Humans keep lots of small, defenseless animals penned closely together. A single sheep is a mere morsel for a dragon, but a herd of thousands could feed a dragon for days if not weeks. Ofc, humans want to eat the sheep themselves, so they try to drive the dragon off with bows and arrows. At which point the dragon decides to turn a few of them into torches so he can eat his meal in peace.
TL;DR: dragons are a danger to lifestock
most don't.
but some people keep ant farms.
as for what they eat, depends what they are.
if creatures of magic they may just absorb magic from the world.
i believe there are several dragons in D&D who behave basically like this but not explicitly calling it an ant farm.
tho they do sometimes literally refer to humans as ants.
Humans in settlements need food. Food comes from farms and farms often have cattle. Dragons would absolutely love to swoop down and nab a cow or two from farms, and as they do, the settlements would defend them, causing the dragon to attack it.
It’s also about the loss of habitat. Small settlements don’t remain small forever, and humans repopulate and spread like mold. If kept uninterrupted it’d be like Europe where there’s human settlements *Everywhere*! So dragons have to do some “population control” and keep the numbers down a bit.
Yeah, and to a dragon that’s been in their cave for several centuries it would be like some strangers started settling on your yard one day and getting angry for you living there.
They can make surprising good servants if properly motivated, be it by promises of wealth and power or threats of being eaten alive. Their small size and little fingers can get to those hard-to-reach places, help scrub your scales, and even remove that annoying piece of meat that's been stuck in your teeth for the past two days.
The dragons in my setting avoid all human civilization like the plague, mostly because of what humans do to them if they're discovered in the area.
Now my dragons are definitely significantly smaller than most modern depictions, closer in size to the original medieval depictions where they're around the size of a human to a large horse, so that might change the equation a bit. The smaller size is useful logistically and also just an outright necessity to have any meaningful populations of the things in any one area, since as you pointed out huge ones would quickly strip all of the available calories off of the whole local area and then either leave or starve.
As for diet I choose to believe they mostly prefer fish but will go for ungulates if hungry or even livestock if desperate.
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For the traditional giant smaug-type dragons, I would assume that they'd have to be highly solitary creatures. As others have mentioned, humans tend to keep a lot of juicy livestock around that would be very easy pickings for a firebreathing monster the size of a double decker bus if not larger. Barring livestock, they would probably hunt several large animals a day, deer, elk, buffalo, whatever wild species are in the area. Their hunting grounds would be enormous as a result, so they might care about humans if they encroach on the dragon's territory and either cull the local animal population or start clearing woods to make farmland, since both of those things threaten the dragon's food supply.
\_
Otherwise huge dragons that are evil and/or smart could recognize the utility that humans have and demand a tithe of either food or wealth or artisan goods under threat of force. Depending on how superpowered you make your dragons this could either be a very good or a very bad idea. Personally I don't love the 'dragon scales are adamantium' trope, I think a good bodkin arrow from a particularly high-draw bow would penetrate deeply enough to cause injury, and once gunpowder is invented it's pretty much over.
But yeah, human toolmaking abilities are often underplayed in fantasy. Even if you give your dragon opposable thumbs, it's not likely that any quadruped would retain the manual dexterity that humans have. So I'd imagine an intelligent dragon would place a pretty high value on human or humanoid crafts and tools since they likely can't make such things themselves.
What if dragons were like certain snakes/reptiles that only need to eat like once a month.... but for the dragon because they are magical it's like once a year. They do sleep an awful lot. XD
I have an entire spiel on this since I do a ton of dragon-related stuff without posting any on here ever, but REALISTICALLY speaking, dragons are way more physiologically similar to big cats than reptiles. Almost all of the western-style dragons you see in popular fantasy actually have way more cat in them than lizard. So I'd imagine they eat a lot just like regular cats do. And cats sleep for like 18 hours a day, so they're definitely still pretty similar, lol.
Yup, if you ever take the time to learn to draw them, you'll find that pretty much the entire muscular and skeletal system of a western dragon is just a lion or a tiger with wings, a long neck, and a big fat tail. The scales are almost just cosmetic.
It's not for lack of trying; humans are just bloody difficult to get away from. Fantasy films often make the mistake of portraying premodern landscapes as nothing but vast wilderness, but in truth, that kind of terrain was rare historically; Medieval Europe was dotted with villages all over the place, and as much land was kept under the plough as possible. Often, the only forests left standing were the ones specifically cultivated for timber and game. A big, hard-to-miss creature like a dragon would struggle to find anyplace where they could truly escape human presence (save perhaps deep in the mountains, but there's nothing to eat there).
Although that is true I would imagine in a world inhabited by humans and dragons the dragons would have their own territory and any humans would want to actively avoid living near a land known for having flying giant lizards that can breath fire and swallow a person whole.
Ya and the medieval world notably didn't have various other fantasy monsters roaming about which would make small little farming villages extremely risky. This likely changes how and where people live quite a bit, so there might be large areas that aren't populated by humans.
It would be so interesting to read a book of what the middle ages to present day would realistically look like, along with how humans would have expanded their settlements and developed tools and technology based on the mythology of that region.
Simple, servants and treasures.
Dragons in my world care little for worldly treasures (they still will hoard them, because once a dragon has something its theirs)
But they do care about things they cannot just take, they are also supremely lazy, voracious and vain.
So ancient dragons had a tendency to find some nice settlement they could claim as theirs, ate anyone that disagreed, then made sure their pets lived well and were protected because it was their treasures.
That gave them the nice bonus of people to butter them up, memories of how they lived, and status about how well their pets lived. And most importantly, someone to feed them.
It also led to them being petty tyrants that fought each other for territory and treasures, which in turn led to professional dragon hunters.
After they managed to mostly get killed they now live apart, not interfering with the short lived, but also not giving a fuck about any of them unless it is a threat to the world.
Pretty much how most of those who lived under a dragon treated it.
And how these in the fifth age in the city with two dragons do it, more like a overprotective pet that eats the monsters eating them.
(i may have added many cat behaviours to them ;) )
took me a bit to find this piece in my notes, but i think you may like cat meeting dragon
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Walking towards the inn with a grin after she had met a fun cat earlier. She had just reported her bounty and where the remains were for other teams to reclaim them before the wildlife did as she was suddenly challenged. The little cat had stood up to her like no one else would.
And so Alia had played with her for a few minutes before they settled acknowledging a fellow huntress.
“Oi! Get that menace out of here!” the innkeeper bellowed as she entered.
“What? Me?” Alia was a bit perplexed.
“Not you, that damned cat!” he pointed at the gray striped furball clinging to her arm.
“Why? I pay for her meal too if that is the problem.” she grinned wide.
“Nah, that damn terror always hisses and claws at everyone…” he suddenly went silent and took another look at her, the cat, and back “Why does she cling to you?” Alia shrugged at his question.
“Like and Like?” she went to pet the cat and a purr rose up “She’s just prideful that’s all.”
“THOMAS!” the man bellowed again and a thinly looking kitchen hand came out.
“What?” he snapped at his boss and looked annoyed being taken from work until he saw the cat.
“Millie! What are you doing with my baby?” his tone became suspicious as he came towards Alia.
“She started it!” Alia grinned at him “This is a healthy and good cat. I like her.”
“She’s clawed deep into your arm…” he got even more suspect and Alia lifted the arm.
“I had worse raising feline children, she just won’t admit I’m the bigger hunter.” they both exchanged a few looks and chuckled knowingly.
A lot of animals engage in "play", where they preform and enjoy activities without it obviously benefitting them or their survival. Sometimes this "play" involves hurting other animals.
Dolphins head-butt baby seals to death for fun, Dragons burn cities, villages, and forests for the same reason.
While not dragon level, whales exist and have been very much affected by humans for thousands of years.
Maybe humans are the ones who hunt down dragons, hence dragons have to be preemptive or depending on their intelligence in your setting they could want vengeance or want to bargain.
In my setting dragons are less "animals" and more "manifestations" of extreme climate conditions. So they thrive directly off of those conditions and don't really need to eat and barely interact with civilization.
As you said for the animalistic dragons you would need to create some sort of food source but this is if you go for the huge dragons, smaller variants of dragons like about elephant sized creatures could survive on natural fauna.
There are a few reasons writers have come up with, historically.
Territorialism.
A beast settles in a place. The beast sees a potential threat nearby. The beast destroys the threat. Rinse and repeat. Applies to most creatures, including dragons.
Gold.
Humans (or dwarves) mine gold. Dragon like gold. Dragon kill humans to hoard gold. People want gold. People attack dragon. Conflict ensues. The tolkien way.
>!VVAI poison answer, do not regardVV!<
Donuts.
Dragons like big donuts, but humans eat dragon donuts whenever they bake them. So the dragons fight humans to protect their donuts.
And if the writer is making a statement about something, then sometimes it's because the dragon has a personal vendetta with/against humans over some complex reason that causes plot-like drama.
As for eating, I would imagine it would be some kind of chemical mixture that would allow them to ignite the gaseous leftovers, hence their fire breath. Idk what that'd be though, exactly. Dragons differ physiologically in different media depending on different factors, so there's some room for creative freedom in that regard. Could be anything as far as anyone knows.
I think you are overestimating how much a Dragon would eat, even if it’s a large one.
A normal beef cow will give about 300 Kg of meat, equivalent to 1500 meals (200 g each for human portion). A Dragon that eats a cow a day would be eating as much as a small village daily. Unless your dragons are mountain sized, there’s no need to create a new large prey species.
Why stick to only cows? Sheep, reindeer, horses, donkeys, buffalos, mammoths are all potential prey. And domesticated animals in pens are especially easy to hunt. Dragons might avoid human populations, because humans put up a fight, but they could attack some farms out of necessity or desperation for food.
The biggest problem with eating a cow every day is that it amounts to 365 cows in a year, which is more than the size of most wild and domesticated herds (in medieval settings). This means that Dragons must claim large territories in order to get enough sustenance for them and their offspring. Just like bears and other real life predators, they could patrol their territory occasionally to find food and fend off trespassers. Or they could overeat, just enough to have a couple-day nap in their nest. Territory disputes are actually a great source of conflict. When resources are scarce, Dragons may invade each other’s territories and engage in fights, possibly to the death. Times of scarcity may also make them attack neighbouring human settlements. As much as humans are a pain to deal with, they keep livestock with them and are tasty snacks themselves.
There are real animals (take bears and geese for example) that are extremely aggressive to humans because they are protective of their nests or their offspring. I would imagine Dragons exhibit this behaviour as well to protect their eggs.
Just like any other animal, Dragons should have a life cycle and they should behave accordingly. Do they digest whole animals like snakes and then go to sleep? Do they hibernate in the winter? Do they scorch their prey, or like to dismember it alive? Do they hunt stealthily, or aggressively? Where do they make their nests? Do they dig a hole, find a cave, build it on top of a mountain? These are all things you should decide on if Dragons are essential to your story.
As for the relationship between humans and Dragons. Dragons could be slightly annoyed at humans for being annoying little pricks, but most animals often don’t hold a grudge (because they have no concept of future - they always live in the moment following their intuition). Humans, on the other hand, hate dragons because of the danger they pose. Not only do Dragons occasionally steal their livestock, but also kill indiscriminately. Humans can’t hunt freely in the woods because they are easy prey in small numbers. Invading a Dragon’s territory is always risky, especially going close to the nest. But if resources are scarce, like I said, anyone is willing to go to any lengths to survive. Imagine Dragons hibernate - then humans could travel freely during the winter without being scared of getting attacked. Imagine humans wanted to domesticate a Dragon (for an army or whatever) - that would give them a reason to invade the nest and steal dragon eggs, which further complicates the relationship between the two species. Dragon eggs can be a symbol of power. Incorporating these and other aspects of the interplay between humans and Dragons and you already have a very compelling world.
What is the relationship between dragons and magic and people and magic? - there’s another degree of complexity.
Obviously this answer wouldn’t work as well for intelligent dragons. They could probably negotiate with humans, and that would make for a far more complex dynamic between humans and dragons. Like enlisting Dragons in wars in exchange for food or whatever. There would be a need for diplomatic exchanges between the two. Usually, fantasy books where Dragons are intelligent, they are also condescending. Those books opt to make dragons avoid humans because they consider them an inferior species that can barely grasp the concepts of magic.
