Cataclysmic Dragons
 

To the midieval mind-or atleast to a poor dirt farmer in the dark ages-a dragon was a catastrophy. They could burn your village, poison your wells, do hideous things to your womenfolk-without even marrying them! No virgin ever got a dragon's dowry, and having a dragon in the area was all around bad news. The devil was a dragon, and before the devil even existed, they fought the gods of the ancient world-and come judgement day, dragons would eat the world and everyone in it. Dragons also guarded treasure, magical power, and the secret of immortality.

In recent years, in part due to a shortness of real dragons in the news, and in part because of Disney's softening influence on all things fantastical, dragons have been remade into shadows of their former selves. Even Tolkien-who tried hard to make dragons terrifying-had a hand in this, when he made his dragons talk. Suddenly, the notion of having a conversation with a dragon became popular-and that was only one step away from inviting one over for tea.

Dragons have devolved become cartoon characters, faithful steeds, noble heroes. In short, they're safe for children. No more are they the devil in disguise, or avatars of apocalypse. Dragons have become our imaginary pets.

Well, when it comes to fantasy, there's a popular view-complete with snooty elves, grumpy dwarves, and friendly dragons that's safe to read your kiddies at night-or atleast to giggle about in your college dorm room--and then there's the bad old dirty myths that had the muscle and the grit to drag the human race up through the ages, and it's those nasty, gruesome, adult-rated myths us folks in the Dominions forums are interested in. We want the real story-with teeth and claws intact!

Dragons always held pride of place in those R rated myths, and they should have that same place in Dominions 3. So that's the purpose of this thread.

Starting tonight, I'm aiming to list descriptions, graphics, and stats for a total of nine different types of dragons, which are meant to replace the ones in the game. They eventually will be balanced for CBM mod, but balance for now isn't my biggest concern-my biggest concern is to evoke an element of terror, and even dismay, to go along with the sense of wonder that dragons imbue.

These are the 13 types of dragons that I'm creating, with their stats (eventually):

Earthquake dragons: XX
Wildfire dragons: X
Flood dragons: X
Typhoon dragons:
Lightning dragons: X
Volcanic dragons: XX
Sirocco dragons: X
Plague dragons:
Avalanche dragons: X
Blight dragons:
Dust dragons: X
Tsunami dragons:
Creep dragons:

As should be clear in most cases, each type of dragon embodies a cataclysmic natural disaster-and my dragons are meant to represent the spiritual embodiment of those elemental forces. In that, they are meant to bring together somewhat Eastern and Western traditions, in that on one hand they are horrifying monsters, but on the other hand, they're regulators of their respective, destructive aspects of the natural world.

My dragons are neither purely good nor purely evil. They have the same range of intelligence, character, ambition, morality, and personality as a human being, just written large in the way myths always are.

They will still retain the ability to shapechange into a human-or near human-form, and will be available as Pretenders, but otherwise, each will be built from the ground up, to fit into the game in a slightly different way than dragons currently do.

I'm eventually planning on putting all the dragons into this post-provided they'll fit-but for now, due to the current restrictions of my computer, and my inability to add images into a post (hopefully corrected soon), I'll just add them in separate posts, starting with tonight's dragon, the Volcanic Dragon.

My dragons have the following abilities, unless otherwise noted:

Darkvision (100%), Fear (5), all melee attacks are magical (bite, claws), self-healing, no need to eat, 50% weakness to all elemental attacks except poison, which they are 50% resistant to, they can live for 15,000 years (so no aging concerns), and they are considered demons for purposes of banishment, etc. They Cause Unrest and have Patrol Bonus (+5), Pillage Bonus (+20), and Gluttony (30). They also have Upkeep as 500 gold creatures.

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One of the rarest, and most terrible of all dragons is the volcanic dragon. Born in the heart of a caldera, these dragons regulate some of the most purely destructive forces in nature. They do not possess wings, having instead four powerfully developed claws, and dozens of almost insect-like legs. They also lack a normal breath weapon, instead spreading noxious vapors over a short distance. Surrounded by clouds of poison and waves of incredible heat, volcanic dragons are difficult to approach, let alone to destroy.

