The Court of the Great

The Court of the Great

Dragon. Uttered by countless things capable of speech and language, the word has been wed over time with fear, awe, revulsion, wonder, terror, respect–and in some cases devotion and worship. To the creature in question, however, all it ever heard when the word was spoken was great; no one ever said dragons were modest, after all. Unchallenged by few beings in the world, and only slightly more in the planes beyond it, only the most courageous–or most foolhardy–ever think it wise to trifle with them.

That doesn’t mean all dragons are the same, however. Not all of them terrorize the innocent or the weak. Not all wish to lay waste to civilization, or conquer it under heel and lash. Some dragons want to be left alone; some seek adventure and the unknown, just as any other being might; some wish to share their power for the betterment of all life.

Stories of dragons pervade the world, even when they continue to take flight, dwell deep, and everything in between. Some talk about a time when they were more numerous than humans, elves, dwarves and other humanoids, and kept a society of their own just as the humanoids do. Halexis, a Wyrm with gleaming gold scales, was its beneficent magnate: likened to a king or queen in humanoid cultures, but as dragons are capable of altering their physiology to assume either a male or female gender as the need arose, there was no need for two functionally equivalent terms. Calandaxus, a silver drake, was Halexis’ confidante, advisor and councilor. Korsis, however, a dragon with blood-red crimson scales, was always identified in the tales as the betrayer, instigator, and enemy. It was Korsis who gathered a force to wage war on the aerial holdings of the dragon realms, battles waged in the skies. They unleashed an onslaught that none expected, a fury that even the most stalwart defenders could not withstand. The dragons as a civilization would never be the same.

The fallout of the dragons’ war left many of them living solitary lives wherever they could eke out an existence. Regardless of which side they were on, most were left bitter and angry, and resorted to building hoards secreted away in caves under mountains. With civilization shifting towards the dominion of humanoid races, dragons fiercely guarded their collections of treasure, fighting claw, tooth and breath to keep interlopers away.

What has remained, however, are dragon eggs. The aftermath of the dragons’ war left many clutches separated and scattered. Some dragons have turned to searching them out in order to keep them safe in their lairs, in the hopes that the right conditions will allow them to hatch.

Humanoid adventurers, on the other hand, have taken to acquiring dragon eggs as prizes, or in the hopes that they could rear the creatures as allies.