Heart Dragons

A bloody rebirth

Throughout the fourth era of Llagnyn, magic permeated all life. One effect of this were the heart dragons, souls of murdered individuals who took flight to avenge their deaths.

Birth of a Dragon

The way a heart dragon is born is unique amongst the creatures of Llagnyn. After an individual is murdered, their heart is hardened to marble of a whitish-pink color. This becomes the dragon's egg. Over the course of seven months, features of the dragon's body, including head, legs, wings, and tail, slowly form on the outside of the egg. at the end of those seven months, the features all detach from the egg's surface, save at the points where they join the main body, and become functional. At the center of the dragon's spine remains a small but noticeable lump with the imprints of the various parts of the body, where it can curl up if need be. After birth, the hunt begins.

Task of a Dragon

A heart dragon has only one purpose: to avenge its death. It knows by instinct who killed it, and hunts them down. Upon finding the murderer, the heart dragon will try at all costs to rip out their heart and eat it. After doing so, as long as the body is still there, it will attempt to curl up back into its heart shape and replace the spot where the previous heart had been. If it is successful at doing so, the consciousness of the dragon's previous life will be restored in the new body.

Lost Dragons

In the event that a heart dragon's target dies before it finds them, or if they are unable to find their heart, eat it, and take its spot within the body, it will become a lost heart dragon. Like normal heart dragons, they are friendly to all. However, they have no purpose. They tend to roam around and form nests with other lost heart dragons in cemeteries and graveyards. These nests are made of pieces of marble they find, and they eat of the corpses that surround them. These dragons can breed together, and although lost heart dragons cannot become them, their children are known to be very popular pets.

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Appearance of a Dragon

As noted previously, a heart dragon has a pinkish-white marble skin, with a lump in the middle that they can curl into. A dragon egg is about four inches tall, with a three inch maximum circumference. As a child, a heart dragon will reach an average length of nine inches, extending to an average of sixteen inches long in adulthood. Unlike many other dragons in Llagnyn, heart dragons are unable to breathe fire, but they have many other features that can be used to attack and unnerve their foes. Inlaid in their sculpted heads are the eyes of their previous bodies, known to make many uneasy at the intelligence they see inside, despite not demonstrating any outward intelligence in their actions. Their beaks are as wickedly sharp as each of the pairs of talons that line their two pairs of legs, as well as the single point at the end of their tails. Their two wings rise a few inches above their heads in height.

Response

Different sectors of society react in quite different manners to the appearance of heart dragons. Many, in particular anti-magical society, are flat-out against them, and have developed job positions specifically for their extermination. These individuals often incorporate similar tactics to many professional assassins, who've had to develop ways to be able to continue their trade without swarms of dragons hunting them down. The most common of these tactics is the Red Tail sword form, which flows around gracefully to confuse one's victim, along with specifically targeting the heart. If punctured, the heart will never turn to a dragon egg. Similarly, if a heart dragon's head is cut off or its lump in the middle of its back is punctured through, it will die. In the latter case and when puncturing the pre-egg heart, it will also leak a large quantity of blood. Even in sorcerer society,

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many are averse to heart dragons, and will destroy the hearts of their loved ones, even if they die of natural causes, to prevent them becoming heart dragons. Indeed, many are quite alarmed at being reborn in the bodies of their killers, and often have difficulty adjusting to a life being shunned by many and often commit suicide, if not dying from wounds made by the heart dragon on entry into the new body first. Others embrace their new lives, either with a life of crime or as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf. In these more accepting areas, usually in sorcerer society, heart dragons are often kept as pets, though usually only those that have been bred from lost heart dragons. Although their talons and tails are often clipped to prevent injury, they are known to be very friendly and protective pets, who often bind themselves to a specific owner for the whole of their lives. Some families take the heart dragons made by their own relatives to keep as pets to commemorate their lives. This leads to dragon crypts, small buildings with large nests in them, containing the dragons of generations of a family. Producing these often requires the manipulation of others to inadvertently kill individuals on their deathbeds, and then to kill those individuals to create a lost heart dragon.

Type

Metaphysical