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For this update I wanted to take a short look at dragons, a stapple of the fantasy genre and a little different in Fragged Kingdom as they're Nephilim!
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” - GK Chesterton.
"Why is the dragon so integral to the fantasy genre?" "I'm pretty sure it's because dragons are cool." - random discussion on Reddit.
Three dragon queens 'Frey, Hail and Gullv' alongside king Noskos of Ire.
Dragons
“Dragons are creatures born of a primal age, with hearts devoid of all virtue. Prideful and cruel, they seek only destruction, their greed insatiable. With every roar, they defy the heavens, for they bow to no god. Their wings blot out the suns, their breath melts all before them and they have no word for mercy.” - Cratinus Lowhill, Introduction to Codex Dracanus.
The great dragons of Akharon are fearsome, serpentine monstrosities, creatures of primaeval dread, muscle and elemental power. Their scaly hides glisten like darkened jewels, mirroring the shadows of the abyss and their eyes burn with an evil malevolence that harks back to the dawn of time. These ancient wyrms are wreathed in the enigmatic shroud of myth as they slumbered for a thousand years before they were awoken by the scent of wylding magic during the Druidic War.
Demigod dragon king Languorem!!
Kings
These monsters are the undisputed rulers of the dragon world as they are larger, hold the ability to prevent mutation into lesser draconic forms (see Drakes and Wyverns below), and their arcane powers are more destructive. They are easily identified from their female counterparts as they have forearms, while the queen’s arms are also their wings.
Kings do not tolerate the presence of competition and will kill rival kings and nomadic princes. They are incredibly intelligent, but also deeply lazy creatures who prefer to have their minions fight for them, avoid nesting near threats, procrastinate and delegate most tasks to underlings. They are also greedy and love to raid nearby lands for wealth, food, wylding and monsters to subjugate.
There are seven living great dragon kings that have slumbered since the Age of Darkness - Eclipsion (Cosmic), Emberax (Fire & Smoke), Languorem (Mutation), Nelthrezad (Death & Water), Psychrosis (Air & Ice), Terratorse (Life & Poison) and Vorathor (Fire & Metal). The great dragon Doijn was killed by Jötnar giants and Trolls as he slept, turning him into a ghostly wraith. The dragon demigod, Languorem, has killed and absorbed the bodies of multiple rival great kings who sought to steal away his enormous supply of wylding magic.
Queens
Mature female dragons are smaller and have no forearms, but they are faster due to their large wings and elastic muscles. Their arcane abilities also tend to be more complex than the raw might of kings. Queens are even more aggressive and territorial than males and it is they who break young royals into their lesser forms, and it is they who patrol their lands to kill and enforce the established social order within a nest.
Slothful Drakes and rage-filled Wyverns.
Drakes & Wyverns
Two curious draconic topics that are commonly discussed by scholars are their sexual tetramorphism and the social structures of their nests. Roosted males and females are known as kings and queens, while their younger counterparts are referred to as princes and princesses.
Dragons are treated horribly by their parents, as they are entombed alive at a young age until they succumb to Neph’s Decline and devolve into animal stupidity and their bodies mutate into a lesser form; that of a male drake or female wyvern. They are then enslaved and used as disposable fodder to defend the nest or act as beasts of burden. On rare occasions, a young dragon breaks free to lose their mind in the wild, partners up to create a small nest of their own, or a princess joins a rival roost to become a queen.
Most nests consist of a dragon pair, while the great kings have dozens of queens and thousands of slaves. Queens produce very few royal eggs but will gestate and lay hundreds of smaller Dracim eggs within a single month after being infused with wylding magic.
Dragon nests vary greatly based on the culture of its royals and their environment. Most are a network of caves with chambers set aside for eggs, food, waste, rest and servants. With the rise of the Dracim they are becoming increasingly complex and include more buildings, traps, animal pens, homes and other markings of civilisation. The cultural centre of all dragon nests is the hoard; a mound of coins and arcane artefacts for the king to rest upon.
Dracim and all dragon kind are strains of Nephilim.
Dracim
The great dragons ruled much of the early Age of Darkness and slumbered for a thousand years until the Druidic War awoke them with the irresistible scent of wylding magic; the glowing green power of the late goddess Neph that turned the Archdruid and the dragon Languorem into demigods. Carving out a warped realm for himself, Languorem created the Dracim to be hatched from dragon queen eggs to work in his new nation as disposable slaves. Many other great dragon kings have purchased this power from Languorem with vows of loyalty and gifts of wylding so that they too may create their own servile people.
Languorem has long used the Dracim to extract resources, craft tools and wage war against his rivals. Tens of thousands of his Dracim have been captured and enslaved by the Holy Kingdom of Catla and the Drasong Clan. Many under Catla rule were liberated by the civil war that formed the Kingdom of Ire and did not wish to return to their brutal creator.
The Dracim produce very few eggs of their own and without dragon queens they were doomed to fade away. Their salvation arrived when the king of Ire permitted three nestless dragon princesses (Frey, Hail and Gullv) to roost in his capital city of Kethwick. Their integration into the kingdom has been tumultuous, but the eggs they provide have stabilised the Dracim of Ire and allowed them to move towards a future beyond the tyranny of dragons.
Species Stats:
+1 Leadership and Monsters.
+1 to all Acquisition Rolls.
+2 End Dmg, all Weapons.
-2 max Reflexes.
Complication: Neph’s Decline and prejudice from many people.
Dracim with techno-magical armour and weapons!
Secret Truth: The Nephilim deployed an army to Akharon to uncover a number of secret Archon weapon laboratories (that were creating super soldiers code-named ‘Angel’), these were in turn counter assaulted by Mechonid robots. Dragons are a form of Nephilim Genocrat that outlived almost all other Genocrats due to their impressive genetic engineering.
Despite killing the last Archon on the planet, the Nephilim were losing their war with the Mechonids. Dragons are exceptionally selfish creatures and they sacrificed much of their remaining forces to allow themselves time to burrow into the planet’s many caves to hibernate. They did not arise until the Archdruid made use of large amounts of biotechnology (known as wylding) that triggered sensors that were designed to detect Nephilim reinforcements.
When the dragons arose they learned that the Mechonids were also slumbering and that all non-dragon Nephilim on the planet had mentally degraded into a feral bestial state (known as Neph’s Decline). They themselves were starting to suffer the effects of mental degradation despite their dormancy.
All of the great dragon kings fought in the X’ion war against the Archons, but most have foggy memories or minds that have been reworked by psionic nanites that infest the planet. They dragons moved to gather organic technology (which they were also calling wylding at the time) to heal their minds and strengthen their atrophied bodies. Languorem secured a large amount of wylding that was deployed to the planet by a feral Nephilim warship that orbited the planet (known as the goddess Neph). This deployment included mobile laboratories, weapons and mutagenic fluid. The warship had detected the Genocrat dragons and was sending aid.
