The shadow dragon is a traditional monster in both
fantasy fiction and role-playing games.
The shadow dragon is one of the smallest and nastiest
breeds of dragons. Their very bodies are translucent from
birth and enjoy lurking in shadowy places and killing as
many creatures as possible. The see-through body of a
shadow dragon makes it near invisible when lurking in
darker areas. These dragons originated on the demi-plane
of shadow where they are extremely common, but now they
exist in the real world as well.
Shadow dragons are hatched from eggs and they come out colorless
and translucent. Light passes right through them and thus
they tend to look the color of whatever happens to be
behind them at the moment. They have the ability to breathe
out a terrible cloud of darkness that blinds their enemies
and saps their very life energy. This
ability becomes more and more powerful as the dragon ages.
A hatchling can barely blind a good sized frog, while
ancient shadow dragons can blind other dragons and leave
entire human armies dead from a single breath. As they age
these dragons gain the ability to exert more and more
control over darkness. Most shadow dragons are also decent
spellcasters as well.
Shadow dragons almost always make their homes in dark
and shadowy places, such as ruins and dense ancient
forests. They greatly prefer shadow to darkness and will go
out of their way to create shadowy areas in any way that
they can. Shadow dragons will never venture outside during
the middle of the day, instead they prefer to do their
hunting at night and during the evening, blending into the
shadows as they stalk their prey.
Shadow dragons do not form mated pairs.
The male of the species leaves the female as soon as they
have mated, and the females abandon the hatchlings as soon
as they exit the eggs. Because of this fact shadow dragons
tend to be very solitary creatures and rarely
even form alliances with other evil creatures.
Most dragons can eat anything and
shadow dragons are no exception to that rule. They prefer
to eat rotting meat, and will usually allow their kills to
become rancid before eating them. If rotting flesh is not
available then rotten vegetation is a second choice.
My monster nodes are usually based upon material in the
various AD&D rulebooks. But they are my own work, as I
often expand the information. In some cases I will
blatantly disagree with the source material. None of these
nodes are cut and paste. You are free to use my
descriptions in any material of your own (even commercial
material), as long as I am credited as the
source.