Lore Spotlight: The Dread Dragon

Happy Father’s Day weekend! Along with celebrating all the father-figures in your life, Sunday brings another occasion to celebrate; a certain HBO show about dragons makes its season 2 return Sunday evening. What better way to celebrate the father-figures in your life by saying a “dad joke” and watching cool looking dragons fight each other. That’s why today’s lore spotlight is about the Dread Dragon. Do you have a favorite dad joke or type of dragon? Let us know below! And without further adieu here’s more about the Dread Dragon.

[Dread Dragon Encounter, art generated with Adobe Firefly]

There are two parts that make up the Dread Dragon. The first being Dread, which is simply described as Undead Beasts. When a beast is slain, but it’s corpse is still intact, on incredibly rare occasions, Dark Aether will cause the corpse of a beast to rise again. Undead are unthinking, unremembering, and fueled by an insatiable hatred, lust only for blood and violence. Different undead attack humans and/or animals with different means and for different causes. But all undead won’t stop until they are killed… For good. For these reasons that’s why there are no monsters as rare, nor as terrifying as a dread.

The second part that makes up the Dread Dragon is again right in the name, Dragon. Dragons are the Aetherial Beasts of great legends. Massive, as the size of a shop or stronghold when fully grown, and capable of casting elemental magics to defend or attack. These great, lizard-like beings have two hind legs and two forearms, as well as a large pair of wings making it capable of flight. The graspers of the dragon are great claws and the maw holds a row of sharp, carnivorous teeth, each tooth the size of a man on their own. The dragon is covered in a thick, scaled hide with the occasional barbs sticking from the hide-plates to discourage larger creatures from biting the dragon. Their scales and hide are always colored to the landscape in which they were born, most commonly shades of grey to black for being born in the mountains, but it is possible to find green or blue dragons born in forests or near oceans respectively.

On the very rare occasion, when both of these parts come together and Dark Aether fills the corpse of a slain Dragon, the Dread Dragon rises. The armored hides of this once great beast are beginning to wither away; it’s eyes, if even present, appear to have gone white with blindness; and dilapidated and rotting flesh can be found all over this terrifying creature. The Dread Dragon has two hind legs and two forearms with grasping hands. Unlike its other cousins, the Dread Dragon is capable of standing on its two hind legs and battling or gripping foes with its hands. The Dread Dragon has large, rotting teeth, but still plenty strong with even greater strength than a normal dragon. While a Dread Dragon is an undead, and thus is incapable of using magic, one terrifying aspect is that it is immune to magic altogether. With the sole exception of the darkest and most dangerous of aetherial arts, Shadow Magic. Thus causing it to be one of the most powerful beasts in War & Aether.

We hope you enjoyed today’s Lore Spotlight and hope you have a great Father’s Day weekend! As always feel free to comment below your favorite dad joke or dragon and check back for all things regarding War & Aether: The Roleplaying Game!