Dragons. It’s what you’ve heard about the great Jungle, it’s what you want to hear about more. Let none say the Stranger in Red is short of courage or that he does not listen to the desires of the people. I have scoured the wild and treacherous jungle for a whole lifetime to bring the people my answers.

Firstly, I must bring sad, disappointing truths to you. The dragons of the Jungle do NOT breathe fire. They breathe a toxic fume that brings death to pretty much anything not-a-dragon-or-its-rider that it touches. There is a chance that this fume is flammable, thus, giving birth to the rumors, but even I am not so foolhardy as to stand in a dragon’s breath and try to light it on fire, nor attempt to give orders to a dragon to breathe on a fire. These dragons, at least all those I encountered, do NOT have wings. While they are very agile and quick for their significant bulk and can even jump from outcroppings and large rocks, they possess no aptitude for flight. That is not to say you can outrun them. Like an elephant, when on the move, they are fast and have a tendency to destroy everything in their path. Similarly, while I found no indication that dragons are as intelligent as you or me, well, certainly not as intelligent as me, and can NOT talk; they are still not dumb, more akin to say, a particularly intelligent dog.

Onto the jungle itself, which in all good sense should be first, but you people are so enamored with your two ton scaly dealers of death (and I must put a disclaimer that I merely estimate their weight as I have no way of convincing one onto a scale nor can I carry such a scale with me on my adventures) that the jungle is second. In short, the jungle is not a fun place to be. Well, in long, it’s a very fun place to be, as long as constant brushes with death are your definition of “fun”. In an ecosystem where the alpha predator has to weight as much of an elephant, be armed to the literal teeth with natural weapons such as the infamous breath, and even THEN still requires a symbiotic relationship with a human utilizing traps, poisons, tools, and tactics, one will simply have to imagine how deadly the rest of the animals there are because there are too many to list in this abbreviated article(all of which are fully explored in my latest book, DRAGONS!, pick it up now for the low price of seventy coins of the realm!). And that’s not even mentioning the plants or the usually aquatic alpha predator of the dreaded River Wurm who requires swarms of dragons to push back into the waters whence it came. In short, if you’re in the jungle and you haven’t been eaten or eaten something poisonous yet, give it five seconds and that will quickly be taken care of for you.

"How then, if the jungle is truly so fearsome, did you survive so long, oh devilishly handsome Stranger in Red?" you might ask? By making a deal with the natives, I must admit to my chagrin. As much as I might hope to weave a tale of my own daring, I am bound ever to the truth. Simply making a "deal" took me the better part of a decade. The Dragon Riders, as we call them, have no language. They communicate entirely with their body language and with inarticulate cries. While they are able to understand the intricacies of social interaction on a basic level, their lack of language or interaction for that matter makes things difficult to say the least. After many failed attempts, dodged spears, arrows, and deadly dragons, I managed to strike up a relationship with a new mother that gladly accepted my traded goods of food and clothing due to her exasperation with being burdened with a child. At the side of her and her dragon, I explored the jungle and saw many sights (all of which are fully explored in my latest book, DRAGONS!, pick it up now for the low price of seventy coins of the realm!), learning about her peoples ways and those of dragons. Her people, as far as I can tell, are completely immune to poison, whether from their diets or something of birth, I do not know. They mature startlingly fast, only 3 years from birth to adulthood, yet also die at the age of thirty. That is why I had to leave, as when the lady rider I knew grew old and died, I was no longer welcome in the jungle, by the way. This matches that of their dragons, each one being born at roughly the same time and, barring violence, dying around the same time. Any child conceived without a dragon is left to die, any egg hatched without a rider exposed to the elements. Speaking of conception, that brings me to the only time the dragons and their riders interact with each other. There is an annual "festival" of sorts where they meet, under a great towering spire of rock where a great dragon of immense size lives. I believe that dragon and its rider are immortal or something, because neither aged in all my years in the jungle. Regardless, all payed the pair deference.

Now, alas, this article must come to an end, and while you can find the full story, including that of the battles between dragons and the River Wurm (all of which are fully explored in my latest book, DRAGONS!, pick it up now for the low price of seventy coins of the realm!), for now, I must bid you all a fond farewell.
~The Stranger in Red