Young Lava Dragon (3.5e Monster)

Lava Dragon, Young
The idea of lava dragons, as a whole, makes us pretty happy. They're lizards, which means that hot temperatures are a-ok for them, and a volcano is a pretty inhospitable place, which makes it awesome for living undisturbed by annoying, treasure-seeking adventurers. Their massive wingspan isn't a problem either, since flying around the volcano itself would give it plenty of space, and if it felt like diving into the magma chamber, it totally could do that.

However, it does posit a difficult question - how do you keep gold in a volcano? Gold has a super-low melting point, and even the coldest part of a volcano would cause it to turn into a puddle before too long. Lava is pretty destructive to other precious things, and very few substances exist that lava isn't hot enough to either melt or wreck beyond recognition. And, since we want our dragons keeping treasure hoards for people to loot, we run into an impasse.

A related, but important issue, is 'what does a lava dragon eat?'. Once again, volcanoes are pretty inhospitable to animal life (aside from other lava dragons, and let's be honest, how many of those would you need to feed even one?), and something that big subsisting on vegetation around an active volcano, while curious, strikes me as more than slightly odd - especially given that dragons aren't known as herbivorous.

The simplest solution is that lava dragons eat metal and stone. They prefer precious gems and metals (like gold, silver and so forth), but will happily dine on anything metallic or stone-based. This means that these kinds of dragons are actually made of precious (and not-so-precious) metals. Their reddish hue would come from iron and rubies and suchlike, but their darker-coloured back plates would come from other metals.

This raises the question 'can lava dragons eat humans and animals, even though it can't digest them?' Simply put, yes - we do it all the time, when we nibble on a stick of celery. Food is much more than just nutrition, as it includes mouth texture, flavour and so forth, so it is entirely possible that to a lava dragon, humans or animals taste great, even if they provide no nutritional worth. So if you want to have evil lava dragons snacking on herds of sheep or the occasional pretty woman, knock yourself out.

An interesting implication of this is that lava dragons have more reasons than most to acquire gold and precious things - they eat them, and they're basically like good food is for us. Additionally, unlike other dragons, who require sitting on big piles of gold to age and grow stronger, lava dragons have to have huge treasure binges to do so instead. What doesn't appear on the outside would remain on the inside, so that lava dragon intestines are made of iron, and their blood is molten electrum. This also means that their internal body temperature would be fairly high (about 1000 C), which also conveniently gives them their famous fire breath.

This means that the 'treasure' in a lava dragon encounter is its body - all of it is basically valuable. As a result, lava dragons would only keep magic items they can use - the lava wouldn't take the stuff that's completely useless, and if the item is unusable, but made of precious things, the lava dragon would likely just eat it instead.

Furthermore, because of this, lava dragons are seriously hot. They would need to keep their core body temperature at about 1000 degrees C or so (for which lava is ideally suited), which would mean that they were confined to their volcanoes and a small area around them. While this would work, it does mean that gathering treasure as such for most lava dragons would be near-impossible (as anyone with treasure would just avoid their volcanoes). As a result, the inner fire ability was given to them as a way to get around this problem.

Strategies and Tactics
If confronted with intruders, a young lava dragon is smart enough to understand that it is the main prize. As a result, if it genuinely fears for its own life, it will spend most of its time inside a lava flow or the volcano's magma chamber. It does need to come up for air occasionally, and it will do so carefully, preferably as briefly as possible and away from anything scary.

If, however, the young lava dragon believes that the intruders are weaker than itself, or that they carry significant quantities of precious metals and gems, it may attack them directly. In this case, it will use the element of surprise, jumping out from the volcano's core at the most opportune moment. It will usually start with its breath, aimed at weakening the front-line combatants. It will then fly or dive over to where the weakest party members are, and will attempt to grab onto them and swallow one of them whole. After this, it will simply proceed to take apart the party's rear, occasionally diving into the lava to allow its breath weapon to recover strength.

If it is up against a group that can fight within the lava, it will aim to use its swim speed to its advantage, either outrunning them if things are going against it, or by flanking them and attacking their weaker group members if it feels it has the upper hand. Young lava dragons are smart enough to understand that spellcasters are both dangerous and squishy, and will make decisions accordingly.

