Balagos

Balagos, known as the Flying Flame, was one of the most famous red dragons.

Personality
Balagos was a megalomaniac. He truly believed that his destiny was to rule over all dragonkind and lead them in the extermination of humans and elves. However, on his path to dominion, he had to destroy all who opposed to him; he killed so many other dragons that elves nicknamed him Dragonsbane. However, despite his ego, Balagos was nor stupid at all, and he would escape from a losing battle in order to have vengeance another day. His three main talents were that he never forgot a face, name, and attitude of any being that he met; he was a good judge of character (and not limited only to dragons); and he always calculated the consequences and outcomes of his acts.

Activities
Balagos was very fond of human flesh, particularly that of youngish females. In ancient Amn, villagers would try to sacrifice their maidens to appease him.

The Flying Flame liked to bathe (unusual in a red dragon), and preferred to do so in the Chionthar. He usually took water at Lake Esmel or the Gaping Face Cascade. Balagos hunted anywhere he pleased, always over land and usually taking creatures on the move and not actually in the mountains (the great wyrm was too cunning to trust confined spaces and the cover that caverns and rock pinnacles afforded enemies).

To Balagos, there was no such thing as a typical day. He's always varying what he did, so no foe can catch him in a routine and no creature living in his domain can come to feel safe and complacent. He's as likely to alight on the roof of a coster hall in Athkatla as to sun himself on high ledges in the Troll Mountains (Amn), and every so often he flied hard and fast along the Trade Way, 40 ft. or so off the ground, terrifying horses and humans alike, and sending goods and wagons tumbling in the wind of his passing.

Such behavior has won him no shortage of foes, and many a wizard has sought to win fame as "the destroyer of the dread Balagos" -- but such titles must be earned, and though a lone red dragon shouldn't be able to prevail against the right combination of spells and items, somehow Balagos always seems to survive, and the list of wizards who ended up as smoldering bones spit into bone pit by the Flying Flame grows ever longer.

Balagos takes no mates, though it's said he once consorted with Uluuthavarra, a venerable red dragon who laired somewhere near the Lake of Steam. In the end he had to slaughter all of his offspring, after they slew and ate their mother and came looking for him. Several wizards (including Elminster Aumar) share the belief that Balagos was covertly trying to research clone magics or a new kind of lichdom that will allow him to retain more of his powers than the Cult-assisted undead dragons that he contemptuously calls "bone dragons."

Balagos holds no special affinities or hatreds for anyone; all beings are his rightful subjects, and all who defy him must be destroyed. To many observers, he seems one of the few mad tyrants in Faerûn who just might have a chance to carry out such a policy and survive, as he already has done, for more than a thousand years.

Currently, Balagos was thought to be assembling a small band of loyal human agents whose tasks will be to strike at any human organization or dragon cabal that plots to work together against Balagos. The first few of these agents have already slain a Red Wizard who tried to poison the Gaping Face Cascade, so as to render Balagos blind and paralyzed. (The wizard had the concentration of liquids wrong and succeeded only in causing the great wyrm several days of discomfort).

Appearances

 * Magazines:
 * Dragon #232 ("Balagos, 'the Flying Flame'")