[Glorantha] Re: Dragons

Robert Davis:
> I have always advised players against that cult telling them that
>its filled with magic they will never use, mainly due to inability to
>reconcile or suspend my belief that a regular human with a few neat
>feats could take on a dragon. For me that ruins the magic.

  Of course they can. Fantasy and legend is full of stories of Dragonslayers, sometimes knights, sometimes heroes but often normal men.   

Donald Oddy:
  > According to TR, the cult is Orvenshagor Dragonslayer. Alokoring
> is the only known hero of that cult. I don't see most members
> fighting true dragons often if at all. The magic will also be
> useful against dream dragons and dragonnewts which is where they
> will get the practice and experience to tackle the real thing.

  Yep, only Heros (as opposed to heros) will fight True Dragons in the same way that only Heros will fight Demigods and Gods. Other mere mortals will have to stick to other draconic beasties.    

  Peter Metcalfe:
  > If the magics could only be used against true dragons and greater, the
> advice would be good. But considering that the magics could be used
> against Dragonewts, Dream Dragons, Wyrms, Wyverns, Magisaurs and
> some dinosaurs, Orvanshagor becomes useful to clans with dragon
> trouble on their border or for Orlanthi heroes who want some extra
> dragon-killing magic.

  Yes, if I lived near Dragon's Eye in Dragon Pass or near similar draconic areas then I would love to have a dragonslaying cult nearby, just in case.    

  As a matter of interest, Orlanth is known as a Dragonslayer from the God Time, he killed Aroka and several other dragons. Presumably he had a subcult devoted to killing dragons before the EWF. What happened to it during the EWF? Was it just ignored or suppressed? Did the Ingolfi pretend that Orlanth never killed dragons? What about Alokoring? Did he restructure the subcult or did he forge a new subcult, in the same way as he made the Orlanth Rex cult? Does the Orvenshagor Dragonslayer cult have any EWF-time myths about slaying dragons? Would it contain myths such as Orlanth-Aroka, Vadrus-Dragon (can't remember which one) or Orlanth slaying the dragon that forms part of Orlanth's Ring (can't remember which one again)? Are those myths common Orlanth Adventurous myths or are they specific to the Dragonslayer cult?    

  Is there only one Orlanth Dragonslaying subcult or are there more? I know that Alakoring is a Hero, but has he a cult of his own? What about other Dragonslaying Heros/Demigods?    

  Robert Davis:
> I mean, where were those Alokoring dudes during the Dragonkill?
>Down the 24hr petrol station looking for some twinkies?

  Most of them went off to kill dragons. Some presumably had bad backs, or their leg had gone, or they had a really bad headache and would go tomorrow. Others were too important to risk actually fighting dragons, they had to stay behind and teach others how to fight dragons.     

  Mikko Rintasaari:
  >> Amongst the EWF, again, the dragons fought in Dara Happa and were fought
>> by armies. The True Dragons were killed by Heroes or Groups of
>> magicians, so they might not have fought in armies themselves, leaving
>> that to Dream Dragons. But I can't see why they didn't. Although, if I
>> had a True Dragon on my side, I wouldn't need an army with it.
>
> You would. Check out what you just wrote
   

  Oh, I can't see much fun in being consistent - even in a single paragraph :-)

> I bet it's much harder to both, fight and army, and to destroy a dragon
> with heroic level magic, than to do just one of the things.
   

  Yes, fair enough. The rmy could run interference while the dragon got on with eating armies, knocking down city walls and thinking people to death.

>> Of course, Cragspider has her own pet True Dragon, although I'm not sure
>> how she uses it.
>
> Even in my version where the true dragon is like a god incarnate (not
> actually the size of a mountain, only sometimes) I'd say the ansver to
> that is
>
> "Like atomic weapons"
   

  Which means that Cragspider has two forms of WMD - Firestorm and Black Dragon. I always thought she was fun.

> That's not exactly what I'm after. I need a vision of the true dragons
> that can fit in _my_ head, and that I'm comfortable using. The celestial
> scale dragons don't work for me as actual physical objects flying/walking
> around the surface of Glorantha. I'm just presenting a view I've been
> working on. One way of looking at the Glorantha material/setting.
   

  Basically, use whatever you feel comfortable with. The Inhuman King/Dragonet is a True Dragon in Dragonewt form and he is only fairly small. His Full Priests/Rulers are capable of turning into dragons themselves. If that's the scale you are happy with then run with it. If you want army-eating, city-smashing landscape-altering dragons then go with them instead.

>> I have always advised players against that cult telling them that its
>> filled with magic they will never use, mainly due to inability to
>> reconcile or suspend my belief that a regular human with a few neat
>> feats could take on a dragon.
>
> Not a regular human being, but a Hero. Somebody in the 1w3 - 10w4 range in
> very specific and exotic abilities... everything has to go right, and even
> then all the hero has got is a chanse.
>
> But I need to know what my NPC's can do, and how they do it.

  NPCs can generally do whatever the Narrator says they can do. PCs/heros are the ones who need a means to achieve their desires.   

> Not so for me. I'm a big fan of the EWF, but that also requires that their
> enemies were/are real and dangerous. Also remember that a dragon that has
> been killed isn't necessarily permanently gone. Permanently killing a True
> Dragon is propably just as impossible as permanently killing a major God.
> Parhaps even more so, since the dragons seem pretty resilient aainst
> chaos.

  I can't think of any case off the top of my head where a True Dragon has come back from being killed. Even in the Godtime they stayed pretty dead. Sometimes they changed into other dragons and crept away, so Aroka became Oslira and bothered the Dara Happans, but they didn't come back.    

  Dream Dragons, however, can be dreamed up again and again, with different variations until the heros/pcs become sick of them.   

>> > concluding thought on the dragons
>> Concluding? I doubt it very much :-)
> Sorry, I was trying to sum up my current thinking. Non-native english
> speaker problem there.

  No, it was my fault entirely. I just think that this has some way to go before we go back to ogre-duck-mystics.    

  See Ya    

  Simon     Received on Tue 04 Jul 2006 - 11:03:24 EEST