So what are dragons?

One theory is that they are manifestations of Glorantha’s unconscious – primordial beings that predate even Chaos. They are intrinsically connected with the Cosmic Egg and the birth of Glorantha. By this reasoning, the dragon-slaying myths of Orlanth and Yelm are cosmogenic in nature. Both deities impose order on the unshaped and dangerous world by defeating the dragon that threatens gods and mortals.

Or seen from the dragon’s perspective, the dragon’s act of self-sacrifice allows the world to be created. The Cosmic Dragon predates existence and even Chaos. As the Cosmic Dragon meditated, Orxili grappled with it and sought to interfere with its composure. The Cosmic Dragon overcame Orxili and wrapped itself around it, cutting it off from the outer, more mystical realms. The body inside changed and grew and became the Cosmic Egg from which the cosmos was created.

Many human philosophers identify Orxili with Chaos – the Primal Void. The Kralori and the Empire of Wyrms Friends held the Cosmic Dragon to be the greatest of all deities, solely responsible for the creation of the world, while the God Learners gave it a masculine bent and paired it with the world-wide goddess Glorantha.The True Dragons are all emanations of the Cosmic Dragon, through the Ancestral Dragons. Each entanglement that their creator committed to, were created from birth of the Ancestral Dragons. This paradoxical creation is typical of draconic explanations. The Grand Ancestral Dragon was sacrificed and dismembered as a result of its willingness to accept the duty of the entanglements which its actions had brought about and resulted in its full integration into the world. By dying, the Dragon re-entered the world to fulfill its duties. To do otherwise, would destroy the basis for draconic existence.This draconic philosophy has been largely ignored by humans, at least in central and western Genertela, during the Third Age and was supplanted as a mystical path by the Lunar Way. But it comes back with a vengeance during the Hero Wars as Argrath and his followers explore the possibilities of the draconic philosophy. According to one popular story, Argrath had the possibility of avoiding the Hero Wars and all its suffering, but was reminded of his duties and re-entered the world to fulfil his duties as an agent of change.The Draconic philosophy represents an interesting alternative to the Lunar Way, and has some curious similarities and some profound differences. One might view the later Hero Wars as a violent attempt to create a synthesis of the two.

The Draconic Religion was a great source of frustration to the God Learners because it largely ignored the monomyth, concerning itself primarily with events of creation. Only a very few cults had much direct interaction with the dragons – really only Orlanth and to a much lesser extent Maran Gor and Yelm had much to do with the dragons. But Orlanth’s interaction with the dragons is core to his identity, making his cult very unusual, and perhaps explaining why Orlanth’s people made alliances with the dragons in each age – even if Orlanth is the Dragon Killer, that is still more interaction with the dragons than other gods.