Actually, my first rolled dragon AND space dragon. So, my players have been stuck in the Purple Planet for a year in our campaign. They have in the last session reached that status of “Warlods of the Purple Planet”, creating a domain in the middle of the sandbox, between the Peak of the Ancients and the northern deserts. To make a long story short, they started by clashing against warbands of both major houses from Peril on the Purple Planet and then running away. That was made ridiculous easy (and created a very chaotic sandbox) because the Mercurial Magic effect rolled by the party’s warlock (none other than this poor guy) triggers a teleport of 1-6 hexes in a random direction every time he casts Sleep. So, after some (literal) zig-zag they ended up finding the Tomb of Sotark, the Destroyer (from Tombs of Ancients), almost found the City of Smoke, pillaged (and lost) lots of relics, murdered Nam-knir, the Black Queen (a potential ally), allied with the Rider of the Wasteland (potential enemies) and finally took over the Servants to the Cauldron (all from the amazing Purple Planet Companion). Because I was running a sandbox, they also missed encounters (such as with the Skymasters patrols). There was also a lot more craziness going, but based on our campaign, such as celestial nemesis, Yog-Sothothery, references to Clark Ashton Smith, comics etc.
What happened, basically, is that after 5 months of campaign I decided that I wanted to create a major player for the sandbox, one with a random location (and which changed locations quite often). I created 2 rogue Ascended Masters and a small kith house that kept ancient healing technology, but I also decided to use a dragon! Yes, a dragon in the Purple Planet. I love the monster tables from the DCC Core Rulebook, so I decided (in true sandbox fashion) to randomly generate a dragon.
To my surprise I ended up rolling a young dragon (although one about the size of an elephant), with just 6HD and 13 years of age. However, to make things interesting, this dragon’s breath was a save versus poison or you are dead. Nice! It AC was just 17, but it has a rusting hide, destroying every metal weapon that touched it. Also nice! It has two unique powers: a dust cloud that dealt suffocation damage and the power to grant a Luck Boom (+1 permanently on luck).
With those results in mind I started my favorite part: making sense out of this chaos. Considering that we are playing the Purple Planet I decided to build a space dragon. Because we are dealing with a young and small species, I used the aesthetics of a gem dragon to describe him: exotic and alien for players used to chromatic/metallic dragons (and also wrongfully assuming that this particular space dragon would have psionics powers). The dragon would have crystalline, gossamer like wings (but razor sharp), and its scales would be like green-blue gems, its eyes shinning with the same cold light of the stars. The dragon would not speak but use a limited form of telepathy (but no mind reading, although the dragon would suggest that to manipulate the players). Because dragons are vanity and pride incarnate, this dragon would also pretend to be older, wiser and powerful.
I changed the breath weapon to a “crystallizing breath”. Targets have to succeed at a Fort save (like poison) or be changed instantly to crystal (the good thing is that the party can try to find a way to reverse the crystallization).
The unique power of suffocation was eve better: I decided my space dragon would open a small hole in the upper atmosphere and drag the vacuum of space, creating the suffocation effect. As a side effect, I decided that this unique power could be see from afar, like a strange haze in the atmosphere in the shape of an inverted funnel (image a slightly dark tornado upside down). In fact, during the campaign the players would often see the dragon using this power 2-3 hexes away and wonder what was happening.
The Luck Boom acted as “small patron bond”, blessing a character as an Agent of the dragon (I was tempted to use the rules from DCC Lankhmar here).
The rusting hide was perfect as it is.
That said, here is Opulent Nebulous Resplendence (or Opuneres for short).
Age: Young
(just 13 !)
Size: Elephant
HD: 6d12+12 (42 hp)
Speed 40 ft.
Daily Breaths:
1 (Poison, save vs Fort or dies as your body is crystallized)
Action Die:
2d20
Attack: +9
(bite 1d8+1d3*, claw 1d12+1d3*) (Critical 1d10)
(*House rule: I
usually add the dragon’s bonus to attack to its damage rolls, in this case this is a d3)
Saves: all +6
AC: 17 (rusting
hide; magic weapons are theoretically immune)
Unique Power: Vacuum Zone (like dust cloud, 1d4 stamina due
to suffocation)
Unique Power: Luck Boom +1 permanently (the dragon places one
of its gem-like scales in the target’s forehead)
