Magic Under Construction: TOMU 2-13
May. 10th, 2011 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinStarted: 5/10/2011
Status: In progress.
Last Updated: 4:30
Word Count: ~2650
Time Writing: 3 hours
[3 hours. Didn't grow much in last half hour, but I think I have the beginning of the story finished.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual. Not every dragon had a taste for the flesh of intelligent mortals and surely there were some somewhere that did feel a genuine sense of camaraderie towards the smaller two-legged kinds, but they had to be pretty exceptional exceptions.
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way. He was almost as good at hiding his delight as Professor Hart was at hiding his frustration.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well... dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. They have more in common with demigods than they with do with the more common half-elves, half-dwarves, or half-orcs. That's not to say that they have much in common with demigods. They aren't, for instance, divine. Although, they are beings of immense potential... a half-dragon is more likely to attain a level of power akin to a demigod than is a full human or a hybrid of two mortal races..."
"Maybe we should appoint a moderator for this debate," Hart said
"Well, to bring it back around to the point," Hall said, "what I meant when I said that half-dragons are more like demigods is that dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you no doubt are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation! While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round, then," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"Hold on," Hart said. "We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that. Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly... if a little peevishly. "Technically, it was a blessing. Divine power, not infernal."
"Yes, well, it was a curse in the purely vernacular sense of a misfortune or negative imposition," Hall said. "Even the Universal Temple refers to the act of Lord Khersis casting all of demonkind into the fire as a 'curse'."
"Well, the dogmatic accounts of things often have more in common with lore than history," Hart said. "But I take your point."
"Good," Hall continued. "Though this divine act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. "
"True enough," Hart said. "Though... the Fall spanned centuries. Nothing actually happened overnight. The empire of the Mother Isles was already established... at least within and around the Mother Isles, and it was during this period that they began their first really aggressive expansions to the east of the continental coasts. The sudden disappearance of any threat of dragon attack probably had something to do with the shape or the extent of conquest, but the internal pressures that lead to the expansionist tendencies... overcrowded cities, a shrinking tax base, a top-heavy aristocracy, and a restless army... would have been present anyway."
"Hmm, yes, well it wasn't only the Mother City that suddenly marched on its neighbors," Hall said. "The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. Stronger states swallowed weaker ones all over the world. Enclaves that had existed in complete isolation for centuries or longer suddenly found themselves connected by roads that would have been impossible to maintain a few centuries before. Also consider that a number of petty kingdoms in the world before the Fall were ruled by or existed under the direct protection of a dragon. When the change happened, these holdings were all plunged into chaos. Tyrannical dragons were overthrown, and more benevolent ones suddenly found themselves as shepherds being protected by their flocks."
"Except for the empire of Yokano and the Sunward Islands," Hart said. "The emperor of Yokano was able to maintain control through a combination of his traditional status as a god, the Yokanese reverence for tradition, and the support of the feudal lords operating in a rigid caste structure. Though the culture of the Sunward Islands was also changed by the Fall, as the emperor ceded more power and freedom to his vassals in exchange for their continued loyalty."
"Well, yes, be that as may, Yokano was hardly a petty kingdom," Hall said. "It's more in the nature of the greater powers that would have seized on the opportunity, if not for the internal instability. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. He sounded like he was beginning to enjoy things... not just contradicting Hall, but the back-and-forth in general. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on which Pontifex sitting on the Eternal Throne at the moment."
"Yes, well, you know how unreliable those dogmatic accounts can be," Hall said, and Hart almost smiled as he winced. "Besides, three stories is three more ideas than history has."
"Well, history depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the Fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Later hybrids were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals... dragons had their own less flattering views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story. While the Pelorians and the dragonblooded heroes were an entirely new phenomenon, the greater numbers of classical dragon hybrids that abounded changed the way the world... dragon and mortal alike... thought of and dealt with such beings. With every living dragon having experienced enforced captivity in mortal form, even those who had produced no children during the Fall by and large harbored less prejudice towards the hybrids."
"On the human side," Hart said, "we did see the Mother City... which, again, had expanded its influence quite a bit during the centuries of the Fall... once more moving to take advantage. They conquered and absorbed the nascent Pelorian Empire, adding the Pelorian armies to their own forces, and appointed half-dragons to high offices, some of which were created specifically for them. For a time, the unofficial policy was that any half-dragon who was willing to swear loyalty to the Unnameable Emperor would be given a noble title and rank."
"Yes, and this trend was inherited and continued by our own more republican empire," Hall said. "Though new hybrids are rarely born with a full-blooded dragon parent... the prejudice against mortal pairings growing once more in the face of the dwindling population of full true dragons... it is an open secret that hybrids and dragons who have the habit of mortal form are favored within the upper echelons of the civil service and the higher ranks of the military. Even in ages when traces of non-human blood were wholly despised and semi-human hybrids of other origins were blocked from full participation in public life, the mysterious allure of dragons somehow allowed them to..."
