Palarandusk - The Oldest Dragon in D&D

because we have been covering some of the most powerful dragons in the Forgotten Realms we are tending to see dragons that are basically at their Apex dragons that are at their most powerful it's somewhat rare actually to see dragons that have already peaked but are now in a downward trajectory in their winning years because as you all know for a creature of the Dragon subtype to be considered a true Dragon it must become stronger the more it ages the older a dragon becomes the more powerful it is today however we're going to talk about one of the very few exceptions what could possibly be the oldest dragon that we will cover on this channel a dragon that has lived before waterdeep Neverwinter or even luskin were settled a dragon that existed before the netheris Empire today we are covering paleran dusk the Gold Dragon the Unseen protector a dragon who is holding on to Life by the sheer power of its magic but before we get into it Merry Christmas everyone and happy holidays you know 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it's gotten so bad that he only dares materialize for a few minutes a day instead choosing to remain in its ephemeral form just to cling to life but how did this happen see Peller and dusk grew up in a short Coast that was mostly uninhabited empty of all of the cities and kingdoms that rule it today he used to spend his time hunting and eating wyverns that is until the nethery's kingdom arose it is said that paleran dusk was already fairly mature even by the early days of the netheris Empire which came up around 5 000 or so years ago it was at that time that he was captured and enslaved by one of the most powerful wizards of that Empire in particular one wizard named melee irigoth the ancient scriptures say that the wizard and his apprentices tested a lot of Magic on the dragon and trying to find ways to compel him to do their bidding to restore its wounds to lengthen its age it's unclear the extent of the experimentation but at the time this was not at all rare to see the arcanists of the netheris empire were notorious for not really having any taboos when it came to Magic they would enslave and experiment on all kinds of magical creatures all the time in order to uncover more and more magical Secrets it's actually the reason why they became so strong now if you do remember the powerful spells that made cloth the ancient red dragon so formidable also came from nethery's Wizards experimenting on dragons so this again was not uncommon at all now in any case the lifespan of paleran dusk was lengthened thanks to these many spells which then of course resulted in the dragon itself outliving the Empire and when the netheris Empire collapsed and palaran dusk was granted its freedom he escaped but not after seizing and collecting hundreds of spell books and magical tomes from the chaos and then for the next set of Millennia the Gold Dragon would study those tomes and learn of its Magics experimenting on itself and inventing his own set of spells in fact the second level spell which you know was dragon's breath which was added of course in senator's Guide to Everything is technically called pellerendusk's breath it's unclear whether that is a spell that the dragon designed himself or whether it was created by one of the nethery's arcanists thanks to their experimentation with the dragon but we do know that most of the spells that we use nowadays were indeed invented by the netheris the spell of course imbues a creature with the ability to breathe fire like a gold dragon does now one such spell created by peleron dusk is whip strike a very scary one the spell materializes the air around the Target and then forces that air to bludgeon them the spell functions like magic Missile in that it hits the target unerringly and you can't escape it at all but I digress back in those days pelor and dusk was still a fairly normal gold dragon albeit just extremely powerful thanks to how old he was and how many spells he had been enchanted with when Neverwinter was founded and had become this burgeoning fledgling like new up-and-comer the Gold Dragon made the decision to become its protector this would be when I would consider to be the dragon's true Apex when he was at its most powerful whenever armies would come to destroy the city of Neverwinter a ballerin dust would come to its rescue he would destroy entire orc hordes he would kill evil dragons before they would get anywhere near close to the city and whenever the region would get invaded by another rival Kingdom power and dusk would come to aided to the people of Neverwinter pelor and dusk became an icon a legendary figure an entity to which the humans even prayed to from time to time and for those who Neverwinter he was called the sun dragon and this believe in him Phil pelleron does with this sense of purpose and happiness however after hundreds of years of constant fighting of defending the the very land he loved he would become weaker from all of the wounds that he would endure quote the passing years robbed the sun dragon of his strength and suppleness and young dragons arrived to challenge him for his domain with the frequency of vultures circling a stricken Beast with no fitting trusted successor as defender of Neverwinter in sight palerendusk dared not stand his ground and go down fighting for that proud gesture would leave his chosen home undefended he had to hide and devote his time to learning magic enough to survive and learning it fast wherefore the sun dragon was seen less and less in Neverwinter he had already slipped into legend by the time the Arcane Brotherhood arose in luskin and the fear of their recognizing of his magical nature and using spells to enslave him drove palerendusk to disappear and quote Pellerin does hid from the world for a time so that he may study from all of the tomes that he had taken from the netheris empire in order to find a way to restore some of his Vigor to maintain some