Tiamat

Tiamat, the Chromatic Dragon, is feared as the legendary Queen of Evil Dragons. Although few humans, demihumans, or humanoids venerate the Dark Lady, and she is merely propitiated by most of her chromatic wyrm spawn, Tiamat is a divine being in her own right.

Tiamat is a greedy, vain, and arrogant demipower who embodies all of the strengths of her chromatic progeny but few of their weaknesses. She is entirely focused on the acquisition of personal power and wealth and views mortals as hapless pawns in her struggles with other deities. She can be charming and fey when necessary, but her self-serving, evil, reptilian nature is readily apparent to those who look.

Tiamat has favored two forms throughout history: the Dark Lady and the Chromatic Dragon. In the wake of recent setbacks and in view of her future plots, the Dragon Queen has developed a third form known as the Undying Queen. The Dark Lady appears as a human sorceress with long, dark hair and dark robes. She has a fey beauty, a seductive smile, and totally black eyes. The Chromatic Dragon is a nightmarish amalgamation of a monstrous draconic body on four stubby legs that has five writhing necks and heads, each corresponding to one of the species of chromatic dragons. Each head's color runs the length of the neck and into the forepart of her body as strips, gradually blending to three stripes of gray, blue-green, and purple over her back and hindquarters, then merging into a muddy dark brown tail. Her underbelly and legs are greenish white fading into her upper body colors. Traditionally Tiamat's heads are colored red, green, blue, black, and white, but in fact the Chromatic Dragon can have many different subsets of heads, as long as there are no more than five total, each head's color and powers are unique, and each corresponds to an evil chromatic dragon species. The Undying Queen is an undead manifestation of the Chromatic Dragon, a sort of multi-headed dracolich. It has skeletal wings and glowing points of light floating in shadowy eye sockets rather than normal draconic eyes.

Tiamat commonly manifests in a fashion similar to a thunderbolt from the heavens. Such strokes of divine power are always equivalent to the breath weapon of a great wyrm of one of the chromatic species of dragon. Tiamat shows her favor through the discovery of priceless treasures including gold, silver, precious gems, and rare works of art. Her displeasure is usually expressed by the inexplicable disappearance of a vast amount of hoarded wealth from a warded vault or other supposedly safe location. The Dragon Queen is served by all species of evil dragons, abishai baatezu of all colors, evil dragonets, and many species of reptiles, particularly serpents.

This version of Tiamat originally appeared in this form in Powers and Pantheons for the AD&D game from TSR. Its use here is for the purposes of providing context for the campaign only.