"It's not mysterious at all," Hart said. "Dragons... even half-dragons... are just too powerful to be ignored. The imperial rulers wanted that power on their side, under their control. An emperor's command is theoretically absolute, and they found the cover they needed in the Decree of Separate Halves."
"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this decree," Hall said.
"Well, maybe somebody will write a story about it," Hart said, grinning. "The decree stated that shapeshifters... specifically referring to those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At that stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the original intent of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving anyone the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
"Why, how very fascinating," Hall said. It was impossible to say if he was being sincere.
"The decree was later cited as a legal precedent when the 'human blood' rule was adopted as law in the Imperial Republic," Hart said. "That rule was based in a centuries-old Khersian doctrine, but it didn't find a firm legal foothold until the coalition-building days of Magisterion II, during the most fragile period of the Republic. Of course it is from there that we eventually reached the point where actual human blood is not a prerequisite for full citizenship. From the Decree of Separate Halves to the human blood law, and from there to what is informally called the principle of interchangeability, or... less accurately... the declaration of universal rights."
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "From draconic hybrids begat during the Fall of Dragons, we have the birth of universal rights in our own glorious Imperial Republic."
"That's... a bit of a simplification," Hart said, though he sounded less eager to contradict Hall now. "Separate Halves would have existed anyway, and it was the justification... not the impetus... for the reforms of Magisterion II. His predecessor had already informally paved the way, and that may have been precedent enough. But suffice it to say, it would have happened differently."
Professor Hart had been growing more animated as the discussion wore on. I still regretted that he hadn't been able to pick the topic for the class period... one of his hallmarks was the sort of interesting anecdotes that didn't tend to make it into the textbooks, which was sort of ironic given his professional distaste for lore. If he'd wanted to talk about the Tylean explorers, he probably had something more particular in mind than the "broad strokes" he was giving.
[2.5 hours. Really coming together. I spent this half hour mostly editing what's already there. There's still more to come.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual. Not every dragon had a taste for the flesh of intelligent mortals and surely there were some somewhere that did feel a genuine sense of camaraderie towards the smaller two-legged kinds, but they had to be pretty exceptional exceptions.
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way. He was almost as good at hiding his delight as Professor Hart was at hiding his frustration.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well... dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. They have more in common with demigods than they with do with the more common half-elves, half-dwarves, or half-orcs. That's not to say that they have much in common with demigods. They aren't, for instance, divine. Although, they are beings of immense potential... a half-dragon is more likely to attain a level of power akin to a demigod than is a full human or a hybrid of two mortal races..."
"Maybe we should appoint a moderator for this debate," Hart said
"Well, to bring it back around to the point," Hall said, "what I meant when I said that half-dragons are more like demigods is that dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you no doubt are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation! While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round, then," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"Hold on," Hart said. "We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that. Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly... if a little peevishly. "Technically, it was a blessing. Divine power, not infernal."
"Yes, well, it was a curse in the purely vernacular sense of a misfortune or negative imposition," Hall said. "Even the Universal Temple refers to the act of Lord Khersis casting all of demonkind into the fire as a 'curse'."
"Well, the dogmatic accounts of things often have more in common with lore than history," Hart said. "But I take your point."
"Good," Hall continued. "Though this divine act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. "
"True enough," Hart said. "Though... the Fall spanned centuries. Nothing actually happened overnight. The empire of the Mother Isles was already established... at least within and around the Mother Isles, and it was during this period that they began their first really aggressive expansions to the east of the continental coasts. The sudden disappearance of any threat of dragon attack probably had something to do with the shape or the extent of conquest, but the internal pressures that lead to the expansionist tendencies... overcrowded cities, a shrinking tax base, a top-heavy aristocracy, and a restless army... would have been present anyway."
"Hmm, yes, well it wasn't only the Mother City that suddenly marched on its neighbors," Hall said. "The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. Stronger states swallowed weaker ones all over the world. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"History depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia draconic hybrids, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Often they were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals. Dragons had their own views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story. While the Pelorians and the dragonblooded heroes were an entirely new phenomenon, the greater numbers of classical dragon hybrids that abounded changed the way the world... dragon and mortal alike... thought of and dealt with such beings. With every living dragon having experienced enforced captivity in mortal form, even those who had produced no children during the Fall by and large harbored less prejudice towards the hybrids."
"On the human side," Hart said, "we did see the Mother City... which had expanded its influence quite a bit during the centuries of the Fall... taking advantage. They conquered and absorbed the nascent Pelorian Empire, adding the Pelorian armies to their own forces, and appointed half-dragons to high offices, some of which were created specifically for them. For a time, the unofficial policy was that any half-dragon who was willing to swear loyalty to the Unnameable Emperor would be given a noble title and rank."
"Yes, and this trend was inherited and continued by our own more republican empire," Hall said. "Though new hybrids are rarely born with a full-blooded dragon parent... the prejudice against mortal pairings growing once more in the face of the dwindling population of full true dragons... it is an open secret that hybrids and dragons who have the habit of mortal form are favored within the upper echelons of the civil service and the higher ranks of the military. Even in ages when traces of non-human blood were wholly despised and semi-human hybrids of other origins were blocked from full participation in public life, the mysterious allure of dragons somehow allowed them to..."
