Dragons and Wurms

 

The Adversary. The Dire Serpent. The Old Horror. Dragon. These are the words by which a certain family of beast is known. The creatures of the World are innumerable in their deviations. Even among kinds thought docile, monstrous individuals may arise, and in lands thought peaceful may spring a new form of unwholesome life.

The draconic brood stands above them all as the direst of predators.

 

 They bear a passing resemblances to serpents, though not wholly so. Though both may have claws and wings and fangs, the draconine are closer to the hirsute beasts of the Known World in the configuration of their bones than they are to the scaled folk. Tucked under are their legs and strong their jaws, though it is there where the resemblance ends, for as the reptile they are scaled, even if they may sometimes sport fur or leathery skin in patches or along their underbelly.

In truth, they resemble nothing more than some primordial version of Chthon's daimons, those hateful things from the depths of the earth. It is known such fiends take the forms of man to better understand how to degrade our souls, even if madly amalgamated with the traits of other beasts. But a dragon is as such, if it had started as a tormentor of some prehuman reptilian people. Indeed, many believe it to be so, that the dragon is the last echo of some antediluvian time, when even the Pagan Gods were subordinate to another, stranger dynasty, worshiped by another, stranger people. Now, their monsters are all which remain.

The cycle of a dragon is in three stages;

The first is its youngling phase, already terrible. A kind of first maturity as its body develops into a passably adult form, but still with much more to do. These may be the size of a wolf or bear, though as newborns they are perhaps the scale of a weasel. Quickly do they grow, and strangely, no two being quite alike. They are feral, bestial, driven by mad instinct and terrible passions. Most are slain in this stage, but even so they are a fearsome foe. How many men could best a Worldly hunter of men in combat? How many if it were armored, venomous? Even a lesser dragon is a terrible thing to face, even if overshadowed by what comes after.

If one lives long enough, it shall continue to grow. Now the size of an elephant or rhinoceros, it is a proper dragon at last. Just as its body grows, so too do its capabilities? Terrible attributes manifest. It may drip poison, rendering the earth foul and unusable for miles. It may belch flame, or surround itself with dragonets; stunted spawn which are made to serve it. And it grows cunning. Though it has no capacity for speechcraft, it possesses the ability to learn. As a solver of problems it is as cunning as a man, but whatever combination of flesh and spirit grants of empathy and communication are wholly absent from it. It is said in the sea there are boneless, crawling things which too are solitary and clever, and thus the dragon may be compared to that in its mentality.

Most know of dragons, and think them the pinnacle of their terrible brood.

But this is not so.

Should a dragon live yet long enough, then it shall grow even stranger. Down in the far depths of the world dwells the wurm, the final stage of draconic morphology. Great like a serpent, many-legged and perhaps multi-winged, the size of a great whale or the sea or larger yet striding upon the land (though it may also swim). Each a unique monstrosity, they may live for thousands of years in the lightless caverns they prefer, for such places teem with life to sustain them but lack the sprawling kingdoms of man which may challenge their dominance. But foolish is the one who thinks they are confined to that abyssal realm, or never inclined to leave.

Wurms are more cunning even than dragons, though their alien mentality remains. By now they may well be practitioners of Gnosis and if not, still possess the potential to learn. They view the realms of men as natural enemies, fellow predators that impact their territory as much as they do themselves. Thus ever do they act to curb those places which grow to prosperous above them. That is not to say they win every time, but those who would face a wurm speak of it as a battle as terrible as against any invading army. And more often than not the beast itself is not slain, but wounded, retreating back into the depths to plot another attempt, long after time has taken its would-be slayers (though with the proliferation of sinners and monsters in this age, this is easier said than done).

Rarely do wurms fight alone, for most spawn swarms of dragonets and cow lesser dragons to their service. Cults too there are, wurm-worshippers who use the Theurgy of Flesh to grow closer to their subterranean lords. Indeed, a wurm is comparable to a daimon in its power, but is not one in truth. It is still subject to the flesh lording over the spirit. It is merely that this flesh is potent enough to rival those great spirits.

They are horrible to see in motion. A great scaled serpent crawling on many limbs, its dragonets and greater kin circling above and shrieking below. Chimerae with claws and wings of their own driving masses of slave soldiers and mad fanatics, painted with the noxious colors of their lord, at the front of their host. At once cattle and shield wall, for often will the dragonets pull one aside to devour them. 

Their families are typically kept behind the front, as incentive to obey.

It is even said that there are kingdoms ruled by men-turned-wurms, chimerae of draconine flesh grown so large they rival their wild counterparts, though lacking in their terrible vitality. What grants them power is their human minds, which understand the ways of their once-kin and so may master instead of destroy them.

Though one may think them in league with Chthon, it is not so. They are but beasts. If they were once another race's devils, that time has long since passed. Whatever malevolent will which may once have driven them has abandoned their lot to roost in the souls of mortals and in the horrible daimons which now hide above the Inner Fire, and has left only the tumorous, twisted shells of the Adversaries to wander unguided, the relics of an age forgotten even by the oldest living daimons.

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The obligatory "dragons in my setting" post. I have always been a fan of this take, albeit I have my own additions. I prefer monstrous, freakish dragons over the awe-inspiring, of middling size compared to kaiju. In my eyes, a dragon ought to be capable of being slain by a setting's knight-equivalent if they are of sufficient valor and cunning. In the Known World, a single knight can be quite powerful, so the dragons are scaled accordingly. Certainly, confronting it with a party of venturesome types is probably the wiser move, but you get the idea.