Paladine (Dragonlance)

Paladine, "The Dragon's Lord", is a fictional deity from the Dragonlance fantasy novels written by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and numerous other authors.

Paladine represents all that is good. He is the patron Order of the Rose and is chief deity of the gods of good. He is the chief of the Gods of Light and the creator of the Elves. As such, he is their most respected god. His colors are silver and white. He is the patron god of charity, redemption, leadership, and greatness. He influences order, hope, light, rulership and guardianship, as well as law, wards, thought, and war. His earthly avatars (a Material Plane manifestation of any deity) include the Platinum Dragon and the muddled old wizard, Fizban the Fabulous.

Paladine is elder brother to Takhisis and Gilean. He and Mishakal are the parents of the gods Kiri-Jolith, Habbakuk, and Solinari.

War of Souls
After the Chaos War, Takhisis stole the world from the rest of the Gods and became the "One God" of the world. When the rest of the gods returned to Krynn, they realized that Takhisis had gone too far. The punishment was for Takhisis to be stripped of her godhood and immortality, though for balance to be kept, a god of opposite faction had to also become mortal. Paladine saw this need for balance between good and evil, and so made the sacrifice, taking the guise of an elf named Valthonis while Takhisis was killed by Silvanoshei. The authors of the series have yet to reveal his fate thereafter.

Symbols and titles
Paladine is also called Draco Paladin, E'li, the Platinum Dragon, Dragonlord, Valiant Warrior, The Dragon's Lord, Bah'mut (strikingly similar to traditional mythological creature Bahamut), the Great Dragon, Skyblade, Platinum Father, and Thak the Hammer. After the conclusion of the War of the Lance, the deity himself became known as Fizban--also the name of his most famous avatar, the befuddled wizard--among the kender; thus, referring to "Fizban" by kender can be somewhat ambiguous!

His symbols include the anvil, a silver triangle, a pine tree, and the platinum dragon. In the night sky of Krynn, he can be viewed as the constellation known as the Valiant Warrior, sometimes referred to as the Platinum Dragon. Raistlin Majere, in the first chapters of Dragons of Autumn Twilight, noted that this constellation as well as the Dark Queen, constellation of Takhisis, were missing, symbolizing that Paladine was on Krynn.

Related characters


Fizban "The Fabulous" is secretly the mortal avatar of Paladine. Though he is wise and powerful, he disguises his true purpose in the form of a clumsy and absent-minded wizard.

During the Chronicles Trilogy, Paladine helped the Heroes of the Lance indirectly through Fizban. The kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot, one of the heroes, also became a close friend of Fizban.

Weis and Hickman later introduced a similar character in the Death Gate Cycle named Zifnab, and in The Mantle of Kendis-Dai named Zanfib. Both names are anagrams of Fizban.