"It's not mysterious at all," Hart said. "Dragons... even half-dragons... are just too powerful to be ignored. The imperial rulers wanted that power on their side, under their control. An emperor's command is theoretically absolute, and they found the cover they needed int he Decree of Separate Halves."
"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this decree," Hall said.
"Well, maybe somebody will write a story about it," Hart said. "The decree stated that shapeshifters... specifically referring to those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At that stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the original intent of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving anyone the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
"Why, how very fascinating," Hall said.
"The decree was later cited as a legal precedent when the 'human blood' rule was adopted as law in the Imperial Republic," Hart said. "That rule was based in a centuries-old Khersian doctrine, but it didn't find a legal foothold until the coalition-building days of Magisterion II, during the most fragile period of the Republic. Of course it is from there that we eventually reached the point where actual human blood is not a prerequisite for full citizenship. From the Decree of Separate Halves to the human blood law, and from there to what is informally called the principle of interchangeability, or... less accurately... the declaration of universal rights."
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "From draconic hybrids begat during the Fall of Dragons, we have the birth of universal rights in our own glorious Imperial Republic."
"That's... a bit of a simplification," Hart said, though he sounded less eager to contradict Hall now. "Separate Halves would have existed anyway, and it was the justification... not the impetus... for the reforms of Magisterion II. His predecessor had already informally paved the way, and that may have been precedent enough.
[2 hours. Shaping up! All this stuff is (hopefully interesting) background... the actual key points of the chapter are yet to come, believe it or not.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual.
[]
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well, dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly.
"...on all of dragonkind," Hall continued. "Though this act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"History depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia draconic hybrids, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Often they were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals. Dragons had their own views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story. While the Pelorians and the dragonblooded heroes were an entirely new phenomenon, the greater numbers of classical dragon hybrids that abounded changed the way the world... dragon and mortal alike... thought of and dealt with such beings. With every living dragon having experienced enforced captivity in mortal form, even those who had produced no children during the Fall by and large harbored less prejudice towards the hybrids."
"On the human side," Hart said, "we did see the Mother City... which had expanded its influence quite a bit during the centuries of the Fall... taking advantage. They conquered and absorbed the nascent Pelorian Empire, adding the Pelorian armies to their own forces, and appointed half-dragons to high offices, some of which were created specifically for them. For a time, the unofficial policy was that any half-dragon who was willing to swear loyalty to the Unnameable Emperor would be given a noble title and rank."
"Yes, and this trend was inherited and continued by our own more republican empire," Hall said. "Though new hybrids are rarely born with a full-blooded dragon parent... the prejudice against mortal pairings growing once more in the face of the dwindling population of full true dragons... it is an open secret that hybrids and dragons who have the habit of mortal form are favored within the upper echelons of the civil service and the higher ranks of the military. Even in ages when traces of non-human blood were wholly despised and semi-human hybrids of other origins were blocked from full participation in public life, the mysterious allure of dragons somehow allowed them to..."
"It's not mysterious at all," Hart said. "Dragons... even half-dragons... are just too powerful to be ignored. The imperial rulers wanted that power on their side, under their control. An emperor's command is theoretically absolute, and they found the cover they needed int he Decree of Separate Halves."
"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this decree," Hall said.
"Well, maybe somebody will write a story about it," Hart said. "The decree stated that shapeshifters... specifically referring to those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At that stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the original intent of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving anyone the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
"Why, how very fascinating," Hall said.
"The decree was later cited as a legal precedent when the 'human blood' rule was adopted as law in the Imperial Republic," Hart said. "That rule was based in a centuries-old Khersian doctrine, but it didn't find a legal foothold until the coalition-building days of Magisterion II, during the most fragile period of the Republic. Of course it is from there that we eventually reached the point where actual human blood is not a prerequisite for full citizenship. From the Decree of Separate Halves to the human blood law, and from there to what is informally called the principle of interchangeability, or... less accurately... the declaration of universal rights."
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "From draconic hybrids begat during the Fall of Dragons, we have the birth of universal rights in our own glorious Imperial Republic."
[1.5 hours. It begins to resemble an actual story.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual.
[]
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well, dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly.
"...on all of dragonkind," Hall continued. "Though this act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"History depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia draconic hybrids, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Often they were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals. Dragons had their own views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story.
[]
"Well," Hart said, "there was the Decree of Separate Halves. This stated that shapeshifters... specifically, those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At this stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the effect of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving them the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. A half-human/half-dragon could be accepted as human in the imperial civil service or the officer corps without hiding their draconic nature and all the advantages that gave them. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
[1 hour in. Next hour I'm going to do more to set this as a conversation in class, and not just Hart and Hall jousting]
"Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other," Hall said. "And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. Some stories claim that they are immigrants to our sphere... some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof. What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people. The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form.
"The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes," Hall said. "Your usual hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the short-lived Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of draconic humanoids."
