Monday, November 18, 2019

Brother to Dragons

This post is a follow to a couple of previous posts during Exalted's Creation into a D&D setting.


The Dragonborn, Princes of the Earth, rulers of Creation for over a millennia, are the descendants of the elders of dragonkind. Gaea, the Titan of Earth, was mother to The Dragon Ao [1], whose nature warred against itself until he split into Tiamat and Bahamut. The two represented the forces of chaos and order. The first progeny of Tiamat were the elders of the chromatic dragons, while Bahamut's children were the metallic dragons.

The elder dragons, both metallic and chromatic, bore human children, who carried a portion of draconic power. Those who carried the most draconic power were transformed by it and were able to take on the form of a humanoid dragon [2]. Those with a weaker, but still potent connection, became sorcerers. The Dragonborn and their sorcerer kin were the soldiers of the gods in the Titanomachy. This estranged the chromatic Dragonborn from their grandmother, Tiamat, who sided with the Titans and was imprisoned in Hell with them following their defeat [3].

Today, the Dragonborn rule a vast Empire (though less vast than it was in the past). They are organized into Great Houses, one for each of the types of metallic and chromatic dragons.


1 D&D sources report this name as "Io." This seems better to me.
2 I figure these Dragonborn would have a human/mostly human form as well as the draconid form.
3 D&D tradition places her on the first layer of Hell.

3 comments:

Jack Guignol said...

One thing I noticed about Tiamat when I was working out a similar idea was that she's in the first plane of Hell (as opposed to the Abyss) which makes an analog of the Scarlet Empress being kidnapped by the Ebon Dragon (Asmodeus, I'd say, from D&D's "canon") for a hellside wedding fit pretty well.

Trey said...

That's a nice synergy!

JB said...

That sword doesn't appear to be particularly well balanced.

I prefer "Ao" as I'd have a difficult time associating Io with anyone other than the Greek myth.