An Alternate Ecology of Dragons, revised and expanded
An Alternative Ecology of Dragons, revised and expanded
Dragons. Massive, majestic, murderous. Few monsters evoke as much fear or awe as the dragon, found in nearly every world mythology in some form or another. But a monster of such size and power raises a number of critical questions about where it fits into the ecology of a world, if at all.
The easiest response is to say that they don't. That dragons are rare enough, (or even unique) that despite their size and power, they don't so much affect the ecology as perhaps destroy and disrupt it. That they are monsters in every sense, unnatural and damaging to the environment. But this does not suit the assumptions of many fantasy worlds. Dragons are rarely common, exactly, but they are by no means extremely rare.
All that being said, here is one particular take on their ecology, and a bit of their society, as it were, that gamemasters can use to deepen their worldbuilding.
It all starts with the egg, as one might expect. Female dragons lay large clutches on a semi-annual basis, whether or not they have mated recently. There is some indication that like some terrestrial species, a female dragon or 'queen' can save sperm from matings for years at a time, and indeed, can choose to fertilize her eggs (or leave them unfertilized) from any number of past mates, even in the same clutch. This allows them to have any number of true dragon offspring from a clutch up to the total number of eggs laid, or as few as none. Very rarely does a queen choose to fertilize more than a handful of her eggs, even if she has laid several dozen. She also seems to be able to choose the sex of her offspring, and almost universally chooses to have 4 males to every female.
So what happens to the unfertilized eggs? Well, much like a hive insect on our world, a dragon queen's unfertilized eggs produce a third sex, a neuter drone. Unlike the real world, these neuter drones have a very different morphology, and rarely get much larger than they are at the time of hatching. These neuter drones, otherwise genetic copies or clones of their queen, are humanoid in shape, and act as servants, gatherers of food...all the things workers do in a hive. External observers, unaware of the true nature of their relationship to dragons, call these drones drakonaki or drakelings. Servitor drakonaki are the same color and general appearance as their queen, except for the more humanoid form.
So where do the common drakonaki that do not serve a queen come from? Sometimes, when a colony loses their queen, or members travel too far from the queen and cannot make their way back, the drones differentiate into two different sexes, while usually retaining the same base morphology. In other words, they remain drakonaki (except when occasionally one becomes a winged drakonaki or other sport, which also occurs in a queen's nest from time to time), but now are able to mate, and propagate their own 'species'. Over time and several generations, they lose the distinctive appearance of their queen and become what we see as 'common' drakelings. Even then, they often seek to return to the service of a queen. Such is their basic instinct. On rare occasions, in a region nearly free of dragons, a drakeling matriarch (they do retain the draconic matriarchal structure) will, over time, with sufficient treasure and magic, develop back into a dragon...but that is exceedingly rare.
Enough about drakelings, for now. What about dragons themselves? Remember, the ratio of sexes is four males to every female. In addition, females tend to be considerably larger and stronger than males, as well as more intelligent. This results in a strongly matriarchal 'society' if that term can be applied to so loose a structure.
Let's go back to the clutch, and the hatching. Newly hatched dragons are tended with differing levels of attention and affection based on the subtype of dragon and their individual inclinations, but become self sufficient very rapidly, even before leaving the wyrmling stage.
Dragons of all kinds are fiercely independent, and wyrmlings travel quite far from their original lair to find a hunting range. Only the females, however, establish extensive long term lairs. Only the queens establish hoards. Over time, each queen will attract as many as 8 or 10 lesser males as long term mates. Each of them hunts and patrols in a territory satellite to, and subject to, hers. All their territories belong to her, though there is often fierce competition between the males for the best hunting ranges. The queens compete fiercely too, on a much larger scale.
