Due to their inherent nature/abilities, how hard is it to control a Dragon?
Interesting question!
The answer: Very, very hard.
Why is it difficult?
First, dragons have strong will. Iron will. This is a constant throughout wyrmkind, regardless of disposition or form. A dragon with a weak will is like a person born legless: Not necessarily anything unheard of or unspeakably awful, but very, very uncommon, and highly inconvenient. This is because dragon awe does work on other dragons, if their will isn’t strong enough to repel it. Weak-willed dragons don’t tend to do well around others of their kind as a consequence.
Think of this iron will as a snail shell. A dragon can voluntarily lower their willpower, if they should for some reason wish to be compelled—a dragon might do this for fun, if they enjoy being hypnotized, or for practical reasons, if they want some sort of assistance from a magic user. For instance, most healing magic relies on working with the subject’s soul, and that requires allowing the magic to take hold.
Dragons usually choose mortal mages to submit to for these situations. They aren’t stupid. In fact, most dragons like to cultivate positive relationships with especially weak-willed mages, to ensure that should they need the help, they’ll have access to magic users who can never truly pose a threat to them.
It is worth noting that a dragon who voluntarily lowers their mental defenses still has dragon awe, which complicates things.
How is it done?
Of course, the difficulties of mastering dragons by no means mean nobody has ever tried. In fact, people try quite often. And sometimes, they are successful. In fact, there’s a large swath of history in which they were extremely successful! The Inquisition saw virtually all of wyrmkind purged from the Lacratian Continent, and one common tool was mind control.
There are three approaches, in a general sense.
First, subterfuge. Quite simply, wait for the dragon to lower their defenses, then strike while they’re vulnerable. If the dragon is badly injured, they will likely seek a healer. If you can get to the healer first, you can replace them, or better yet, compromise them. During the Horny War, this was how the Great and Awful Melchior was captivated—after fighting a pit fiend to a standstill, he fled to a trusted druid friend, not knowing that this druid had already been corrupted by a pair of succubi who were only too happy to ease the injured creature’s pain.
The first path is difficult, but nowhere near as difficult as the second path: Finding the chink in the dragon’s shell, the kink in the ropes that hold the wyrm’s will together. When this kink is found, the dragon is slightly more vulnerable. Slightly.
For instance, the Violet Terror Magdalene was one of the first targets of the first Inquisition, as discovering her weakness was relatively easy—Magdalene was one of the dragons who looked after multiple villages, treating each resident as a part of her “hoard” and the success of the villages overall as a measure of her hoard’s worth. For this reason, many mortals had had opportunity to learn much about her, as she walked among them frequently.
Quite simply, Magdalene had a preoccupation with ropes, and it was eventually discovered that a length of her own hair, braided and drenched in the waters of the Rose Well of the Northern isles, would completely negate her resistances when bound around her neck as a collar.
Most dragons’ weaknesses are obscure like that: Something likely determined only by consulting a seer, consulting a hag or demon, or consulting the dragon themselves. Some are a little easier to stumble upon, however. All are very, very difficult to take advantage of without being caught.
The third path is most difficult of all, of course.
Brute force.
It is said that there is only one creature that the head of the Mindweaver’s Guild, Lady Mistress, truly fears—and that creature is the reason she always wears her mask.
Once, long ago, before she founded the Guild, ‘Lady Mistress’—who then used another name—encountered a dragon.
It is unknown who won the battle of minds that ensued. What is known is that simply mentioning the word “dragon” around her is enough to earn such terrible punishments that the word is considered all but illegal within the entirety of the Guild.
