Dragons

Dragon appreciation thread. Post art, lore and suggest good books, comics and such about the classic fantasy creature.

Other urls found in this thread:

exemplore.com/misc/Shape-Shifting-Dragons-of-Folklore
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

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I'll dump a few images before going to grab lunch, to get it started.

Chinese dragons are legendary creatures in Chinese mythology and Chinese folklore. The dragons have many animal-like forms such as turtles and fish, but are most commonly depicted as snake-like with four legs. Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, typhoons, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck for people who are worthy of it. With this, the Emperor of China usually used the dragon as a symbol of his imperial power and strength

I like the gold/gem color and overall aesthetic on dragons, fits their nobility/treasure hoarding tropes.

In popular fiction, "the dragon" is a person or monster that the hero has to get through to find the real bad guy.
In that sense, the dragon can be a tool that is corrupted or enslaved or just a weapon for the real bad guy.

I think we had this a million times, but...
Tell me why they should sleep on a big heap of gold.

It's warm.

To attract female dragons

They need the gold to start the chemical reaction that allows them to breathe fire.
They need to breathe fire to perform their mating rituals, flying in elaborate shapes in the sky and unleashing flames for all the girls to see.
So an alpha stud dragon collects and saves gold, that way he can chew on some and when he empties his belly of the bio-gas he produced there from eating specific trees, plants and flesh, it will catch fire as it leaves his mouth.

They need to maintain 20% liquidity by law

Still the best damned thred i've even been on.

In greek myths, dragons (literally "the watcher") are created by the gods and placed to guard treasures from thieves.
Now the question is why do the gods need gold, and why they place it in caves in the mortal world.

The last one is probably to protect it from other gods.

i love dragons, but i hate the sentient, noble kind.
dragons must be ancient, feral weapons of mass destruction and fiery death!

Do you also like your elves being skinny savage feral hunters that live in the forest and worship and pretend to be wolves or panthers?

To protect themselves from static electricity.

Dentists say having two noble metals as teeth fillings creates a battery in your mouth.
Dragons use these noble metals to get the spark required to light their fire.

I more the feral-tribesmen-elves-that-lives-normadic-in-the-plains guy, but yes. Essentially.

But then who was orc?

My elf tribes are not warlike. They are territorial in their grounds but won't raid or conquer outside of it. Orcs are the cliche warlike raider rapers from the hills that band together under great warlords.
Also: why does every race has its distinctive place and culture? There are also human savage tribes in the east.
So what? Don't dis my setting I'm sensitive!

Should have made Orcies as the more civilized warlike people. Just for the role reversal, we need more pompous snobby orcs.

Na, that's too skyrim.

Dragons should be like Godzilla with wings. Noble is kinda boring, sure, but feral isn't a replacement. They are true apex predators. Their intelligence is otherworldly, cruel, and selfish. While I like variety in my dragons, the archetypal dragon is much like a cat, aloof and hungry.

TES Orcs are neither Snobby nor civilized.

>Godzilla
>cruel
>selfish
Fuck your american remake.

i only played morrowind and skyrim, but they had their culture and religion and blacksmith craft. Also intelligent enough to intergrate into another culture and become wise magic users. that's enough civilized form me to not like it.

I like dragons as solitary, yet highly intelligent and intellectual beings, with a mind that works completely different from our own. They don't have a civilization, and don't write, build or invent, but due to their long lifespan have gathered a lot of information, and can indeed be considered wise creatures. Conversations with a dragon can be very interesting, I subconsciously modeled one particular dragon's personality after Hannibal Lecter. They do possess the feral and aggressive attitude, but they are so much more than just beast.

>I subconsciously modeled one particular dragon's personality
Oh god, please stop talking.

>stop having fun
Normies leave.

Wait a fucking minute.
I remember these pictures.
This is from r/imaginarydragons

No. So wanna talk about it?
What's your fursona like?

That Traditional games are regaining popularity is fine and all, but lately Veeky Forums is flooded by 12 yr olds trying desperately to appear ''meta''.

Please go back to Youtube comedy. Veeky Forums isn't the place for you.

No, you're right. I never modeled particular dragon personalities subconsciously in my head.

