History Main / DragonHoard

* ''LetsPlay/AfterlifeSMP'': fWhip and Joel develop a love for shiny riches after becoming Wyvernians, and the former builds a cavern-hoard to store his valuables. [[spoiler:When Vampire Scott shows up at the cave, [[BullyingADragon trying to steal fWhip's riches while underestimating the Dragons]], they collectively ''[[CurbStompBattle obliterate]]'' him with swords and poison breath (with fWhip getting the killing blow).]]

* ''Literature/{{Grunts}}'': Parodied. A troop of orcs is ordered to steal powerful artifacts from a dragon hoard. It turns out the dragon was not interested in treasure, but was a collector of weapons and militaria.

* In ''[[Website/FunOrb Dungeon Assault]]'', you play as a dragon who has to create a labyrinth of guards and traps to protect your hoard while sending out raiders to steal treasure from other players.
* In ''[[Creator/ChoiceOfGames Choice of the Dragon]]'', you play as a dragon and one of your objectives is to acquire and protect a pile of treasure.

** In ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'', if you manage to kill the red dragon Tholapsyx you get to loot her hoard.
* In ''VideoGame/RuneScape'', many dragon lairs are littered with piles of gold. The extremely rare [[{{Unobtainium}} runite]] rocks are also usually found near dragons, because it is a delicacy to them.

** While dragons in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' are not lounging on a bed of Septims, there is usually a well-stocked treasure chest coincidentally sitting near a dragon roost. Also, [[TokenHeroicOrc Paarthurnax]] claims that the [[PlayerCharacter Dragonborn]] got a few draconic instincts with their dragon soul, including hoarding, hence the KleptomaniacHero tendencies.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Discworld}}'', Rincewind discovers a dragon's hoard. His joy for becoming a rich man is shortlived.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonsLair'', the player's mission is to battle a dragon which also owns a hoard in a treasure room.
* In ''VideoGame/TheKingOfDragons'', the final boss, Gildiss, is fought in a room full of gold, and the hallway to its domain is [[SuspiciousVideoGameGenerosity littered with treasure chests]].
* In ''VideoGame/QuestForYrolg'', you play as the imp servant of the evil necromancer Yrolg who has a dragon guarding his treasure room.

* In ''VideoGame/ForTheKing'', the "Frost Adventure" quest involves traveling to and climbing Frostbite Peak, in search of the fabulous treasure rumored to be found at its summit. The treasure proves to be real, consisting of thousands of gold coins -- and jealously guarded by an enormous dragon that rumor neglected to mention.
* In ''Videogame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' ''III'', the Dungeon Town's strongest units are Dragons. Their creature dwelling, the Dragon Cave, is a typical dragon hoard full of gold (appropriately enough, this is one of the more expensive level 7 unit buildings). Upgrading the Dragon Cave, thus upgrading Red Dragons to the stronger Black Dragons, adds more gold to the hoard.
* In ''VideoGame/GemsOfWar'', the dragon Emperina has lost one of these to dwarves. The player is recruited to help recover it (which isn't the side of the equation that protagonists are usually on).

* The ''VideoGame/{{Drakan}}'' games play with this: while dragons don't hoard treasures per se, they are often associated with powerful magic crystals and gems which could awaken them from their slumber while turning the human into a dragon rider. The protagonist Rynn finds and uses one such crystal to awaken the dragon Arokh and perform the Bond ritual which allows them to join forces and embark together on adventure.
* Notably [[AvertedTrope averted]] in ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII''; of all the dragons you encounter only the red dragon Firkraag has a sizable treasure, and it is scattered and hidden all over his lair instead of gathered in one pile. The other dragons may drop a fair amount of gold and perhaps a useful magical item or two, or their scales for ItemCrafting but none of them has a truly sizable hoard, not even the half-god dragon Abazigal.
* In ''VideoGame/RomancingSaGa3'', Gwayne the dragon is found roosting on a large pile of treasure that once belonged to his mother Dorra at his lair at Mount Loev. He isn't particularly greedy though, and will part with some of it if you fulling some conditions first [[note]]Either close at least 1 Abyss Gate (not the Wind Gate), talk to Anna about the Gates and listened to the bard's old song in Tinyville or if you have defeated Byunei with Gwayne and have not heard about Tinyville[[/note]]; he will give you 10000 Aurum, the maximum amount of money one can carry.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', the dungeon Alzadaal's Legacy turns to be a literal one. It is an underwater palace filled with treasure that the heroes plan to use to rebuild Thavnair's economy... and is in fact the place where the Elder Dragon Vrtra, who rules Thavnair and is an ally of the Scions, keeps his gold in case that very issue arises, basically making the palace Thavnair's rainy days trust fund. Oops.
* In ''VideoGame/DragonTaxReturnSimulator2015'', you've been building a hoard and must pay taxes on last year's additions to it.

