Man Eater's Madness

by me with Midjourney

Numaness the Mystic, dragon

  "Just as ogres, skopen, and jormangers pass their taint on to their offspring, dragons with cannibal sickness pass their condition on to their offspring. Most of the most voracious and infamous man eating dragons of recorded history came from a long line of man eaters."

by me with Midjourney

-Kovenoth the Builder, dragon

"Addiction has destroyed the lives of many humans and sadly, dragons, for all our wisdom and might, are not immune to the dangers of addiction either.   Most dragons can have a favorite food, but are not defined by the food they eat. I like to eat horse flesh, but not I'm not addicted to it, I only eat it when it is convenient.

  Dragons that eat the flesh of mortals often quickly become obsessed with eating mortal flesh and will go out of their way to seek out more mortal flesh.   Many human scholars and more than a few dragons believe that dragons are completely immune to Cannibal Sickness, but there does seem to be a form of connected mental illness.   Dragons with a taste for mortal flesh are nearly always very cruel and vindictive. There is what humans call a 'chicken or the egg" problem. Does eating mortal flesh makea dragon cruel or do dragons who are already cruel seek to each mortal flesh.   ('Chicken or the egg' is a bad metaphor though since the egg came first because dragons laid eggs before chickens walked the face of Scarterra, but that is neither here nor there).   Much like lesser predators, dragons that hunt in the wild will usually focus on the weak and infirm among herds of prey. Going back to me eating horseflesh, I'm perfectly content to eat elderly nags. It's more economical than eating strong stallions and mares.   Dragons that develop a taste for manflesh often have a strong preference for eating the best and most promising mortals. Beautiful maidens, athletic young men, young royalty, and wise sages. This is sick and twisted in more ways than one. These dragons take delight in stunting the collective growth of humanity.   Worse still, some will physically or psychologically torture their meals before hand. It is also common for man eating dragons to eat their special meals in front of onlookers in order to spread fear and despair."

"It is possible to cure and redeem an ogre or an ollum with magic, determination and luck. It only works if the cannibal wants to be redeemed though.   I've seen it happen with my own eyes...once. I've seen many failed rehabilitation attempts. Gnomes are especially enthusiastic about trying to redeem cannibals and for every cannibal that is successfully redeemed, a great many gnomes and humans are eaten by a cannibal who was lying about wanting to be redeemed.   Whether good or evil, we dragons are smooth talkers. If I meet a man-eating dragon that claims to want to reform her evil ways, I will not give her the benefit of the doubt. It's just not worth the risk. I say kill them all and let the Nine worry about their souls can be salvaged.   Maybe, maybe, the offspring of a man-eating dragon can be redeemed if they were adopted and raised by a dragon of great integrity, but even then I think it might be safer just to purge the tainted hatchlings. If you try to save a hatchling with latent man-eating tendencies and you fail, that dragon can grow up to eat hundreds or even thousands of innocent humans in the future.   -Fremiss the Vibrant, dragon

by me with Midjourney

-Jemmurth the Swamp King, dragon.

"It does not matter what your race is, if you never eat mortal flesh, you will never contract Cannibal Sickness.   We dragons are not immune to Cannibal Sickness, but we are resistant to it. If you only eat manflesh on special occasions, your odds of becoming addicted to mortal flesh are extremely remote."

 

by me with Midjourney

-Kovenoth the Builder, dragon

"According to legend. dragons that develops a taste for the flesh of other dragons will physically mutate in extreme ways, far exceeding the changes witnessed in ogres and skopen. Supposedly these mutations include growing additional limbs, wings, or even a second head.

  In the the First Age, mutant dragons like this were put down by their own kind with extreme prejudice, so this was rare, though the number of dragon cannibal mutants increased drastically during the First Unmaking.   A lot of the dragon activity in the early the Second Age involved untainted dragons putting these degenerates down. This might have given the ancient elves some breathing room as the surviving dragons were largely occupied with internal affairs, and thus unable to interfere much with the newest race of mortals to emerge.   As far as I know, there have never been any acts of true dragon-on-dragon cannibalism during the Third Age. But just because dragons have stopped eating dragons doesn't mean others haven't tasted dragon flesh. Many have tried, few have succeeded.   As for the faux-cannibalism of dragons eating lesser mortals, written and oral records suggest that our ancient forebears of the First Age did not consider it taboo to eat the flesh of non-dragon mortals though many claimed not to like the taste. At the time, the most plentiful mortal flesh available was the flesh of giants and their flesh tastes awful...or so I've been told.   Dragons eating mortal flesh never stopped in the Second Age and the the Third Age. It was only in the current age where some dragons tried to making eating the flesh of any mortal a taboo.   Taboo or not, from a practical standpoint, nothing galvanizes would-be dragon hunters than man-eating dragons so it's good to avoid eating manflesh if only to avoid making unnecessary enemies.

by me with Midjourney

-Jormmuth the Swamp King

 

"It does not matter what your race is, if you never eat mortal flesh, you will never contract Cannibal Sickness.   We dragons are not immune to Cannibal Sickness, but we are resistant to it. If you only eat manflesh on special occasions, your odds of becoming addicted to it is extremely remote."