Fading Embers General /feg/

This but with a darker color scheme and more D E M O N S

I also really liked this as one of the early inspo images for the Preservers of Zelthen's Light. Really evokes that cold, distant mutant killing machine who at the end of the day IS fighting for a just cause, even if they have left behind everything that makes them human in the process.

Maybe the Arch-Magus of Visamt could be based on this

What kind of culture are the bears

Ok, so here's our main goal for this thread: Define what the units in each faction look like, in order to better find 3d models and make 2d tokens. Here's what we've got so far:

Yonas Clan: Actual Bears with an opposable claw that allows them to hold spears and other simple weapons. Wears druidic armor made from wood, animal sinew, carved bone. May have Cherokee warpaint.

Inverse: As close to Eldritch Horrors as you can get while still maintaining the dragon feel. Mostly snakelike eastern dragon bodies with wings, and extra sets of mouths, teeth wings, heads, claws, spines, etc. Basically go nuts.

Visamti and Zelthen: see above, have yet to get a consensus.

Lizardmen: Desert lizards and more built for speed and lithe than anything else.

Well, Yonas is the Cherokee word for Bear, so we were going off of that for aesthetic, mostly warpaint and feather/Natural decorations. Besides that, there was a huge rant about the matrilineal oligarchy and whatnot.

Don't forget, the lizards ride giant gazelles.

We decided that the lizards ride whatever the fuck they want, can tame, and maintain food sources for. Personally, gazelles, while cool, are somewhat impractical for the barren lands being large herbivores. More likely the Utahraptor or giant komodo dragons would be easier to keep, feeding them the victims of their raids, which is what they themselves eat.

oh alright, guess i missed that bit of fluffing. I thought we were all still onboard for the gazelle and the consensus was that rapters was a little to close to WFB. That makes finding art for them SOOOO much easier.

Just gonna say. Not picking Saxons for bears is a little disappointing. I could have contributed much more. Native Americans are bland as hell

Feathered raptor-birds are more different, and I think we were leaning Komodo Dragons anyway.

They're based on "industries druidism" which basically means they rape nature until it does what they want. Most if their society revolves around avoiding and covering up up the cineastes if thier actions.

I'd be cool with a classic western druid motif instead of a native American one.

Not that I think native American motifs are bland.

Bearloreman here. The bears aren't native Americans, I used the name because I liked the way it sounded and southeastern US bee, berry and briar young growth forest was what I imagined as thier default terrain, to avoid the old growth England/european trope mostly associated with elves. If you have alternate ideas for clothing or cultural elements, contribute away.

I'm currently working but I do have some big ideas for bear people I'll post a little later

Not to be contrarion or accused of something and making things different for the sake of it, but I really feel like lizardmen riding dinosaurs or other large reptiles is way too cliche. I'm also not a huge fan of this notion that lizardmen eat the dead after thier battles, which is totally new to my knowledge.

Obviously "what do they eat," is always a question one needs to ask in world building, but that level of subhuman savagery does not really feel appropriate for the culture we've crafted for them. Surely we can find a better answer than that.

Perhaps there are certain distant parts of the waste where only lizardmen are hardy enough to reach, and there they find some highly unusual food source for their mounts. Maybe massive briars that feed off an underground river so deep they're the only plant that was tough enough to survive the climate of the surface and reach their roots down to it. Maybe some weird for of cave moss that they found deep inside a nation-sized cavern system. I dunno, anything but eating corpses, that's grimdark city.

Just a thought, but I see no reason to be purest here.

We could have Cherokee near druids with touches of Saxon influence

And while I am 100% in favor of the lizards riding whatever they can that's available in the environment, I see no reason that they can't ride komodo gazelles, as long as we keep the right tone.

Given their Mongolian influence, it would be nice for them to have a particular animal they hold a special cultural relationship with or hold in particular esteem, although I was also originally in favor of them just riding whatever they can find in the wastes.

There isn't a ton of consensus on Berustia yet other than people seem to really like the Martine power with a focus on whaling as the base. I agree, I think there's a lot of good eligiac feels to be mined from whaling and the sea in a dying world.

Suggestions for cultural touchstones have included Norway, Denmark, England, New England, Japan, Renaissance Italy, and Venice. Of the major Whaling nations, the only ones we were missing were Iceland and Denmark. You also added Russia on there, which based on my research has its own interesting whaling anecdotes, especially from the Soviet period so that's worth considering.

