Book 4, Chapter 6: Wheels Within Wheels
Death Song: Mystery-class dragon
Overview: Diurnal close support and economic dragon; primarily useful in civilian life, with tactical applications in non-lethal crowd control. Their acoustic skills can assist in calming even agitated combatants, and while the dragon is notably visually striking, most individuals have significant skill in stealth and ambush, and will hide if necessary, rendering them difficult to counterattack. On the modern battlefield they have little tactical use, but historically saw application in disrupting mass infantry formations. Furthermore, their ‘amber’ breath can be useful in immobilizing small numbers of closely packed targets.
Breath Type: Rapid-setting binary polymer plastic. Historically this material was confused with fossilized tree resin (amber), as it closely resembles that material in coloration and gross mechanical characteristics. Death Songs are capable of ingesting and recycling this material, along with other plastic polymers, limited primarily by individual tolerance for taste.
Identification: Large adult size. Gold to red coloration along the wings and main body. Single wing pair, two legs with grasping claws incapable of fine manual dexterity, long whiplike tail with barbs and small fins at terminus. Wings are scalloped inwards between the supporting ribs, and feature large eyespots and other patterns on the inner and outer surfaces. Large spines along the spine, and fins and long horns on the head. Distinctive songs (See Death Song Appendix C for audio recording).
Strategic Role: Crowd control, non-lethal immobilization of high-value targets, tactical distractions, and morale support.
Known Weaknesses: Extremely eye-catching; while skilled at stealth, these dragons find it hard to hide again once spotted. Counter-acoustics can distract or enrage them, making them break stealth with ease.
Phenotype Cluster: B2FØS5+S4-S3!M4+TØTØ
Populations: Small and scattered. Primarily located around the Aegean and Black Seas, Death Songs, also known as the Siren Dragon, have been reported in numerous nests scattered as far away as the northwestern Vestrilands, as well as individual isolates connected to no known nest. Note that isolated individuals tend to be undersocialized and hostile as a result, with recorded instances of cannibalism of other dragons by these individuals.
—North Sea Empire, Office of Draconic Intelligence, Dragon Breed Profiles (Declassified), 1822 Edition
Tropes that appear in this chapter:
- Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Turns out that the assassination attempt during Drago's wedding day was done by three separate factions who did not know about each other and got in each other's way.
- Content Warnings:Chapter Trigger Warnings: Explicit Depiction of Failure To Thrive Infants (Dragon Hatchlings), Explicit Depiction of a Shipwreck
- Fantastic Plastic: The Death Song can produce naturally-occurring plastic as their breath weapon.
- Karmic Misfire: Five blocks had burned due to a single thief keeping dragons in his home. That's a lot of people unrelated to the crime that suffered loss due to one man's stupidity.
- Laser-Guided Karma: One man managed to steal several dragons from the Byzantines, but is caught before he could sell them due to the dragons setting his house on fire.
- Mythology Gag: The Death Song's canon trait of cannibalising other dragons is referenced in the epigraph as something that only isolated and hostile individual members of the breed does.
- Three-Way Sex: More like four way sex, Sigurd, Gunnar, Heidrun, and Sophia have sex before bathing.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Because of Henry's Engineered Heroics, the people of Brittany think he's an actual hero when he's the mastermind responsible for the attacks on their nobles.
