Cohabitation with large creatures

Most fantasy worlds have large creatures living in a world with humans and other races. In Tamriel, the province of Skyrim has giants, mammoth and even dragons roaming freely. The Lord of the ring have oliphants and ents. In dungeon and dragon, there is the tarasque and all sort of other gigantic creatures. We could also imagine a world where large dinosaurs still exist.

My problem is that, in human history, large predators were always the first to suffer form this cohabitation. Tigers and lions get chased partly because they threaten the livestock and the lives of the people. Even the efforts form NGO and governments are not enough to secure the survival of some of these species. In the case of dragons, they would be in competition against human societies. They would attack the livestock of nearby villages. I think these creatures will likely suffer the same fate as Earth's large predators. Humans will come to have the upper hand because they are more numerous and they have access to advanced tools and techniques. Since they consider the other creatures as a threat/rival, they will chase it to extinction. The extinction of the species is a real possibility from over hunting.

Can I make a credible world (believable food chain) with large creatures roaming around with a ruined economy, a drunken king and corrupted officials à la Game of Thrones? Or are the creatures doomed to extinction?

Examples of creatures:

Dragons

Griffons

Mammoth (number 1)

• Most of these can be tame or used as mount.
• They are not evil but do have a survival instinct that might conflict with humans.
• Most are not really intelligent but dragons are usually more intelligent than humans and can breath fire (some might breath something else but that's a detail).

Other creature could include: Ogres, Giants ...

But these have some intelligence and can't be tamed. they could be at least 3-4m tall for the Ogres but even taller for the giants.

posted almost 10 years ago

Vincent‭

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