Dragons, Magic, & Dwarves
@weatherman667 (and anyone else who wishes to offer their thoughts on the matter), I got some silly ideas about Dragons, Magic, and Dwarves that I would like to hear your thoughts on.
I believe it's best to begin with the dragons, besides Roman-Egyptian theming, hunger games from childhood (and the children being treated like stocks), hermaphroditism until a coming-of-age duel, and being allowed to visually look like whatever they want (all the dragons), I am thinking to make them like the Necrons from 40k.
So you remember the world spirit that made the giants? Do you remember I was thinking of her cursing the dragons to become small? Well, I like ironies and the will of fate being completed in the oddest of ways. So, when the dragons come back, it's primarily done by animating statues of dragons, which would be smaller than actual dragons. Which reminds me of a mixture of gargoyles and necrons (I don't know if they should be fleshy or not, leaning towards yes).
How do the dragons experience a mass resurrection if most of them are dead and the rest are more concerned with living their lives than their race because of dragon assholery? The ending of the main fairyzord storyline. Great, I need to explain that as well.
So the most important dragon characters:
-The Gold Dragon King. Had to quite literally beat civilization into the other dragons. Eats the souls of all the dragons that try to kill him. Was functionally immortal till The Wish happened. Fun fact, he HATES the empire he built because draconic greed made everything stagnant and prefers the company of his servants over other dragons. Gets resurrected by his son later on and weeps at the sight of the human empire his son built because despite not being world-spanning, his empire could never function like this.
-Silver Dragon Prince. Wingless (drake) and weird. When the Wish happened, he was in another form; it also helped that he didn't really think of the empire much. Despite being obviously a runt, the Dragon King took a shine towards him out of his countless unproven bastards because he wasn't like a dragon, actually tried diplomacy, etc. Fun fact, he was betted on to be female when his fight came up, but he managed to beat the strongest now-sister heir. Once the empire fell, he built a human empire. Despite making humanity under his rule xenophobic (even then, "look the other way" is the unofficial policy), it was relatively stable and growing. He resurrected his father out of boredom and wanting to learn to be a better ruler. But he was confused when his father said he had already surpassed him. Resurrecting the Gold Dragon King also meant resurrecting the rest of the dragons into a giant kaiju abomination that possesses the empire's city.
-bronze scientist. Either the inventor of the process that let dragons literally shape mankind, or part of the clan that did so. Eastern dragon. Was head of the dragonborn soldier project, but the sheer scale of experimentation forced an empathetic epiphany (and possibly ghosts), making him leave the empire in un-dragonlike shame near the end. The Fairyzord party meets him to try to fix the werewolf (dragon) problem humanoid half-dragons (not the elves) have.
With the death of the gold and silver dragons they meet the bronze dragon. They all express regrets, but the silver dragon is the only one with hope for the future (irony being that he didn't really interact with dragons much). Then they all fuse in hopes of improving the dragon race, making the good dragon god. Their first act is to shove the erratic dragon souls into statues, the second is to specifically empower the dragon slayers with anti-dragon magic much to the confusion of the dragon slayers.
The reason dragon souls were shoved into dragon statues is so they can finally be in the same general eye-level of their subjects, and unknowingly fulfill the world spirit's curse towards (pure) dragon kind. Dragons are much weaker in this form, more flying lizards than kingdom-devouring wyrm. They now actively need to wear armor, etc. Their hordes are now directly their lifeforce, as dragons can now no longer generate enough mana to power their artificial bodies, requiring long periods of rest. There is a way to circumvent this however, have their hordes go into circulation. The gold is continuously charged by magic via exchange.
The fact good dragons in dnd are metallic gave me an idea of good dragons having their personalities based on how that metal was used, and perceived along with the age named after them. Fate/stay night rules basically. But it goes stone, copper, brass, iron, steel, bronze, silver, gold, platinum.
This should be quick, it relates to the zombie-like scaly hordes. So you know how in the post-empire period there’s a lot of questionably dead dragons and that being in the wasteland that was the empire makes you into a feral dragon-person like rad makes ghouls in fallout? That is due to Dragon magic/their souls didn’t move on. And that gives me the idea of everyone (who isn’t an elf) unknowingly channels the souls of dead dragons to do magic. Maybe I’ll make this a plot point near the second(?) finale, just something to add that I find funny and headache inducing because oops! More dragons!
Besides being heretical and making the Dwarves Chinese like I mentioned before, another thing I’m thinking about is lack of ambition. I really don’t know how to express this, or what I am really talking about. Dwarves were created by the Dragons to be better servants, their intelligence and effectiveness a complete fluke on the Dragons part. They are bureaucratic and are able to argue with dragons and (mostly) live. They were somewhat comfortable in the old Empire, they weren’t above dealings with both sides, the rebellion had dwarves. Nowadays Dwarves are in their mountain forges, filling out decade-long contracts for various human empires. One of the reasons it takes so long is gradual improvements that the Dwarves demonstrate but don’t actually put into practice unless explicitly requested and then the contract gets revised. Their culture is mostly for dealing with humans. Actually ambitious dwarves go do a bioshock and slow-handed dwarves go up to become farmers along with the human vassals under dwarven employment. Dwarves don’t like Elves because Elven contracts are fundamentally different from Dwarven ones due to emotions being considered a major part of them. Dwarves prefer to deal with Humans but don’t enjoy their impatient pestering, something Dwarves understand the reason why but still don’t like them.
It's like the Elves all over again, I don’t have a problem making them living telecommunication devices and their dead the servers of history and dreams. It was shattering them with grief to the point they can not effectively communicate among their various groups. I’m fine with making Dwarves organic robots but to rob them of passion feels perverse. I keep thinking of a mixture of the Tau, Mechanicus, Votann and Vulcan but it doesn’t taste right. I keep thinking of machines but you can always hear the passion in their voices even with “fully logical” types. I am damming dwarves into organic automata.
I try to envision the classic dwarven grudge and I see it as another contract. “You have worked against us, if you wish for us to work with you again you must pay a fee”, etc.
Somehow Kobolds are easier to populate with ideas.
It is not like the dwarves I'm thinking of don’t have emotions, it’s just like everything else I have in mind with them, it takes 5-10 business days/years.
