Flame Linnorm

Perhaps the scarcest Norse dragon and certainly the most beautiful, a flame linnorm lives for domination and wealth. It starts life black, paling to a muted gray by its juvenile years, when people often take it for a gray linnorm. As a young adult it flushes a bright, glowing orange, and by wyrmhood it is solid scarlet. Adults look like moving bonfires as they walk, and the greatest wyrms are compared to fireballs.

Its own language serves it among its kind, and it can speak with every other Norse dragon. There is a 20% chance that a very young flame learns human speech, and that chance climbs 10% with each later age category.

Height is its favorite vantage. It nearly always leads with spells, hoping to kill its quarry without scorching any loot, then turns to breath and fire magic if that fails. Teeth and claws are a last resort.

Either breath inflicts the same damage: a 5-foot-wide jet of flame reaching 110 feet, or a cloud of red-hot ash 90 feet long, 70 across and 40 deep. Its magical abilities work at 9th level plus combat modifier.

Ordinary fire never harms a flame. Powers by age: very young, heat metal 3/day and immunity to magical fire as well; juvenile, produce fire and pyrotechnics, 3/day each; adult, a fireball every third round; old, fire trap and fire charm, 3/day each; venerable, wall of fire and flame strike, 2/day each; great wyrm, firestorm and fire seeds, 1/day each.

A flame troubles mindless creatures only when hungry. It lives alone in deep caves that hold its vast bulk and its vaster treasure, avoiding other linnorms not from hatred but from fear that they would steal. It counts its hoard constantly and cherishes magic above all, puzzling for hours over how each item works. Those items then serve in combat or to bind human and demihuman thralls, who in turn gather yet more wealth for their master. Every corner of its domain is memorized and fiercely defended. Lairs of venerable or older flames have a 25% chance of 1d4 fire elemental guardians; whether they are summoned or paid in treasure, sages cannot say.

Flames pair up every 30 years and separate afterward. The mother lays alone and deserts her brood the moment they hatch.

Herd beasts, timber and even dirt all feed a flame, but its true delicacy is anything already ablaze, and it will set a forest burning simply to dine.