Chapter #18Dragons and Draconians by: Yote   Draconians
Over a thousand years ago, a band of humans desperate to stop the endless predations of dragons sought out the breeding ground of the dragon queen, destroying its clutch of unhatched dragons. In revenge, the dragon queen cursed the humans such that they and their descendants would forever play host to the souls of her butchered children and, over time, become their new bodies.
The half-human, half-dragon Draconians are the result of that curse. Though the children of Draconians are born essentially human, at the onset of puberty they develop wings and hard, metallic scales that spread across their body as they age. When fully formed, they are hot-blooded (to the point that their fresh blood will scald a human), fiery-tempered carnivores with voracious appetites and insatiable lusts for both treasure and maidens. They are ferocious, animalistic tendencies becoming more so as they develop. Ultimately, over many many years, a Draconian will lose their humanoid form altogether, becoming a true dragon.
Draconians periodically outgrow and shed their skins; garbing a human in these skins will give them the body of the draconian exactly as they were in that stage in their development, though will not afflict them with the curse.
They live in the frosty heights of the Rawridge Mountains, coming down from their seclusion to hunt.
The dragon queen retreated into mourning shortly after the destruction of her nest, not laying a single egg since that day; as such true dragons have vanished almost entirely from the world. However, the oldest Draconians, those surviving members of the original party of humans that destroyed the nest, have almost completed their slow transformation into full dragons and will soon become able to lay true dragon eggs of their own, ushering in a return to the reign of dragonkind.
True Dragons
Nigh-indestructable, highly destructive, fire-breathing, flying reptiles. Extremely dangerous, kill on sight.
Wyrmholes
Wyrmholes are magical tears in space and time that link areas many hundreds of miles apart. These portals lie along the migratory routes of the dragons; in the days of old they were formed by migrating dragons tearing through reality with their powerful magic.
After the fall of the dragons, the wyrmholes came under control of human wizards. They represent the safest, fastest method of travel over long distances, allowing wizards to be deployed anywhere in the world. Due to the nature of the holes, they are usually high in the sky, necessitating that the wizards build towers around them.
Wyrmholes fluctuate over a period of years according to the long-lost migratory paths and rhythms of the ancient dragons, becoming unstable or closing with little warning. Old wyrmholes may reactivate after periods of hundreds of years. The wyrmhole network is of paramount importance to the continued survival of Tryzantium and to keep it operational, the Colleges of magic constantly monitor the flow of energy -or leylines- that follows active holes and presages their collapse, and the Gold Order works hard to keep working the exotic machinery required to stabilise the tears long enough for somebody to jump through. | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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