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in a humanoid community, it prefers larger cities tosmaller villages.An urban dragon looks for different traits in alair than does one that dwells in the wilderness. Inan urban environment, a dragon cannot dependon secrecy for safety. The citizens might not knowexactly where its lair is located, but it’s a safe betthat they have some idea—at least as to the locationof the entrance, if not the lair itself. Further, unlessthe location is underground or part of a truly enormousbuilding, such as the wing of a great palace,any structure large enough to serve as a lair probablywill stand out. A fortress at the city’s highest point,a stone-walled complex hidden in the sewers (butfar cleaner, of course), or a cave in the midst of thecommunity’s sacred grove are all valid options. If adragon can’t have secrecy, it tries for impregnability.A dragon dwelling among humanoids either controlsthe government or has spies and allies withinthe community’s power structure. In either case, suchdragons lair near their allies for ease of communicationand so that help, if required, is nearby.Evil chromatic dragons use the citizens aroundthem as shields. By making a lair in a heavilypopulated part of town, the dragon ensures thatadventurers must be careful with area powers. Thedragon might even bargain its way out of an untenablesituation by threatening the lives of the peoplearound its lair.Planar LairsSome dragons make their homes in the ElementalChaos, but these realms are so dangerous, strange,and unpredictable that most nonplanar dragons avoidthem. A few make their lairs on floating islands in theAstral Sea, but they are so rare that few conclusionscan be drawn. Most planar lairs exist in the Feywildor the Shadowfell. Although these chromatics sometimescome into conflict with planar wyrms, suchstruggles are less common than attacks by metallicdragon rivals or adventurers in the natural world.Dragon lairs in the Feywild resemble wildernesslairs from the natural world, but exaggerated. Thecave entrance isn’t just on a mountain peak, but at thepinnacle of thousands of feet of a sheer, crumblingcliff of shale. The lair isn’t surrounded by a dozenmiles of dense forest, but by hundreds of miles ofovergrowth as thick as hedgerows. A few Feywilddwellingchromatic dragons serve or cooperate withvarious faerie courts, but the majority treat the feythe same way chromatics in the natural world treathumans—as prey.All known chromatic dragon varieties can befound in the Feywild, though blues, blacks, greens,and grays are most common.The aesthetic tastes of dragons that dwell in theShadowfell seem as subtly twisted as the rest of thatmacabre world. Even more so than in the naturalworld, they take advantage of what they can findrather than building homes of their own. Suchdragons favor gloomy lairs, letting them lapse intocomplete darkness. Even the most orderly tolerateoddly twisted passages, and lairs have chambers thatthe dragon rarely uses. Adventurers tell of lairs in theShadowfell where other monsters or undead movedin and made their homes without the dragon evenbeing aware of them.Purple dragons are among those most commonlyfound in the Shadowfell, sometimes dwelling on thesurface of that world rather than underground. Intelligentundead dragons prefer the Shadowfell as well.Other chromatic varieties are encountered there onlyoccasionally.Lairs in the Elemental Chaos are frequently madeup of pure elemental forms. Reds dwell in castles ofsemisolid flame; whites in caves of purest ice; brownsin manors of sand that reshape themselves with thewind; and blues in the heart of endless storms, onsolid clouds linked by bridges of corporeal lightning.The nature of these lairs makes it impossible for anybut the most powerful of adventurers to draw near.Dragons that have elemental resistance are theones most commonly found in the Elemental Chaos.Those that have only nonelemental resistances, suchas the green dragon’s resistance to poison, nevermake their lairs here for fear that the realm mightkill them.Nine LairsThis chapter includes three sample lairs for each tierof play, from a party’s introductory experience withdragon hunting in the heroic tier to the experienceddragon hunters of paragon levels to the home to thegreatest of the great dragons in their epic lairs, wherethe ghosts of dead would-be dragonslayers scream infrustrated silence within their borders.OPTIONAL ENCOUNTERSIn addition to the two tactical encounters presented foreach lair, optional encounters are suggested in some locationsfor Dungeon Masters who wish to expand the lairinto a longer adventure. Use some, all, or none of these,as you prefer.LAIR FEATURESCHAPTER 3 | Dragon Lairs93