Endrass

A dragon who spent centuries in dwarf form because the world is too dangerous for a small dragon to lie still in a cave, and a dragon that never lies still never becomes a Great Wyrm.

His argument is that men broke the natural order. Monsters used to live long lives, each ruling its own territory; since humanity entered the system, monsters hide. He intends to gather them under one banner and kill the three people responsible. He knows monsters are stupid and never cooperate, and treats that as a logistics problem.

Dream dragons are pariahs, hated by every monster and most of all by their own kind, and their power is not in their body but in putting a mind to sleep and walking its owner around. Dragons cannot be made to sleep, so Phantasm receives none of its usual advantage against them and must overcome their Will directly. That should have been the end of the species' ambitions. His answer was the Beholder: a sleeping beholder doubles its power and reaches magic that bends matter and time, and a master of dreams can stand inside that and use it. With beholders in hand he took Ferothar, a great red dragon, and after that he could take anything.

He hunted Qormuza by the only method that works—walk in beside adventurers strong enough that a beholder will underestimate them, let the fight go badly for it, and wait for it to sleep to survive. He paid his debts on the way out, in full, and said so plainly: today I am your friend, tomorrow we are enemies.

He kept the appointment. He opened his war on Cerberus by tearing the ground open and sending giant worms and Dark Youngs up out of the Underdark across the whole island, with drow advisers at his side and a week of planning behind it. His diviner had promised him two chances in three of catching Aldor or Frolix under the opening breath. He got Gyllyn, and was furious about it.

He corrupted two of Cerberus's greatest wizards to do it—Daviau Morin with dreams so good they became an addiction, Lucius Stoneheart with torture—and finished on a dimensional battlefield strewn with the weapons of every era, where every blade lifted fed him. He lost it to a man who reasoned his way out of a perfect dream and then took the realm of shadow away from him, and he died burning, mid-sentence, with a spell in his mouth that would have covered the world.