Care to Stay a While?

4. The Guardian's Charge

I wanted to pick at least one piece of breed-specific lore for this list, and Guardians have always been my favorite in that regard. The whole idea of the Search and subsequent adoption of a charge is just so cool to me, and it lends itself fantastically to character building in a way that few other breeds can say.

It's the perfect balance of structure and open-endedness, if that makes any sense. It can be easy to get overwhelmed when you're trying to write a dragon's lore from scratch, but if you're working with a Guardian, their charge gives you an easy jumping-off point without restricting your creativity too much. I've seen some really great out-of-the-box interpretations of the charge in the past!

On top of that, I just like the concept. Guardians are the most 'classical Western dragon' of all the breeds to me, so I love that their lore involves setting up shop somewhere and protecting something, taking the stereotypical image of a big scaly dragon guarding a cave full of treasure and expanding it into the basis of this unique culture.

3. Warrior's Way

Seriously, if you haven't read the Warrior's Way informational pamphlet, you are missing out on a ton of cool stuff.

Like, for one, the article itself is actually pretty funny. It was written by the world's most passive-aggressive accountant and so many passages radiate the seething hatred of someone who's had to answer way too many stupid questions from the public.

But more importantly, the lore itself is really interesting! I'm one of those softies who likes when the flights work together instead of being in a constant state of gritty warfare, and Warrior's Way has that in spades (Arcane literally donated spell scrolls so that Fire and Water dragons could simulate their preferred sleeping conditions, it's adorable) while still acknowledging the presence of the dominance conflict:

I mean... yeah! If I were a Light flight general and I woke up to find Luminax on my doorstep, I'd probably put expanding our territory on the backburner for a while! It's a perfectly reasonable explanation for why these 'rival factions' spend so much time intermingling nowadays.

Maybe this is getting into headcanon territory, maybe I'm being too dramatic, but the whole event almost feels like the people of Sornieth taking control of their lives away from the gods. They were created to battle each other and conquer the world in their deity's name, armed with sharp claws and destructive spells and combative instincts, and yet they found a way to engage in those behaviors without senselessly killing each other over territory. Good for them!

It's also got the most canon depth of any on-site event by far. We know more about what Warrior's Way looks like in practice than the elemental festivals or Night of the Nocturne, which have always been a little more abstract. There are tents and mess halls decorated with red and gold banners! A plaza for merchants to sell their goods! Practice arenas for sparring matches! Not to mention all the unique familiars showcasing what types of beastclans and animals you might see roaming around, all with their own unique combat styles. I can picture it so clearly in my head and it just seems like a ton of fun.

2. The Plague-Nature Dynamic

Of all the flights in the game, Nature and Plague definitely have the most developed canon relationship. Like, it's literally the central driving force of their lore. All the other flights got self-contained stories for Bounty of the Elements, but these two got a single shared one that's entirely focused on their diplomatic connections. And it's awesome.

First of all, going all the way back to the start, the Gladekeeper and Plaguebringer were simultaneously created from the Arcanist's magic seeping into the overgrown flora and rotting animals left behind after the Second Age apocalypse. That's absolutely metal. Moving on.

So you've got these two deities representing opposing elements who instinctively hated each other's guts and spent most of their early lives trying to kill each other. You'd expect their flights to be enemies, right? Well, it's not that simple! Yes, they were enemies, and there's still a lot of tension between them, but they actually worked out a truce to prevent a repeat of the bloody conflict wrought by their gods. Much more interesting than if they just unilaterally hated each other! It kind of reminds me of what I said about Warrior's Way, with dragonkind moving away from the single-minded ambitions of their deities in favor of more complex politics.

The terms of the armistice were also very cool, with the embassies and the mutually assured destruction via magical superweapons and everything. I love that the whole thing was mediated by the Earth flight, too, since their territory is right between Nature and Plague. Just another taste of those sweet inter-flight dynamics!

But, of course, that peace couldn't last. Nature's ambassador planted the First Seed and now there's a patch of perpetually-growing flora in the Scarred Wasteland that needs to be constantly maintained to keep it from swallowing the whole region. Which is an incredibly rad visual by the way. Shoutout to the Seedscar. Most stories would have the Scary All-Consuming Bioweapon be a disease that kills all the innocent plant life, so it's neat to see that subverted.

Okay, so NOW they hate each other, right? Nope! At the end of the story, even though the alliance is broken, the Plague leaders don't blame Liefa (the ambassador) nor do they plan on retaliating right away. They act like it was inevitable, treating her with pity more than anger. Of course she cracked under the pressure - Nature dragons are just too weak to survive these conditions. Once again, a more nuanced perspective than you'd expect, showcasing Plague's unique philosophy of strength and survival.

It's shown that Liefa wasn't really herself when she planted the seed. She'd been infected by something, and it's heavily implied that the Plague ambassador was somehow involved in sabotaging her. Why? How? I'm genuinely excited to see where this plot might go in the future!

1. The Second Age

WOOOOOOO THE SECOND AGE!!! I LOVE THE SECOND AGE!!!

It's so WEIRD and MYSTERIOUS and EXTREMELY DETAILED FOR NO APPARENT REASON!!! There's a whole long encyclopedia article about the rise and fall of this mysterious pre-dragon civilization, their use of magic, their interpersonal conflicts, their worship of the Pillar, the elemental cults, their technological advancements, and literally none of it has any clear relevance to the main story until the very end when they accidentally blow themselves up and create the Arcanist, and that just FASCINATES me.

I have a very strong feeling that the Second Age will play a major role in future plots, especially with the ruins uncovered during the Dustcarve Dig, and all this seemingly-random history is setup for that. I'm so curious to see how it all comes together and what the payoff will ultimately be.

Of course, I'm not just here to talk about the potential of the Second Age as it relates to the modern day; the actual lore is also really intriguing. Seeing this civilization come into being without the influence of the dragon gods, develop their own theology based on how they interpreted the symbols on the Pillar, split into warring sects of magic and technology, and eventually unify before tragically destroying themselves with a gigantic arcane reactor... like, I would SO read a sci-fi fantasy novel set in this universe.