Literature / Dragonrealm

Dragonrealm is an open-ended fantasy series by Richard A. Knaak. The series mostly follows events related to the sorcerous Bedlam family, but a few novels focus on the adventures of other significant characters.

Dragonrealm consists of the following series / novels:

• Origin Of The Dragonrealm
  • The Shrouded Realm
  • Children of the Drake
  • Dragon Tome
• The Turning War
  • Dragon Masters
  • The Gryphon Mage
  • The Horned Blade
• Firedrake
• Ice Dragon
• Wolfhelm
• Shadow Steed
• The Crystal Dragon
• The Dragon Crown
• The Horse King
• Shade
• Knights of the Frost

Novellas:

• "Skins"
• "Past Dance"
• "Storm Lord"
• "The Still Lands"
• "Dragon Master"
• "A Wolf in the Fold"
• "A Game of Ghosts"

Dragonrealm provides examples of:

• A God Am I: Shows up with disturbing regularity within the series, typically alongside With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
  • The Ravager absolutely believes he is the god of the Wolf Raiders. He's actually a powerful Familiar of the original Precursors with delusions of godhood.
• Aerith and Bob: Within the main storyline we have Nathan, who begat Azran, who begat Cabe Bedlam. Who then marries Gwen. You also have Barakas, Lochivan, and Reegan Tezerenee, who are related to Gerrod. So there is definitely a bith of Aerith and Bob to this series.
• Apocalypse How: Shows up several times.
  • During the events of the Turning War, the lands of Dragon King Brown were turned into a wasteland.
  • Dragon King Ice deliberately attempts to engineer a planetary form of this trope in Ice Dragon.
  • The Vraad accidentally trigger one through their abuse of magic by the time of the events in The Shrouded Realm. This forces them to flee from their world to the Dragonrealm for survival.
• Alien Sky: The Vraad homeworld, thanks to centuries of magical abuse by the Vraad, is home to one of these. It's an ever shifting riot of colors and storms sweeping the land. The sky is often described as a nausea-inducing shade of green reminiscent of decay.
• Armored Dragons: Subverted. When in human form, male dragons appear to be wearing dragonscale armor and helms. It's actually their natural skin.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: How the rulership among the Dragon Kings is established. The Dragon Kings are acknowledged as the most powerful members of their respective clans, both physically and magically. The Dragon Emperor (Gold) is even more so. However, only dragons born from eggs with a special speckled band markings are allow to vie for the rulership of a clan.
• BFS: Both the Horned Blade and the Nameless from Firedrake qualify.
• Bird People: The Seekers (or Sheekas) qualify—avian humanoids, though their description is somewhat vague. They fly, have feathers, bird heads/faces, and yet walk upright and have limbs capable of great manual dexterity.
• Cat Folk: Troia, one of the guardians of the Dream Lands belongs to a race of catlike people.
• The Chosen One: Cabe Bedlam in Firedrake and Ice Dragon is very clearly made to be The Chosen One as everyone in the Dragonrealms is looking for him, either to sacrifice him in a dark ritual, or turn his potential magical abilities to their own advantage. Cabe Bedlam carries a soul-fragment of his grandfather Nathan Bedlam.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Darkhorse is quite good at this. A number of adversaries attempt to attack him, but he just laughs and absorbs them with The Power of the Void.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Darkhorse again. He's portrayed as being innocent and naive when it comes to humanity. He's curious and inquisitive and is a tremendously loyal friend. Any evil he commits is almost entirely due to being controlled by an enemy.
• Death World: Nimth, the homeworld of the Vraad becomes this, due to their abuse of sorcery.
• Doomed by Canon: The Turning War prequel series. ALL of the characters are Doomed by Canon to some extent. All of the events set up the backstory of Firedrake, the first novel in the Dragonrealm series. Nathan Bedlam dies, but imparts some of his soul into his newly born grandson, Cabe. The Turning War itself is doomed to failure, with Azran backstabbing (literally, in a few cases) many of the Dragon Masters.
• The Faceless: The Faceless Ones from the Dreamlands. They are the leftover bodies from the Vraad's earlier attempt to transfer their spirits from Nimth to the Dragonrealm. The original Precursors stole the bodies for their own inscrutable purposes.