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' has a handful of dragons based on this trope, including [[https://magiccards.info/ud/en/80.html Covetous Dragon]] (which must be sacrificed if you control no artifact cards), [[https://magiccards.info/m11/en/144.html Hoarding Dragon]], [[https://scryfall.com/card/c16/128/hellkite-tyrant Hellkite Tyrant]] (which allows you to a) take control of all artifacts your opponent controls when you attack, and b) win the game when you control twenty or more artifacts), and [[https://magiccards.info/som/en/93.html Hoard-Smelter Dragon]]. There's also the artifact card [[https://magiccards.info/m19/en/232.html Dragon's Hoard]].

* ''Anime/LittleWitchAcademia2017'' has Fafnir, a dragon who has chosen to [[CorporateDragon adopt to modern times]] by becoming an online stock broker and a LoanShark.

* ''Fanfic/HarryIsADragonAndThatsOK'': Harry's already created his own hoard early in the story after reading about dragons having them; this is noted to be odd behavior, as the setting's actual dragons do not gather hoards. However as Harry is a bookworm (and a literal bookwyrm, as named by Charlie Weasley) he instead has a hoard of books and Hogwarts letters which he likes to sleep on. After encountering his vault and canon fortune he is also compelled by instinct to lie on it and burrow within it.

* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'': Dragons have an intrinsic love of all that is shiny and are easily bribed by it. When the protagonists are traveling through central Asia with a pack of feral dragons, the ferals exchange stories about a group of dragons fighting and arguing over a hoard of treasure. The Chinese dragons love gold, but they'd rather have it tucked in a safe bank account. The Russian heavyweight dragons steal anything they can find and hoard it, and threaten to kill anyone that so much as approaches their hoard. Mildly spoofed in the last book, when [[spoiler:dragons turn out to have a natural head for numbers as long as the numbers describe amounts of wealth and not abstract quantities]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}'': Dragon sleeps on-top of a mountain of treasure. She doesn't seem that bothered by the collection of treasure in the sequels, though.

* In [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV]], the dungeon Alzadaal's Legacy turns to be a literal one. It is an underwater palace filled with treasure that the heroes plan to use to rebuild Thavnair's economy... and is in fact the place where the Elder Dragon Vrtra, who rules Thavnair and is an ally of the Scions, keeps his gold in case that very issue arises, basically making the palace Thavnair's rainy days trust fund. Oops.

* In [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXiv]], the dungeon Alzadaal's Legacy turns to be a literal one. It is an underwater palace filled with treasure that the heroes plan to use to rebuild Thavnair's economy... and is in fact the place where the Elder Dragon Vrtra, who rules Thavnair and is an ally of the Scions, keeps his gold in case that very issue arises, basically making the palace Thavnair's rainy days trust fund. Oops.

* ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesFor300YearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'': Laika mentions that it's a racial trait among the dragons to hoard gold, which is why it only takes her a few hours for her to collect the money to pay Azusa back for destroying the latter's house.

* ''LightNovel/RestaurantToAnotherWorld'': The Red Queen is a dragon whose hoard happens to include a magical portal leading to a restaurant in Japan. Therefore, she considers the restaurant one of her treasures and she is very protective of the restaurant and its staff.

* ''Literature/AgeOfFire'': Dragons hoard because they need metal to make scales (essentially making the hoard a stockpile of vitamin supplements). Grey dragons, which don't grow scales, have no need to eat metal and therefore don't bother hoarding it.

