Cloud Dragon

Cloud dragons hatch with silvery white scales edged in red. The red spreads and fades to sunset orange as they grow, and from mature adulthood it deepens to red-gold, displacing nearly all the silver. They speak their own tongue and the neutral dragon tongue, and 17% of hatchlings can talk with any intelligent creature, rising 5% per age category.

Reclusive and resentful of intruders, cloud dragons rarely speak, and then curtly and coldly; they have nothing but scorn for anything that needs spells or devices to fly. A cloud dragon is as apt to slip away in cloud form as to fight. When it attacks, it breathes to scatter enemies, then uses solid fog and its weather powers to blind and bewilder them. Truly enraged, it builds a storm with control weather and then uses call lightning, and against flying foes it likes stinking cloud and control winds.

The breath is a freezing blast 140 feet long, 30 high and 30 wide that wounds with cold and flying ice. Any creature at least three size classes smaller than the dragon is also tumbled away a distance of 2d12 feet, plus 3 more for each age category. Characters able to grab something solid hold on unless they fail Strength checks, and creatures with claws, suckers and similar gear resist if there is a surface to grip. Cold cannot harm them, and their spells and powers work at 6th level plus combat modifier.

Once per round it may take or drop a cohesive cloud shape. In that form it is 75% likely to be mistaken for an ordinary cloud, it gains 3 points of Armor Class and its magic resistance increases by 15%; it can still cast and use innate powers but cannot breathe or make physical attacks, and it flies at 12 (maneuverability A). Age brings solid fog twice daily (very young), stinking cloud twice daily (young), create water twice daily up to three cubic yards, or 81 cubic feet (juvenile), obscurement three times daily (adult), call lightning twice daily (mature adult), weather summoning twice daily (old), control weather twice daily (very old) and control winds twice daily at the ancient stage.

Lairs are magical cloud islands that offer some small patch of firm ground for eggs and treasure, or very rarely cloud-wrapped mountain peaks. They are alone 95% of the time; any group is one parent with young.

Though able to eat almost anything, they seem to live mainly on rainwater, hail and an occasional morsel of silver. Shared territory pits them against silver dragons, and despite their greater intellect cloud dragons usually lose, outmatched by the silvers' second breath weapon and talent for gathering allies.