DC Lore AMA

[TJ09]

This seems to be a shared trait among DC dragons. Why do dragons hoard shiny things and sleep on it? A lot of other media say "because they are greedy", but they're the villains in those stories.

Because that text was written almost 11 years ago and has remained mostly unchanged since.

 

But one could argue that more so than greediness, dragons in general enjoy being mostly at the top of the food chain, and as such enjoy shows of power, such as collecting things that aren't even valuable to them (but are to humans).

[RWyvern]

Because that text was written almost 11 years ago and has remained mostly unchanged since.

 

But one could argue that more so than greediness, dragons in general enjoy being mostly at the top of the food chain, and as such enjoy shows of power, such as collecting things that aren't even valuable to them (but are to humans).

I always just imagined the dragons were unapologetic kleptomaniacs, in the same way ravens and crows are. Some kind of hoarding instinct that some species since took in different ways, such as to woo a mate. Shiny things attract them most - it's all too bad that most shiny things are also things humans consider valuable.

 

[TJ09]

I always just imagined the dragons were unapologetic kleptomaniacs, in the same way ravens and crows are. Some kind of hoarding instinct that some species since took in different ways, such as to woo a mate. Shiny things attract them most - it's all too bad that most shiny things are also things humans consider valuable.

Certainly the more vain and showboat-y dragons are more likely to be at the front of the cave where their riches can be seen.

[solarflare3000]

Do dragons have a spoken/written language seperate from humans? Armed with the knowledge that they use telepathy and can communicate with pretty much any creature that can understand them, I've been voting to reject descriptions that mention spoken names in draconic since I don't know if such a thing exists in Valkemare.

[irrelevantindigo]

So, canonically, what colors are mana crystals/pools?

[Vrack]

So, canonically, what colors are mana crystals/pools?

I believe this is summarized here in the wiki. The Snow Warning event showed all of the mana crystals in sprite form. But only TJ can say how correct those sprites are canonically.

[TJ09]

Do dragons have a spoken/written language seperate from humans? Armed with the knowledge that they use telepathy and can communicate with pretty much any creature that can understand them, I've been voting to reject descriptions that mention spoken names in draconic since I don't know if such a thing exists in Valkemare.

I would say yes, they do have some form of spoken language, and probably a form of written language. I'm not sure right now about the vocal capabilities of giant magical reptiles, but I'd hazard a guess that they are sufficiently different from those of hairless apes that the phonemes used in languages of the former creatures have little overlap with the languages of the latter.

 

But that aside, there's probably no need to reject descriptions for parts of "lore" that are unspecified. Even most of the things in this thread aren't really grounds for rejecting a dragon description; only things provided on-site in nice, organized packets of information should be considered widespread enough to reasonably expect the average description writer to adhere to.

[TJ09]

So, canonically, what colors are mana crystals/pools?

The colors of mana crystals shown in events (Snow Warning and others, as mentioned above) are a significant part of the story, but not the whole deal.

 

Mana is iridescent/pearlescant, so varies in appearance based on how you view it. Almost all of the elements have two primary colors that comprise their "palette," and the appearance of mana incorporates both colors at the same time. Liquid mana tends towards one of the two colors—and last I thought about it I decided liquid mana has a subtle glow—while solid mana tends towards the other. Regardless of phase, both colors are involved.

 

The exception here is light mana, which has most of the same visual properties described above, but is follows a spectrum that covers the pastels (instead of just two colors).

 

Since that doesn't answer the actual question, I dug up the guide I made for Snow Warning that influenced those mana crystals and updated it for things that have changed in the last three years:

 

Neutral: ⬤ Blue / ⬤ Purple (Ever seen a GON?)

 

Elements of Destruction

Dark: ⬤ Pink / ⬤ Purple

Fire: ⬤ Orange / ⬤ Red

Lightning: ⬤ Yellow / ⬤ Blue

Death: ⬤ Red / ⬤ Gray

 

Elements of Creation

Light: ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ ⬤ Pastels

Water: ⬤ Aquamarine / ⬤ Coral (see: water temple from this past Holiday Event)

Earth: ⬤ Green / ⬤ Brown

Life: ⬤ Light Green / ⬤ Green

 

Elements of Change

Magi: ⬤ Yellow / ⬤ Orange (Literally: see magi egg)

Ice: ⬤ Light Blue / White / ⬤ Blue

Air: White / ⬤ Teal / ⬤ Blue

Time: ⬤ Teal / ⬤ Darker Teal

 

Several released dragons have already been utilizing these colors to tie them into their element better, and the events have been utilizing them as well.