If I were picking from that grabbag, I think I would Japan, Iceland and Denmark with just the slightest frosting of New England. But that's just based on some preliminary reading and rough ideas I've been doing on my own.

So just to clarify, which minor factions still need stats and what kinda armies are we looking for with them. I know there are the Dwarves (although that may be difficult) and Berustia. I was also thinking about doing some priests for Zelthan. I know i'm missing a few, help an user out?

Saxon-Bear-Man here. Home from work and ready to drop my two cents.

Saxons as the major Cultural focus of bears is a good fit because Saxons themselves are majorly culturally impacted by bears and I think they hit right home because of:

>Saxon Pagan worship focused on Storms, Earth and forest, with many Mehirs, Cairns and Standing Columns, with Saxon Paganism focused very much on Animism.

>Might makes right mentality, with Strength a great symbol of power within Saxon culture, but cruelty frowned upon.

>Hunting cultures don't actually suit bears, as bears are not Hunter Predators.

And to add things when it comes to fluffing up a culture.

>Saxons loved Mead , Mead is brewed from Honey, Bears as a stereotype love honey

>Saxons had an extreme goldlust, you can tie that to Honey too

>Housekeeping was a strictly Matriarchal role Where the Women owned the property, Female bears are seen as very Matriarchal

You could tie this all together to make the Bear-folk even into the Not!Dwarves of the setting.

>Cave-city dwelling Bearfolk who mine for Gold and Drink Mead, Valuing Strength and Honour with Rigid house-Matrons.

I truth be told did this in a PnP session, so I can give examples of cultural rites and things I did there if you are interested more in Saxon-Bears.

/Two cents given.

Alright, I think I've finally found our first good 3d model. Fully poseable in Blender, fits our aesthetic for the bears, etc. Only thing it's missing is weapons and gear.

Oh, and I found a really nice free tool to animate poses made by adobe:
mixamo.com/

Here's how I've managed:

1. Export model in Blender as .fbx.

2. Upload to Mixamo and choose a good animation with a pose you like.

3. Re-download the model with the animation attached and import into blender.

4. Pause the animation mid-pose and export the model to .dae.

There you have it. A free easy model poser without the hassle of extraneous modeling.

Sounds pretty good except for the gold mining thing. They don't seem to have a use for gold.

Nobody had a use for gold for centuries except to look good.

Gold = wealth.
Gold looks like Honey
Bears fucking love Honey.
Bears fucking love Gold.

I think I'll outline some customs my OC Saxon-Bear people had because fuck it it was fun

>Length of fur was a symbol of wisdom, Male bears braided and straightened their fur on their chins in the style of beards and cut their fur on the head and nape of neck, Females did the reverse
>However, if a Female is pregnant, she doesn't cut her chin fur, and instead letting it grow long
>When the cub is born, the female cuts it down to normal and braids it into a belt for the child.
>Belts are a big status symbol, the bigger belt, the bigger bear, the Bigger belt buckle and ornaments, the more wealthy
>They always kept the original weave of their mothers braid
>When their mothers die, it's often customary to cut the braid in two, keeping half tied to their belt, and for Sons and Daughters to weave the braids into one long burial belt that is adorned with given wealth.

>Fantastic Miners, Bearfolk claim they can sniff out the metal within the rock
>Though adept smiths, Bearfolk shun Most armour and weapons like spears and swords, calling them coward weapons that weaken those who carry them, however, they do use Caestus and armoured claws, reasoning the bear does most the work
>Iron and Steel goes towards more mundane things, though Bear-folk Armour is made of rounded plates tied to belts and chain loincloths.
>Gold however is prized and often used for Ornamentation of everything from Fur combs to drinking horns.

I like most of this.

But I agree that they don't really have a traditional mining feel.
Although using druidic magic to force nature to produce or reveal the minerals the want jives with the earlier writing.

Awesome possum.

Oh hell yes.

The Idea from mining is that they like the Gold and Jewels, everything else is a Byproduct really.

Also it ties with Bears living in Caves.

All interesting stuff. I mentioned this toward the end of the last thread, but one of my tonal inspirations for the race was Princess Mononoke. Not in that there is anything japanese about thier culture, but in that I wanted a vision of Nature as something that has great strength, nobility and granite, but also a fundamental element of greed, pettiness and rot. I don't think anything you're talking about is incompatible with that.

That said, I don't want them to be not dwarves. Especially since we have dwarves that are sort of not dwarves. So don't move too far in that direction.

sorry, grandeur. Dumb phone spellcheck.