"History records all that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly.
"...on all of dragonkind," Hall continued. "Though this act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been conditional. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"While accounts differ, dragons are universally agreed to be among the original inhabitants of the world, grouped in the first order of creation along with gods and giants," Hall said. "The Draconic Age predates mortal habitation of the sphere. While dragons didn't begin their decline until after the advent of elves, some hold that it was the appearance of the elves and other created kinds that marked the end of the Draconic Age, ending as it did millennia of uncontested rule. It is in this time... the early Athanasian Age... that we find the first accounts of dragon hybrids."
"Well," Hart said, "there was the Decree of Separate Halves. This stated that shapeshifters... specifically, those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At this stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the effect of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving them the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. A half-human/half-dragon could be accepted as human in the imperial civil service or the officer corps without hiding their draconic nature and all the advantages that gave them. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
[0.5 hours. Very disjointed and rough. At this point I'm fleshing out some of the info I want to be in the story. Future efforts will smooth the infodump into the story.]
"Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other," Hall said. "And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. Some stories claim that they are immigrants to our sphere... some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof. What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people. The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form.
"The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Twelve hundred years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven decades that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes," Hall said. "Your usual hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent.
"While accounts differ, dragons are universally agreed to be among the original inhabitants of the world, grouped in the first order of creation along with gods and giants," Hall said. "The Draconic Age predates mortal habitation of the sphere. While dragons didn't begin their decline until after the advent of elves, some hold that it was the appearance of the elves and other created kinds that marked the end of the Draconic Age, ending as it did millennia of uncontested rule. It is in this time... the early Athanasian Age... that we find the first accounts of dragon hybrids."
"Well," Hart said, "there was the Decree of Separate Halves. This stated that shapeshifters... specifically, those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At this stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the effect of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving them the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. A half-human/half-dragon could be accepted as human in the imperial civil service or the officer corps without hiding their draconic nature and all the advantages that gave them. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
Status: In progress.
Last Updated: 4:30
Word Count: ~2650
Time Writing: 3 hours
[3 hours. Didn't grow much in last half hour, but I think I have the beginning of the story finished.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual. Not every dragon had a taste for the flesh of intelligent mortals and surely there were some somewhere that did feel a genuine sense of camaraderie towards the smaller two-legged kinds, but they had to be pretty exceptional exceptions.
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way. He was almost as good at hiding his delight as Professor Hart was at hiding his frustration.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well... dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. They have more in common with demigods than they with do with the more common half-elves, half-dwarves, or half-orcs. That's not to say that they have much in common with demigods. They aren't, for instance, divine. Although, they are beings of immense potential... a half-dragon is more likely to attain a level of power akin to a demigod than is a full human or a hybrid of two mortal races..."
"Maybe we should appoint a moderator for this debate," Hart said
"Well, to bring it back around to the point," Hall said, "what I meant when I said that half-dragons are more like demigods is that dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you no doubt are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation! While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round, then," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"Hold on," Hart said. "We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that. Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly... if a little peevishly. "Technically, it was a blessing. Divine power, not infernal."
"Yes, well, it was a curse in the purely vernacular sense of a misfortune or negative imposition," Hall said. "Even the Universal Temple refers to the act of Lord Khersis casting all of demonkind into the fire as a 'curse'."
"Well, the dogmatic accounts of things often have more in common with lore than history," Hart said. "But I take your point."
"Good," Hall continued. "Though this divine act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. "
"True enough," Hart said. "Though... the Fall spanned centuries. Nothing actually happened overnight. The empire of the Mother Isles was already established... at least within and around the Mother Isles, and it was during this period that they began their first really aggressive expansions to the east of the continental coasts. The sudden disappearance of any threat of dragon attack probably had something to do with the shape or the extent of conquest, but the internal pressures that lead to the expansionist tendencies... overcrowded cities, a shrinking tax base, a top-heavy aristocracy, and a restless army... would have been present anyway."
"Hmm, yes, well it wasn't only the Mother City that suddenly marched on its neighbors," Hall said. "The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. Stronger states swallowed weaker ones all over the world. Enclaves that had existed in complete isolation for centuries or longer suddenly found themselves connected by roads that would have been impossible to maintain a few centuries before. Also consider that a number of petty kingdoms in the world before the Fall were ruled by or existed under the direct protection of a dragon. When the change happened, these holdings were all plunged into chaos. Tyrannical dragons were overthrown, and more benevolent ones suddenly found themselves as shepherds being protected by their flocks."
"Except for the empire of Yokano and the Sunward Islands," Hart said. "The emperor of Yokano was able to maintain control through a combination of his traditional status as a god, the Yokanese reverence for tradition, and the support of the feudal lords operating in a rigid caste structure. Though the culture of the Sunward Islands was also changed by the Fall, as the emperor ceded more power and freedom to his vassals in exchange for their continued loyalty."
