Remove ads

You Are A Dragon

Reader mode
[x] Protective Dragon. Other, darker gods will awaken in the coming years along with other dragons who view humans as cattle or slaves. You have risen to defend your faithful and guide them in maintaining their proud independence in the face of such terrible foes.
Because it's true and won't start a panic.

[x] Etorix is whatever sex Etorix wishes. It would only be mildly annoying to make a female human form then swap between them but this might be embarrassing if other dragons think you actually care about humans that much.
-[x] Etorix is above human sexes. You really do not give a shit. You are a dragon.
-[x] Also this is a really stupid thing to focus on. Seriously, why is this always a problem whenever a civilization pops up? Humans are humans, regardless of whether their genitals are largely internal or largely external.
 
Guys, can I just say we should go full Male. Before you jump on me with Social Justice! and Mah Equality! Remember, we can pick up the Dragon Empress next to our nation, who is second in power only to us and has an army of Young Dragons, via marriage her strength can add to our own.

I think that's only going to be binding if we have solid genders to aid in creating a more human friendly idea of the Union.

[x] Yes, Etorix is male. True! Also this might lead to some kind of backlash against said 'heretics'.

Edit:
Also @Packrat, why? Seriously, we already did a gender vote before I even got here, why are we going for a round two on this? It literally does not matter beyond the politics of the Union and is going to potentially whip up a load of shit from social justice arguments, gender equality argument and other such ideas clashing against pragmatism. There is literally no reason for you to do this in any way.
 
Last edited:
McLuvin said:
Guys, can I just say we should go full Male. Before you jump on me with Social Justice! and Mah Equality! Remember, we can pick up the Dragon Empress next to our nation, who is second in power only to us and has an army of Young Dragons, via marriage her strength can add to our own.

I think that's only going to be binding if we have solid genders to aid in creating a more human friendly idea of the Union.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I go with whatever I feel like in the moment. Usually for me it is male if a big lizard, female if humanoid. But in general, I usually just think dragons are dragons, doing whatever they want till someone kills them and loots their body parts for armor and starts a war because of all the treasure everyone will argue over.

But I think we will have a nice dragon army with this other one nearby, yes.
 
Also [USER=19900 said:
@Packrat, why? Seriously, we already did a gender vote before I even got here, why are we going for a round two on this? It literally does not matter beyond the politics of the Union and is going to potentially whip up a load of shit from social justice arguments, gender equality argument and other such ideas clashing against pragmatism. There is literally no reason for you to do this in any way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The idea at least is that, having opted to go full religion, dealing with this kind of shit is going to be the short term focus and issue. You have a religion that has had a millennia to fragment and go in weird directions and whilst there is a certain level of unity thanks to the 'Benefactors' you now really need to get a whole bunch of humans corralled into a coherent view on what the worship of Etorix is in order to fully benefit from it. The Benefaction Mission have largely ignored this kind of minutia because they were focused purely on using your religion as a vehicle to push technological advancement.

There are probably going to be a dozen or more sub factions who will take whatever you imply or can be translated as having hinted at as holy gospel and use it an an excuse to try to purge or persecute their rivals. Etorix is male and very much into lady dragons (is that an appropriate term?). Etorix also does on a fundamental level really not give a shit about what humans think about such things, but you are having to work with being a religious figure.

I mean at least it was a more straightforward question than some complex Holy Trinity interaction and you do not need to worry about Gnosticism.
 
Last edited:
[X] Etorix is above human sexes. You really do not give a shit. You are a dragon.

Who gives a shit. Certainly not us.

[X] Protective Jesus Dragon. We're going to protect the people. All of them.
 
[X] Protective Dragon. Other, darker gods will awaken in the coming years along with other dragons who view humans as cattle or slaves. You have risen to defend your faithful and guide them in maintaining their proud independence in the face of such terrible foes.
[X] Etorix is above human sexes.
 
[X] Jesus Dragon. You are aware that your faithful are scattered across myriad nations and despite the work of your Benefactors there is still conflict between them. Now you will disseminate your pure message, unfiltered by emissaries, uniting the faithful in the pursuit of advancement and prosperity regardless of petty notions such as human borders.

[X] Etorix is above human sexes.

Step one is to reunify the faith. With our return we want to bulldoze through bureaucracy and other resistance. This will accelerate all our other uplift efforts.
 
[X] Jesus Dragon. You are aware that your faithful are scattered across myriad nations and despite the work of your Benefactors there is still conflict between them. Now you will disseminate your pure message, unfiltered by emissaries, uniting the faithful in the pursuit of advancement and prosperity regardless of petty notions such as human borders.

