All i know is that he is big and powerful, and can kill you without attacking you by sucking magic from your life.
Hes undead i think?
and hes supposed to make the dray for 4e.
King kalak is building a big tower to stop him.
thats the extent of my knowledge.
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seeing as the backstory isnt really described. is there anything else i NEED to know about him?
It seems his purpose was more for "up to the dm"
sucking life using his magic. No not undead but I think immortal or nearly immortal. no he does not make the dray, thats dregroth. No king kalak never tried to stop him, he was trying to become a dragon too.
His name is borys I think. He was the one who led the rebellion on rajaat and helped seal him away, the other sk appointed him thier leader and helped make him a full on dragon. He went nuts afterwords and went on a very long rampage (was it 1000 years?) when he came out of it he found that the prison they put rajaat in was breaking so every year (is it yearly?) he collects a levy of slaves to pretty much seal the prison again (its either 1000 a year or 1000 from each city-state or 1000 from each sity state after a cycle of not collecting).
This is how it is originally and I might not be the best to answer the question of who is the dragon. I dont know how they will have him now since they restarting just after king kalaks death and that the pp is only one outcome of many that could happen.
A human who mastered the defiling arts and the will and the way (psionics), who served in the genocidal campaign to slaughter all of the other races thousands of years ago. His mastery of psionics and arcane magic allows him to drain the life from animals as well as plants to power his spells. After the champions (who were all humans and thought Rajaat was going to give the world to humans) found out that Rajaat was going to give the world back the the first race, halflings, they betrayed and imprisoned him... Borys is the guard to the prison. (which the levy of 1000 lives is to pay for.)
He has a huge city in the middle of the silt sea in the Valley of Dust and Fire... where metal is not as rare and the city is lush and beautiful.
Each of the other champions of Rajaat that turned against Rajaat each claimed a city state as their own... and became the Sorcerer Kings.
Dregoth is the undead Sorcerer King (formerly the "giant killer") of a "dead city" the other Sorcerer Kings killed him to prevent him from completing the dragon metamorphosis (he was almost done) and his city was destroyed... he was raised as a kaisga (athasian form of lich) and then rebuilt his city underground changing the humans of his city into dray, dragonlike humanoids. (Dragonborn for Darksun)
Note none of this is known by most people in Dark Sun... to everyone else the dragon is a myth... as none who see him survive normally. And virtually no one knows he has a name or a city, or anything about Rajaat... the other Sorcerer Kings make sure of that.
(This is why I dislike all the Rajaat stuff: it turned THE DRAGON *scream*panic* into "former wizard-general who is now a big lizard and goes around collecting a toll" *yawn*.)
And I am sorry... but in my opinion, Borys was a heck of alot more scary when he was not just a mysterious beast... He led armies in genocide, and only failed because he chose to. He was even more powerful and dangerous. (He never used his vast armies in Ur Draxa, just because he had no need to... nothing could touch him in his view...)
And again, players and most NPCs had no way of knowing the dragon was anything more than just a legendary monster. (that may or may not even exist, and if you see it, it will be your last sight) The Sorcerer Kings made sure of it, even going so far as making it illegal to be literate, save in very special cases.
If you are wise, do not incorporate the dragon in your game directly, unless you want a TPK.
If you are wise, do not incorporate the dragon in your game directly, unless you want a TPK.
Total Planet Kill?
Actually in the first box set and especially in the first novel that was written and released at the same time, there were hints that the dragon used to be something else... and even mentioned that all the SK's were in the process of becoming dragons. (The lorebook mentioned stuff in passing for those who payed attention and "Verdant Passage" just outright said it.)
I'll have to reread the set, but I don't recall any such mentions. Any ideas whereabout in the text those suggestions were? (Though, if so, at least they were simple suggestions, not outright facts the rest of the setting would have to labor under.)
As far as the PP goes: Ugh. There's a number of reasons I drop-kicked that stuff and treated it like plague instead of canon (not the least of which was "Here they go with the metaplot again"), even long after they officially and unfortunately became canon. First boxed set all the way.
1st boxed set Dragon all the way!
mysterious, absolute TERROR, it could kick the tarrasques butt!!
Leaves withered remains of entire caravans in it's wake, and that's about all you need to know...
it's a "Party's Pants Fill With Poop" critter
Those are all good overviews of what the Dragon was turned into in the second boxed set. In the first boxed set, the dragon was a mysterious and powerful beast one might encounter out in the wastelands -- hopefully nothing more than a glimpse as it flew overhead in the distance -- a mysterious thing of nightmares.
(This is why I dislike all the Rajaat stuff: it turned THE DRAGON *scream*panic* into "former wizard-general who is now a big lizard and goes around collecting a toll" *yawn*.)
