The Dragon Cave

[Coach]

[Coach]

Jonas Otsuji
Classification: The Legendary Dragon

There's a cave on top of the hill near the village where folks say a dragon lives. At night, parents will tell this story to their children as a means to scare them into being good. "Eat your greens," they say, "or the dragon will eat you."

Folks never see the dragon but they know to stay away from the cave. Some tell in the tavern that they swear the dragon ate their cousin's children. Nobody has seen it, but they know it exists. Because folks say, so how could it not?

The Legendary Dragon poses no threat to the dragonslayer. Eventually the villagers will decide they've had it with this dragon. Their crops aren't growing right and they are plagued with disease. Everything would surely go down better if the dragon was no longer living there.

So with their pitchforks they go en mass to kill it. They arrive at the cave and sure enough, there lies the sleeping dragon. Folks say the dragon is fierce and that one look from it will turn you to stone, so they don't give the dragon time to try anything. In a flash, the deed is done and the villagers take back a piece of dragon scale for luck.

The dragonslayer never slays a Legendary Dragon. He might swoop into the raiding party with a sword and make a brave show of it but the work was already done for him. Was the Legendary Dragon ever truly a danger? Nobody ever saw it do anything, but folks say. Its actual power remains a mystery.

Maybe it was dangerous and maybe if it had lived, there would have been terror and chaos. Maybe it was just looking to sleep and stay out of trouble. But folks say it was a problem, and what folks say counts for everything when it comes to dragons.

[Coach]

Rory "The Crusher" Freeman
Classification: The Lazy Dragon

If you only read the stories, chances are you'll have a very vivid image of what dragons are like. Huge, fire-breathing monstrosities that slaughter people and raze entire cities to the ground in a blaze of red hellfire.

This is not actually strictly the case, though. Dragons, like people, come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some of them are no more threatening than a pussy cat. They won't terrorize any civilizations because they can barely fly beyond their own cave.

This is the way of the Lazy Dragon. A beast that has become bloated, decadent and useless. There is no glory in the slaying of the Lazy Dragon, but a sly dragonslayer might agree to do it for payment anyway. Little honour can be taken in such a mission.

The Lazy Dragon will almost certainly take care of itself. Sometimes it will be slain by some eager young glory-hunters, a bunch of kids who want to rush to their friends, boasting about how they slayed a dragon of their own. More often than not though, the lifestyle of the Lazy Dragon brings about its own demise.

Being too fat and stupid to rise from the confines of its cave, it really is a pathetic creature. Eventually it will get so lackluster and devoid of activity that the Lazy Dragon will merely starve itself to death, not fully comprehending the fact it needs to hunt and eat to live.

And from time to time, the Lazy Dragon will awaken just in the moment it is being slaughtered. Unable to properly fight anymore it will give a half-hearted attempt to attack. As it flails about in its pitiful death throes, the Lazy Dragon will simply kill itself in the process.

[Coach]

Kelly Sharbaugh
Classification: The Forgotten Dragon

When it comes to dragons, a lot of what people know derives from the old tales and stories. We used to have bigger dragons in my day, an old man will proudly declare. Nobody knows the full truth of it. Maybe people just remember dragons differently to how they really were, or maybe there is truth in the old tales.

Enter the Forgotten Dragon. This is one that belongs firmly in the old stories. The Forgotten Dragon still roams the lands, but its glory days are well and truly behind it. Folks might fear it a little, but mostly upon seeing it they'll slay on sight because a Forgotten Dragon is a weak target.

Don't get me wrong, the Forgotten Dragon still has power. But it no longer has an interest in attacking and causing havoc. The Forgotten Dragon has moved on to new things. It hasn't changed, but it will no longer pose any kind of a conceivable threat.

The old men will sit around and recall a time when they went head to head with the Forgotten Dragon. Days spent battling long and hard, for hours on end. But those times are gone now and there are new dragons to fear. And old men who cling to the old stories, hoping for glory, will only find defeat.

[Coach]

Sekou Sekou
Classification: The Black Dragon

When you stack the different dragon types side by side, one can't help but gaze in wonder and awe at the Black Dragon. A mighty beast that looms above them all. It sends the lesser dragons cowering in fear.

Once there was a time when the world of dragons was dominated by the Black Dragons. They were the kings and they could do whatever they liked. Nobody would question the will of the Black Dragon. Villages would cower and offer sacrifice. Sometimes the dragon would let them live but more often than not it would burn them for fun anyway.

So wild and unpredictable were these beasts that they threatened our world to the point where they needed to be defeated. A great war was started against them and many lives were lost. Eventually the Black Dragons were rooted out and driven to near extinction.

Nobody wanted them to return. This meant that most of the remaining were slaughtered as infants. The handful that survived were the ones deemed harmless, kept around as mere novelties by the lords and noblemen. Having a black dragon in your palace became a talking point.

They were controversial. Some people didn't want them there at all and felt like they should be executed on the spot. Others found them amusing because this new breed of Black Dragon was harmless. Their strange behaviour, instinct that could never properly be reached, made them almost comical from time to time.

But every so often, once in a blue moon, one of the Black Dragons would do something devastating. They'd burn somebody unexpectedly and cause chaos in the process. Sometimes it's better to slay the unpredictable, no matter how amusing you may find them.