Weaknesses: slowness, lack of flight, lack of natural ranged weapons, difficulty grouping with other alied units, weakness to cold attacks and in cold weather, weak waterform, expensive.

Strengths: Great chaff-killer, good natural protection, Pretenders have access to both Earth and Fire paths, and better than average starting Dominion.

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Volcanic Dragon attack.

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Are you basing them off any real world mythology? It would be cool to see the Yamato-no-Orochi (Eight Branched Serpent), or a Tiamat/Marduk sirrush-type dragon.

Edit: Whoa, is that a third arm? Or perhaps the dragon has its own hornito? :eek:

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He's actually got four arms, only 3 of which (2 at rest) I was able to fit into the picture. I decided that adding the fourth arm would have made the picture more visually-as opposed to descriptively-confusing. :) They replace his wings, and the two you can see on the first pic are actually meant to both be on the side closest. These dragons are based somewhat on real mythology, although not specific dragons as such, since these aren't meant to be unique critters.

Just for kicks, here's an attack sprite with 4 arms intact. I guess it doesn't look too bad...

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That one is GREAT! It would be very cool if the dragons collectively encompassed all magic paths. Like Blight would get Death + Nature, and Plague would be Death + Blood.

It would be so awesome if there were pretender specific spells, so each of these dragons could have a large scale Global or BE related to their sphere of influence, that would be unlocked for any nation with that specific pretender. Ahhhh, Dominions 12, you will be incomprehensibly awesome. ;)

Will that particular dragon have 4 hand slots? I don't think there's a 4 hand critter in the game that lacks other major slots (like this one would lack feet, and probably torso).

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No. no.
You're all wrong.
Must I eat you?

And no tea with blacks. They're insidious.

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Well I don't think I would have believed it without the picture from Endoperez. I'am with HoneyBadger. We need some old school dragons in Dominions 3 to counteract this blasphemy!

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Racist.

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I do not think they should be demons. Magical creatures would be better. Of course, Christian mythos includes demons in dragon form - just like "The Lion" was sometimes used as an allegory for Christ. This may be represented as either one of the Dragons be demon-type or including a demon (lord?) who can take a dragon form. And in both classic Antiquity and Oriental mythos they were powerful supernatural creatures without any hint to be demonic (actually, quite the opposite often!). And in Chinese folklore in particular, speaking with dragons is actually quite common occurence - though never safe! Herakles have spoken with one, too. And even in Russian folk tales heroes quite often speak with Zmey (there is one also where a hero listens from his hiding place as a dragon speaks with its own servants trying to learn where the hero can be) - sometimes even entering into a sort of NAP! :grin:

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I like your ideas very much, HB. Might i suggest that they get a higher guttony rating. 5 means that they eat enough for 2 and1/2 human troops, no? doesn't seem like that much. 50 or so would be good, if possible (i have never modded gluttony).

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Hooray, Honeybadger. Dragons have needed an upgrade for so long now. I hope you can do them justice. They should not be demons though, just magical creatures.

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Sorry, but they're definitely going to remain demons. I have my own ideas about demons too, and in Chinese myth, demons aren't always evil, either. I don't mean they're Christian demons (whatever those are supposed to be). Being demonic just means they're subject to the holy power of priests/faith, and certain anti-demon items/spells/powers, and dragons have been battling the gods since ancient Egypt, so it makes sense that many cultures would view them as demonic.

If the devs decide at some point to add a 'Dragon' tag, that still causes them to be affected by Banishment and the other holy spells, then I'll switch them to that-and maybe we can get dragon-slayer weapons and spells.

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Well, give them good MR then. I would hate to see my massive Dragon fall to a banishment.

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Yeah, they definitely will have high MR.

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a "dragon" tag seems a bit useless for the most part.. if you call it a dragon it's a dragon right? I don't really see what specifically sets dragons apart from other monsters (what the tag would need to carry).

