Just a fun elemental dragon for the thread to play around with.
Kutya, the Thunder in the Mountain
Elemental Dragon of Air and Earth
The wise do not ascend the mountain, nor do they brave the passages from which silver, jade and firedust once poured in rivers. The unwise do not return.
The tale of this curse upon the land begins long ago, with an ambitious elemental whose name and nature have long been forgotten. All that the tales agree upon is that he was a creature of Air, a powerful master of thunderous martial arts, and a rebel against the order of the heavens. He decried the corruption of the Celestial Bureaucracy, and gathered about him spirits, mortals and martial artists who wished to make a change. He was impetuous and often rash, but such was his charisma and his martial power that he gave his followers hope, and they began the labour of ordering their slice of Creation according to their best ideas. Illicit divine blessings brought bounty to the mountain and the lands around it, and the might of the elemental and his followers beat back those who attempted to claim these newfound riches for themselves. In the halls of Heaven, a close watch was set upon the region, but it was decided that drastic measures need not yet be taken.
Some say that was where the debate ended, while others claim that it was decided to employ more subtle means. Whether thanks to his own ambition, or due to some subtle prompting, the elemental grew slowly more certain that another step was needed to prove that their way could work. They couldn't fight Heaven itself, but they could perhaps prove it wrong, and so he devised a cunning scheme. He would steal the Essence of a dragon, become an elemental dragon itself, and by doing so break the monopoly of Heaven upon the legitimacy of the draconic form handed down by the Emerald Mother. It was ambitious, audacious, reckless - but was not their whole project?
In the end, though, it was not the ambition, audaciousness or recklessness of the plot which doomed it, but simple miscalculation. Through some twist of fate, the dragon from which the elemental chose to steal was of Earth, not Air, and that dissonance would prove his undoing. When he imbibed it with grand ceremony, his body swelled and grew into a dragon indeed - but a twisted dragon of lightning and stone commingled, lizard-like with withered wings and a great crown of bone. Its mind was torn between its warring Essences, and it became a monstrous beast, claiming the mountain for a home and slaughtering or driving out all its former subjects, friends and followers. It became Kutya, the Thunder in the Mountain, and there it lairs unto this day, wandering the tunnels like a worm within an apple, and devouring any who dare brave the depths or the heights.
Summoning (4/6): Kutya is not a god - indeed, he is reviled by Heaven - and so he can be summoned and bound by sorcery. However, his power is such that only the might of an Adamant Sorcerer can bind him to task, and so he has gone unbeckoned from his mountain lair. Were he to be summoned, he would be a devastating weapon of war. Though he cannot fly, as the skin never grew upon his vestigial wings, he can make great leaps, and his physical strength is immense. He could smash a city wall with ease, and his stony scales are proof against all but the blades of mighty heroes or the weapons of an elder age. Most terrible of all is his breath; he can exhale blasts of lightning the equal of any First Age lightning-ballista, or seed the clouds with thunder to rain down once more. He is a living siege weapon, fit to devastate armies.
His cause splintered in the wake of his transformation, the combined loss of their leader and many of their most honoured members dealing a mortal blow to the morale of the nascent movement. Nevertheless, some gods and mortal descendants remain about the mountain, telling old tales and holding onto some faint hope that Kutya could be restored. Even so, the younger generations know the dragon only as a creature of terror, and their tales have begun to change, recalling only the monster and not the hero he once was. The gods remember, though, and talk in circles - should they seek out sorcerers to attempt to heal their old companion, or would it be kinder to put him out of his misery? How would Heaven respond, even if it were possible? They have endless questions, and no answers.
