Homebrews - The Place of Dragons in our Cosmologies

[Odhanan]

Hello there.

I have been thinking about Dragons for a while today, and how I would like them to be special in the campaign. How I could bring this about, and what kind of impact it would have on the campaign world.

I would like to fuel my and your brainstorms by talking about the place of Dragons in our Homebrew worlds.

After all, the game's called Dungeons and well, Dragons. Yet, I don't think that, for me, the special status of Dragons in the game is accurately described by either variety or sheer number of hit dice.

So I ask you, how did you make Dragons special in your worlds? What place do they hold in your worlds? Are they creatures/races like any other, just more ancient? Who created them? For what purpose? What is the role of Dragons in your Cosmology? Agents of good and evil a la Dragonlance, or something completely different? Any ideas you have you didn't explore yet? What would those be? Any interesting "what if's" to share with us?

Please explain at your leisure, and don't hesitate to comment (with the appropriate civility and politeness of course) on each others ideas. Thank you in advance!

 

[Crothian]

The history of Dragons in my world is a little complex and not yet really in my wiki either

During the first World there was a Dragonn God, one of the 15 (at the time) Greater Gods. He created all dragons and at that time they were little more then just powerful, intelligent reptiles. That world was destroyed and during the chaos of the world crumbling the Evil Greater God attacked the other Gods including the Dragon God. The Dragon God was near death and choose to spread out his power unto all his children and thus ended is own existance. Dragons became the powers we see nbow in the books.

Many many years later, the Dragons rose up and conquored much of the new world. It lasted for quite a while but in the end the Dragons just didn't trust each other enough. The Empire fell and now Dragons live mostly a solatary existance, but that is changing.

An ancient dragon who was a cleric to the dragon God recently got freed from a divine prison. He instinctly knew of a place holy to dragon god on the world, and has set up an empire there. The draconic races like the kobolds have been mystically drawn there and now have formed their own country on what used to be Dwarven lands. Soo, other real dragons will make their way there and they will start the path to attempt to ressurect a God.

 

[an_idol_mind]

Dragons in my world are essentially gods. From the history notes on my campaign:

The largest focus of the Mythic Age is the War of the Kami. From out of the chaos of creation, two deities emerged. They were Ameterra, a goddess formed of pure divine light, and Arrin, the Dragonlord. The two deities became lovers, and crafted the world of Niiran to be their home. The creation of Niiran took hundreds, if not thousands of years, during which time Ameterra gave birth to a demigod. Derrezen, the first of the kami (“kami” being the elven word for demigod, which has made its way into the common tongue), was a massive red dragon of power comparable to his father. He was not satisfied with living in the world his parents had created, however, and sought the power to create his own worlds. To gain this power, he fought against his father. Arrin and Derrezen battled for days and weeks on end. The fire they breathed and the destruction they wrought formed deserts and badlands across the world of Niiran. Ultimately, Derrezen killed his father. Arrin’s corpse fell to the earth, and his bones eventually grew into the near-impassable Peaks of Arrin. Exhausted by the battle, Derrezen flew north and rested in a cave. While her son slept, the goddess Ameterra cast a spell that bound him in an eternal sleep. She created an immortal guardian to watch over her son, and imprisoned Derrezen forevermore.

Ameterra was not satisfied to be alone, so she created a variety of new races, including humans, dwarves, dragons, and orcs. But these creatures were far beneath her in terms of power and vision, and most seemed ignorant of her existence altogether. To escape her loneliness, she created twelve more kami, each with power comparable to her own. These children would rule over the twelve continents of Niiran and lead the people of the world. Once again, however, her children would not be satisfied to only be semi-gods. They wanted all of Ameterra’s power, and made war among themselves for the right to challenge the goddess. The War of the Kami threatened to tear Niiran apart, and Ameterra ultimately imprisoned each of her children in the same way that she had Derrezen, creating an immortal guardian for each one who would watch the sleeping kami until the end of time.

Alone again, Ameterra traveled the globe, watching over the course of thousands of years as the creatures she had created evolved and the land changed. She traveled to Capertia, the largest of the world’s lands, and grew to love that place most of all. The humans of Capertia endeared themselves to her, and she gave them a gift of her divinity. She imbued each of the Capertians with a piece of her divine light—a piece of her very soul. In doing so, she insured that no one being could ever steal her power. The light in the Capertians could multiply and diversify through childbirth. To seize all of Ameterra’s power, one would need to destroy all of the Capertian race. The light gave the Capertian humans unnatural grace and beauty, immortality, and an innate ability to cast magic by focusing on their inner divinity. These humans became known as elves.

Near the end of the Mythic Age, more humans traveled to Capertia from the western lands of Annwn, also known as the Cursed Lands. The humans were fleeing something, although no one knows exactly what. They made their homes in the frozen hills and plains of the north, and feared the immortal and magical creatures now known as elves. Seeking to avoid violence between the two species, the elves moved into the forests of the south, leaving the more barbaric men to form clans in the north. The fearful humans soon came to know the massive southern forests as the Black Wood, for it was there that the immortal elves and their dangerous magic lived.

