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.

The Phoenix is a unique creature. In fact, it may be the only one of its kind.

Its plumage is the colours of fire and burn with the same intensity. Even when a feather is shed, assuming it doesn't simply burn away, it retains heat and golden light indefinitely. It can start fires with a touch and its blood burns like lava. The Phoenix's fire is more than just mundane flame, as creatures normally immune to it find themselves burned by divinity.

The most striking ability of the Phoenix is its self-immolation. Every few centuries, the Phoenix spontaneously bursts into flames and a younger version rises from the glowing ashes. This same ability is also used as a defense mechanism, making it able to burn away all damage in a matter of seconds. To see the Phoenix self-immolate can be considered a good or bad omen, depending on your interpretation. However, it is certainly a bad omen if you're within the burn range.


Welcome to Epic Month. As a celebration of Dungeons & Drawings four-year anniversary, we're going to be posting epic-level creatures, i.e. creatures which should only be fought by adventurers of 20th level or higher. At this challenge rating, creatures encountered are more divine forces than ordinary forces, capable of levelling landscapes, destroying souls and bending time and space.

Honestly, the Phoenix's immolation supernatural ability seems a bit OP to me. Basically, as a full round action it can kill itself, dealing massive damage within a certain area, reapparing at the end of the round with full hit points. You can probably count its spell-like abilities as refreshed too, since this phoenix technically counts as a "new" bird. I suppose its AC is on the low side compared to other epic-level creatures, so it won't be to hard to whittle it back down again. Just enjoy taking 40d6 fire damage every few rounds as it regenerates itself.

Happy 200 images!

We mostly keep away from dragons and such to do some of the more obscure creatures in the D&D bestiaries. Those ones are usually a bit weirder and a bit what, but they're sometimes pretty cool and need more love. But in special occasions like these, you need to go back to the classics. Specifically, the classic final boss of the campaign and proof of your heroicness.

Among all the dragons, the Red Dragon is the one you really have to watch out for. They are the classic dragon: fire breather, gold hoarder, maiden eater, town razer. They are cruel, vindictive, greedy creatures and amongst the most powerful of dragons (only a fully grown gold dragon is stonger than a fully grown red). Even straight out of the egg, they're already the size of a human and are capable of taking down bears and similar dangerous animals. When they reach the Great Wyrm stage of their life, they're the only chromatic dragon to reach Colossal size, about 70ft in length. Even the main head of Tiamat, the chromatic dragon goddess, is that of a red dragon.

The first famous red dragon was Tolkein's Smaug from The Hobbit, who is the template on which all modern dragons come from. Which is a shame in some ways, because it feels like it limits them to a flying crocodile-dinosaur kind of form. I tried going in a more medieval direction with the Red Dragon, giving it some more leonine features, though he's still quite scaly and bat-winged.

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!