The biggest problem with the Princess Mononoke feeling is that you'll never get that with the Bears themselves Worshipping and controling elements.

Unless you mean an army of LITERAL Bears and not Bear-folk it's hard to make the Faction feel less like the Humans than the animals.

Well, the bears don't worship the elements, they use them, consume them, aggressively seek them out to maintain thier way of life without much regard for anyone but themselves. That kind of self-centered nature is pretty animal by my reckoning, especially in contrast to the Zelthan knights.

Well, what I feel here is that the Bears don't have a culture so much as an instinctual design, making much of what I said kind of useless to the subject.

For you Visamti fans out there, I found these.

...

Thinking on this, I think you have a good point. I wrote on a lot on what the bears are but not much on why they are. I'll ruminate on that and put up some ideas when I don't have to type on a.phone

Zelthen as well

Main Visamt lore guy here
I really like these for the Visamti sorcerers. Fits my idea of them perfectly. For their main armies I have no doubt that there's plenty of Roman models out there too.

Where are you finding these?

Found a decent Lizard man, but he's going to need a head replacer, and possibly feet.

Turbosquid and Yobi3d. Mostly Yobi3d.

And because it's in such popular demand, here's a mount.

All of these are rigged and fully poseable.

He's pretty swole. Did we ever decide if these are lithe lanky lizardmen or not? I would think they would be if they ride gazelle

Hey, did you my post at the end of the last thread mildly objecting to the Demons And God Power Are Manifested Emotional Energy lore? Nobody from the Visa lore discussion responded to it

The problem is that there is a total of 3 free Lizard men models on the internet:

-The one that looks like the Worst version of the spiderman villain
-The one that's evern more swole than this guy
-This one.

I do have a suggestion though: We make these guys all manlets, under 5ft in height. Scaling is the easiest thing in 3d modeling.

I didn't see it, I wasn't really active from this time yesterday until a couple hours ago. I'll try to find it.

Reposting for ease:

You CAN take blood without causing pain or suffering. That doesn't mean you HAVE to. Pain, Fear, Rage, all might make blood more potent or have different properties for instance. Lifeblood is the most potent of all.

If I have to be totally honest I'm not the biggest fan of "Demons and angelic mutations are emotional energy manifested on the corporeal plane," thing. It feels like magi-science, which isn't something you should really have in a setting like this. Magic, even divine magic, should really maintain that mysticism in a setting where the best days of the world are behind it and all the great kingdoms of old are long dead. Even the Wizard Kingdom is run by malfunctioning holograms instead of real wizards, the only people who actually understand magic are ghosts that can't be relied upon to teach anyone anything. Demons just coming from a Demon Realm because they have a pact with this Evil Kingdom and the Knights just having the mutations and protections without they (or us) knowing for sure if the God is real or how they do these miracles feels more right for the setting.

Also, I think it much better if the Visamti civilization doesn't HAVE to kill their slaves. If their way of life obligates it, especially in an apocalyptic setting, there's a certain moral buffer about being casual and callous about human life. It represents a greater degree of corruption and lack of concern for anything but one's own interests at the individual AND societal level if you don't HAVE to let slaves die, but will anyway if it helps you in the smallest way.

This is all just my opinion though

Yeah, I just read everything I missed from the previous thread and there was some highly interesting stuff in there about Visamt, Restavia and the Knights.

As for your thing, I really like it. It makes the setting feel much more grim if all concept of magic, the one thing that can save them, is lost and the only people who use it are doing so by accident. I don't think the Visamt should have to sacrifice slaves for their magic most of the time. They live in their own little world and they aren't really keeping slaves to survive, they're doing so out of gluttony.

One thing though is that I think perhaps the Archon should need some sort of human sacrifice to keep him alive. Maybe every couple months he needs to drink the blood of a virgin slave, or maybe bathe in their blood. Something greedy and sinister. The Archon should also be one of the last people on earth who really understands the magic that his people use, but keeps these secrets to himself out of personal interest.

Speaking of the Archon, I kind of want to build the fluff around the struggle for power that we've set up in the Imperial Court.

Veeky Forums finishing one set of rules is a lofty enough goal to begin with.

Not with that attitude!

There's also no shortage of dragons that suit our purposes, nor Monstrous heads and features for our theme, especially on yobi3d. The only issue is that none of them are rigged, which I have no experience in. We need someone who can do that.

