Drakeborn Overview

Drakeborn, sometimes called dragonmen, are humanoid dragon-hybrids made from corrupted eggs of good dragons. They fought as special troops for the dragon warlords in a great war, and the survivors rank among the most dangerous and loathsome beings in the world.

Ages ago, evil dragons spread such terror that a legendary knight drove them to a negative plane and bound them in eternal sleep. To keep the balance, the good dragons agreed to leave too, and the Dark Queen secured their oath to slumber on a distant island while she kept their eggs as hostages in tunnels beneath a volcanic city. Instead of guarding the eggs, she corrupted them. An evil priest, a renegade wizard and an ancient red dragon used dark spells to swell the eggs and multiply what was inside, and the priest then tore open a portal to the Abyss, and scaled devils, her servants, poured in to animate the spawn.

In the War of the Dark Queen they made ideal troops: steadier than humans and far more obedient than the ogres and goblins filling her ranks. Once the good dragons discovered the treachery and joined the good races, her armies broke and she was driven from the world. Leaderless, the drakeborn scattered. Weak commanders lost control, harsh ones faced revolt, and most deserted.

Today most live as small raiding bands in desolate wilds, thriving on banditry, extortion and murder, and those near towns sometimes erupt into sprees of looting, burning and killing. They still revere the Dark Queen but care little for their old commanders' plots. Some serve in evil human armies yet keep apart from other races. Evil dragons draw them; nothing else does.

There are five true races, each from one kind of good dragon egg: stony brass drakeborn (brass), spellcasting bronze drakeborn (bronze), poison-tongued copper drakeborn (copper), shapeshifting silver drakeborn (silver) and mighty gold drakeborn (gold). Proto drakeborn, also from brass eggs, are covered here though most scholars do not count them.

In the war, brass drakeborn were the robed scouts and massed foot soldiers, copper drakeborn the archers and assassins with poisoned weapons, bronze drakeborn the sword-carrying spellcasters who led squads, silver drakeborn the heavily armored elite with two-handed swords, and gold drakeborn rare generals and infiltrators who could pass among humans. The races once shared armies but never form mixed bands now; brass and copper loathe each other as much as either hates humans, and this feuding is what keeps drakeborn from becoming a power of their own.

All share a basic shape: a stocky humanoid body with a dragon's head and tail, covered in small scales that are a duller version of the parent dragon's color (bronze drakeborn are dull bronze, for example). They have long snouts, razor teeth and small bright eyes. Height runs from 5 1/2 feet for brass drakeborn to nine feet for silver. Fingers and toes end in sharp claws, yet their hands work tools and weapons as well as a human's. Each huge foot has three spread front toes and one at the back. The heavy tail drags behind, useless in a fight but good for balance.

All except gold drakeborn have leathery wings almost as big as their bodies, with bony spurs along the lower edge and a single spur on top. They are fairly intelligent and multilingual, speaking their own hissing, wheezing tongue and usually common, plus the tongues of evil dragons and other wicked peoples.

Only silver drakeborn can fly for long, and bronze drakeborn can manage a single round, but all winged kinds sprint on all fours with flapping wings and glide four feet for every foot of height they launch from, so a 100-foot cliff yields a 400-foot glide. Dragon fear does not affect them; they love evil dragons' company, and one serving such a dragon gains +1 to attack rolls within 120 feet of it. Being magical creations, all radiate magic, and each race dies in its own dramatic and often deadly way, described in its entry.

With the Dark Queen banished, the only way to make more is lost. Drakeborn cannot breed, since their sexes are effectively the same, and they cannot cross with other races. They do not age in any visible way, are thought to live well past 1,000 years, catch no known disease and can go long periods on little food or water, so their numbers fall only through accident and violence. Still, they will slowly dwindle.