My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Dragon Neighbours.
Dragons are like natural disasters: unpredictable, destructive and devilishly difficult to kill. Thus the best way to do away with a dragon threat is to placate it with offerings until it falls asleep. As long as the hoard remains sufficiently big, the dragon will not wake and calamity can be kept at bay.
The land is littered with a surprising amount of such dragon dens, where these impossible creatures rest undisturbed until inevitably someone foolish or greedy disturbs them.
Though sleeping dragons are preferable to those who are not, they remain a burden. The dreams of dragons are too big and leak out into the surrounding land. And dragons do not dream pleasant dreams.
Here follows a description of the effect Smolder, the dreaming dragon at the bottom of the Star's Prison, has on its surroundings:
It is hard to make out the dragon or the piles of treasure it sleeps on through the thick, black smoke, coming not so much off of the beast but seemingly emanating from the earth itself.
From the smoke strange creatures emerge, heads down in reverence, singing the praises of their divinity, Smolder. Soon they begin pillaging the higher levels of the dungeon, a tribute to their god to whom they offer all the spoils.
They stand on back legs, wear clothes, speak, and use tools.
They are not very bright, quick to anger and cowardly, yet resourceful, collaborative and driven.
Their afe weak, small, spindly, their body and tail covered in scales and their faces are strangely canine.
They are humans, viewed through the lense of a creature that has seen them, but thought them so pathetic it has never taken the time to actually look at them, caricatures of our insignificance.
When mortals approach Smolder they start to feel under-appreciated. They should deserve praise from their equals, and underlings should worship them. The weak-minded will start to actually believe these feelings to be fact.
Sleeping near Smolder solidifies these new convictions, your dreams swept up in the dragon's and now infected with its desires.
Yes, dragons are terrifying forces of destruction when awake, but the corruption seeping from their dreams is still a blight upon the world.
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