Yellow Dragon [Salt]

Called salt dragons, these yellows hatch with tiny lemon-yellow scales like chips of glass that sun-bleach paler over the years to a yellowish white that vanishes against sand or salt-crusted rock. The scales harden but never grow, so new ones keep forming, leaving the body snakelike and flexible. It digs swiftly into beaches or salt pans, concealing the disturbance with pass without trace, and its large claws, built for burrowing, also make its claw attacks unusually dangerous. It speaks its own tongue and the evil dragon tongue; 12% of hatchlings can talk to any intelligent being, plus 5% per age category. Tormenting others, especially good creatures, is its delight.

Ashore it opens from hiding with its breath, a cone of blinding white salt. It notes who is blinded, attacks the sighted ones with claws and bite, and returns for the blind before they recover. Rather than lose, it escapes to plot revenge, fleeing into the sea from land foes and ashore from sea foes.

Salt dragons haunt coasts, salt marshes and inland salt flats and lakes, living alone except to mate and raise hatchlings; the female hunts and the male guards lair and young. Youngsters stay ashore, perfecting their breath and learning to move through sand and salt leaving no trace, until at young age they gain water breathing and begin hunting at sea despite water's effect on their breath. On coasts sahuagin often serve them as guards and servants for protection; inland, lawful evil humans or demihumans trade obedience and information for the same.

They eat fish and sea mammals on the coast, cattle and herd beasts inland, and on special occasions raid good folk for intelligent captives to torture and devour. Surplus meat is salted and stored in cool back caves: beef, goat, horse and fish, but also elves, humans, tritons and merfolk. Immune to poison, the dragon can eat spoiled salt meat its servants cannot, handy during a siege. It prefers salt water but can drink fresh.

Bronze dragons compete with coastal salt dragons for food and caves; being outmatched, a salt dragon rarely fights one without sahuagin help, though a venerable or older one may challenge an adult or younger bronze alone after casting protection from lightning. Marsh dwellers avoid the black dragons upriver. Bullywugs and vasshari cautiously hunt hatchling and very young salt dragons to eat. Those of the salt flats seldom have neighbors.

Mating a salt dragon with a blue produces a green dragon, whose chlorine breath arises from the yellow parent's ability to process sodium chloride and the blue parent's electricity, which together split chlorine gas from salt.