Tiamat

Tiamat, is a Dragon adventurer.

Biography
Lest anyone think that the dragons are either infinitely old - and therefore wise - or they are devious belly spiders! Well, not everyone thinks in such extremes, but the fact is that an "old" dragon is not an old dragon, and not always wise. What old is means different things to different people, but let's just put it in human terms, so at least everyone understands. Her story is as varied as it is boring if we try to recall it from different angles, but what is not disputed is that it began sometime during the time of Thorm'fa. What family ties she has, you don't know, the dragon who raised her was not her father or any relation, but an "old lizard" who had just grown tired of being alone for a generation. If ever there were a truly wise and powerful race, he most certainly a representative of it, most often whenever he compares himself to it. He spoke the language of other cold-blooded men, men who had long since vanished from the face of this world, but on his memory time could not touch. Matusalos - as he called himself, not very imaginatively - was as big as a temple, but his patience could not have been equaled by a whole country, and even if he had been able to talk continuously for a hundred years without sleep, he could not have told all he had ever known. Tiamat never knew another of her kind as she knew him, for while she was with her there was no one else to talk to. In a word, she listened to sher eagerly then, having no other choice in the remote or not so remote lands isolated from the world, between high mountain peaks.

From him she learned almost all the knowledge she knows - and others would call wisdom - including the language of the mountain species, the sharp-eared and the round-eared, which for a young creature was not difficult, and one day was an advantage. More than once. Knowing and saying that one day she would have to fend for herself, her old tutor made a decision that would cause some mortals problems: he introduced her to the ancient magics. Had he not done so, Tiamat might have lived on carrying his spirituality to this day, rarely descending into the valleys and plains to satisfy her hunger and then fly back to the back of the gods to contemplate further all that Matusalos once held dear. And she did so long after he had moved on, in the cramped little utopia of solitude and silence that was her home for millennia. She abandoned her green scales and changed them to a similar emerald colour, and after an eternity of losing her appetite for frothing plants, at least her long torment with them made sense when she finally acquired golden scales. There is indeed little to tell of these times, what can be said of the harmonious and natural thoughts that passed through her mind, seeking the meaning of life or other mysteries, while she meditated far from the cities of the nations? Nowadays, she cannot imagine how she could have thought so much nonsense then, when times are different and she no longer sees things with the same eyes.

She was changed, of course, like so many others: she left home. When she had worn the skins of perhaps the mightiest of dragons for many years, she set out into the unknown, but found not some kind of enlightenment in the great world, but different truths and values. At first, she visited the pastures of men, watching her fellow dragons when she had the chance, and eventually the possibility of other kinds of wealth was drilled into her head. She became less and less interested in taking cattle without being noticed, and once she realised that the smaller creatures could do little to stop her, she simply went and took what she wanted to take. It was much easier that way, no restraint was needed and, most importantly, she could leave with impunity until she decided to stay. It was the early years of the Kingdom of Etrand, the king was not yet as powerful as he is today, the lands he ruled were still a long way from the capital, and when the guard fell asleep on the walls of a riverside town, she took the citadel herself, after ravaging it, of course. She may have felt herself just like a queen there, except that the true lord of the land was far away, but not for long, and here ended a life which would have been like that of the infamous worm, had she been executed. For there seemed to have been a certain caution in her, and a certain residue which, on proper occasions, could overcome her new-found greed and arrogance. For she had learned that the king had recruited a whole army just to rid her city of her, and she had come to the conclusion, by some strange intuition, that she could hardly win. Reluctantly, she left the town, people and all, and never showed herself as a dragon again. It was not the sort of decision that one of her kind would make without any second thoughts, but she had her reasons, and it was not just a matter of running away from an unusual challenge.

