fame/melusine.htm
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vouivre
• https://abookofcreatures.com/2015/12/11/vouivre/
• https://www.wordnik.com/words/viperess
• https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type4080.html

Gaming and popular culture links

• https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Vouivre
• http://dailybestiary.blogspot.com/2014/02/vouivre.html
• https://shop.gempakstarz.com/clay/LM-XV-S03-ENG

Some thoughts on the lusca (sharktopus)

The lusca is a cryptid reputed to swim the waters of the Caribbean, variously described as part shark, dragon, and octopus. In modern popular culture, like Pathfinder Bestiary, it is often depicted as a "sharktopus."

We don’t need so many reptilian races

One of many oddities of D&D is that it has a bazillion reptilian races. As with goblinoids and orcs, I think it makes the most sense to treat all these chike/gatorfolk, kobolds, lizardfolk, serpentfolk/naga/ophiduan/inphidian, lernaeati/dorvae/manalishi, troglodytes/xulgath, dinosaurfolk, etc as members of the same monster family. For example, the reptilian races could be distinguished by categories like subrace, caste, size, tribe, degree of anthropomorphism, etc a la Warhammer Fantasy lizardmen.

Way back I briefly recapped the saurian race from Slavelords of Cydonia, which had several castes representing different reptile varieties like gators, chameleons, and turtles. I said back then that it made sense too, but this moment I wanted to add something else.

The reptilian races should be explicitly linked with dragons, dragonborn/dragonkin/dragonspawn, and so forth. In D&D-inspired media, this is already seen to a degree like the “dragonewt” race.

Furthermore, I think this family should (vaguely) include what amphibian races exist. A herptilefolk family? I alluded to this a while back when I discussed the Ogdoad of Ancient Egypt, a paired set of primordial deities in the forms of snakes and frogs. (Which are the parents of basilisks. Patterns are fun!)

In a future post I intend to explain about how I would define dragons based on comparative mythology rather than the idiosyncratic D&D norms.

Make dragons magical again!

The recent release of Pathfinder 2e has reinvigorated my interest in dragons, mostly because PF2 has doubled down on having a bazillion different kinds of dragons with their own pseudo-naturalistic ecologies. On the one hand, I'm perfectly fine with using random generation tables to create dragons. On the other hand, I'm pretty sick of dragons being reduced to glorified dinosaurs.

Dragons are found throughout world mythology. There are primordial chaos dragons like Apepi and Tiamat. There are many-headed dragons like Hydra. There are she-dragons like Echidna and Chimera. There are tons of weird magical features, too. A dragon's hoard might be cursed, causing misfortune to thieves or turning you into a dragon yourself. Dragons are often seen as omens of disaster, or conversely as benevolent gods who bring life-giving rain. Dragons are often invulnerable, except for some tiny weak spot the hero must find through wit. Alternately, they have regeneration that requires cleverness to overcome, such as the Greek Hydra or the British knuckers.

Dragon body parts may have a variety of effects. Consuming a dragon's heart grants knowledge of the language of the birds. Dragon's blood is a possible ingredient in the elixir of life. Bathing in dragon's blood confers invulnerability, assuming you survive the bath since dragon's blood is often toxic, corrosive, flammable, or all of the above. If it doesn't cause "dragon trees" or monsters like amphisbaena or scytale to sprout. Sowing a dragon's teeth like seeds might cause hoplites to sprout from the ground.

There are a few stories of dragon's having precious stones in or on their bodies that contain their power. The draconite stone is extracted from the head of a live dragon and has magical properties. The pearl of a Chinese dragon might have the power to generate food. In some Korean tales, falling stars contain wish-granting jewels (Korean yeouiju, from Sanskrit cintamani) that may grant a serpent's wish to become a dragon.

Mythology is full of weird stuff like that. It's a great way to make dragons feel magical again.

Thoughts on the couatl

Couatls are celestial beings based on the Mesoamerican feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl.

By default they have a minimalist yet highly flexible background: they could be generic do-gooders, enemies of the rakshasa, scheming manipulators, dragons, angels, etc.

I like the idea of presenting couatls as the angels of Quetzalcoatl himself, or as outright gods themselves. (I'm not a fan of the idea of presenting "gods" as these abstract yet ridiculously over-detailed setting constants that are inexplicably beyond game statistics.)