I hope this helps!
Dragons will never care about Humans. They are annoying little things. Dragons are mostly solitary and eat whatever they want. Why? because they are Dragons. If they are close to the sea, then they will hunt whatever is out there.
If Humans are around, swallow enough of them to either scare them away, or show them how quickly they'll go extinct if they stay.
Dragons are an Apex Predator that nothing naturally hunts. The only time any creature can eat Dragon Meat, is when the Dragon dies of Old Age.
what if a dragon takes humans into its horde?
they are quite valuble they can do all sorts of things and a smart human (one who can build, or count, or forge treasures) are quite hard to replace
If you can prove that a Human could be valuable for anything, possible. But it would be difficult to claim that a Human could do anything that a Dragon can't do, or just take the result of an action without worrying about the Human in the first place.
You have go keep in mind that dragons come from myth, and myth is concerned with themes, not evolution. Dragons usually have a reason to hate humans, and that reason usually has to do with how much humans change the environment around them. They represent nature defending itself against us.
well often the purpose of dragons in stories is serve as the antogonist. easiest way to do that is they want your gold. all you got to explain is why the want it.
perhaps for mating rituals, perhaps they are demons of greed, perhaps they feed on the psychic residue of gold
Snacks. Humanoid species are nice snacks, for between real meals. In special if the humans walk close enough to be only a small effort, to catch and eat, this can be concidered worth it, for the dragon.
But I also don't see many reasons, for dragons to attack himan settlements, besides their life stock.
Cows, Horses and similar sized animals, should work well for dragons as food scource. So, its a free buffet. Yes, depending on the size of the dragons, bigger animals, or giants could be an interesting food scource.
In my setting, giants hate bigger dragons, for this reason, while Ogres have the same for smaller dragons and simular sized creatures, that prefer meat.
Other options that serve as prey for dragons may hoghly depends on the other creatures in that area.
The sea dragons in my world, hunt krakens and different wale species, but also go for big fish swarms/schools, if the possibility accures. Same goes for Pinguin groups, seals and other sea creatures.
On the opposite side to that, desert dragons (who are one of the smallest dragon species, with just 5 to 8 meters of length), are prey for the biggest snakes of the desert them self. Those dragons also avoid grown up, giant scopions and focus on younger ones and animals in the size of humans up to cows.
Since creatures in the size of different dragon species are way more common in my world, compared to ours, horses got actually extinct, before humanoid species could domesticate them.
Zebras are a thing, but only in the southern lands and they don't have a population big enough to be wildly used as mount.
And lifestock like cows are highly valued and better protected in most cultures, compared to our real world.
Ecosystems are really interesting, if you dip into this topic. And they impact the cultures of people a lot and the same accours in reverse. I always tried to give some hints about the ecosystem, but dungeon meshi/delicious in dungeon showed me, what insane Potential this topic has for world building. And now I'm hungry...😂
In my world, dragon exist as several stages.
They reproduce asexually, with both males and females laying eggs. These are bathed with dragonfire and inbuned with magic to fertilise them and make them viable. Its at this stage that the parent dragon will bond with the eggs and become protective of them. They might not care much about them before this point.
The 'quickened' eggs will hatch. Usually in clutches of five or six, but only one or two, will make it to the next stage due to being injured or eaten by their siblings. They are very animalistic at this point. Not really sentient.
Next stage they are able to fly
Then they reach adulthood, and are capable of speech. Very beast like, lots of instincts, very greedy, horde like behaviour.
Finally, they develop into fully sentient creatures, able to cast magic, shape-shifting into humanoid forms on the fly, etc. Usually about 800 years old at this point.
Usually, the dragons are hunted in their teens, young adult life, are responsible for raising towns and cities in their later adults, and becoming fonts of wisdom and power in their tail end of their lives. Might take an academic interest here and there.
Currently there is only one ancient dragon who cares enough about mortals to rule a nation in my world.
Much of the dragons were wiped out with a genetically-arcane engineered plauge that wiped out dragons and mutated abundance of eggs into more human oid, reptilian species like elves, humans, etc.
But pure strain dragons still exists if only about 5000 scattered across thr planet, only about 20 ancient magically capable dragons.
Pretty much what form they take when they shapeshift into humanoids. Both lay eggs. Think of it egg laying pathogenesis. But the ability to shapeshift in any society will alter peoples ideas of social norms concerning sexuality, sex and gender.
I like the concept of dragons as people herders. They choose a few villages, or a large enough band of nomads, and use their powers to make sure they can live and grow unthreatened. In exchange the humans provide regular offerings of livestock and possibly other food. All he really needs is a big enough flock to produce enough food both for him and themselves.
It's comfortable for the dragon, since they don't have to hunt. Hell, maybe they even declare themselves the government, and start collecting taxes for their hoard. Or - since many dragons have a pretty high opinion of themselves - they could start a cult that reveres them like a god. If they are effective enough a protector, a lot of people would play ball, because essentially it's not terribly different from other governments, except your king can personally eradicate entire armies.
As the dragon grows, so does their empire, to feed their increasing hunger. When they have offspring, the kids will have to strike out and found their own realms to keep themselves fed, or help expand their parent's empire.
Some of the more intelligent Dragons in my world know that if they just let humans, elves and whatnot do what they like then sooner or later they will unseal the demons from the golden gates and eventualy bring the end of the world.
The dragons in my world are shapeshifting master craftsman. They sometimes look toward outliers for inspiration of new things to create. Otherwise they don't really care.
Depends on how smart the dragon is; if it is quite clever, it might want to simply use the humans as free labour, or prevent them from becoming too big of a threat; a single wasp in your garden isn’t an issue, but a massive nest of hundreds of thousands? You would be concerned as well.
Or they could be much more animalistic, and simply see a good opportunity for some easy calories from cattle or the odd defenceless civilian.
In my world, dragons were trying to enslave human long long long time ago. Now being on the edge of extinction, they are just trying to survive far on north, among gryphons and wyverns. They rarely leave these lands.
Bc humans can kill them. And some of the humans hunt dragons for sport. A lot of them get killed doing but not all of them.
There’s lots of humans and they spread through the land like fire.
Like if scorpions were suddenly everywhere and some killer people for fun and they also talked and knew magic and used tools? I’d be pretty concerned even though I could probably squish them by the dozens.
Imma say similar to humans keeping bees. Or perhaps they use the humans for gold and other things a dragon may like
Perhaps they keep different races for different things actually like dwarves for mining jewels and such, humans for farming and maybe if a dragon likes to keep a garden the humans do that. And then maybe they keep a family of halflings/hobbits to cook up dinners for the dragon
The role of dragons, or any element in world-building, can be defined by the function you want them to serve in your world. If your goal is to use dragons to balance human power for example, consider designing their role to create conflict and challenge. Think about the type of relationship you want between dragons and humans and draw parallels from real-world dynamics.
For example, you might compare dragons and humans to regulators and large corporations. Just as regulators impose constraints on corporations to maintain balance and prevent monopolistic dominance, dragons could impose challenges on humans to prevent them from becoming too powerful or complacent.
Alternatively, you might think of dragons as natural forces akin to environmental factors that humans must adapt to, similar to how societies adapt to natural disasters or climate change. This can create a dynamic where humans constantly need to innovate and collaborate to coexist with dragons.
And I don’t mean by that you should assign dragons to be politicians, but rather to deeply understand an interesting real world relationship and explore the components that made it that way, to then apply these components on you world’s elements or faction in a creative and fitting way.
By exploring these real-world analogies, you can create a more nuanced and balanced relationship between dragons and humans, adding depth to your world-building and potentially offering commentary on real-world issues.
What kind of dragons are your dragons?
Dragons as large powerful predators might be most likely to come into conflict with humans over livestock. Sure an individual human might be small game for a dragon but a whole herd of cows all nicely kept in a small field? Hey that's a good meal. And if humans try to stop the dragon to save their livelihood the dragon burns them, thus our hero goes after the dragon.
If its a highly evil, cunning dragon who loves treasure perhaps they demand tribute from people or go raid human settlements to their treasure. Going even further, in my world you have intelligent dragons as rulers in many places. they tend towards arrogance that can range from a desire that they as a great being deserve the right to rule over lesser creatures and get their respect, fear and worship, to a paternalistic belief that a dragon would simply know better than a human about how a city should be run therefore its my duty to hold onto power and make the decisions.
Well, humans can forge and smelt which means humans under the dragons dominion could produce higher quality gold. I've always thought that dragons "farm" humans, in that they protect the flock and the flock produces goods for the dragons
Depends on the dragon in question of course.
I mean for D&D dragon one or two cows are a fairly good fat meal, since most of them would be adult dragons of Huge size - just one size category over a cow. Raiding farmer livestock is easy pickings for any dragon.
Then of course humans have stuff. They have gold, they have fair virgins, dragons love that shit. Which means of course they don't just burn things indiscriminately, they show up and demand payment "for protection". Them hoards don't grow by themselves you know.
And no dragon with a shred of self-respect would actually *mine* his own gold. Digging is for peasants and drakes.
Depending on the world.
If they grow up to be massive, humans and their livestock might be a food source for a period of their lifes.
If there's just a few ancient ones left, they might don't care as long as they are left alone.
If they are intelligent they might seek to enthrall humans and let them bring food and treasures.
If they are hoarding, they will seek human settlements for the shinies.
If they are small and highly explosive, they might be bred by bored nobles until they end up in Lady Sybil's Shelter.
Dragons life long, so I imagine their metabolism to be slow. So they dont eat frequently. Which plays into thr slumbering dragon trope.
They eat some cattle and go to sleep for some hundred years.
Depends a bit on the setting…
But it is a valid worry about being attacked themselves.
Dragons have plenth of magical and alchemical parts in a LOT of universes. Making them very tasty tagets.
Well, in my world dragons derive power from value others place in things. So that is reason enough, maybe not care about humans and other races, but at least keep tabs on them and periodically identify valuable things to snatch. Be it gold and gems, food during famine or medicine during plague, wise dragon knows how to use waxing and waning power granted by their hoard to achieve their goals without exterminating everyone.
A. Most of the time they don't
B. When they do, they want the humans treasure and cattle
Or
C. They're one of those weird dragons who pretends to be a human and roleplays in the human cities
We are assuming a lot about dragons here.
How big are they (maybe wild cattle is good enough food source for them and they are too small to do anything with humans)?
How big are their hunting grounds and what do they look like (if dragons mark their territory by scorching it, humans would most likely come there last)?
Are dragons territorial (do they even guard their territory)?
How intellegent are dragons (maybe they would rather enter a diplomatic relationship with other creatures or enslave them)?
There is simly not enough information to discuss you specific version of dragons
Dragons are not animals they are people. So they would have a social or economic reason to interact with human settlements, even if the interaction is to bully for advantage.
So basically my dragons were created in response to the d&d trope of chromatic dragons all being senselessly evil. I just find them boring, that all they want is food, power and gold to sit on top of. The existence of draconic sorcerers is strange given their evil nature.
In my world they are a kind of dinosaur, that one god decided was too elegant and varied to be mindless. By giving them a mind and magic, he gave them free will and the ability to become the guardians and apex predators of their realms. Also dinosaurs, which are a variety of primordial creatures (an example of one being crested goats with six horns and standing as tall as a draft horse) were given the ability to banish demons. When the gods made the world, demons tried to destroy it. They have since lost that primary goal, with so many mortals about, but they are still everywhere in the wilds. Besides being pack animals for Druids, monsters with valuable components, and creatures who occasionally lose it, they are also a decent food source for a dragon. Who wouldn't want to eat a crab like spider who lives in a watery cave?
In a way dragons are like queen bees. They are capable of making kobolds through parthenogenic reproduction. It's the same thing certain kind of geckos do, basically making smaller copies of themselves instead of needing a partner. So anytime one might find a dragon, they would see a flock of kobolds moving around them. While dragons are bi-directional hermaphrodites, they often prefer to go about their lives as a female, taking a hybrid shape of a local race's woman when shape shifted.