Well, in 2e, the Dragon could cast 9th level-Wizard spells with just about every Psionic in the book.
It also stated that the Dragon walked on two legs and was "Faintly humanoid". Probably from day one, the Dragon was a former wizard; they just didn't release that yet.
and yes, he was scary as hell.
too bad he went down like a chump. that really saddened me when it happened.
My fav dragon pic; still have to sculpt a version of that art for myself.
Personally, i find this 1000x better than any of the 4e art (or 3e art for that matter).
members.cox.net/dragons_sanctum/Borys.jp...
Sanjay
Nibenay was the most advanced of them. while Kalak tried to reach full grown form in one "leap". "Dragon Kings" detailed whole process of becoming dragon (actually it took 10 levels of experience, during that period dragon went through madness episode, when it was rampaging in animal-like fury.
Dregoth was second to Boris and all the sorcerer-kings allied to stop him, before madness will consume him and beast will be unleashed upon Tablelands. It took powers of all them to stop Dregoth and kill him, but still he survived his own death and become an undead. He spent whole cycles in hiding, plotting revenge, seeking nature of divine and planning to became first and only true god of Athas. After events of Prism Pendant saga he claimed Raam as his city. In Paizo's version of Dark sun her rules it along with New Guistenal (his own domain, an undercity below ruins of original Guistenal) and prepares o ascend to godhood.
On the picture, at the right of his body, near the middle-bottom of the right wing, are small stone spikes in the background, which are tipped with humanoid skulls, giving perspective. That obsidian orb is nearly a meter across too.
If you are wise, do not incorporate the dragon in your game directly, unless you want a TPK.
On the contrary, this is exactly the sort of thing your players should aim for in Epic Tier.
One question that just occurred me: how big is the Dragon? And the SKs and Dregoth? I always had the impression of medium-sized creatures, but, in this picture that StarFyre2007 linked, he sure seems to be quite big (Gargantuan, probably). I don't know why, but the tought of Human-Sized Godlike Overpowered Mr. Bad McEvil sure soundss a lot more scary than Mountain-Sized Godlike Overpowered Mr. Bad McEvil.
Dragon's size is linked directly to stage of transformation he is in. to become dragon one had to be human defiler/psionic of levels 20/20. then he had to to cast "Defiler metamorphosis" spell and was able to advance on 21st level. His character classes merged into one, a dragon. With each level up to 30rd he was changing more and more. At first dragon was not distinguishable from human: he was taller, more vicious in appearance but looked like an average athasian. In later stages one grew heavier and bigger, becoming more and more bestial.
In "Dragon Kings" accessory there is a diagram showing evolution of defiler turning to dragon, but at final stage, contrary to BROM's illustrations, one looks more like standard AD&D dragon, than gaunt, humanoid/reptile monstrosity. I don't have book beside me, but I seem to recall there was a calculations of it's size, growing mass etc.
the scales from brom's art, while looking cool, do not match the generic art/size shown in Dragon Kings...
Sanjay
According to dragonkings, a lvl 30 dragon is roughly 40 feet long and weighing 50,000 pounds with massive wings and almost impenetrable scales. The original box set has the dragon of tyr listed a (G) 40 feet tall. It's also described as tall and thin.
There also is the possibility that the rapid acceleration through the metamorphosis performed on Borys resulted in a significant distortion of the end result. Maybe he ended up not looking completely transformed.
According to dragonkings, a lvl 30 dragon is roughly 40 feet long and weighing 50,000 pounds with massive wings and almost impenetrable scales. The original box set has the dragon of tyr listed a (G) 40 feet tall. It's also described as tall and thin.
There also is the possibility that the rapid acceleration through the metamorphosis performed on Borys resulted in a significant distortion of the end result. Maybe he ended up not looking completely transformed.
Yeah, that makes sense, because the actual picture of "Borys" isn't anything like what they show in the other books. Page 77 of the valley of dust and fire is what I consider the "real" depiction of borys.
I assume all the other pictures, if refering to borys, would be illusions. And the cover art of valley of dust was just done to look cool, which it does even though it reminds me of a sea horse.
The dragon in the DK book is a level 28 dragon (by it's looks) and the dragon of tyr in the box set doesn't match any of the stages in the DK. The cover art of DK looks like a lvl 26 dragon, looking at it's head. While the NEW dragon art on the DSCS looks like a level 27 with wings. Dregoth does look like a level 29 or level 30 dragon, as far as the shape of the bones and size of the wings.
Farculnn looks too different to tell. But if I had to guess, I place him at level 24 and I have no idea what the inspiration for the day of light cover was from. It doesn't look like an athasian dragon.
So many different pictures of darksun dragons, it's sort of a shame they rarely get used.
It should be whatever you want in your games; I like the humanoid non-winged dragon.