Month of the Dragon: Brass Dragon

Expanding on Monster Mondays, I’m spending March digging deep into dragons. Inspired by James Jacobs’ 10 goblin facts written for Pathfinder, I’m working my way through the Monster Manual creating ten facts about each creature based on their art and lore. The goal is to provide habits, scene-setting tools, and plot hooks for encounters.

10 Facts About Brass Dragons

1. Favored Form: Brass dragons often take on a halfling form when traveling amongst humanoids, spending months chatting their way from one tavern to the next, learning about the people of a region up close. They also sometimes take on the form of a parrot.
2. Sphinx Speakers: Brass dragons are fond of sphinxes, often befriending them and spending countless hours exchanging riddles with the creatures. Adventurers who take an aggressive approach toward passing a sphinx’s challenges may find themselves facing off with its brass dragon best friend.
3. Hag Hunters: Some brass dragons consider hags to be the ultimate corrupters of the joy of conversation, using their words to entangle innocent people in dangerous, destructive circumstances. Consequently, these dragons will hunt down and destroy hag covens wherever they can.
4. Treasured Tongues: Some alchemists will pay handsomely for the tongue of a brass dragon. Bits of brass dragon tongue can be boiled down for use in potions that grant linguistic gifts to the drinker.
5. Cursed Chattering: Old folktales say that a brass dragon that bends its will toward evil will lose control of its speech, constantly chattering in incomprehensible syllables.
6. Heat Seekers: Brass dragons adore spicy food. The hotter the better. Thanks to their fiery breath, brass dragons can tolerate spicy foods that would be painful or even dangerous to humans. There are legends of brass dragons visiting the plane of fire and consuming delicacies so spicy that even efreeti lords could not touch them.
7. Library Lairs: Brass dragons don’t just love talking. They love words, the art of communication. Their lairs often include massive libraries, though the organization of these literary sanctums may frustrate scholars. Brass dragon libraries are organized by the dragon’s fastidious attention to the rhythm of text and speech and how that rhythm affects the dragon’s mood.
8. Brass Bards: Many brass dragons enjoy singing and songwriting. Brass dragon songs may include carefully controlled displays of fire breathing, both for the spectacle and for the particular sounds that flames make.
9. Wordy Wooing: Brass dragon courtship involves the exchange of ornate poems, rooted in a millennia-old poetic tradition with unique and complicated linguistic expressions. The first poems in a courtship generally stay close to classical templates, but each successive poem is expected to be more personal and original.
10. Brass Broods: Brass dragons raise their children in communal settings. Typically, several brass dragon pairs will meet to lay and hatch their eggs and travel together from one lair to the next until the wyrmlings are old enough to travel alone.