What to do with Dragons?

[Tzi]

So I'm running into an odd thought, probably one shared by others. What are dragons? Not literally, but what do I do with dragons in my world?

Dragons are an odd deal, are they intelligent gold hording lizards with magical powers? Gods? Evil Aliens?

For me I'm trying to figure out how to handle these big, tough, long lived scaly devils. My idea was to make them usocial animals. I.E. Forming highly organized colonies akin to say Naked Mole Rats, Ants, Bees, or Wasps. Thus the different types of Dragon could all be just dragons that fit different roles within a colony.

There would be a female queen dragon, male lovers and then legions of sterile workers, warriors, ect who serve the colony. Or a slightly different take would be a small colony or cluster of colonies presided over by a Patriarch Dragon who has small brood Matriarch Dragons and then dragon society is a constant fight to climb the hierarchy. Like Female dragons might challenge and kill a higher up female to become the breeding dragon and male dragons might amass other dragons to depose a male dragon as the patriarch might have underlings. ect

Mainly I wanted Dragons to be like "Deal with them early before they infest and take root." kinda situation.

So what do you all do with Dragons? Also is this a neat idea for dragons or just terrible? XD

[LordVreeg]

On the. iPad, s o really cannot answer fully, but dragons, in the same vein as magic but not quite as much, need to be accounted for and decided on in terms of history and how the function.   
In Celtricia, you don't fuck with dragons, as the physics of damage are very brought.
The sauropod race, the dragons, were the second servants of the Planars, built to be Ble to give even other Planars pause in a conflict...small wonder that millennia later, the least of them can give a small host pause.

[Tzi]

On the. iPad, s o really cannot answer fully, but dragons, in the same vein as magic but not quite as much, need to be accounted for and decided on in terms of history and how the function.   
In Celtricia, you don't fuck with dragons, as the physics of damage are very brought.
The sauropod race, the dragons, were the second servants of the Planars, built to be Ble to give even other Planars pause in a conflict...small wonder that millennia later, the least of them can give a small host pause.

Hmmm, I guess for me in keeping with my fantasy-scifi mashup, I've considered having dragons be an oddity. Their biology and the degree to which they are intelligent is unknown. Possibly intentionally designed with genetic memories causing them to be able to do things or be driven to things that seems odd for an animal. Also plausible that they are a ticking time bomb, the next clutches of eggs possibly hatching into some new humanoid race that could pose a threat to the ones already there.

Basically the Dragons are a form of invasion, a vary aggressive species that could decimate a world and then at a certain time lay eggs that hatch into a new race that then rules it.

[SA]

I haven't seen this particular take before. I think it's awesome.

Stressing the hive/colony angle produces some rather alien (and therefore awesome) motifs that few people will have associated with dragons at all. Consider this:

[spoiler][/spoiler]But winged, scaly and massive.

[Humabout]

You might look into these buggers for some inspiration, as well.  Giant, aggressively invasive species trying to wipe out humanity.  Check!

[Tzi]

You might look into these buggers for some inspiration, as well.  Giant, aggressively invasive species trying to wipe out humanity.  Check!

Omg, Why didn't I think of Tyranid inspiration? I'm a War 40K fanatic. XD

Actually currently all I had was a weird animal social structure and some ideas as to different breeds and possibly having them be 1 part Ork (As in having genetic memories that allow them to do intelligent things) and plausible Gene stealing traits to be possibly stealing say Tyr blood to breed a humanoid version.

Right now the basics are that Dragons form complex social groups. the Basic unit is the Brood Flight, ruled over by an egg laying Queen, a few princesses, some male lovers, and legions of drone wyrmlings, tetzelwyrms, drakes, wyvrns and possibly Kobolds. Over the Brood Flights are what are called "Patriarch Dragons," or Male dragons who are the dominate lovers who often kill the other males. Or are killed by the other males. Females likewise have to keep an eye on the princesses as they might rise to supplant the queen, though they might try to form their own colonies.

Some Dragons however show signs of being manipulated by some Alien force. As Kobolds show humanoid form and some Have shown increasing humanoid form. Causing some rumors to arise that Dragons are being used to incubate a future army against the peoples of Madara (My campaign world)

[Lmns Crn]

I have nine dragons. All have names. Some are dead. Others have departed.

They're the creator gods, essentially, for a reptilian society. According to common belief among the liriss (the species itself takes its name from the dragon Lir), dragons created them as a servitor race, then exalted them and gifted them with autonomy, then departed-- all for their own inscrutable reasons.

Dragons, in this case, being enormous, wingless lizards of vast intelligence and indefinitely long lifespan, whose vast powers are the stuff of legend but never actually defined. We have liriss folklore and dogma about the dragons, but it's unclear how much of it is true or factual. According to the folklore, each individual dragon contributed an aspect of culture and society to what would eventually become the liriss's desert empire.