Ecology
Environment: Lava dragons prefer intensely hot environments, as characterised by them living inside volcanoes. For them, even the hottest deserts by human standards are unpleasantly cold, and anything like 'temperate conditions' for most humanoids would be close to a deep-freeze for a lava dragon. While their inner fire can keep them going through such environments, there are limits to how long they can maintain this capability, and thus, most prefer not to spend too long outside their homes (unless it's for something important, like food).

Typical Physical Characteristics: A young lava dragon is about the size of an elephant, and has wings that span almost sixteen metres when fully unfurled. Their eyes are composed of differently-coloured gemstones, and their blood is made of molten electrum. The scales on their softer underside are comprised of rust and rubies, while their harder top scales are a darker red (or sometimes even black) colour, dyed so by the various stones and metals they consume. Teeth and claws are made of mithral, and are thus a gleaming silver, kept free of impurities by the searing environments that they choose to inhabit.

Alignment: Lava dragons can be of any alignment, but most are neutral.

Society
Lava dragons tend to be loners - very few of them enjoy sharing their volcano homes. They also tend to find each other hard to be around for long anyway, as food is scarce enough for them as it is (especially good food, like gems and gold). As a result, lava dragons have a standing agreement not to bother each other unless absolutely necessary.

Lava dragons don't have much of a need to socialise, but when they feel a need to mate, they will travel as far as their inner fire will allow to do so. If there are no mates nearby (an unlikely prospect given how volcanoes cluster), the lava dragon is happy to simply not reproduce (more food for itself, anyway). Eggs are typically laid in the mother's volcano home, one or two at a time, and it is the mother's task to look after them. Once a lava dragon grows enough to be considered young, it must leave the mother's volcano home and find another for itself (possibly by displacing or killing another lava dragon).

Sample Lair
A lava dragon will usually live in a volcano's magma chamber, although it may use some of the natural caverns and crevices in the volcano to store important things in, or simply to relax. Lava dragons don't typically trap or develop their lairs much - the natural hostility of a volcano to (almost) all life does most of this for them. Some enterprising lava dragons do add additional fire-based hazards to their lairs, however, as a lava dragon can ignore almost all of them safely. If the dragon has certain items it wishes to keep, but not carry on its person, it may also have a 'cool room', which it would keep cold by insulating it from the rest of the volcano, or by keeping it near the surface.

Typical Treasure
The typical treasure of a young lava dragon is its own body, as it composed of metal and stone, some of which is precious. Most notably, they have blood made of electrum, and the typical young lava dragon has 32 pints of blood in its body (assuming some loss due to fighting). This (assuming typical electrum composition of 50-50 gold-silver) is worth approximately 18,500 gp by weight. Their eyes are typically made of gemstones (with a value of about 100gp each), and much of their body is likely to also have precious metals in it. This means that an average young lava dragon is likely to yield about 20,000gp of treasure from its body, although some could yield substantially more

Additionally, lava dragons are smart enough to use magic items, and will do so if useful ones come their way. Lava dragons will most commonly use items they can wear, such as necklaces (typically worn as bracelets), cloaks (worn as shoulder pads) and crowns (worn as bracelets or, if small enough, rings). However, in many cases, the items a lava dragon finds won't be useful - in which case, it will simply eat them. Some of these may survive the digestion process, which means that finding magical items in its gullet is not altogether unlikely.

For Player Characters
Young lava dragons are fearsome combatants, having three modes of movement, fire-based powers bigger than your mum, and generally a lot of nastiness coming off them. The best way to fight them is using cold and range, because getting close to them is doubly dangerous. Additionally, the terrain you're likely to see one in is going to give you problems - especially if the dragon's on its home turf - so plan accordingly with a lot of fire resistance.

Creatures As Characters
Young lava dragons are appropriate 7th level PCs.

Creatures With Class Levels
Young lava dragons sometimes take class levels, but it's rare.

Advanced Creatures
Lava dragons can grow to be more capable than the young version.