Cyclopean Dragon(Creature, dragon)

Dragon (Earth)

**Environment**: Volcanoes and underground

**Organization**: Solitary, pair, or family (2-5)

**Challenge Rating**: Wyrmling 4; very young 5; young 7; juvenile 10; young adult 12; adult 15; mature adult 17; old 19; very old 20; ancient 21; wyrm 22; great wyrm 24.

**Treasure**: Triple Standard.

**Alignment**: Always chaotic evil.

[i]The creation myths told about the dragons I am informing you about today vary. Some say they were created by Gruumsh from volcanic dust following the loss of his eye, filling them with hatred towards elves and a thirst for elven blood. Thus these dragons have but one eye and tirelessly eat the flesh of elves and their favorite allies men.

Others contest this pointing to the god of war and magic of some crystal spheres. This god, who wandered the worlds in search of knowledge traded one of his eyes for a drink from the well of wisdom and some say the first of these dragons developed from that eye and they became hateful of his chosen followers, men, for they were abandoned to better these others

A third group points to another pantheon which holds a close tie to both titans and, more importantly, cyclopses with divine ranks. They point to the latter and say that the descendants of these quasi-deific entities and dragons gave rise to the cyclopean dragons and that like the lesser cyclopses they share a taste for human flesh.

I will not comment on the veracity of these legends, save to note that they do not seem particularly prone to eating elves over other humanoids, but that may just show the lack of skill Gruumsh has in creation if the orcs did not already show his ineptitude. I will instead describe these creature’s physical nature, psychological outlook, and what danger and threats they may present and what resistances one can expect.

Cyclopean dragons are amongst the largest of dragonkind, only the great dragons exceed them in size, although they are not the most powerful. They lack sorcerous power instead limited to the much less versatile arts of a duskblade and thus relying even more heavily on their plentiful array of physical weapons and raw strength. They are unaffected by even the hottest flames, but do not spew it forth and are actually more closely related elementally to earth than fire.

**Special Abilities**

**Breath Weapon** (Su): A cyclopean dragon has a single breath weapon a line of lightning dealing the listed damage; a successful Reflex save halves this damage.

**Inferior Vision**: A cyclopean dragon’s one eye leaves it with worse vision than other true dragons. It lacks the Keen Senses ability of other true dragons, having merely 120-ft darkvision and low-light vision. It also suffers a -4 on Spot and Search checks as well as a -2 on ranged attack rolls.

**Smite** (Su): As part of an attack a very young or older cyclopean dragon may declare a smite gaining a +4 to hit and dealing extra damage equal to its HD. Once it has used this ability, even on a miss, it must wait 1 minute to use it again.

**Arcane Channeling** (Su): When casting a melee touch spell a young or older cyclopean dragon may make a natural weapon attack as part of the same action as casting the touch spell and applying the touch spell to the target of the natural weapon attack on a successful hit. When cast in this way the spell does not provoke attacks of opportunity for being cast, and it is automatically stilled with no change to casting time or spell level. When they reach adulthood they may cast a melee touch spell as part of making a full-attack action and the effects of the spell are applied once to each creature struck by one of its natural weapons during the full-attack. Upon reaching the Ancient age category they may instead apply a single melee touch spell to their breath weapon as part of the action required to use it and all creatures which fail their Reflex save or take damage from the breath weapon are affected as if they had been targeted by the touch spell; in this case the spell is automatically silenced as well as stilled.

**Spellcasting**: A young or older cyclopean dragon casts spells as a duskblade of the listed level. They may also learn spells from the bard spell list as well as the craft, and creation domain lists as if they were duskblade spells.

**Quick Cast** (Su): A juvenile or older cyclopean dragon may, the listed number of times per day, cast a duskblade spell as if it had been affected by the Quicken Spell feat without increase to casting time or spell level.

*Greater Magic Fang* (Sp): 3/day an old or older cyclopean dragon may use *Greater Magic Fang* as a spell-like ability.

**Skills**: Appraise, Craft, and Decipher Script are class skills for cyclopean dragons in addition to those available to all true dragons.