To be plain, there are two kinds of dragons, Great Nature and Wild. The relationship between the two is somewhat unclear and like a great many realms as yet unvetted by sage or scholar, myth inhabits much. What is known is they are so similar in appearance only observation and means will present the Great Nature from the Wild, not that they have ever been known to be encountered together.
Where Wild dragons live and hunt and breed in great packs, Great Nature Dragons are solitary. While Wild dragons fight with fang and claw, Great Nature dragons are seemingly unlimited in skill, ability and means.
Wild dragons, for better or for worse are limited to the carnate forms, some swimming some flying, some burrowing, albeit shallow but burrowing none the less. They are cunning as most predatory beings. In groups they are conceivably invincible. Grapplers one and all, Wild dragons have no match when it comes to that type of combat. Many a warrior has made the mistake of attempting to trade blows with a creature who latches on and writhes and rends and flips around like a viper on a hare. Still some make their living hunting the creatures, and they are aptly named Dragon Hunters. Much of what is known about Wild dragons comes from their source.
According to Dragon Hunters, there are roughly a dozen kinds of Wild dragons. They are somewhat simply referred to by color as many creatures lacking Sage classifications. Red, brown and blue etc.
Yes, armor can be made from their scales but even more valuable are the teeth, the skin and the claws. Where swift arrows can pierce plate, even the sharpest heaviest arrow falling like a curse out of heaven will struggle and break to penetrate treated and hardened dragon hide. Their teeth are prized as magic daggers and often become them, for they take dweomer like silver. And their claws can crack diamonds. Still getting these things from them is the more difficult task.
Like many packs of meat eaters, there is one leader of the greatest strength and cunning. The pack is polygamouse. None raise the young specifically rather they imitate their elders and seek protection in the pack. The young hatch from eggs. Once a year the pack will settle into a nest for the purpose of laying and hatching young. When the young are hatched the pack moves on. Some of the young stay with the pack and learn, others are not so clever or quick.
Wild dragons cannot speak or communicate with humanoids or any other creature for that matter beyond the language of aggression all living things share knowledge of. Some can fly, mainly blue and green ones. Black dragons swim and rarely break the surface of the water leaving many to suppose that they cannot breath air. Red and yellow dragons can fly or glide for short distances. To a degree, all dragons have a subtle form of camoflage. As told, it is not so much the color of the scales that tells them apart but the color of their skin.
Wild dragons cannot breath flame or acid or any other such oral fume or venom. They sleep and hunt together and fell game, mainly deer and elk and the like. They are only as intelligent as wolves and tend to be more flighty. They hunt only when hungry or threatened and their numbers are kept in check by three factors. The first would be the availability of food. The second would be Dragon Hunters. And the Third would be Great Nature dragons. You see, Great Nature dragons eat Wild dragons.
Contrary to their lesser cousins, Great Nature dragons vary so greatly in form and power and ability so as to be unique creatures. So much so that they have names and dealings in the world at large on often intimidating levels.
There is Suel, the Green Dragon of the Northern Province. An ancient foe of the Druids of Westfolden of long ago. Stories of his acts during the Incursion War have become song, though he is not confused as a friend of the Eastern Kingdoms. He is said to have despised the Gray elves from the beginning. And when the Druids were exiled and came to the Northern Province he strove against them and their influnce, which is an easier thing to say than do. When they left, or were driven out, he had loose agreements with men but ended up killing more of them than he did of the Gray elves.
King John is said to have met Suel. What came of the meeting is the kings secret alone, but not long after, the ambition of the king in the Northern Province subsided and he turned his attention south until many years later and the comming of the Great Uprising. Now who knows what will happen but the kings interest is keen in the north and further, even unto Tarus and those lands over the Break. In those 600 years since his meeting with Suel and his recent returned interest, not one word or sighting of Suel has been circulated until now. The Green Man he is called and he is even called a dragon by some. From Many Rivers came a story of a Green man keenly interested in horses. Every horse brought to him fell dead of apparant fright. when the man who sought to sell him a mount confronted him and demanded recompense for his sorcery, the Green Man just disappeared.
