Scourge Dragons? Catastrophic Dragons?

The 4E Draconomicon mentions the "Scourge" and "Catastrophic" families of dragon. I haven't run across those terms before, and they don't seem to be detailed in the book.

Does anybody know anything about them?

Stoat said:

The 4E Draconomicon mentions the "Scourge" and "Catastrophic" families of dragon. I haven't run across those terms before, and they don't seem to be detailed in the book.

Does anybody know anything about them?

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I think there's more detail in Draconomicon (not much more), but I don't have my book with me.

From the 4e MM:

Catastrophic dragons are mighty embodiments of primordial forces. They are destructive, bu tnot devoted to evil. The ground warps and explodes violently in their presence. Earthquake and typhoon dragons are two types of catastropic dragons.

Scourge dragons, sometimes called linnorms, embody the afflictions that plague living creatuers, much as catastrophic dragon embody natural disasters. They are almost universally evil, even more so than the chromatics, and they revel in the raw physicality of melee combat. Because they lack wings and rear legs, some scholars insist that they're not true dragons, but more closely related to drakes.

To expand upon what Nightchilde said, it sounds like they're basically two more families of dragons, like Chromatic and Metallic. I don't think they're necessarily new to 4e, just the categorization is new. Linnorms were in one of the 3.5 MM's (was it MMIII? or 2?), and I imagine that there were some dragons in 3.x and previous editions that will now be categorized as Catastrophic dragons.

4e is theorized to have a four year cycle, correct? As in, people think there will be four PHBs, etc... Well, if each MM has one family of dragons, and each Draconomicon deals specifically with the same family, then doing this lets them continue with dragons in each MM and new material in each Draconomicon, right? I don't think that will be a bad thing (assuming things go as I just predicted) - if you're really into Linnorms, then the Linnorm Draconomicon would be perfect for you, no?

Linnorms go all the way back to early AD&D. They were even in one of the Monstrous Manual Appendixes. They're the "norse" dragons, and now "scourge" dragons.

I think the catastrophic dragons will turn out to be the old Oriental dragons, which included a Typhoon dragon (tun-mi lung, iirc).

Lord Sessadore said:

4e is theorized to have a four year cycle, correct? As in, people think there will be four PHBs, etc... Well, if each MM has one family of dragons, and each Draconomicon deals specifically with the same family, then doing this lets them continue with dragons in each MM and new material in each Draconomicon, right? I don't think that will be a bad thing (assuming things go as I just predicted) - if you're really into Linnorms, then the Linnorm Draconomicon would be perfect for you, no?

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There's five types of dragons though. Metallic, Chromatic, Scourge, Catastrophic, and Planar.

Sonny said:

There's five types of dragons though. Metallic, Chromatic, Scourge, Catastrophic, and Planar.

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Yes, but Planar Dragons aren't really a separate "family" in the same sense as the others (at least not in 4e). Planar Dragons are "mutations" of dragons from one of the more standard "families". Look at the examples in the 4e Draconomicon . . . each one is based on a Chromatic!

Although, I'd still love to see someday, "Draconomicon XX: Planar Dragons"!