Brown dragon

Brown dragons are a type of chromatic dragons spawned by Molta, the Brown Shard of Ardothun.

Appearance

Brown dragons are broadly built and muscular, and many appear lumbering and slow in their movements. They are usually endowed with a single set of bull-like horns on their head. Their scales are irregularly shaped and resemble shards of stone. In addition, they have crests on their backs that resemble raw crystals, which glow whenever they exert their auratic power, and their front paws are distinctly mole-like, with elongated claws adapted for digging. They're notably the only species of true dragon who do not have opposable thumbs.

Beauty standards

The most valuable traits to brown dragon beauty standards are the length of their horns and the size and shapes of their crystal crests. Brown dragons of means often enlist the services of skilled jewelcrafters to carve their crystal crests into pleasing shapes.

Habitat

Brown dragons are most often found in arid and rocky regions. Many brown dragon lairs connect to each other with blocked off tunnels that can be cleared quickly in case they are needed. These lairs tend to typically cluster around the lairs of the oldest and most powerful brown dragons, whose more accessible parts serve as travel hubs for younger brown dragons and minions such as rock kobolds, who are the type of minions most favored by brown dragons. The largest such hub-lairs are the ones inhabited by Molta herself, in the Ascuphre Mountains, and Kaniroos, the Brown Dragonflight's Speaker, in the mountain range that separates the Nikosian Empire provinces of Leograu and Jangara from each other.

Cohabitating species

A number of other species that favor the same types of habitats tend to cohabitate with brown dragons in their lairs, most notably rock kobolds, and species of drakes like mountain drakes and cave drakes.

The Brown Dragonflight

The Brown Dragonflight is one of the more closely knit dragonflights among its counterparts, as they are not as averse to teamwork as most other dragonflights are, to the point of hunting in packs, which is almost unheard of in other flights. This shows itself in the flight's battle tactics, where if taken unawares, an adversary can be beaten quickly by the brown dragons' emphasis on numbers and brute force.

Relations with other dragonflights

Brown dragons are not particularly fond of most of the other flights, who tend to view them as anomaly among dragonkind due to their unusual intra-flight social dynamic. The only flights who they regularly cooperate with are the Copper and Iron dragonflights, both of whom have enlisted their aid in both digging lairs in locales typically difficult for other dragons to develop, and to utilize their pack tactics in the various dragon wars over the ages.