The Dragon Age
Capable of growing to
gargantuan sizes, gifted with flight, and able to breathe fire hot
enough to melt stone, little else can rival the majesty, awe, and
fear inspired by the sight of a dragon. Hello and welcome, this is
Ken J. Bailey, author of the Alice Dippleblack series, and in this
Lore Piece, we will explore a bit about the history of dragons and
their part in forging Alice's world.
During the centuries of
chaos known as the Age of Titans, the remnants of peoples forced to
flee the devastation brought on by the skyscraping earth giants, ran
in terror into the uncharted parts of the world. Frightened, lost,
and with little hope, these people wandered hostile lands, rife with
dangers of every sort imaginable. Death came from ferocious beasts,
poisonous plants, toxic waters, and even the very air could burst to
life with screaming horrors. As their numbers dwindled, the remains
of once great societies sought safety in whatever form it could take.
A few would find caves to huddle in, taking solace within the Earth
that at least limited from which directions death could approach. And
within some of these caves, they would find dragons.
As dangerous as the
leviathans could be, and often were, the people saw that very little
ever dared challenge them. Having few options, some chose to trade
the innumerable dangers of the wild world around them, to the single
deadly threat before them. It took great care, rare luck, and many
sacrifices, but some of these people eventually became tolerated by
their dragon hosts. Over time, the behemoths grew used to their scent
and ways. Proud, the great reptiles came to know the people could do
them no harm. And far wiser than their fearsome visages could show,
some dragons saw the use of having the tiny beings around.
The people, being very
fragile, were of no threat to the dragons. They could keep pests and
other lesser annoyances away that were too small for the dragons' own
teeth or claws, and were an easily accessed, if meager meal. As the
dragons became more tolerant of the small furry beings scuttling
around their caves, the people began to worship them as gods. Living
far longer then they, the dragons seemed immortal, endlessly
powerful, and able to keep those in close proximity fairly safe from
the many dangers of the outside world. Under the shadow of such great
beings, the people's confidence in their ability to survive would
grow.
They picked off the
remains of the dragons' meals, made tools from discarded bones,
weapons from old teeth, and even armor from shed scales. Becoming
bolder with these gifts, the people ventured outward, steadily
carving out a place in their hostile world. As their populations
grew, they constructed villages, often before the entrances of their
dragon guardian's caves. They would offer their dragon sacrifices of
themselves and slain beasts in the hopes of keeping their host
appeased and its hunger sated. Many generations of these tribal
people could live and die under a single dragon.
Through the years, the
people would often see their dragons leaving their caves, sometimes
to hunt, other times to find mates and lay their eggs, but ever so
often they would return with great wounds, and very rarely, not at
all. This revealed to the people that dragons were not immortal, they
bled and died like anything else. And, that dragons had rivals. The
only living things the people could imagine capable of matching the
raw power of a dragon, was another.
It would be discovered
that dragons, while solitary by nature, were also fiercely
territorial. This was instilled in them at an early age. Careful
observation would show that an expectant mother dragon would make
efforts to find an isolated peak, often a dormant volcano, far from
her own hunting grounds. Once found, she would seek a cave or even
carve one out with her own incredibly durable claws. There, in her
seclusion, she would lay her precious clutch of eggs. Once done, a
mother will not leave her nest, protecting it with her life, until
her brood hatches.
The mother will not risk
leaving her nest, even to eat, as dragon eggs are especially
vulnerable to predators. Other dragons who find dragon eggs, or even
young dragons, will kill them in order to increase their own
offspring's chances of survival. Dragon eggs are also vulnerable to
drops in temperature. If a nest is allowed to get too cold, it will
slow the development of the clutch, extending the time a mother will
have to wait without food. If left in such a state, the unborn dragon
will perish. Mother dragons, incapable of producing body heat, as all
creatures of cold blood, will use their fiery breath on themselves to
heat their bodies and insulate their nests. Doing so, day after day
without meals, is extremely taxing on the waiting mother.
Finally, after a great
deal of patients and care, the eggs will hatch, often together if the
mother has done a good job of keeping them at the same temperature.