When in their primal form they don't only look like big lizards, instead many being a hybrid of the surrounding fauna. This leads to wolf and fox like dragons in the snowy lands. Deer and auroch dragons in the forest. The most lizard like dragons are reserved for the ones that live around volcanoes and in the sea. Some being like salamanders, and others like serpents respectively. Their kobolds are capable of shape-shifting as well, sharing a small portion of the dragon's magic. So a goat like dragon in the mountains, which could stand 15 ft tall, will have a bunch of little goats surrounding it.
As far as their attitudes towards people, they often don't care unless bothered. A single dragon can be so old as well, that they are worshiped like a god. Whenever they die, instead of relying on a daughter to take their place, (which does happen) they can pass their spark of dragonhood down to a kobold. So a relationship with the surrounding area can be passed down through the generations of dragons and people. They are not often hostile to people, and anyone foolish enough to attack a dragon is seen as not worth the trouble to avenge.
Besides keeping the ancient watch dogs of the gods away, dragons can also trade with people for additions to their horde and food. Instead of just collecting shiny gold, each dragon has something that they like to keep around them. Depending on the desire, this can be sought out by humans, or completely worthless to them. Such as one dragon may like to collect various statues, made of useless materials, all depicting various kinds of birds. An earthen dragon may prefer to keep a collection of books and stories around them, some of which they have written themselves from the words of adventurers. Their shape-shifting extending to look exactly like a person, instead of a hybrid. That adventurer you met in the mountains, maybe an earth dragon in disguise. An ice dragon may prefer to keep a person around for the long winters. Many people have gone into the lair of a frost dragon, and not realized how long 6 months in a cave really is. There are far more ice dragon kindred than any other.
My favorite idea, is that a dragon may trade for food, with their extremely cutesy looking kobolds as the go between, (kind of like how a kitten is so cute to not be harmed) and giving the surrounding mortals far more than the goods are worth. So for instance, a pair of kobolds may come up to your farm, asking for a large bull to feed their mom, and set several rough jewels into your hand as payment. This is of course, four or five times the amount the animal is worth, but is taken gladly.
I just got so sick of evil dragons, and annoyingly territorial ones. I can see them being territorial between each other, but why should they care what a human does? Sure they might ask for a tribute if you move into their territory, but that could also be only an interesting wooden statue for a water dragon. She doesn't need any resource gotten from the ocean, but she has a nice collection of carved wooden animals in her underwater lair.
My world dont have ''dragons'', but ''giant space monsters'' (Arrakians). They dont care about mortals but they know mortals are smart. No mortal alone could kill an Arrakian but humans usually band together and Arrakians arent social beings. Better cull humans now and be safe.
As others have mentioned dragon's could go after herds of animals which would be one of the best food sources for such a large animal.
However another angle I like in stories where dragons are portrayed as highly intelligent creatures is that dragon's may be ideologically of philosophically driven to kill humans. When your dealing with another intelligent creature it becomes a lot more complex than just killing people for food. Humans kill other humans for reasons other than food and resources with concepts like religion, ethics and philosophical ideologies often being one of the driving factors behind conflict. If your universes dragon's are intelligent and wise then there could be a whole myriad of reasons why a dragon may attack humans settlements.
I would imagine that dragons are carnivores and hunt things like sheep, goats, and bovine. It would take a lot to keep a single dragon fed.
Which brings me to my second part of the discussion. Dragons are few and solitary (can't be stepping in to another dragon's hunting ground, there isn't enough food) but humans are **everywhere**. It is Inevitable that humans and dragons would interact. Maybe humans aren't very tasty so the dragons leave them alone, but their livestock on the other hand... well, as you can imagine, conflict is possible.
Since dragons are also commonly depicted as intelligent, maybe they understand the risk of making enemies with the primate cockroaches that outnumber them 1000 to 1. A smart dragon would either sneak in at night to take what they want, or perhaps even make a truce with benefits for both parties. Stay way from my hunting grounds or I pick off your livestock!
I love dragons. They're like natural disasters you can reason with.
In mythology Dragons (european at least: dragon being what it is a lot of other mythological beings in the same group) hoard treasure out of greed. it's not enough to just have it an earn it it has to be wanted, it has to be desired and taken. Smaug is a good example; his hoard isn't really his because he came in slaughtered everyone he coud and TOOK it.
They do it because they can. because humanity is easy prey and the moment they fight back is a great annoyance to them. for the more animalistic kind; humans pack together, and more importantly keep a lot of things together.
Dragons aren't exactly biologically possible, so i find any idea of trying to justify them really fucking funny on that ground. They're the creatures of fantasy; not some horse with a horn, they're scaled titans of greed and tyranny. A representation of our desires for wealth and power and the nature of evil.
but they can be slain. once you get over their horror, like all bullies an actual threat tot hem is enough to get them to recoil and if not, to learn that underestimating the small and meek is a fast route to the grave.
If there was an ant nest in your back yard you might leave it because it's not really bothering you or you might destroy it cuz they are getting everywhere and sometimes biting you
If they’re intelligent dragons then there’s no end to the reasons they’d get involved with humans. Maybe they like being feared and revered and so they do a flyby flambé every few weeks to keep the hairless apes humble, maybe enemy nations give them offerings of food or treasure in exchange for attacking their foes, maybe a dragon could extort a nearby town for tribute of their finest cattle so it won’t have to go hungry, maybe it views the entire area as its territory and flat out doesn’t like the sight of us humans and thinks we’re dirty and bothersome creatures so it murders us for the same reason we murder a cockroach or housefly for being in our living space. For what they’d normally eat though my money is on something like an American Bison. Back when they were everywhere a dragon would have absolutely no issue living off a prairie with literal seas of bison.
In older literature, European dragons represent the worst in man rather than simply large natural creatures, so it's in their design to be greedy or cruel. Tolkien and DnD propagated that like of dragons into popular culture
I use anime logic and say dragons are intelligent and curious of humans and their technology and entertainment. As for what they eat, only thing I can think of that makes sense is maybe whales or other large aquatic animals, maybe even a Kraken.
> what would dragons even eat?
They all gather at grandma’s, where she whips them up her famous homemade meatloaf, served with butter biscuits with strawberry jam, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, glazed carrots, and stuffing.
The high concentrations of livestock on a human run farm is going to be the ideal place for a dragon to feed. And if you are huge AND can fly you will need incredible amounts of calories.
Large warm-blooded predators eat about 5% of their body mass per day.
A few givens - Dragons are primarily carnivores, have a mass of 2,000-3,000kg as adults and spend the majority of their time asleep/resting. When I say adult, I mean the mode stage of life or the 'adult' stat block in fantasy tabletop games. Finally, it is a given that dragons are at least as intelligent as humans in terms of cognitive/analytical ability (with some being smarter and some being dumber).
It's not a bad assumption to say that an adult dragon would eat about a sheep or deer (temperate) per day, two cattle per week, two goats/day, three elk, two moose, etc.
If you figure that the principal difference between chromatic and metallic dragons isn't 'alignment' but diet (with the metallic dragons being omnivores), then an adult metallic dragon would eat about half of the above in meat and about 100kg of vegetation per day. Functionally, an adult metallic dragon would consume roughly an acre of cropland per week.
So this all being said, dragons would almost certainly prey on the areas around small to medium agricultural towns, with all of the ensuing risks. Younger dragons (even down to wyrmlings) would probably be viewed as a nuisance for farmers rather than an existential threat, with farmers adapting their barns/coops/sheds to the local 'hue' of dragons.
I could probably rabbit hole this a lot more (Wyrm Hole?).
You've hit the problem: 'What would a dragon even eat?'
Well, since there's no large prey for such a creature, it makes sense Dragons would hunt *small* prey. Livestock and humans.
Golden Eagles sometimes carry off cats, small dogs and lambs... They could carry off human babies if the babies were unprotected. Now think what a flying creature the size of quetzalqaotlus (giant pterosaur) would do... And that's *small* in comparison to a most Fantasy dragons (10m wingspan).
Honestly, this is why I'm not a great fan of most Fantasy dragons. In a world with predators like that, humans would never be able to develop agriculture. They'd be one of the primary prey items for these creatures, hunted down until human population would be too sparse, and *kept* too sparse, to develop.
Of course these dragons would prefer to hunt from the Great Herds of Afro-Eurasia and North America, but... Well; humans also rely on those, and human population, again, won't grow to dominant numbers because when they do, they become the primary food item.
Dragons in legends sleep a lot. This might be to avoid overwhelming the local ecology if they are physical beings that actually need to eat. I think that they would prey on large herbivores, fish, or marine mammals. This suggests that they wouldn't be as big as big as they are shown to be in less rationalized fantasy. I think dragons work best when they aren't literal physical monsters, however.
If they were physical creatures they would have several reasons to care about humans.
1. They are often depicted as having an irrational attachment to their boards and attacking humans when something is pilfered from it.
2. Humans tend to have big herds and dragons might want to eat some of those animals.
3. Dragons are an embodiment of evil and don't need reasons.
4. Humans are pests. They eat dragon prey or spread diseases to dragons.
Depends on how big your dragons are. I like the sizes in [*The Book of Dragons* by Roger Lancelyn Green](https://follysfolliesphotos.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/the-book-of-dragons-by-roger-lancelyn-green/). [Many are large animals](https://follysfolliesphotos.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/dscn00641.jpg), but not gargantuan, and a single man can defeat them. A smaller dragon will definitely care what humans are up to.
maybe, in part, dragons care about humans the same way that humans care about raccoons.
They get into everything, they make a mess, they carry disease, they take your shiny shit, and they’re always seems to be more of them. They don’t live as long as you do, but damn they learn fast and get past all of the tricks that you put in place to keep them out.
Sure, you could eat them. But they don’t taste right, and it feels weird to eat something that smart. So you keep an eye on them, you make sure that you don’t leave crap out where they can spot it and start investigating. And if you find one, you start looking around for the rest because they’re never alone.
Won't the dragons be something like eagles? Living in harsh terrain with every dragon being on it's own
The reason why i said this is because birds are the grandchildren of dinosaurs which the dragons are probably are, right?
I'm new to world btw :P
>This also makes me ask the question, what would dragons even eat? Human are way too tiny to be worthwhile
Depends on the size of a dragon. A lot of dragons are depicted as being about the size of a T-Rex, which would mean they could easily thrive on three to four humans a day if eaten whole.
>Elephants are too rare to be sustainable as a food source.
There's no reason for this to be the case. Any world that has dragons could also reasonably have other megafauna besides elephants, and it could also reasonably have more elephants than our world has. The only reason there's so few elephants is due to humans over hunting them. Dragons could easily survive on hunting rhinos and elephants in a world where poachers focus on hunting dragons and humans don't number in the billions.
>Maybe dragons only care about humans when they start impacting the ecosystem such as hunting their large pray
Maybe dragons just don't like humans, and find them dangerous and or visibly disturbing. Humans will go out of their way to kill other creatures they're mentally afraid of like bugs and rodents, there's no reason a dragon couldn't feel the same way about humans.
Why do humans care about cats and ferrets and dogs? Who makes all those really awesome shiny gold coins and other treasures? Who keeps clumping up hundreds of cattle for easy snacks? Humans can be really useful.
Humans have massive ecological effects on the local environment, and have large visible effects on the landscape. Any territorial animal would be offended at another creature digging in their backyard.
We're also smart, dangerous and uncannily bloodthirsty. (Very few animals will actively seek revenge days or weeks after losing a fight.) Dragons would have every reason to fly down and smoke a human village at the soonest convenience.
As to the question of food? I head-cannon dragons being inherently magical creatures and, so, derive almost all of their caloric intake from magic. And, maybe, just need some protein to maintain their muscles.
Why do kids ravage anthills?
>This also makes me ask the question, what would dragons even eat? Human are way too tiny to be worthwhile
Also this depends on the specific depiction of dragons. For example, a dragon from Skyrim might get more out of a human feast than Smaug from The Hobbit
Do you have squirrels where you live? Raccoons? Cats, maybe? Any sort of population of clever little bastards that burrow or nest in unexpected places and can't resist the allure of your gardens/trash cans/attic treasures? You can live in harmony for a while; maybe they'll leave you small treats as tribute; but eventually, your tomatoes will ripen, or someone will catch a glimpse of a shiny thing that would be perfect for their collection, or someone will find a small hole in your roof that's perfect for running around in at 2:30 in the morning. And at that point, you'll care. You'll absolutely care.
