Kraka-Tarr clears his throat and takes a sip from his stale water can, then whispers further.
"Ah! Then listen, good fellow, and listen well, for this is, as you will soon realize, a very important thing to know when dealing with the children of the dragon! Why, you might ask? It is simple - this tale is sacred not because it deals with things not of our world, but simply because no dragonborn is likely to tell it to you! And this truth that I am about to relay to you relates deeply to their thought and society!" Kraka-Tarr whispers sharply.
"You see, among the commodities and treasures of the dragonborn, none are prized more than the female! This is not exactly a recent development, though discoveries in breeding science by the eminent minds of recent ages have aided it! Even more than gold, even more than knowledge, they elevate purity among themselves! 'Dragonborn honor' is the most commonly used word for it - it is an ingenious word, for it tells the uninformed nothing at all, and allows those in possession of it to sneer at those less gifted! Not that many of the word's users possess it, obviously - the dragonborn doth protest too much, as the saying goes! In truth, the truly honorable dragonborn originate from unpolluted females at least three generations deep, they are purebred, and isolated from the world to ensure they are not tarnished! And when a female is born, even when the parents do not manage to get them into one of the isolation towers in the big cities, they make sure to seclude them at home to increase desirability! In their seclusion, the females are expected to study, to exercise their minds and bodies for the day that they will be permitted to produce worthy, honorable offspring with their chosen mate!"
"Now, you might wonder what the point of this is! Like I have said, purity, yes? Women of purity and honor, those you will never see in polite society! To look upon a proper dragonborn woman is a great honor, not in the dragonborn sense but in a more general one! If you see one of the dragonborn women, you may safely say that she is to be your wife! Though due to reasons of dragonborn honor, one hardly sees their wife even a few years into their marriage! And this is why, in any given city or village of the dragonborn, only men wander the streets! All of them silently burn with the hope of being allowed to mate with a female, for this is what they have been taught they need to do, both by nature and by society! A dragonborn is lucky to mate with a female more than twice in their lifetimes, though the rich, the powerful and the dragonborn-honorable are known to have mated as many as seventeen times over their whole life! And, of course, conception is mandatory in these cases - should the prospective father fail, and be of lower honor than his bride, he is shamed and demoted in the eyes of society! Though if it is the other way around, the bride loses her social standing! You can imagine how that is catastrophic for the woman - her very purpose she has failed at!"
"You can understand, of course, how that makes relations between men and women in this society very strained and complicated! And also how many men and women can become very, very frustrated! This leads to a great deal of... awkwardness, shall we say! Women are, because of their importance and unavailability, as I said, treasured and idolized! And frustrated men live amongst other frustrated men, which gives rise to a whole lot of interesting phenomena! First, there is 'practice', as they call it! It is when male dragonborn, typically in their youth, get together into clubs and speak of their marital ambitions at length and in depth, sharing their favorite works of literature on the subject, and very often... try many of the things described! For experimentation's sake! And for the good of society! You see?"
"Secondly, there is 'affecting'. The qualities of the woman are fetishized to an incredible degree in dragonborn society, obviously, and many men, though their honor, the more general kind, prevents them from admitting it, feel somewhat undervalued in comparison! Thus the cult of the female has increased in prominence, especially in the past century, and many men of dragon birth, in their daily routine, adopt feminine mannerisms and fashion elements! And some just dress as women entirely! Powerful people, too, and in public! There are are few things more natural these days! Sometimes, these affecting men are practicing men as well, though that's not always the case! And lately, now that more contact with the surrounding empires has been established through warring with the humans, affectation has taken a turn for the strange, as many affecting men have begun to slowly steer away from their own species, and now affect characteristics of, say, elven and even human females!"
"As you may have wondered already, what bearing does all of this have on anything? And why would you ever want to know this? Why, for the love of Braka-Skreek, why? It is simple - the idea of dragonborn honor I have described to you, and the children of the dragon of both sexes! And what I say to you now is most important - there are no dragonborn women outside of dragon-land!" he finishes, chuckling very grimly, but still maintaining his perpetually sharp tone of voice.
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Topic: New Age Mercenaries II: To the Wild (Read 16040 times)