Visamti soldiers, on the other hand, I'm not going to put so much effort into prepping. There is already a wide variety of free Roman Soldier miniatures that simply need to be converted to .dae and painted that you'll hardly need a fully posable and equippable model to get the same kind of variety the other armies need.

Alright, I'm going to get a Mega started to hold all of our stuff. Besides what I've got, if you guys want to do some searching and link me to new models we can use, that'd be great.

I had been messing around with makehuman earlier. If someone knows their way around blender and can talk the models from makehuman and put armor and stuff on them it could increase our options for knight models and our ability to manipulate them for that "Mutated super human" Type feel. For instance the one i was messing with i jacked the proportions so the legs were unnaturally long, which i thought might work as a base for pathfinders.

So, Bear Culture. I guess I'll start by talking through my thought processes.

When I first saw the prompt in the first thread for BEARS, I thought of a matriarchal society because of a documentary I saw on Polar Bears, which mentioned that males will kill and eat their own young if the mother allows them to get close. I also mentioned in my original post that other races think of the bears as gluttons, because they eat a huge tons of food at any given meal. This is because when I was thinking of animal traits one might associate with bears, one that I latched onto was the idea that they'll eat anything and lots of it to store fat for hibernation. I figured that was a lot more interesting than "likes honey," or other more cartoony associations. In another post I mentioned how hibernation is a thing that is only recently being reintroduced to their society. I didn't include it initially because I figured it didn't make a ton of sense for them to be sleeping when they're desperate to stay alive and threats approach their forests from all sides, but hitting on it as a form of subtle resource control made it click for me with the other traits I'd articulated for them. If you're sleeping, you're not eating after all (of course you're also not working, which then is another problem).

Other thoughts I had while I was writing up Bear stuff: I didn't want the bears to be Elves reskinned, which is why I came up with the idea of "Industrial," Druidism. They're not about protecting the forests or natural balance or anything like that. They're greedy animals that want what they want when they want it, and have the ability to get as much of it as they want with a cost that isn't immediately apparent or troubling for them, so they do so. This is where the Mononoke reference ties in, as the Boar Tribe is that movie is very much about recklessness and indulgence. They're strong and grand and proud, but also foolish and doomed and out for themselves rather than "nature."

Fellow Lorefags, we should flesh out the finer details of the setting. I'll start us off with a prompt:

> Write the daily schedule for an average member of each faction.

So, looking at all that, and some of these Saxon cultural influence suggestions in

I like this cultural tie to women owning property and having exclusive control over housekeeping. When I was thinking on the Males Eat Young thing, I didn't want that to lead to the bears being Male-less amazons, which is why I went with the idea that males are either Wanderers or under total control of the female leaders and bred for specific purposes. The idea that only females can own land and have total dominion over the home (and thus can totally dictate the lives of males who live there down to breeding them for desirable traits, and later can enact a police state on the lesser females) really clicks with the existing Matriarchy lore.

I never said this expressly, but I felt in the back of my head that this race shouldn't have a religion per se. No gods, no worshiping of anything. I felt like their greedy nature and exploitative lifestyle necessitated a sort of narcissism that precluded a higher power. I mentioned this at least once in passing by noting the Bears think the Lizards desire to become Gods is silly because their understanding of the universe is that gods are incompatible with the cosmic order. That said, I think they absolutely could have a Mytho-History.

So what if we say the origins of their cultural order came down to two great beings from their distant savage past, a male and a female. The males in those days devoured the young as a matter of course, and the females fought to save them. This went on until one female with two mates issued an ultimatum: no male would ever taste the flesh of a fellow bear again, or no female would bring another cub into the world again, and their race would die. All the other females joined her in a pact, and the males began to fight among themselves over what to do. Her two mates each chose a different answer: one into exile, while the other bowed to her. Half of the males followed each one.

cont.

The males who went into exile tried to settle, but without the wisdom of the females fell upon each other any time they stopped their journey. The weight of the crime of killing children stained them, and so for refusing to give up their right to eat cubs they would never know peace, and were doomed only to wander for all time. Meanwhile, because the males could not be trusted even after bowing, the concept of absolute authority within settled lands arose, and thus the one who'd stood up to her mates became the First Matriarch. Over time, other females would grow wise and strong and challenge her, but because females are not so savage as the men, they went off peacefully with their followers to create their own homes instead of making war and shedding blood. The males over time saw how much better life was under their Matriarchs, and the stain of their crime and their lust for the flesh of children was lost in noble service.