The quality of a territory, and the hunting ranges within it, is determined mostly by two factors: the availability of large prey, making hunting more efficient, and the availability of treasure. Male dragons have a magpie like attraction to shiny treasures, with a human or greater intellect causing them to prioritize certain high quality treasures over others. One of the reasons for this is that dragons require metals and minerals in their diet to maintain their scales and bones, and dragon queens require even more, to provide for their clutches and themselves. Such minerals are easier to take from others that have already mined them...but also explains why so many dragons take up residence in former dwarven mines, where such fare is plentiful. Magic is also prized, as the simple radiations from magical items are absorbed into the flesh and scales of a dragon queen through long proximity, fueling her growth, her powers, and her clutch.
When a male wishes to mate, or even simply to join a queen's harem and add his territory to hers, he brings her gifts of prey, and of treasure, and of magic. If she accepts him, she eats the offering, or stores it in her hoard for consumption or absorption. They then mate, at her discretion. If she does not accept him...she drives him off, if of a 'good' disposition, or eats him, if 'evil'. Either way, she always keeps the offering.
If she consumes so much of the treasure, why does she still have a large horde? There are two reasons, both having to do with how and why such a large creature can sustain itself without destroying everything near it. One, they are constantly gathering more. The mightier or more attractive the queen, the more tribute she receives, and thus the larger the hoard, constantly replenished. Two, even though she eats much of the hoard, there are parts of it she cannot digest, even with her nearly perfectly efficient digestive system. She cannot digest heavy metals like gold, platinum, and the like, so those accumulate over time, either never ingested or passed as fewmets. She cannot digest a hard gem if it is without flaw for her stomach processes to work on, and she cannot digest magic items until she has first absorbed all the magic therein. If she is slain, all the magic she has absorbed returns to the items remaining in the hoard, and some items that were not already magical become so.
Her extraordinarily efficient digestive system also explains the lack of traditional droppings anywhere near her lair...biological material is simply used in its entirety, and her fewmets are in fact indistinguishable from her hoard.
Previously, we discussed how drakonaki form, naturally, from the unfertilized eggs of dragon queens, as drones, effectively. Let's follow that line of thought. In some species , like ants, that have worker drones, there are also soldiers. Specialized members of the species that engage in defense of the
group. It seems a fairly obvious extension, then, that at least the first drakemen, or drakonoi, came about in this fashion. Dragon queens produce, from their unfertilized eggs, a standard ratio of about 90 percent workers (drakonaki) to soldiers (drakonoi). Natural mutation explains some variation here, and like the drakelings, when drakemen are separated from a queen for extended periods of time, they can develop gender and sexual characteristics, and breed true. Soldiers, by their nature, have to be more independent than workers, so far more of them go rogue, sometimes even by choice, and strike off on their own to gain freedom, or are freed by the death of their queen. Some might even revolt against their overlord and slay it. Such behavior has even been found in ants!
Nevertheless, as dragons are an ancient race, the grand majority of the drakemen in the world today are descendants of the free drakonoi who developed genders and reproductive capability. The majority of drakonoi breed with other drakemen of their own subspecies. Those that do not, in most cases, breed true as the phenotype of one parent or the other. Sometimes, however, they do not, and hybrids occur, with a mixture of traits from parents. In such cases, you might find a drakeman with both gold and red scales, or one that mixed blue and red evenly enough to appear purple, or when with rows of spikes as well as ridged frills on their heads. Their breath might match one parent or the other...or be a hybrid as well, such as a mixed drakeman breathing acidic flaming napalm...
Free drakonoi will cluster in drakeman communities for the most part, while some of course will join in cosmoplolitan societies. Servitor drakonoi will remain near their queens, and share their behavior and moral outlook, except for an inborn tendency toward submission and obedience. Free drakonoi tend toward lawful and honorable due to this instinctive factor, and they favor occupations that reflect their codes, like knights, sworn swords, and other warriors sworn to a master, like samurai.
Many free drakonoi hate true dragons, as they had to fight for their freedom, at least in the ancient past if not recently. But some free drakonoi might well have been allowed to leave in peace, and their people retain good relationships with the dragons from whom they long ago sprung.
