[Glorantha] Re: Landscaping with dragons

Mikko Rintasaari:   

> That's the part I like. The true dragons are the equivalent of gods, yet
> reside in the mundane world. It's quite neat that they slumber as parts of
> the world; hills, mountains and even rivers. Heck, with the dual nature of
> the heortling gods (see inner dragon) isn't there some implications that
> Kero Fin herself may be a dragon?
   

  Well, she's one of the Three Dragon Mountains and I heard somewhere that she was the daughter of a dragon, perhaps.

> The problem is if they are still supposed to be in the same titanic scale
> when awake and active in the mundane world.
   

  Why not? I like the idea of huge dragons destroying all and sundry. It's fun.

> If I ever need to have Orlanth stride the mundane world (it could happen)
> it won't be as a man ten miles long. It will be as a titanic man possibly
> four meters (~15 feet) tall. Similarily, there won't be any giants that
> are tens of meters long in my GLorantha...
   

  Well, Larnste's Footprint is huge, so the gods could be that big, or they could be smaler, depends what they are doing. The same with dragons, I suppose.

> Unless. Gonn Orta (or a similar giant, or a true dragon) would decide to
> fight the Crimson Bat then the battle propably would look like a Godzilla
> movie to any mortal seeing it, with the both combatants in the same scale.
   

  Yes, and that's a bad thing because ... ? Gonn Orta (150m) vs a True Dragon (say 1500m long) would be the same scale, roughly, as a human fighting a big dream dragon (20m long). I'd fancy the dragon, to be honest.        

  Donald R. Oddy:    

  > Why is this a problem? Bear in mind that they sleep for centuries
> and being awake and active doesn't mean that they move as quickly
> as humans. We know the new Temple of the Reaching Moon is built on
> top of a dragon. And when it wakes it devours the whole army that's
> present. This makes more sense if the dragon is at least the size
> of an ocean liner rather than a whale. There's also the Dragonkill
> where a small number of dragons killed everyone in Dragon Pass.
   

  To be fair, the dragon under the Temple of the Reaching Moon did take three whole bites to eat the army, as I recall. Not that impressicve, really.

> Now it's not clear how quickly either of these events happen. I'd
> certainly go with there having been odd movements under the temple
> for days or even weeks beforehand and a period of several hours
> while the dragon wakes up, looks around and then decides what to
> do about all those irritating humans crawling all over him. Then
> it moves a foot and crushes an entire regiment.
   

  Oh, I think the dragon wakes up, looks around and eats everything in sight. The Lunars don't have a chance to get away or to attack the dragon. It really is that quick. I would guess that it was woken up pretty immediately by whatever Argrath/Kallyr did to it - they probably prodded it with a dragonstick, or something :-)

> I understand Gonn Orta is a small giant at 150 metres (as described
> in Griffin Mountain) and some giants are nearby mountains. The giant
> baby in the RQ Pavis supplement is described as being ten meters long.
> So yes I think combat between such beings would be Godzilla scale.
   

  Well, the giant baby is 1/15th his height, which is the equivalent to a 12cm-long baby (180cm/15) which isn't that big at all. So, take these measurements with a large pinch of salt.    

  See Ya    

  Simon     Received on Fri 30 Jun 2006 - 13:14:45 EEST