Dragonsworn
Citizens of the City of Ten Thousand Daggers are well aware that the line between racketeer and actual protector can be blurry. The bravos who routinely hound and threaten a shopkeeper to pay their protection dues can instantly transform into heroic defenders ready to lay down their lives to protect that same merchant against a threat from outside of the neighborhood. Dragons followed a similar arc from extortionist to guardian. Before the Dragon Pacts, it was common for the dragons to demand tribute from the cities of Tarsa, with the implication being that failure to comply would result in the dragon releasing havoc upon the settlement. Instead of gold, the dragons demanded that youths from the village be offered up to them.
It was generally assumed that the young men and women taken as tribute were eaten by the dragon, but why this belief caught on remains a mystery. Given the sheer size of a dragon, the idea that a single scrawny human adolescent would be worth eating--much less worth going through the trouble of extorting a town for the pleasure of eating--seems rather ridiculous when seriously considered even briefly. It wasn't until the time of Dragon Kings that people began to understand what really became of the dragons' abductees.
It could be a birthmark, or a habitual mispronunciation of a certain word, or just a distinctive flash of anger in the eyes, but over time people began to see evidence that the masked strangers who were part of every Dragon King's entourage were none other than the tributes handed over to the dragon years earlier. The dragons weren't demanding the town's youth so they could snack on them, they were demanding tributes so they could train them to act as agents and spies. Even after the truth of the arrangement became an open secret, neither the dragons nor their servants (eventually dubbed "Dragonsworn") ever admitted to it. When Kelik the Hunter banished the dragons from the world, most Dragonsworn adapted to other lines of work, but a few continued to do their best to serve their banished dragon master for the remainder of their lives.
Career
Qualifications
Dragons often specified that the tributes offered must be virgins, but this may have simply been a way of ensuring the youth (and presumably, impressionability) of the dragon's servants. Whether a dragon specified that tributes be male, female, or either could be a either a matter of preference or a calculated decision based on how the dragon expected its agents to fulfil their duties.
Perception
Purpose
To serve as their dragon master's agents in the world of man.
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