It is important to note, returning to dragons themselves, that they come in many varieties. In the Successor States of Rega setting, they were crafted by the dark gods as living siege weapons, intended to destroy all they encountered, so as to make the conquest and destruction of the world of Tellus easier, and so that the great dragon goddess Invidia could return after her destruction by Saevios before time really began. Another kind of dragon was made by the bright gods to counter them...but all the dragons turned out to have minds of their own, and did not serve, though many were as desctructive as their makers could have hoped. But in a more general sense, dragons still have extraordinary variation, from the form most common in the west, with four legs and a pair of wings, to the lesser two legged winged wyverns, the serpentine drakons, and the 4 legged, flying, but wingless dragons of the east. There are even winged and feathered, but legless, dragons, rumored in far lands across the western seas.What they all have in common is their existance as a manifestation of pure and unbridled elemental power, whether storm, or fire, or earth.
Perhaps the most common true dragon is the western firedrake. Long and lithe, built like some cross between great cat, serpent, and lizard, with vast bat-like wings, they breath fire. Their coloration varies widely, often influenced by the region where they make their home, with northern dragons often being white, at least during winter months, in order to blend in with the snow. Dragons that hunt temperate woodlands often have scales of brown and green or both, changing to reds and yellows in autumn, and mixes of brown and grey in winter. Dragons of the mountains usually have colors that reflect the local stone, and so on. The classic red color that many expect is relatively rare, and seems to be associated with volcanic regions and areas where local stone or foliage has such a coloration. Some sages say that firedrakes have been observed to turn red, hot and glowing, when enraged. Some dragons who prefer to hunt from the air, particularly in regions where clouds are scarce, take on a light blue coloration that is easily lost against the azure sky. It might be darker, even to a midnight blue, if they prefer to hunt at dusk or at night. Some can even change their colors at will, though this is probably magic.
As apex predators, dragons rarely have spikes or other defensive structures of any significance, though some have frills that seem to aid in flight control, or horns used in mating and dominance struggles. They also might have additional formations that aid in camouflage, and many have tendrils or 'whiskers' on their faces and chins that seem to be sensory organs, detecting disturbances in the air or water around them, since most dragons seem to function just as well in aquatic environments as they do on land.
The subset of dragons known as cold-drakes don't actually breath cold. Instead, they most often spit a kind of acidic venom. The arctic subtypes still often breath fire, in fact, especially since many denizens of their regions are inured to cold. The confusion about many types of 'breath' seems to come from the fact that many dragons are extraordinarliy capable magic wielders, able to harness whatever elemental energy is most useful to them at any time, and some may well have preferences or even signature magics that resemble a breath, or change their breath...and that often has little or nothing to do with their color or region. A dragon who can blast lightning bolts from their eyes is using magic, not a biological process. This is even more common with eastern dragons, who often possess truly amazing levels of control over weather related magics, storms, and lightning. That's not to say that some dragons don't possess bio-electricity...some definitely do, but it is usually a short ranged aura or requires touch, as an electric eel might. That sort of thing is particularly common with the serpentine sea dragons colloquially referred to as 'sea serpents.'
The dragons made by the bright gods, at least in Tellus, are quite different, not really biological creatures at all. Crafted from celestial bronze and shining adamant by the king of the gods and the god of the forge, they were intended as defenders of the world from the dragons made by the dark gods. In response to the other dragons ability to spawn servitors and soldiers, the gods crafted humanoid bronze beings named 'spartoi' or 'Talosians' from the teeth of the dragons they had crafted. Talosian, because the first of their kind was named Talos. Spartoi, which means 'sown men', because the process of creation involved burying them in the earth after their forging and quenching to imbue them with the life that only the deities of earth and sea seem able to easily bestow. From earth and sea we all come, and to it we return. The Spartoi are no different.
As an aside, the first dragon crafted by the bright gods is referred to as golden, simply because his bronze flesh is burnished brighter than any other dragon. He is not actually crafted of a different metal. It is unknown if the dragons made by the bright gods are capable of biological reproduction, though the spartoi certainly are. The 'breath' of the bright dragons is fire...but divine fire from the forge of the gods, mixed with the lightning of the king of heaven, a divine gift rather than a biological product.
Let’s chat about this. What do you think of this approach?
