Idea(s) for a story with Dragons

Here is the link for the original question and some of the discussion afterwards.

I've decided to expand the discussion to more about dragons (biology/culture etc). Ask any questions you have about the dragons in my story and, hopefully, you can help with my questions.

edited 13th Feb '12 9:56:43 PM by Grenedle

Well since you're the original poster, maybe you should start the ball rolling. Anything you particularly want opinions on?

Right. That's probably a good idea :P

So, in this world (I think I'm going to go with a seperate magical world in parallel with a "normal" world) there are Eastern dragons (easties (sing. easty)) which are the basic serpentine Asian dragons, and Western Dragons (westies (sing. westy)).

Easties are more naturally skilled with controlling their inherent magic, so their kids (dragonets?dragonlings?) generally look like their parents. The westies, however, are less skilled their magic and it leaks into their eggs. This means that westy mutations are very common, explaining the variety of western dragons.

So, with that background out of the way, here is the idea. Westies can have various morphs, where the features are generally the same generation to generation. But I don't want a world completely saturated with dragons. What are the most likely habitats for large hunters to live in? I have a some ideas for a few morphs, but I'll probably use the morphs that live in the most likely populated places.

Also if you want to continue with the diet talk, that works too.

edited 13th Feb '12 11:28:45 PM by Grenedle

Desolate area near rich areas, so say the Alps, Andes, Ethiopean highlands, that kind of place. There's also places called Sky Islands and Tepuis (not the same thing) that might suit as say, isolated communities.

As for food, again, just how big are these dragons going to be? The size of the belly is a big limiter for population.

If humans and dragons coexist relatively peacefully (as I think you said in your original thread), maybe there are communities of humans which have sprung up in order to feed a family dragons by breeding livestock for them to eat. Perhaps the dragons repay them with protection, or somthing magical?

Dragons do have many potentially lucrative mundane utilities for their magical nature.

• As a Bank. The Dragon's horde could actually be a town/city's treasure store. The Dragon agrees to guard it for a small fee.

• As a mining industry. Dragons may be able to burrow deep into the mountain and endure things like lava and cave ins. Partnered with humans who will sort out what was excavated, this set up could explain cheap metal goods before steam.

• As a terraformer. While planting seeds one by one is inefficient, Dragons can likely divert rivers, dig out irrigation channels, fisheries, and clear brush with a burst of fire. Dragon gets a share of the harvest, peasants get spare weeks of back breaking work.

• As an Airforce. Kingdoms would pay handsomely for a giant fire breathing, flying lizard on their side in a war.

edited 14th Feb '12 2:19:24 AM by Natasel

There are a lot of large animals in the oceans. Maybe one morph would spend its days soaring on thermals over the water, diving to catch marine mammals, large fish, sea turtles and the like.

I also have a few questions. Just how powerful are your dragons, magically? Is magic an intrinsic ability for them, or do they have to learn spells through research and dedication? How intelligent are your dragons?

Do dragons get along with each other, or see each other as threats? If dragons do get along, do they have their own society? Do they see humans as equals? Can they speak human languages? Take human form? Do they get involved with politics?

Most dragons (East or West) are more or less T Rex sized. Some morphs are smaller however.

/ These are good ideas. I was only thinking of sort of stable human/dragon relations where neither messes with each other, but this could add a lot to my idea. Also, dragon manure :P

One of the morphs that I came up with was a completely aquatic dragon. They would be long and serpentine, like the easties, but more adapted to living in the water. In fact, I was toying with the idea that aquatic westies (or a similar species from the past) being ancestors to all dragons, East and West.

Maybe I should show all the morphs that I've come up with?

Okay, assuming half the food requirements compared to say a lion (1 kg of meat per day per 30 kg of animal), then takking the size of a 'rex as 6 tonnes (about middle range for estimates of its weight) and you're looking at 100 kg per day of meat for an adult animal, and that's before to have to eat for labour-intensive activities like flight...

For a community bigger than say a family group, that's going to require a big herd.

edited 14th Feb '12 9:54:53 PM by MattII

How many large herbivores are there? If there are hordes of elephant-sized animals or larger, like sauropods, it's far more plausible. But then, of course, you need enough vegetation to feed them. That's less of a problem, though.

edited 14th Feb '12 10:00:29 PM by Feather7603

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

Just had a thought: if you have that many large beasts able to fly... kinda hints that it's a rather high-oxygen environment (which would also impact on metabolism: faster). I'd hate to meet fire-breath in a that! Or the breather's appetite in the dark.

I meant 'dark' as in 'dark alley' — but, doubted that the dragon would fit in an alley.

edited 16th Feb '12 6:54:35 AM by Euodiachloris

There are larger communities of dragons. Both types of dragons live in groups (tribes?), under a central leader and his group. The story I'm thinking of has a general meeting between both Easties and Westies where they're also bringing their groups together so there will be a considerable number of dragons in a small area (relatively speaking).

That's why I was asking my original question. I was trying to think of prey animals that could sustain a population of dragons.

Don't forget that part of dragon biology can be explained by magic. That is something to think about though. Why would being in the dark affect a fire-breather's appetite?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serengeti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serengeti_National_Park

Serengeti which is one of most productive grassland in the world had

30,000 km2 grassland > two million herbivore > 4,000 predator

T-Rex had almost six ton of weight, while leopard roughly 60 kg and lion 150kg, lets make dragon lighter than t-rex with hollow bone for flying, say three tons

3,000 (dragon weight) / 150 (lion weight) = one dragon take the place of 20 lion

so area the size of Serengeti could sustain roughly 200 dragons.

