No they can`t, but we might add this in shortly after the start of this event, since I like the idea
And I won`t worry too much about this Dragon quest, early on. First you`ll probably get a weak Green Dragon. Larger towns will be fighting against supped up Royal Dragon. And this Dragon quest is only available after player completed a few first start-up quests. In addition the Dragon spawns at the remote corner of the map. It does come with full AI though, and player can always lure it to his town if he likes, or try to deal with it in the remote part of the map (wildfires and all...)