I am working on my own homebrewed Fantasy Mexico inspired D&D Campaign set in a facsimile of the historical Spanish Conquest but dragged out longer like both sides are pretty evenly matched with the backup of Gods and Magic.

I decided to make my own group of 5 original Dragons for the setting based on some of the Aztec Gods. The Gilded Dragon is based on the Aztec god: Xipe Totec.

Xipe Totec's name means "Our Lord the Flayed one", God of Life-Death-and Rebirth, Agriculture, Fertility, Vegetation, Earth, Gold and Silversmiths, Liberation, and Plagues. Every year come springtime, Xipe Totec would flay off his own flesh like a snake skin which would fertilize the earth for a good harvest representing the renewal of life. Over the course of the year he grows back his skin and the cycle starts all over, however if he is displeased with humanity, instead of bringing a good harvest year he can also be responsible for crop failure, disease, blight, and plague, and may require a sacrafice where a human is is flayed.

I like to imagine the Gilded dragon in this setting are he reborn victims of flayed sacrifices to the Xipe Totec stand-in of this setting if he deems them worthy. Male Gilded Dragons are Gold and Female Gilded Dragons are Silver, but only fully in the spring. Over the course of the year their colors dull and are replaced with earthy tones, but once spring returns they shed their dull feathers and skin and are renewed to brilliant silver and gold colors. Their shedded skin then acts as a miraculous fertilizer to the earth bringing about rapid growth and abundance of crops.

The Gilded dragons can control earth and plants, but also they have a poison breath weapon which not only deals poison damage but also inflicts plague.