of the Magics that his body was enchanted with that were now breaking and the thing to understand here is that a lot of what made palerendusk so strong originally were these enchantments that dotted his body but he really didn't understand many of them they were put on him against his will after all and at this point in time the Spells were shattering the enchantments were waning using his human polymorphed form a paleran dusk purchased an old decrepit mansion in the mountains close to Neverwinter where he then proceeded to store all of his old spell books and tomes and then he basically just hid from the world in order to study the Magics that course through his body unfortunately for him though his Mansion was then attacked it isn't clear exactly why the attack happened but it came from a group of adventurers that assumingly either knew palorandosk lived within or were extremely lucky in the confrontation they ended up burning they ended up just like exploding the entire building with fire quote the attack came without warning and it destroyed almost all of the Aging gold dragons spell books palarendusk escaped destruction by frantic use of his spells but not before his body had been so ravaged by Magic that it was only held together by a webwork of shattered enchantments whelming all of his magic to save himself the sun dragon rebuilt his own frame forming the substance-less body of the slowly crumbling unseen protector he is today and quote bellerin dusk was forced to rebuild himself with magic just to stay alive which now forces him to exist mostly in this form of ethereal figure now after the incident in this new form that pelarandus has been forced to take he finds himself neither Desiring nor needing to eat food instead he spends most of the scant minutes that he can materialize absorbing moisture into his body by standing in the rain and this is typically enough to sustain him though on the rare moments where he does get hungry he does attempt to find creatures which threaten his land and then eat them his unique Nature has also left him without the need for sleep and so he never does though ironically those few who do know of polarandosk's condition the claim that his lack of sleep is actually one of the primary reasons why his life force is draining so quickly most dragons of venerable age do spend more time sleeping than awake and palerendusk does not now is being merely an old Legend to those who live in Neverwinter and feeling like he is no longer able to defend the land as he used to the poor dragon has failed purposeless that is until he found a town of gnomes high up in the sword Mountains close to waterdeep a palaran dusk felt like he needed something even if he was overall small in the grand scope of things his purpose has always been to defend those in need to protect the helpless and so he approached this town of gnomes possessing no more than 400 adults in total and asked them if they would allow his presence in exchange for his protection which in awe they accepted the town of gnomes is called Larry thimble and it is nestled in a valley up in the mountains called Fel Rendon and so bellarendusk's Lair nowadays is up there close to the Gnomes that he now protects now I do say a lair but polarendas doesn't really have a layer per se he doesn't sleep so he doesn't have a cave where he stays and he doesn't really care very much about wealth whether it is to accrue it or to covet it so he doesn't have a bed of coin like normal dragons do the few pieces of treasure that he does possess he hides under Boulders in different parts of the mountain which he uses to trade for Magics which may Aid him in giving him the Vigor that he requires in order to materialize more often so if you wanted to find him and interact with him as a player that would actually be the only thing that he actually would care about since he dislikes talking to people and doesn't really have any allies see all he does with his time is do everything that he can to protect his gnomes he will stay invisible and just listen to them and observe them if one of them has to travel down the mountain onto civilization he might follow them just to make sure that they're safe if anything his past time is to get to know his little gnomes better so he will listen to their quarrels when they talk to each other he will spy on them when they think that they are alone to listen to their worries he will overhear his spousal fights he will pay attention to the children when they play and of course he wanders around the town when they sleep this is why of course bellarendusk never sleeps himself and why his body is decaying faster than normal is because he spends every waking moment safeguarding the tiny little gnomes and he loves it I mean this is why he lives this is his purpose in life to protect and to guard applerandesk has a very strong sense of Duty and honor and he believes that this is his Destiny to Shepherd the land and its people and so again if you wanted to interact with him the only thing that would have him consider in the audience would be magic which would help him regain his Vigor in particular a specific set of rods so a while back a wizard traded spells with palarandosk and in exchange the wizard granted him a set of rods filled with magic and a spell which allowed the dragon to absorb the magic of the rods onto himself now he has since run out of those rods however and so he seeks more of them whenever he can at the actual nature of what these rods are R is unknown though and the Lord doesn't really expand upon them at all but but it is interesting nonetheless and again a reason why he would want to meet with players I should mention though that nobody really even knows that he exists though it is said that at this point in time only the Gnomes and a very small group of wild mountain dwarves that live in the sword mountains know that the Unseen protector is even a dragon other people such as adventurers that pass by the mountains