White Dragon [Chromatic]

A white dragon hatchling's scales shine like a mirror. The gleam fades as it ages, and by the very old stage pale blue and light gray scales are mixed into the white. Whites speak their own tongue and the evil dragon tongue, and 7% of hatchlings can talk with any intelligent creature, rising 5% per age category.

The least of the evil dragons in size and strength, whites are dull-witted but capable hunters: impulsive, savage and bestial, living in the moment without foresight or remorse, yet as greedy and wicked as their evil kin. Whatever the size of its target, a white prefers to open with breath and special powers before moving to melee, which can backfire when it wastes its breath on small game and then must take on something larger with tooth and claw. When chasing swimmers such as polar bears or seals, it fights them in the water with claws and bite.

The breath is a cone of frost 70 feet long, 5 feet wide at the mouth and 25 feet at the end, halved by a save vs. breath weapon. Spells and powers work at 5th level plus combat modifier. Whites are immune to cold from birth. Juveniles gain ice walking, crossing ice as easily as others cross dry, level ground. Mature adults gain gust of wind three times daily; very old whites cast wall of fog three times daily, producing snow or hail in place of rain; and wyrms can call up freezing fog three times daily, which blinds within 100 feet and glazes the ground and everything in the area with thin, slick ice.

Whites seek cold lands where the temperature rarely tops freezing and snow and ice never leave, and they turn sluggish when it gets too warm. They revel in bitter winds and frolic in deep drifts. Parenting is careless: young stay with the adults up to the juvenile or young adult stage but get no protection, and once past hatchling age must learn to hunt and defend themselves by watching.

Lairs are frozen caves and deep underground chambers whose mouths face away from the sun. The hoard is kept inside, ideally in ice-walled caverns that reflect the gems, diamonds especially, because the dragons like how they look.

Like any dragon a white can eat almost anything, but it is picky and eats only frozen food. After killing with its breath it usually feeds while the body is still rigid with cold, and it buries other kills in snow until they freeze. Frost giants are its natural enemies, killing whites for meat and armor and subduing them as guards and mounts.