"Well, yes, be that as may, Yokano was hardly a petty kingdom," Hall said. "It's more in the nature of the greater powers that would have seized on the opportunity, if not for the internal instability. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. He sounded like he was beginning to enjoy things... not just contradicting Hall, but the back-and-forth in general. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on which Pontifex sitting on the Eternal Throne at the moment."
"Yes, well, you know how unreliable those dogmatic accounts can be," Hall said, and Hart almost smiled as he winced. "Besides, three stories is three more ideas than history has."
"Well, history depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the Fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Later hybrids were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals... dragons had their own less flattering views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story. While the Pelorians and the dragonblooded heroes were an entirely new phenomenon, the greater numbers of classical dragon hybrids that abounded changed the way the world... dragon and mortal alike... thought of and dealt with such beings. With every living dragon having experienced enforced captivity in mortal form, even those who had produced no children during the Fall by and large harbored less prejudice towards the hybrids."
"On the human side," Hart said, "we did see the Mother City... which, again, had expanded its influence quite a bit during the centuries of the Fall... once more moving to take advantage. They conquered and absorbed the nascent Pelorian Empire, adding the Pelorian armies to their own forces, and appointed half-dragons to high offices, some of which were created specifically for them. For a time, the unofficial policy was that any half-dragon who was willing to swear loyalty to the Unnameable Emperor would be given a noble title and rank."
"Yes, and this trend was inherited and continued by our own more republican empire," Hall said. "Though new hybrids are rarely born with a full-blooded dragon parent... the prejudice against mortal pairings growing once more in the face of the dwindling population of full true dragons... it is an open secret that hybrids and dragons who have the habit of mortal form are favored within the upper echelons of the civil service and the higher ranks of the military. Even in ages when traces of non-human blood were wholly despised and semi-human hybrids of other origins were blocked from full participation in public life, the mysterious allure of dragons somehow allowed them to..."
"It's not mysterious at all," Hart said. "Dragons... even half-dragons... are just too powerful to be ignored. The imperial rulers wanted that power on their side, under their control. An emperor's command is theoretically absolute, and they found the cover they needed in the Decree of Separate Halves."
"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this decree," Hall said.
"Well, maybe somebody will write a story about it," Hart said, grinning. "The decree stated that shapeshifters... specifically referring to those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At that stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the original intent of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving anyone the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
"Why, how very fascinating," Hall said. It was impossible to say if he was being sincere.
"The decree was later cited as a legal precedent when the 'human blood' rule was adopted as law in the Imperial Republic," Hart said. "That rule was based in a centuries-old Khersian doctrine, but it didn't find a firm legal foothold until the coalition-building days of Magisterion II, during the most fragile period of the Republic. Of course it is from there that we eventually reached the point where actual human blood is not a prerequisite for full citizenship. From the Decree of Separate Halves to the human blood law, and from there to what is informally called the principle of interchangeability, or... less accurately... the declaration of universal rights."
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "From draconic hybrids begat during the Fall of Dragons, we have the birth of universal rights in our own glorious Imperial Republic."
"That's... a bit of a simplification," Hart said, though he sounded less eager to contradict Hall now. "Separate Halves would have existed anyway, and it was the justification... not the impetus... for the reforms of Magisterion II. His predecessor had already informally paved the way, and that may have been precedent enough. But suffice it to say, it would have happened differently."
Professor Hart had been growing more animated as the discussion wore on. I still regretted that he hadn't been able to pick the topic for the class period... one of his hallmarks was the sort of interesting anecdotes that didn't tend to make it into the textbooks, which was sort of ironic given his professional distaste for lore. If he'd wanted to talk about the Tylean explorers, he probably had something more particular in mind than the "broad strokes" he was giving.
[2.5 hours. Really coming together. I spent this half hour mostly editing what's already there. There's still more to come.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual. Not every dragon had a taste for the flesh of intelligent mortals and surely there were some somewhere that did feel a genuine sense of camaraderie towards the smaller two-legged kinds, but they had to be pretty exceptional exceptions.
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way. He was almost as good at hiding his delight as Professor Hart was at hiding his frustration.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well... dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. They have more in common with demigods than they with do with the more common half-elves, half-dwarves, or half-orcs. That's not to say that they have much in common with demigods. They aren't, for instance, divine. Although, they are beings of immense potential... a half-dragon is more likely to attain a level of power akin to a demigod than is a full human or a hybrid of two mortal races..."
"Maybe we should appoint a moderator for this debate," Hart said
"Well, to bring it back around to the point," Hall said, "what I meant when I said that half-dragons are more like demigods is that dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you no doubt are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation! While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round, then," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"Hold on," Hart said. "We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that. Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly... if a little peevishly. "Technically, it was a blessing. Divine power, not infernal."
"Yes, well, it was a curse in the purely vernacular sense of a misfortune or negative imposition," Hall said. "Even the Universal Temple refers to the act of Lord Khersis casting all of demonkind into the fire as a 'curse'."
"Well, the dogmatic accounts of things often have more in common with lore than history," Hart said. "But I take your point."
