D&D 5E What can a dragon do to accelerate its aging?

[Son of the Serpent]

Hi! So I'm curious about making a specific dragon a recurring enemy, but I want her to grow stronger as the party does.

Of course, dragons do have several stages of life, but they grow slowly with age; the difference between a "young" dragon and "adult" dragon can be decades, and the difference between adult and ancient can be hundred of years.

So my question is... what can a dragon do if it decides to accelerate its own aging, in an effort to defeat troublesome adventurers?

The idea is that this young dragon failed to defeat the heroes within it's own lair, and although escaped, sees no other recourse but to "hit puberty quick!"

The dragon does have some humanoid assistance in local followers, including lizardfolk, ogres and bullywugs. What I want suggestions for are things like specific spells, rituals, items or patrons that the dragon would seek out to accelerate its aging.

If you can, point to a source in a D&D book where this has happened (I'm sure it has somewhere). But if you've got a great idea, I'd love to hear it!

EDIT: It's a black dragon, starting this as young.

There is a famous example of something other than a dragon doing this that could help you out. The fact black dragons are known for having a lean toward necromantic practices will help here. I dont know if it will work in your edition. If it doesnt just say naughty word the rules and go with it anyway if you like it.

Strahd (the vampire. Yes that very one) had a sister or a female cousin (i forgot which). She too was a vampire. Vampires like many undead passively grow more powerful with age. She didnt feel like waiting thousands of years and wanted a quick no effort boost. So she hatched a plan. Ghosts have an ability to age people. This is non harmful to vampires. Only helpful. She had a lover who was a ghost. For an entire night she tortured her lover and let him use his aging abikity on her over and over and over in blind vengeful rage. At the end of the night she had gone up several age categories and had the evolved undead template.

A black dragon is not undead however and grows larger as they age. So i recommend an adjustment.

Have him do the same thing with a ghost he gets his claws on. Have him be in his alternate humanoid form THE WHOLE TIME (with the classic 10 dragon species the alternate form is technically an alternate true form which is almost never touched on in the lore. The point is its not actually "false".) this is to avoid problems with rapid growth that we cant account for because we dont have examples.

Have a ring of sustenance to offset starvation that presumably would jave occurred if he went the long way if aging and didnt eat during those hundreds of years.

This should result in an ancient wyrm in short order.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Send the dragon to a place full of ghosts and see how many times it fails the Horrifying Visage saving throw, aging by 1d4x10 years for each of the saves failed by five or more?

Aparently we both thought of the ghost thing. I saw your post after i posted mine (i read op's post and immediately posted my solution without reading any of the proposed answers).

We both have some details that the other didnt think of. I think if we combine our two versions of the method we would get a very handsomely well thought out method.

More ghosts equals faster aging after all.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Playing on my earlier post i realized something. Why stop at ancient wyrm?

Age to the very limits of ancient wyrm's strength, then use a vampire to turn yourself into a vampiric dragon (with some sort of reason to be confident the vampire will release you. Perhaps pact magic or something more mundane), and then just go right back to ghost agin to gain 10 or so evolved undead increases.

Forget the party of adventures and take rightful throne as draconic god-king of the planet.

 

[The Glen]

Have kids.

 

[Garthanos]

Become part human... accelerate ambition and change personality in the process.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Have five boys.

 

[cbwjm]

I remember Bruce Heard wrote a dragon article where dragons became more powerful using the ritual of sublimation. I can't recall if it was used by younger dragons or the eldest most powerful though. You could use something like this to grant more hit dice up to 1 below the next age category (signifying that the adult hit dice are the minimum for that age category).

I can't recall the dragon issue but it might be up on the vaults of pandius.

 

[Bawylie]

I’m gonna go against the grain here. Don’t explain it at all. Highlight the observable insanity of it. It’s much bigger, much more powerful, than it should be for its age. And point that out every time. It’s back and it’s grown again!

The growth itself, without any ready explanation, will become a threat all on its own.

Sometimes we over-explain things and end up the worse for it. “Seeing how the sausage is made” and all that.

 

[humble minion]

Well, you could take the (canonical!) Dark Sun route and have it ritualistically suck out the lifeforce of 40000 people from within its occult obsidian pyramid....

 

[Olrox17]

Stock up a huge amount of potions of longevity, and start drinking them. Enjoy the side effect.

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