humans that live in waterdeep or any of the nearby towns the sages that have studied the region all of them believe that the Unseen protector is nothing but a spirit or some wizard who is using illusion magic to disguise himself you have to keep in mind that palerandos virtually never materializes and he has been in this form for hundreds of years so his name has really just faded Into Obscurity it would be a complete shock to those who live in Neverwinter to hear what ended up happening to their beloved Son dragon now that being said and I should mention is he is still extraordinarily powerful so we have been talking all this time about like how he's no longer the Apex dragon that he used to be and and how he has deteriorated over time but again all of this is it's mostly just because of the magic that keeps his body together and that it is breaking apart but he is still a true dragon and just like we mentioned at the very beginning of this video true dragons become stronger the older they get not weaker and uh polarandus might be one of the oldest dragons alive so what does that say about his power well palaran dusk has an official challenge rating of 36 putting him just below Inferno because he is so old Ed Greenwood wrote that he had the equivalent sorceress power of a level 28 Sorcerer And that is of course on top of this very powerful draconic body this means that he can cast seven ninth level spells which I mean come compared to dargothoth and Inferno it is nothing but compared to the rest of the world it is shockingly powerful now the rest of his battle kit would be fairly standard for a gold dragon is really just powerful claws bites and fire breath weapons he's ethereal nature unfortunately doesn't really translate particularly well in combat since it does take a full round for him to transition between his ethereal form and his material form and he can't really abuse his ethereal form in combat since he can only cast spells that Target himself while in that form and he of course can't do any form of attack while in it in fact his ethereal form has a severe weakness whenever palaran dusk is forced to go through any physical object whether it is a house a blade or any other person he takes a little bit of damage which is no problem but his total hit points go down by one permanently if he is ever say you know shot with an arrow while translucent his total hit points would be permanently reduced by one this is the big issue that the Gold Dragon is facing and why his Essence is slowly deteriorating over time and why soon enough there won't be anything left of him he is slowly facing out of existence every encounter he has every week that passes his life force drains this also happens when he attempts to attack a creature while he's still translucent the attack would deal no damage to the Target but would create a sense of nausea and tightness on them nothing that would actually hurt them however now let's cover a bit about his personality we haven't talked about the actual person yet quote polarendusk has also collected philosophical human writings and has spoken with a few elves and dwarves about their own views of the world with the aim of forming a personal code end quote quote he does enjoy Beauty such as that captured in the occasional statue or even painting which might be found propped up in clefs and beneath sheltered overhangs here and there around Fel Rendon today polarendusk lives by his own laws which he Alters rarely and then only after much internal debate and reflection he believes that any dragon has a duty to live in harmony with the land devouring prey only as needful the spoiling things only when ruination can't be avoided and protecting his domain against damage from such things as flots fires and invasions and the key to pellerandas character is his light humor and thorough and sympathetic understanding of human nature operating through a firm personal code if paladins learned about him they could learn much from him he defends the Gnomes like a bold and benevolent grandfather never thinking of its own safety never employing traps or ruses and never sleeping end quote it is injury interesting that Pellerin dusk has a peculiar distaste for traps considering them to be inherently foul in nature the concept of preparing someone's demise ahead of time before you can even ascertain the intruder's intention it's awful to him it betrays a flow of character where you have to detach yourself from the maiming of a creature Butler and dusk avoids killing whenever possible but when he's forced to he always weeps quote although the Unseen protector could well be overwhelmed if the Fel Rendon ever became vitally important to the Arcane Brotherhood another kaval of evil Mages or any Alliance of three or more dragons it seems more likely he will Soldier on in obscurity for several more centuries before his body finally falls apart whether his enchantments will enable him to continue on as a disembodied sentience or not is some known but elminster warns that if it does the protector deprived of any means of Defending anything and Faded only to watch could well go insane and might then pose either a menace to all or be merely a powerless unseen Shadow and quote thank you guys so much for watching make sure to go ahead and click the link in the description to check out Sans of Doom and if you like cool dragons which I would imagine to do since you're still here on this video then do make sure to check out the collector's edition hardcover book it's not every day you get to see a vampiric black dragon rotting from the inside out whose only Lifeline is The anubian Relic in her eye who keeps her alive with its powerful Divine Essence will you get her to your side or slay her for her Relic Sans of Doom on Kickstarter the link in the description below thank you guys so much for the support

Channel: MrRhexx

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Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022