EPT
Of the many creatures born during the Age Wondrous, the Dragons were the first. Xa and Dys, fatigued after creating the Elves and Tieflings and struggling to preserve the Anima against Rogash’s onslaught, traveled Iris to avoid their divine responsibilities and indulge in their hedonistic impulses. At the dawn of the Age Wondrous, the most powerful beings upon Iris were the Quintessences, the avatars of the Dominions of Harell that are the most enduring elements of Iris. Recognizing that which was closest to their own power, Xa and Dys sought out the terrestrial spirits immediately, choosing to conjugate first with the entities that represented the greatest wonders of the world they created. No beings on Iris could lie with the greatest of the High Gods without receiving the burden of their divine genesis, so each of the Quintessences became impregnated with aspects of the Sun and the Moon. The children of the Quintessences were the World Dragons, serpentine gods born of the confluence of the terrestrial and the celestial, vast wyrms of incalculable wisdom and unknowable magicks.
From the moment of their emergence, the World Dragons watched over Iris, protecting the raw elements from which they were formed. Each of the leviathans is also the progenitor of two lordly Draconic lines: one Metallic, borne of the glorious Light, and one Chromatic, spawned from the dreadful Dark. Voleras of the Northern Sky is the cold through which the Silver and the White crystallize. Elantria of the Southern Stone is the rock from which the Copper and the Black are hewn. Olondyr of the Eastern Seas is the ocean from which the Bronze and the Blue flow. Golandrathon of the Western Stars is the light by which the Brass and the Green shine. Sinrath of the Axial Flame is the pyre in which the Gold and the Red are forged. Of the innumerable scions of the divine, the Dragons are the closest in strength to their godly ancestors. They possess power incomprehensible to most of the Animata, and though they too are mortal, this power instills them with pride that rivals the mightiest of almighty. It’s no wonder that such imperious creatures sought to create life in their own image.
Emulating the gods that created them, the Dragons birthed their own lesser children by consorting with the Animata. The Dragons took the forms of mortal races using their incredible magics, thinning their majestic Draconic blood with the seed of those that could not match their might. For the Chromatic Dragons, such couplings were sacrifices required for the glory of their future scions; their mates were typically used then discarded once the seed or the child was acquired. The Metallic Dragons saw their children as an opportunity to grow closer to the other races of Iris, to show the Unscaled that, despite the great power of the Dragons, that they all shared the Anima. These Dragons courted their desired mates and raised their young together, or at least until the shorter-lived Unscaled passed into the void. The children born of the Dragons and their mortal consorts surpassed the Dragons’ wildest dreams. The chosen heirs to the Draconic bloodlines emerged resembling their kingly parents: scaled, strong, and bearing breath of the elements. The Dragonborn.
The Dragonborn echo their mighty parents in the same ways that the Dragons themselves take after the divine serpents from which they emerged. The Dragonborn are dignified, confident, and imposing, but can be haughty, imperious, and self-obsessed. They tend to be prideful and dogmatic, especially in regards to their clans. As heirs to the great wyrms, family is of utmost importance to the Dragonborn, for it is that lineage that provides their perspective on the history of Iris and inspires their vision of what the world’s future should hold. When the Dragonborn leave their birth nests, it is almost always for the purpose of emboldening their family names and advancing the reputations of their tribes. What the greatest path towards glory is differs among the clans, but similarities can be observed within clans of a specific Draconic heritage. As a general rule, the Chromatic Dragonborn empower their families through conquest, oppression, plunder, and devastation. In contrast, the Metallic Dragonborn increase their tribes’ notorieties through fame, conversion, charity, and protection. Though the bonds of the clans are tough to sever, plenty of Dragonborn break free of their restrictive origins and search for their own destinies rather than those mandated by the will of their ancestries.
