Dragon gestation..

[dirtywhitellama]

Was just wondering if there are any "canon" references or lore surrounding dragon mating, eggs, how long and what conditions are required for hatching especially. I'm wanting to introduce a dragon egg in a campaign I am playing with making (who knows how far I will get anyway.... hey I edited the main config file so it shows up in my game now ) and have spent an hour or two or three here and there searching and rummaging around but there doesn't seem to be a lot of information. If there's no previously established canon, my idea at present is a) that it takes a ridiculously long time for the egg to hatch and b) requires an extreme amount of heat to properly complete gestation and hatching..especially at the end of the cycle (not so much in the meantime, what dragon hen is going to want to sit on a big fat rock for a decade or a hundred years or however long??)

Also, tangentially, is there any plausible circumstance which would kill a dragon in a normal wild series of events? Didn't occur to me before, but if I have an abandoned egg I suppose something must have happened to the mother.

thanks!

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Was just wondering if there are any "canon" references or lore surrounding dragon mating, eggs, how long and what conditions are required for hatching especially. I'm wanting to introduce a dragon egg in a campaign I am playing with making (who knows how far I will get anyway.... hey I edited the main config file so it shows up in my game now ) and have spent an hour or two or three here and there searching and rummaging around but there doesn't seem to be a lot of information. If there's no previously established canon, my idea at present is a) that it takes a ridiculously long time for the egg to hatch and b) requires an extreme amount of heat to properly complete gestation and hatching..especially at the end of the cycle (not so much in the meantime, what dragon hen is going to want to sit on a big fat rock for a decade or a hundred years or however long??)

WINR (though dragons are not reality ). The reason your not finding the info you need on dragon eggs is that (and I can't believe I'm going to explain this) they do not exist. They have never existed, therefor nobody knows what the heck the hatching conditions and gestation details are. Nobody even knows the size of one either. You'll just have to make something up by yourself.

Also, tangentially, is there any plausible circumstance which would kill a dragon in a normal wild series of events? Didn't occur to me before, but if I have an abandoned egg I suppose something must have happened to the mother.

Make something up, I suppose. The possibilities are endless. Nobody on Earth as of today has actually killed a real dragon (as they do not exist and probably never will). The reason your not finding the info you need on dragon eggs is that (and I can't believe I'm going to explain this) they do not exist. They have never existed, therefor nobody knows what the heck the hatching conditions and gestation details are. You'll just have to make something up by yourself.

[Iris]

WINR (though dragons are not reality ). The reason your not finding the info you need on dragon eggs is that (and I can't believe I'm going to explain this) they do not exist. They have never existed, therefor nobody knows what the heck the hatching conditions and gestation details are. Nobody even knows the size of one either. You'll just have to make something up by yourself.

...

The poster asked for references within the Wesnoth canon, not real life history.

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Well there aren't really many canons in Wesnoth, if I'm not entirely mistaken. (Apologies for misreading the post. Did not realize "Wesnoth canons".)

[Drakefriend]

Canon, not Cannon. What is confirmed about a setting.

Unfortunatly, there is not much known about dragons in Wesnoth as they are considered extinct: The only ones I know of appear in Rise of Wesnoth and Scepter of Fire, both happening at the very beginnig of canon history (and SoF being more a legend), and are one-shot villains. However, the Drakes are now neotenic dragons for adult dragons could no longer be ecologically supported.

[dirtywhitellama]

So in other words, for it to seem somewhat believable to have 2 adult dragons (each for one scn only) and a baby in a campaign, it would need to be set very early in wesnoth history; also, it's not going to go against anything established if I make up these details then. Correct?

Great_Mage_Atari: I can't believe you felt it necessary to explain that either. I'm not going to say anything else, but there is a reason I'm posting in a fantasy writing board about fantasy creatures.

[Great_Mage_Atari]

Great_Mage_Atari: I can't believe you felt it necessary to explain that either. I'm not going to say anything else, but there is a reason I'm posting in a fantasy writing board about fantasy creatures.

Hey, thanks for the clarification. I'll add it to my blog.

So in other words, for it to seem somewhat believable to have 2 adult dragons (each for one scn only) and a baby in a campaign, it would need to be set very early in wesnoth history; also, it's not going to go against anything established if I make up these details then. Correct?

You are correct. Though Wesnoth lore does state that dragons are rare and many are not found, that doesn't mean they are all extinct (or at least that is what I can gather from it), so there is no necessary need to place your campaign or scenario early in history. There is the possibility of a male and female dragon doing what dragons do to make a baby dragon somewhere off the radar, which is why there is a certain magic behind UMCs. UMCs allow you to make a story how you like it. So putting a mama and a papa dragon can be on a little island off the coast somewhere and make a dragon baby, which is better than placing it in and by a well-known area of Wesnoth (like Knalga, a major city, etc.) because more than likely it would conflict with mainline stories (not that it's that big of a deal, only if you want some sort of accuracy to your story).
Hope this helped at least a little bit.