"Good," Hall continued. "Though this divine act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. "
"True enough," Hart said. "Though... the Fall spanned centuries. Nothing actually happened overnight. The empire of the Mother Isles was already established... at least within and around the Mother Isles, and it was during this period that they began their first really aggressive expansions to the east of the continental coasts. The sudden disappearance of any threat of dragon attack probably had something to do with the shape or the extent of conquest, but the internal pressures that lead to the expansionist tendencies... overcrowded cities, a shrinking tax base, a top-heavy aristocracy, and a restless army... would have been present anyway."
"Hmm, yes, well it wasn't only the Mother City that suddenly marched on its neighbors," Hall said. "The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. Stronger states swallowed weaker ones all over the world. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"History depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia draconic hybrids, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Often they were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals. Dragons had their own views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story. While the Pelorians and the dragonblooded heroes were an entirely new phenomenon, the greater numbers of classical dragon hybrids that abounded changed the way the world... dragon and mortal alike... thought of and dealt with such beings. With every living dragon having experienced enforced captivity in mortal form, even those who had produced no children during the Fall by and large harbored less prejudice towards the hybrids."
"On the human side," Hart said, "we did see the Mother City... which had expanded its influence quite a bit during the centuries of the Fall... taking advantage. They conquered and absorbed the nascent Pelorian Empire, adding the Pelorian armies to their own forces, and appointed half-dragons to high offices, some of which were created specifically for them. For a time, the unofficial policy was that any half-dragon who was willing to swear loyalty to the Unnameable Emperor would be given a noble title and rank."
"Yes, and this trend was inherited and continued by our own more republican empire," Hall said. "Though new hybrids are rarely born with a full-blooded dragon parent... the prejudice against mortal pairings growing once more in the face of the dwindling population of full true dragons... it is an open secret that hybrids and dragons who have the habit of mortal form are favored within the upper echelons of the civil service and the higher ranks of the military. Even in ages when traces of non-human blood were wholly despised and semi-human hybrids of other origins were blocked from full participation in public life, the mysterious allure of dragons somehow allowed them to..."
"It's not mysterious at all," Hart said. "Dragons... even half-dragons... are just too powerful to be ignored. The imperial rulers wanted that power on their side, under their control. An emperor's command is theoretically absolute, and they found the cover they needed int he Decree of Separate Halves."
"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this decree," Hall said.
"Well, maybe somebody will write a story about it," Hart said. "The decree stated that shapeshifters... specifically referring to those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At that stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the original intent of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving anyone the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
"Why, how very fascinating," Hall said.
"The decree was later cited as a legal precedent when the 'human blood' rule was adopted as law in the Imperial Republic," Hart said. "That rule was based in a centuries-old Khersian doctrine, but it didn't find a legal foothold until the coalition-building days of Magisterion II, during the most fragile period of the Republic. Of course it is from there that we eventually reached the point where actual human blood is not a prerequisite for full citizenship. From the Decree of Separate Halves to the human blood law, and from there to what is informally called the principle of interchangeability, or... less accurately... the declaration of universal rights."
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "From draconic hybrids begat during the Fall of Dragons, we have the birth of universal rights in our own glorious Imperial Republic."
"That's... a bit of a simplification," Hart said, though he sounded less eager to contradict Hall now. "Separate Halves would have existed anyway, and it was the justification... not the impetus... for the reforms of Magisterion II. His predecessor had already informally paved the way, and that may have been precedent enough.
[2 hours. Shaping up! All this stuff is (hopefully interesting) background... the actual key points of the chapter are yet to come, believe it or not.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual.
[]
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well, dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly.
"...on all of dragonkind," Hall continued. "Though this act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"History depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia draconic hybrids, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Often they were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals. Dragons had their own views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story. While the Pelorians and the dragonblooded heroes were an entirely new phenomenon, the greater numbers of classical dragon hybrids that abounded changed the way the world... dragon and mortal alike... thought of and dealt with such beings. With every living dragon having experienced enforced captivity in mortal form, even those who had produced no children during the Fall by and large harbored less prejudice towards the hybrids."
"On the human side," Hart said, "we did see the Mother City... which had expanded its influence quite a bit during the centuries of the Fall... taking advantage. They conquered and absorbed the nascent Pelorian Empire, adding the Pelorian armies to their own forces, and appointed half-dragons to high offices, some of which were created specifically for them. For a time, the unofficial policy was that any half-dragon who was willing to swear loyalty to the Unnameable Emperor would be given a noble title and rank."
"Yes, and this trend was inherited and continued by our own more republican empire," Hall said. "Though new hybrids are rarely born with a full-blooded dragon parent... the prejudice against mortal pairings growing once more in the face of the dwindling population of full true dragons... it is an open secret that hybrids and dragons who have the habit of mortal form are favored within the upper echelons of the civil service and the higher ranks of the military. Even in ages when traces of non-human blood were wholly despised and semi-human hybrids of other origins were blocked from full participation in public life, the mysterious allure of dragons somehow allowed them to..."
