Sunday, 2 April 2023

Dragons and Caranus.

 


 

There were three continents and each was far from the others.  The Gods of Old looked upon the world and saw the creatures that lived on each continent and knew that one day they would come together and interact, but they knew that it would they would need to mature before that happened.  So they were kept far apart by their nature.  The humans warred upon themselves and they ruled that continent.  The other peoples were more widely varied, the dwarves, elves, gnomes and halflings lived in different niches on the second continent and they warred amongst themselves too.  Humans warred for dominance and with their dominance they would hold their continent.  The other peoples they needed to cooperate to hold their continent to gain power.  Only when they accomplished their hold of their continent would they be allowed to try to travel to the third continent, Caranus.  The main inhabitants of Caranus were dragons, but they, as soon as they started existing controlled their continent.  To the others they are alien. 

The Elves, the Humans, the Dwarves, The Halflings and the Gnomes, were all more closely relatable than they could ever be to dragons.  They had genders, they had children they had minds and memories that ended with their deaths.  Dragons had none of these.  Dragons have no gender, they do not reproduce, so there are no children and there are no elders either.  Their memories are a function of their size, their sentience a function of their size. Their personality a function of the environment where they live.  Their appearance a function of where they live.  They are the holders of Magic and Magic is their inheritance.

What does a dragon look like?  They are identical to each other in everyway.  They are serpents with wings and feet.  A small dragon and a gargantuan dragon look like each other, they have trivial difference in detail of shape save in two ways, where they grew up affects their colour and their special abilities.  the people they interact with when they evolve affect them too.  The magic that they learn to use is affected by these factors too.  Magic began with dragons, and it was only when the humans and later the demi-humans came to Caranus did they learn how to use magic.

Dragons are filled with power from the moment they are born.  Each cell permeates with the power.  As they have more of those cells they gain power and they gain sentience.  A dragon begins as the seed of rain.  A mote that falls from the clouds.  When the mote arrives it senses the location of the next closest dragon and they fight and are consumed.  It starts as one cell becomes two cells, two becomes four as it consumes dragons around it.  the observed rule is that dragon consumes three of its size to get to the next size.  An amoeba is a fully formed animal, but looks nothing like a multicellular animal.  A dragon the size of a cell looks like a dragon the size of a mountain.  Dragons can be sizes that you can’t see, to the size of a small insect—it is at this stage that many people see these small dragon as fire-flies fire breathing flies.  Lightning breathing etc.  Small miniature song bird sized dragons, crow sized, chicken sized, turkey sized and then something happens they get big enough that a spark changes and they gain sentience and magic.

When a Dragon hits Challenge rating 1, they gain that ability to speak and cast cantrips as a sorcerer.  Ever Challenge rating higher they gain a level of sorcery.  At CR3 their tail becomes an effective weapon, at CR4 they learn to speak with other creatures.  At CR 7 their wings are big enough to damage and they become charismatic enough to gain allies, never dragons.  At CR 10, they can start to lay eggs, these hatch into Kobolds.  Kobolds they create will look like them in colour and they serve the dragon until they or the dragon dies.  At CR13 they will lay bigger eggs and these will hatch into Dragon Born.  They like the kobold appear like the dragon and serve them too.  When the Dragon hits CR21 they become a different force in the World, their followers can become true clerics and can cast clerical cantrips in the dragon’s name.  at CR 22, they grant 1st level spells, and every size beyond that another spell level is granted.  A CR 30 dragon, can have clerics that cast clerical spells as any other god.  When the dragon consumes enough sentience it will transcend itself and take to the skies and seed the world with its cells as proto dragons.

As a dragon gains size, it gains sentience too.  Before CR1 it is tiny in size and small for CR 1 and 2.  While this size it has a proficiency bonus of 2 and a attribute bonus of +1, all its stats are 12.  It has proficiency in all saving throws and it has a hit die of d4 and d6.  It gains 2 hit dice every Challenge Rating difference.  At CR3 it gets significantly bigger and is size Medium.  Its hit die becomes a d8.  At CR3 attributes rise to 14 and +2, at CR4 to 16 and +3.  At CR5 their Proficiency increase to +3.  At CR7 they are bigger than Medium and are Large in size, they gain a d10 hit die.  Their size is about the space that they control, they are not that much bigger.  At CR 8, their attributes rise to 18 and +4, and at CR9 their Proficiency increases to +4.  At CR13 they gain a Proficiency bonus of +5 and attributes rise to 20, +5.  At DC14 they take control of a bigger space and are considered Huge, their Hit die increases to d12.  At DC22 they become Gargantuan and their hit die increases to d20.  In these sizes their Attributes continue to grow naturally to 30 or +9 and their proficiency to +9.  There are creatures more intelligent or stronger, or more charismatic, but there are none that are overall as competent. 

A CR1 dragon must consume three other CR1 dragons to become a CR2 dragon.  A CR2 dragon, must consume 9 CR1 dragons to become CR3, or 3 CR2.  Dragon flesh is all that is important to them the concentration of the essence of dragon kind is all that is important.  Growing in a society that requires utter selfishness and viciousness is part of the reason why a dragon’s out look they way that it is.  Dragons are filled with hate.  They are evil.  This is their natural state when everything else is equal.  Who would show that dragon a different way?  The path of mercy is a path of myth and legend.  When it works it creates a fundamental change in the dragon, one that is reflected in their appearance.