[TJ09]

While I'm at it, I'll just drop this here...

[TJ09]

Definitely not. I haven't really put any thought into what it would be though.

 

To think out loud here, I can come up with a few possibilities:

 

400 day year, 8 day weeks, 4 week months = 12.5 months. I kind of like the idea of having a two week period that doesn't belong to any month that would have some cultural significance to humans. I don't quite know what that importance would be, though.

 

384 day year, 8 day weeks, 4 week months = 12 months. But that's all too neat and orderly to be interesting.

 

397 day year, 8 day weeks, 12 months = 32 days per month with 13 days left over. That's a little less orderly; some of the months can have 30-31 days, some can have 32-34. Leaving 13 days outside of that is intentional and gets back to the first option—it leaves one day for each element, which helps set the direction for how exactly the extra time could be used (i.e. some sort of end-of-year celebration to the primal spirits).

 

396 day year, 8 day weeks, 12 months = ~33 days per month (probably: 32,33,34,33,32,33,34,33,32,33,34,33). Pretty much the previous option with the extra days distributed into the months) It doesn't divide evenly into a round number of weeks, but neither does 365/7.

aaand I have just now discovered that I essentially re-invented the Egyptian calendar.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar

 

The year consisted of three seasons of 120 days each, plus an intercalary month of 5 epagomenal days treated as outside of the year proper. Each season was divided into four months of 30 days.

[Dirtytabs]

Since the calendar's been on your mind lately, where does the month of February fall? Near the beginning of the year? (Or in the middle of the calendar year to be different from what we're familiar with?)

 

When nocturne dragons become idle, is it a gradual process - a few seconds or longer - or do they immediately stop moving? Could they become unfrozen in light if they're in danger?

Edited May 28, 2017 by dirtytabs

[Kakaru_of_DOOM]

Technically, Earth's year is fractionally longer than 365 days (hence the reason for leap years). For clarification, have you chosen a final number from (or near) the top contenders you listed?

 

Would you like suggestions on this - and possibly other TBA lore - from ordinary users like myself?

 

I second Tabs's calendar question. My working assumption has been that the New Years for Valkemare falls on the equivalent date to the DragCave birthday, based on absolutely nothing.

 

((Not that you've asked, but my vote would be ~388.926 Valkemarian days in a year.))

[SkyWolf25]

Are Sinomorphs born as eggs somewhere else, grow up, then are summoned? Or are they created out of nowhere? Or.. is that part of the mystery?

Since GoNs are basically Valkemare God, would a Sino obey their orders if they ever gave a command? Or are Sinos so shrouded in mystery that they evade even the gods?

 

New special species=new questions, haha.

[TJ09]

Since the calendar's been on your mind lately, where does the month of February fall? Near the beginning of the year? (Or in the middle of the calendar year to be different from what we're familiar with?)

I don't even know how to interpret this, because "February" is something that only exists in our calendar. So it all depends on how I interpret the question.

 

If I interpret it as "where does the second month of the year fall in the year" then the answer is obvious: by virtue of being second, it's near the beginning. If I interpret it as "where in the year is the last full month of winter before spring," then the answer becomes much more different.

 

Realistically, the choice of when to start the year is fairly arbitrary, and a fantasy culture that develops independently of our own would be just as likely to start their year in Summer as in Winter. IIRC January 1 is only the beginning of the year because it lined up with when Roman government changed over.

 

But since fantasy is a thing that's created to serve our world, keeping some parallels makes it easier to track. I could come up with my own week structure, but doing so would make it harder for people to try to convert between real world weeks and Valkemarian weeks, so why not just use a seven day week? Similarly, why not keep the beginning of the year in the middle of winter, in absence of a strong reason not to?

 

When nocturne dragons become idle, is it a gradual process - a few seconds or longer - or do they immediately stop moving? Could they become unfrozen in light if they're in danger?

I'd imagine it takes a little bit of time to occur. The description makes it sound like it is intended to be a passive process (that is, not one that the dragon has control over). This, combined with the explicit statement that their day form "leaves them vulnerable" would imply that they don't really have the ability to unfreeze if needed.

[TJ09]

Technically, Earth's year is fractionally longer than 365 days (hence the reason for leap years).  For clarification, have you chosen a final number from (or near) the top contenders you listed?