"It's not mysterious at all," Hart said. "Dragons... even half-dragons... are just too powerful to be ignored. The imperial rulers wanted that power on their side, under their control. An emperor's command is theoretically absolute, and they found the cover they needed int he Decree of Separate Halves."
"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with this decree," Hall said.
"Well, maybe somebody will write a story about it," Hart said. "The decree stated that shapeshifters... specifically referring to those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At that stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the original intent of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving anyone the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
"Why, how very fascinating," Hall said.
"The decree was later cited as a legal precedent when the 'human blood' rule was adopted as law in the Imperial Republic," Hart said. "That rule was based in a centuries-old Khersian doctrine, but it didn't find a legal foothold until the coalition-building days of Magisterion II, during the most fragile period of the Republic. Of course it is from there that we eventually reached the point where actual human blood is not a prerequisite for full citizenship. From the Decree of Separate Halves to the human blood law, and from there to what is informally called the principle of interchangeability, or... less accurately... the declaration of universal rights."
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "From draconic hybrids begat during the Fall of Dragons, we have the birth of universal rights in our own glorious Imperial Republic."
[1.5 hours. It begins to resemble an actual story.]
We voted with raised hands, and Hart and Hall each counted both times. I cast my vote for the sea-faring Thyleans... a conversation about dragons, particularly the ranks of those that could assume human forms, was somewhat fraught with potential trauma for me.
The vice-chancellor of the school, known as Edmund Embries, was a greater silver dragon who wore the form of a silver-haired man. He was generally polite, and erudite. Metallic-scaled dragons get classed by humans as "noble", supposedly because they have a more trustworthy and civilized temperament, as opposed to the "ignoble" dragons with less shiny hides.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the "noble" distinction is a matter of rank. It isn't. A silver dragon isn't inherently more powerful than a blue one, for instance, and a newly hatched least copper dragon is as much a noble dragon as an eons-old greater platinum one. The noble dragons are just seen to embody more traits that humanity values. They're considered to be more refined.
Having spent more than a lifetime's allotment of time in close proximity with a silver dragon, I had to say that if I were forced to choose between confronting a hungry blue dragon or a silver one, I'd go with the blue... if only because I could count on the "less refined" dragon to finish its meal more quickly.
That's the second mistake that people make about noble dragons... assuming that the admiration and kinship humans feel towards them is in any way mutual.
[]
It was a close vote, but the lure of dragons proved stronger and Professor Hall got to have his way.
"Well, then," he said, clasping his hands together, "I hope you won't mind, dear Hart, if I don't pretend I'm not pleased. Draconic lore is something of a personal specialty of mine. It isn't my favorite, exactly... I enjoy the more mysterious sorts of lore, like ancient dwarven secrets and the deeper mysteries of the crawling chaos, but information on those topics is, perforce..."
"The topic was dragons," Hart reminded him. "Specifically, draconic hybrids and how they shaped the modern world."
"Quite right," Hall said. "Well, dragon hybrids are in and of themselves a fascinating topic. Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other. And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. While no historical record can claim to extend back so far, some stories from the dawning age claim that they are immigrants to our sphere while some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof."
"Oh, I guess you win this round," Hart said.
"What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people," Hall said. "The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form. The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes right," Hall said. "Your usual dragon hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the new Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of the draconic humanoids who founded the short-lived Pelorian Empire."
"History actually does record all of that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly.
"...on all of dragonkind," Hall continued. "Though this act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been that the whole thing was conditional and the necessary end condition was fulfilled. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"History depends on more than the uncritical accumulation of a pile of wrong ideas in the hope that the right idea is somewhere among them," Hart said. "Historians studying the fall have examined all those ideas, using the scant evidence available."
"And what have they concluded?" Professor Hall asked.
"That there's nothing conclusive, yet," Hart said.
"Well, there you have it," Hall said. "Now, as I said, the world changed further when the Fall ended... it did not go back to the way it had been. While accounts of elven/dragon hybrids date back to the earliest days of Athanasia draconic hybrids, they had been quite rare, with each half-dragon and quarter-dragon being an anomaly worthy of song and story. Often they were treated as simply another kind of dragon, at least by mortals. Dragons had their own views on the subject. Post-Fall, it was an entirely different story.
[]
"Well," Hart said, "there was the Decree of Separate Halves. This stated that shapeshifters... specifically, those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At this stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the effect of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving them the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. A half-human/half-dragon could be accepted as human in the imperial civil service or the officer corps without hiding their draconic nature and all the advantages that gave them. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
[1 hour in. Next hour I'm going to do more to set this as a conversation in class, and not just Hart and Hall jousting]
"Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other," Hall said. "And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. Some stories claim that they are immigrants to our sphere... some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof. What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people. The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form.
"The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Almost three thousand years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven centuries that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes," Hall said. "Your usual hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent. What we saw after the end of the Fall was a little different: people with draconic blood, draconic spirits, but no natural means of expression. This infusion of draconic traits into mortal bloodlines helped in part to fuel the short-lived Age of Heroes that followed the reversal of the Fall. In cases where the proportion of dragon blood was greater than one-half, it gave rise to the phenomenon of draconic humanoids."
