Warpfire Dragon

Warpfire Dragons are hateful and ruinous creatures that are thankfully rare within Aiandell. Their long, charred-black bodies twist and undulate, throwing off disturbing patterns of baleful fire as they move, never still, unnaturally twisting and shuddering as if tortured eternally by unseen blades.   Clusters of strange crystals mar their scaled skins and each individual hosts its own affliction and minor deformities of limb and hue hinting at their exotic and corrupt origins. The very air around Warpfire Dragons thrums with tainted power, shriveling plants and burning the very ground their claws touch. When brought to battle the energy caged within Warpfire Dragons works upon those foes foolish enough to close with them, leaving each a burning carcass in its wake. When unleashed its breath is like no other Dragons', a coruscating blast scintillating red-black lightning that burns their victims in all-consuming flames, scorching even spirits and creatures of magic.  

Overview

  Warpfire Dragons fuel their destructive powers and maintain their tortured bodies by devouring pure warpstone, turning their bodies into vast vessels of arcane power. Only the mighty constitution of a Dragon could withstand the effects of so much concentrated energy and Chaotic taint without ripping itself to pieces, although upon their violent death the loss of control often leads to a spectacular and explosive end to these Dragons' marauding. The scarcity of warpstone in Aiandell frequently leads the Warpfire Dragons into conflict with the Ungrel, assaulting their fortresses and digging out their burrows to get to their hoards of the tainted stone, although some will seek out the inhabitants of the Chaos Wastes or the dark holdfasts of the restless dead in search of prey, or at least to devour creatures themselves tainted with foul magics to sustain them.   It is also by the promise of this most powerful and malignant of materials — warpstone — that insane and arrogant Wizards bargain with Warpfire Dragons for their might in battle, for it is said these beasts are to quixotic and factious even for the great binding scrolls to alone contain, while their strange hunger to some points to their true origins — the blasted Southern Wastes of Chaos, a region legendarily inhabited by Daemons and littered with the warpstone laden debris of Morrslieb's birth. No Warpfire Dragon has ever been sighted (by any that have survived) that rivaled Aiandell's Emperor Dragons, though such monstrous creatures may exist somewhere in the trackless and unknown southern wastes, while the myths of Far Cathay hold tales of 'daemon-dragons' of the south, which may be one-and-the-same to them. Some scholars theorize that one blasted region far away from the sight and knowledge of Man may be dominated by these great wyrms, grown to such massive proportions on the diet of unadulterated warpstone there that they rival Kalgalanos the Black in size. If this were true it would explain why many of the younger Warpfire Dragons make the long and arduous migration to the Aiandell, escaping a land ruled by these terrifyingly powerful creatures.