Dracon

Picture a centaur built from three animals: a brontosaur's heavy body, a man's torso and arms, and a dragon's head. A dracon stands on broad, flat elephant-like feet and trails a long serpentine tail. Each hand has five fingers plus a thumb, all clawed. Its own language and the tongue of dragons come easily, while common is slow and thickly accented. Even in casual talk, dracons sound formal and ceremonious.

In the void, dracons travel in starhelm-driven ships, mostly converted galleons, though a few hammer-prowed craft have been seen with them. Their favored weapon is a slender long sword, but they wrestle and grapple just as well, and their long thumb-claws rake for 1-4 points in close fighting. They also carry heavy darts (1-6 damage, one throw per round, range 20/40/60 yards), plus halberds, which serve as space grappling hooks and as ceremonial and dueling arms, but rarely see ordinary battle.

Their smithing matches elves', though not dwarves'. Each keeps armor aboard and puts it on in a ritual before battle; given the time, this raises its AC to 3.

Among themselves they duel by strict custom. The challenged party picks the weapons, the challenger sets the stakes (to the death, first blood, half hit points, best of three falls and so on), and the challenged chooses when and where, within reason; one old rhyme tells of heroes who return every year for one more round of the Battle Eternal. They do not offer this code to outsiders, but a dracon honor-bound by terms an outsider proposes will keep them as far as is reasonable. One will not accept a mind reaver's challenge unless it swears off its psionic blast.

These vegetarians live and travel in families led by their eldest member, of either sex. A solitary dracon is thought of as a freak. Cut off from kin, one sickens unless it builds a new family, sometimes by adopting non-dracons. Even the bold explorers who crew the new ships seem stiff and passive, quicker to withdraw than fight, except those who have adopted humanoid kin.

A herd's leader, the herd-elder, is not the strongest or fastest but whoever wins a near-mystical reckoning of kinship. Through long rounds of questions and answers, dracons trace lineage until precedence is clear. Cynics say they invent the ties on the spot from old favors and slights, which would at least reward wit. When herds meet, the first business is settling who leads the combined group. A displaced leader feels no shame: leading is a duty, and its reward is that someone greater eventually lets you rest.

Each herd, however small, has a rite-keeper who guards ritual, advises the herd-elder and heals. This is a priest of level 3-12, more powerful in larger herds, plus one more for every 30 dracons, drawing on the spheres of Healing, Sun, Protection, Animal, Guardian, Divination, Creation, Combat and Necromantic.

Their gods (of war, fertility, storm, sea and more) are always shown together as a single great herd, following the Full Leader, a god of wisdom and leadership who always knows the right path. Calling someone Full Leader is about the highest praise a dracon gives. Dragons fill them with awe; the rite-keepers call dragons messengers of the gods and watch them for signs.

Their tight kinship suggests a single homeworld only recently left behind, which fits their ships: clumsy copies of groundling sailing vessels with raised ceilings. They describe a dry world of fast-growing grass and desert, broad, shallow seas and one large moon or more, whose shifting climate forces the herds to keep moving and cooperating. It has no known predators, but stories tell of a spidery Dark God that bursts from the sand to snatch stray young. Whether it is real, folklore, or a memory of web-eel slavers, dracons hate all spiders and those slavers most of all. They say little else about home, perhaps from caution, or because these ships are lost.

They regard humans, elves, dwarves and mind reavers with polite curiosity, lump them together as 'the deformed', and confuse their traits constantly (they can never decide who flies the big rock-ships). Lizard men get on famously with them and are taken into families as small, disabled relatives, while centaurs and their like are hailed as long-lost allies. Gazer tyrants strike them as hilarious, like the big balls kicked in their home games, and jokes about them pass from ship to ship.