"History records all that," Hart said. "My point was that in all the cases where a greater dragon or other dragon with shapeshifting abilities mated during the Fall, the results that followed shows that dragon nature is inherited even when the transformation was decreed by the gods and intended at the time to be complete and permanent."
"In any event, here we can see how the strings of fate intertwined in the past to help weave the world we live in today," Hall said. "Nearly thirty centuries ago, the gods place a divine curse..."
"That's a contradiction in terms," Hart pointed out, quite correctly.
"...on all of dragonkind," Hall continued. "Though this act was undone several hundred years later, it changed the world forever. Regions that had once been overrun with lesser dragons were now merely home to fierce varieties of mortal beasts. Territories the size of small countries were suddenly vacant and up for grabs. Treasure troves were suddenly unguarded... or at least, less guarded. Merchants who had once had to negotiate for safe passage through mountain passes now traveled freely. Kingdoms that had depended on a lair near their borders to act as a buffer were now unguarded. The map of the world changed almost overnight. The changes mostly favored the great powers of the world, who were in the best positions to seize on the opportunities that had suddenly appeared. When the gods were finally compelled to rescind their edict, it was too late for things to go back to the way they had been... instead, the world changed further."
"History doesn't actually record how the Fall ended," Hart said. "It's pure supposition to say the gods were forced to rescind anything. It could have been part of their design from the beginning, or it may have been conditional. Last I checked, there were at least three completely different competing stories making the rounds about how some hero tricked the gods, or how a dragon defeated a god. The Universal Temple holds that Khersis intervened as a mediator, or unilaterally ended the exile, depending on who you ask."
"Yes, well, three stories is three more ideas than history has," Hall said.
"While accounts differ, dragons are universally agreed to be among the original inhabitants of the world, grouped in the first order of creation along with gods and giants," Hall said. "The Draconic Age predates mortal habitation of the sphere. While dragons didn't begin their decline until after the advent of elves, some hold that it was the appearance of the elves and other created kinds that marked the end of the Draconic Age, ending as it did millennia of uncontested rule. It is in this time... the early Athanasian Age... that we find the first accounts of dragon hybrids."
"Well," Hart said, "there was the Decree of Separate Halves. This stated that shapeshifters... specifically, those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At this stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the effect of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving them the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. A half-human/half-dragon could be accepted as human in the imperial civil service or the officer corps without hiding their draconic nature and all the advantages that gave them. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."
[0.5 hours. Very disjointed and rough. At this point I'm fleshing out some of the info I want to be in the story. Future efforts will smooth the infodump into the story.]
"Dragons do not mix with mortal races in the way that mortal races mix with each other," Hall said. "And I do not simply refer to the anatomical incompatibilities that some of you, no doubt, are envisioning. Dragons belong to a wholly separate order of creation. Some stories claim that they are immigrants to our sphere... some claim that they are the original inhabitants thereof. What is not disputed is that there were dragons, and then there were people. The mortal races created according to a common model can interbreed freely. Dragons breed with mortals by assuming a mortal form.
"The method, so far as we can tell from interrogating the stories, is not important. Some dragons are able to naturally alter their shapes. Some study magic. But even in a story where a dragon is forcibly trapped in a human guise by outside magic, the dragon's true nature cannot be fully suppressed... it breeds through."
"We don't actually have to rely on old stories for that," Hart said. "Twelve hundred years before the start of the current era, following the so-called Fall of the Dragons, all true dragons were transformed by a divine act into mortals. While many of the transformed dragons were hunted and killed during the seven decades that followed, more than a few of them married or otherwise mated with mortals. After the Fall was reversed, the descendants of the trapped dragons showed the same traits as other draconic hybrids."
"As usual, history has the broad strokes," Hall said. "Your usual hybrid will be the offspring of a naturally shapeshifting dragon, and will inherit that faculty from its draconic parent.
"While accounts differ, dragons are universally agreed to be among the original inhabitants of the world, grouped in the first order of creation along with gods and giants," Hall said. "The Draconic Age predates mortal habitation of the sphere. While dragons didn't begin their decline until after the advent of elves, some hold that it was the appearance of the elves and other created kinds that marked the end of the Draconic Age, ending as it did millennia of uncontested rule. It is in this time... the early Athanasian Age... that we find the first accounts of dragon hybrids."
"Well," Hart said, "there was the Decree of Separate Halves. This stated that shapeshifters... specifically, those who moved between set forms... were considered to be wholly of the race they appeared as. At this stage in history, the phrase 'human rights' didn't hold much meaning... the effect of the decree was more about insuring werewolves could be prosecuted or conscripted by human authorities than giving them the protection of human laws. But it did set a precedent that was advantageous for half-dragons when compared to other hybrids, like half-elves and half-orcs. A half-human/half-dragon could be accepted as human in the imperial civil service or the officer corps without hiding their draconic nature and all the advantages that gave them. Essentially, under old imperial law, a half-dragon was fully human and fully dragon, depending on which form he wore at a given moment."