  • Also Shade. He is introduced in Firedrake as always having his face in shadow within his hood. A closer look reveals that his features are blurred out. It's part of his curse of immortality.
• Great Big Library of Everything: The Library in Penacles is rumored to contain the answers to any question. However, the answers are often cryptic and very difficult to decipher. This was intentional on the part of its original creator.
• Identity Amnesia:
  • The Gryphon washed up on the shores of the Dragonrealm with no memory of how he arrived there or who he really was. Wolfhelm explores his origin story as he travels across the seas to the lands of the Ravager, where he came from. He's a Master Guardian of the Dream Lands who was forcibly altered by the Ravager.
  • This happens to Shade every time he reincarnates, with his personality shifting between the extremes of good and evil while only bearing fragmented memories of his previous incarnations that he considers separate people, complete with giving himself a new name every time. At least, it does until he finally settles on a more-or-less permanent identity due a shift in his curse.
• Interspecies Romance: Although uncommon, it does happen often enough. For instance, the Gryphon (a unique human/animal hybrid) takes a cat-person (Troia) as a mate. They are even genetically compatible enough to bear children. Cabe is a human who can claim elven ancestry. Humans and drakes are also compatible enough to have children.
• Large Ham: Darkhorse. He knows exactly how awesome he is and will tell you in no uncertain terms.
  "Call me Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, Thanatos, Death—if you wish! You know my nature, but not my mind! If I am different, it is because one must be so when eternal! Otherwise, madness would have taken me long ago!"
  "Come my darlings! Are you so afraid to embrace a loved one? Have you forgotten so soon that Darkhorse finds you always? Come! Will neither of you be first?"
  "To demons I may be a demon! To most others, I am he who brings an end to all time!"
• Literal Split Personality: In a sense, Darkhorse is this to his "twin" and "progenitor" Yureel, as Yureel was the first one and, on whim after meeting and absorbing two siblings, was inspired to try and create another "him" to converse with by splitting himself into two. Of course, the act took so much energy that Darkhorse's first conscious memory as a separate individual involved running for his life from his "brother" trying to eat him to regain the lost essence.
• Medieval Stasis: Despite the fact that the novels span centuries, if not millennia, of events in Dragonrealm history, the civilizations and societies remain largely static. This is justified by the fact that not only are many races Long-Lived, but often the ones in power seek to stamp out any sort of progress that could threaten their power.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: As Darkhouse is literally made of the Void, he is very, very difficult to harm, let alone kill. he is somewhat vulnerable to magic, but it takes an extreme source, such as Vraad sorcery, to really cause him much difficulty. He can absorb just about any other magical or physical attack. In fact, he is so over-powered most of the time that many of his conflicts result in a Curb-Stomp Battle against his foes.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: The Gryphon is a unique creature. He's bipedal, with the head/face of an eagle. His hands are clawed talons, something of a cross between an eagle and a cat. His legs resemble a lion standing erect. He does not have a tail, but he does have vestigial wings on his back. He's a bit sensitive about these, so the Gryphon (that's his name as well as his race) hides them with loose-fitting clothing most of the time. He's one of the Master Guardians of the Dream Lands who went rogue—all of the Master Guardians are unique creatures.
• One-Hit Kill: The Sunlancer Bow, a spell created by the Dragon Masters, is capable of taking out even a Dragon King with one shot. The drawbacks are that it's a difficult spell to cast, can take some time to set up depending on the time of day, and it drains a decent chunk of energy to perform.
• Patchwork Map: The Dragonrealm is the quintessential patchwork map. There is little rhyme or reason to the geography, other than that it reflects the personality of the Dragon King that rules over each region. Some of the oddities are due to magical intervention. The Barren Lands (ruled by Brown) used to be verdant forests and grasslands until a ritual gone awry turned them into a desert. Another ritual gone awry then turned the Barren Lands back into forests (though the name stuck).
