INTERLUDE: ON THE NATURE OF DRAGONS
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In the library of the Skyfire Sect, a fire magic lodge based in the city of Arkastor, is a prominent shelf—made of glittering ebony with golden embellishments—dedicated to the world's largest repository of dragonlore. On this shelf is a particular book, of modest size, time-worn but surprisingly unabused by human hands. To its left is a series of well-regarded tomes covering the known history of dragons, their powers, the myths of their origins, and so forth. To the right, the books are more recent and largely the same, though tending to focus more on written accounts of human encounters with dragons.
Dragons, they all say, are the kings of all reptiles, the sole tier above vyrns. Four-legged, two-winged, one-tailed, with scales stronger than any enchanted armor. Their fangs are sharper than the legendary blades of Tarvis, their jaws crush stone like bread. They breathe fire, spit fire, eat fire, and probably shit fire. They lay their eggs in fire, incubate them in fire, and make sure they hatch in fire. They live almost exclusively in mountain caves, and if they live long enough, their lairs will become so extensive and they will become so powerful that they cause a phenomenon whereby the mountain's peak erupts in fire and ash. They cannot be truly tamed, like any monster—but they can be controlled for a time if imprinted upon hatching and promptly broken in, as was done by the ancient dragon riders of Kazra. Though any reader should probably be made aware that the dragons once ridden by the Kazrites ultimately ate them, their families, the very stones of their palaces, and every other living thing in the deep north.
Dragons live for millennia and can sleep for hundreds of years at a time. From time to time they emerge from their lairs to raid the lush green lands below their mountain burrows for food, gold, and fun. Being greedy creatures by nature, they will amass great hoards of gold and guard them jealously. Some dragons, it is said, can take on the form of a human, beguiling their kind for the sake of acquiring their gold. So these venerable tomes say.
For the most part, they are all wrong.
First of all, dragons are not reptiles. Secondly—dragons are the kings of all living beings on this world. Thirdly, vyrns aren't reptiles either. Fourth, the population residing in mountain caves is only a fraction of the dragons in the world. And fifth… Dragons do not lay eggs.
In that tome of modest size are a number of sources considered by modern scholars to be unverifiable and without substance. It begins, for instance, with a passage quoted from the elder of a migrant people who supposedly fled to Nauresia from the lands south of the Wetwoods:
> Dragons are born of stone, and return to stone. A dragon's spirit cannot be severed from its flesh, nor can the void bear its animus; it metamorphoses, as do the riches of the nether kingdoms, into rock of a greater form: an unbeating heart. If you would truly vanquish the king of earth and fire, then shatter this petrified aspect. Yet know that no hammer or pick that has seen any sky is worthy of the task.
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> This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
The tome continues with a number of theories regarding their origins, all of them—unlike the book's many shelf-mates—associated with the utmost depths of the world. Perhaps they are the spawn of Ingvinith, the true Leyline of Fire, and of Deghom, that of Earth. Or perhaps they were birthed at the dawn of the world by the very primordial flames that shaped the lands above and below. In a similar vein, they could be the product of those forces that create the 'riches of the nether kingdoms', glimstein and diamonds and other unbelievable stones. There is even a theory—which the author specified he felt obliged to include—that they were created by the nether kingdoms themselves, or whatever dwelt in them.
You would be forgiven for not knowing what the nether kingdoms are. Only the most learned of the modern world are aware of the "forgotten kingdoms" among and below the netherlanes. The netherlanes themselves are, in many nations, little more than a legend among adventurers—a crisscrossing network of artificial passageways so deep below the ground that there is as little air to breathe as there is sunlight to see with. And yet, this tome contains an account from a human woman who claimed to not only be an experienced deepwender, but also to live well below the surface.
The magic-bearing animus of a dragon is so strong, she says, that it is able to hold much of the essence of what makes each individual… individual. Much of their spirit. When a dragon dies, its animus coalesces within its heart, which soon condenses into a petrified form resembling an egg. These heart-stones will sink into the ground beneath the dragon's very corpse, which itself will petrify over the course of some weeks. After enough time—very much of it, presumably—the dragon may reform itself from the surrounding stone, if it is the right kind. If there is too little rock of a suitable kind, it may be birthed again as a youngling, sometimes requiring centuries of growth to reach its former prowess.
It's common knowledge, she says.
The tome's author then meanders for some time, detailing his efforts to corroborate this information and uncover more details. It took him two decades, he claims, but by chance he stumbled upon a strange tower, in which resided an aging wizard who clearly appreciated having someone to talk to.
This wizard produced many of the same claims as those above, but he particularly focused on the types of dragons, such as they were. Or perhaps, rather than 'type', it would be better to describe them as 'phases', 'stages', or 'aspects'. A dragon's color, he claimed, depended on the stone and other minerals surrounding it when it reformed. And these could dramatically affect the dragon's lifespan, strength, and even intelligence. The wizard had attempted to map out a hierarchy of colors and the materials they spawned from, but admitted that most of it was wild conjecture; it was hard to believe that there was enough available azurite, for instance, to account for the several sightings of blue dragons he claimed to have records of. But one thing was for sure: dragons hoarded gold because a gold dragon was by far the most powerful, most intelligent. Every dragon that supposedly had a human form, indeed, was a gold dragon.
It's a good thing, the wizard said more than once, that there's never enough gold in one place for a gold dragon to spawn as anything more than a juvenile. After all, A fully matured gold dragon was very likely what caused the Calamity that ruined the two empires beyond the western Aldrim, before the current mage-kings put a stop to it. Hm? What do you mean you didn't know there were nations over the western mountains? Well, sit down again young man, I can't let you go without apprising you of some basic geography.
After all, it's all common knowledge.