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Description
NAME: Jianglong
BREATH: A high-pressure torrent of water, naturally.
LAIR: A submerged cave underneath a cliff overlooking an estuarine lagoon. The roof of the cave is pentrated by a well, which allows sunlight to stream in during the day. The lagoon is rich in biodiversity, especially fish, amphibians, mollusks, and waterbirds, and a prosperous fishing town has grown up alongside it, while rice paddies thrive in the surrounding wetlands. The fisherfolk throw small stones inscribed with prayers to Jianglong (mostly requests for bountiful catches) into the well.
HOARD: Mostly pearls of every possible size and color.
NATIVE FORM: Coastal Orm

Just as my goal with the Dragon of Fire was to invoke the classic European fantasy dragon with hardly any "twists" or additional gimmicks, my goal with the Dragon of Water was to invoke the classic Sinospheric dragon. Although Jianglong's name is Chinese (it means "river dragon"), xir face is really that of a Japanese dragon specifically, with an elongated muzzle and spiky beard (Chinese dragons tend to have boxier heads, and beards that more closely resemble actual hair). The face is where the resemblance ends, though—while I deliberately copied Jianglong's head as closely as possible from Japanese dragon iconography, it somehow didn't feel right to give xem the same body plan. Maybe it's because the appearance of Sinospheric dragons is so standardized that to use it without any twist at all would leave me with no room for creativity in even the smallest detail. Or maybe it's because there will be so many dragons in this series, with so many different body plans, that the standard Sinospheric "snake with four legs" just didn't feel exceptionally watery enough to merit its use for the Dragon of Water. Or maybe I just wanted to keep up the retrosaur theme. In any case, I'm quite happy with how this guy turned out.

I am a compulsive worldbuilder and cannot help but start to sketch out setting details in my head while I'm sketching a monster on paper, so here are some tidbits: The reason I keep referring to these dragons with the pronoun "xe" is that dragons in my primary mythopoeia are hermaphrodites, and I saw no reason not to import that idea into the vague implied setting of the Elementals series. Also, I've decided that each Elemental Dragon begins xir life as an ordinary animal but is instantly transformed into a divine dragon when, at some point in xir life, xir skull is implanted with magic gems (draconces) from deep within the Earth. If the dragon of a certain element is killed, xir draconce must be given to a worthy beast, who becomes the next dragon of that element. The line NATIVE FORM in a dragon's bio refers to the species xe was born as—I probably won't draw these, at least for a long time, so it's up to you to imagine what a "Pyromander" or a "Coastal Orm" looks like! Of course you can assume that they would all look something like their dragon representatives, but smaller and far more mundane, with fewer limbs, horns, frills, etc.

Description
NAME: Jianglong
BREATH: A high-pressure torrent of water, naturally.
LAIR: A submerged cave underneath a cliff overlooking an estuarine lagoon. The roof of the cave is pentrated by a well, which allows sunlight to stream in during the day. The lagoon is rich in biodiversity, especially fish, amphibians, mollusks, and waterbirds, and a prosperous fishing town has grown up alongside it, while rice paddies thrive in the surrounding wetlands. The fisherfolk throw small stones inscribed with prayers to Jianglong (mostly requests for bountiful catches) into the well.
HOARD: Mostly pearls of every possible size and color.
NATIVE FORM: Coastal Orm

Just as my goal with the Dragon of Fire was to invoke the classic European fantasy dragon with hardly any "twists" or additional gimmicks, my goal with the Dragon of Water was to invoke the classic Sinospheric dragon. Although Jianglong's name is Chinese (it means "river dragon"), xir face is really that of a Japanese dragon specifically, with an elongated muzzle and spiky beard (Chinese dragons tend to have boxier heads, and beards that more closely resemble actual hair). The face is where the resemblance ends, though—while I deliberately copied Jianglong's head as closely as possible from Japanese dragon iconography, it somehow didn't feel right to give xem the same body plan. Maybe it's because the appearance of Sinospheric dragons is so standardized that to use it without any twist at all would leave me with no room for creativity in even the smallest detail. Or maybe it's because there will be so many dragons in this series, with so many different body plans, that the standard Sinospheric "snake with four legs" just didn't feel exceptionally watery enough to merit its use for the Dragon of Water. Or maybe I just wanted to keep up the retrosaur theme. In any case, I'm quite happy with how this guy turned out.

I am a compulsive worldbuilder and cannot help but start to sketch out setting details in my head while I'm sketching a monster on paper, so here are some tidbits: The reason I keep referring to these dragons with the pronoun "xe" is that dragons in my primary mythopoeia are hermaphrodites, and I saw no reason not to import that idea into the vague implied setting of the Elementals series. Also, I've decided that each Elemental Dragon begins xir life as an ordinary animal but is instantly transformed into a divine dragon when, at some point in xir life, xir skull is implanted with magic gems (draconces) from deep within the Earth. If the dragon of a certain element is killed, xir draconce must be given to a worthy beast, who becomes the next dragon of that element. The line NATIVE FORM in a dragon's bio refers to the species xe was born as—I probably won't draw these, at least for a long time, so it's up to you to imagine what a "Pyromander" or a "Coastal Orm" looks like! Of course you can assume that they would all look something like their dragon representatives, but smaller and far more mundane, with fewer limbs, horns, frills, etc.