Dragons are among the rarest and most mysterious creatures in the Unwell Kingdom. Few have ever been seen, though frightful tales of their ruthless cunning are passed down and distorted into myth. Most versions of this myth agree on the basics – scales, wings, teeth, and fiercely guarded hoards of treasure! But other questions go unanswered. For instance, where do dragons come from to begin with?

Our heroes learned the truth from the ancient Whittler, deep in the heart of the Giantwood. He revealed that dragons are not born, at least in the traditional sense. Instead, they seem to manifest wherever there exists an environment of collective fear. When other creatures experience prolonged fears and anxieties without proper outlets for them, those negative feelings pool and coalesce, until they crystallize into a physical, draconic form. The greater the scope and intensity of the fear, the greater the dragon.

Their hoards, then, are also reflections of the fears they embody, and tend to be more abstract than the glittering gold of legends… For instance, Frara the Chromatic Dragon, surreptitious tyrant of the Unseen Library, was born when a society of wizards grew frustrated with their lacking esoteric knowledge. Thus, she began to hoard knowledge itself, first by founding her Library in the remote Painted Wastes, and then manipulating the wizards to fill its halls with secrets.

The Whittler warned that dragons do have the ability to reproduce, in their own way. They are born from fear, but it is their nature to inflict it as well. When a dragon grows powerful enough and terrorizes a large enough group of people, those new terrors can result in a new dragon, and so the vicious cycle continues!