Shadow Dragon

Translucent at every age, a shadow dragon seen from afar is just a knot of shadows. Sly and risk-averse, it speaks its own tongue and the evil dragons' tongue; 17% of hatchlings can converse with any intelligent creature, plus 5% per age category.

It strikes from invisibility or deep shade, misleading foes with illusion/phantasm spells, and older dragons rely on non-detection. Its spells and powers function at 6th level, adding its combat modifier.

Its breath is a 40 by 30 foot mass of blackness, 20 feet tall. Victims are blinded for a round and lose a quarter of their levels or Hit Dice, rounded up, or half that (also rounded up) with a save vs. breath weapon. The loss lasts a number of turns based on the dragon's age and is blocked by negative plane protection; anyone reduced below 1 level lies comatose until it ends.

Born immune to energy drain, it hides in shadows at 40%, gaining 5% per category up to 95%. Juveniles gain mirror image (1d4+1 images) 3/day, adults dimension door 2/day, old dragons non-detection 3/day, venerable ones shadow walk 1/day, and great wyrms create shadows 3/day. This last fills a 100-yard radius with leaping darkness for an hour, negating all light and darkness sources, magical or not. Shadow-hiders can hide there even under observation, and the dragon and other natives of the plane of Shadow act within it as if improved invisible. Dispel magic ends it.

Neither bright light nor total dark suits it; it wants mottled gloom. On the Prime Material Plane it haunts ruins, sheltering underground at midday and emerging at dawn and dusk. On its home plane it dens in thorny thickets, castles or cave mazes. It likes neighbors who can warn of intruders, though it rarely works with them and often eats them. Its hoard favors black and other dark, opaque stones, plus magic items that make shadow or darkness, used to break up pure light or pure dark.

It eats almost anything but loves carrion, killing for sport and leaving corpses to ripen. Frost-blighted, waterlogged or salt-poisoned plants please it too.