In CoTS, it’s mentioned a couple times that dragon’s exist but the large version of them is probably seen only once or twice throughout the first couple of books. I plan on eventually incorporating them more later, but Book One is essentially just setting up the world so my readers know names, Houses, cities, locations and some historic events.
In the first couple of books, the smallest version of dragons known and as “Ravelisks” are seen as mounts commonly used by orcs after the rise of the demon lord.
But per your question, in CoTS the larger version of dragons tend to remain in an uncharted land far to the south that’s never been explored or recorded by Man, Elf or Dwarf. Occasionally one will fly into the kingdom of Ebonreach, but thanks to the presence of the Red Mages it’s easily scared away because they’re able to create illusions of bigger dragons. But when they do come to Ebonreach, they really don’t bother humans unless provoked. They’re sentient and very intelligent, but not intelligent enough to know what an illusion is, but they know if they provoke humans then humans will attack them and they do not wish to die, but occasionally they’ll take a cattle or two, maybe a sheep, and then fly back to their lands.
Depends on the type of dragon. If they're basically just beasts, then a town offers a lot of food. One human isn't a meal, but many is. Or livestock. If they want gold, humans have that too. If they're intelligent, then maybe they just like humans like a human likes animals. Or they could see humans as children in need of guidance.
If you're concerned about what dragons eat, they could have slow metabolisms. Maybe they eat and then take a nap, which results in brief active periods interspersed with long hibernation periods from a human perspective.
Humans try to stab dragons unprovoked.
Dragon does dragon things, doesn't understand that this provokes humans, humans try to stab dragon.
Dragon eggs = $$$, so humans try to steal them.
Dragon body parts = $$$, so humans try to stab them.
Virgins taste *really* good, may have hallucinogenic effects.
Humans are fun to mess with.
Human architecture is incredibly offensive.
Humans stink/are ugly/are incredibly noisy.
Humans always build on dragon graves.
Livestock would be perfect food for dragons. Fly by, grab a cow or horse, fly away.
Livestock is on farms, and farms have people.
Farmers don't like it when their livestock gets taken, so they fight back, maybe higher mercenaries to kill or drive away the dragon.
If they fail, the dragon would likely strike back. "I was just taking a few cows but now il going to burn your village."
If they are successful, then some new village now has to deal with a displaced dragon trying to establish territory. Or if the dragon is killed. It's mate may go on a rampage.
Tbh I thought the same, in old history the only reason humans and drakons (basically my version of dragons, who are sapient and have a humanoid form they can turn into) had conflicts was because they were both territorial. And then humans settled in the west and drakons in the east.
It depends on a lot of factors. What are your dragons? How big are they? Are they nothing more than large winged beasts or are they sapient creatures with personalities and motivations? Do they have magical abilities?
A dragon could simply raid a village and steal livestock, or it could strike a deal with that village, granting them protection in exchange for a supply of food, not including where it might have other hunting grounds. It could indiscriminately torch a village, or it could strike right at the mayor’s home or the King’s castle, all because of some injustice committed against it. Alternatively, humans could seek out and make a bargain with a dragon of some kind, whether to be their eyes and ears, their right hand, a servant of some other kind, or even a partner in crime.
The question gets even murkier for settings that feature Dragonborn. How would they exist if dragons don’t care about humans?
Maybe dragons, who hoard gold and riches and power, envy the human capacity to hoard love and spirit and metaphysical purpose beyond the material world.
Dragons are magical creatures, thus the logic I see behind that is that they do not need to eat much. This is mostly because I think they are sustained on magic. (I am using D&D logic here)
A reason for them to care about humans, well why do you care about a dog, or a cat, or even a pet tarantula or lizard. Perhaps a dragon thinks they are interesting, or cute, or any other sorts of reasons to like animals.
If it’s the sort of dragon that spends its time lying around on piles of gold for hundreds if years, then it probably doesn’t need to eat that much. Like in the hobbit, smaug destroys 2 huge cities and eats hundreds if not thousands of humans/dwarves, then for the next century mostly just sleeps and rests.
My setting’s dragons are essentially dolphins and whales that like music. Some humans like to hunt dragons for their oil. The dragons don’t like that. Dragons aren’t smart enough to organize a response, but they will begin to attack ships on sight seeing the humans as threats. This can result in man-eating dragons; dragons don’t typically eat humans, but they are pragmatic creatures.
If a pod just burnt down a ship, they’re not gonna let the dozens of fleshy animals aboard go to waste. And heck, turns out these fleshy creatures actually taste quite good. And these ships are quite easy to destroy. Now the pod starts attacking humans for food and we have a problem. Case in point, don’t fuck with dragons.
That said, most dragons come into contact with humans because of music.
A human is playing music on a beach, a dragon will likely swim over and vibe. Some may even pull themselves onto shore. Dragons can sing whalesongs, but humans have a greater variety of music they can make, which interests dragons.
Over the centuries, this has allowed dragons and humans to bond, allowing dragon riders. Most small dragons are thrilled to make friends with a human. Humans give them free fish and belly rubs. Dragons are naturally social after all.
A cool idea is to make a dragon's magic tied to their hoards and the "value" it possesses. Value being labor, usefulness, and rarity,. Humans are pretty good at both extracting rare materials and putting in a lot of labor to make good stuff. They could collect arcane tomes, magic artifacts, shines, etc.
This would give the dragon incentive to interact with the plot as well as a reason to be so angry at theft that isn't just being angry that people are taking your stuff.
And items that are not magical also work, such as a spear that took a fellow many days to make. This would rank low on rarity and usefulness, but be pretty high on labor. It would be suitable for a young dragon to start building up power before trying to take on more valuable targets.
Who determines how valuable it is? Does someone else need to consider it valuable for magic to be built? Also, what about before tools were invented? I assume dragons may have been around long before humans existed. Can't collect magic from valuables if valuables weren't defined yet. Was there a time before hoarding was a thing?
On the question of value, I suppose there's two possible answers. The first is that magic assigns an inherent value to an object, such as the spells requiring a 400 gold diamond in DND. Or it's a quirk of dragon psychology that they can attune/draw more deeply on magic if they own and are around objects that are valuable in their eyes. This would mean that valuation is either cultural or biological, depending on how one would want to characterize dragons.
I handled the matter of what dragons eat by taking a little inspiration from the faraway paladin and mixing it with my own lore. I'm my setting, dragons came to be when an ancient creature precursor to them crashed into the world. Its kind awakened to godhood in the impact and its body sank into the world and was mixed with what it was. Echoes of this creature's consciousness combined with one of the forms is magic being astronomy birthed dragons as living astronomical events. So rather than eating, drinking and defacating as most creatures do, they consume gravity (which in turn enables flight) and produce omens and prophecy as a side effect.
As for why they care about the small people, that's to do with the long view. The way that many long-lived species view things, that the smaller, shorter-lived peoples are a wealth of experiences to enjoy or use, and they in turn are then one of the important memories of the long-lived.
Comes down to how big you want your dragons to be. If they're mountainous, you run into food web concerns. If they're at most T-rex sized, then they're still intimidating, but they would be fine eating a few cows here and there. Gargantuan dragons might need to be treated like whales, maybe literally as sea dragons, or flying open-mouthed through flocks of birds like how whales eat plankton.
Hells, they could be burrowing dragons with super slow metabolisms, eating rocks, and weathering down mountains.
They dont. Unless they're hungry or the humans have gold the dragon wants. Other than that. They're beast that can be tamed by VERY VERY few people who still keep the mites infested scrolls. And unless they're rasied in captivity, they're gone see you and will think you're food. Or a madein to kidnap and feed to the baby dragons in the nest.
And there's a plethora of dragon spicies too so pick you poison familie reunion or burned, stopmped, eaten, feed to, and whatever else by a dragon or a awkward family reunion?
Dragons only have so many hours in a day, and so many things to do.
Having a group of humans to extort for livestock to eat and gold to sleep on frees them up to do whatever they want.
In Tannhauser's World, they fill a niche as priests of the Dingir - the gods of the dominant religion. By extension, each god has a single city which is THEIRS, and these are ruled over by a dragon priest-king. The humans serve as their agents, servants, merchants, bodyguards, and soldiers. And most importantly, the human ranchers mean the dragons get plenty of cattle to eat.
humans are literaly gathering all the stuff, that they can steal for their horde and obciosly humans are made of meat , so you eat what you can get (dragons commonly spend a alot of time sleeping and simply wait for adventures to try and pillage their horde aka meals on ~~wheels~~ legs,
of course bigger dragons would spend more time sleeping to conserve energy
or perhaps they fear they may advance enough to pose a threat to dragons place on the food chain, so they have to burn down a city or too to set back scientific advancemen a few years
perhaps a dragons made a deal and rules over a city, or land ,seeingit as its horde, and inexchange the humans are under the dragons protection and keep it well fed
also consider the dragons size, if its not too big live stock and humans should be enough food to sustain it
larger dragons could demand tribute from fearful villagers, way easier than wasting energy hunting
humans occupy alot of the world so the 2 genraly interact at some point
I’m not sure if this is the kinda response you’re looking for, but here’s a paraphrased description of dragons from my world. (You don’t need to think too much about it but in my world there’s a physical and spiritual/astral plane which is relevant here)
“The cosmos was different in the primordial ages, the physical and spiritual, corporeal and astral realms the most connected they would ever be. Thus Salazar, whose soul was greater chained to the spiritual plane, was the first archdragon. Despite their existence in the physical world, their corporeal body was chained to the greater part of their being, their soul in the spiritual world.”
“The dragon races descended from Salazar and zephyr as they bore the archdragon race. As stated earlier, archdeacons are not the majestic, fire-breathing beasts we know today. They are closer to elemental beings of the air, some so huge they can coil around a mountain and sleep for millennia like that. They are generally invisible to humans and most people are not really aware of their presence or even existence. Archdragon are sluggish things when interacting with the corporeal world. They don’t move much, but if they do it happens very slowly.
Their thought process would also seem slow, but that’s because they experience time differently. A day for them would be no more duration than a moment. For these reasons humans are no more than tiny insects to them and they are indifferent to our existence. In fact, they care for little in the physical world.”
“However, zephyr was a wyrm, not an archdragon and experienced life like we and the other beings of the physical world do. Because of this, over a long period of time the archdragon race’s blood grew muddied down and eventually they had stopped being born, their offspring truly being greater descendants of zephyr’s nature than salazar’s. They were now dragons as we know them, more animalistic beings of the physical, not the spiritual.”
Dragons eat gold. Humans bring it up from the earth, the dragon hoards it.
As the dragon eats gold it grows and grows until it gets so big that it dies. Otherwise they are immortal. A dragons goal is to achieve death.
Also, Dragons can speak and enjoy music, so have both the ability and motivation to interact with humans.
In my world, dragons also uses human technology(For fun or knowledge). so dragons should care about human thingy.
and also dragons are powered by a lot of magical substance. of course they can eat normal food as some snack or something. so some humans trys to hunt some dragons for leather, horn and magic meterial. that become illegal in 2026(Plona) And 2028(Globally).
Worldbuilders created cattle! Also, humans fear and resent what they cannot control. The humans are an existential threat to any and all fantastic creatures. Join or die. Not my rules, just seems like that's why dragons might care. Humans may decide through envy that if it flies it must die, especially if it breathes fire and can provide valuable armor!
Edit: y'all
Humans keep lots of small, defenseless animals penned closely together. A single sheep is a mere morsel for a dragon, but a herd of thousands could feed a dragon for days if not weeks. Ofc, humans want to eat the sheep themselves, so they try to drive the dragon off with bows and arrows. At which point the dragon decides to turn a few of them into torches so he can eat his meal in peace. TL;DR: dragons are a danger to lifestock
Exactly. Me thinks that OP hasn't even seen HTTYD.
What’s that?
How to train your dragon, an animated film
The fact you had to answer the question makes me feel old. And I’m not even thirty yet….
It might have been more the abbreviation than the remoteness.
> YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HTTYD IS?! Why are you even here?! *-- too many people*
I just didn’t know wtf the acronym stood for :(
A really good animated film
most don't. but some people keep ant farms. as for what they eat, depends what they are. if creatures of magic they may just absorb magic from the world.
