"Well your greatness, your HDL's are evidently too high and you're in stage one Hypertension. If you don't start losing some weight and getting more aerobic exercise in..."
The Devastator of Mount Alderbad, (or "Devie", as Dr. Pique has been permitted to refer to him) is an ancient 10,000 year old Dragon living in the distal desert plains and crags of Kazakhstan. He is a deep dark crimson scaled example of his now-threatened and dwindling species. Sire to countless historic terrors of the Caucuses, Mediterranean, and Eurasian and even Russian territories, his legacy as conqueror and terror of the blood-moon night sky is long behind him.
Devie stares daggers at the puny labcoat-clad human in his cavern. After a tense moment, the elder dragon sighs in resignation, bows his head to his doctor's level and murmurs about the aches and pains in his joints. The doctor tuts, giving the massive compact-sedan sized snout of the overgrown winged lizard a gentle and reassuring pat. The gaggle of lab techs, practicum student veterinarians, members of the Kazakh national security counsel, United Nations Supernatural Animal Rights Panel delegates, and photographers from National Geographic are sitting stunned and speechless the two continue to discuss liver panel results, urinalysis figures, and other mundanely unremarkable medical results. Since entering care of the Kazakh government in the 1990's after the fall of the Soviet Union, the world has gotten to peer periodically into the private life of Devie. Aged as he is, his carnal fury and hunger has been long sated, leaving the empty and aching heart of a being much isolated from company, comfort, and a place in the world. He is attended to by one of the most internationally known names in veterinarian science, Dr. Ahmed (or "Arnie", which is the westernized name he adopted) Pique.
Dr. Pique is one of the few humans brave enough to venture close enough to touch, let alone take samples of, the legendary Devestator of Mount Alderbad. They have a working relationship, sparked not by the veterinarian profession, but rather Dr. Pique's fascination with Hindu gods and mythology. A Western Educated, Iranian-Canadian whose family fled during the revolution and the end of internationally recognized Iranian democracy, Dr. Pique's storied experiences of culture shock and the ever-present and developing non-arcane technologies of the modern era offer Devie more than he could ever have hoped for in a companion at the end of his days. Dragons are known to live long lives, but most perish after a few centuries. Devie is an incredible anomaly, owed in part to his life extending well beyond his years thanks to glaciers entombing him for several centuries. Dragons have many evolved traits that make them particularly hardy animals, one of them being the ability to enter prolonged states of suspended animation. Devie has described it as "inconsolable somnolence", and aided with technological intervention, his cavern is kept hot at a sweltering 35 degrees Celsius year-round.
Western Herpitology was ill prepared for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Caucuses and Baltics were the tip of the iceberg when the Union's capacity to keep secrets disintegrated in tandem with the rest of its structure. Many regions in southern Russia and the border it shares with the Middle East are home to dragons of all manner which the Soviets kept humbled by flying constant military aircraft around on rotating schedules. These interior security actions by Soviet Aircraft were done starting in the late 1940's after the fall of Berlin and surrender of Nazi Germany. At the time, it was done to defend trains transporting precious ores and petrol, though in the modern era the conspicuous lack of airpower by the Russian Federation in-region has caused the traumatized dragons to take flight cautiously. Generations of air to air kills on Dragons by Soviet Pilots as part of air combat training has left many of the dwindling dragon population frightful of humans, resulting in stagnant and stranded populations which developed narrow gene pools. In some cases, the incestuous circumstances has all but wiped out entire lineages of dragons, leaving several with Hapsburg-like cognitive and physical deficits that cannot be rectified.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains what they call a "Red List", demarking threatened species. It has had to add Lycanthropes ('were' wolves, as it turned out were just bipedal wolf men with an extreme genetic allergy to silver), Basilisks (American and European varieties), and countless other "supernatural" species to its repertoire of endangered creatures. The usual concerns such as pollution, climate change, and habitat loss due to man-made settlement or industrial incursions are peppered throughout. In the cases where possible, governments have had to not only offer up the protected species status to newly discovered mythological creatures, but also spend sizable portions of their GDP on preservation. This has made the sparsely populated plains, mountains, and deserts of Kazakhstan an ideal location. Largely free of international conflict, the region's relative peace has made it a hub of Dragonkin relocation efforts. Many dragons are expected to be moved into prepared habitats sprinkled around the interior of Kazakhstan, albeit delayed now by the war Russia has waged on Ukraine.
Devie's first neighbors are due to be moved in by 2025, assuming sanctions and the global political nightmare doesn't elongate his wait. Already delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic aftershock, it's made conservation efforts far more difficult than first advertised. Dr. Pique for his part has been an advocate for more programs than his own fledgling project in seeing to the health of Devie. He's been involved in drafting or helping organize countless examples internationally, though for U.S. bound readers there are a few you might recognize: such as the Bayou Basilisk Socialization program underway in the Southeast United States, the Canadian-Alaskan Triassic Crayfish Reserve, or the Native Prehistoric Spirits Program in Northern Arizona. Many of these programs are fresh, some starting less than a decade ago under little fan-fare as to help minimize tourists who might enter the reserve and harass the protected animals. With time, it's become clear many of these Paranormal creatures have genetic ties to extinct prehistoric animals of various clades, albeit less discussed in the publicly-available academics is the developing documentation on the inexplicable attributes ascribed once as Supernatural power.
What is clear in the case of Devie and the other international programs is that the world is a crazy place with little secrets just under your nose. For the dragons of Kazakhstan, maybe it will be a world they can find a way to live within... if humankind can allot the space for them.
-Thomas Clarkson, National Geographic (2023, June), The Dragons of Kazakhstan, pp. 35-38