The idea of this thread is nice though. Personally I'd agree with those who say you shouldn't demon tag them (especially if they have high MR I don't even really see the point) since it doesn't really fit with Dominions 3 lore. But it's your mod and I doubt it will influence their gameplay much. Anyway nice new sprites and opponents are always good. And having dragons be a bit more divers than the dominions 3 dragons we have now is a good thing.

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I dont think making them demons is a bad idea. The original "Daimon" was used by the greeks to refer to spirits/supernatural beings which, while powerful, didn´t çuite rank alongside with gods. And in dominions 3 it´s more of a brand name for extradimensional/banishables that aren´t really undead (including that wizard from Yomi--speaking about which, when I tried them I half expected them to be less high on necromancy and more on blood magic..)

And for the record, I do think that they shouldn´t have human forms. And at most they should speak only to gloat over lesser beings, and only if they parallely show themselves to be engines of destruction.

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Here's the normal pic of the second dragon-the mighty Earthquake Dragon.
This is just the main head. It just sort of explodes from the ground. It's body can't be seen on the battlefield-just the head and neck-and it lacks claw attacks.

The Earthquake Dragon, largest and strongest of all dragons, dwells far underground. Hydralike, it's hundreds of heads push against the surface of the Earth, creating cracks through which they can feed the Earthquake Dragon's relentless hunger.

Pros: High Prot, ability to summon lesser heads in battle, regeneration (5%), extremely difficult to blind, with 14 eyes and darkvision, main head spits acid. Lesser heads have (weak) poison bite.

Cons: Immobile, no flying-must be teleported around. Immobile on the battlefield, 100% susceptibility to both fire and cold. Only the main head has a magical bite.

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Lesser dragon head: Normal state. These are blind/eyeless, and also immobile.

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Nice. Are you drawing these yourself? If so, nice job.

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Yes, the two pictures I just posted are original (as are the volcano dragon pics) and took a little under 8 hours time to draw from scratch, combined. And all the pictures I post here will be original, unless otherwise noted.

I could average a little faster when I had access to ImageForge, but Paint's quite a bit slower, since it lacks many of the tools I like to use. By the way, they're not quite exactly the colors I wanted/chose, due to converting them from bitmaps to JPegs-it fades them out and mixes them a little bit, giving the pictures a slightly washed-out appearance. Since it seems to actually help the pictures look a little better and the colors blend together, I don't mind if they're not quite as bright as they're supposed to be.

Thanks! it's a lot of fun and a real labor of love, so I'm glad you're enjoying it too :)

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I'd mostly want a "dragon" tag to allow different forged items, creatures, and spells, to have different effects on dragons, than say demons or undead. A "dragonslayer" sword, for instance, that did triple damage to true dragons, drakes, and wyverns, etc. would be nice to see in the game.

The main reason for the demon tag-controversial though it may be-is to allow holy magic to damage them. Even the earliest stories about the Loch Ness Monster had a bishop driving the monster away with the power of his faith, so it's got a lot of mythic precedence.

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Sorry it took so long to answer your question, Jim, but I haven't decided what the humanlike forms of the various dragons will be, so it's possible the Volcanic Dragon human form might have 4 arm slots. As far as the dragon form itself, the answer is no, the dragons themselves are all going to be designed as SCs "out of the box" with only 2-4 Misc. slots. It would just be impossible to balance them, if they had access to more than misc slots.

As it is, I've got to be very careful, because these dragons are meant to have a much larger presence-and for a longer period of time-on the battlefield than the current dragon Pretenders.

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Ahah, makes sense actually. You've put quite a bit of thought into these I think, it looks very promising and exciting.

I can't wait to see an 8-10 player game with the rule that everyone plays a different cataclysmic dragon. :D

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I can't wait either, I think it'll be fun!

