I have a very strong feeling we're about to have a lot of dragonslayers coming back into popularity within the next few years.
The slaying of dragons should never have gone out of vogue.
“…and because they burn villages and homes, eat livestock and people. Do you really have to ask why we should kill the terrifying man eating beast?”
Knight out there "just asking questions".
Wait, chromatic dragons are evil but metallic dragons are quirky at worst
I mean sure as far D&D goes. But generally speaking dragons are giant, scary, flying, firebreathing, winged monstrosities with lots of scary sharp teeth and claws.
"Fuck the king because you can be sure the king is already fucking you."
I think those tropes were mostly accidents actually, in medieval times you'd slay a dragon because it was literally a demon from hell, like that's literally where fire breath comes from, because their mouth is a direct portal to hell and opening it can unleash the fires of hell.
Tolkien is probably one of the first authors to portray the Dragon's horde in a context of a sign of the Dragon's immoral character, as opposed to an incidental that made for a good source of loot for the hero to get a cool new toy from, and even then that's how most narratives involving dragon's hordes treat the actual horde, the horde itself, given back to the people or not, is not especially relevant except for a few choice items which the hero takes a shining to and keeps, it'll happen in D&D just cause.
Just to point out, belief and depictions of dragons transcend European literature and mythology, so limiting dragons to European medieval depictions and Tolkien means ignoring other cultural depictions.
Overall Smaug was based on elements of Beowulf's Bane and Norse mythology's Fafnir, and Fafnir is considered Norse symbolic for greed.
I believe the spelling for the mass of treasure is "hoard" as opposed to the mass of bodies, "horde".
But what if the dragon collects human friends?
And then everybody clapped
Hooray for sir Albert they all said!
And it turned out the dragon was the guy interviewing him, and he not only got the job, but he was put in charge of the business unit and kittens.
I would've assumed because they're big, dangerous, unpredictable animals. Like killing wolves or something.
Depends on the type of dragon. Sure the ones in King Arthur were dumb beasts, but almost all other mythologies and fantasy systems have made dragons extremely intelligent, and wyverns are the dumb beasts.
Also see why Skyrim dragons are actually Wyverns
Sure, but does the king care about that?
Provably does. If his lands and peasants or those of his vassals are fucked up then it obviously causes problems. Who wants their lands burned, cattle eaten or serfs killed? Bad for business, innit