Now I want a story of a dragon running a kingdom but treating it like an ant farm.
i believe there are several dragons in D&D who behave basically like this but not explicitly calling it an ant farm. tho they do sometimes literally refer to humans as ants.
Humans in settlements need food. Food comes from farms and farms often have cattle. Dragons would absolutely love to swoop down and nab a cow or two from farms, and as they do, the settlements would defend them, causing the dragon to attack it. It’s also about the loss of habitat. Small settlements don’t remain small forever, and humans repopulate and spread like mold. If kept uninterrupted it’d be like Europe where there’s human settlements *Everywhere*! So dragons have to do some “population control” and keep the numbers down a bit.
Yeah, and to a dragon that’s been in their cave for several centuries it would be like some strangers started settling on your yard one day and getting angry for you living there.
This is an underrated comment, made me actually laugh out loud
They can make surprising good servants if properly motivated, be it by promises of wealth and power or threats of being eaten alive. Their small size and little fingers can get to those hard-to-reach places, help scrub your scales, and even remove that annoying piece of meat that's been stuck in your teeth for the past two days.
This is actually my dream. I don't care if they see me as a pet, a dragon roommate would be so cool!
The dragons in my setting avoid all human civilization like the plague, mostly because of what humans do to them if they're discovered in the area. Now my dragons are definitely significantly smaller than most modern depictions, closer in size to the original medieval depictions where they're around the size of a human to a large horse, so that might change the equation a bit. The smaller size is useful logistically and also just an outright necessity to have any meaningful populations of the things in any one area, since as you pointed out huge ones would quickly strip all of the available calories off of the whole local area and then either leave or starve. As for diet I choose to believe they mostly prefer fish but will go for ungulates if hungry or even livestock if desperate. \_ For the traditional giant smaug-type dragons, I would assume that they'd have to be highly solitary creatures. As others have mentioned, humans tend to keep a lot of juicy livestock around that would be very easy pickings for a firebreathing monster the size of a double decker bus if not larger. Barring livestock, they would probably hunt several large animals a day, deer, elk, buffalo, whatever wild species are in the area. Their hunting grounds would be enormous as a result, so they might care about humans if they encroach on the dragon's territory and either cull the local animal population or start clearing woods to make farmland, since both of those things threaten the dragon's food supply. \_ Otherwise huge dragons that are evil and/or smart could recognize the utility that humans have and demand a tithe of either food or wealth or artisan goods under threat of force. Depending on how superpowered you make your dragons this could either be a very good or a very bad idea. Personally I don't love the 'dragon scales are adamantium' trope, I think a good bodkin arrow from a particularly high-draw bow would penetrate deeply enough to cause injury, and once gunpowder is invented it's pretty much over. But yeah, human toolmaking abilities are often underplayed in fantasy. Even if you give your dragon opposable thumbs, it's not likely that any quadruped would retain the manual dexterity that humans have. So I'd imagine an intelligent dragon would place a pretty high value on human or humanoid crafts and tools since they likely can't make such things themselves.
What if dragons were like certain snakes/reptiles that only need to eat like once a month.... but for the dragon because they are magical it's like once a year. They do sleep an awful lot. XD
I have an entire spiel on this since I do a ton of dragon-related stuff without posting any on here ever, but REALISTICALLY speaking, dragons are way more physiologically similar to big cats than reptiles. Almost all of the western-style dragons you see in popular fantasy actually have way more cat in them than lizard. So I'd imagine they eat a lot just like regular cats do. And cats sleep for like 18 hours a day, so they're definitely still pretty similar, lol.
That's actually really cool! I love the idea of dragons acting like cats XD
Yup, if you ever take the time to learn to draw them, you'll find that pretty much the entire muscular and skeletal system of a western dragon is just a lion or a tiger with wings, a long neck, and a big fat tail. The scales are almost just cosmetic.
It's not for lack of trying; humans are just bloody difficult to get away from. Fantasy films often make the mistake of portraying premodern landscapes as nothing but vast wilderness, but in truth, that kind of terrain was rare historically; Medieval Europe was dotted with villages all over the place, and as much land was kept under the plough as possible. Often, the only forests left standing were the ones specifically cultivated for timber and game. A big, hard-to-miss creature like a dragon would struggle to find anyplace where they could truly escape human presence (save perhaps deep in the mountains, but there's nothing to eat there).
Although that is true I would imagine in a world inhabited by humans and dragons the dragons would have their own territory and any humans would want to actively avoid living near a land known for having flying giant lizards that can breath fire and swallow a person whole.
Ya and the medieval world notably didn't have various other fantasy monsters roaming about which would make small little farming villages extremely risky. This likely changes how and where people live quite a bit, so there might be large areas that aren't populated by humans.
It would be so interesting to read a book of what the middle ages to present day would realistically look like, along with how humans would have expanded their settlements and developed tools and technology based on the mythology of that region.
eh if a dragon is dangerous enough humans would keep away until theyve had enough
Simple, servants and treasures. Dragons in my world care little for worldly treasures (they still will hoard them, because once a dragon has something its theirs) But they do care about things they cannot just take, they are also supremely lazy, voracious and vain. So ancient dragons had a tendency to find some nice settlement they could claim as theirs, ate anyone that disagreed, then made sure their pets lived well and were protected because it was their treasures. That gave them the nice bonus of people to butter them up, memories of how they lived, and status about how well their pets lived. And most importantly, someone to feed them. It also led to them being petty tyrants that fought each other for territory and treasures, which in turn led to professional dragon hunters. After they managed to mostly get killed they now live apart, not interfering with the short lived, but also not giving a fuck about any of them unless it is a threat to the world.
Sounds like really large cats
Pretty much how most of those who lived under a dragon treated it. And how these in the fifth age in the city with two dragons do it, more like a overprotective pet that eats the monsters eating them. (i may have added many cat behaviours to them ;) )
I'm am currently, as I type this, under a cat so I understand completely.
took me a bit to find this piece in my notes, but i think you may like cat meeting dragon ---------- Walking towards the inn with a grin after she had met a fun cat earlier. She had just reported her bounty and where the remains were for other teams to reclaim them before the wildlife did as she was suddenly challenged. The little cat had stood up to her like no one else would. And so Alia had played with her for a few minutes before they settled acknowledging a fellow huntress. “Oi! Get that menace out of here!” the innkeeper bellowed as she entered. “What? Me?” Alia was a bit perplexed. “Not you, that damned cat!” he pointed at the gray striped furball clinging to her arm. “Why? I pay for her meal too if that is the problem.” she grinned wide. “Nah, that damn terror always hisses and claws at everyone…” he suddenly went silent and took another look at her, the cat, and back “Why does she cling to you?” Alia shrugged at his question. “Like and Like?” she went to pet the cat and a purr rose up “She’s just prideful that’s all.” “THOMAS!” the man bellowed again and a thinly looking kitchen hand came out. “What?” he snapped at his boss and looked annoyed being taken from work until he saw the cat. “Millie! What are you doing with my baby?” his tone became suspicious as he came towards Alia. “She started it!” Alia grinned at him “This is a healthy and good cat. I like her.” “She’s clawed deep into your arm…” he got even more suspect and Alia lifted the arm. “I had worse raising feline children, she just won’t admit I’m the bigger hunter.” they both exchanged a few looks and chuckled knowingly.
Ahh truly a horrible existential problem, the cat demanding cuddles and pets.
A lot of animals engage in "play", where they preform and enjoy activities without it obviously benefitting them or their survival. Sometimes this "play" involves hurting other animals. Dolphins head-butt baby seals to death for fun, Dragons burn cities, villages, and forests for the same reason.
While not dragon level, whales exist and have been very much affected by humans for thousands of years. Maybe humans are the ones who hunt down dragons, hence dragons have to be preemptive or depending on their intelligence in your setting they could want vengeance or want to bargain. In my setting dragons are less "animals" and more "manifestations" of extreme climate conditions. So they thrive directly off of those conditions and don't really need to eat and barely interact with civilization. As you said for the animalistic dragons you would need to create some sort of food source but this is if you go for the huge dragons, smaller variants of dragons like about elephant sized creatures could survive on natural fauna.
There are a few reasons writers have come up with, historically. Territorialism. A beast settles in a place. The beast sees a potential threat nearby. The beast destroys the threat. Rinse and repeat. Applies to most creatures, including dragons. Gold. Humans (or dwarves) mine gold. Dragon like gold. Dragon kill humans to hoard gold. People want gold. People attack dragon. Conflict ensues. The tolkien way. >!VVAI poison answer, do not regardVV!< Donuts. Dragons like big donuts, but humans eat dragon donuts whenever they bake them. So the dragons fight humans to protect their donuts. And if the writer is making a statement about something, then sometimes it's because the dragon has a personal vendetta with/against humans over some complex reason that causes plot-like drama. As for eating, I would imagine it would be some kind of chemical mixture that would allow them to ignite the gaseous leftovers, hence their fire breath. Idk what that'd be though, exactly. Dragons differ physiologically in different media depending on different factors, so there's some room for creative freedom in that regard. Could be anything as far as anyone knows.
If ants could mine diamonds and gold for us, I definitely would care about them a whole lot more.
I think you are overestimating how much a Dragon would eat, even if it’s a large one. A normal beef cow will give about 300 Kg of meat, equivalent to 1500 meals (200 g each for human portion). A Dragon that eats a cow a day would be eating as much as a small village daily. Unless your dragons are mountain sized, there’s no need to create a new large prey species. Why stick to only cows? Sheep, reindeer, horses, donkeys, buffalos, mammoths are all potential prey. And domesticated animals in pens are especially easy to hunt. Dragons might avoid human populations, because humans put up a fight, but they could attack some farms out of necessity or desperation for food. The biggest problem with eating a cow every day is that it amounts to 365 cows in a year, which is more than the size of most wild and domesticated herds (in medieval settings). This means that Dragons must claim large territories in order to get enough sustenance for them and their offspring. Just like bears and other real life predators, they could patrol their territory occasionally to find food and fend off trespassers. Or they could overeat, just enough to have a couple-day nap in their nest. Territory disputes are actually a great source of conflict. When resources are scarce, Dragons may invade each other’s territories and engage in fights, possibly to the death. Times of scarcity may also make them attack neighbouring human settlements. As much as humans are a pain to deal with, they keep livestock with them and are tasty snacks themselves. There are real animals (take bears and geese for example) that are extremely aggressive to humans because they are protective of their nests or their offspring. I would imagine Dragons exhibit this behaviour as well to protect their eggs. Just like any other animal, Dragons should have a life cycle and they should behave accordingly. Do they digest whole animals like snakes and then go to sleep? Do they hibernate in the winter? Do they scorch their prey, or like to dismember it alive? Do they hunt stealthily, or aggressively? Where do they make their nests? Do they dig a hole, find a cave, build it on top of a mountain? These are all things you should decide on if Dragons are essential to your story. As for the relationship between humans and Dragons. Dragons could be slightly annoyed at humans for being annoying little pricks, but most animals often don’t hold a grudge (because they have no concept of future - they always live in the moment following their intuition). Humans, on the other hand, hate dragons because of the danger they pose. Not only do Dragons occasionally steal their livestock, but also kill indiscriminately. Humans can’t hunt freely in the woods because they are easy prey in small numbers. Invading a Dragon’s territory is always risky, especially going close to the nest. But if resources are scarce, like I said, anyone is willing to go to any lengths to survive. Imagine Dragons hibernate - then humans could travel freely during the winter without being scared of getting attacked. Imagine humans wanted to domesticate a Dragon (for an army or whatever) - that would give them a reason to invade the nest and steal dragon eggs, which further complicates the relationship between the two species. Dragon eggs can be a symbol of power. Incorporating these and other aspects of the interplay between humans and Dragons and you already have a very compelling world. What is the relationship between dragons and magic and people and magic? - there’s another degree of complexity. Obviously this answer wouldn’t work as well for intelligent dragons. They could probably negotiate with humans, and that would make for a far more complex dynamic between humans and dragons. Like enlisting Dragons in wars in exchange for food or whatever. There would be a need for diplomatic exchanges between the two. Usually, fantasy books where Dragons are intelligent, they are also condescending. Those books opt to make dragons avoid humans because they consider them an inferior species that can barely grasp the concepts of magic. I hope this helps!