Here's the attack sprite for the lesser dragon head:

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The earthçuake dragon reminds me vaguely of the things in "Tremors"

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It makes sense that they might, given that they're both big, earth-dwelling critters. :mushroom::mushroom::mushroom::mushroom::mushroom:

Here's the attack sprite (finally!) for the Earthquake Dragon. Took almost as long as the normal sprite in this case-about 5-6 hours-since so much content was added.

I'm not quite sure how these guys are gonna scale, against the background of a Dom3 battle, but this guy's the biggest of all the dragons, and ought to be pretty enormous-noticeably larger than the previous volcanic dragon:

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Keep it up HB.
Looking good. :)

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Thanks! I'm working on the flood dragon as we speak.

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I agree that dragons in dom 3 have a deflated value from both dom 2 and "reality." I think that you will find more success in creating "balanced" new dom 3 dragon pretenders if you go for a cross creature sort of ability set, such as fear 5, awe 1 and claw/claw/bite magic attacks, and then each dragon type has their own abilities such as the iced base dragon being immune to cold, bit o extra damage to fire and a cold breath weapon.

Too much special weirdness and whatnot will end up with things that cost 300 points to be "balanced".

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Don't worry, I'm going to spend a lot of time balancing the dragons out. For now, I just want to get the art done-the most time consuming, exacting, and brain-numbing part-but everything will follow from there.

All of the dragons will be individual and unique from one another-and as much as possible, different from other creatures in the game.

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Understood about what you meant by making them demons. Though you certainly remember that St.George, being slightly higher in level than the above-mentioned bishop, still used his lance, not holy words. :)
I certainly agree that "Dragon" tag would be very good. Though I think that they won't implement it until Dom4 in any case... :(
In any case more dragons would be good. Especially if they can partly fill up the niche for endgame summons for paths other than Death and Blood! ;)
I take it that you are also making them one-of-a-kind, right?

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I like the idea of more impressive dragons, though I don't share all your prejudices about dragons.
Don't blame Tolkien for talking dragons. He was working from mythological source. Fafnir spoke in the Norse myths. I can't remember if the dragon in Beowulf did.
Chinese versions of dragons often talked and played a very different role than medieval European ones. That's probably also where the idea of dragons taking human form comes from.

And from a literary point of view, a villain who can talk and has a personality is more interesting than a simple destructive monster, however powerful.

As for dragons being demonic, to the medieval Christian anything supernatural was either divine/angelic or demonic. If you're going to classify dragons as demons based on that, everything magical should be
demonic. Including many of the non-human races and most summons.


And despite the scoffing here, Tea with the Black Dragon is a really good book. I read it a long time ago. Highly recommended. Except maybe for those who want their dragons only as destructive forces of nature. Even the dragons get bored with that after thousands of years.

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Just a fun fact: Fafnir could talk because he used to be human. The Andvaranaut cursed him to kill his father, banish his brother, and become the dragon.

http://www.cleandungeon.com/article.php?anum=475

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I thought he was a giant actually, but the concept is the same.

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nice pics.. wish I had 8 hours for a picture.. would really help my dominions 3000 mod.. but sadly that ain't the case.

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Well, those 8 hours were also spent earning a paycheck and cleaning the house :) The volcanic dragon isn't the only one with 4 arms :fight:

And Tolkien didn't invent the idea, he just popularized it, and I'm not criticising him for that. Without Tolkien, Dom3 probably wouldn't be in the same form it currently is, if it existed at all. It's other authors and artists who have gone on to take the heart and soul out of dragons, for reasons of sentimental commercial popularity.

Dragons talking is fine, dragons taking tea is fine too, but dragons as toothless cartoons or melodramatic soap opera stars or even beasts of burden, doesn't sit right with me at all.

By the way, this thread in no way is intended-or should be taken-as a criticism of the Devs, Dom3, or even the way dragons themselves are portrayed in the game. There's about a million different areas of the game that took a great deal of attention to get right, and if Dom 3 had been all about dragons, I know we would have had some truly spectacular examples.

I'm just working on a very narrow focus here, which they didn't have the great luxury of taking, and I wouldn't be able to do that, if all the other elements in the game hadn't come together so well.

