Silver Dragon [Metallic]

A silver hatchling is blue-gray with silvery glints, brightening gradually to shining silver as adulthood nears. Adult scales are so fine they can barely be told apart, and from afar the dragon looks like a statue cast from pure metal. Among people it favors the shapes of kindly old men or lovely young women.

Peaceful by nature, silvers fight only highly evil or aggressive foes. Feather fall stops incoming missiles, and control weather or wall of fog blinds and confuses the enemy before the dragon closes. An angry silver uses reverse gravity to hurl foes helplessly upward and snatch them out of the air. Against fliers it lurks in clouds, summoning them up with control weather when the sky is clear, strolls about inside them and strikes when the moment is right.

Its breath is a cone of cold 80 feet long, 5 feet wide at the mouth and 30 at the end, or a 50 x 40 x 20-foot cloud of paralyzing gas. The cold allows a save vs. breath weapon for half. Spells and abilities operate at 6th level plus combat modifier.

Silvers hatch immune to cold and able to polymorph self 3/day, each form lasting until the next change, with resuming true form free. They can also cloud walk, treading on fog or cloud as if on firm ground; this works continuously but can be switched off and on at will. Age adds feather fall 2/day (young), wall of fog 1/day (juvenile), control winds 3/day (adult), control weather 1/day (mature adult) and reverse gravity 1/day (old).

Kind and helpful, a silver will gladly aid good creatures in genuine need. It speaks its own language and the good dragon tongue, and hatchlings have a 16% chance, plus 5% per age category, to talk with any intelligent creature.

Lairs sit on isolated mountain summits or in the clouds themselves; a cloud lair always includes an enchanted, solid-floored area for eggs and treasure. Silvers seem to like human shape better than their own and often keep mortal friends, sometimes for years, but in the end the dragon reveals itself and departs to live as a dragon for a while.

They prefer human cooking and can live on it indefinitely. Red dragons covet the same mountain territory, and their duels with silvers are savage, but the silvers usually win because they cooperate better and often have human allies.