The hatchlings will be led from the cave to water and their first
food sources, often small things like bugs. Her great task now done,
the ravenous mother will leave her children to the world. Not wanting
to risk depriving her young of needed food, she will take flight with
only the hope that all her work will see at least some survive.
Early life for the
hatchlings, being very small and flightless, is a trying time that
few manage to live through. Their scales still soft and their flames
still weak, they have little protection. Their only goal at this
stage is to eat as much as possible in order to grow as quickly as
they can. The larger they can grow, the less vulnerable they will be.
But at the same time, the larger they grow, the more food they will
need. Because of this, the brood, if enough survive infancy, will
inevitably end up fighting with one another.
The most common scenario
shows one dominate young dragon either killing or scaring off its
lesser siblings. As it continues to grow, it expands its territory,
fending off rivals and consuming all it can. Once it learns to fly,
the striving young dragon will lay claim to even more land, taking
over it's parent mountain and then expanding further as it ages. This
expansion, along with its growth, will continue throughout its life.
Doing so often leads to territorial overlaps with other dragons.
Needing to keep their hunting grounds clear of rivals, disputes over
land always culminate with a fight to the death. These brutal bouts,
often leaving the landscape below bathed in blood, is likely the only
thing that has kept dragons from overpopulating the world.
As the people under them
began to see that dragons were not immortal, could in fact be killed,
and that their children were especially vulnerable, some would come
to challenge the behemoth's godhood. Often spurred by the loss of
loved ones to their tribe's ritual sacrifices or simply a dragon's
desire for a snack, these brave few would seek vengeance upon there
supposed guardians. Most would fail, becoming just another pile of
bones decorating a dragon's nest, but some would discover truths that
would change the course of their people forever.
Able to coat their prey
in flames, tear rock with claw and fang, fly through the air, and
protect themselves with thick hides and scales, even young dragons
are a force to be reckoned with. As they age, they only become more
formidable. But a weakness does exist, a chink in the leviathan's
natural armor. At the back of the head, near the base of the skull is
a 'soft' spot. The area, though almost always guarded by a backward
facing crown of horns, is often free of particularly thick scales to
give the region greater flexibility. This is so that the dragon's
head has free range of motion, particularly during flight when their
necks are stretched forward. A well honed blade, at just the right
spot, can slip in between the skull and vertebrae, damaging or even
severing the spinal cord.
A properly struck blow
can paralyze a dragon, leaving it incapable of defending itself.
Death for such a crippled creature is inevitable. Despite some wildly
heroic tales of great warriors risking life and limb by leaping onto
a rampaging dragon's back, climbing it's imposing racks of thickly
thorned scales to strike one such mighty blow, most were attacked in
their sleep.
Once a dragon was slain,
the people who believed in its power to protect them would need a new
protector, and so they would venerate the slayer. Made desperate over
their guardian's loss, the people would choose to believe the slayer
to be a creature of greater power than even a dragon. And the slayer,
often still hot with vengeance, would seek out another dragon, so
they might prove it. As dragons were killed by the people that once
worshiped them, they lost their divinity. They became animals to the
people, incredibly dangerous animals true, but gods no longer.
Confident in their new
found glory, slayers would lead their people into the world,
searching for others to show the truth they had found. As they
wandered, some would find unhatched dragon eggs, and even hatchlings.
Many would be destroyed on sight, but a few wise leaders would care
for the young dragons, raise them, train them, and claim their
strength for their own. These would become the first dragon riders.
With the dragons' power, the people would venture more boldly than
ever before. The fearsome beasts that once fed on the tribes were now
feasted on. Deadly forests and harsh swamps would be burned away to
make room for new villages. And, for the first time in many
generations, the people truly prospered.
The source of their new
prosperity, great lengths were taken to raise more dragons. The
people learned how to find and care for their eggs. How best to
nurture their young. And, of course, how to train them to be the most
powerful extensions of their masters' will. But more dragons meant
more food was needed to keep them fed, which meant more land would
have to be conquered. Doing so would bring the people back into
conflict with their age old foe, the titans.