[X] Etorix is above human sexes.
 
[X] Space Threat! Arafan is menaced by a great and terrible danger, wicked dragons from beyond the stars who even now gather in the darkness of space. They may not arrive for centuries, but eventually they will come and everyone must be ready.

Global panic? Maybe, but maybe other dragons might take a hint. (*nudge* maybe working together to protect this dirtball of ours makes sense *hint hint*)


[X] Etorix is above human sexes. You really do not give a shit. You are a dragon.

I might have voted for the male option if I had known where the heretics were and how many there were.
 
At first a thought this was a subtle fourth wall break referencing the voters who wanted the PC to be female, and then I realized that this was a serious are actually issue entirely divorced from fourth wal breaks
 
Thyreus said:
Global panic? Maybe, but maybe other dragons might take a hint. (*nudge* maybe working together to protect this dirtball of ours makes sense *hint hint*)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Or they might like what the other dragons are doing, and want to join in on that.

Wait, is there a reason, other than that we seem to actually give a damn about humanity, that we can't get in on this? Packrat
 
Last edited:
I wonder if we could use magic to create a lightspeed ship large enough to house us and a bunch of worshipers with time magic to reduce time dilation to nothing. Then just leave in a straight line and be at peak magical power forever. Build a large enough hoard/worshiper base to be awake for several cycles and then FTL back home. We'd be researching how and why magic propagates to we if we could contain or stimulate it.
 
The Froggy Ninja said:
I wonder if we could use magic to create a lightspeed ship large enough to house us and a bunch of worshipers with time magic to reduce time dilation to nothing. Then just leave in a straight line and be at peak magical power forever. Build a large enough hoard/worshiper base to be awake for several cycles and then FTL back home. We'd be researching how and why magic propagates to we if we could contain or stimulate it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I see somebody's read Greg Egan.
Anaja said:
Wait, is there a reason, other than that we seem to actually give a damn about humanity, that we can't get in on this? Packrat
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I personally wonder how sacrifice interacts with identical copies. If AIs and uploading are a thing in this universe, it seems we should be able to cheese sacrifice for a minimal ethical cost. (Copy, sacrifice, copy, sacrifice, copy, sacrifice... ) On the other hand, magic might balance it by giving diminishing weight per copy. On the third hand, sacrifice inherently produces magic out of, magically speaking, nowhere, since otherwise the space dragons' scheme couldn't work. So one way or another there has to be a way there to get from physics to basically unlimited magical power.

Luckily, working around restrictions with technology is basically our thing.
 
Last edited:
[X] Industry Dragon. Push economic development. Develop agricultural technologies and promote engineering. Build factories and aim to create an industrial powerhouse capable of steamrolling enemy states both economically and with the mass-produced high-grade weaponry that will come out of this endeavor.
[X] Etorix is above human sexes. You really do not give a shit. You are a dragon.

I'm surprised there wasn't an "agriculture" or "science" vote in there, so I wrote-in. Hopefully this isn't too ambitious.
 
FeepingCreature said:
I personally wonder how sacrifice interacts with identical copies. If AIs and uploading are a thing in this universe, it seems we should be able to cheese sacrifice for a minimal ethical cost. (Copy, sacrifice, copy, sacrifice, copy, sacrifice... ) On the other hand, magic might balance it by giving diminishing weight per copy. On the third hand, sacrifice inherently produces magic out of, magically speaking, nowhere, since otherwise the space dragons' scheme couldn't work. So one way or another there has to be a way there to get from physics to basically unlimited magical power.

Luckily, working around restrictions with technology is basically our thing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well difficulty seems to play a role in magical potency. The original Mona Lisa is more magic than an exact atomic replica made using some kind of nanoscale 3d printer because the first one took both effort and creativity. A hand made replica would be more potent than the printed one despite being a less accurate copy but still much weaker than the original. It's quite possible that the thing that generates souls is the effort that goes into producing the life. If you can just copy paste human brains and have them develop souls then, yes, just find superhitler and torture his soon to be infinite souls in eternal digestion but I doubt it works like that.
FeepingCreature said:
I see somebody's read Greg Egan.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I most definitely have not. I just thought about how magic appeared to exist as a wave propagating at lightspeed and having a length of one thousand light years. Although whether it weakens as it spreads seems like important data.
 
Last edited:
[X] Jesus Dragon. You are aware that your faithful are scattered across myriad nations and despite the work of your Benefactors there is still conflict between them. Now you will disseminate your pure message, unfiltered by emissaries, uniting the faithful in the pursuit of advancement and prosperity regardless of petty notions such as human borders.

[X] Etorix is above human sexes.
 
