How Dragons Punish Sin

I have extolled, previously, on how humans across the various lands of Enayra view and punish sin in their religion. Most humans, living such short lives, are sustained by the belief that punishment eternal lies in the next life, where time is abundant, and unending.

However, it is interesting that humans, having borrowed many facets of Dragomancy from Enayra’s original sentient race, grafted their belief in the Nine Hells on to the religion.

Dragons, being long lived (for save the infliction of mortal wounds or disease, a dragon could likely live forever), dragons do not put much stock in punishment in the afterlife. Indeed, it is antithesis to their belief in the afterlife. For all life that lives must eventually perish, and when that life perishes, it becomes one with the planet. Their body rots and decomposes, becoming food for scavengers, for plants and trees, for fungi, for bugs, and their soul becomes one with the Earth Mother, and joins the Great Song in replenishing and rejuvenating the natural balance of life across the world.

As the dragons were originally the only sentient species in Enayra (save for the Xiani, who likely evolved on Enayra, but no one remembers who created them, or how long ago), and the Earth Mother is their progenitor, it does not make sense, for the dragons at least, that the Earth Mother would punish her children after death.

So instead, they hold to punishment in this life.

In the days when dragons were plentiful, before humans came and warred with them, before the infighting with Tenebrae diminished their number, before only five of the original eleven Clans remained, and before the Glorious Hunt claimed even more, dragons would punish their wicked in one of two ways: physical rebuke, or social exile.

Nowadays, physical rebuke is often done to first blood for minor offences. Few dragons are made Harzok, and their hatchlings and eggs are no longer purged if they are. No dragons are physically maimed any more. All of this was done since the end of the first war with Tenebrae and the start of the Glorious Hunt to ensure the continued growth of a viable breeding population of dragons, and to prevent the dragons from going extinct.

The first was physical rebuke. Minor infractions would lead to duels of honour, where combat between an offended party and the offender would lead to one or the other victorious. The loser would be intentionally bloodied and scarred in some way to show they had lost–not that help is ever needed to dragon blood or rend flesh between dragons.

For more serious infractions, the rebuke would involve older dragons ganging up on the perpetrator to deform them (usually the removal of a claw, or horn, to show all that they were marked for their crimes).

For the most serious infractions, dragons of old, much like today, would be made Harzok, or Bloodless. They would be shunned by their Clan and their people. Their blood relations would disown and disavow them. Their mates would shun them and find others. If their eggs were not yet hatched, they would be broken. Any young they have produced that are not yet reached maturity are killed. These Harzok would live on the fringes of draconic society. They would have no protection, no allies, no place to live among their old clans, or any other clans.

For a dragon, this is the ultimate punishment. They can never mate. They cannot pass on their memories or their bloodlines. They are forgotten and stricken from the minds of their former companions. When new eggs are laid, any memories of these Harzok are excluded from what are passed down to their hatchlings. Because of this, it is unsure how many dragons have been Harzok, as dragons, eventually, in their attempts to forget these Bloodless, will actually forget they existed.

Only in the most severe cases, however, is a dragon given a worse fate: death. It is illegal for a dragon to kill another dragon. But when a dragon is marked for death, it is the duty of all living, and able dragons to attempt to kill the marked dragon if they should get the chance. These dragons are often not even made Harzok, so as to keep close enough to society to kill. Any who oppose the death mark of such a dragon are also marked for death, or made Harzok.

In all of Enayran history, only one dragon has been marked for death in such a way: Tenebrae. His clan was made Harzok instead of being marked for death along with him, however, it is not considered wrong to kill them, especially in the defence of one’s self, or others.