Naturally, the Wandering Males tell a very different version of this legend, but this tale is nonetheless the foundation of Bear society

Welp. I've been working way to hard at this. We've got all the minis we could ever want, fully textured, and ready to go at no extra cost. Tabletop Simulator's Workshop is chock full of models for every motif possible, from Dark Souls to Generic Knights, to the entire 40k set. Better yet, it's all in .obj, which is just a blender import/export away from being perfectly compatible with BB3D.

Sweet.

Statsfag here. So do ya'll want the minor factions or not?

Sure, why not. Though we should get the supplements uploaded sometime. I was about to buy them myself but I realized tuition has me out for about a week

If we're going to stat the minor factions as units, we need more fluff for them.

Lets start with Berustia. And while we're here: am I the only one bugged by that name when our other kingdom is Restavia? They hit the ear pretty similarly, and not just because of the -ia. Since they're inevitably going to have such a radically different culture than the ones we've established with the north europe/japan schtick, the name really ought to be something more different.

There is one drawback to this though: We need someone who owns TTS to be able to download the models for us. I'm totally willing to convert them though if someone can provide me with them.

Random kingdom names dump:

Shathizdin,
Imralis
Bregonde
Ossin
Karnimress
Zundushar
Sirisea
Eriallon
Ondenon
Esseargoth
Honingul
Iriargest
Mithleras
Bressirion
Norestir
Nandone
Amadhor
Lorione
Formithladh
Larastir
Eledhel
Essealand
Sirothel
Faline
Belumar
Sirasea
Helonde
Ilieriand

Take what you will.

That actually reminds me of a piece of software I downloaded, but never got to use. The Everchanging Book of Names. Quick, someone give me a culture, and someone else give me a letter.

The story of the Wandering Males are thus:
Long time ago, long before the world started to decay, and long before the world is lush, there was the beginning-time. At this time, the Yona did not have the druidic magics needed to survive in the wilds of the beginning, and thus food were hard to get. At that time there were three Bears, a matriarch and her two consorts. The harshness of life was briefly subdued when the matriarch birthed a cub, which brought joy to the trio. The four of them journeyed from place to place, and soon enough the cub shows that it had a power. Every land they traveled past grew fertile, prey plentiful. But one of the consorts grew jealous of this, and tried to kill the magic cub - only to be met with the other consort's fury. A fight ensued, but it matters not who won at the end of it, for the magic cub was slain in the fight. The matriarch grieves, and a consort was exiled, to forever wander the wastes. The magic in the cub was then passed to the matriarch, and with it she made the world lush and fertile. Now, you ask, 'are we the descendants of the exiled ones?' yes. But our ancestor is not the jealous one. Though the jealous one's blood might be in some of us, know that we are sworn to be the protector of the Yona. Suppress your greed, and protect your kin; it's the least we can do for the Cub.

I like the tone of this. It explains a lot about why their society is so sheltered. They've got something like the loss of a cub ingrained into their origin story, it makes sense that they would want to protect the youth, protect the innocent, and help them flourish, even at the cost of the truth, and the lives they risk in order to maintain it.

I think I may have found a tool that works even better than Makehuman. Fuse. It's free and available on steam, works with Mixamo, and seems to have a lot more free clothing sets, including Armor, and it seems to do everything Makehuman does.

oh? Well now, that may be worth a look.

How's this guy? I believe you can modify body shape as you please, so we can have our mutants in armor as well. I'll let you know.

Das perfect, so very perfect.

Yeah, you do have to sign up for an Adobe account in order to download him, but hey, it's free, and it's better quality than most else of what we'll find.

well i mean once one user has it after we modify it to our tastes can't it just be passed around? Or is there something to prevent that?

I'm actually headed of to bed now, so I thought you, who took an interest in this sort of thing, would sign up.

This is also neat because the male's version of the story omits any reference to males devouring cubs. You're left with the question of whether that element of the mythology was some kind of female propaganda since they are so controlling, or if it was the Wanderers whitewashing history to make themselves seem less monsterous. It is awfully charitable that it was the males who chose submission and service to the females who ALSO happened to be the criminal who wanted to jealously slay its own child... and yet it could also ring true if the shame of being the one to start the conflict was so great that they allowed themselves to lose all power and freedom as penance while those who tried to save the cub walk with pride as the defenders of their race, blameless for what happened yet nobly suffering a self-imposed penance for failing to protect.