Even after thousands of years, the Dragonborn remain few in number. The myriad clans inhabit cloistered communes scattered across Iris, fortresses of Dragonborn purity whose walls and isolation maintain the honor and dignity of the broods. Dragonborn communities almost always consist of several clans that hail from a single Draconic species. Clans so connected share many philosophies and cultural practices, even if their primary loyalties are to themselves. Most Dragonborn societies are as closed and self-sufficient as the Dragonborn themselves, but there are a few that welcome outsiders in order to display the great glory of the native clans’ achievements. One of the most traveled Dragonborn cities is Restonrodor, a Green Dragonborn city within the sweltering jungles of the Deraisen Archipelago and the host of the Academic Collective’s Department of Alchemy. The frozen citadel of Zhilandrathon is a more typical example of a Dragonborn settlement. The arctic cathedral floats amidst the icebergs of the Northern Isarian Ocean, where few travel who are not beckoned by the call of Voleras.
Incorporating the Dragonborn into my traditional concept of the Wizards of the Coast D&D setting has been difficult. After consuming copious amounts of 3E and 3.5E as a child, as well as reading all the Dragonlance I could get my hands on, it’s challenging to recontextualize the power of the Draconic into something that’s appropriate for a PC race. Dragons are among the biggest challenges in the game; after all, even a baby Dragon can annihilate a low-level party of adventurers. To me, Dragons are either terrifying True Dragons like Smaug or Skie/Khellendros or half-bloods such as the confusing Half-Dragons (we’ll get to those) or the powerful Draconians. It’s strange to be giving players even a fraction of that long-unavailable strength, especially when it starts from character creation.* On the other hand, the inclusion of the Dragonborn makes a lot of sense for WotC and D&D. After all, Dragons are among the most important aspects of any game set within the D&D ruleset, to the extent that explanations are necessary when there is a lack of Dragons in a custom setting. So even though I have to remind myself I’m not in Skyrim every time their name comes up, I’m glad that the Dragonborn are a part of the base game of D&D. The only problem remaining is how to include them in Iris because I didn’t realize they were a possibility until after I bought the 5E PHB.
Since I didn’t start thinking about the Dragonborn of Iris until relatively recently, they differ little from the default version of the race. The self-sufficiency, pride, and clan-centric mentality of the Dragonborn all made perfect sense within Iris, as I believe these are logical extensions of the personalities of the Dragons themselves. However, there are some differences in the lore of Iris’ Dragons that are important to note when considering the Dragonborn. First of all, the traditional Dragon Gods, Bahamut and Tiamat, are not part of Iris. This is partially because the Horde of the Dragon Queen campaign heavily features the two (mostly Tiamat) and partially because I wanted more than two Dragon Gods on Iris. On the other hand, I like the dichotomy of Bahamut and Tiamat, as well as the odd mirroring of the Chromatic and Metallic Dragons that’s exemplified by the Platinum and Five-Headed pair. In order to preserve this conflict of good and evil, I created the World Dragons. The World Dragons are a hybrid of the High Gods and the most permanent aspects of Iris (the Quintessences, as described above), and they are the font from which the Dragons (and, by extension, the Dragonborn) draw their incredible powers. Furthermore, instead of strictly dividing the World Dragons along the axis of good and evil, I divided them according to their primordial origins and included within them facets of both. The World Dragons themselves are neutral because they contain mirrored Aspects of diverging alignments, and each of their children derives from one of those two Aspects. This has two important implications in game. One, it means that Brass Dragons no longer have Fire breath. Instead, they have Poison breath in order to formally align them with Green Dragons, the only Chromatic Dragon who didn’t have a breath weapon “twin” on the Metallic side. I feel like this pairing would be included in standard 5E if not for tradition and the idea that Poison is somehow too evil for a Metallic Dragon to possess. Personally, I don’t think getting covered in Poison is any worse than getting covered in Fire, so that’s the breath weapon of the Brass Dragons (and Brass Dragonborn) on Iris. Secondly, it means that Dragonborn hailing from separate Aspects of the same World Dragon maintain an adversarial relationship far more similar to estranged family members than eternal, bitter enemies. In some ways, this means that the pairs are even more violent towards each other than in normal 5E; each side believes that the other is not merely an enemy but a traitor, a affront to the dignity of their mutual ancestor. However, they also have a natural common ground, and when that ground is threatened, even the dueling species can come together. Strangely, in times of greatest desperation, a Dragon or Dragonborn can trust their opposite-aligned cousins even more than similarly-aligned Dragonborn with alternate origins.