May involve a TreasureRoom. This trope is to PooledFunds as a waterbed is to a swimming pool (depending on the size and age of the dragon, it may be the other way around). See also ThievingMagpie, for another creature obsessed with hoarding shiny and/or precious things, and LazyDragon, for dragons that don't seem to do anything beyond sleep on their hoards.

** The Great Dragon Lofwyr still has a physical hoard of gold and valuable items, but it is currently quite modest in size as he liquidated most of it to buy stocks shortly after he awakened. Much more important is his sole ownership of the MegaCorp Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries (obtained over decades of buy-outs of the company's owners using said liquidated wealth), making the company his 'real' Hoard. Despite having no interest in selling any part of it, the hypothetical value of S-K's stock if he ever ''were'' to make a Public Offering makes Lofwyr the richest known entity on Earth, on top of him banking all of the company's surplus re-investing it in other companies.

** Lofwyr's hoard consists largely of MegaCorp stock certificates, and as CEO and sole owner of Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries he's the richest known entity on earth.

* ''Literature/GuardsGuards'': The dragon that takes over the palace of Ankh-Morpork demands all the gold for its hoard. Since Ankh-Morpork is a VestigialEmpire of gilded treasures and heavily diluted coinage, there's a lot of ugliness before the dragon is satisfied. Well, somewhat satisfied: "A three-legged lizard wouldn't hoard this lot!"

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* ''Film/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'' mentions that the vaults of Gringotts Wizarding Bank are guarded by trained dragons. In ''Film/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', Harry, Ron and Hermione have to pass such a guard dragon when breaking into the [=LeStrange=] vault to steal the golden Cup of Helga Hufflepuff.

* Franz Scorchmaw, the Great Dragon of Mechanicsburg in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', has a hoard comprised of the treasures the Heterodynes looted and then forgot about. Unlike most dragons, he's quite happy to let (some of) the stuff go, [[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220829 as long as he gets something in return]]. Franz ''does'' have his own [[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220902 personal hoard]] that he values much more highly, but it's not gold or jewels, it's rare first-edition ''[[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220905 books]]''. However, he is [[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php unable to sleep]] unless he has at least a nominal heap of gold to lie on.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation: [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1779 SCP-1779]] are tiny reptiles which feed only on coins and make their nests out of them. They can grow to really big sizes, though...

* ''Literature/DragonAndDamsel'': Azrael keeps most of his valuables -- gold, silver, and gems -- in a cave hidden behind a wall that is completely solid to anyone who isn't a dragon. Bernadette finds a way into it mostly by accident and good luck.

** The band ''Glass Hammer'' had two entire albums of Middle-Earth based songs. One of them, "The Ballad of Balin Longbeard", features an elderly dwarven warrior trying to kill a dragon of proportionally equivalent age to raid the hoard. Balin manages to kill the dragon because it's too old to fight effectively, [[MutualKill but is himself too old to get out of the way when the dragon's corpse lands on him]].