So thanks, as always, Kristoffer and Johan, for making this all possible.

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my paycheck sadly includes activities that are not compatible with making art or drawings etc.. if I could make art or drawings in the first place that is.

If this is done you can always create a dom 3000 nation :D.. if the art is done and you make a thread like the gazillion you already made with general ideas and stats I'd make a .dm file out of it in notime :D

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Very nice job for paint, I know full well how difficult making images in paint is and you seem to have worked very hard.

Btw would you like for me to touch them up a bit in a more effective tool, i ain't got nothing to do and i really do have the urge to help.

oh and aezeal i wouldn't mind making pics for your dominions 3000 mod.

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That's ok. I'm offering them as-is. If you want to modify them for your own uses, though, you're welcome to, as long as you give me credit. As much as I may grumble about it, part of this is that I'm doing it with the most basic Paint program out there, and hopefully that will serve as an inspiration to others, to do their own art, since you don't need a big, expensive program to work with Dom 3.

Also, whatever very small talent I might have as an artist is backed up by about %99.999 perspiration. It's really just guess work, especially with a mouse, which is just about the hardest tool to draw with ever invented-Jackson Pollock never had it so bad-a lot of editing, a lot of doing the same thing over and over again, and a lot of working pixel by pixel on a canvas that's 16384 pixels big, or bigger. Anybody can do this, if you're willing to put in the time and effort to do it over and over and over again, until it more or less falls into place.

Alternatively, it *doesn't* fall into place, you say "to hell with it" and offer it anyway, which also happens. And if it looks too goofy to stand, maybe you go back to it in a month or two.

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Puff hater! :(

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heh lol, just keep up the hard work, you may also wanna download paint.net, it's better than MS paint if not quite photoshop and it's completely free.

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If you're going to spend a lot of time on this you should consider drawing it on paper and scanning it. I have a cheap "all in one" printer/scanner/fax and trust me it's faster to draw it and then scan it then to go pixel by pixel. That's how I got my avatar. Of course you might want to use colored pencils. :)

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Why Jim! I *love* Vietnamese era AC-47 gunships!

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-...pooky-puff.htm

Or were you referring to marijuana? In which case, I would have to deny any influence hallucinogenics have had on my artwork. :P

Oh and I'm unable, for work reasons, to download anything, nor do I have a scanner. So those aren't options.

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Ok, the flood dragon is finally done. Roughly 12 hours work :)

Lacking wings, a breath weapon, and the sheer physical power of some of his larger brethren, the flood dragon is nonetheless an extremely dangerous foe. Able to fight well in the water, with his two short but powerful front claws, and vicious, highly toxic bite, the flood dragon comes into his own on land, where he can make good use of his amazing speed, and incredibly long, poison-spined tail--whipping it around in all directions to poison or simply decapitate his foes.

Advantages: Fully amphibious, able to attack multiple opponents in the water or on land, deadly poison bite-on land has a poison/magical area 2 attack, and 24 combat speed. Decent Prot. Great poison/magical chaff-killing weapon.
Disadvantages: Can only use tail on land, and can't use claws on land. Extra vulnerability to fire and cold, no real ranged attack. Move is only 1 (outside of combat) on land, 2 in water. Slow in water-Combat movement is only 12 in water.

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Looks nice HB, but he looks much friendlier than I would have expected. :)
Is he smiling?

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Well...the style of dragon for the flood dragon was heavily influenced by 15th century Chinese/Japanese art, and dragons in those always have that kind of "smiley" look to them, unless their mouths are covered by mustaches. So I can see where you get that he's smiling at you, but he's really just smiling because he's found his dinner, and you're it

:burger:

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Hmmmm, he IS kind of cute. :p

I want one papa, can I keep it?

;)

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*sigh* My wife says he's cute, too...

Am I the only one who can see the crazed look in his eyes?

He would bite you in half, people! drink your blood! gnaw your bones! fetch your slippers! do your laundry! angrily! He's got big bitey fangs and huge, vicious teeth!