As one would expect, deep dragons are found deep, deep in the earth. It's not completely certain whether deep dragons are their own species, or some kind of mutated version of a true dragon. Regardless, they're just as powerful as true dragons. Surface dwellers may now give a sigh of relief as it's made known that deep dragons have no interest in leaving their dark world. They sometimes make pacts with drow, but that's mostly to keep an eye on them and make sure that whatever the drow do, it won't interfere with the deep dragon's well-being.

Deep dragons cannot be trusted. They’re especially tricky creatures, and similarly difficult to fool. Even a wyrmling is born with innate true seeing, making them immune to the effects of illusions and invisibility. Older deep dragons become more attuned to their cavernous and stony environment. They start out being able to easily burrow through stone and worm their way though small cracks. By the time end of their lifespan, deep dragons can command the stone to open, close and warp as they please.

Why fight some repugnant humanoid skulking in the tunnel you've left behind when you can simply command the tunnel to seal itself, crushing the intruder?

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The Shen Lung is one of many different dragons of the Lung type. Ordinary dragons are highly magical creatures, but in the end they are merely intelligent, large and potent beasts. The Lungs are inherently mystical beings allied to the elements who cross the boundary between the Spirit World and the Material Plane at will. Their powers come from a mystic pearl embedded in their heads (or brains), which allow them to fly without wings, riding the currents of air.

The Shen Lung (the Spirit Dragon) is among the lungs that mortals are most likely to meet, where all others prefer to remain hidden away in their celestial palaces or in the Spirit World. An aura of divine purity exudes from this dragon, repelling all verminous beasts that would dare approach it. It has special power over water and is often found near rivers inhabited by Chiang Lungs, whom they are bodyguards to. Pleasing a Shen Lung results in good harvests, while insulting one can lead to floods and blights, as it has control over the weather.

I like the traditional D&D dragons (blue and black are my favourites), but I have a soft spot in my heart for the lung type dragons. I think it's mostly the way they don't have wings but can still fly. There's just something quite cool about that. And the whole mystic pearl thing. Some Chinese (and I'm assuming other Oriental tales) feature the dragon's pearl being found by a human and then it bringing them good luck.

Some of you may recognize the name Shen Lung from the Dragon Ball series, where the 7 dragon balls (mystic pearls?) were gathered together to summon Shenron (or Eternal Dragon, or Shenlong) to grant the gatherer a wish.

The final image of Epic Month, which also consisted of the Phoenix, Phane and White Slaad. Using a dragon feels a bit like cheating, since dragons have more than one challenge rating depending on their age. But from 800 years onwards a Shen Lung is over CR 20 so that means it becomes an epic level creature so yeah.

Black dragons are the most cruel-tempered of the chromatic dragons. Where blue dragons are vain, reds are tyrannical, greens are two-faced and whites are primal, blacks are petty. They despise all beautiful things. These dragons are of corpse-like apperance, growing more and more skeletal with age, and live in fetid swamps. They surround themselves in darkness, slime and putrefaction. The meat they eat is of creatures they've eaten and allowed to rot in the stinking pools of their undewater homes. Black dragons are ambushers; their chosen homes have too many trees for flight, and its easier to lie in the cool mud and wait for some hapless victim to walk by.

Tried to do something a little bit more unusual with this dragon. I ended up taking a lot of influence from Oceanic and Inuit masks.

Green Dragons are your fairly classic creatures: they're huge, they live in forests, they eat faeires and elves and other good creatures. Out of the five chromatic dragons, the Greens are one of the two lawful species (the other being Blue). However, unlike their Blue cousins, Green Dragons aren't creatures of honour. Be wary of them. Though they pride themselves on appearing civil and being masters of the spoken word, this is a paper-thin disguise. Green dragons are jealous, covetous creatures. Their words mask insults and their promises are broken when their mood sours, and you'll find yourself burnt from the inside out by their chlorine breath.

My contribution to DRAGON MONTH, ladies and gents. Behold our attempts to these creatures interesting again, since Smaug cemented the scaly lizard look. Admittedly, I'm not off to the best start with the whole "let's make this original" thing. I'll try something weirder with my next dragon. With this one I ended up trying the pixelly-style thing, which is a lot harder that I'd originally anticipated.

I've started a special tagging method over at Reference Reference. Now you can look at specific images that served as guides for the Green Dragon.

Moreso than any of their metallic brethren, Gold Dragons are creatures of utmost law and virtue. They are known to be kind and fantastically intellgent, devoting much of their attention to righting wrongs and helping the weak. Gold Dragons appear to take at times an almost parental role when dealing with lesser creatures, whether lending a helping wing to a besieged adventurer or scolding an opportunistic treasure-thief.

To celebrate our 100th post (it's kind of a joint thing with the blog's first year anniversary) this fair month of August is going to be Dragon Month. Yes, you may have noticed a conspicuous absence of fantasy's bescaled poster boys from our pages so far - early on we decided to hold off from illustrating them until we reached post number 100.

If the idea of this blog is to challenge peoples' perception of what standard fantasy art should look like, then dragons are pretty high on the hit-list of "stuff to challenge". Especially on the internet, dragons must be some of the most popular and often-drawn fantasy creatures ever, and a quick search on somewhere like Deviantart will give you a good cross-section of the visual tropes they tend to subscribe to. Seriously, go look at it. See that? That's what we're gonna try to avoid. Not because it's bad, but because being weird and different makes us feel special. ;_;

Stay tuned for the rest of Dragon Month and see if you like it!