Bronze Drakeborn [Drakeborn]

Born from corrupted bronze dragon eggs, a bronze drakeborn is a little over six feet tall, scaled in bronze, with gray teeth and dull yellow eyes. It avoids real armor because it hampers movement, but likes helmets, light breastplates and leather bands on its limbs as decoration.

Its wings are the most capable of any drakeborn but copper drakeborn. It can truly fly for one round at movement 6, and it glides like the rest but can ride a strong wind indefinitely. It spreads its wings to bask on cold days, fans itself slowly on hot ones, and its wings quiver when it is nervous or deep in thought.

Shrewd, quick-witted and careful, bronze drakeborn soften foes with spells or arrows before closing, and most carry a long bow along with a melee weapon. Their signature charge comes on all fours, wings beating and hissing, with a sword or other weapon gripped in the jaws. The sight is so unnerving that targets often freeze until it is too late. They favor daggers, short swords and any blade light enough to hold in the jaws at a run. Like brass drakeborn they make two claw attacks, or a claw and a 1d4 bite.

They cast as 4th-level wizards, preferring burning hands, enlarge, web, magic missile, invisibility, shocking grasp and stinking cloud, and they get +2 on all saving throws. They show no mercy once committed, but will spare a foe whose survival helps their cause.

At 0 hit points the scaly flesh withers and falls from the bones as dust over one round. In the following round the skeleton bursts, dealing 1d6 to everyone within ten feet with no save.

These intensely religious creatures serve the Dark Queen with elaborate rites and favor lonely forests where they can worship in peace. Unlike other drakeborn they build homes: small wood-and-stone huts with flat roofs, wooden doors and small window holes, furnished with boulders and stumps and floored with soft weeds and twigs.

Bands number 2d10, though more than six together is rare. The strongest leads, makes every decision and presides over worship. Most lairs have a crude shrine: a dragon idol of stones and saplings bound with vine, seldom taller than a person's waist, in a clearing burned black and ringed with charred bones. Gems and jewelry are their favorite treasure, and they often adorn the shrine with them.

Sure of their own superiority, they pretend friendship with other drakeborn when it pays, and the gullible brass drakeborn are frequent dupes. They often raid human settlements for captives, but mostly eat plants, carrion and small mammals.