DMing Chemistry

 The Wings of Salvation is the name of a young dragon active near the oceanic coastline of what was once a meeting place of mighty empires, now utterly devastated by drought, earthquakes and raiders . She poses as something of a religious figure, requiring tribute and adoration from the local populace in exchange for protection. While the latter is mostly meant as a guarantee that she won't do anything harmful, not many of the invaders dare approach villages protected by her, as she was proven both able and willing to burn an entire invasion fleet. This feat has gathered her many followers, and the nearby rulers are too preoccupied with the crises elsewhere to pay much heed to what happened to a bunch of fishermen and semi-nomadic goat and cattle herders.  The Wings of Salvation herself is settling in for the long haul, intending to set herself up as a local goddess, becoming the de facto ruler of these lands. Of course older and more powerful dragons have tried to do similar...

  Old Man Death is the colloquial name of an huge and ancient dragon that lives near the eastern side of the mines of Caeledor . While the old beast is quite temperamental, he has been known to on occasion help the locals in exchange for vast amounts of gold and iron. This help comes usually in the form of him sniffing around for new tin deposits (he boasts that his nose can smell all sorts of metals, and judging by the fact that he can tell the grade and purity of metals offered to him without even looking), but he sometimes lets humans use his fire for melting metal. On at least one occasion he even used his gigantic claws to dig around for tin, but that came at such a gigantic price, that no.one has attempted to ask such a thing from him ever again.  Of course dealing with a dragon is never easy, but especially one as old and bad-tempered as Old Man Death. The locals will tell you that even if you bring unimaginable wealth to his doorstep, he's just as likely to eat you th...

Dragons being a mostly solitary species rarely came into contact with each other, save to mate or to fight. This of course meant that over time mortals with their increasingly complex and efficient societies were eventually able to overcome even the strongest dragons. Dragons, being an intelligent species saw what was happening, and were desperately searching for a way to avoid extinction. The solution ironically came from mortals as well. Originally developed for the convenience of Sorcerer-Kings, long-range communication magic in the form of crystal balls, sacred pools and the like were perfect for enabling meetings between dragons without triggering their instincts to tear each other apart. Thus the draconic society was born. Being so new, their society is barely more than a forum for them to share information, but still it has enabled dragons to somewhat anticipate and be better prepared for mortal incursions into their territories, and with more and more of those who refused to j...

While the word ‘dragon’ gets applied to many wildly different creatures, the ones most consider to be ‘true’ dragons, are an interesting bunch. They look neither wholly mammal nor reptile, scales and fur both covering their towering frames. While no two are exactly alike, and they can vary in their size, color, number of limbs, or abilities, they do have some things in common, which mark them as belonging to the same group. The first one is their aforementioned mixture of traits, the second is their batlike wings, which allow them to fly, unless they have grown too fat on their many victims. The third is their affinity to some kind of ruin. They spread this ruin around their lairs merely by existing, and they can focus it into a kind of breath weapon. For example a fire dragon’s domain would be permanently burnt out and it would be able to breath fire, while a poison dragon’s demesne would produce choking fumes, and the dragon itself would be able to breath poison strong enough to ki...