Needles Bunk even had him visit an Inn. He asked about the king and when none answered he asked if there be anythere who could speak for the king. Now the Northern Province has long been shunned from the protection and the ingenuity of the kingdom. the king has no great love up here as many still remember keenly his failures durring the Incursion War and few who live here do not have kin in the Stitchel Hills. He drew scoffs from the people and turned shoulders. The barkeep was said to have asked him what business he had with the king could be taken south to Kias as the Northern Province held none of his business if the barkeep had anything to say about it. the Patrons cheered and raised glassess and the Green man is said to have remarked that that was good should it remain so. then he left without paying and was pursued out the door by the barkeep and his man and nothing was out the door of the in but 5 tethered and dead horses of some of the patrons.
But it is Tenwillows that he is said to frequent. Green robes, green hair, green eyes, yes, a Green Man. None there take him for anything less than what he is. The most powerful living thing known in the Northern Province.
Then there is Myskateel, the orchestrator of the Smiluvenni, a guild of Assassins who’s motives are as secret as there order. Said to be a student of man he is ever in the guise of a human, learning and meddling in our world to a purpose as dark as his heart. A red robe he wears yet so do many. Myskateel is said to be ubiquitouse and insinuative. He loves the city of Kias and every month a new story circulates of his commings and doings. The King has promised Knighthood for any who take the head of one of his Assassins as he himself has survuved four of their attempts. One would wonder why, if the Dragon wanted him dead, why he would not just kill him. But I must ask you if you wonder this. Have you ever met King John?
There is Akua, a terrorizor of the Vasting, capable of laying waste to entire armies. Durring the uprising he swooped out of the sky and crushed an army of 3000 Kords, the least of which stood two hands above the tallest bravest knight that met them in the field that day. After he had killed them to a fang, the Knights of the Vistilry of Ingveroon some 300 men out of Tullnimoon, that city of their god Varmeylius, brought the dragon gifts and blessed him in their name, and he turned to them and said "Who are you to give what you cannot keep?" And he attacked them and killed many as there was still alarm as his manner was peacable and he had presented himself in an appropriate form after he had wasted the Kords and they were stunned by his likeness to them and though they were not foolhardy they were enamored by the beast and he came on them suddenly and all would have been lost had their God not intervened directly and taken them and all their dead in an instant to that place that is the city, Tullnimoon, where their god resides.
There are rumored to by 11 or so of these Great Nature dragons but many stories overlap and many tales are not told by the principle interest of the deeds they relate. To pursue the truth in the stories of drunkards and barbarians is a learned mans art, For instance the story some of you may have heard of Akua, or a great Blue dragon on the Stitchel Road has many versions and it has only appeared since summer. The most cohesive assimilation or separately layed events can be summarized as follows into a single story incorporating the many twists, flourishes and uniqnesses the yarn has separately accquired, but here it goes. A group of bandits rode through the Stitchel Hills in a day. South they were headed and in haste to meet baots moored off the coast there. After having accomplished the unachievable they exited in what haste they could muster considering the 10 hour ride at the greatest of speed they had just occured. Not three hundred paces from the Weel stone that marks the hills southern border they were met by a great blue dragon, or Akua to be precise. His body stretching from the craggy peaks of the break to the west and the cliffs to the east. He did not commend them but rather admonished their tresspassing into his lands. For fine he gave them ultimatum. Either return the way you came or one of you must feed my with his life, but you must decide who.
Now the Stitchel Hills are vast and the are home to the Whights that are the dead from that great battle between King Johns army and the Emmisaries out of Westfolden. Many are the stories that could be told here and some will be told elsewhere but for this tale it must be understood that the Stitchel hills are teaming with Wights. Foul malevolent innate undead. Like most the bear moonlight better than sunlight and so eek from their byres in the night and do what ever it is they do. and when living things are near they track and kill and eat them. and so it was close to that time already that the bandits had made it through they sought to put much distance now on open easy ground between them and the hunting dead of those hills and here lay Akua.
The captain of that gang was said to have entreated the Dragon with a tale of their darring and pleaded for the sake of their deed that they be granted pardon for their error in light of the renoun they would gain for the accomplishment. The dragon is said to have considered this for a moment then rejoined a new condition. He said either they decide amongst them who should offer themselves up or he would devour them all. Now he said he would suffer no coerced sacrifice. the one to be eaten must do so willinly and must strip down and lay in the dragons mouth. if this would be done, he would allow the others to leave. He told them also that they should decide quickly as soon they would all die anyway as the dead were already stirring beneaththe earth and they scratched at their doors and felt for the cooling of the sun warmed stones that kept them in their tombs. soon they would be out and Akua assured them he would see them all under the Veil from which no return even with the will and the word of god.