Its also very fitting that the manta of the Wanderers is "Supress your greed." Even before the End Times began, the wanderers would never had had the kind of resources that the Clans throw away on a whim. Every day would have been a fight for them to survive while the rest of their race feasted in safety. And you can interpret the mantra with both versions of the story. If the Exiles were horrible child-eating barbarians who wouldn't give up their bloodlust to stay with their people, then you're lying to yourself and those who follow as a necessity, to teach them how to survive outside of plenty through false traditions and happy lies... only for the lies to become true when the world starts to die and the clans start relying on you to find them resources.

Oh, also, its neat how the Female's version of the myth is group oriented, it talks about a pact between all females and the response of all males, while the Exiles version of the story is all about a single noble male from a single family as a root ancestor for all who came after. There's so many subtle things going on with this, its a great addition.

I will give you Scandanavian and H

Saxonman here. This is a pretty good and in depth thing and I like alot of it. The only problem I have with it is it really relies on the species being exclusively polar bears and polar bears are sort on an outlier when it comes to bears

Sorry for short posts. Posting from the phone.

Basically. Most bear species are nowhere near as aggressive as polar bears and often not active hunters. On the inverse Polar bears are not as intelligent as grizzly or brown bears.

You could incorporate that into the mythos really. But just a thought.

I was only around for the first thread, but I couldn't help but notice that there is very little written for the dragons. Has anyone considered taking inspiration from Guild Wars on it? To summarize them in Guild Wars, there are only 6 Elder Dragons, each of them with their own domain and strength to rival the gods. They are each of them from a time before time and their very wingbeats destroy and corrupt the world around them. For example, Zhaitan (the Dragon of Undeath)'s awakening brought an ancient continent up from the sea floor, destroying everything on the coastline, causing tidal waves on lands half the world away and raising all those who drowned with to undeath. The spine-spikes of Kralkattorik, the Desert Dragon, were believed to be a great mountain range before he awoke in anger and drew a blighted scar through the lands of Ascslon many miles wide.

Any consensus on taking inspiration from Guild Wars?

This would conflict with Dragons being actual game units.

Well, the Elder Dragons DO have minions, among the most powerful of which are Dragon Champions. While corrupted crestures can become one, the majority of champions are lesser dragons that they spawn - one of the main characters of the first game is one such Dragon Champion, Glint.

Well, they are called the Antithesis for a reason. So let's determine how many of them are, and what element(s) are they the antithesis of? Once we find the element, we lovecraft it up to 11, and dragonify it a bit.
40k took their Chaos Gods after the four horseman of the apocalypse(-ish), so maybe instead of elements we could find something else to find the anathema of. Or we could look at how Lovecraft did it with his Elder Gods. What do they embody?

Nope nope nope. The Dragons are supposed to be incomprehensible. They do not correspond to anything. They are called the Antithesis for a lack of a better word.

I also think that not really having any named Dragons would add to the atmosphere. Cataloguing and identifying things goes a long way towards understanding.

There could always be conflicting details

Nah, I agree, keeping the dragons unnamed is better, especially since the focus is one Your Guys, it's not really about their identity, it's more about just how fucking scary you can make your dragon. If they did have names, they would be ones assigned by the other factions, Tyranid style, with names like Terror of the North.

I'm even thinking that Dragon observations could be non-repeating.

E.g., a particular Dragon showed up to terrorize the North for 10 years and was accordingly nicknamed the Terror of the North. Then no one has ever seen it, or any Dragon similar to it, again. Did it die? Did it just leave for somewhere not of this world? Maybe Dragons can change forms? Is it at will or a life stage transformation? No one knows. Fucking Dragons, how do they work?

This development I wholeheartedly agree. Pure chaos! Which means they can be whatever you want them to look like, as long as it's terrifying/weird, and could fall within the stretched definition of 'Dragon'.

Now, any other faction(s) needing fleshing out? Or perhaps you've spotted a gaping plothole? Maybe it's the other way around, you found a link between two setting pieces? Do tell!

It makes sense that people would try to name them. They'd need something to call whatever dragon happened to be screwing with them at the time. And for historic documents they would want more than just "a dragon" because then things would get confusing. Was the dragon lord magistrate Eliajas slew the one that was burning the westfold? Or the one that kept attacking caravans? Don't know. It was a dragon through. Makes for bad history.

The thing that picked my attention was that the Lizardmen are supposed to be mercenaries, and at the same time they are fanatically trying to save the world by killing all humans. These two pieces of fluff don't combine well. You could say that Lizardmen work as mercenaries to kill more humans without attracting undue attention to themselves, but this sort of conspiratorial plan implies a central authority.