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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

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Dragon, Brine

Source Bestiary 2 pg. 86 2.0
Brine dragons are usually blue-green in color, with shiny scales, crests that help them glide through the water, and sweeping neck frills. They care little for either good or evil. As they are both opinionated and willing to impose their sense of order on others, many brine dragons eventually seek to rule over a meticulously crafted community. These communities are orderly and well-planned, with rigid standards of courtesy and unchanging laws set down by the dragon themself. A settlement seeded by a brine dragon can be made of members of almost any ancestry, but the most common inhabitants are humans, merfolk, tengus, or sahuagin.

Depending on the dragon's personality, their community members might view their brine dragon ruler as anything from a benevolent force of order to a fearful tyrant. Regardless, the typical brine dragon has little patience for kindness or philanthropy, and the strength and health of their settlement as a whole are of greater concern than individuals' well-being. A notable exception to this dispassion rises when an outside force encroaches on their lands. In these cases, the brine dragon is quick to step in and aid in the defense of their community.

Although brine dragons enjoy cultivating settlements, they rarely make their lairs within the city limits, instead preferring to dwell in sea caves or cliffside grottoes overlooking the coastline. Here they can retreat for privacy as needed, or can accumulate and display their gathered wealth in a place where they feel safe spreading out their treasures. Brine dragon hoards often consist of a mix of offerings and taxes paid by those they rule over and strange discoveries salvaged from sunken ships.

Members

Adult Brine Dragon (Creature 12), Ancient Brine Dragon (Creature 17), Young Brine Dragon (Creature 8)

Sidebar - Advice and Rules Brine Dragon Spellcasters

Brine dragon spellcasters tend to cast the following spells.

Young

Primal Prepared Spells DC 26, attack +20; 3rd haste, lightning bolt, slow; 2nd animal messenger, humanoid form, water breathing; 1st create water, grease, negate aroma; Cantrips (3rd) acid splash, detect magic, prestidigitation, sigil, stabilize

Adult

Primal Prepared Spells DC 33, attack +26; as young brine dragon, plus 5th cone of cold, control water, mariner's curse; 4th freedom of movement, hallucinatory terrain, solid fog; Cantrips (5th) acid splash, detect magic, prestidigitation, sigil, stabilize

Ancient

Primal Prepared Spells DC 38, attack +33; as adult brine dragon, plus 8th dispel magic, horrid wilting; 7th energy aegis, plane shift, regenerate; 6th baleful polymorph, slow, true seeing; Cantrips (8th) acid splash, detect magic, prestidigitation, sigil, stabilize

Sidebar - Related Creatures Rezlarabren

A series of underwater caverns on Thoska Isle in the Ironbound Archipelago serves as Rezlarabren's lair. There she rules a tribe of ulat-kini who labor as miners. Her relationship with the Linnorm Kings is complex, and whether she views them as allies or enemies depends on her mood.

Dragon, Primal

Related Groups Dragon, Cloud, Dragon, Crystal, Dragon, Magma, Dragon, Umbral
The strange and otherworldly primal dragons hail from realities adjacent to the Material Plane—the four Elemental Planes and the Shadow Plane. These true dragons have natures and powers that exemplify their plane of origin and an affinity for primal magic, unlike chromatic and metallic dragons, who favor arcane or divine magic. Although they come from distant planes, primal dragons can be found on the Material Plane in regions touched by or reminiscent of their home plane. Although such encounters are rare, adventurers and travelers have sometimes found a brine dragon dwelling near a salty inland sea, for example, or a crystal dragon living in massive natural caverns deep in the Darklands. Unlike chromatic and metallic dragons, primal dragons tend not to develop shape-changing powers, and they are less interested in infiltrating settlements or influencing others from the shadows.

Primal Dragon Spellcasters

Each type of primal dragon features a note in the margins on spellcasting dragons of that type. To make a primal dragon spellcaster, remove the dragon’s Draconic Frenzy and Draconic Momentum abilities and give it the spells outlined in its sidebar. You can swap out any number of these with other primal spells, provided you keep the same number of spells for each level. You might also want to increase the dragon’s Wisdom or Charisma modifier by 1 or 2 to reflect their mastery of magic.

Primal Dragons of Golarion

Golarion is not home to many primal dragons. Yet primal dragons do still come to Golarion now and then, whether to escape persecution in their home plane, build new lairs, torment and brutalize weaker creatures, or seek knowledge and resources that are scarce or unavailable at home.

Brine dragons can be found along Golarion’s coastlines but are often frustrated by piracy and other lawless elements. They tend to avoid heavily populated coastal areas like the Shackles and instead choose remote islands in the oceans as their homes, where they can rule small communities of their own curation. Cloud dragons are even more isolated, and lacking any interest in politics, they prefer to dwell in large mountain ranges like the Kodars or the Barrier Wall. Crystal dragons’ vanity compels them to seek places that complement their natural beauty, such as gem-studded caverns in the Darklands. Of all the primal dragons, cantankerous magma dragons may be the ones most often found dwelling on Golarion, where they are drawn to volcanic ranges like the Five Kings Mountains. Umbral dragons hail not from an Elemental Plane but the Shadow Plane, and they can be encountered anywhere the borders to that plane grow thin, particularly in the sinister nation of Nidal.