I like the idea of presenting couatls as a type of dragon, too. (I'm not a fan of D&D's absurd anal-retentive taxonomy anyway.) Eberron presents couatls as related to feathered serpentfolk, which is a nice idea too.

Maybe they are related to the lillend? Friends or relatives? Master and servant? Since couatls can change shape, perhaps the lillend are one of the forms they typically assume?

Couatls have been presented as psionic monsters, alongside other celestials like the angels and shedu, oddly enough. In third edition, they are full-blown spellcasters or psionicists! (I'm not really a fan of laundry lists of spells. Difficult to track, really.)

The couatl isn't a very popular monster (like all goodly monsters), but it did manage to inspire a couple of variants in 3pp. Pathfinder in particular presented several different variants: auwaz couatl, chicome couatl, mix couatl, quetz couatl, tletli couatl, and xiuh couatl. The last is based on the Aztec Xiuhcoatl.

Although not evil in mythology, a couple of 3pp presented the xiuhcoatl as an evil fiery counterpart of the couatl. The "dark couatl" appears in Monster Encyclopaedia 2 - Dark Bestiary by Mongoose Publishing, and the "xiuhcoatl" appears in Bane Ledger by Bloodstone Press (pictured below).

Links

• https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/3evkjl/couatl/
• http://dailybestiary.blogspot.com/2011/10/couatl.html
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Couatl
• http://tao-dndwiki.blogspot.com/2018/04/couatl.html
• https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/couatl/

Demon brood idea: manalishi

As suggested by Mongoose Publishing's The Slayer's Guide to Demons and Encyclopaedia Arcane: Demonology, demons or fiends are divided into a number of broods (tags in D&D 5e rules). Each brood descends from a member of demonic royalty, and are named for their founder plus the suffix of -ka meaning "brood of." For example, the tanar'ka and are the brood of Tanar, the baate'ka are the brood of Baate, the yugo'ka are the brood of Yugo, and the tzaretch'ka are the brood of Tzaretch. Other broods named in the literature include the vang'ka (insectoid demons), jartas'ka (shadow demons), and nuyul'ka (mind worms).

I present another brood: manalishi'ka. The manalishi, or "scaly devils", are fiends with distinct reptilian features. They were originally introduced in OSRIC as an OGL substitute for the closed content abishai devils, although they were renamed to scaly devils in later reprintings. The name originates from the title of a song by Peter Green.

Garnfellow proposes that manalishi are dragon eggs transmuted into devils. I would go a step further and propose that the manalishi include a variety of other scaly fiends, like dorvae and lernaeati*. I've got tons of ideas for a draconic family tree but that's for another time.

*From Monsters of Porphyra. Called "savant hydras" in Creature Collection and "hydranoids" in Monster Geographica.

ADDENDUM 11/22/2019: In the Scarred Lands' Creature Collection series, reptilian devils like the savant hydra and heartclutch are the servants of the LE god Chardun created in mockery of his reptilian mother the titaness Mormo. I think I could take inspiration from them too.

the Ogdoad and Protean

The ogdoads and proteans are exemplars of chaos resembling frogs and snakes, respectively.

Dragon-kin and other draconic hybrids

D&D traditionally divides dragons into a variety of categories such as "true dragon," "false dragon," "greater dragon," "lesser dragon," "drake," "dragon-kin," and so forth. I prefer to ignore these distinctions because they are arbitrary and unhelpful. D&D, Pathfinder and other 3pp have devised a bazillion varieties of dragons that are impossible to keep track of, so I don't bother to try. A dragon is whatever the DM wants, and as such I will consider dragons on an individual basis.

In this post, I will concern myself with those monsters traditionally relegated to the bin of "dragon-kin" and/or "half-dragon" (whatever the distinction is by edition). Prior to 3e's introduction of the half-dragon template, earlier editions of D&D liked to introduced a bunch of monsters whose shtick was that they were half-dragon and half-another monster. Or otherwise some obscure branch on the dragon family tree. D&D gets weirdly obsessive over its nonsensical monster ecology.

Chimera and dracimera

The chimera was typed as a dragon (or "dragon-kin") by the Rules Cyclopedia, but 3e and 5e have not typed it as a dragon. In Greek mythology the chimera was considered a dragon. Given these data points, I will treat the chimera as a dragon.