Roughly 150 km2 grassland and 10.000 herbivore to sustain single dragon.

This is just a passing thought, of course, but what if the dragons were... not sure how the word would work, geovores? Metallovores? Basically, they eat stone or metal. It recontextualizes a lot of things, heh... those giant hoards they sleep on? That's their larder, not their safety-deposit box. If I'm not taking the artistic license on biology too far, it would also basically make them nuclear powered, making the flame breath kind of a safety valve as well as a weapon...

Eh, no idea. Could be interesting, though.

That could be interesting. Reminds me of a mockumentary about dragons that had them scraping minerals off of rocks to power their fire breath. That wasn't their entire diet though. I wonder how that would work. The dragons' body wouldn't be made of proteins then. It would be like some sort of organic robot.

I love the aquatic dragons in Monster Hunter 3 (ganototosu & ragiakurusu). Mean westies that rule the seas but cripple on land.

By the way, not all easties live in water. In Chinese legends, a Zhu Long manipulates polar days, polar nights and aurora with the opening and closing of its eyes.

edited 6th Mar '12 5:18:42 PM by YuriStrike

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That ragiakurusu looks somewhat like my water dragon idea, but a lot shorter.

That's interesting; I thought all easties were deities of bodies of water. Something like your Zhu Long might be classified under Dragons (with a capital D). The difference being that normal dragons are more or less animals in the way that humans are animals, but Dragons are akin to gods/god-like beings.

I like this new setting of yours.

So, did the Dragons procreate normal dragons?

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I actually hadn't thought of that. I'm going to say probably. Although the dragons don't worship the Dragons. Only respect them as greater beings than themselves at this point in my ideas. I may or may not find a reason to change this.

In this world, how intelligent are the Dragons? I mean, are they so intelligent that they can outwit humans, or more like really smart Lions?

And do humans hunt them? Is there any kind of universal weakness for Eastys, or each breed of Westy? Can a mundane human take down a dragon without magic, just technology and intelligence? Or are they simply too big and too powerful to be taken down by anything the humans have?

It's your God, they're your rules, you go to hell." - Mark Twain

Dragons are like humans intelligence-wise, some are smarter and some are dumber. I've been toying with the idea of there being both sentient and non-sentient dragons, but I haven't thought of a way to have both without just saying "that's the way it is" and ignoring it.

Normal dragons do have weaknesses. All dragons have an inherent weakness to anti-magic, although easties are more succeptable to that sort of thing, as they naturally use magic more. Iron, being the quintessential anti-magical medallion, works well. Easties are long and serpentine, so they have a lot of exposed body to take advantage of (they can reach their backs by bending around, but those precious seconds could make the difference in a fight), and they have puny legs. Different westy breeds have different weakness (ie water dragons can't really do a lot on land because of their aquatic adaptations, wyverns are often smaller than other westies and don't have front limbs, so if you get their wings trapped they can't much either). Single humans wouldn't be able to do a lot though. But it takes ages for dragons to reproduce (every 40-50 years maybe?) so humans could take an entire community of dragons down just through shear numbers.

The dragons in the story I'm thinking of writing live near a human community that they have made an uneasy peace with. The backstory being that the westies on one mountatin and the easties on another mountain were feuding and destroyed much of the human settlements in between. Eventually the humans got fed up with that and attacked both sides, coming out on top and ordered them to stop fighting (at least near human lands) on pain of being obliterated.

edited 7th Mar '12 3:31:39 PM by Grenedle

Regarding the diet thing: some large predators can survive on things which are absolutely tiny in comparison to them. For instance Grizzly Bears have evolved those big claws of theirs not as weapons but so that they can dig out the fatty moths that make up a large portion of their diet (sometimes they'll eat just moths for months on end, in fact).

So a dragon, who could eat a Grizzly, could also easily sustain themselves on - say - mice and cats (and I can't believe I just suggested that, since I love cats). Obviously not the whole time, but it could be a sizable portion of their diet.

So, if dragons are sapient, that leaves a couple big questions.

1. Humans (especially early ones) have a tendency to dislike and/or kill everything that's different (just look at our Neanderthal cousins). Does that tendency reflect back to dragons? What stopped prehistoric dragons from just obliterating the entire human race in its monkey phase?

2. Are there any dragon philosophers? What does dragon philosophy look like?

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

"The Flight Of Dragons by Peter Dickinson is a "speculative natural history" book, explaining how dragons might have evolved, how everything about them from hoards of gold to breathing fire was based on their flight mechanism (they were essentially living dirigibles), and why there aren't any fossils (once they died, the complicated chemical processes they used to produce hydrogen dissolved their bones)." from Our Dragons Are Different Literature.

Dragons can't fly. Compare weight to wingspan, it's impossible.

Therefore dragons must float. Hydrochloric acid in the stomach + metal = Hydrogen gas. Dragon is a zepellin. Hence fire breath is expelling excess Hydrogen. All that acid dissolves dragon bones (hollow for flight), hence no dragon fossils. Dragon sleep on gold and silver because excess acid dissolves everything else.

edited 29th Nov '13 11:31:51 AM by Jaqen

What if there were no hypothetical questions? There are 10 kinds of people: those who understand Binary and those who don't.