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There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Yeesh, super helpful. Why these tiny Meegrat Elves choose to keep reminding me of this fact I don't know. Normally I wouldn't even entertain the thought of contract dragonslaying work, it never ends quickly and inevitably more than a few Unkok Worker Trolls are either fried or eaten. Besides this, I kind of dig Dragons, and am of the opinion that they are just wild animals doing what wild animals do; if you stay out of their territory, which is very clearly marked by the scat trail they fastidiously maintain as a border, they are very unlikely to ever give you any trouble. Sure you will get the odd Ruby Dragon that will burn up a village, but almost all them have been under some enchantment control, these 'killers' are soon after their episode of destruction found malnourished, confused but back in their normally placid state. Easy pickings for a knight to slay and collect a hefty reward from the remaining villagers. The blame for these tragedies rests soley with those irresponsible witches and warlocks who in the course of their petty disputes often cast half baked control enchantments to use Ruby Dragons to pester their foes with their late night high pitch screeching habit of defecating on the cleanest surface they can find. These enchantments have no well defined exit path, hence usually involve a bout of mania prior to wearing off. There is even talk that knights will often source Rubies for the magic class knowing full well they will likley be required to slay the merchandise, for a fee, sometime in the near future. ...And yet I am the one who is shunned from the polite circles for being uncouth.

Here now I find myself standing at the edge of the Valley of round eyes, so named for the large boulders which sit on the eastern cliff face, boulders that seem to be arranged in such a way that one always seems to the see the full round face of each no matter where one stood in the Valley. For a standard dragonslaying, I would normally bring along a dozen Unkok Worker Trolls, these 12 foot tall 6 foot wide beasts imprint on the first moving being they see at birth, and serve without question for the rest of their life. Unkok's sound like the perfect worker, indeed in addition to their inimitable loyalty they possess immense strength and endurance, but there is a catch; they eat alot, I mean ALOT, and if you dont provide enough food for them they will without warning brutally dispatch the oldest member of their group and dig in. There are stories of a Troll keeper passing away leaving his full flock of 100 Unkoks penned up with no one to feed them, needless to say after only 1 week, at which point a nearby trader arrived to collect his order, there sat just 4 Unkoks with the discards of the digestion process piled 30 feet in the air. This job finds me with no less than 30 fully grown Unkoks with enough food on board for 2 hours before they start turning on each other.

I look down the valley to the mouth of the cave where the Dragon has claimed as it's lair. We walk forward and cross over the scar border, the distance from the border to the lair is a fair indication of the size of the dragon, bigger dragons tend to claim a much larger area, looking up I can see the distance from this border to the lair is enormous. We are dealing a serious dragon, or even worse, a pair of dragons. Our motley crew moves forward, unsheathing weapons.