Monster Monday: Dragons

Dragons are terrible things who lack any kindness or empathy.  They are the physical embodiment of sin: Humankind's evils made flesh to stalk the world and devour their victims.  They are avaricious, slothful, prideful, envious, wrathful, lustful, and gluttonous.  They are almost as wicked as demons, and some even believe they are demons.  This can neither be confirmed or denied, but few sages actually associate Dragons with Hell.

Dragons are rare beasts.  There does not exist a "race" of Dragons, rather there is a handful of highly unique individuals.  No two dragons are alike, though certain lineages seem to exist that pace down traits from Dragon to Dragon.  Still, Dragons resist all attempts to categorize them into types, much to the chagrin of the various scholars of the World.  There are several books on the subject, but all are wildly inaccurate, sometimes laughably so.  Other times they are dangerously so.

One cannot accurately say that Dragons are encountered more frequently in the Dark Country than the West. This would imply that Dragons may be encountered frequently in the first place, which is a patent falsehood.  Most agree that you could count on one hand the number of adult Dragons lairing in the foreboding mountains of the Dark Country.  These make their homes in caves which they make more comfortable with strange beds made of the gold and bones of dead kings and warriors.

They sleep for centuries on these morbid pallets.  Indeed, many have slept for so long that the natives of the Dark Country wonder if they are still there.  It has been centuries since leathery wings brought fiery death to the squat villages and hamlets that dot the hills and valleys.  No one alive has seen a Dragon, for more reasons than one.  Despite the dangers, it is not for lack of trying.

Knights from the West often seek to test their mettle by slaying a Dragon.  Many knights dedicated to the Church believe that defeating a Dragon represents the defeat of their personal sins.  Many seek salvation this way, for the life of a knight is usually fraught with sin.  Most do not ever find a Dragon and those that do seldom live to relate their adventure.  Still, many songs, plays, epics, etc. have been written about knights on such quests.  They range from the darkly tragic to the comical, but they rarely end with the night achieving what he desires.

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EDIT: I forgot to put my design blurb.

I realized I'd been writing a Dungeons & Dragons blog for almost two months and I had only used the word dragon once.  That just could not do, so I had to figure out how to incorporate Dragons into The Dark Country.  I've decided not to use the different colored Dragon types in my setting, instead each Dragon shall be built on an individual basis.  Their offspring will be more or less identical, and most likely many of the Dragons will be similar to the different types, but you can't find Green Dragons in every forest you ever enter. They will only show up on Wandering Monster tables if there is a lair nearby, and then its a specific Dragon.  They should be special (though they are meant for killing).