[X] Industry Dragon. Push economic development. Develop agricultural technologies and promote engineering. Build factories and aim to create an industrial powerhouse capable of steamrolling enemy states both economically and with the mass-produced high-grade weaponry that will come out of this endeavor.

Yea, kickstart the technological revolution and try to advance tech as far as possible without the aid of magic. There are ravening hordes of super terrible mayan death dragons coming and we need the industrial base to produce the military capable of kicking their asses. That means we also need to use our religion to encourage procreation as much as possible to have deep enough population for industrial warfare.

[X] Etorix is above human sexes.

I don't think Etorix cares whether humans think him male or female. Etorix demands only your obeisance.
 
Last edited:
[X] Protective Dragon. Other, darker gods will awaken in the coming years along with other dragons who view humans as cattle or slaves. You have risen to defend your faithful and guide them in maintaining their proud independence in the face of such terrible foes.

[X] Etorix is above human sexes.

The reason I'm voting protective dragon over Space Threat! here is that I don't believe that other dragons would really be willing to band together under us for any length of time. If we wipe them out and consume their magic and hoard, with the boost in might and magic we gain, we should be able to convey power of a roughly equal and more reliable measure than if we were to have them in a temporary alliance (Edit: Unless we can forcefully convert dragons to be our worshippers... that's tempting). Our protective mantra should also aid in conversion efforts as people seek to be underneath our aegis. I also think Space Threat! is more of an abstract threat to low-tech humanity compared to the very real and present threat of the reawakening of other powers within the world and should thus be easier for them to conceptually grasp.

The urgency of the threat we warn of should aid in scientific and magical advancement itself, I don't see too much advantage over the other choices at least as far as this is concerned. Medicare Dragon does have some merit though.

I'm indifferent to the last choice, I'm not sure of the schismatic difference between the first and third option.
 
Last edited:
[X] Jesus Dragon. You are aware that your faithful are scattered across myriad nations and despite the work of your Benefactors there is still conflict between them. Now you will disseminate your pure message, unfiltered by emissaries, uniting the faithful in the pursuit of advancement and prosperity regardless of petty notions such as human borders.

[X] Etorix is above human sexes.
 
The Froggy Ninja said:
Well difficulty seems to play a role in magical potency. The original Mona Lisa is more magic than an exact atomic replica made using some kind of nanoscale 3d printer because the first one took both effort and creativity. A hand made replica would be more potent than the printed one despite being a less accurate copy but still much weaker than the original. It's quite possible that the thing that generates souls is the effort that goes into producing the life. If you can just copy paste human brains and have them develop souls then, yes, just find superhitler and torture his soon to be infinite souls in eternal digestion but I doubt it works like that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is absolutely correct, something like a hand made goblet made by a master craftsperson and set with natural gemstones is much more objectively valuable, thus useful and desirable to a dragon, than an identical 3-D printed copy with industrial gems set in it. In the same way if you did want to get into soul consuming then an actual princess (or prince!) would be significantly 'better' than a random peasant. Also royalty tend to be much better conversation. As a dragon you essentially have a kind of '6th sense' in that you inherently and intuitively can see/smell/determine the intrinsic value of things.

Dirk93 said:
Wait, is there a reason, other than that we seem to actually give a damn about humanity, that we can't get in on this? Packrat
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well without your godhood and a sufficient pool of worshipers for that to matter (so tens of millions minimum), or your skill at manipulating and guiding human societies? You are a fully grown but not otherwise super exceptional dragon who is at a distinct disadvantage against an 'ancient' who has survived an extra cycle of magic or longer. Dragons sleeping during magical down time is right now an advantage for you given it means you can wake up before your older rivals and have time to establish yourself, this is even more the case for dragons younger than you but yes, your peers and the existing ancients might decide that signing up with the mass murdering space dragons sounds like a really awesome idea. For that matter if you are sufficiently powerful when they arrive they might just ask you if you want to sign up to their Dragon Star Empire (or whatever type of organisation they have if any) before trying to murder you if you do go into hibernation.

Existing through a magical drought by consuming human souls is also really, really unpleasant, kind of like living breathing through a gas mask. Sleeping is far nicer and probably healthier but also hideously dangerous if other dragons are sticking around and doing shit for a thousand years (shit like seeking out your hiding place to take your treasures).

Also voting is overwhelmingly for:

[X] Etorix is above human sexes.

Whilst the reply to the reporter is mostly 'Jesus Dragon' with a sideline of 'Protective Jesus Dragon' or 'Protective Dragon'.

I shall work on an update tomorrow, right now I am trying to stop kittens from drinking my wine.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top