Believe it or not, dragons are a lot like humans. Some are smarter than others, some are meaner than others. Some are more greedy and others more altruistic. Some of them are even nice, the kind of creature who remembers your birthday, and asks after your offspring's health whenever your paths happen to cross.
There's a lingering misnomer that all dragons look alike, which couldn't be further from the truth and is only truly embraced by hardcore speciests. Their colors, their scale patterns, their Horn Arrays and Talon Prints are all unique. Every Dragon is special, even if they're not anything to write home about.
They're still a dragon, you jaded fuck.
The myth that all dragons are hyper intelligent, ultra cunning beasts is mostly just that, a myth. Oh sure they're around, the evil genius ones, but the legend surrounding their intellect has been hyperbolized. What they really have, in spades, is previous experience dealing with humans.
Which is to say that although we humans, as a species, like to glorify our kind and set ourselves on some sort of philosophical pedestal (since we invented philosophy AND pedestals), the truth of the matter is our basic natures haven't changed all that much over the entirety of our history.
The trappings of civilization tend to blunt and mask our baser tendencies, but strip away culture and society, food and safety, and watch how savage we can get.
And how quickly.
And since we exhibit the same flaws over and over again through the ages, even a dragon of moderate intellect can figure us out after five or so (of our) generations. We're just not as great as we picture ourselves, otherwise we'd have probably wiped out Dragonkind by now.
Yet only the stupidest of dragons doesn't understand this and regularly use it to bamboozle and cheat our petty and venal asses.
Right. Now that's out of the way...
I've had, in my career as a Dark Lord, quite a few interactions with Dragons.
I've fought them, killed them, employed them, referred them, evaluated them, worked for them, put a price on their heads, heeded their warnings, ignored them, sheltered them, abetted them, opposed them and just about married one of my cousins to one of them.
In all that time and with all those interactions, I have been outwitted by one, outplayed by two and regularly drink with another three.
So here, in no particular order are four tiny stories (vignettes) about Dragons (mostly) from the perspective of an Lawful Evil DL.
1) I regularly employ a Stunt Dragon. I'm not ashamed to admit it because I'm Evil.
If I were one of those Good sorta types hiring the same lizard for a similar gig, I'd be embarrassed because it's deceptive and underhanded and whatever happy-ass Gods I served probably wouldn't tolerate me lying about an evil Dragon being vanquished to make money.
Most of you outside the Dark Lording industry probably don't know what a Stunt Dragon is. It's not in any or the Manuals, Tomes or Folios, no matter how rare or unpublished they may be. It's a highly specialized subspecies of dragonkind that hires itself out to up and coming Heroes, Adventure Coordinators, Crooked Dragon Hunt Guides as well as the odd Dark Lord with a complex and multi-faceted public relations agenda.
His name is, believe it or not, Devastay-Shawn. And he's a professional Stunt Dragon with an impressive natural horn mullet. For a handsome sum, he'll threaten a certain region, burn down the odd village or two for the look of the thing and generally be a feared nuisance until a convenient Hero (wink, wink) shows up to slay him, to much local applause and reward.
His glamours can make him look like any dragon, and contrary to the average human perspective, all dragons DO NOT look alike. That's Speciest thought right there. Reprehensible.
It became his business model after he'd realized humans weren't going away any time soon and that they frequently seemed to have a lot of money. Faking the death of either himself or his local equivalent or whatever role he'd been contracted to portray. The service isn't cheap but the payoff to the conniving Hero/Politician/Lawspeaker/Bad Guy, etc etc is often immense.
A Pied Piper Scheme on an enterprise scale, with the metaphorical 'rats' calling the shots.
Devastay-Shawn is a fucking genius.
2) Laughtrax was the first dragon I ever contracted with and the only reason he didn't kill me during our association was because I amused him. It's the sole reason I survived our business dealings together.
I'm handy with the one liners and Laughtrax had a soft spot for comedians. Ergo, he incinerated a few mid sized cities for me and I'd rewarded him with several 3 minute sets of speciest jokes about dragonkind and dragon-culture in general. Fresh material per city burned, of course.
He ate it up.
We're still on amicable terms to this day and he's a regular follower of this blog.
3) Matti T is a one of a kind Hydra-Dragon crossbreed with five heads all boasting their own unique breath weapon. She's got a thousand Hit Points or something ridiculous like that and the short of it is you and your party of haughty, photogenic Adventurers are never, ever going to defeat her.
It all comes down to:
A) How many of you she's been paid to let live, contractually.
B) How many of you she decides to spare, if she decides to honor the contract.
C) How many of you have enough coin or clout to buy your way out of incineration, via me, Her employer....?
4) There was once, about forty or so years ago, a rival Dark Lord I had to go toe-to-toe with, for dominance of the central area of my projected Empire. His name was Larry Fossman, he styled himself the 'Dragon Lord of The Central Plains'
I whupped his monkey-ass and decided to spare him because I smelled the subservience wafting off him.
He absolutely DID NOT want to run the Big Show and was balls-ass happy to be granted the opportunity to manage whatever I saw fit to allow him. Which at that point was The Canyon of the Arachnid King, my first destination to really take off.
Larry started his way at the bottom, which was not being killed outright, and made his way up through the corporate chain of demise. He settled into the most ambitious niche he figured he could attain while maintaining a low profile.
Over the years Larry has proven himself unfailingly reliable in whatever role I've put him in. He currently manages my 2nd highest grossing Adventure Destination, The Hateful Mountain Keep Of The Dragon Emperor.
That destination consistently wastes some fairly high level hitters. Larry's riddles are both arbitrary AND lethal. He's a mastermind at doublespeak.
That's what you get this lesson, non-paying scum.
Tune in next time when I tell you how to take down a fortified city using only stuff I'm not going to tell you about here.
You know you like it.
-Lord Hurderoth
His May Word Law Is