Yes, it appeared as an advert on another website and I saved a bunch. It showed for you too?

Mate I have every single Toho production. "She's" not cruel in the American version either, but the otherworldly intelligence definitely applies. I will apologise to Godzilla for the implication though.

Wyverns.

A Long.

Difficult to tell what kind of draco.

Dragon.

Racists pls go. All dragon lives matter.

No Dragon matters.

To keep anybody from coming in and touching their gold. What a dragon takes and defends from the world is direct, material proof of their worth as a dragon.

You are this threads token autist.

Nope,I just visit the place every once in a while.
The whole r/imaginary whatever is pretty good.

Historically speaking you are totally incorrect.
Nigh all words used to describe draconic beings were applied inconsistently to many different bodytypes/layouts. The codification of specific names to only a single body layout is a modern affectation with no basis in the origin of the words. Thusly such pedantry is pointless, because anyone can some up with something vaguely draconic and call it whatever they want and most of the time they'll be true to the inconsistent and/or vague/minimal historical sources.

In short, you're wrong because of hundreds of years of history, please don't do it again.

> Getting up in arms because your favourite metaphor for atomic bombs got turned into a hero
Although it's true enough that that movie does suck.

People might reference heraldic imagery to go against your point.
But:
1. That's a blip in the history of dragon-related mythology
2. It had the difference between a lion and a leopard be what direction they were facing.

They all sucked. Sucked fucking hard. The only saving grace of the early ones is that they were very much a product of their time and are in a so bad it's funny category.

The 1998 film was the nearest it got to being not shit and it was still shit. the nearest we have ever got to a not shit Godzilla movie was Pacific Rim and that was more than half Power Rangers.

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I rather liked Waisitora from the MtG Legends cycle. She was a literal cat dragon who had conquered a fishing village to feed her brood (and for her amusement) and treated every opponent with casual disdain, toying with them before killing them. Well, with the exception of the Imperial Champion who was able to fight her to a standstill and eventually earn her respect by making her the official imperial reagent of the fishing village.

Shame they did a terrible job with her card...

>dragons must be ancient, feral weapons of mass destruction and fiery death!

What about ancient sentient weapons of mass destruction and death?

Those are MY favorite kind. It's not enough to be simple animals, they need to have an active malevolence behind them. A real cruel evil. So I never run metallic, only ever chromatic. Most normies aren't really familiar with metallic anyway so it works well regardless.

I usually like to have a metallic dragon ally unbeknownst to the party and a chromatic dragon secondary antagonist. At least when I’m running a D&Dlike setting anyway. I’m currently having a silver dragon pretend to be an old priest and mentor to the party paladin and a green dragon just sit in a carven under a huge forest it’s filling with it’s toxic breath such that said forest has been considered cursed for centuries. Fun times.

This is why I’m not a fan of animalistic dumb dragons.

I get that, it's just that metallic dragons remind me too much of dragonlance, and while dragonlance is good...I don't think it's that good. if you kinda get what I'm saying.

I read it for the first time after reading lot of other more recently written books and modern fantasy has made some improvements in the genre that Dragonlance lacked that makes dragonlance look worse by comparison.

it's an essential formative series for both fantasy and DnD in particular, but certain things in it left me with a bad taste in my mouth hand metallic dragons are one of those things.

I don't want to imply that your plot sounds bad though, it doesn't. I'm just rambling. Sorry about that.

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bump.

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exemplore.com/misc/Shape-Shifting-Dragons-of-Folklore

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Loli dragons: yes, no, why

Whats the worst thing a dragon has done in one of your campaigns?

Honestly I don't run dragons too much because the party doesn't get up to a high enough level to fight them, but in one of my campaigns the birth of a dragon caused a volcanic eruption that killed everything living on a densely populated island. The players got to go through a cool adventure explored an ash covered nearly uninhabited island in it's aftermath.

Bump

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Yeah man it’s cool. The dragons are more like optional side-quest stuff anyway.

Wow, what a faggot.

I have four ideas for dragons (not all used in the same setting though).

The First is a pet idea where Dragons in a new world fantasy settings are feathered. Dull plumage in the north, colorful plumage in the south. Also bald eagle dragons because freedom.