Traditionally, D&D maintains that the standard chimera has the head of a red dragon that breathes fire. Chimeras with heads of other colors and breath weapons are arbitrarily segregated into a separate species called a dracimera (a portmanteau of draconic and chimera), which is the result of crossbreeding between a chimera and a chromatic dragon. Pathfinder discarded this distinction and allowed the standard chimera to have a dragon's head in any of the traditional five colors and corresponding breath weapons.

Chimeras are traditionally limited to the heads of chromatic dragons, but there's really no reason why they can't have the head of a metallic dragon. It's a simple matter of changing the breath weapon and, if necessary, alignment. (I personally think the chromatic versus metallic distinction, and all the other distinctions made over the decades, are silly and unnecessary.)

Dragonne

I can't recall which D&D books the dragonne appears in, but I know it appeared in the Tome of Horrors and a Pathfinder bestiary.

As I explained in my other post on the dragonne's etymology, it's a simple lion-dragon (or "dracolion" as the traditional D&D naming scheme for hybrids may suggest). That is, a possible crossbreed of a dragon (traditionally brass, but I suppose that's up in the air at this point) and a lion that like many monsters is inexplicably treated as its own species because publishers need something to fill the bestiaries.

The lion-dragon is two-thirds of a chimera. It appears in heraldry and lacks a mythological underpinning. Like a lot of the monsters, it was made up solely for the game. Unfortunately, it is really boring as far as monsters go unless your DM allows you to take it as a paladin's mount or something.

Octavirate Presents Vol #4: The Forgotten got the odd idea to invent a "half-dragonne" template as part of an overall "half-dragonkin" template initiative. Although it is a genuinely original albeit bizarre concept, I can't really imagine myself employing many crossbreeds of lion-dragons. I should probably make an attempt to fix that later.

Mantidrake

The mantidrake is a simple hybrid of manticore and dragon. As you may be starting to realize if you haven’t already, there’s a very good reason why 3e introduced a half-dragon template.

It varies whether the mantidrake is a hybrid, species of its own or both. Nonetheless, it isn’t any less boring than its constituents. It’s a random encounter, an evil wizard’s servant, whatever the DM needs.

What made the mythological manticore interesting was that it was hunted by men on elephant-back, its young were captured and their tails docked so that nobles could enjoy their singing voices. That, like so much else, is absent in D&D.

Wyvern and wyvern-drake

D&D has an inconsistent definition of "drake." Sometimes a drake is a synonym for or subcategory of dragonet (a category of small dragons including wyverns, the oddly named pseudodragon, elemental drakes, etc). Sometimes, as in mantidrake and wyvern-drake, a synonym for "true" dragon varieties.

Anyway, the wyvern falls into that arbitrary gamey category I mentioned of “false” versus “true” dragons. The wyvern-drake is a hybrid of wyvern and true dragon, or some kind of evolutionary throwback. The bestiaries get pretty weird after a while.

Again, it doesn’t really have anything going for it. It’s more monster manual filler.

Dracohydra

The hydra is considered a dragon by real bestiaries. The monster manual somehow disagrees. I’m labeling the hydra a dragon, damnit!

Anyway, some writer got the idea to combine the hydra with chromatic dragons. It’s either a literal crossbreed or the demented offspring of an evil dragon god. Again, nothing spectacular.

The exact statistics vary by edition. Generally a dracohydra has 2–5+ chromatic dragon heads, with the color (and thus breath weapon) of each individual head determined by rolling on a table (or arbitrary chosen by the DM). I suppose that makes it unpredictable and tactically challenging.

Dracolisk

Again, the basilisk is one of those monsters labeled a dragon by mythology textbooks but not by D&D monster manuals. Go figure.

The dracolisk is a hybrid of basilisk and chromatic dragon. It has a petrifying gaze and one of five breath weapons. It’s really unimaginative and Pathfinder even used it as their example half-dragon.

I did a post a while back that referenced 13th Age and other 3pp giving more variety to the basilisk and cockatrice with elemental-flavored attacks, so the dracolisk is now fairly redundant.

Dracotaur

The dracotaur is a simple dragon-themed centaur. 

Funny etymology trivia: dracotaur translates (more or less) to “dragon-bull,” not dragon-centaur. The “standard” centaur is technically a horse-centaur, so the technically correct term would be draco- or dragon-centaur.