Dragons that grow in the snow and the tundra, or the snowy peaks are white.  Their sorcery tends to by like their environment, filled with cold and icy power.  A dragon that grows up in windswept rock, towering mountains or deep canyons grows to be the colour of their rock and has powers similar to this nature.  Dragons in temperate forests, coniferous forests, tropical jungles are diverse colours of green with similar powers.  Dragons of deserts, dragons or rivers, dragons of lakes.  Dragons of grasslands, dragons of wastelands, dragons for swamps and fens.  Dragons that fly in storms, dragons that live their entire life underground.  Dragons that grow up in living cities, dragons the grow in dead cities.  Dragons that grow in mudflats, dragons of volcanoes.  Every natural and unnatural terrain will influence a dragon and their appearance.  Dragons that grew up in the north during the days of no sun verses the same dragon on 24 hours of light.  Dragons of lightest yellow, deepest reds, greens, greys, whites, purples, blacks, and blues.  The dragon that grows in the mist of a waterfall.  The dragon that grows at the surface of a lake, or in the dark depths.  The environment affects the spells, the colour, and the breath weapon too.  The last thing that affects things is the alignment.  Once the dragon is shown a different way, it will change, and its colour will change with it.  a Dragon on the Path of Mercy changes to a metallic version of its colour.  Its breath will be modified, a non-lethal version and a lethal version. 

A dragon’s Breath weapon is usually a cone, their attribute + proficiency x 10’ long and its damage increases as it gets bigger but not as fast as it gets in size damage is in d6s.  it will cause damage as a elemental force, poison, electricity, force, fire, cold, radiance, necromancy, etc.  it may have another effect like petrification, but then the damage is reduced, or the dragon may have an environmental version like it creates fog or causes plant growth, then the lethal damage breath weapon is reduced too.  Merciful dragons straight up have a deadly and a non-lethal breath weapon with a maximum effect. 

A merciful dragon who is poorly treated afterwards may leave the Path of Mercy and either join that Path of Balance or the Path of Vengeance.  The path of Balance the dragon gains a colour that is neither metallic nor colour, but like that of a gemstone.  The path of Vengeance creates a dragon that exists beyond the reactionary nature of unmodified dragon and becomes one that is driven to destroy.  The Dragon’s power is bent on destruction—the fire of a Vengeance Dragon melts things as it burns, the Electricity magnetizes metals and burns organics, gas corrodes animals and causes over growth among plants, the breath that petrifies, petrifies and shatters, the cold freezes and shatters, thunder that deafens and shatters.  The extra lethality is rare, as one can not change paths as a dragon more than once a size level.

Dragons are territorial, a natural effect of their needs to devour other dragon kind.  A Dragon of a difference of CR4 of their CR can ignore each other, because they are no longer a threat or considered appropriate food.  A CR4 dragon would need to consume 81 CR1 dragon to gain CR5, but a CR5 would need to consume 243 CR1 dragons to get to CR6.  And the same for  the larger.  A CR15 dragon would need to consume 243 CR11 dragons to gain CR16.   As such there can be different tiers of dragons in a single area but a lack of dragon close in tier.  Two dragons of the same size would clash often and fight to the point where one by chance overcomes the other.  Dragon flesh has a scent that other dragons can smell, and the concentration will ward or entice dragons to the area.  And dead dragon flesh is even more enticing.  People who desire a dragon head to fix upon their wall will often be hounded by dragons attempting to take the dragon flesh and consume it.  as the dragon corpse pile up around the would be trophy hunters the smell will summon increasingly more powerful dragons and the trophy hunters will weaken as more and more powerful dragons arrive to feast.  Only the most powerful can survive a few fights and in the end there will always be another dragon close by, bigger than a the last dragon fought.  If a dragon consumes a dragon a full CR greater than it, it will be forced to sleep for a week.  If you befriended a dragon and you fed it a Dragon more than 1 CR larger than it, it would be forced sleep a week for every CR increase, but not together, one at a time—eat, sleep, eat sleep until the smaller dragon is equal to the deceased dragon in size, or more likely another dragon flies down and eats the dragon corpse and kills the sleeping dragon too.  Metallic dragons are the only dragons that have been known to form cooperative groups with other metallic dragons, but they are often different size levels and similar sizes create too much pressure to fight and consume. 

Spells.  Dragons are the first spell casters and they have spells that no other caster has.  They use Charisma as their casting trait.  They are not restricted to casting sorcery spells although they will be seen doing these more often.  They may cast any spell that has a type of damage with their type of damage that is innate, so a stone dragon might cast a “fireball” that does force damage.  Little known powers of Metallic dragons is they can cast clerical spells and that some even cast elemental spells with radically different damage types, like a healing fireball, but this heals half the damage it would normally cause.  Legendary dragons were thought to have transcended the casting power of spells and break reality with 10th, 11th and 12th level spells, but the Dragon had to be CR 21, CR25 and CR29 to do so.  Those on the Path of Balance or the Path of Vengeance may be able to cast these spells too, if so it would do much to explain the devastation caused by these dragons.

No comments:

Post a Comment