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The dragons in Kazin’s world are a race of creatures who have disappeared shortly after the dragon wars ended, many decades before Kazin was born.  They were a common sight in the realm before that, and were a threat to everyone, regardless of race.  They didn’t fly around in droves causing havoc, but they did show themselves on a fairly frequent basis, usually individually, and often attacked settlements where livestock was to be found.  Since humans were new to the land, they didn’t find out about the threat of dragons until they had settled in great numbers.  As they created new towns and cities, they also brought with them livestock which they used for food and trade.  The farmland increased in area, as did the cattle ranches.  It wasn’t until the discovery of magic that the dragons showed themselves to the human population.  As the human settlers learned of magic from the elves, who used it often, the humans discovered that some of them had the same inherent ability to cast magical spells.  At that point magical schools were born.  Soon, guilds of black, white and grey magic were created, and the power of magic was wielded and experimented with.  The magic differed slightly from the magic of the elves, but was similar enough that the humans were able to mold the spells into something they could also use for themselves.  But with the use of magic, the humans unknowingly brought trouble upon themselves.  What they failed to realize until too late, was the fact that the use of magic attracted dragons.  Soon, villages and towns were increasingly under attack by dragons.  The dragons razed villages and took livestock for food.  Various tactics were applied to resist the attacks or prevent them, including the use of many mages to drive the dragons off with the very magic that attracted them.   Oddly, the elves were relieved, simply because the dragons were no longer singling them out among the surface dwellers.  Now another race was attracting the attention of the annoying dragons.  With the added incentive of livestock, the dragons seemed to prefer attacking the humans rather than the elves, who were more concealed in the woods.

After the dragon wars, where magic was used in excessive abundance, the dragons retreated to parts unknown, and were only occasionally sighted from then on.  Of the ones who ventured into the realms of the humans and elves, most were driven off, and others were controlled using dragon orbs.  The magic cast on these orbs drew the life force of the dragons into them, and allowed the mages who controlled the orbs to gain control of the dragon.  There was no escape for these dragons.  They had no choice but to obey their new masters.  The magic within the orb held their very life force, and the desire to protect the orb was instinctively the most important thing on the dragon’s mind.  Being magically bound to the mage, the dragon often built up a tentative relationship with the mage, and some of those relationships became a very close bond between mage and dragon.

Some dangers existed for both the dragon and mage as a result of this magical bond.  If the orb was broken, the dragon, and often the mage, would die.  The dragon often died as a result of its life force being released from the orb.  As for the mage, the severance of the bond was occasionally too much for the mage to bear, and the mage would die in mental agony.  If the mage lived, they would live out their lives with a profound emptiness that would eventually consume their minds.  Sometimes the result was the same if the dragon outlived the mage.  Other times, the dragon would triumph over its loss and take the orb, and fly away to live out its life elsewhere.  The orb would be its primary possession, and the dragon would not relinquish it to anyone.

If the dragon and mage died but the orb was still intact, and the mage who found it could overcome the mental strain of handling such an artifact, they would have the ability to transform into the dragon whose life force was stored within the orb.  If the mage who found such an orb could not handle the strain of that magic, they would still be able to transform into the dragon, but the dragon’s will would prevail, and the dragon would react without any inhibition.  It would often attack settlements, and draw the attention of mages and mercenaries, who would hunt it down in order to try to kill it.

If the orb was damaged and the dragon and mage were dead, the orb still had some magic contained within, but the magic was unpredictable.  If such an orb was found, the new owner would have additional magical strength at his or her disposal, and they would even have the ability to transform into a magical creature, but what they could turn into was a random outcome.  Once it was determined what that outcome was, it would be the same each time.  Sometimes they would transform only to discover that they could no longer return back into their original form!

For those of you who love to read about dragons, you will have to wait until book III of The Dragon Mage Trilogy is released.  There Kazin goes back in time to  when dragons were plentiful.  You will see not only how the dragons interacted with the races, but also how they interacted with humans.  You will get to see how the dragons themselves differed from one another and what kinds of personalities they had.  I’m sure you will enjoy it!