#dragon jayce

Part 2

Since it’s practically everywhere, I’ve been having thoughts about this in the past couple days, specifically around Jayce (and Mel and Viktor)

I’m thinking specifically about dragon Jayce

With human mage Mel and siren seer Viktor

Important Lore Details

Dragons are one of the few actually immortal creatures, and as such age extremely slowly in their true forms

Dragons also grow as they age until they hit about 300

Jayce, being only 35 when main canon (Happy Progress Day onward) hits, is still teeny tiny in full dragon form

Ximena is close to 350, and so is full grown and massive

The blacksmith is also full grown and older than Ximena, around 500

At some point in the past, Noxus made a sport of hunting dragons as a way to prove ‘might’, one of their pillars of strength

Unfortunately, this has the consequence of hunting dragons in anywhere Noxus invades to near extinction

Most do flee to neighboring nations (one of the many reasons Noxus and Ionia go to war), but sometimes they’re caught unaware by hunters and have to flee immediately with no planning

This is what happens to Ximena and her husband/mate, with Ximena weaker than usual because she had just laid Jayce’s egg not even three days ago

She’s forced to flee with Jayce’s egg in her claws and flee northwards, further into the mountains to find a place to let Jayce’s egg grow and hatch, while her partner holds off the Noxian hunters and is killed

Jayce’s egg take roughly 50 years to hatch, between his mom having to find a warm enough spot and having to get a stockpile of food so that she can actually incubate Jayce long enough for him to hatch

But when he’s about 6, a severe blizzard forces them to move south again, severe enough that Ximena isn’t willing to risk Jayce’s wings to the cold and have them fly, but catches them off guard and this is when the mage steps in and saves them, transporting them not too far from Piltover, where they are able to start over again

Important Plot Points

Thinking that Piltover & Zaun are both mainly mixes of vampires and werewolves, with a few rarer exceptions

Jayce and his mother are refugees to Piltover

Jayce is obviously a little hatchling when they get to Piltover, no more than 6, so Ximena is incredibly protective of him

With them being immigrants to Piltover, I can see his common/English not being as good/extremely accented to the point it was hard to understand at first and he gets bullied enough for it that Ximena makes the decision to pull him out of school and teach him what she knows after only a couple of months because like hell is her hatchling going to go through taunting that he can barely understand

Also it happens to be safer for Jayce to be sequestered in the home/nest until he’s older and able to adequately defend himself

Even in a place like Piltover, there’s still plenty of opportunities for a young dragon hatchling to be stolen right from under his mother’s nose and sold off for parts/as a pet/etc.

But without a partner to watch him in the home/nest, Ximena is pretty much forced to take him along on any outings to keep him by her side

He doesn’t particularly mind, but he’s easily distracted by books and often asks his mama to get the book(s) that capture his attention, and this causes a separation from Ximena exactly once

It doesn’t happen again after he starts tearing up before he hears his mama yelling his name outside and he runs out to her, abandoning the book he had been reading

Ximena had noticed her hatchling was missing and turned back in the massive market and started yelling his name, eventually she was noticed by a certain Lady Kiramman in her youth, who helps calm her down enough to guide her back to the bookstore and Jayce bolts out and attaches himself to Ximena, shaking and tearing up

The young Lady Kiramman may or may not escort them home and Ximena thanks her for her help and they stay acquainted through letters, and Jayce may or may not receive ‘anonymous’ gifts of piles of books to add to his slowly growing hoard over the years

Over the years, Jayce learns everything he knows about blacksmithing by apprenticing to one of the only other dragons in Piltover who offers after they discover each other as dragons and he realizes just how young Jayce is by dragon standards

He still goes through university, and after the trial, he’s still on the edge of the building’s rubble, and Viktor still interrupts him and they still work on Hextech, and they still break into Heimerdinger’s lab

Difference is that when they’re flying it’s a little more familiar to Jayce than to Viktor, who still finds his way through it, almost as if it was water instead of air but still moving forward

He starts nursing two crushes that night

One on the most gorgeous man he thinks he’s ever seen, who has a brilliant mind to go along with amber eyes that almost look like a forge ember

And one on the most beautiful woman he thinks he’s ever seen, with eyes like jade glass with a spark in them, and golden implants that sparkles in the light of the Hextech

Part 1

This is going to go over some the societal implications of magical creatures being the norm in Runeterra and specifically Piltover and Zaun. I’m sure to miss some details, so let me know if there’s specifics you want to know that I didn’t go over.

Obviously magic is an inherent part of everyday life and existence, so it’s more tolerated (unless you’re in Demacia, but we’re not focusing there)

Piltover

Heimerdinger is still traumatized by magic, but it’s specifically the use of magic as a weapon, not just the ambient magic most people on Runeterra (including himself) give off

Piltover’s norm is a mix of mainly vampires and werewolves, with vampires tending to be higher class

Most of the Council are vampires

The exception is Mel (unawakened human mage)

Werewolves exist in Piltover, just mainly as working class people, rather than higher class

There are more than a few immigrant families that aren’t vampires or werewolves, but they tend to either pretend to be human or keep to themselves enough that it doesn’t matter to the public

Like I stated before, dragons are exceedingly rare and ever more secretive, there are only four dragons in all of Piltover/Zaun and they do an exceptional job of convincing the world that they are just normal non-magical humans

Like anywhere where people accumulate enough wealth to want to show it off, there’s obviously a black market trade in rarer, “more exotic” magical creatures, usually captured very young and trained/beat into compliance (such as dragon hatchlings, siren and mer pups, fae children, etc.)

A lot of the time, they’re sold off to the vampiric elite and used as blood bags since it’s considered “uncouth” and “savage” to actually go hunting for a civilian to feed off of

Some of them do develop a preference for what creatures they want to feed off of for this reason, at which point it becomes too bothersome to scout out a specific species to hunt down from the civilian populace

The black market trade is part of the reason that Ximena doesn’t let Jayce out of her sight until he’s much older and able to actually defend himself

There may or may not be irregular raids on the warehouses the children are kept in, orchestrated by abolitionist Piltovans and organized Zaunites

Zaun

In Zaun, the mix is a little more even, with other creatures not really having to hide once they can defend themselves, so it is and appears a lot more diverse than Piltover

It’s still mainly vampires and werewolves, but it’s not a particularly strict hierarchy between them (ie, Vander’s a werewolf, Silco’s a vampire, Felicia and Connor were human, etc.)

The only creatures that are truly rare in Piltover and Zaun are ones more aligned with nature (ie, mermaids, sirens, selkies, nymphs, fauns/satyrs, etc.) because of the pollution that industrialization has caused to the land around them

This is more severe in Zaun because of the runoff and pollution from Piltover’s industrialization floods into Zaun’s streets

Most nature spirits that did live in the region have since moved/died, with one of the exceptions being the dryad for the tree Ekko and the Firelights find later on

A lot of the children freed from the abolitionist-planned raids end up with families in Zaun, since they would be out of place in Piltover