Fever-induced speculation on fantasy metaphysics incoming.

That dragon hoards consist of valuable items is a given, but strikingly, our draconian peers seem to prefer manufactured items. Raw silk, ore ingots, and uncut gems may incidentally find their way into the dragon’s repository, but tradition dictates that the vast majority of the hoard constitutes coins, jewellery, weaponry and armor, and other goods processed by the hands of an artisan and/or enchanter.

This reveals something about what dragons value and what they’re drawn to. They do not make lairs in gorges with untapped veins of valuable metals nor sit atop fields of silk worms. Dragons prefer items that exemplify and show skill and craftsmanship. Artisanal virtuosity and industrial effort count, it seems, for more than the mere raw material value. But if production and artifice were indeed central to the dragon’s value assessment, why would the dragon not turn its energy to stimulating such endeavors in other species – or why indeed not training itself and learn the arts of manufacturing?

Because, it seems, they cannot. By nature, dragons are not creators. They are usurpers. In this sense, dragons are, despite all their power and might, supremely uninspired entities. The mechanisms and processes of creation and meaningful production of goods and items are inaccessible to them, and they can only behold them from afar. But o what beholders they are.

As any good robber, the dragon must be an expert in identifying value, and to this end, the dragon’s preternatural senses are unmatched. Dragons do not carefully scout out prospective lairs; they are simply drawn to them. A large enough hoard will in time simply attract draconic attention. Not because of its value in raw material, but because of its value in the thing all sentient species respect but dragons crave: the value of creation.

As Burning Wheel teaches us, dwarves are greedy, and not in the traditional human sense. They are greedy for the same thing dragons are; displays of imaginative, creative force. But unlike dragons, dwarves are attuned with, even addicted to, the mechanisms of creation. And as Dwarf Fortress shows us, the overwhelming urge in a dwarf to CREATE can be akin to madness.

Though they would never admit so, dragons therefore need dwarves. They need these masters of making, these smiths of storied items, to render unto the world what the dragons themselves cannot. Because the dragon can only steal, someone else must supply the to-be-stolen goods.

And though they would be loath to admit so too, the dwarves need the dragons. For all the calamity a dragon attack brings, there is no greater assurance of a dwarf community’s power to create than draconic interest. Dragons verify the value of the objects of dwarven greed. Without them, dwarven claims to item-making excellence may very well ring hollow; but with them, dwarves are confirmed in their claims of greatness. The dwarves can may rage at predations of dragons, but deep down they crave them.

Ultimately, this symbiotic (but antagonistic) relationship proves a cosmic truth: that acts of creation do in fact carry meaning and importance. And that makes it worth creating stuff, despite the danger of dragons.