• Power of the Void: Darkhorse is made of the Void. He's a sentient sphere of annihilation in the shape of, well, a horse.
• Precursors: Where to begin? Dragonrealm contains several layers of Precursors, each more ancient than the last. Going backwards in time, they are roughly as follows: Dragon Kings preceded humans. Dragon Kings are actually descended from the Vraad—it's sort of complicated. Vraad preceded Dragon Kings. Humans, like Dragon Kings, are descended from Vraad—again, complicated. Seekers preceded Vraad. Quel preceded Seekers. An unnamed race of spirit beings are heavily implied to be the ones who started the whole process going. A remnant of this race now inhabit the bodies of the Faceless Ones from the Dreamlands.
• Purple Is Powerful: Dragon King Purple (who died during the Turning War) was arguably even more powerful than the Dragon Emperor Gold, if only because Purple controlled the city of Penacles and its Library. He also had aspirations of usurping Gold via believing he legitimately was more powerful, and had the heroes not stopped him since his plans would have led to mankind's utter subservience to drakes forever would as well likely would have succeeded in his planned betrayal.
• Really 700 Years Old: Dragon Kings in general are quite long lived, though there are some Dragon Kings that stand out. Ice and Storm are among the oldest and most powerful. Crystal is an order of magnitude older and more powerful. Shade is nearly immortal, though it's also his curse. Sorcerers are known to live for centuries. The Gryphon is also quite long-lived, having played an active role in current events since the Turning Wars 200 years ago, with no signs of slowing down.
• Sharing a Body: Cabe Bedlam shares his body with Nathan Bedlam, his grandfather. This is because Nathan imbued Cabe with part of his own soul in order to save Cabe's life when he was a baby.
• Weredragon: The more advanced Dragon Kings and their broods fall into this category. Male dragons can take the form of armored humanoids which appear mostly human unless you look at them closely. Female dragons have more advanced shapeshifting capabilities that allow them to pass for fully human in most cases.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Shows up frequently, especially among Dragon Kings. Gold, Ice, Brown, and Crystal are not known for being the most rational. Duke Toma is more calculating than most, but he's also quite mad with power. Azran Bedlam, Cabe's father and Nathan's son, goes completely off the deep end while creating the Nameless. Many—if not most—members of the Tezerenee clan suffer from this trope. Shade, Dragon King Crystal, and the Tzee are all former members of the Tezerenee clan still alive and all are quite, quite mad, though the sanity of the former two ebbs and flows depending on the circumstances.
• Wizards Live Longer:
  • Human wizards can live on average for 300 years, with exceptionally powerful ones being able to extend that further and even those with little power having extended lifespans by several decades. This is due to both slowed aging and the use of rejuvenation spells, to the point it's not uncommon for a wizard who looks to be in his 20s or 30s to actually be over 100. As wizards near the end of their life, however, it takes more energy to maintain such spells, and they'll start aging much more normally.
  • Drakes can live even longer, with it being mentioned the strongest can live up to 1000 years. Though given the drakes' perchance for battle and treachery, it's hard to find any that live over 600. The Crystal Dragon King was an exception, being the first of his line and outliving several of his "heirs" through age alone, though he had the help of a powerful artifact for that matter.
  • The Vraad were even more impressive, their Physical God-like magic allowing them to live for thousands of years and still only look middle-aged. Their arrival in the Dragonrealm, along with the loss of much of said magic, also came with effects of age creeping up on them faster, which several found quite disconcerting after living for so long without signs of visible aging. Gerrod Tezerenne, one of the youngest of his clan, was about 900 years old when he made the crossing of worlds and would go on to outlive many of them when he became Shade, who's practically a Time Abyss, though he cheats in that regard.