Umbraconis

(a.k.a. The Shadow Serpent / The Fallen Dragon)

Once, many moons ago, Umbraconis was a mighty Dragon, said to have surpassed even the strength of the first of their kind and many lauded and praised his fortitude, knowledge and arcane power. His power and might even attracted the adulation of the Divines, the gods and goddesses themselves of Kelbonnar, who likewise marvelled at the Dragon’s prowess in everything that he turned his mind to. He grew close to many of these divines, but the longer that he spent with them, the more his own vanity began to grow and fester inside him. He began to believe himself to be first an equal of the Divines and then as a purer, stronger entity who deserved a station not just within the hierarchy of the deities, but above it.
As his conceitedness began to consume him, Umbraconis began to plot and scheme, forming many plans only to discard them, until one day, his delusion grew to its most excessive height. He convinced himself that the way to rise above the Divines was to kill the father of them all Orivious and replace him as the lord or all things in Kelbonnar. By this point, Umbraconis’ vanity had become that most toxic of things, hubris. It led him to stalk Orivious, and when the divine was alone Umbraconis attacked him.   However, hubris had blinded Umbraconis to the fact that he had never seen the true extent of the power of the Divines and that he knew least of all of Orivious' strength. The two became locked in a titanic struggle which eventually led to Umbraconis being knocked out of the air and dashed against the slopes of the Dragons' Tears Mountains. Wounded and defeated, the chastised Dragon slunk back to his lair, deep within the volcano Draig Mount, where he licked his wounds and brooded over his loss, his blood staining the glittering wealth of his hoard. However, for Orivious, the score was not settled.
The father of the Divines sought out the Dragon’s lair and with the most powerful of his children, including Melchis the Divine who had created all draconic creatures in the first place. Together they enacted a ritual which banished Umbraconis and all of his worldly possessions to the Shadowfell.
There, in that colourless bleak land, Umbraconis has wallowed in his hate, the wounds to his pride still biting deep. Over the many millennia that he has been imprisoned in the Shadowfell he has regained his strength and has begun to extend his reach onto other planes of existence, bargaining with creatures in far off places, lending them a shred of his power and trinkets from his great hoard in exchange for their servitude, to what end, no one knows.    

Assumed Forms

It is only when seen in the Shadowfell that Umbraconis retains any vestige of his former glory. There he still appears in much the same way as he did in life, as a gargantuan Dragon though his body is scarred by the wounds that he suffered during his titanic struggle with Orivious, wounds which have never truly healed, and the once glittering gold of his scales has been turned grey by the Shadowfell’s atmosphere.
It is rare for creatures beyond the Shadowfell to see Umbraconis, but when the Shadow Serpent wishes to commune with an entity on another plane of existence, he can project a shadowy form onto that plane. This form normally takes the shape of an insubstantial mass of shadow, with two glowing red, reptilian eyes at its centre. Occasionally, when the entity that he wishes to commune with is near a liminal space with the Shadowfell, this projected form is able to take on more substance, and in these cases Umbraconis appears as a large shadowy serpent.

Relations with other Entities

Whilst it is impossible for anyone other than Umbraconis to truly know his own mind, scholars who have shown an interest in the entity and the Shadowfell have collated a number of suggestions with regards to his unique position and his relationship to other powerful entities in Kelbonnar’s planes of existence.
It is believed that the Shadow Serpent both loathes and fears the Divines of Kelbonnar. This standpoint is understandable given that they banished him to the Shadowfell, but the subsequent fall and imprisonment of Orivious, the main entity that Umbraconis fought against has muddied the waters somewhat. Given that the Divine War has no signs of ending, it has been suggested that Umbraconis may be able to put aside his fear and hatred of the Divines and ally with one of their factions in exchange for being given leave to ascend to divine status himself. However, such an approach would not be without its risks, and some have suggested that Umbraconis playing his hand and declaring for one side or another may actually have the opposite effect, uniting the remaining factions and possibly even bringing an end to the conflict.
Within the Shadowfell itself, Umbraconis is said to be at war with the domain’s most powerful entity, the Raven Queen. The Shadow Servant has reportedly managed to win some of the Raven Queen’s servants over to his side, which has drawn her ire, but thankfully for Umbraconis, she does not view him as a powerful enough threat to make moves against him other than to thwart his schemes. It has even been suggested that the Raven Queen enjoys having Umbraconis in her realm, and that she feeds off of his anger, sorrow and frustration.

Artifacts

When Umbraconis was banished to the Shadowfell by Orivious, the father of the Divines decided that nothing that had been created, or coveted by the Shadow Serpent should be allowed to remain on the Material Plane, lest it exert a poisoning influence that would turn others against his divine order, or encourage others to attempt to usurp the Divines as Umbraconis did. Therefore the entirety of the Dragon’s hoard stashed within his lair of Draig Mount was banished with him and its many relics and mountains of gold and gems were thought lost.
However, as the Shadow Serpent’s power has grown over the millennia of his banishment, he has learnt how to pass on shadowy simulacra of items in his hoard to creatures on other planes of existence. These relics are not simply shadowy projections, but are tangible, useable versions of the original items that still sit within Umbraconis’ glittering hoard in the Shadowfell.

Divine Classification

Semi-Divine Entity

Age

Unknown

Symbols & Sigils

Umbraconis is most commonly represented either by the symbols of a snake wreathed in shadows, or a Dragon's skull.

Goals

As relatively few entities commune with Umbraconis as equals, it is hard for the wider world to get a sense of what his goals are. Those who are contacted by the Shadow Serpent or who end up serving him rarely ever get a sense of what he is after in the long term, with some only being given a single discreet task in their entire lifetimes in exchange for a small semblance of his power.
Scholars have hypothesised that Umbraconis’ goals, if he still even has any will likely not have changed from those that originally saw him banished to the Shadowfell, to become a true divine being, an equal of the gods and goddesses of Kelbonnar, and perhaps even surpass them. Others have suggested that his goal is to escape his prison in the Shadowfell, but then again, the anecdotal evidence of the power that he is able to project onto other planes of existence has lead others to counter this and state that if Umbraconis truly wished to escape the Shadowfell, he could.