White dragon

Legacy canon content This article contains information of uncertain canon status due to changes made in Monster Core. Chromatic dragons will not appear in Remastered works. Additional context might be available at Meta:White dragon.

White dragon

(Creature)

Common

CE

Cold

Dragon

Level

Varies by age

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

White dragon

Images of white dragons

Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 113–115

Type

Dragon
(cold)

CR

2–18 (by age category)

Environment

Cold mountains

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

White dragon

Images of white dragons

Source: Bestiary, pg(s). 100–101

Ⅰ

Ⅱ

Two white dragons battle a frost giant.

White dragons tend to be the most feral and animalistic of the chromatic dragons. Unlike other types of dragon, they rely on sheer force rather than elaborate plans or strategies and are primarily motivated by self-preservation.

Appearance

White dragons are primarily distinguished by their snow-white scales, which are thick and patterned with tiny ridges that trap enough heat to keep them warm. A white dragon's head bears a number of horns radiating backwards from their crown, which are connected by a tough membrane. Clusters of small horns grow over their face and lower jaw, and a similar texture extends over their body, breaking up their silhouette. White dragons are lithe and muscular.

Ecology

White dragons prefer to live in remote locales of intensely cold climates. Most inhabit arctic environments such as tundra, but some live atop high mountains in temperate latitudes. Some white dragons have settled as far south as Garund, but this is a rare occurrence. White dragons often claim territories covering thousands of square miles.

Most white dragon lairs are dug directly into glaciers or are stony caverns coated in ice, and often open into deep shafts accessible only by flight. White dragons often take over lairs originally made by other creatures, either working out clear boundaries with them if they are intelligent or penning them in out-of-the-way parts of the lair if they are not. White dragons create numerous traps and pitfalls within their lairs, using the slipperiness of the ice to send intruders into deep pits filled with gelid salted water or inhabited by dangerous creatures penned there by the dragon. They also use their mastery over shaping ice to design their lairs to their precise needs, and take pride in decorating their lairs with treasure they display in icy niches.

White dragons are opportunistic predators, and use their natural camouflage in their snowy homelands to ambush prey. While highly effective predators in their environment, the scarcity of food in the arctic leads to white dragons having few compunctions about potential foods, and white dragons will readily consume plant matter and rotting meat.

White dragons are almost always the dominant predators of their environments. While the weakest true dragons, white dragons are nonetheless exceeded only by other dragons in power and ferocity, and can thus establish themselves as unchallenged apex predators as long as stronger draconic competition is absent.

White dragons tend to overhunt their territories and often deplete their stocks of game to below the numbers necessary to sustain the dragon. When this happens, white dragons typically enter extended hibernation periods as they wait for their prey to breed back into numbers.

Society and culture

A white dragon.

White dragons are often looked down upon as the least of draconic society due to their dull-minded nature and quick tempers, and white dragons in turn have no interest in discussion. They rarely speak but to issue threats or crude jokes, or to babble incoherently before attacking.

Other dragons rarely intrude directly on a white dragon's territory, as most other dragons dislike the cold climates favored by white dragons. Silver dragons are an exception, as their own preference for cold mountains leads them to compete with white dragons for lairs and territory. When a white dragon becomes aware of a silver's arrival, they typically gathers their hoard and flee to allow the stronger dragon to claim its territory.

While white dragons rarely take part in draconic society and have little contact with other dragons, they are often very social with one another. White dragons sometimes band together to hunt stronger prey or large herds of game; this behavior is especially common among younger dragons. While these bands can endure for several years, during scarce times they are prone to disbanding or to turning upon and cannibalizing their weakest members.

White dragons' mating rituals involve extensive play-fighting that does not injure the participants. Females mate with several males, and members of the same clutch often have different fathers.

Mature white dragons can match and exceed any human in intelligence, but the bestial lifestyles they lead during their youths often prove too ingrained for them to deviate from even late in life, leading most white dragons to remain thoughtless brutes throughout their lives.

Unlike other dragons, white dragons collect anything they believe that other creatures might find valuable, with a slight preference shown to practical items such as trade goods, tools, and cuisine over currency or gemstones. They place great value on the rare magic items they collect and go to great lengths to protect them.

Lazakh

Lazakh are white dragons who desire more to life than the animalistic lifestyles of their kind, and often try to pursue academic or philosophical goals. These white dragons are highly unpopular among their kind, who coined the term lazakh, meaning "big heads", as an insult that was later adopted by other dragons as a term of endearment. Most lazakh are killed by other white dragons, while the ones who survive tend to leave their homelands and become apprenticed to brass, bronze, blue, or green dragons.

Bronze and green dragons tend to take on lazakh as academic assistants, who are then tasked with performing rote labor and chores for their teachers. Taking on these apprentices rarely results in their teachers' work being done more quickly or efficiently than normal, but enough reports exist of white dragons who provided sudden insights and leaps in logic that bronzes and greens continue to take lazakh apprentices in hopes of finding the next such idiot savant. Brass dragons tend to encourage their lazakh charges to develop their social and creative sides, while blue dragons incorporate their lazakh within their social networks as spies, contacts, and enforcers.

On Golarion

See also: Category:White dragon/Inhabitants

Most of Golarion's white dragons, by some estimates counting over three-quarters of their total numbers, live in the Crown of the World or in those parts of Avistan, Casmaron, and Tian Xia within a hundred miles or so of the Crown. In temperate latitudes, populations of white dragons exist in high, snow-capped mountain ranges such as the Kodar, Menador, and Mindspin Mountains. Two white dragons are also recorded to have lived on Droskar's Crag and fiercely competed for territory there before the arrival of Daralathyxl.

Notable white dragons

See also: Category:White dragon/Inhabitants

• Arkrhyst, also known as Freezemaw, of the Rimeskull in Varisia
• Logrivich, a young white dragon who guards Whitethrone in Irrisen
• Lydek, an adult white dragon near Mount Thaharak in the Tusk Mountains
• Rimetooth, an aged white dragon in Irrisen
• Sjohvor, a great wyrm white dragon in Iobaria's Dvezda Marches
• Syrranelzon, who lairs in an iceberg near Golarion's South Pole
• Tammedraxilar, who lairs in the caves of Holvir and is an ancient ally of Grungginnir
• Thelyrox, also known as the Great White Wyrm, an ancient white dragon said to dwell on Mount Kaltafarr in the World's Edge Mountains
• Thragandor, an adult white dragon of the eastern edge of Iobaria
• Zeidz the Bone Shrieker, of the Realm of the Mammoth Lords

On Triaxus

On the planet Triaxus, where dragons rule vast territories in the continent of the Drakelands, white dragons tend to ascend in political power during the planet's decades-long winters. One of the most powerful white dragon warlords is Yrax of Ivoryglass.

In the Great Beyond

A population of white dragons lives in the Plane of Air, where they war against the silver dragons who also live there for control of floating icebergs. While the exact reasons for this conflict are unknown, it is believed to be due to the white dragons seeking to control a set of objects known as the Shastiled hidden within the icebergs that could provide the white dragons with a degree of control over other dragons, while the silver dragons seek to prevent this from occurring. These white dragons are led by Shelsikarsis, who as of 4716 AR had yet to outwit her silver dragon counterpart Pratinaxis.

References

Paizo ceased the use of chromatic dragons with the publication of Monster Core, as part of the Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project. When mentioned in Monster Core and subsequent publications, existing chromatic dragons might be retroactively changed to new or equivalent types of non-chromatic dragons.

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.