Yes, and even leap days don't quite account for the fractional day, hence the odd behavior of not having leap days if the year is a multiple of 100 (unless it's a multiple of 400; 2000 was a leap year, but 1900 was not, and 2100 won't be).

 

But no, I haven't decided on what I think is a "good" year structure yet. There hasn't been any strong pressure to do so, so I'll just leave my thoughts out there for now until such a pressure exists.

 

Would you like suggestions on this - and possibly other TBA lore - from ordinary users like myself?

I don't mind people offering suggestions and opinions. Almost all of the answers I give here are made up on the spot, which means they're subject to change anyways; it's always interesting to hear other perspectives.

 

I second Tabs's calendar question. My working assumption has been that the New Years for Valkemare falls on the equivalent date to the DragCave birthday, based on absolutely nothing.

Well as I've said above, it's pretty arbitrary. Certainly if I were to pick a time to start the year, the anniversary of when the world was created would be a good contender.

 

((Not that you've asked, but my vote would be ~388.926 Valkemarian days in a year.))

I'm not sure if that number is meant to have any significance, but 0.074 days per year (a little under two hours per year) is small enough that you'd probably add a leap hour here or there and not even notice the extra day. OR add a an extra day every decade. That sort of margin of error is probably outside the level of precision that people in Valkemare care about though.

[TJ09]

Are Sinomorphs born as eggs somewhere else, grow up, then are summoned? Or are they created out of nowhere? Or.. is that part of the mystery?

Since GoNs are basically Valkemare God, would a Sino obey their orders if they ever gave a command? Or are Sinos so shrouded in mystery that they evade even the gods?

 

New special species=new questions, haha.

Most of the "legendary" dragons probably don't exist as an independent species, but as beings that simply exist.

 

It's unlikely that there's more than one GoN, and probably not more than one of each of the avatars. Similarly, there's probably a total of six Zyumorphs (one of each color), and one Sinomorph. At that level, talking about whether it came from an egg almost doesn't matter.

 

My current headcanon (that might become canon if it ever becomes important to do so) is that The GoN and its Avatars are to Galsreim what the Sinomorph/Zyumorphs are to some other continent. That is, the GoN is the protector of one region of the world, and the Sinomorph's domain is somewhere else in the world.

[SkyWolf25]

Most of the "legendary" dragons probably don't exist as an independent species, but as beings that simply exist.

 

It's unlikely that there's more than one GoN, and probably not more than one of each of the avatars. Similarly, there's probably a total of six Zyumorphs (one of each color), and one Sinomorph. At that level, talking about whether it came from an egg almost doesn't matter.

 

My current headcanon (that might become canon if it ever becomes important to do so) is that The GoN and its Avatars are to Galsreim what the Sinomorph/Zyumorphs are to some other continent. That is, the GoN is the protector of one region of the world, and the Sinomorph's domain is somewhere else in the world.

One and only! That's certainly nice to hear. guess who's angry about the weak little lugias in the pokemon anime series

Would they have a set gender then? I'm headcanoning that the GoN is male because of movie Lugia, but for the Sino, I have almost no knowledge of the power ranger series so there's nothing to base my thoughts on - though of course, the genders don't necessarily have to come from the series. What are your headcanons? (I'll refrain from asking about the Zyus and Avatars, 9 dragons is a lot and people probably have a multitude of different opinions about them xP)

[Dirtytabs]

I don't even know how to interpret this, because "February" is something that only exists in our calendar. [...]

I was curious partly because February is mentioned in two breed descriptions, Valentines and heartseekers. So I take that "February" is really a placeholder/different word for either the second month of the year or the month in winter when their two mating seasons occur.

 

Here's another idea that wouldn't involve any conversions to play DC. What if all the time/date units remained the same, but the amount of time a unit lasts was different from what we're familiar with out-of-story? For example, a day on Valkemare is 25.2 Earth hours, but since time is still divided in the same units (a second being 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24 of a day), there are still 24 hours in a day - a second happens to equal 1.05 Earth seconds.

 

The GoN description goes:

In order to protect their chosen home, these dragons are incredibly adaptable; they have been seen everywhere from remote mountain ranges, to ancient forests, to the darkest depths of the ocean.

Would that be multiple sightings of a single GoN assumed by the region's humans to be more than one? Or a case of a description written a while ago that might not match current lore any more?

