The dwellings of dragons—as depicted by bards and playwrights on the Loren Continent:
Dragons built their nests in the hearts of ancient volcanic craters or deep within eternal glaciers. Depending on their kind, they drew power from blazing magma or merciless ice. Sometimes dragons also lived in castles or towers, though they rarely built such exquisite residences themselves. Instead, they simply occupied the homes of humans or other weaker races, and more often than not—indeed, almost always—they turned those refined, comfortable castles rich with history into complete disasters. Only when some brave knight or lucky adventurer managed to defeat the dragons occupying those castles would such terrible destruction and waste finally come to an end.
—Thus wrote the famed Ansu Era playwright Dorangon Jabandel in his work Dragons and Nests.
Gawain came to the edge of the "inner balcony," leaning his upper body slightly over the railing as he looked down upon the scene within the dragon nest—
He saw a vast circular hall supported by exquisite, magnificent pillars. Some kind of alloy structure beyond human understanding had been fitted together with seamless precision, forming the first layer of walls within the hall. Along the outer edge of the hall, mechanical devices in standby mode could be seen, along with small drones busily maintaining equipment and scrubbing the walls, as well as decorative lighting arrangements. More light shone down from the dome, illuminating the center of the hall. There stood a silvery-white circular platform, its surface covered in fine relief patterns. Its immense scale and ingenious construction would have left even the most demanding artists in awe.
He turned back to look at where he was standing—an inner residence built halfway up the mountain. Part of its structure extended inside the mountain, connecting to the enormous circular hall below, with