Voting Incentive Week 12 answers
August 31st, 2010 | Published in Dragon Wars Background | 5 Comments
Dear Ystelyan or Halia or whoever else might know
I see that dragons have to eat or feed to live and that is ok. But then why do they kill or drain the people they feed on? They could just feed on them so far that they do not get a permanent damage. They would need more people to feed once but they all would live…
Kind regards
mjkj
Ystelyan replies:
I may be the wrong dragon to ask this question to, as you may have noticed I don’t generally kill my prey, but I’ll try and answer the question.
If one of us kills their prey it’s for one of two reasons. Either they intended to due to active malice or they lost control while they were feeding and there was no one there to stop them. The latter is unfortunately common among youngster like Talira.
You see we’re always hungry. It doesn’t matter how much we feed we’re always ravenous. When you are as old as I am you get used to it and you learn how much you actually need to feed. Born dragons are similarly fortunate. They live with their hunger their entire life so they learn to compensate for it. Converts like Talira have the worst problem. Talira’s still new to it and doesn’t know what she’s doing. Injury and shock can also overwhelm our self-control and cause a feeding frenzy.
A frenzying dragon will feed until there’s nothing left to eat within miles. That’s why I only let Talira feed when I’m there. I can restrain her until she learns some self-control. Though she’d do a lot better if she’d just learn not to wait until something pushes her over the edge.
As to why we tend to feed deeply enough to knock our prey out. To be honest the sheer number of prey we’d need to feed from in order not to would be prohibitative. Based on the fact that draining five average speakers into unconsciousness only provides about the same energy as draining one to to the point of death I dread to think how many a single dragon would need if they were just sipping. Too many to be sustainable I think.
Fortunately most renegades are quite amenable to being knocked out once or twice a year as long as you recompense them adequately. And if you’re careful they bounce back quickly. The trouble starts when something happens to all your renegades and you have to start raiding.
The Dragon Lord adds:
One of the things which limits the number of dragons I can hold is feeding them all. Halia’s nearly knocked me out a couple of times when I’ve fed her in spite of my controls and she claims I’m not feeding her enough and that’s why she’s prone to collapse. The other’s claim the same, because I’ve ordered them not to drain to unconsciousness, but they don’t pass out as much as she does. I think one of the reasons I have such a bad reputation is because I have to let them feed, even if the those bastards from the Elapyron Council and their cronies do deserve it for what they did to those kids.
Thank you both for your insightful answer.
Yeah, they were quite nasty to those kids…
mjkj
Glad you found it informative. 🙂
Sucks to be hungry all the time. Who would want to be a dragon?
Indeed.
But you see – they have power – and power is quite appealing to many – regardless the cost…
mjkj
In spite of the constant hunger being a dragon isn’t without its perks.