Essentially, dragons are either the true form of the original gods of the world, or as replacements for their first child.

 

[Psion]

In one cosmology I made that has become something of a formative influence on my subsequent worldbuilding eforts, dragons predated the gods. There was a creator figure, the elements (which were living sentient beings in their own right).

To put this rather less floridly than my creation myth (which I'm sort of proud of and may want to use some day), the creator pulled the elements from his body and remained only spirit. The elements made animals, but could not make sentient beings. The creator pulled fragments of the elements from each element, and invested them with his spirit to give them sentience and reason. With this was born the primordial dragon father and mother (this could be Bahamut and Tiamat, but they weren't in my cosmology).

The elements, seeing this, learned to pull fragments of their spirit, and crafted men, elves, and dwarves. Like the dragons, these were thinking beings. But they saw that they died easily. The elements concluded that they needed immortal guardians like unto the dragons. So they took the mightiest of their creations and infused them with the last bits of their sentience and spirit to make them immortal.

 

[el-remmen]

From my wiki:

The origin of dragons is highly debated among scholars, historians and theologians. The most common legend, is that the original dragons were made directly by the gods to serve them. However, abandoned to the mortal realms after the cataclysm that ended The Time Before, they slept deep in the earth and under the sea until awakened by drow witches, and later elven druids, during the Second Age.

In the dwarven creation legend, dragons were a side-effect of Natan-ahb crafting the world.

Dragons in Aquerra are all unique beings. While some of their general attributes can be determined by their color, each possesses power unique to it. There have been no recorded instances of two dragons sharing the same unique power, though dragons of the same blood line often have variations along a theme. For example, Karak the Defilerwas said to have a roar of blasting, while his spawn, Torshenna sings a song of discord.

Age of Dragons: Dragons are thought to be nearly immortal. That is, unless slain, they would never die of old age or disease, and in time can recover from almost any wound. In fact, as dragons get older they only get more and more powerful, but they also seem to become less and less active as well, with decades, if not hundreds of years, passing between their appearances.

However, dragons mature very slowly, and even most of the dragons hatched in the Second Age soon after dragons were reawakened have not passed the "very old" age category. In addition, dragon eggs left unattended for centuries can still be hatched after all that time under the proper conditions.

 

[Robert Ranting]

Sad to Say...

Currently, and perhaps unfortunately, my campaign setting "borrows" it's Dragons as well as several other elements, from Warcraft. Honestly, I know that it would be better for me to come up with my own idea of how Dragons work, but I'm quite enamored with the Five Aspect Dragons, both as individual personalities, and in their usefulness as plot devices. While this is fine for my personal use, there's always been part of me that has hoped that I could publish *something* to do with the setting one day, and I'm painfully aware of how crippled the setting would appear after stripping out all the WarCraft IP. In a sense, I'm torn between what I want to do in my games now (having bought all the WarCraft books) and my vague, far-flung and nigh-impossible hopes of getting something published. Generally, my pessimism wins out in such arguments, and so I put off coming up with my own ideas, and thus, why I have not anything useful to contribute to this thread. I am however, very interested in seeing what other people have to post, as it might inspire me to finally "clean out" the WarCraft from my system and put in original content.

Robert "I spent $100 on WCd20 books, and everyone else would rather play WoW" Ranting

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

In Urbis, blue dragons rule an entire region. They aren't doing a bad job of it, either.

Elsewhere, dragons are a big part of the bureaucracy of a Chinese-style empire. This can lead to things like a gold dragon trying to "civilize" the natives of a recently conquered new province...

 

[Aeric]

Dragons in my world do not talk, cast spells, or have spell-like abilities. Their intelligence level is equivalent to that of a clever predator; think of the velociraptors from the film Jurassic Park. Like many of the more intelligent beasts out there, they have the capacity to be cruel, oftentimes killing for sport and hoarding food just to spite others of their kind. They are, by their nature, Neutral Evil. There is only one breed of dragon. Their coloration varies from dark brown to light brownish-green, and they breathe fire. They live in warm temperate to tropical areas, and they usually lair in places inhospitable to lesser beings: swamps, sulfuric lakes, etc. They occupy no special place in my world's cosmology, aside from being the biggest, baddest critters out there.

 

[Khuxan]

Currently, and perhaps unfortunately, my campaign setting "borrows" it's Dragons as well as several other elements, from Warcraft. Honestly, I know that it would be better for me to come up with my own idea of how Dragons work, but I'm quite enamored with the Five Aspect Dragons, both as individual personalities, and in their usefulness as plot devices.

This is some info about WC dragons, if anyone's interested (I was): http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info...onid=0598B6420214E4D942F2FC6334B75CEE.app05#4

As for my campaign, I haven't quite decided. Either they're immortal, invincible forces of nature, or they're very powerful, very difficult to kill and very cunning. I suppose I'm thinking they'll take the role of Greek gods - sometimes interferring, sometimes scheming but always powerful and unpredictable. But I'm interested to see what others have come up with.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

In the last homebrew I was working on, no place at all.