Farmer in the Dale RPG

[piosenniel]

Kransha’s post - Smaug

The eyes of the dragon, keen and sharp with malevolent pupils focused intently upon the lands that stretched far a wide beneath his soaring bulk, blinked together in an eerily rhythmic succession as the monstrous creature, the golden being lurching along through the river of the sky, neared his goal. Vague, pulsating embers lurked beneath the cold orbs set into his dragon skull and wafting plumes of smoke curled from the narrow gaps between his jagged fangs, jutting out from a pair of thick, muscular jaws that snapped together in anticipation. In the distance, not far beneath the red-gold form, there sat a single mountain rising out of the flat plane of the earth. The flat length of land around its sloping sides were dotted with some isolated tree groves and a minute stretch of woodland. Rising and dipping from the protuberant southern spur of was a thin line of water, a running river that looped gracefully around the crags of mountainous rock. At one end of the structure that was carefully laced into the mountain face, there were stairs and the indication of a modest gate, which presumably led in somewhere, the goal of Smaug. Therein, he knew, lay heaps of fantastic trinkets, baubles, bangles, precious stones, and a vast mélange of glittering objects that the excitedly vigorous dragon could assimilate into his hoard.

Smaug the Magnificent had not descended from his perch in the north for longer than even he, the mighty dragon himself, could recall accurately. His grounds for ‘nesting’ as the chattering aviary creatures around him dubbed it, where now vacant, probably inhabited by some unworthy band of thieving birds who had alighted there unknowingly. But, he would soon find a new lair, a place to lay his weary head in times of weariness that was no longer bleak and dreary, but altogether magnificent, decked in full with the spoils that Smaug would collect from each and every wretched mortal in these lands who had a particle of necessary wealth upon it.

As a sinister grin peeled across Smaug’s scaly lips, the dragon’s wings turned up with drastic force, causing his bulk to arch forward and veer down, honing in on the rough mountaintop. He soared, with as much grace as was possibly for a being of his tremendous size, down through the last thin, shriveled wisps of ivory cloud. He wheeled about through the air, watching with narrowing eyes, glowing with faint and gleeful fury, as the lonely cone of rock, worn away by years of wind, rose up to meet him while he fell, stretching his arms and legs out to each side with talons ready and eager, wings flapping madly against any meek gust that tried to stand in his way.

His mouth, the whole gaping maw of it, suddenly opened, each monumental jaw stretching with his glinting teeth pulled back into his ferocious face and a great and terrible light, brilliant red with orange fringes that flickered outward like feathery capes, began to well up in the pit of his throat. Soon, the building surplus of flame began to billow out like foamy waves which worked their way out from the gates formed by Smaug’s daggers of fangs. As his throat swelled, pulling in a gargantuan gust of air that filled his innards to the brim, he let loose the breath. From Smaug came a searing, blinding pillar of fire that spiraled down and stretched out like two giant hands and countless jagged talons that wrapped around the side of the mountain, burning away the rock itself. The dragon wasted no time in propelling himself from side to side through the sky’s ocean, zigzagging madly about as murderous gusts of fire bubbled up from him and poured out onto to the mountain. He burst out column after column of the searing red, its fringed edges lapping at the rocks and the force of each blast sending up a spray of dust, rock, and rubble from each point of impact. The mountain began to feel the sting of his mighty attacks, by now checkered with blotches of ashen rock that had been charred into disintegrating rubble by the intense heat of the dragon’s breath. As he continued his maniacal assault, his fiery eyes turned up, away from the current target of his incendiary strategy, and looked off into the distance, towards the cleansing river and south.

He saw a new goal. He would certainly return to this mountain, try to get inside and claim his wealth, but he had to eliminate the scent of man and dwarf from these lands as best as he could. Beneath him once again was a city, or town, or some gathering glade of houses and structures that dotted the southern slopes of the Lonely Mountain, looking with a calmed serenity out onto the looping river that ran down from its source in the mountain’s side. A more narrow, almost voracious grin began to grow on Smaug’s face as he turned around the mountain, still spouting flame bursts every few seconds as he turned, extending his magnificent wings perpendicular to the plain below and turning his glittering, gem encrusted underbelly towards the ruined, crumbling side of the mountain.

Slowly, holding in his breath as he dipped again, Smaug the Golden headed towards Dale…