One thing I find confusing about the Dragonborn in 5E is the existence of Half-Dragons in the same world. While the PHB and MM offer some clarification of the differences between the two distinct entities, I still found them to be a bit confusing. As such, I wanted to clarify their relationships within the lore of Iris. The Dragonborn are the proper heirs to the Dragons, just as True Dragons are the heirs of the World Dragons and the World Dragons are the heirs of the Quintessences and the High Gods. When the Dragons decided to create offspring that reflected their power and status upon Iris, they specifically created the Dragonborn. As such, the process that brings a Dragonborn into the world is very deliberate; a Dragonborn does not simply emerge when a Dragon lies with another mortal. An arcane ritual is taught to all Adult Dragons that allows them to bring the Dragonborn into the world when they choose and with the mates they deem worthy.** Half-Dragons are the products of Draconic couplings that do not benefit from the Dragonborn ritual. Though the Half-Dragons inherit more of their serpentine parent’s power from birth, they are also sterile, like a mule or chimera.*** They are not able to carry a Dragon’s glory forward, as that is the calling of the Dragonborn. Consequently, many Half-Dragons envy and despise the Dragonborn, the “favored children” of their extended family.
As the true heirs to Draconic power, the Dragonborn on Iris eventually attain many of the great strengths of their lordly lineage. Most Dragonborn remain within the templates provided in the PHB, but, as we know, adventurers are not common members of any of their respective species. This means that Dragonborn players within Iris are afforded the opportunity to ascend to the apex of Draconic power available to humanoids. Unfortunately, I don’t know what all of these benefits are, nor when they would occur during a character’s progression. I know that one such benefit is that powerful Dragonborn could eventually gain wings, attaining a Flying speed equal to their land Speed. I’m not sure if this is balanced, but I figure that by the time such wings would be acquired, every character would have their own overpowered traits, so I’m not particularly worried about it. More concerning is the overlap with the Sorcerer’s Dragon Wings Class Feature, but not all Sorcerers are Dragonborn, not all Dragonborn are Sorcerers, and for those that are a different benefit could be awarded. Further benefits might by an upgraded breath weapon, access to innate spellcasting, or even lair benefits if the player had a home base of their own. In their current incarnation, I’d want to gate these powers with quests instead of levels, missions where the Dragonborn player proves himself or herself worthy of their Draconic lineage. By Level 20, a Dragonborn adventurer should be the perfect descendant for any Dragon, complete with all the raw might that their ancestry entails.
On the next episode of Building Iris, we wait for the Moment with Khranos, Keeper of the Clock and meet the Last Children, Humanity.
* Yes, I know Dragonborn were in 4E and 3.5E’s Races of the Dragon. I didn’t play/read those. Sorry.
** It should be noted here that while a Dragon must choose to give birth to a Dragonborn, the Dragonborn can mate amongst themselves. That being said, the Dragonborn are just as picky about their mates as the Dragons, so parenthood is a rarity among the Dragonborn, which is why they remain few in number in spite of the age of their race. The Dragonborn can also mate with other mortal races and give birth to Half-Dragonborn children.
*** I don’t know why genetics applies to Dragons more than Orcs, Humans, Elves, or anyone else. Shut up with your “science.”
You can read the best-formatted version of this worldbuilding post as well as quite a few other things (worldbuilding included) at the N3rd Dimension.