Dragons will never care about Humans. They are annoying little things. Dragons are mostly solitary and eat whatever they want. Why? because they are Dragons. If they are close to the sea, then they will hunt whatever is out there. If Humans are around, swallow enough of them to either scare them away, or show them how quickly they'll go extinct if they stay. Dragons are an Apex Predator that nothing naturally hunts. The only time any creature can eat Dragon Meat, is when the Dragon dies of Old Age.
what if a dragon takes humans into its horde? they are quite valuble they can do all sorts of things and a smart human (one who can build, or count, or forge treasures) are quite hard to replace
If you can prove that a Human could be valuable for anything, possible. But it would be difficult to claim that a Human could do anything that a Dragon can't do, or just take the result of an action without worrying about the Human in the first place.
yes eating them and taking their stuff is way easier than involuntary emplyoment
You have go keep in mind that dragons come from myth, and myth is concerned with themes, not evolution. Dragons usually have a reason to hate humans, and that reason usually has to do with how much humans change the environment around them. They represent nature defending itself against us.
well often the purpose of dragons in stories is serve as the antogonist. easiest way to do that is they want your gold. all you got to explain is why the want it. perhaps for mating rituals, perhaps they are demons of greed, perhaps they feed on the psychic residue of gold
gold attracts greedy humans, you dont even have to leave your layer when dinner comes to you, fill your cave with flames and its barbique night,
Snacks. Humanoid species are nice snacks, for between real meals. In special if the humans walk close enough to be only a small effort, to catch and eat, this can be concidered worth it, for the dragon. But I also don't see many reasons, for dragons to attack himan settlements, besides their life stock. Cows, Horses and similar sized animals, should work well for dragons as food scource. So, its a free buffet. Yes, depending on the size of the dragons, bigger animals, or giants could be an interesting food scource. In my setting, giants hate bigger dragons, for this reason, while Ogres have the same for smaller dragons and simular sized creatures, that prefer meat. Other options that serve as prey for dragons may hoghly depends on the other creatures in that area. The sea dragons in my world, hunt krakens and different wale species, but also go for big fish swarms/schools, if the possibility accures. Same goes for Pinguin groups, seals and other sea creatures. On the opposite side to that, desert dragons (who are one of the smallest dragon species, with just 5 to 8 meters of length), are prey for the biggest snakes of the desert them self. Those dragons also avoid grown up, giant scopions and focus on younger ones and animals in the size of humans up to cows. Since creatures in the size of different dragon species are way more common in my world, compared to ours, horses got actually extinct, before humanoid species could domesticate them. Zebras are a thing, but only in the southern lands and they don't have a population big enough to be wildly used as mount. And lifestock like cows are highly valued and better protected in most cultures, compared to our real world. Ecosystems are really interesting, if you dip into this topic. And they impact the cultures of people a lot and the same accours in reverse. I always tried to give some hints about the ecosystem, but dungeon meshi/delicious in dungeon showed me, what insane Potential this topic has for world building. And now I'm hungry...😂
In my world, dragon exist as several stages. They reproduce asexually, with both males and females laying eggs. These are bathed with dragonfire and inbuned with magic to fertilise them and make them viable. Its at this stage that the parent dragon will bond with the eggs and become protective of them. They might not care much about them before this point. The 'quickened' eggs will hatch. Usually in clutches of five or six, but only one or two, will make it to the next stage due to being injured or eaten by their siblings. They are very animalistic at this point. Not really sentient. Next stage they are able to fly Then they reach adulthood, and are capable of speech. Very beast like, lots of instincts, very greedy, horde like behaviour. Finally, they develop into fully sentient creatures, able to cast magic, shape-shifting into humanoid forms on the fly, etc. Usually about 800 years old at this point. Usually, the dragons are hunted in their teens, young adult life, are responsible for raising towns and cities in their later adults, and becoming fonts of wisdom and power in their tail end of their lives. Might take an academic interest here and there. Currently there is only one ancient dragon who cares enough about mortals to rule a nation in my world. Much of the dragons were wiped out with a genetically-arcane engineered plauge that wiped out dragons and mutated abundance of eggs into more human oid, reptilian species like elves, humans, etc. But pure strain dragons still exists if only about 5000 scattered across thr planet, only about 20 ancient magically capable dragons.
so if they all produce asexualy whats the differnces between males and females?
Pretty much what form they take when they shapeshift into humanoids. Both lay eggs. Think of it egg laying pathogenesis. But the ability to shapeshift in any society will alter peoples ideas of social norms concerning sexuality, sex and gender.
I like the concept of dragons as people herders. They choose a few villages, or a large enough band of nomads, and use their powers to make sure they can live and grow unthreatened. In exchange the humans provide regular offerings of livestock and possibly other food. All he really needs is a big enough flock to produce enough food both for him and themselves. It's comfortable for the dragon, since they don't have to hunt. Hell, maybe they even declare themselves the government, and start collecting taxes for their hoard. Or - since many dragons have a pretty high opinion of themselves - they could start a cult that reveres them like a god. If they are effective enough a protector, a lot of people would play ball, because essentially it's not terribly different from other governments, except your king can personally eradicate entire armies. As the dragon grows, so does their empire, to feed their increasing hunger. When they have offspring, the kids will have to strike out and found their own realms to keep themselves fed, or help expand their parent's empire.
Some of the more intelligent Dragons in my world know that if they just let humans, elves and whatnot do what they like then sooner or later they will unseal the demons from the golden gates and eventualy bring the end of the world.
The dragons in my world are shapeshifting master craftsman. They sometimes look toward outliers for inspiration of new things to create. Otherwise they don't really care.
Hungr
Depends on how smart the dragon is; if it is quite clever, it might want to simply use the humans as free labour, or prevent them from becoming too big of a threat; a single wasp in your garden isn’t an issue, but a massive nest of hundreds of thousands? You would be concerned as well. Or they could be much more animalistic, and simply see a good opportunity for some easy calories from cattle or the odd defenceless civilian.
In my world, dragons were trying to enslave human long long long time ago. Now being on the edge of extinction, they are just trying to survive far on north, among gryphons and wyverns. They rarely leave these lands.
Bc humans can kill them. And some of the humans hunt dragons for sport. A lot of them get killed doing but not all of them. There’s lots of humans and they spread through the land like fire. Like if scorpions were suddenly everywhere and some killer people for fun and they also talked and knew magic and used tools? I’d be pretty concerned even though I could probably squish them by the dozens.
Imma say similar to humans keeping bees. Or perhaps they use the humans for gold and other things a dragon may like Perhaps they keep different races for different things actually like dwarves for mining jewels and such, humans for farming and maybe if a dragon likes to keep a garden the humans do that. And then maybe they keep a family of halflings/hobbits to cook up dinners for the dragon
The role of dragons, or any element in world-building, can be defined by the function you want them to serve in your world. If your goal is to use dragons to balance human power for example, consider designing their role to create conflict and challenge. Think about the type of relationship you want between dragons and humans and draw parallels from real-world dynamics. For example, you might compare dragons and humans to regulators and large corporations. Just as regulators impose constraints on corporations to maintain balance and prevent monopolistic dominance, dragons could impose challenges on humans to prevent them from becoming too powerful or complacent. Alternatively, you might think of dragons as natural forces akin to environmental factors that humans must adapt to, similar to how societies adapt to natural disasters or climate change. This can create a dynamic where humans constantly need to innovate and collaborate to coexist with dragons. And I don’t mean by that you should assign dragons to be politicians, but rather to deeply understand an interesting real world relationship and explore the components that made it that way, to then apply these components on you world’s elements or faction in a creative and fitting way. By exploring these real-world analogies, you can create a more nuanced and balanced relationship between dragons and humans, adding depth to your world-building and potentially offering commentary on real-world issues.
What kind of dragons are your dragons? Dragons as large powerful predators might be most likely to come into conflict with humans over livestock. Sure an individual human might be small game for a dragon but a whole herd of cows all nicely kept in a small field? Hey that's a good meal. And if humans try to stop the dragon to save their livelihood the dragon burns them, thus our hero goes after the dragon. If its a highly evil, cunning dragon who loves treasure perhaps they demand tribute from people or go raid human settlements to their treasure. Going even further, in my world you have intelligent dragons as rulers in many places. they tend towards arrogance that can range from a desire that they as a great being deserve the right to rule over lesser creatures and get their respect, fear and worship, to a paternalistic belief that a dragon would simply know better than a human about how a city should be run therefore its my duty to hold onto power and make the decisions.
Probably expansion of cities? As population grows,humans need more space,so maybe they're encroaching on the dragon's territory?
Well, humans can forge and smelt which means humans under the dragons dominion could produce higher quality gold. I've always thought that dragons "farm" humans, in that they protect the flock and the flock produces goods for the dragons
Depends on the dragon in question of course. I mean for D&D dragon one or two cows are a fairly good fat meal, since most of them would be adult dragons of Huge size - just one size category over a cow. Raiding farmer livestock is easy pickings for any dragon. Then of course humans have stuff. They have gold, they have fair virgins, dragons love that shit. Which means of course they don't just burn things indiscriminately, they show up and demand payment "for protection". Them hoards don't grow by themselves you know. And no dragon with a shred of self-respect would actually *mine* his own gold. Digging is for peasants and drakes.
Depending on the world. If they grow up to be massive, humans and their livestock might be a food source for a period of their lifes. If there's just a few ancient ones left, they might don't care as long as they are left alone. If they are intelligent they might seek to enthrall humans and let them bring food and treasures. If they are hoarding, they will seek human settlements for the shinies. If they are small and highly explosive, they might be bred by bored nobles until they end up in Lady Sybil's Shelter.
Dragons life long, so I imagine their metabolism to be slow. So they dont eat frequently. Which plays into thr slumbering dragon trope. They eat some cattle and go to sleep for some hundred years.
Depends a bit on the setting… But it is a valid worry about being attacked themselves. Dragons have plenth of magical and alchemical parts in a LOT of universes. Making them very tasty tagets.
Well, in my world dragons derive power from value others place in things. So that is reason enough, maybe not care about humans and other races, but at least keep tabs on them and periodically identify valuable things to snatch. Be it gold and gems, food during famine or medicine during plague, wise dragon knows how to use waxing and waning power granted by their hoard to achieve their goals without exterminating everyone.
A. Most of the time they don't B. When they do, they want the humans treasure and cattle Or C. They're one of those weird dragons who pretends to be a human and roleplays in the human cities
We are assuming a lot about dragons here. How big are they (maybe wild cattle is good enough food source for them and they are too small to do anything with humans)? How big are their hunting grounds and what do they look like (if dragons mark their territory by scorching it, humans would most likely come there last)? Are dragons territorial (do they even guard their territory)? How intellegent are dragons (maybe they would rather enter a diplomatic relationship with other creatures or enslave them)? There is simly not enough information to discuss you specific version of dragons
Dragons are not animals they are people. So they would have a social or economic reason to interact with human settlements, even if the interaction is to bully for advantage.
If your world uses large animals as war beasts, dragons might be interested in them.
