Chapter One: The Dragon's Introduction
Every dragon must have a hook, a gimmick. It is one of the immutable laws of dragondom, a law which cannot be ignored or violated.
Cousin Chuck, for instance, who lives beyond the cold blue mountains of the north, he's known as the Dragon of Rage. Anger is his gimmick.
Do you want to slay Ole Chuck? Don't approach him with a sword and spear; he will only laugh at you. No, you must approach him with all the rage that is in you, and you must match the anger of his draconic heart, rage for rage, fury for fury, and so defeat him.
I once saw Cousin Chuck battle against a knight of the Kingdom of Northerpeak. It was the strangest war you could ever imagine. There was no noise, no speech, no clanging of weapons against scales, no screeching of claws against armor. There was only the deep blue and the barely visible violet of the two combatants' anger, hurling silently back and forth.
What? Oh yes. You can see anger. If you look closely enough. If the anger is deep enough. This knight had enough anger to paint the mountains an entirely different shade of blue. But of course, he could not match Cousin Chuck, because whenever it seemed that he had enough rage to destroy the dragon, the knowledge of his coming destruction would infuriate Cousin Chuck all the more.
Then there was Aunt Ruth. She was known far and wide as the Dragon of Grief. Only the most sorrowful could hope to slay her, for tears were her gimmick. For centuries the tragic heroes of the land would go out to Aunt Ruth's lair, weeping all the way, weeping over the loss of loved ones, of wealth, or of power.
Every battle always seemed to go against her at the beginning--after all, what does a dragon have to be sad about? But the battle's tide would always turn when Aunt Ruth asked, "What is it that makes you so sad?" She would ask it so simply, her voice so innocently curious and innocuous. The knights would tell her. "My true love married another man," or "My mother died of the plague last week," or "All my earthly possessions have been stolen by my mortal enemy."
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What they did not understand was how terribly sympathetic Aunt Ruth was. As soon as the story was out of the knight's mouth, she would begin to weep great, sopping dragon tears, and the poor fellow would be drowned in a river of sympathy.
Poor Aunt Ruth. Never survived the day she met a knight whose tongue had been cut out. Of course, having your tongue cut out isn't that great a sorrow compared to losing your true love or your mother--but having your tongue cut out does prevent you from sharing your woes with a sympathetic dragon who will turn your own sorrows against you.
Yes, each dragon must have a gimmick.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Then how come we only hear about the dragons who fight physical battles against knights with swords and shields?
That's a good question. Truth of the matter is, those kinds of dragons--the ones with gimmicks for physical battle--are far less common than you might expect, but mankind has this foolish notion that the only battles worth fighting are the physical ones. So Cousin Chuck, Aunt Ruth, and dragons like them--they mostly get left alone. And when they do get to fight, well, who is ever going to tell the story? Can you imagine the bards sitting around the palace singing epic tales of Sir Cries-a-lot, who died trying to weep a dragon to death?
Chapter Two: The Seeker Of Wisdom
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