These mountainous giants
of earth and magic dwarf even the largest dragons, but to reclaim the
great regions taken by them centuries ago, the stone goliaths would
have to fall. But challenging a titan was not to be taken lightly. A
great flight of skilled dragon riders would need to be rallied
against it. Its shear size and strength meant even a slight shift in
position, a mere step in any direction, for a titan would mean a
mountain of rock slamming into any dragons that stray too near. And
near they would need to be.
Titans are constructs of
magic at a magnitude never seen before. Tied to rifts by ancient
sorcery, the living mountains had limitless power, granting them a
semblance of immortality. The only way to fell them would be to enter
the monsters themselves, brave their ever-shifting, pulverizing
inners, and close the rift. Uniquely, dragon fire can burn even
magic, and a rift is a near endless fount. Being hit with enough of a
dragon's fiery breath will burn away the flood of magic pouring in
from the rift, and eventually seal it. Enumerable riders and their
dragons would be lost in attempts of this great feat. But when
managed, a titan would be cut off from its sole source of power, and
fall, back into the lifeless mountain it began as.
The survivors of such a
successful attack would be haled as heroes, but the few who managed
to live through the sealing of a rift would be welcomed back to their
people as the great kings and queens of their newly conquered lands.
For a titan's fall not only freed the vast territories held under
them, but the creatures' earthy remains, charged over the aeons with
a rifts magic, would make for naturally formidable foundations on
which to build the impressive keeps and castles of this new age. The
Age of Dragons.
As titans fell, many
kingdoms would spring up from their ruin. These, and the dragons
controlled by them, would then challenge others for supremacy.
Centuries of war would see many kingdoms rise and fall, while others
merged to grow stronger. During this age, dragons, above all else,
brought dominance to those who had them, and servitude to those who
did not. Fear and death once more became common for the people.
Being so great a source
of power, dragons inspired tremendous efforts of learning. How to
raise them quicker, how to train them easier, and, in general, how to
make them battle ready as soon as possible. The fallen titans would
once again show their worth when it was found that dragons not only
benefited from consuming minerals, as doing so strengthened claw,
teeth, bone, and scale, but being fed rock infused with magic also
made them more resistant to magical attack. But the reliance these
early kingdoms placed in their dragons, would also be the behemoth's
down fall.
While learning to make
their dragons even more formidable, the people also needed to learn
how best to kill them, should they be challenged by a rival's flight.
Nothing was more terrifying than a dragon attack. Left unchallenged,
a single dragon could reduce an entry city and its inhabitance to ash
and dust. And so, innovative weapons, deadly poisons, and all manner
of tactics would be devised to combat the enduring threat.
Dragons, once trained,
would find little to threaten them aside from others of their kind,
but young dragons, hatchlings and eggs especially, were another
matter. With the goal of keeping an enemy's dragons from reaching
battle ready condition, the sabotage of a rival's hatcheries and
nurseries became a very handsomely rewarded trade, as did the slaying
of any wild dragons in or around a rival's territory. As the wars
went on, slain battle dragons became harder and harder to replaced.
Desperate for the power and protection dragons could offer, people
searched well beyond their own borders for more dragon eggs, even
hatchlings they could tame. If found, these would frequently be
forced into battle before they were ready, and would often be quickly
slain.
In time, sightings of
dragons in the field or abroad grew so few that, for most, they
became a thing to dismiss as wild rumor, until, eventually, no
sightings existed at all. Great rewards would be promised to those
who could find a dragon. But, despite generous fortunes spurring many
to the search, none could be found. It then came to be believed that
the great behemoths had finally become extinct in all the kingdoms,
and the Age of Dragons was over.
That is, until a young
Tokala and her friends made a most remarkable discovery in a lonely
mountain, many years later.
I know this was a bit of a
long one, and I'd like to thank you for tuning in. I do hope you
enjoyed this bit of lore from the Alice Dippleblack universe and look
forward to having you next time.
If you'd like to know more
about a particular topic, feel free to let me know in the comments.
If you're new to my
writing, I hope this has built some curiously that might lead you to
explore my completed works, available on Amazon.com and as audiobooks
on YouTube.