Another is that Dragons were designed specifically by the Gods to be mobile death machines as a failed bid to wipe out other races. However the dragons were vain and took to settling for being worshipped and creating their own civilizations. This is where they get there hoards, and complex dungeons to go through to reach said hoard. Their civilization also fell, with the last of it being conquered by a knightly order of dragon hunters who then became dragon riders.

Then there’s the idea of Dragon wizards being shapeshifters, going some way to explain why dragons have so many shapes. They often take the form of cats since Cats are the only other animal that gets to be as haughty and vain.

And lastly for lost world settings there being dinosaur dragons that typically try to enforce lizard supremacy on other races.

Depends on the description

From a story telling perspective, it would be cool to have the SMALL Halfling or Gnome transform into a HUGE Dragon. It’s cool for an Antagonist reveal, don’t know how I’d handle it for a PC.

Otherwise, they’re doing it for the Lulz or Evulz. Kind of like in Dragon Maid, they know the effects of doing so. I’m okay with characters like Kanna doing it because THEY ARE a child

Kanna is not a child, she acts like a child. Toohru points this out more than once. She didn't have much of a childhood. She's still fairly ancient compared to humans.

Guess I forgot about that. I haven’t kept up with the comics for a long while.

The greatest knight is only as great as the dragon of their legend.

I actually fucking dig that. Lets turn it into a setting detail.

All dragons possess a form of divination that tells them how they will die. MoreovertThrough a quirk of fate all dragons will eventually be slain. This is the only way they CAN be killed. No dragons will ever die of old age or disease. Every dragon that lives will eventually be murdered. What makes the situation even more complicated is that the significance and grandeur of any dragon's life seems to be directly linked to the significance of the being that is destined to kill the dragon and the means that the slayer is fated to kill the dragon.

Meek timid dragons are killed in their sleep by unassuming and normally cowardly farmhands. Ferocious and powerful dragons are killed by heroic knights and the Wizards of Legend. The logic makes sense. The thought that consumes the waking hours of the more intelligent of dragonkind is " Can our behavior in life change the manner of our death?"

Some dragons radically alternate between coward and monster, terror and protector in attempts to disrupt and change their visions others adopt a fatalist philosophy and as a result cannot be negotiated with or dissuaded from their course of actions. A rare few become daredevils, using their foreknowledge of their deaths as a proverbial shield.


Thats all I got.

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>Thread about dragons
>starts off with wyverns
Hi, Todd!

But can you really hold the dragon responsible for events that happened before it was even capable of thought?

Dragons are an invasive species whose presence mutates the local biosphere to be more like them.

That's how you have so much half-dragon stuff and draconic sorcerers, without making dragons into sluts.

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Wyverns are dragons.

This.

Oviparous creatures either lay vast numbers of eggs or have to guard their nests. The latter case leads to females who select mates who have demonstrated fitness to take, maintain, and protect a lair. And, ideally, a hunting territory. Some species of birds win mates through elaborate mating rituals which show this fitness off. Males of many species fight over territory in part for this reason.

So being intelligent, dragons expand their definitions to include not just the hunting territory and lair but also wealth, power, and reputation/status.

The book's title is "The lonely dragon". Old but gold. Not sure if there is an enlish translation. It's about a bio-genetist that makes planetfall on a feudal world. He needs to survive until help arrives, and to do that, he makes himself a draconic body. But when he transitions his mind into it, he suffers amnesia.

Sub-Dragon scum is what they are

I need some scary-ass dragon art. I'm running a campaign where they're basically eldritch horrors.

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>dragons (literally "the watcher")
No.

I kind of feel the same.
I mostly don't like sentient dragons. I much prefer them being characterized as giant fire breathing birds of prey of flying fire breathing Allosaurs.

Prefer them with wings but good stuff still, thanks.

>HOT DRAGON COCKS IN YOUR AREA! CLICK HERE NOW!

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Reminder that wyvern is best dragon
>inb4 hurr durr not dragon

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lol that's fucking cool. Where'd he get the dragon genes, though? Did he just combine reptile DNA with other shit?

fuck off

This one spooks me. Enormous beings concealed by clouds like this fill me with a sense of dread.

Yet another good post gets trashed by summerkids on winter break trying to sound like grownups.