Quote Originally Posted by sandmote View Post
I do assume mercury gets labeled by Detect Poison, or whatever other equivalent you'd have available.

Second, humans are omnivorous and most of the meat we eat is from primary consumers. There's a reason mercury is considered a bigger problem in tuna than in venison. When you eat something containing mercury, it builds up in your system. Particularly if a creature is eating a lot of large fish, its mercury levels are going to build up a lot faster than they do in a typical human. And of course dragons also live a lot longer, so there's more time for it to build up.

Of course, all of this can be hand waved for a game setting. I just figure a lot of parties are going to start wondering about what a dragon (particularly a metallic) is doing with a bunch of mercury.
Mercury is poisonous to humans, but what do you expect? They are killed simply by breathing water!

How do you know dragons, especially metalic ones, are harmed by it at all? Perhaps to a bronze dragon it's a spice.

"Garcon, the lady will have the emerald neclace in muratic acid, and I'll have the pearls garnished with quicksilver, please."

Mercury in the oceans is the result of low-tech gold mining along rivers and some older industrial processes. Absent these, fish are as likely as chickens to be saturated with mercury. Though with dwarves and kobolds around low-tech mining just might be an issue...

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What in the dark appears to be a bumpy floor turns out to be a 3d map of the continent.