In a major way, they're in the setting to contrast with the religious figures of the other main, ancient empire with personified gods: the dwarves. The dwarven religion has an elaborate polytheism with layers of myths and legends about progenitor gods who may or may not ever have been real, and veneration and placation of these gods is key. The liriss have evidence of the existence of their "gods" as confirmed fact, but their role is more historical and less theosophical-- they acknowledge, respect, and perhaps even revere their dragons, but don't worship them.

Three of the nine have been confirmed dead, through war or treachery. The whereabouts of the others, if they still exist, are unknown. Sitting in caves, lounging on piles of treasure, is not really the archetype here.

[Lmns Crn]

But anything that you can do with drawing upon naked mole rats for inspiration is a plus, I think.

[HippopotamusDundee]

My dragons come, I suspect, from a somewhat similar place as LCs and come in two varieties: the original dragons who were elemental forces of catalysation and transformation and the wide variety of their devolved and diminished offspring.

The original dragons (the Dayren) were cosmically powerful, titanic in size (small physical landmark like a hill was the absolute minimum), of a scaled nature such that reptile is a more apt descriptor than anything else, winged or limbed or fire/other-breathing depending on the Dayren in question, and of an elemental and primal nature so strong that surviving scraps of history suggest they were either the children of the World-Serpent who encircles the disc or the incarnate spirits of his million-and-one starry eyes. They shaped a great deal of the world's basic geography, taught the fundaments of magic, language and craftsmanship to the sentient races and kickstarted evolution and mutation into overdrive wherever they went. But at some point in the distant past they grew weary, lay down and passed into death-like hibernation, and became various massive geographic features (one borders an entire kingdom of mountains and plateaus, another is the natural lip within which a vast archipelago has welled up, yet another is a vast ridge of obsidian rock within the hollow of which a steamy rainforest thrives) within which biodiversity continued (albeit at a slowed rate) to flourish.

The lesser dragons (the Dayaren) come in a nearly infinite variety, limbed vs. nonlimbed; winged vs. non-winged; serpentine vs. lizard-like; fire-breathing vs. poison-spitting vs. lightning-spraying vs. cold-breathing vs. etc, but even the largest barely approach the hill-like size of their smallest progenitors. Some are intelligent, some are not; some can speak, some are telepathic, some do not deign to speak with lesser creatures - about the only defining trait of the Dayaren is that they are scaled, in some way elementally-aligned and far richer in the lifeblood of creation (an energy called dayr) than almost any other creatures.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

You might look into these buggers for some inspiration, as well.  Giant, aggressively invasive species trying to wipe out humanity.  Check!

Very cool. Never heard of them, but then I don't know much about WH40K.

[Cheomesh]

So I'm running into an odd thought, probably one shared by others. What are dragons? Not literally, but what do I do with dragons in my world?

Dragons are an odd deal, are they intelligent gold hording lizards with magical powers? Gods? Evil Aliens?

For me I'm trying to figure out how to handle these big, tough, long lived scaly devils. My idea was to make them usocial animals. I.E. Forming highly organized colonies akin to say Naked Mole Rats, Ants, Bees, or Wasps. Thus the different types of Dragon could all be just dragons that fit different roles within a colony.

There would be a female queen dragon, male lovers and then legions of sterile workers, warriors, ect who serve the colony. Or a slightly different take would be a small colony or cluster of colonies presided over by a Patriarch Dragon who has small brood Matriarch Dragons and then dragon society is a constant fight to climb the hierarchy. Like Female dragons might challenge and kill a higher up female to become the breeding dragon and male dragons might amass other dragons to depose a male dragon as the patriarch might have underlings. ect

Mainly I wanted Dragons to be like "Deal with them early before they infest and take root." kinda situation.

So what do you all do with Dragons? Also is this a neat idea for dragons or just terrible? XD

I did exactly that with an older setting, wherein Wyvren and Pseudo-dragons formed the stat basis for some of the colony roles.  It was pretty neat.  Reign of Fire was my inspiration.

M.

[Rhamnousia]

My mind also went to "Reign of Fire", with the dragons being an entirely-female species with the exception of a lone male.

My thoughts on the matter are as follows:

A single colony of dragons is known as a "hoard" and is ruled by an elder male dragon, known as either the Patriarch or the Hierophant (I personally prefer the latter) and a handful of dominant females with whom he mates exclusively: I can't think of a title for them that captures their roles as both the brood-mothers of the hoard and the major decision-makers.

Wyrmlings are born in clutches of between one and two dozen, nearly all of them female. From the time they hatch, they are nearly the size of a fully-grown human man and possessed of a vicious streak of low cunning. There is no creature alive who can match the pointless, savage sadism of a young wyrmling: less than half of them reach maturity, as the more aggressive daughters will gleefully cannibalize their weaker sisters. The handful of males in every clutch are taken by their father and raised apart.