* In (some of) the works of Creator/DianaWynneJones (suspected in ''Literature/TheToughGuideToFantasyland'', confirmed in ''Literature/DarkLordOfDerkholm''), dragons hoard gold because they have to: they sleep in nests of treasure to absorb nutrients from it.
* In ''Literature/{{Seraphina}}'' Dragons hoarded treasure until the treaty and Ardmagar Comonot reforms. Interestingly, the new generation of dragons still hoard in a way, collecting books and sitting on them.
* In ''Literature/{{Sekhmet}}'', Dragons are mentioned to have hoards though this range from the traditional gold and gems to more unconventional things like spoons.
* In ''Literature/{{Everworld}},'' the only thing dragons seem to care about is money; [[BigGood Merlin]] has a few who work for him, and at least one argues about fees during their mission. The series' best example is Nidhoggr, who is huge even by dragon standards and has a hoard to match. Yet, when the protagonists meet him, he's besides himself with misery and fury that some of it (namely, four magical items previously belonging to the Celtic gods) were stolen [[spoiler:by leprechauns]].
-->''It was insane, of course. This dragon, this brachiosaurus of a creature, was sitting in and on enough wealth to buy France. And yet, the monstrous thing was crying, weeping swimming pools of tears.''
:: The heroes are allowed to leave his cave in exchange for getting the treasure back. To ensure their loyalty, Niddhoggr replaces their hearts with rubies... except Senna, who would need a diamond, and he wasn't about to pay ''that'' much.
* In ''Literature/RachelGriffin'', [[MeaningfulName Sigfried]] Smith, a preteen dragon-slayer, inherited its hoard... and sleeps on it.
* The ''Dragon's Ring'' series portrays dragons as having a psychological addiction to gold, as their hoards are not only a preeminent status symbol but magically revitalize their powers when in physical contact. The novels show that this can be taken advantage of when fighting them, such as offering them a cursed gold coin which they will be unable to resist.
* Aleksandra, a dragon, is collecting for her hoard in ''Literature/AFantasyAttraction''.
* In "The Tasks of Tantalon", one of the ''Literature/FightingFantasy'' books, one of the tasks is to steal the gold of the Brimstone Dragon.
* In ''Literature/DragonskinSlippers'', dragons have hoards of things like shoes, glass windows, and live animals.
* ''Literature/DragonQueen'': The Dragon Queen has a hoard, according to the old man.
* In the first book of ''Literature/YoungWizards'', Nita and Kit visit with a very old fireworm, also called a dragon. It was protecting its own collection of jewels, gold, and trash, but was extremely anxious as it was losing its memory and couldn't be sure if it lost anything. It was therefore extremely suspicious at seeing anyone, fearing they would steal from it.
* In the speculative zoology book ''The Flight of Dragons'' by Creator/PeterDickinson, dragons are essentially a mess of volatile chemistry, with the fire-breathing being a side-effect of producing hydrogen so they can fly. Their nests are made of gold because gold is unlikely to react to any of the gasses they produce.
* In the ''Literature/InCryptid'' series, gold is somehow necessary for maintaining draconic health. The cryptozoologists aren't sure why, and generations of hunters killing the dragons to steal the gold and remove the threat of bus-sized creatures that breathe fire from their neighborhoods until they were nearly extinct didn't help.
* ''[[Literature/TalesOfTheFiveHundredKingdoms The Sleeping Beauty]]'': One of the EngagementChallenge tests is for the princes to find some way of sneaking a mildly-cursed item into a dragon's hoard without harming the dragon. The dragon agreed to this because 1) all the items are gold, 2) he's [[AntiMagic immune]] to all the curses, and 3) a reputation for having a cursed hoard should cut down on treasure hunters bothering him.
* In the ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'' series, dragons have an intrinsic love of all that is shiny and are easily bribed by it. When the protagonists are traveling through central Asia with a pack of feral dragons, the ferals exchange stories about a group of dragons fighting and arguing over a hoard of treasure. The Chinese dragons love gold, but they'd rather have it tucked in a safe bank account. The Russian heavyweight dragons steal anything they can find and hoard it, and threaten to kill anyone that so much as approaches their hoard. Mildly spoofed in the last book, when [[spoiler:dragons turn out to have a natural head for numbers as long as the numbers describe amounts of wealth and not abstract quantities]].
* A dragon's former hoard is the goal of the quest in ''Literature/{{Below}}''. Unusually for this trope the dragon is long dead, having been dispatched decades ago by a wizard who claimed the treasure for himself. Now that the wizard himself has passed on, his fortune sits in the underground ruins where he found it, making it prohibitively dangerous to reach.
* In ''LightNovel/RestaurantToAnotherWorld'', the Red Queen is a dragon whose hoard happens to include a magical portal leading to a restaurant in Japan. Therefore, she considers the restaurant one of her treasures and she is very protective of the restaurant and its staff.
