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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9350634" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Well, dragonborn aren't a hybrid of dragons and humans. They are their own species. This doesn't have an explanation any more than "any other race can reproduce with humans and produce a blend of traits" does. It's just how things are presented.And, yes, I personally prefer dragonborn to work this way. I've had a few ideas for diegetically explaining this difference. Some examples:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Humans and dragons are the only natural species that exist. All other species arose from ritually-crafting ancestral beings from appropriate materials (e.g. dwarves from precious metals and gemstones, elves from leaves and petals, orcs from sturdy ordinary stone, halflings from cooked food, etc.), who could then produce offspring with humans and thus "piggyback" off of the elemental spark that allows humans to reproduce. As a result, all "elves" are actually humans, who simply carry on enough of the mystical heritage of the Progenitor Elves to consistently produce "elf" offspring. However, when an active dragon-spark and an active human-spark are inherited simultaneously by a person (which doesn't always happen), the result is always a dragonborn--and two dragonborn more or less always produce dragonborn offspring. As a result, dragonborn are sometimes shunned by other societies because they're seen as "taking over" or the like.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragonborn actually come from a different universe (or perhaps this universe, but far, far in its distant future), and are thus biologically incompatible with beings of this universe(/distant past). They simply cannot produce offspring with any other race that currently exists, except (possibly) dragons. Not even humans. (I particularly like pairing this idea with the "dragonborn are rare in the world because they all come from a crashed cryosleep colony ship, where they struggle to expand because this world doesn't have the industrial capacity to support the lifestyle they expect.")</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dragonborn were a divine accident, the result of Io's blood striking the ground and sprouting a new species directly from the earth. Because they were not intentionally created, unlike all other races, their nature is fundamentally different, precluding the possibility of offspring. Exactly why intentional vs accidental creation matters so much would depend on the cosmology of the specific setting, but I imagine in many cases it would tie into some kind of "wheel of fate" or the like, where everything intentionally created by the gods is bound up in some destiny, and things accidentally created don't fit into that structure.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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