Dragons, being huge and meaty, are the ideal habitat for countless unpleasant parasites.
Wyrm wormsThese giant bowel slugs live inside dragons. They do not kill, but merely sap the dragon's strength.
Hackmandibles. These are like fleas the size of your fist with a bite like a vice (they need it to penetrate the thick scales of their host). Enterprising but naive wizards think to use them as a source of dragons' blood. In fact it's harder to kill one of these than a Great Red: their exoskeleton is impenetrable to most blades and they jump up to twenty metres at a hop.
Scalefly. These are flies which colonise the epidermis behind the belly scales (the dorsal scales are too tough). They live long enough to lay hatches of maggots, which lay dormant for a few years, then continue the line. The maggots secrete juices which dissolve the scales and then they reabsorb it as food. When a scale is sufficiently rotted it will flake off. These are the main source of the infamous 'weak spots' on a dragon's belly which are penetrable to arrows.
Firetooth beetles. These are not really parasites, rather they have a symbiotic relationship with the dragon. When a dragon breathes fire it melts and burns the enamel on its teeth. The firetooth beetle eats this residue (the dragon grows more to replace it) and thus prevents the dragon's teeth from becoming blunt and black.
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If you kill a dragon you might then get swarmed by all these parasites such as hackmandibles etc. After all, their host is dead and another dragon is far away, so they will presumably be after the closest source of fresh blood: i.e. you.
The PCs could kill a dragon at the end of their adventure and then be attacked by all these horrible parasites and be chased away from the treasure by swarms of Hackmandibles and Wrym worms hoping off the dead body.
Very nice. There are many bug posts here that I'm not sure how I would bring into my adventure. The introduction of these creatures should be simple and amusing. It also brings a touch of reality to the game when players realize that dragons have mundane problems like tapeworms and that the large beasts can serve as an entire ecosystem to these fiends.
A very logical form of life to exist. Ever wondered why dragons are so shy of social contacts?
Having this knowledge, could it be possible to get a hold of a nice batch of these parasites, and plant them into a dragon's nest? (Preferably a young, strong, dangerous dragon.) A quest to stop or hinder the shatterer of the countryside... if you are too weak to kill it, you may at least weaken it.
Alternative: an old sickly dragon is at odds with a young and strong one... so he secretly asks some adventurers to take along his troubles to weaken the enemy.
Just make sure this parasites don't eat you.
I really like this one.
I thought I had voted upon this, but not according to the system.
The ecosystem around a dragon is interesting. The existance of the bugs help to remove some of the invunerability of a dragon.
Another ephe beaut! short, sweet, and scrumptious!
Hmm, this one is quite interesting. I like it!