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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8311020" data-attributes="member: 6790260">That's correct, yes (though I favor the more flowery/poetic "heavenly" rather than "sky.") He's not actually a god, but dragons (and some other, innately-magical beings) are in some sense a step closer to celestial/divine than ordinary mortals are. You could think of it as dragons being physical creatures that contain manifestations of the power inherent in creation itself, charged to act as custodians and caretakers. Good dragons are thus wise, gracious, and noble, but often inscrutable. Sometimes, they do things that don't look gracious to mortal eyes because dragons can literally observe more of the world than mortals can (magic/supernatural senses beyond what training can achieve for humanoids), and because they're nigh-immortal and thus have a much bigger time-horizon.For Shen and others like him, this is focused in part by him (apparently; the party hasn't directly asked) revering the same monotheistic deity as the priests of the land they live in, which binds Shen by certain rules of what he can and can't do and sets the goals he pursues. Evil dragons, by contrast, are...sort of somewhere between fallen clerics and "corrupted" aasimar, beings who have taken the power given to them and bent it toward wicked ends. (For this purpose, I lump "neutral" dragons with "good" ones, "neutral" meaning they lean rather harder into the "inscrutable goals" side of things, probably focused on parts of the "divine plan" that only tangentially intersect with mortal concerns.) So this black dragon is, in some meaningful sense, a "traitor," which is part of why Shen is on his hunt.Being perfectly honest, I had actually been really concerned my players would not like him, seeing him as a powerful DMPC or an annoying questgiver or the like. I am most fortunate that they instead think he's great, and are super jazzed to eventually attend his marriage to his (human) fiancée, Hafsa el-Alam, who is a respected wizard and talented artificer. Both she and her fiancé have helped out the party with various things over the years we've played, which I'm sure helped the "will they like him?" stuff.</blockquote>

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