During her short existence there were some people who not only submitted to her, but by their clever words and usefulness, one might say endeared themselves to her, and this occupied her thoughts for a long time after she had gone on. She liked their roundness, their occasional perseverance and, in the end, their variety, which enabled them to adapt themselves to the world around them. How much more could such creatures have done in the shadow of lords and ladies? They were there before them, and often after their masters' stars had passed. Whatever the word, her temperament found much more affinity with certain people than she felt after all these years with Matusalos' tutelage. Reflecting on the disparities between life forms, as a large creature she was a great burden to herself even just in relation to the environment in which she found herself. She no longer felt that it could serve her interests if she did not find a solution to the problem, which in time would only exacerbate the dangers and, what is more, the inconveniences that she faced. Her magical powers as a dragon were still considerable, and though she had not always searched far into the hidden recesses of magic, she had managed to descend among the people and their kin with the help of it, which was easier when she spoke their language than it would have been without it. Of course, to wear their clothes, to walk in their boots, to have their weapons resting at her fingertips, was not easy at first, and though she did not now rise among them in height or in looks, her strength remained, and in truth that was the most important thing. But blood is not water: she did not have to spend much time among them to develop a cynicism about the world and the things in it, which contributed to her somewhat unsmiling sense of humour, which, however, not many people have understood even to this day. People were cunning, but they were also petty and clung to things that she still had not quite managed to understand, let alone experience. But their world was not without danger, and if she had been one of them, she would not have lasted many days on the streets of their cities, or even in their houses. However, it did offer her opportunities: she had no difficulty in finding common ground with so many people who were dishonest and unconcerned about other people's lives, and the more she got to know them, the wiser she became. And indeed, those at the top were always more exposed to the vagaries and dangers of the changing winds than those below them, and though this could not be said from every point of view, it did not matter. So she resolved to seek a future for herself by avoiding the limelight of the famous and infamous, of which she had no idea, in fact, but for which very reason she might hide things that might give her more than mere satisfaction.

Living with weapons proved much easier than living with magic, which, while it certainly did not leave her, was rarely needed and thus remained less conspicuous, if her blue-tinged locks of hair were not - but even creatures with little magic left liked to shape what they could, so it was mostly only the commoners who looked at her in this respect - not always to her advantage. Of course, she had plenty of problems with horses, they were not wise beasts, but they were not entirely animalistic fools, so it was difficult but rewarding to get one and break it in to ride it. A suit of armour, a horse, a spear and a sword seemed far better friends to a man than the common tools that could barely jingle a coin in their pouches. Which she sometimes ached for, and if she could shed blood for them in peace, she would. Of course, it was worth it to work as landlords sometimes, to help keep order over their manors and remove the trespassers. But it also paid to join armies, as when she had risen to the rank of bodyguard to a many royal prince a few hundred years ago, only to be the first to lead her company into ambush, in conciliation with the enemy, and to be the first to lift her most precious badges from the corpse of the lord she was defending. From a naïve and thoughtful but powerful being, she has become a dishonest but always pursuing smaller and more attainable goals, a tyrant who is always on the move and only sees beyond her own selfish goals when she wants to or when there is no one who can influence her in any way. Perhaps that's why she got on with people: she understood them and how they thought, and she wasn't picky about who had a job for him. And despite her differences, she was good at keeping them a secret, even though she was often in dubious situations.

It was only two years ago that a large group of mercenaries and knights happened to be on the side of the law when they came up against a band of unlikely thieves who were rampaging through the central regions of Etrand, and had already caused the king many headaches. The bounties were promising in the main, so much so that she might as well have rested for a while afterwards, for a dragon is a dragon after all, and sometimes spending more time somewhere eating and drinking can be more relaxing than just napping. She had no doubt, therefore, she went up with them, and, thanks to some useful eyes and ears, they soon found their camp and struck. The problem, however, was a troll, which she wanted to get over as soon as possible. Where they had gathered her from and what they had done to persuade her stone brain to join forces she did not want to know, but when it came to battle she had to take her chances. Easily outrunning the others, she made her way into the camp and literally engaged the troll in question in a biro, and before the others could get there, she had already beaten the tough creature to death. It wasn't until a year later in a tavern that it was discovered that there was an unexpected witness to the end of the brief confrontation, and strangely enough, it wasn't exactly as if she had taken wing. She mentioned that she had never expected to meet one of the knights under very different circumstances, who had never mentioned it to anyone until then. It would have been worth her while to have kept it silent for ever out of prudence, but for some reason she began to wonder more why she had kept it to herself at all. All she could find out was that they hadn't discovered her real secret, a troll would have been too little to trick her out of it, and she could easily find an explanation within the bounds of magic. When fate brought her together for the third time soon after, she simply latched on, but she hadn't quite decided why. It wasn't the first time she hadn't thought through her own decisions.

The original FRPG
Tiamat first appeared on the Hungarian version of the forum on the 21th of September, 2014. She only did one adventure with Reyanna Rýger.