DRAGON MONTH: Tiamat, Mother of Evil Dragons

Tiamat is one of the most iconic members of the Greyhawk pantheon. Although only a minor goddess, she's heavily involved in the mortal world, and in her home plane in the Baator. All evil dragons keep shrines to her, in rooms separate from their treasures so she won't reach through and take their hoard. Good dragons respect her (warily). She's a vengeful creature and concerned only with her survival and that of her progeny. Her enemies include most good deities, with special regards to Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. She sleeps in a mountain of demonic skulls and guards the borders between Avernus and Dis, attended by five ancient dragon servants.

Even people who aren't familiar with games might've heard of Tiamat. She's a common enemy in the Dragonlance books and was one of the main baddies in the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

First of all, I'd like to apologize for being so late with this. I've been working really hard for the past few months on some animation for a film, A Liar's Autobiography, a documentary about Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame. While it's been super awesome to be working on a film, doing character animation (basically exactly what I want to do), it leaves me absolutely exhausted when the weekend comes around.

Joe's already mentioned that he doesn't intend to return to Dungeons & Drawings on a regular basis due to other projects he wants to work on. We started this blog just over a year ago with the intent of it being a weekly drawing exercise while we looked for work: pick a monster, draw it, avoid getting rusty. With the work he and I have been getting it's been harder to keep up with the blog. So, for now, Joe's called it quits. Not me, though. I'm still too obsessive over this game to stop.

I'll start putting up the poll again so you guys can help me pick the next monster and I'll keep doing my weekly thing.

Kobolds

The Kobold is considered by many a travelling adventurer to be small and harmless. The more experienced adventurer knows that the kobolds use this to their advantage, to lull others into a sense of security and lead them into traps that'll butcher the enemy. Kobolds are clever and proud, and only serve themseleves or the dragons they believe they're descended from.


These are some of my favourite creatures.

Kobolds are a pretty common early-level encounter. They're small and have a very low challenge rating, which means you can throw a whole pack of them at the players without worrying too much about murdering them too early in the game. Even the Monster Manual goes to some lengths to describe how pathetic they are. "Kobolds speak Draconic with a voice that sounds like that of a yapping dog," says the Manual. They're the chihuahuas of the D&D world.

But that can make them dangerous. They're expert trap-makers and you'll spend more time avoiding them that you will fighting the little creatures themselves. There's the infamous Tucker's Kobolds, a group of completely average kobolds which specialized in guerilla tactics and dangerous traps instead of direct confrontation, designed to challenge players at high levels. There's also Pun-Pun, a demonstration about how the rules of the game can be broken to create a ridiculously powerful character. Wizards later released another book, Races of the Dragon, expanding on kobolds, making them more intelligent and conniving, and listing futher specialties and qualities.

Later illustrations of kobolds in further books and magazines went on to make them a bit more evil looking, but I've always preferred that their cruel minds were hidden behind an adorable, pathetic exterior.