* ''Literature/GotrekAndFelix'': ''Dragonslayer'' has several Slayers on a quest to slay an ancient dragon who'd dented their airship. Its hoard is a close secondary motivation for the Dwarves, after revenge. [[spoiler: The hoard is lost when a rocket accidentally ignites a PowderTrail and triggers a cave-in, but that is only a temporary setback for a race of miners.]]
* ''LightNovel/IveBeenKillingSlimesFor300YearsAndMaxedOutMyLevel'': Laika mentions it's a racial trait among the dragons to hoard gold, which is why it only takes her a few hours for her to collect the money to pay Azusa back for destroying the latter's house.
* ''Literature/DragonAndDamsel'': Azrael keeps piles of gold, silver, and gems in his castle, mostly hidden in his TreasureRoom or underneath his bed. He also seems to be attracted to anything shiny, and has a small collection of items that are pretty or shiny, but not worth much.
* ''Literature/TheHeartstrikers'':
** Dragons are rich practically by definition; they're greedy and immortal, it's inevitable. Bethesda the Heartstriker, Julius's mother, is infamous for her giant bed of gold coins. For almost a thousand years Bethesda kept all her treasure in one place because she's vain and likes looking at it, but shortly before the start of the series her more pragmatic children convinced her to spread out some of her less valuable treasures for safety. Of course, "less valuable" in this case includes priceless unique magical artifacts such as the cursed sword Tyrfing.
** ''Literature/{{DFZ}}'': The Great Dragon Yong hoards just as much as any dragon, but he's known for his art collections rather than simple currency. He hoards rare paintings, ancient sculptures, and anything else that is valuable because of the skill and work put into it. His love of art is one of the few things he shares with his human daughter Opal. When Opal's mother comes to visit, she is amused that Opal has her own miniature hoard of interesting and beautiful artifacts, just like Yong. Opal, who is not fond of her father, insists it's a collection, not a hoard.
* In the ''Literature/{{Orconomics}}'' novel, part of the ''Dark Profit'' series, Dragons are mentioned as having particularly spectacular hoards to loot. Or, at least, they did, before market speculation and investment in heroes resulted in the hoards being worth less than the amount invested to retrieve them. Now the average hoard of ''any'' monster is worth a ''fraction'' of the amount invested to retrieve it, as the monsters aren't allowed to live long enough to accumulate wealth before heroes are sent out to kill them and take their stuff.
* ''Literature/ForestKingdom'': In book 1 (''Blue Moon Rising''), the dragon that Rupert's been sent to kill turns out to have collected a vast hoard of ''butterflies'', carefully preserved and pinned in display-cases. When asked why not gold, he merely says that butterflies are just as pretty.
* Hoards are a central element of draconic culture in the ''Literature/ChroniclesOfElantra'', with the twist that a hoard can potentially be ''anything'' the dragon in question claims and is willing to fight to protect - for example, Elantra's emperor is himself a dragon, and his hoard contains ''the entire empire and everyone and everything in it.'' It's noted that in theory a hoard ''could'' be a giant pile of treasure, but most dragons would consider such a hoard to be rather uninspired, and that it's far more common in stories humans tell ''about'' dragons than among actual dragons. Amusingly, the draconic word that is usually translated as "hoard" is said to have a literal meaning that's even more direct and simple - "mine!"

* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''. The Winchesters find themselves up against dragons in "Like a Virgin", albeit of a human-shapeshifting variety. As well as kidnapping virgins for their EvilPlan, the dragons also steal any gold on their persons. Dean finds a small pile of gold jewelry in their lair, and gleefully helps himself.

* Myth/ClassicalMythology's dragons frequently guard ''something'' (usually on command of a god), but there is a broad range of objects guarded. It helps that dragons are often said to never sleep, making them ideal guardians.

* In Creator/TheBBC's [[Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium Tolkien]] parody ''Hordes of the Things'' we are told that blue dragons hoard "those woolen foot-garments that men do call socks, stealing one only of every pair". So now you know where they went.

* Franz Scorchmaw, the Great Dragon of Mechanicsburg in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', has a hoard comprised of the treasures the Heterodynes looted and then forgot about. Unlike most dragons, he's quite happy to let (some of) the stuff go, [[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220829 as long as he gets something in return]]. Franz ''does'' have his own [[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220902 personal hoard]] that he values much more highly, but it's not gold or jewels, it's rare first-edition ''[[https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20220905 books]]''.