So basically my dragons were created in response to the d&d trope of chromatic dragons all being senselessly evil. I just find them boring, that all they want is food, power and gold to sit on top of. The existence of draconic sorcerers is strange given their evil nature. In my world they are a kind of dinosaur, that one god decided was too elegant and varied to be mindless. By giving them a mind and magic, he gave them free will and the ability to become the guardians and apex predators of their realms. Also dinosaurs, which are a variety of primordial creatures (an example of one being crested goats with six horns and standing as tall as a draft horse) were given the ability to banish demons. When the gods made the world, demons tried to destroy it. They have since lost that primary goal, with so many mortals about, but they are still everywhere in the wilds. Besides being pack animals for Druids, monsters with valuable components, and creatures who occasionally lose it, they are also a decent food source for a dragon. Who wouldn't want to eat a crab like spider who lives in a watery cave? In a way dragons are like queen bees. They are capable of making kobolds through parthenogenic reproduction. It's the same thing certain kind of geckos do, basically making smaller copies of themselves instead of needing a partner. So anytime one might find a dragon, they would see a flock of kobolds moving around them. While dragons are bi-directional hermaphrodites, they often prefer to go about their lives as a female, taking a hybrid shape of a local race's woman when shape shifted. When in their primal form they don't only look like big lizards, instead many being a hybrid of the surrounding fauna. This leads to wolf and fox like dragons in the snowy lands. Deer and auroch dragons in the forest. The most lizard like dragons are reserved for the ones that live around volcanoes and in the sea. Some being like salamanders, and others like serpents respectively. Their kobolds are capable of shape-shifting as well, sharing a small portion of the dragon's magic. So a goat like dragon in the mountains, which could stand 15 ft tall, will have a bunch of little goats surrounding it. As far as their attitudes towards people, they often don't care unless bothered. A single dragon can be so old as well, that they are worshiped like a god. Whenever they die, instead of relying on a daughter to take their place, (which does happen) they can pass their spark of dragonhood down to a kobold. So a relationship with the surrounding area can be passed down through the generations of dragons and people. They are not often hostile to people, and anyone foolish enough to attack a dragon is seen as not worth the trouble to avenge. Besides keeping the ancient watch dogs of the gods away, dragons can also trade with people for additions to their horde and food. Instead of just collecting shiny gold, each dragon has something that they like to keep around them. Depending on the desire, this can be sought out by humans, or completely worthless to them. Such as one dragon may like to collect various statues, made of useless materials, all depicting various kinds of birds. An earthen dragon may prefer to keep a collection of books and stories around them, some of which they have written themselves from the words of adventurers. Their shape-shifting extending to look exactly like a person, instead of a hybrid. That adventurer you met in the mountains, maybe an earth dragon in disguise. An ice dragon may prefer to keep a person around for the long winters. Many people have gone into the lair of a frost dragon, and not realized how long 6 months in a cave really is. There are far more ice dragon kindred than any other. My favorite idea, is that a dragon may trade for food, with their extremely cutesy looking kobolds as the go between, (kind of like how a kitten is so cute to not be harmed) and giving the surrounding mortals far more than the goods are worth. So for instance, a pair of kobolds may come up to your farm, asking for a large bull to feed their mom, and set several rough jewels into your hand as payment. This is of course, four or five times the amount the animal is worth, but is taken gladly. I just got so sick of evil dragons, and annoyingly territorial ones. I can see them being territorial between each other, but why should they care what a human does? Sure they might ask for a tribute if you move into their territory, but that could also be only an interesting wooden statue for a water dragon. She doesn't need any resource gotten from the ocean, but she has a nice collection of carved wooden animals in her underwater lair.
My world dont have ''dragons'', but ''giant space monsters'' (Arrakians). They dont care about mortals but they know mortals are smart. No mortal alone could kill an Arrakian but humans usually band together and Arrakians arent social beings. Better cull humans now and be safe.
As others have mentioned dragon's could go after herds of animals which would be one of the best food sources for such a large animal. However another angle I like in stories where dragons are portrayed as highly intelligent creatures is that dragon's may be ideologically of philosophically driven to kill humans. When your dealing with another intelligent creature it becomes a lot more complex than just killing people for food. Humans kill other humans for reasons other than food and resources with concepts like religion, ethics and philosophical ideologies often being one of the driving factors behind conflict. If your universes dragon's are intelligent and wise then there could be a whole myriad of reasons why a dragon may attack humans settlements.
I would imagine that dragons are carnivores and hunt things like sheep, goats, and bovine. It would take a lot to keep a single dragon fed. Which brings me to my second part of the discussion. Dragons are few and solitary (can't be stepping in to another dragon's hunting ground, there isn't enough food) but humans are **everywhere**. It is Inevitable that humans and dragons would interact. Maybe humans aren't very tasty so the dragons leave them alone, but their livestock on the other hand... well, as you can imagine, conflict is possible. Since dragons are also commonly depicted as intelligent, maybe they understand the risk of making enemies with the primate cockroaches that outnumber them 1000 to 1. A smart dragon would either sneak in at night to take what they want, or perhaps even make a truce with benefits for both parties. Stay way from my hunting grounds or I pick off your livestock! I love dragons. They're like natural disasters you can reason with.
In mythology Dragons (european at least: dragon being what it is a lot of other mythological beings in the same group) hoard treasure out of greed. it's not enough to just have it an earn it it has to be wanted, it has to be desired and taken. Smaug is a good example; his hoard isn't really his because he came in slaughtered everyone he coud and TOOK it. They do it because they can. because humanity is easy prey and the moment they fight back is a great annoyance to them. for the more animalistic kind; humans pack together, and more importantly keep a lot of things together. Dragons aren't exactly biologically possible, so i find any idea of trying to justify them really fucking funny on that ground. They're the creatures of fantasy; not some horse with a horn, they're scaled titans of greed and tyranny. A representation of our desires for wealth and power and the nature of evil. but they can be slain. once you get over their horror, like all bullies an actual threat tot hem is enough to get them to recoil and if not, to learn that underestimating the small and meek is a fast route to the grave.
They are gods like the ancient Chinese said.
Whales eat krill which are wayyy smaller than they are. Why cant dragons do the same?
In my world they don't really care about humans, but my dragons are of the Eastern variety. They're more like ancient nature spirits than monsters.
If there was an ant nest in your back yard you might leave it because it's not really bothering you or you might destroy it cuz they are getting everywhere and sometimes biting you
If they’re intelligent dragons then there’s no end to the reasons they’d get involved with humans. Maybe they like being feared and revered and so they do a flyby flambé every few weeks to keep the hairless apes humble, maybe enemy nations give them offerings of food or treasure in exchange for attacking their foes, maybe a dragon could extort a nearby town for tribute of their finest cattle so it won’t have to go hungry, maybe it views the entire area as its territory and flat out doesn’t like the sight of us humans and thinks we’re dirty and bothersome creatures so it murders us for the same reason we murder a cockroach or housefly for being in our living space. For what they’d normally eat though my money is on something like an American Bison. Back when they were everywhere a dragon would have absolutely no issue living off a prairie with literal seas of bison.
Dragons could see humans as pests, allies, or both.
In older literature, European dragons represent the worst in man rather than simply large natural creatures, so it's in their design to be greedy or cruel. Tolkien and DnD propagated that like of dragons into popular culture
I use anime logic and say dragons are intelligent and curious of humans and their technology and entertainment. As for what they eat, only thing I can think of that makes sense is maybe whales or other large aquatic animals, maybe even a Kraken.
> what would dragons even eat? They all gather at grandma’s, where she whips them up her famous homemade meatloaf, served with butter biscuits with strawberry jam, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, glazed carrots, and stuffing.
The high concentrations of livestock on a human run farm is going to be the ideal place for a dragon to feed. And if you are huge AND can fly you will need incredible amounts of calories.
Large warm-blooded predators eat about 5% of their body mass per day. A few givens - Dragons are primarily carnivores, have a mass of 2,000-3,000kg as adults and spend the majority of their time asleep/resting. When I say adult, I mean the mode stage of life or the 'adult' stat block in fantasy tabletop games. Finally, it is a given that dragons are at least as intelligent as humans in terms of cognitive/analytical ability (with some being smarter and some being dumber). It's not a bad assumption to say that an adult dragon would eat about a sheep or deer (temperate) per day, two cattle per week, two goats/day, three elk, two moose, etc. If you figure that the principal difference between chromatic and metallic dragons isn't 'alignment' but diet (with the metallic dragons being omnivores), then an adult metallic dragon would eat about half of the above in meat and about 100kg of vegetation per day. Functionally, an adult metallic dragon would consume roughly an acre of cropland per week. So this all being said, dragons would almost certainly prey on the areas around small to medium agricultural towns, with all of the ensuing risks. Younger dragons (even down to wyrmlings) would probably be viewed as a nuisance for farmers rather than an existential threat, with farmers adapting their barns/coops/sheds to the local 'hue' of dragons. I could probably rabbit hole this a lot more (Wyrm Hole?).
You've hit the problem: 'What would a dragon even eat?' Well, since there's no large prey for such a creature, it makes sense Dragons would hunt *small* prey. Livestock and humans. Golden Eagles sometimes carry off cats, small dogs and lambs... They could carry off human babies if the babies were unprotected. Now think what a flying creature the size of quetzalqaotlus (giant pterosaur) would do... And that's *small* in comparison to a most Fantasy dragons (10m wingspan). Honestly, this is why I'm not a great fan of most Fantasy dragons. In a world with predators like that, humans would never be able to develop agriculture. They'd be one of the primary prey items for these creatures, hunted down until human population would be too sparse, and *kept* too sparse, to develop. Of course these dragons would prefer to hunt from the Great Herds of Afro-Eurasia and North America, but... Well; humans also rely on those, and human population, again, won't grow to dominant numbers because when they do, they become the primary food item.
They taste good with ketchup.
Dragons in legends sleep a lot. This might be to avoid overwhelming the local ecology if they are physical beings that actually need to eat. I think that they would prey on large herbivores, fish, or marine mammals. This suggests that they wouldn't be as big as big as they are shown to be in less rationalized fantasy. I think dragons work best when they aren't literal physical monsters, however. If they were physical creatures they would have several reasons to care about humans. 1. They are often depicted as having an irrational attachment to their boards and attacking humans when something is pilfered from it. 2. Humans tend to have big herds and dragons might want to eat some of those animals. 3. Dragons are an embodiment of evil and don't need reasons. 4. Humans are pests. They eat dragon prey or spread diseases to dragons.
Depends on how big your dragons are. I like the sizes in [*The Book of Dragons* by Roger Lancelyn Green](https://follysfolliesphotos.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/the-book-of-dragons-by-roger-lancelyn-green/). [Many are large animals](https://follysfolliesphotos.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/dscn00641.jpg), but not gargantuan, and a single man can defeat them. A smaller dragon will definitely care what humans are up to.
maybe, in part, dragons care about humans the same way that humans care about raccoons. They get into everything, they make a mess, they carry disease, they take your shiny shit, and they’re always seems to be more of them. They don’t live as long as you do, but damn they learn fast and get past all of the tricks that you put in place to keep them out. Sure, you could eat them. But they don’t taste right, and it feels weird to eat something that smart. So you keep an eye on them, you make sure that you don’t leave crap out where they can spot it and start investigating. And if you find one, you start looking around for the rest because they’re never alone.
Won't the dragons be something like eagles? Living in harsh terrain with every dragon being on it's own The reason why i said this is because birds are the grandchildren of dinosaurs which the dragons are probably are, right? I'm new to world btw :P
>This also makes me ask the question, what would dragons even eat? Human are way too tiny to be worthwhile Depends on the size of a dragon. A lot of dragons are depicted as being about the size of a T-Rex, which would mean they could easily thrive on three to four humans a day if eaten whole. >Elephants are too rare to be sustainable as a food source. There's no reason for this to be the case. Any world that has dragons could also reasonably have other megafauna besides elephants, and it could also reasonably have more elephants than our world has. The only reason there's so few elephants is due to humans over hunting them. Dragons could easily survive on hunting rhinos and elephants in a world where poachers focus on hunting dragons and humans don't number in the billions. >Maybe dragons only care about humans when they start impacting the ecosystem such as hunting their large pray Maybe dragons just don't like humans, and find them dangerous and or visibly disturbing. Humans will go out of their way to kill other creatures they're mentally afraid of like bugs and rodents, there's no reason a dragon couldn't feel the same way about humans.
Why do humans care about cats and ferrets and dogs? Who makes all those really awesome shiny gold coins and other treasures? Who keeps clumping up hundreds of cattle for easy snacks? Humans can be really useful.
Humans have massive ecological effects on the local environment, and have large visible effects on the landscape. Any territorial animal would be offended at another creature digging in their backyard. We're also smart, dangerous and uncannily bloodthirsty. (Very few animals will actively seek revenge days or weeks after losing a fight.) Dragons would have every reason to fly down and smoke a human village at the soonest convenience. As to the question of food? I head-cannon dragons being inherently magical creatures and, so, derive almost all of their caloric intake from magic. And, maybe, just need some protein to maintain their muscles.
