A goblin warband waits outside the Archmage's tower. The hobgoblin chief and the Archmage are enjoying a cup of gold leaf coffee after a copious meal. The warchief listens intently.
"Dragons are usually presented in relation to their color and the albedo of their scales. Peasants, vagrant scholars and even court wizards will say Red Chromatic Dragons are evil and Gold Metalic Dragons are good and righteous. The reality is that they are both humongous beasts of a magical nature and their look on life and morality mostly depend on their upbringing. They can't die of old age, but as they never stop growing they get so big they can no longer eat enough. Eventually their wings can't lift them and they succumb to atrophy.
A curious fact about dragons is that they are the only creatures that get objectively smarter with age. Up until they are as big as a horse they have brains that differ very little from the ones on their smaller reptilian cousins. They are basically as smart as a a common lizard. It will take them arround 50 years to become this big and it will take them the next 250 years to become as big as a commoner's house.
By this time their brains will have developed enough for some actual conscience. A dragon left to it's own devices in nature will very likely still have an animal cunning to it, becoming the apex predator of the area and building a new nest, with some semblance of architecture, hoarding as much things as possible, usually of a similar nature. They will definetly not talk. A dragon that by this point has been largely exposed to inteligent behaviour and speech will have developed actual conscience. This conscience will still be rooted in centuries of survival of the fittest and their hoarding syndrome. They are petty and try to plan a lot, but they are not very smart. Their hoards are usually made up of things that other creatures desire, these are the famous dragon hoards filed with gold and magical artifacts. A peasant could probably trick them, but villagers terrorized by a dragon overlord would rather not risk their wrath most of the time.
A domesticated dragon that has spent their whole life surrounded by trusting and loving people will be no diferent than a human. A very big dumb human with scales and a built in flamethrower. Like a dog raised by cats. They usually end up hoarding books, candles or mail stamps.
They will spend the next 500 years slowly growing. Arround this time they begin to be of national importance.All Dragons of this size are know to the local population and there are only one or two a single country at a time. They are big enough to easily take on an entire city with its own magic school (unless we are talking about an Abjuration or Evocation type college). At this point you can be sure that even the more animalistic of dragons would have picked up language. If not they are smart enough to understand it after being exposed to it for a breif period of time, although they probably won't care to engage you in a conversation.
By the time they reach 1000 years of age their cunning and inteligence will rival the best of Archmages and their size is arround the size of a hill or medium castle. Although dragons can pick up casting soon after they start being able to speak, they will have picked some sort spellcasting by this point regardless of their exposure to magical learning. Those that have had lessons are on par if not superior to any Archmage.
The way dragons are built they to only need to eat their own body weight every month or so if they are keeping their movements at a minimum. By this point, arround 1200 years, they basically need to hibernate every time they hunt. They require giants or other creatures of this size. Dragons that are amphibious usually have an easier time finding this kind of prey, but they are also hardly the biggest thing in their ecosystem.
By the time they are 1500 years old they are too big to consistently feed themselves. They will start to waste, their wings decay, their scales turn to hollow stone. They will stop moving unless completely necesary.
Eventually they will try to hunt but fail to even get up. And in this spot they will slowly but surely turn to stone, their brain and heart being the last two things to stay healthy throughout the process."
The hobgoblin had been absentmindedly looking outside the window for most of the lesson.
"So the pretty-big-but-smaller-than-a-house lizard in the mountains is dumb."
"Yup."
"Then Garlok will gain fame and glory when she kills it with cunning and steel."
As the warband marches the Archmage aproaches their crystal ball. In it they see through the eyes of Garlok. Time to see if the wizard's theories are correct.
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