[averyimaginativename]

So in other words, for it to seem somewhat believable to have 2 adult dragons (each for one scn only) and a baby in a campaign, it would need to be set very early in wesnoth history;

Possibly, but use that as a consideration rather than a constraint.

There's lots of ways around it - even something as simple as having them hibernate in volcanic caves for thousands of years at a time or whatever. You could even answer both questions at the same time - have the dragons live away from the great continent until they need to return because [some reason - like salmon swimming upstream, a food source only available on the great continent, whatever] is important for the newly fertile female. Nobody has seen one for years because they live somewhere else.

Dragons are necessarily magical creatures and in a game with orcs, faeries, walking dead and wizards, you've got a relatively sympathetic audience. You can get away with a lot of things before you break suspension of disbelief, especially if there's only one or two of them rather than an entire race.

[Boldek]

methinks it says somewhere that there is no dragons eggs left, the drakes are their dying descendants, something about dragons not breeding. am I confused?
anyway, I imagine a dragon wouldn't sit on an egg, but maybe breath fire on it, or place it near a fire or something as drakes live near volcanoes, maybe dragons do too?
other people also suggested that a dragon egg was capable of just sitting still for a long time, but that idea to me is just to fill in the plot holes.'glares at Paolini'

anyway, dragons are big, scary, and probably keep their nests up on mountains or volcanoes, not just anywhere, so the chance someone will just step on an egg in an alleyway is kinda weird. and I don't really think that dragons have any natural predators, but the norse idea, (yes, every good thing in fantasy comes from them) that dragons just sit on a pile of gold may be the source of that.

[fabi]

The fact that there's not a dragon part of every mainline campaign does not necessarily mean that they are extinct or near to extinct.

Dragons are of high intelligence in most fantasy settings.
So they might just avoid conflicts or even help the humanoid population in their region from time to time.
Thus no need to get hunted down.

Of course they are still rare, just because they need a wide district to support them for one reason.

[Boldek]

The fact that there's not a dragon part of every mainline campaign does not necessarily mean that they are extinct or near to extinct.

Dragons are of high intelligence in most fantasy settings.
So they might just avoid conflicts or even help the humanoid population in their region from time to time.
Thus no need to get hunted down.

Of course they are still rare, just because they need a wide district to support them for one reason.

yeah, I think they require a large territory to survive, and they don't take too kindly to each other. but I thought that they don't really hang around towns, if they do, it's becuase they are dormant; the towns usually get destroyed when they move in. and plus: who's gonna hunt a dragon? people only killed dragons in the stories becuase they were eating their dog, or chasing their kids. but I didn't think that dragons became rare and dying off in wesnoth because they were nice and wise.

[averyimaginativename]

who's gonna hunt a dragon?

The same idiot that thought it was a good idea to make artificial new suns - which could actually offer an interesting story line for a campaign.

[ancestral]

Just remember: legend and myth are stronger than [in-game] reality. (Sometimes the legends are true, but that’s unimportant; it’s the incredible tales and accomplishing the nearly impossible that fuels the adventure!)

Reasons to hunt a dragon might include:

1. Fame
2. A hoard of treasure
3. Money from Dragon eggs/teeth/scale
4. Honor or sacrifice, coming to aid the local populace

You could have fun with this; it doesn’t have to be "find dragon, slay dragon.” Your motivations to kill the dragon could change once you meet him/her. Maybe you befriend the dragon. Maybe you ally with one dragon against other dragons. Or maybe it’s not you vs. dragon, it’s raise an army, find mages and convince the Dwarven Gryphon Riders to come to aid and defend the town.

Maybe a dragon is causing lightning storms. Or unseasonable snow in the summer. Or warm weather in late autumn. Maybe because of a drought the dragon is out of food and is eating crops and animals the town is raising. Maybe the dragon is sick but no one knows yet. Or pregnant. Maybe you you find a baby dragon or a dragon egg, abandoned by its mother. Maybe an adult dragon dies outside of town, but no one really knows why, sending you out (knowing they did something and knowing they finally have a reason to get rid of you).

Or maybe there’s no dragon at all; it’s simply an elaborate illusion conjured by a meddling mage who’s distracting an important town while it sends troops to invade other parts of the kingdom.

[johndh]

I would imagine that dragons spend a lot of time hibernating, just sitting around in volcanoes where nothing else can disturb them. There could be quite a few dragons around the world, but none of them have had any activity in centuries. I suppose it would be plausible for a dragon's egg to be dormant for centuries, requiring some outside stimulus (like extreme heat) in order to germinate, much like the seeds of some plants.

[Mountain_King]

[randompossiblyhelpfulthought]
I remember reading about a Chinese legend that said dragon eggs needed 3000 years incubation to hatch...
[/randompossiblyhelpfulthought]

EDIT: invalid markup.