Bathroom Monologue: Friendly Tortragon

All dragons require some form of treasure to make a comfortable bed. This is considered psychosomatic, or magical. It’s hard to tell the difference when you’re studying a creature whose nervous system is made out of fire.

The internal workings of most dragons are entirely flame-based, though the tortragon is filled with pure plasma – the stuff of stars. Biologists theorize that this creature may be the oldest living kind of dragon, and its plasma interior may hold the keys to the modern, bellicose and fiery dragons of the land and sky. They note that the plasma-based interior has allowed the single generation of tortragons to survive nearly as long as the seas themselves, peacefully drifting inside their giant shells without disturbing people or other aquatic life. Their fusion cores as so efficient that they don’t even need to eat, which explains why so many tasty fish and marine mammals play on them.

The only thing that routinely makes a tortragon testy is finding a bed. They like shiny seashells, and will go to war with an entire human flotilla if enough pearls are smelled to be nearby. They have little interest in gold or sunken treasure, so there’s no use to searching for it around them.

Ironically it is not pearls that bring them into conflict with humans most frequently. At least seven out of every nine cases of tortragon-on-human violence are initiated by people landing on the giant shells of slumbering tortragons and attempting to dig for buried treasure. This, along with the immorality of theft, is a key reason to not go treasure hunting.