>>39371168I Ancient elemental beings. Not in the captain planet sense necessarily, but that they're the embodiment of intrinsic forces found in creation. While you may kill them, they can never truly die (and either reincarnate or reform or something), and for whatever reason none of them do much more than fuck off to their little corners of the world and obliterate anyone who wakes them up or impedes their lives in any personal sense.
Not dumb animals though, but they either are or at least consider themselves to be so much higher than any other conscious being that they can't view anything below them as anything but dumb animals. Like, it's not malicious, they thing they're all too stupid to process thought on a level dragons do, and/or they honestly are.
To mortals dragons seem irrational, unpredictable, even malicious, while they see mortals as wild, careless, and comparably insane.
They spend 99% of their time dormant and/or isolated though, so only those who trespass on their holds or find themselves in commune with the beasts are even aware they still exist (for whatever brief moment the remain there after).
Maybe there are some benevolent dragons; for all intents and purposes they would work as gods: fundamentally immune to conventional weaponry and known magics, extremely powerful, and seemingly irrational to all but their closest acolytes, who then preach the dragons wisdom to the best of their ability to the other mortals in their stead (as they still largely recede into mountains and islands and what have you, and do fuck all themselves anyway. They're still too old/ornery/tired/contemplative/slow/archaic/arcane/whatever to participate directly in modern life on any relevant or prudent level).
