Dragons of Decay and Despair
Habitat: Swamp; Treasure: Relics
Black dragons delight in suffering and ruin. While other chromatic dragons scheme for power and wealth, these dragons seek to tear down all they see and rule over what remains.
Black dragons are terrifying creatures with curved horns and withered visages suggestive of fiendish skulls. They typically inhabit stagnant swamps, crumbling ruins, or places of magical or environmental corruption. Their acid breath scars their domains, eroding the features from ancient statues and leaving nature with festering wounds.
Black dragons hoard tarnished symbols of hope and relics of fallen empires. The more sought-after the treasure, the more black dragons prize it—particularly if they were responsible for it being lost.
Black Dragon Wyrmling
Black dragon wyrmlings lurk in bogs and polluted waterways, hunting for prey and weaker creatures to overpower. While older wyrmlings eventually seek their own territories, recently hatched ones might hunt one another, seeking dominance over their clutch and slaying rivals they can’t subjugate.
Young Black Dragon
Most young black dragons claim a hidden lair—typically a dismal place accessible through deadly ruins or a treacherous bog. They delight in exploiting fearful servants and might terrorize small communities or impress groups of kobolds or troglodytes into their service. Some ally themselves with powerful undead such as death knights and vampires or aberrations such as aboleths and kuo-toa.
Black Dragon Lairs
Black dragons lurk in dismal ruins, polluted bogs, or other sites gripped by decay.
The region containing an adult or ancient black dragon’s lair is warped by its presence, creating the following effects:
- Acrid Haze. Odorous and stifling fog covers the area within 1 mile of the lair, rendering that area Lightly Obscured. Travel for creatures other than the dragon and its allies takes twice the usual time in that area.
- Foul Water. Water sources within 1 mile of the lair are supernaturally fouled. A creature that drinks such water must succeed on a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or have the Poisoned condition for 1 hour.
If the dragon dies or moves its lair elsewhere, these effects end immediately.
Adult Black Dragon
Caption
An adult black dragon uses its acid breath to melt the construct defenders of a clockwork fortress
By the time they’re adults, black dragons are among the greatest terrors in the lands they claim. Wretched swamps and monster-haunted ruins grow more dismal and spread under an adult black dragon’s influence. Morbid cultists and doomsayers frequently gather in the dragon’s service, bringing with them undead terrors that answer to the black dragon and aid it in spreading ruin to nearby bastions of beauty and peace.
Ancient Black Dragon
Ancient black dragons plot the ruin of whole realms. They seek magic to corrupt the land, raise undead hordes, bind fiends, and replicate magical disasters. Ancient black dragons strive to create vast, dead domains where they are the greatest things that remain.
Caption
As terrifying as it is titanic, an ancient black dragon eradicates unwanted life in its despoiled territory