I don’t recall offhand what the popular appearance is, but the humanoid upper body of a draco-centaur may either be a human or a humanoid dragon.

Warcraft calls them “dragon-spawn.”

Dracosphinx

The dracosphinx, as the name implies, is a hybrid of dragon and sphinx. In other words, a sphinx variant charaterized by a dragon’s head and wings on a sphinx’s body. (The difference compared to a dracolion is that the dracolion typically looks like a scaly lion or has a lion front side and dragon back side, whereas the dracosphinx has a scaly dragon front side and unscaled lion back side.)

How a dracosphinx comes to exist might vary immensely by edition. Prior to 5e, sphinxes reproduced and died of old age; in 5e, they’re sexless immortals that guard the gods’ stuff (although they do seem to have genders). Presumably, a 5e era dracosphinx is the result of a dragon cult summoning a sphinx.

Behir

The behir is based on the Scottish beithir, a serpentine dragon. The behir is a dragon. Get that through your thick skull, D&D!

Dragon turtle

The dragon turtle originates in Chinese mythology. Mercifully, D&D correctly labeled it a dragon. Although that’s probably because the name forced the writers to.

Pseudodragon

The pseudodragon is one of those “false” dragons placed under the dragonet umbrella that includes wyverns and elemental drakes. Although called false dragons (the name literally means that), in the game rules they’re dragons because D&D logic.

Dragonborn

Under this heading I will place all playable dragon races including half-dragons, dragontouched, dragonblooded, dragonwrought, or whatever the nomenclature is. Regardless of their name or various in-universe origins, playable humanoid dragons have been around since at least 2e. Because playing dragons is awesome, simple as that. Sadly, to date only FantasyCraft made playable dragons (as in quadrupedal winged dragons) playable in its core rules.

Half-dragonkin (3pp)

The third party supplement Octavirate Presents Vol #4: The Forgotten introduced a set of "half-dragonkin" templates, allowing GMs to create hybrids of dragonkin like the behir, chimera, dragon turtle, dragonne, jabberwock (new monster), pseudodragon and wyvern. Needless to say... oh what the heck, have fun with it!

Mandragora, mandrake, man-dragon?

According to Wiktionary, one definition of mandrake or mandragora is "a kind of tiny dragon immune to fire." Ostensibly this is because mandrake may be falsely analyzed as a compound of man and drake. Wiktionary provides no source for this definition so I used Google Books to find where this etymology came from...

Etymology of the dracolion, dragonne, dragony, and lion-dragon

The dragonne, a monster appearing in some monster manuals and the Tome of Horrors, is not a unique invention of the game. Its name actually originates from medieval heraldry...

Dragon types? Drakes, dragonets, lindwyrms, wyverns, lyzards, oy vey...

One of the more frustrating aspects of fantasy gaming is the obsessive compulsion to classify things. Like dragons, for instance. Dragons are classified into distinct species by their body plan, size, color, etc. I have said before that my setting has thrown that out the window in favor of depicting dragons as unique mystical entities rather than species. That said, I still take issue with the absurd terminology...

The diversity of kobolds

Kobolds are one of those monsters that changes noticeably in different media.

Oriental dragons

Past editions of D&D included loads and loads of new kinds of dragons. The world building was ad hoc, so there wasn’t too much logic involved. The default dragons were Western-style dragons, so later oriental dragons were added. (Oddly enough, the gold dragon was originally depicted as an oriental dragon.) Most of their folkloric roots were absent. The interesting thing about oriental dragons in mythology is that they are literally gods. For example, rain dragons cause the rain and so forth. This is really interesting to me so I want to integrate it into my own settings.

Links

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Oriental_Dragon
• https://www.scribd.com/document/317737017/The-Dragons-of-the-Orient-for-5th-Edition-d-d

Renaming true dragons

Like elemental and giant, the term "dragon" in the game rules refers to both a monster type and a monster entry. The rules acknowledge that this distinction is needlessly confusing, so I would prefer to replace it. (tl;dr I labeled the iconic articulate hoarding dragon "zmey", the Russian word for that exact concept.) UPDATE 3/15/2018: decided to use "tarragon" instead. UPDATE 9/19/2018: decided to use drake instead, taking after the original firedrake.