There are moments for which words fail. The limitations of language simply cannot contain the truth of the moment.
A soldier looks up on a battlefield and sees his best friend cut in two.
A woman watches a ship leaving port, her own true love watching from the deck.
Brothers separated for years are reunited at their father’s funeral.
The first kiss of an affair that lasts for decades.
These moments–these precious moments–when all the world falls away, all time falls away, when the moment rests for a thousand years, lifting all the weight from your heart, that we can feel the lingering afterpresence of a dragon.
Dragons are not physical creatures, but the manifestation of moments. Moments of power, moments of grief, moments of love, moments of hate, moments of hope. Some ven scholars speculate that the ven themselves create dragons: the raw emotional energy given off by the ven summons an aura of power so palpable all who stand in its aura can feel it. Like an ache in the bones. A lightning bolt down the spine.
A ven can live his whole life without ever knowing that sensation, but once it happens, there is no forgetting it. It remains, a reminder of the split second when the world paused, took a deep breath, and let wonder seep into its skin.
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There are times at the game table when something happens… something so profound that all the players can do is sit with their jaws wide open and wonder. When what their characters feel is exactly what they feel. When the wall between imagination and reality isn’t just blurred, but knocked down, leaving nothing but rubble in its wake.
This is the dragon. That moment.
When it happens, any player can call, “I see the dragon.” (Or something likewise thoughtful.)
Seeing a dragon is no small affair. It is a life-changing event. As such, seeing the dragon changes everyone involved. Any players involved in the scene may then nominate an aspect and change it to reflect the current moment.
Some involved in the scene may not see the dragon. Their aspects are not changed. But those who have seen it are altered, their destinies turned.
Forever.