ECOLOGY

Environment any
Organization solitary or pair
Treasure triple

Vishaps think of themselves as guardians of the ley lines that connect the life forces of the Material Plane to one another. Like all dragons, vishaps claim expansive territories, but these territories often make little geographical sense to others—a single vishap might claim unconnected areas on different hemispheres of a planet, for example, and yet multiple vishaps sometimes coexist within mere miles of each other with no apparent animosity. To those attuned to the occult mysteries of ley lines, however, the vishaps' territorial borders are clear.

Each vishap claims one or more networks of ley lines, which may stretch for thousands of miles (or even across galaxies), and sometimes overlap with each other without ever touching. A vishap's first priority is the integrity of its ley line network, so any corruption of a ley line draws the attention of the vishap that cares for it.

Vishaps claim only small physical territories in places where their ley lines coincide with interesting geography.

In these places, vishaps make psychic contact with intelligent creatures nearby, encouraging them to create standing stones called vishapakars. A vishap can't place a vishapakar on its own, but the presence of a vishapakar on a ley line allows the vishap a great deal of control over that ley line. Evil or less diplomatic vishaps often travel to these desirable locations to intimidate the local people into appeasing the dragons with standing stones.

Vishapakars can stand for thousands of years, even as the ley lines that they once marked drift and change course, so a vishap must return to each vishapakar periodically, entreating (or forcing) locals to create new vishapakars on the ley lines' new locations. At particularly ancient locations, it is possible to map the gradual drift of ley lines by the age of the nearby vishapakars.

Vishaps become deeply attached to their ley line networks over their millennia-long life spans, and can live peacefully alongside other vishaps with nearby networks. When ley lines drift and converge, however, it often results in a mortal duel. Sometimes this happens as a corporeal battle in the skies of a planet, or between the dragons while in their ethereal forms. Most commonly, vishaps engaged in mortal combat for control of converging ley lines meet each other in elaborate psychic duels. These duels can last for years, and often spill over into the Material Plane, with each vishap subtly manipulating the creatures and locations along the converging ley lines in a proxy war to defeat its opponent.

Vishaps keep their treasure hoards, like their territories, in strange places, hidden in eddies of psychic energy along their favorite ley lines. A vishap's hoard might be physically scattered across dozens of planes, though to the vishap each cache is only minutes away from the others. A vishap favors items of psychic significance, so one is as likely to find a mundane wooden spoon that belonged to a powerful occultist or the skull of a famous psychic in a vishap's hoard as a magical sword or mountains of gold.

Vishaps procreate only once during their lives, as tending to their ley lines takes priority over almost any biological imperative. When a vishap is finally ready to mate, it commits its form wholly to the ley line network, drifting listlessly along the psychic currents. Inevitably, it meets with some other drifting vishap, and the two consciousnesses merge, exploding in a spray of psychic force. The resulting motes of ethereal energy scatter across the universe, slowly drifting back toward each other and forming eggs, which sometimes drift along ley lines for millennia before hatching a young, ethereal vishap that awakens to full consciousness upon hatching.

A fully grown vishap is 70 feet from head to tail and weighs 60,000 pounds.