Moleskin

All know that dragons do not exist. All know they are long extinct. Thousands of years ago, Ill grant you, they ruled the earth, survivors of the First Wake and harbingers of the End of Days. Rearing at once both foul and majestic serpentine maws, unfurling their Eldred wings, taking flight and spewing forth their fiery contagion and opulent largesse, in equal measures, like wanton engines of destruction and sophisticated poet-sages, preaching only the greatest of wisdoms, while laying waste to the rapidly multiplying Lesser Races, all at once, terrible and magnificent to behold!

—Morkoel Rasher
Opening passage from his famous work, Devolved Remnants of True-Wyrms and Dragon-Kinde

Only children, delusional knights, and myopic wizards yet cling to the hope that the Great Beasts still survive among us. Yet we are forever fascinated with Wyrm-Kinde are we not? And we yet fascinate them in turn, ever so rarely. Few of these noble and archaic creatures would ever stoop to interaction with mankind, despite what you may have read in other more fanciful tomes, but occasionally, a true Wyrm was known to conduct truck with members of the softer-skinned, younger races. One such despicable creature deserves a passage in this text, brief as I dare to be.

A runt, if ever there was one, a revolting weakling and mongrel clot, Moleskin was one such Dragon, who not only associated with humans, but went on to ingratiate himself into their pathetic ranks permanently. A True Wyrm, this author shall not call him, nor shall I pronounce his True Name, but Moleskin was as closely related to one of the Eldred Worms by blood as a twisted serpent dared to be. After all, he was an ancestor of Mighty Oblivion, and one of the Eleven Sons of The Spitting Fume. Unfortunately for Moleskin, he was the Eleventh Son.

Moleskin should have been mercilessly slain at birth, as all Last-Born runts in any litter should. An unwanted pup, he was fit to be tied in a sack and flung into a roaring river. A miserable, indolent albino from birth, one third the size of his egg-mates, twisted of limb and soul, a meek, desiccated, shivering parasite, Moleskin would have been surely devoured by his superior kin-brood, but whatever might and splendor he lacked, he made up for with a relentless guile, and an inextinguishable instinct to survive and thrive. The milksop lived, and caused the deaths of several of his sibling rivals in his stead, by whispering insidious words of discord, and stoking his kins jealousies.

Four of Eleven wyrms crawled forth from the Birthing Den that night, and Moleskin the Wretch was one of them. They all dispersed, four ways into the world, and of the other three nothing was heard from again.

Moleskin soon grew into his full size, no larger than a common mare, and no thicker than the thickest python, white as mammal milk, with fur instead of scales of the softest silk! He discovered that his pinkish eyes suffered from the harsh suns light. He quickly learned that his teeth were soft and brittle, when he pursued his first hart. When he first attempted to spew his fiery detritus, only blood, bile and pus came forth. And when he first attempted to soar to fulfill his birthright, Moleskin failed, his palsied wings betraying him. The wretch realized that in order to survive, he would have to manipulate those around him, more so than any dragon had done before him. He decided to be among humankind.

And so the feeble wretch lived, though less than nothing is known of the first two centuries of his blighted existence. Even this relentless researcher could not ascertain the worms movements, though rumors, both those with a grain of truth, and those most likely spread by the depraved whisperer himself exist in olden texts. There is some evidence in my possession that Saltwight the Pirate-Wyrme, that notorious creature which was never seen, but often heard from, along the Apaldian coast between the years 1080 TE-1140 TE was Moleskin in one of his many twisted incarnations. The creature supposedly advised and served those famous brigand brothers, Artog and Beleg Seven-Flies, contributing to the duos vice-like grip on the shipping lanes of the Apaldian Kingdom.

Years later, a wyrmling calling itself Rot, helped cause the downfall of the entire kingdom of Daranesse, at the behest of the queen of a rival country. There is good reason to believe that this was Moleskin as well, and little reason to doubt it.

Yet another two centuries unaccounted for, but then Moleskin, using his own, original, vile epithet for the first time in four hundred years, emerged in the tragically doomed kingdom of Lodwer-Ynsid, like a languid maggot wriggling forth from a rotted pear.

And so has it remained there, the bleak worm, coddled and hidden below the high, granite walls of the Grande Dyyvaretz, the royal palace of King Leudigrande, or Leudi the Great, and Queen Wenosanjia. There, deep beneath the innumerable stones of the Keep, in the macabre Donjon, does Moleskin to this day, writhe and whisper.

For the last three hundred years, Moleskin has subsisted inside the castle walls. Ever since the Drakeling first arrived and began murmuring his venomous schemes and sycophantic flatteries into the ear of Kaltigrosse, or Kalti the Fat, then King of Lodwer-Ynsid, the royal family has kept the Prized Adviser sated and coddled. Few of the peasant-folk knew of Moleskins existence, as the royal heirs and scions kept the milk-livered Whisperer, a well-kept secret over the centuries. Nevertheless words spread, as words often do, and it followed, that during the reign of Glebberauld, or Gleb the Tree, the flag of Lodwer-Ynsid came to bear the snaking White Wyrm as its standard, while the common folk could only gossip and rumormonger as to the inspiration.

Lacking the talent of shape-changing as well as the gift of flight, Moleskin rarely emerges from his self-imposed tomb. The servants that tend to his daily requirements, appointed by the King himself, and often, but not always, blinded or de-tongued during, or soon after the appointment, ably serve the wyrmlings needs. Little does it require in nourishment. Fattened, spawning, salmon from the kingdoms rivers, unborn fetuses of kid and mare, and milk. Most of all, the mewling abomination craved human milk. Once a year, every year, twelve milkmaids, or nursing midwives were chosen by the Palace Mistress of Ceremonies and sent below, to the Prized Adviser. Such was the agreement struck between Moleskin and Kaltigrosse all those years ago, and so it has been followed to the present day, a tradition the royal siblings now find mundane, the horror and abuse of the chosens destiny, lost on their decadent psyches.

What foul and unspeakable fates the woman suffer at the cloying, silky-skinned weaklings grasping, withered claws and stained brittle teeth, this author does not know, but when they emerge anew, they are drained of their life-giving fluids, pallid and languid, able to continue with their lives, but spiritually broken, unable and dismissive of the idea of having children or sharing their lives with mates ever again.

The weakling draws further sustenance from sewing dissonance. Even without physical nourishment, legends claim Moleskin can survive on discord alone and by simply feeding on the baser emotions of humans, emanating like gooey drops of honey from the pinkish flesh of its masters.

Moleskin serves as the adviser to the royal brood. It advises each royal in turn, King Leudigrande on his conquests and holdings, Queen Wenosanjia on her palace politics and policies, Prince Tyggoverich, or Tygg the Truthful, on his ambitions and schemes and the Princess Vollisanta, on her amorous trysts and calculated romances.

And so the Blighted thrive, when surrounded by deluded toadies and parasites.

So ends my entry on Moleskin, an accursed blot on Dragon Kinde. The gods of Serpentdom failed their collective, mighty broods, when they allowed this foul, near-stillborn runt to live.

End Note:

Morkoel Rasher, author of the above entry, one of many from his expansive grimoire of work, Devolved Remnants of True-Wyrms and Dragon-Kinde, is himself rumored to be a dragon in human guise. Though sages and whisperers can prove nothing, it is further speculated by them, that Morkoel Rasher was indeed even a fellow brood-kin of Moleskin, one of the surviving sons of the Spitting Fume! This theory lends credence to the speculations behind the derisive, scathing tone, Morkoel Rasher takes on, in his highly informative but mocking review of the Albino Worm he calls Moleskin.