It is said the captain of the group looked at his men, at the hills behind them and then at the dragon and began to strip down to his birthright and then saying nothing walked to where the dragon lay. the dragon opened its huge maw and the captain stepped in and lay upon the dragons mouth. Akua threw his head up with a jerk and swallowed the captain whole. Then he spoke to the bandits and while he did they could hear their captains screams from inside the dragons stomach.
Akua looked pleased and said very well, you have done what i have asked now you are free to leave but you must go back through those hill because i have already destroyed those boats you had waiting and i will suffer no living thing to cross these lands that are mine now. The bandidts cried and begged and pleaded but the dragon said they should consider that any fool could ride throught he stitchel hills in a day, the fact that none do means they are smart. A truely harrowing tale of bravery would be to ride through the hills at night and with that he drove them back into the hills with great terror wich was in his ability to cause.
Now you may ask why i have subjected this story to almost disbelieving scrutiny and i shal show you why it cannot be true in all and not even a small part half true.
Akua lands are far to the south in the Vasting. Great Nature dragons are more than territorial. they consider lands to belong to them. It is known that Suel is the dragon of the northern Province and what are the Stitchel hills and the the Benches but the Northern Province. If Suel did know he would challenge Akua or vice versa. A battlel between to such forces would be waged across the sky of the northern world and would rage for weeks and spell the ruin of many peoples and places here.
Akua would never make himself so vulnerable as to lay about on the ground, prone and offering an open mouth to adventurers. It is the very image of stupidity. Why would not the Bandits have the ships meet them above the Stitchel road and avoid it all together? Even if they had made the run for bragging rights, why not just say it and not do it, none would believe it anyway and how could one prove it besides.
Who lived to tell the tale? They could not have leaped off the cliffs there. they would have a better chance of surviving the Wights. Who survived is not part of the tale and a survivor would likely tell that part first considering how small a chance he would have had at all. They could not have made it back through the stitchel hills as the horses would not ride through there at night. they would through their riders and leap from the cliffs themselves. The exhausted bandits would have then had to run back through on foot a feat that may take two full days travel if they were well provisioned and rested. But who creates such a fantasy? Who tells such a tale and why does it begin? And this is the question that must be answered first because if you cannot answer this question you suspend your disbelief and then you might as well become a bard and put away the work of the Sages. I have a fantasy that it was the Captain who survived. That akua let him live because he truly saw the best choice and took it without hesitation. But who would fear a dragon that let its naked helpless prey escape from his own mouth? no this is a total farce i think, none of it can be true yet it is precisely from tales and yarns such as this that true knowledge must be made, unwoven then restitched, died and bleached and trimmed until after many years, and often long after it can make any difference it is known, understandable and simple like a shirt to be worn with no great effect.
It is harder to say how many Great Nature dragons do not have stories circulated about them or if there are still more kinds of dragons. What is closest to knowledge is written here.
They are shape changers. They can see and hear to the limits of their imagination. They fly they swim they reflect magic and use their own. They are impervious to all but fantastical weapons. They are devious and intelligent beyond measurement or recconing. They have breath weapons as diverse as their own natures. They not only speak the languages of men and elves but are repositories of such modes of communication. Siin was a Great Nature dragon that was also a Primerium for a time at the Hidden Tower and much of what is known of their kind comes from him. Though no friend of ours, he was no enemy either and informed our sciences and our schools to degrees unachievable by us through our own means in several lifetimes. Though ultimately the City of Freewinds fell during the uprising the Hidden Tower still stands and some wonder what part Siin had or has to play with that.
They are not immortal nor are they eternal but they are virtually unkillable. Only Mirad has been slain in our time and the stories of Bell and Akua and the birth of man on this continant is the only other fable that even holds the deafeat of a great Nature dragon, yet not even its death. And from that encounter over 1700 years ago comes the fang of Akua, the lance built from one of the longteeth of Akua that was plunged into the heart of Mirad by Precarius the Bard 1500 years later. But that lance is disappeared now and what then can kill a Great Nature dragon, considering you could find a soul like Bell to wield a weapon so unique and so powerfull against one?
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