Claugiyliamatar

Claugiyliamatar (a.k.a. Old Gnawbones)

Claugiyliamatar (pronounced: /ˈkloʊgiliəˈmɑːtɑːr/ CLOG-ee-lee-uh-MAT-ar) was a green dragon who tried to influence the politics of Waterdeep and Neverwinter through her own criminal gang.
Old Gnawbone was always fascinated by powerful elven and human females and the spells that transformed dragons into humans. Her main aspiration was to be one of those powerful women, living in the hustle and bustle of city life. However, finding a way in which to do so without risking her safety proved problematic.
Claugiyliamatar employed a large numbers of agents to manipulate events in the City of Splendors and Neverwinter known as the Gnawbones. She also sponsored adventuring parties, like the female nobles of the Bloodred Crown company.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Sages believe that Claugiyliamatar arrived in Kryptgarden Forest in 1303 DR and made her lair there in Deeping Cave.
The Volo and Elminster survey of current dragon rulers of the North continues with one of the most infamous hero-banes in all Faerûn: the vicious, nasty, ancient green dragon known as Claugiyliamatar. This wyrm delights in hunting down and slaughtering small armed bands wandering in the wilderlands (in other words: adventurers). From time to time she varies such activities with devouring a field of almost-ripe grain in Goldenfields or tearing apart a food-caravan bound for the northern interior and eating men, beasts, and cargo alike. Claugiyliamatar usually signals this last sort of triumph by plucking up a caravan wagon, flying very high (to avoid the attention of griffon-back city patrols until it’s too late), and dropping the wagon down as a lethal missile on the roofs of Waterdeep.
Some ballads call Claugiyliamatar “Old Gnawbone” for her habit of carrying a corpse dangling from her jaws to munch on absently from time to time, just as some humans suck on unlit pipes or chew cigars. She is cunning, paranoid, and possessed of a cruel sense of humor: Trapped victims have been known to escape her because she played with them to watch their pain and suffering instead of slaughtering them outright.
Claugiyliamatar lives alone, driving away male green dragons who come courting, but rumors state that she employs several dozen loyal human and halfling agents to work behind the scenes for her in the less savory side of business in Neverwinter and Waterdeep. In particular, these agents make profits on goods made scarce by the dragon’s attacks. Old Gnawbone seems to enjoy manipulating affairs in the cities for the sake of wielding secret power, not for the wealth it brings her. Little treasure is brought back to her lair; all but the coins pocketed by her agents — misdemeanors Claugiyliamatar pointedly ignores if the amounts stay small — is invested in businesses meant to stir up rivalries and gain her ever-more-powerful organizations, allowing her more swiftly and thoroughly to create trouble in her next scheme!
Claugiyliamatar is fascinated by human and elven women who wield power, and she spends hours watching them from her lair through her array of crystal balls. This collection of scrying spheres marks the second thing that fascinates Claugiyliamatar: magic, especially items that allow her to take human form and participate in the things humans do (knifings in alleyways, for example, and passionate courting, and, well, drinking). Her personal spells are too weak to enable her to take human shape, so she watches the nobles of Waterdeep and the sorcerers of Neverwinter for hours at a time, learning who has magic and where it is hidden, before sending her agents forth to steal it. Woe betides an agent who tries to cheat Old Gnawbone out of even the tiniest scrap of magic: He will find himself nailed to a tree deep in the forest, drenched with blood, and left for the wolves (or other hungry forest denizens). Claugiyliamatar herself hungers for the bustle and intrigue of city life in the form of a human, but she wishes to call on her full range of dragon powers while in that form. She was almost tricked into servitude once by a wizard, Hyrix Greentree of Waterdeep, whom she hired to craft her a variant shapechange spell. The magic would have transformed her into a beautiful human maiden, yet leave her able to call on her magic, breath weapon, and immunities. She discovered, however, that while in human form she would have been Hyrix’s charmed slave, and he would have ensured that her desire to return to dragon-shape was firmly quenched. Hyrix died slowly and painfully, and if the phantom of a screaming wizard silently fades into view from time to time above the spell scroll Claugiyliamatar keeps carefully hidden in a coffer beneath the floor of her lair, she ignores it.
Having her own way is everything to Claugiyliamatar. Among other dragons, her reputation for trickery makes her best avoided. Balagos, for instance, considers her a twisted, crabbed thing given to petty silliness and, as such, beneath his notice.
She is a tireless foe who goes to ridiculous lengths to cause even small harm to someone she regards as an enemy, and this “worry-all-the-bones” trait has made most other dragons leave her alone. This is just fine with Old Gnawbone, as it leaves her free to pursue her schemes wrapped in the presumption of her own supremacy over other dragons. It also leaves her great Waterdeep as part of her territory. That more than a dozen dragons dwell in the city under her very nose, and generally regard her activities with amusement, is something she serenely ignores, even when one of her agents is imprudent enough to point it out to her.
How those in authority — in particular, women of power — wield their influence and legal might is something Claugiyliamatar never tires of studying. Increasingly she has turned to scrying Alustriel’s Palace in Silverymoon, and even distant Twilight Hall in Berdusk. She seems unaware that her snooping was detected long ago in both of those places. Junior mages in both cities now take turns honing their illusion-weaving skills by spinning false scenes of intrigue for the green dragon to watch. The impish mage Ralderston Tinter of Silverymoon has even taken to crafting scenes of a handsome young green dragon who takes on human form to court ladies of high station. It has been observed that Claugiyliamatar’s agents are visiting Silverymoon in a steady stream these days, looking for a certain young man with the emerald eyes of a shapechanged green dragon.
Certain mages of Silverymoon have been weaving spells that can be cast covertly on an unwitting agent, to be triggered by Old Gnawbone’s presence: spells made to plunge the green dragon into a long, heavy slumber, so adventurers can safely reach her lair for a massed attack. So far, the castings they’ve attempted have failed. For her part, Claugiyliamatar seems not to have noticed. She has explained away the occasional clumsy images and distortions she observes through her crystal balls as the defensive magic her scrying is penetrating.

Accomplishments & Achievements

She earned the enmity of House Brokengulf when she posed as a silver dragon and offered to rid their grazing lands of herself. Having learned where her payment was waiting, she ate the men guarding it and stole it. She then used more illusions to make it appear that she was fighting with herself, though actually, all she was doing was destroying the fences that secured the Brokengulf's animals so that she could eat them later. Finally, she disappeared behind the mountains, altered her appearance to look injured and returned claiming victory. When Lord Saerlin Brokengulf could not offer the missing reward, he had to instead fill a ship with money and offer that instead. A tenday later, Claugiyliamatar returned without the disguise and demanded twice the amount given to the silver dragon for the audacity of trying to assassinate her, threatening the family's lives should Saerlin refuse. When Saerlin tried to stall for time to hire a real dragonslayer, Claugiyliamatar collapsed his villa's biggest tower on top of him and three of his sisters, resulting in Saerlin being crippled and the women's deaths. Saerlin paid up, almost bankrupting his family. Waterdeep responded with force, quickly sending men after her, but they instead found Endracritar, a male dragon who had just started making designs on Claugiyliamatar's territory, and slew him instead.

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Species

Dragon

Age

Ancient

Current Residence

Kryptgarden Forest

Gender

Female

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Green