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Dragonborn are a relatively recent addition toDungeons & Dragonslore, at least when compared to the other core species. They were formally added in the fourth edition of the Player’s Handbook, making them one of the most popular species ever since, and for good reason; who wouldn’t want to be a Dragon?
While popular, their origins have changed widely across editions, with not much surviving from their previous incarnations beyond their looks and breath weapons. With their constantly evolving narrative, just who are the Dragonborn, what makes them tick, and how they came to be?
A Godly Origin
Creation myths in D&D are hard to follow, since every culture has its own version of what happened, and they are all somehow both wrong and right.For Dragonborn (and Dragons in general), their creation involves a god-like entity known as Asgorath.
Asgorath was one of the Primordials, a set of beings as powerful as any god but far more chaotic.They roamed the universe creating and destroying things, since such was their nature, butonce the gods entered the picture, there was now someone powerful enough to stand against them.
The war between the gods and the Primordials was fierce, nearly ending all creation.What drew the last straw was whenAsgorath, seeing that it wouldn’t be able to own the planet Abeir-Toril, sent forth a meteor shower to destroy it.
Asgorath was also known as Io, and some thought it to be comparable in power to the overgod Ao.
Before Abeir-Toril (and in turn, all creation) was destroyed,the overgod Ao intervened, separating the universe in two, so the gods ruled over one version while the Primordials kept the other.This also split Abeir-Toril in two, leaving Abeir for the Primordials and Toril for the gods.
Asgorath threw more than just meteors that day, likely filling the landscape with draconic eggs, sincethat day all of Dragonkind were born. This includesDragons, Koboldsand, of course,Dragonborn.
The divide of Abeir and Toril wasn’t exactly even, and while Dragonkind are all made by a primordial, some of them ended in Toril. This is why there are Dragons and Kobolds in Toril (the most well known setting of D&D, where all the Baldur’s Gate stories take place), and also why there are draconic gods there like Tiamat and Bahamut.
The Dragonborn in their entirety remained in Abeir, and they would remain there for millennia. This primordial landscape had Dragons that knew of the mighty Asgorath, who therefore thought of themselves as the ultimate rulers of the land.
Life Under Dragons
While you’re able to find Dragons in both Abeir and Toril, the ones in Abeir are more numerous, andthey work as the ruling species of that realm.Sadly for the Dragonborn there, these Dragons aren’t benevolent rulers, and they love having slaves to serve them.
While Dragonborn are mighty creatures(usually stronger than humans and having their own breath weapons),it was hard for them to stand against the flights of Dragons.Still, after centuries of rebellions,they managed to create an independent city known as Tymanchebar.
This is where the identity of the Dragonborn begins to show, sinceto maintain their freedom they had to form a strong militaristic community, valuing strength and unity above all. Within the walls of Tymanchebar, Dragonborn were separated into clans, tasked with the protection of their assigned zone; this made the clan more important than even family to Dragonborn.
The Spellplague And Toril
It isn’t known if Tymanchebar would’ve been able to free all Dragonborn, since it fell by no fault of its own.The Spellplague, an event that caused all kinds of disasters in Toril,was bleeding into Abeir and transporting elements from one realm into another; one such element was Tymanther, capital city of Tymanchebar.
Having received such a heavy blow,the rebel Dragonborn of Abeir were demoralizedand heavily outnumbered by their Dragon masters,leading to their total enslavement.The ones inTyamanther survived the journey to Toril, and while they were now in strange lands, they no longer had to fear the Dragons.
What followed was an uneasy introduction to the cultures of Toril, who were understandably cautious of the sudden new beings that they now called neighbors. On this front,the Dragonborn worked with an advantage, since they already knew of humans, dwarfs and gnomes, making their introduction to them an easier endeavor.
Whilethe Dragons in Toril weren’t the slavers of Abeir(there were even metallic Dragons that fought for justice),they were still mistrusted by the Dragonborn, having a less than stellar past experience with them. As the years passed, however,some Dragonborn were known to worship Bahamut and, in lesser cases, even Tiamat.
Dragonborn In Previous Editions
What we have covered so far is how the Dragonborn came to be in the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, buttheir story changes widely in older editions.Few species are as closely tied to the setting as the Dragonborn are, so any changes to it has to change how they came to be.
In the 4th edition, they are still related to a supreme Dragon god, called Io instead of Asgorath, but serving the same overall purpose. HereIo isn’t a Primordial, but one of the gods opposing them, and dies in battle; from its corpse rise both Tiamat and Bahamut, andfrom its blood the first Dragonborn are formed.
In 4th edition, Dragonborn were able to gain wings thanks to a Paragon path; no such option exists in 5th edition, although plenty of DMs accept adding wings as a homebrew feat.
The biggest difference there isthe lack of Dragon slavers, and how the Dragonborn are split between two teams, not unlike the Dragons themselves. The ideas of honor and militaristic might were already present here, althoughthere was more of an admiration of Dragonsrather than mistrust.
The Dragonborn’s first appearance, however,was in the 3rd editionof Dungeons & Dragons, but they weren’t exactly a species you could start as. In the sourcebook Races of the Dragon,there’s a ritual detailing how one can become a Dragonborn, involving being incubated in a human-sized egg for a whole day.
The most interesting point to note is that,in that rendition, all Dragonborn work for Bahamut, becoming his champions against Tiamat. And if you were a Gnome before becoming a Dragonborn, you’d retain your small size when transformed, being something closer to a Kobold than what we understand as a Dragonborn today.
