A Different Voice
One of Friar Albert's contemporaries, Preceptor Rebecca Chambers of the Wynfel Academia of the Midlands, was invited to write a series of guest articles for Observations of Chaos as she is one of the most well versed experts on all of the kingdom's monsters.
There are creatures so vast in reputation that reality itself begins to distort around them. Most such things prove disappointing under scrutiny but Dragons, gloriously, infuriatingly, do not.
First let us establish a simple truth: Dragons are real. This should not need stating and yet one encounters an astonishing number of otherwise educated people who insist upon reducing them to allegory or exaggeration. To such people I can only ask, politely but firmly, whether allegories commonly leave entire military forces catatonic with terror or reduce fortified cities to surrender without visible violence.
Dragons exist. The problem is not their existence. The problem is that they are so absurdly beyond ordinary frameworks of understanding that most people instinctively retreat into denial rather than confront the implications.
Dragons are believed to be among the rarest of beings, perhaps among the rarest things capable of thought altogether. Rarer than living eoten, even! Current scholarship divides them into six colour classifications: red, green, blue, purple, yellow and orange. This categorisation appears less taxonomic and more observational, derived from scattered encounters and ancient references.
The prevailing theory claims that each colour corresponds to a single living Dragon, though this rests almost entirely upon conjecture surrounding the known appearances of Praltis and Sylphiron. If the others exist, and I choose to believe they do with every fibre of my scholarly integrity, then they have either remained hidden or have simply not deigned to interact with us recently.
And yes, before you ask, this means that Dragons may quite literally be singular entities unto themselves. Not species, not populations; singularities. How wonderful!
Descriptions of their forms vary wildly, though certain patterns emerge often enough to suggest some underlying consistency. Most accounts describe immense scaled bodies interwoven with fur, not patches mind you but full sweeping growths along the limbs, chest and spine. Some speak of manelike crests extending from skull to tail, others of branching antler structures, feathering or fin-like protrusions depending on habitat. This suggests not merely adaptation, but an actively responsive biology shaped by environment and prolonged magical saturation.
In short, Dragons apparently become more Dragon-like over time. This is deeply unfair and astonishingly fascinating.
Their senses are similarly absurd. Accounts consistently describe eyes capable of impossible focus over vast distances, hearing so acute that even sleeping Dragons are said to remain aware of nearby movement and enormous rotating ears capable of tracking sound independently. Whether all Dragons possess these traits is unknown, but enough reports align that dismissing them outright would be foolish.
There are stranger qualities still.
Dragons are widely believed to lack self-doubt entirely. Not confidence in the mortal sense but a complete absence of uncertainty. It is said they cannot be affected by spells or effects designed to undermine morale or erode conviction. More troubling are recurring stories suggesting that Dragons occasionally allow attacks to land intentionally, either out of arrogance or because they simply do not regard the assault as meaningful. One soldier’s account of Praltis includes the statement, “It watched the spear enter its flesh the way a person might watch rain strike a window”.
I should note that this soldier resigned immediately afterward. Quite sensible!
The fear associated with Dragons deserves particular attention because it is not ordinary terror. Nearly every credible account describes a sort of pressure accompanying their presence, a deliberate intrusion into the mind. Witnesses speak of overwhelming despair, paralysis and certainty of insignificance.
Dragons are often described as the absolute ceiling of power, though even this phrasing feels insufficient. They are not simply stronger than other creatures. The distinction appears categorical. Comparing a Dragon to an archmage or army commander feels less like comparing predators and more like comparing weather patterns to kitchen knives. Even that may undersell them.
Some scholars argue that Dragons engage with reality itself differently than mortal beings do. Not through brute magical force alone but through frameworks of understanding so advanced that ordinary concepts of strategy become irrelevant. There are recurring claims that Dragons manipulate probability, perception and long-term outcomes almost effortlessly, nudging events into place rather than reacting to them directly.
One account describes a Dragon ending a war by appearing once above a battlefield. No attack followed, no proclamation was remembered; morale simply collapsed among every side present. Another story claims a Dragon entered a fortress and departed peacefully hours later, after which the defenders surrendered without explanation. None present could clearly recall what had been said, only that resisting no longer seemed conceivable.
One begins to suspect that Dragons do not overpower resistance, they pre-empt it.
This possibility is horrifying. It is also, I confess, tremendously exciting!
Naturally, there are those who insist these stories are exaggerations born of fear and mythmaking. To them I would point out that exaggerations tend to diverge wildly over centuries, while Dragon accounts become more disturbingly consistent the deeper one studies them.
Every road eventually arrives at the same conclusion. A Dragon is not merely a creature, it is an intelligence operating at a scale mortals are not equipped to contextualise comfortably. Somewhere upon Maluna, if the stories are true, several of them are still alive!
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