Young adult females, though already proven killers, are taught traditional draconic fighting styles by their mothers and older siblings that take advantage of their considerable array of natural weaponry. They frequently spar against one another and actively raid the nearby countryside both alone and in pairs.  Mature females will command flights of their younger, smaller sisters organized along disturbingly-militaristic lines and have been known to assault even fortified towns.

While it is often believed by unlearned folk that dragons come in various breeds distinguished by color, the truth of the matter is that dragons can alter the color of their scales as a crude form of camouflage. While it seems this would do little, even adult dragons (who can exceed fifty feet in length) can be terrifyingly stealthy, falling upon their unwary foes seemingly from nowhere. Similarly, the creature's infamous breath weapon is not restricted by breed, and the churning alchemical furnace that is the gut of a mature dragon can produce a full range of lethal exhalations: fire, frost, lighting, viscous acid, or corrosive chlorine gas.

Damn, that really got away from me...I don't want to write your setting for you, but if you'd like, I could elaborate much further. I imagine dragons, true dragons, as actually living in groups similar to both hyenas and mole rats with suspicious military overtones, with the separate matrilineal lines in constant, ruthless competition with each other.

[Tzi]

Borrowing from what others have posted,

Ecology of Dragons:

1. Dragon Patriarch: Fully grown, adult male dragons. Typically with 3 or more reproducing Queens and a territorial range of 25-100 miles depending on age. Usually found with a substantial horde proving his superiority to other male dragons and would be challengers and to attract more females into the "Flight." He aggressively defends the territory he has, seeks to expand it, fights other males and kills younger males (Even those of his own bloodline).

2. Heirophants: Younger male dragons, sometimes with 1-2 mates rarely three. Typically none that can reproduce as a queen could. Typically these are former underlings Xena's of a Queen who could not overthrow their mother. Typically only capable of producing Kobold worker's and Soldiers.

3. Queens: Large or huge sized Matriarchs of an individual colony. Capable of producing Kobold drones, Tetzylwyrms, Wyvrns and other mutations of Dragon that act as workers, scouts and warriors for the colony respectively. She also produces Fertile but immature Xena's which can grow to become Queens. Queens send out soldiers to kill other queens.

4. Xena's: Female lieutenant and daughter of Queens, they serve under her until they feel confident they could stage a rebellion, or see an opportunity to leave. Said females will seek out a Heirophant if they choose to leave as they would be mate-less and vulnerable. Otherwise she commands hordes of Kobolds, Tetzylwyrms and Wyvrns and sometimes while under a Queens command can breed odd strains of Kobolds, including those that can cast crude magic.

5. Wyvyrn: Typically a sign that not only is there a queen but a very mature one, well protected, and likely she has 4-7 Xena's under her and is one of several queens. Wyvyrns are typically warriors for a given colony.

6. Tetzylwyrms: Colony defenders, usually a sign that at least One Queen exists and has definitely found a Heirophant strong enough to at least avoid death or kill his father or the nearest Patriarch to him.

7. Kobolds: The standard worker unit of a colony. Kobolds are usually only a mild nuisances, however they are a sign of a Queens presence or a would be Queen at the least. The Arrival of Kobolds typically means a colony is being founded or is expanding. Kobolds are aggressive but fairly weak.

Wyvyrn, Tetzylwyrms, Kobolds are all universally female, and sterile. Their life-cycles vary but most live 1-5 years. A Male, typically lives 250 years and a female can live 500, though some Males also match the females for age. Dragons rarely die of natural causes outside of captivity.

Dragons come in multiple "Flights." Often defined by scale/feather/skin color. As some breeds of dragon are amphibious or avian in nature. Most dragon Flights have specific colors though rare ones have metallic colors.

I may have to create maybe a template though (Instead of rewriting Dragons stat wise) to compensate for different breeds, roles within colonies and gender)

[Seraph]

This is fun.  I like the somewhat unusual take on dragons with the large colonies.  While I normally go for dragons being really rare, and only ever being able to find a few of them throughout the world, this is a fun change-up to see. 

[Tzi]

This is fun.  I like the somewhat unusual take on dragons with the large colonies.  While I normally go for dragons being really rare, and only ever being able to find a few of them throughout the world, this is a fun change-up to see. 

Part of me wants to have Queen female dragons have their intelligence score or Charisma score tied to the size of her colony. Like they have a kinda collective gestalt intelligence and maybe have different social orders arise.... Like if a female becomes truly powerful she might mentally dominate a Male Patriarch or even kill him and dominate Hierophant males and keep them in the colony, effectively taking over as she becomes "self Aware." intelligent.