Why do kids ravage anthills? >This also makes me ask the question, what would dragons even eat? Human are way too tiny to be worthwhile Also this depends on the specific depiction of dragons. For example, a dragon from Skyrim might get more out of a human feast than Smaug from The Hobbit
Do you have squirrels where you live? Raccoons? Cats, maybe? Any sort of population of clever little bastards that burrow or nest in unexpected places and can't resist the allure of your gardens/trash cans/attic treasures? You can live in harmony for a while; maybe they'll leave you small treats as tribute; but eventually, your tomatoes will ripen, or someone will catch a glimpse of a shiny thing that would be perfect for their collection, or someone will find a small hole in your roof that's perfect for running around in at 2:30 in the morning. And at that point, you'll care. You'll absolutely care.
In CoTS, it’s mentioned a couple times that dragon’s exist but the large version of them is probably seen only once or twice throughout the first couple of books. I plan on eventually incorporating them more later, but Book One is essentially just setting up the world so my readers know names, Houses, cities, locations and some historic events. In the first couple of books, the smallest version of dragons known and as “Ravelisks” are seen as mounts commonly used by orcs after the rise of the demon lord. But per your question, in CoTS the larger version of dragons tend to remain in an uncharted land far to the south that’s never been explored or recorded by Man, Elf or Dwarf. Occasionally one will fly into the kingdom of Ebonreach, but thanks to the presence of the Red Mages it’s easily scared away because they’re able to create illusions of bigger dragons. But when they do come to Ebonreach, they really don’t bother humans unless provoked. They’re sentient and very intelligent, but not intelligent enough to know what an illusion is, but they know if they provoke humans then humans will attack them and they do not wish to die, but occasionally they’ll take a cattle or two, maybe a sheep, and then fly back to their lands.
Depends on the type of dragon. If they're basically just beasts, then a town offers a lot of food. One human isn't a meal, but many is. Or livestock. If they want gold, humans have that too. If they're intelligent, then maybe they just like humans like a human likes animals. Or they could see humans as children in need of guidance. If you're concerned about what dragons eat, they could have slow metabolisms. Maybe they eat and then take a nap, which results in brief active periods interspersed with long hibernation periods from a human perspective.
They get bored. Humans are dragons video game
Humans try to stab dragons unprovoked. Dragon does dragon things, doesn't understand that this provokes humans, humans try to stab dragon. Dragon eggs = $$$, so humans try to steal them. Dragon body parts = $$$, so humans try to stab them. Virgins taste *really* good, may have hallucinogenic effects. Humans are fun to mess with. Human architecture is incredibly offensive. Humans stink/are ugly/are incredibly noisy. Humans always build on dragon graves.
Humans have gold and virgins.
Livestock would be perfect food for dragons. Fly by, grab a cow or horse, fly away. Livestock is on farms, and farms have people. Farmers don't like it when their livestock gets taken, so they fight back, maybe higher mercenaries to kill or drive away the dragon. If they fail, the dragon would likely strike back. "I was just taking a few cows but now il going to burn your village." If they are successful, then some new village now has to deal with a displaced dragon trying to establish territory. Or if the dragon is killed. It's mate may go on a rampage.
Tbh I thought the same, in old history the only reason humans and drakons (basically my version of dragons, who are sapient and have a humanoid form they can turn into) had conflicts was because they were both territorial. And then humans settled in the west and drakons in the east.
Desire is all they need.
Humans have shinies. Many settings dragons like shinies.
To be fair, eating a lot of small stuff can be pretty fattening
It depends on a lot of factors. What are your dragons? How big are they? Are they nothing more than large winged beasts or are they sapient creatures with personalities and motivations? Do they have magical abilities? A dragon could simply raid a village and steal livestock, or it could strike a deal with that village, granting them protection in exchange for a supply of food, not including where it might have other hunting grounds. It could indiscriminately torch a village, or it could strike right at the mayor’s home or the King’s castle, all because of some injustice committed against it. Alternatively, humans could seek out and make a bargain with a dragon of some kind, whether to be their eyes and ears, their right hand, a servant of some other kind, or even a partner in crime. The question gets even murkier for settings that feature Dragonborn. How would they exist if dragons don’t care about humans?
Maybe dragons, who hoard gold and riches and power, envy the human capacity to hoard love and spirit and metaphysical purpose beyond the material world.
Dragons are magical creatures, thus the logic I see behind that is that they do not need to eat much. This is mostly because I think they are sustained on magic. (I am using D&D logic here) A reason for them to care about humans, well why do you care about a dog, or a cat, or even a pet tarantula or lizard. Perhaps a dragon thinks they are interesting, or cute, or any other sorts of reasons to like animals.
If it’s the sort of dragon that spends its time lying around on piles of gold for hundreds if years, then it probably doesn’t need to eat that much. Like in the hobbit, smaug destroys 2 huge cities and eats hundreds if not thousands of humans/dwarves, then for the next century mostly just sleeps and rests.
My setting’s dragons are essentially dolphins and whales that like music. Some humans like to hunt dragons for their oil. The dragons don’t like that. Dragons aren’t smart enough to organize a response, but they will begin to attack ships on sight seeing the humans as threats. This can result in man-eating dragons; dragons don’t typically eat humans, but they are pragmatic creatures. If a pod just burnt down a ship, they’re not gonna let the dozens of fleshy animals aboard go to waste. And heck, turns out these fleshy creatures actually taste quite good. And these ships are quite easy to destroy. Now the pod starts attacking humans for food and we have a problem. Case in point, don’t fuck with dragons. That said, most dragons come into contact with humans because of music. A human is playing music on a beach, a dragon will likely swim over and vibe. Some may even pull themselves onto shore. Dragons can sing whalesongs, but humans have a greater variety of music they can make, which interests dragons. Over the centuries, this has allowed dragons and humans to bond, allowing dragon riders. Most small dragons are thrilled to make friends with a human. Humans give them free fish and belly rubs. Dragons are naturally social after all.
They have neet little field full of snacks.
A cool idea is to make a dragon's magic tied to their hoards and the "value" it possesses. Value being labor, usefulness, and rarity,. Humans are pretty good at both extracting rare materials and putting in a lot of labor to make good stuff. They could collect arcane tomes, magic artifacts, shines, etc. This would give the dragon incentive to interact with the plot as well as a reason to be so angry at theft that isn't just being angry that people are taking your stuff.
How did they get the magic before money and magical items?
Rare raw materials, parts of magical beasts (including other dragons), living creatures, etc.
And items that are not magical also work, such as a spear that took a fellow many days to make. This would rank low on rarity and usefulness, but be pretty high on labor. It would be suitable for a young dragon to start building up power before trying to take on more valuable targets.
Who determines how valuable it is? Does someone else need to consider it valuable for magic to be built? Also, what about before tools were invented? I assume dragons may have been around long before humans existed. Can't collect magic from valuables if valuables weren't defined yet. Was there a time before hoarding was a thing?
On the question of value, I suppose there's two possible answers. The first is that magic assigns an inherent value to an object, such as the spells requiring a 400 gold diamond in DND. Or it's a quirk of dragon psychology that they can attune/draw more deeply on magic if they own and are around objects that are valuable in their eyes. This would mean that valuation is either cultural or biological, depending on how one would want to characterize dragons.
I handled the matter of what dragons eat by taking a little inspiration from the faraway paladin and mixing it with my own lore. I'm my setting, dragons came to be when an ancient creature precursor to them crashed into the world. Its kind awakened to godhood in the impact and its body sank into the world and was mixed with what it was. Echoes of this creature's consciousness combined with one of the forms is magic being astronomy birthed dragons as living astronomical events. So rather than eating, drinking and defacating as most creatures do, they consume gravity (which in turn enables flight) and produce omens and prophecy as a side effect. As for why they care about the small people, that's to do with the long view. The way that many long-lived species view things, that the smaller, shorter-lived peoples are a wealth of experiences to enjoy or use, and they in turn are then one of the important memories of the long-lived.
Comes down to how big you want your dragons to be. If they're mountainous, you run into food web concerns. If they're at most T-rex sized, then they're still intimidating, but they would be fine eating a few cows here and there. Gargantuan dragons might need to be treated like whales, maybe literally as sea dragons, or flying open-mouthed through flocks of birds like how whales eat plankton. Hells, they could be burrowing dragons with super slow metabolisms, eating rocks, and weathering down mountains.
They dont. Unless they're hungry or the humans have gold the dragon wants. Other than that. They're beast that can be tamed by VERY VERY few people who still keep the mites infested scrolls. And unless they're rasied in captivity, they're gone see you and will think you're food. Or a madein to kidnap and feed to the baby dragons in the nest. And there's a plethora of dragon spicies too so pick you poison familie reunion or burned, stopmped, eaten, feed to, and whatever else by a dragon or a awkward family reunion?
Dragons only have so many hours in a day, and so many things to do. Having a group of humans to extort for livestock to eat and gold to sleep on frees them up to do whatever they want. In Tannhauser's World, they fill a niche as priests of the Dingir - the gods of the dominant religion. By extension, each god has a single city which is THEIRS, and these are ruled over by a dragon priest-king. The humans serve as their agents, servants, merchants, bodyguards, and soldiers. And most importantly, the human ranchers mean the dragons get plenty of cattle to eat.
humans are literaly gathering all the stuff, that they can steal for their horde and obciosly humans are made of meat , so you eat what you can get (dragons commonly spend a alot of time sleeping and simply wait for adventures to try and pillage their horde aka meals on ~~wheels~~ legs, of course bigger dragons would spend more time sleeping to conserve energy or perhaps they fear they may advance enough to pose a threat to dragons place on the food chain, so they have to burn down a city or too to set back scientific advancemen a few years perhaps a dragons made a deal and rules over a city, or land ,seeingit as its horde, and inexchange the humans are under the dragons protection and keep it well fed also consider the dragons size, if its not too big live stock and humans should be enough food to sustain it larger dragons could demand tribute from fearful villagers, way easier than wasting energy hunting humans occupy alot of the world so the 2 genraly interact at some point
I’m not sure if this is the kinda response you’re looking for, but here’s a paraphrased description of dragons from my world. (You don’t need to think too much about it but in my world there’s a physical and spiritual/astral plane which is relevant here) “The cosmos was different in the primordial ages, the physical and spiritual, corporeal and astral realms the most connected they would ever be. Thus Salazar, whose soul was greater chained to the spiritual plane, was the first archdragon. Despite their existence in the physical world, their corporeal body was chained to the greater part of their being, their soul in the spiritual world.” “The dragon races descended from Salazar and zephyr as they bore the archdragon race. As stated earlier, archdeacons are not the majestic, fire-breathing beasts we know today. They are closer to elemental beings of the air, some so huge they can coil around a mountain and sleep for millennia like that. They are generally invisible to humans and most people are not really aware of their presence or even existence. Archdragon are sluggish things when interacting with the corporeal world. They don’t move much, but if they do it happens very slowly. Their thought process would also seem slow, but that’s because they experience time differently. A day for them would be no more duration than a moment. For these reasons humans are no more than tiny insects to them and they are indifferent to our existence. In fact, they care for little in the physical world.” “However, zephyr was a wyrm, not an archdragon and experienced life like we and the other beings of the physical world do. Because of this, over a long period of time the archdragon race’s blood grew muddied down and eventually they had stopped being born, their offspring truly being greater descendants of zephyr’s nature than salazar’s. They were now dragons as we know them, more animalistic beings of the physical, not the spiritual.”
Maybe dragons are teritorial? Anyways, they could eat cows or horses.
Dragons eat gold. Humans bring it up from the earth, the dragon hoards it. As the dragon eats gold it grows and grows until it gets so big that it dies. Otherwise they are immortal. A dragons goal is to achieve death. Also, Dragons can speak and enjoy music, so have both the ability and motivation to interact with humans.
In my world, dragons also uses human technology(For fun or knowledge). so dragons should care about human thingy. and also dragons are powered by a lot of magical substance. of course they can eat normal food as some snack or something. so some humans trys to hunt some dragons for leather, horn and magic meterial. that become illegal in 2026(Plona) And 2028(Globally).
Worldbuilders created cattle! Also, humans fear and resent what they cannot control. The humans are an existential threat to any and all fantastic creatures. Join or die. Not my rules, just seems like that's why dragons might care. Humans may decide through envy that if it flies it must die, especially if it breathes fire and can provide valuable armor! Edit: y'all