[TJ09]

One and only! That's certainly nice to hear. guess who's angry about the weak little lugias in the pokemon anime series

Would they have a set gender then? I'm headcanoning that the GoN is male because of movie Lugia, but for the Sino, I have almost no knowledge of the power ranger series so there's nothing to base my thoughts on - though of course, the genders don't necessarily have to come from the series. What are your headcanons? (I'll refrain from asking about the Zyus and Avatars, 9 dragons is a lot and people probably have a multitude of different opinions about them xP)

Well, if there's only one, then yes the "legendaries" presumably have genders, or are at least perceived to have them. From the perspective of human culture, there's likelu no way to tell if their interpretation of these dragons is accurate or not.

 

The GoN is probably male, for the same reason you mention.

The Sinomorph is probably female. I don't have anything to really justify it, that's just what I feel like choosing.

[TJ09]

Would that be multiple sightings of a single GoN assumed by the region's humans to be more than one? Or a case of a description written a while ago that might not match current lore any more?

Some of it is oldness. I believe the intended interpretation at the time, since I don't think I ever believed it to be realistic that there are actually many GoNs, was either that there were either a handful, or one that people assumed was plural due to how far apart its sightings were both spatially and temporally (i.e. all these different cultures have stories about the same purple dragon, there must be more than one).

[Sextonator]

So, I have a concepts that involve mana, and I was a little curious about the lore so I could feel a little more confident about the descriptions working right.

 

1. Can Mana affect eggs? I have one dragon when conceptually the mana it is exposed too/absorbed as an egg/hatchling is what determines it's adult form. Can Mana be absorbed?

 

2. Is there anything super important to keep in mind about mana and how dragons interact with it when you have a concept that's basically "this dragon is mutated by mana and uses the elements it's mutated by"

[TJ09]

So, I have a concepts that involve mana, and I was a little curious about the lore so I could feel a little more confident about the descriptions working right.

 

1. Can Mana affect eggs? I have one dragon when conceptually the mana it is exposed too/absorbed as an egg/hatchling is what determines it's adult form. Can Mana be absorbed?

I don't see why not. It can affect any living thing, and IIRC there's already eggs that are affected by mana (I believe that's the "crystalline" part of Nexus Dragon eggs, for example).

 

Depending on what you mean by "absorbed," I guess so. It's likely too viscous to permeate through skin after quick exposure (e.g. dipping your hand in a puddle). Egg shells are surprisingly permeable, so soaking one in mana would cause some to be absorbed into the egg.

 

2. Is there anything super important to keep in mind about mana and how dragons interact with it when you have a concept that's basically "this dragon is mutated by mana and uses the elements it's mutated by"

 

I'm sure if you search this thread for the word "mana" you'll get a lot of what I've said on mana-mutated creatures. Since I don't know what specifically to speak to, I honestly don't know what to say beyond what's been said here.

[Sundew]

What are Thunder hatchlings allergic to?

[TJ09]

16 hours ago, Dew said:

What are Thunder hatchlings allergic to?

There is nothing canonically provided; they don't have an encyclopedia entry because no one wrote one for them.

 

If I had to guess, they probably have sensitive sinuses, meaning they're more likely to sneeze at pollen or dust.

[Kakaru_of_DOOM]

Quote

White Dragons are pacifists and specialize in extremely strong healing magic. The only limit of this magic is that it can’t bring back the dead. They only eat plants and never kill living things.

I recall that somewhere, you mentioned a tribe/culture of humans that used resurrection magic on a regular basis to revive those that hadn't earned the right to die (though I can't find the post to quote it). Now, given that the average white is much more powerful than the average human at life magic - combined with bodies' tendencies to turn into dust and/or zombies when the spell is attempted - one would not assume humans to be skilled enough to reliably do something that a white cannot.

 

I have some theories and an explanation/caveat for each:

1) Moral. It might go against a white dragon's sensitive morals to force the dead back to life. In this situation, desipis mind-control and extortion could easily force whites to go against this behaviour.

2) Elemental. Resurrection requires the target to be dead, and therefore it could be believable that at least some amount of death mana to perform the spell. Again, this could easily be solved if a death/darkness (or lightning?) aligned individual was willing to help. Plus, death is 'destruction' so as much as I love messing with things, Valkemare does not seem like the place to do it.

3) Out-dated. Whites are an ancient breed, and Valkemare has changed a lot since their breed description was written. Perhaps in modern Valkemare, the whites can pull off resurrections, though it is uncommon - perhaps for at least one of the reasons above?

4) Other? These are just what I've thought up. None of these reasons are mutually exclusive, of course, so it could be all and more.