Green Dragon
Few dragons are as utterly reviled among humanoids as green dragons, known also as forest dragons. Although green dragons might not be as powerful or as destructive as some of their kin, they are innately and instinctively deceptive. They lie as easily as people speak, and they are good at it. They love intrigue and prefer to achieve their goals through guile and double-dealing over any other means. Any brute can hunt, but it takes skill and intelligence to trick one’s prey into offering itself for dinner. Adding this attitude to a green’s belligerent nature—to a green dragon, a weak creature is either prey or pawn, and nearly all creatures are weak—makes the creature a loathsome, conniving beast.
Green dragons are among the chromatics most likely to interfere with nearby humanoid communities. Some greens terrorize their neighbors into obedience. Others play and experiment with local political and mercantile interests. A green dragon might use bribes and intimidation to gain the cooperation of a few select members of a community and then see how much authority it can obtain by proxy before other humanoids discover its minions. Greens might not have lofty goals for this sort of manipulation; they enjoy the process and the practice for its own sake.
Green dragons might negotiate peaceful coexistence with their neighbors, as long as territories and resources do not overlap. Anyone entering into such an arrangement, however, should do so with great care. Green dragons take devilish delight in finding loopholes in such agreements.
Perhaps because their terrain often has a canopy of vegetation, green dragons fight equally well on wing and on land. When battling on or near the ground, greens attack from the cover of trees or from hidden contours of the earth. Woodland obstacles impede humanoid foes’ ranged attacks more than they impede green dragons’ area attacks.
Green dragons frequently patrol their terrain, flying above the canopy and stalking through the underbrush. They do this primarily to locate intruders but also to know every little feature of and change to their territory. They learn every possible path, hiding place, and refuge. This preparation makes them more effective hunters and offers them means of retreat if any battles turn against them.
Basic Information
Anatomy
The various hues of a green dragon’s scales allow it to blend in easily with foliage, an ability that greens enhance by allowing their scales to become scarred, tarnished, and, in some cases, mossy. As with black dragons, green dragons do not use their prominent horn as a weapon. Instead, they primarily use their nose spike to push foliage and branches out of the way as they move through their overgrown domains.
The crown of horns jutting from a green dragon’s head keeps obstacles it has pushed aside with its nose spike from springing back into its face and obstructing its view.
Genetics and Reproduction
Green dragons lay their eggs after about four months of a sixteen-month incubation period.
They lay clutches of three to five eggs, with an average of two to four hatching successfully under optimal conditions.
The environmental diffusion of a deceased green dragon results in an area of lush, beautiful, and deadly plant growth. Grasses, trees, and other vegetation, nearly all of them poisonous, grow swiftly to abnormally large size. These areas also touch on the Feywild more often than do other parts of the woodlands.
Growth Rate & Stages
The wyrmling stage lasts approximately six years. Green dragons reach adulthood around age 160 and become elders after their 950th year. A truly ancient green dragon has lived for at least 1,750 years, give or take a century. The oldest known green dragon lived for approximately 2,250 years.
Ecology and Habitats
Green dragons prefer areas of thick vegetation. By far, they prefer temperate and cold forests to steamy jungles and nonforested land. They particularly favor woods with large and imposing trees—the older and more massive, the better. Greens might accept smaller woods as less desirable alternatives, as well as jungles and overgrown bogs. When a green dragon cannot find any suitable forest or woodland, it might settle for an area of rolling hills or similar terrain, using slopes and valleys for cover and concealment in the same way that its more fortunate cousins use the trees of the forest.
Green dragons prefer caves in forested hills and cliffsides for their lairs. Where they cannot find such convenient openings, they might topple the mightiest of trees into great heaps and make their homes in the hollows of these wooden hills. Some green dragons even lair inside the trunks of the largest, fey-touched trees.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Green dragons prefer sentient mammalian prey over any other kind. Because obtaining such prey can be difficult, however, greens subsist mostly on woodland creatures, such as deer, bears, and wolves.
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