Adventurer's Guide to Monsters

Guide Ch. 1 Dragons

You might be thinking, "Oh wow everyone knows what a dragon is, this guy doesn't need to explain because I already know what one looks like." Most of the time, yes you're right. Congratulations for not being stupid. I mean come on, even a poor farmhand from Veksar knows what a dragon looks like. Have you ever seen some pub names with the Reldian Empire?
It's dragon this, dragon that. Everyone thinks it's cool to name their pub dragon something. Well guess what... IT IS REALLY ANNOYING. You aren't cool because you decided to name your pub "The Flaming Dragon." I mean seriously everyone does that.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, Dragons! So I'm going to describe your average, everyday, normal dragon. Even though technically there's hundreds of specie-

Nevermind... Here goes: So imagine your common gecko or something... Normal right? Imagine that little gecko around 30-70 feet long, and can sometimes be bigger than your local lords estate. Think that's bad?
You sir have more coming, as they have wings as big as sails when they're at their biggest, their teeth are bigger than a shortsword, and they breathe fire. Sounds scary right?

You sir or mam, would be correct. That is extremely terrifying, and if I ever saw one in more than a history book, I would honest to the gods wet my loins. "Oh the big bad scribe wets his trousers haha" you might say to yourself as you read this.

Believe me, you would too.

BUUUUUT moving on. As part of my authory type job description, I will recount an encounter with a dragon, as told to me by a very charming man with no hands. That's not even a joke,. The guy is handless.

I'm going to attempt to replicate his words exactly as he says them on this parchment. His name is also Rudolph the Handless, appropriate name I guess.

"Well first of all, when the adventure started, I had hands" Rudolph said, I figured as much.

"It was a Tueday I believe, told my wife I was going dragon hunting and then left the house."

"The dragon was on a mountain side, looming over it, likely attempting to look magnificent." My my did this brute have a way with words.

He looked to have a ridged back, and he had a light orange coloring, meaning he was likely an orange ridgeback."  A sod farmer could have told you that. "Anyway, there I was, holding my battleaxe, about to charge it, but then an arrow hit the beast. He only looked mildly annoyed, but he saw me and charged. I rolled out of the way, but like an oaf dropped my axe."

This is an interesting account I suppose.

"The beast barely looked back at me before I was running for my life. Eventually, after running for a good fifteen minutes, and backing myself up to a cliff, I resolved that I was ready to die."

Well obviously you didn't where is the suspence in this story?

"I put my hands up he stopped for a second, observing me." He said "Then he opened his mouth over my hands. His breathe smelled really bad."

Hmm, I imagine dragon breathe does.

"Another arrow his him from the nearby trees. In surprise the dragon chomped down on my hands, taking them as a snack. Being the tough warrior I am, I passed out."

Then the oaf went on to tell me the boring story about waking up in a clinic, and having to come to terms with his hand loss. That wasn't really relevant to the story, so I just skipped it.

"well that was anticlimactic" you might be saying. You're right obviously, I mean he lives to tell me the account, so we know he survived.

In any case, I'm now able to move on to the next chapter of this annoying to write guide. The next one is about another scaly beast I believe. I'm not really sure.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the next chapter, it's likely to have just as boring an encounter story as this one.