Spacequest: Dragons

[Utgardloki]

So I am thinking of ideas to work on, including some sort of Runequest-powered space opera game, and I come up with an idea for a star empire that expands and meets a region of the galaxy ruled by dragons, with the PCs coming from a planet in the middle.

So now I am thinking about dragons in space, and how to execute the idea without making it cheesy.

I know that in Glorantha, dragons are beings that can not be slain by mere mortals. However, I am thinking of more of a Cthulhu-esque idea, where dragons are alien creatures, only the eldest of which are capable of holding their own against a sqaudron of interstellar destroyers. I am taking a page from Arthur C. Clarke, and postulating that the dragons can fly through interstellar space without the use of spaceships. (Perhaps, though, such excursions can only be attempted by dragons of a suitable age.)

Dragons are no strangers to humans. They have been aware of the human race since the beginning, having originally come from the planet Earth. They have long been raising humans on their own planets

What kept the dragons and the rising star empire separate is the way that interstellar travel works in this setting. Great distances are traversed through wormholes, and so the "draconic empire" and the "Star Empire" arose around different wormholes. The boundaries of the Star Empire have been expanding, however, so that it is now starting to bump against the Draconic Empire without going through the wormhole (although the wormhole still makes a handy shortcut from the core of one empire to the core of the other).

These are just some ramblings I've been getting on my commute to and from work. I thought I'd post it up here and see what sort of feedback I get.

One thing I need to figure out is why the dragons are out there and not here on Earth. Perhaps I can pull a page from the Bible and postulate that there were "angels" who came from space and for some reason drove the dragons away. That kind of thing is hard to pull off without being cheesy, however, and then I introduce yet another set of players who need to have motivations defined.

 

[CthulhuFnord]

How about the Stars shifted and were no longer right for the Dragons on earth. Now they lie deep underground dead and yet dreaming.

 

[Mongoose Gar]

They're sleeping (on piles of radioactive metals in caves carved from solid hydrogen in the lower reaches of Neptune)?

 

[Vadrus]

So I am thinking of ideas to work on, including some sort of Runequest-powered space opera game, and I come up with an idea for a star empire that expands and meets a region of the galaxy ruled by dragons, with the PCs coming from a planet in the middle.

So now I am thinking about dragons in space, and how to execute the idea without making it cheesy.

I know that in Glorantha, dragons are beings that can not be slain by mere mortals. However, I am thinking of more of a Cthulhu-esque idea, where dragons are alien creatures, only the eldest of which are capable of holding their own against a sqaudron of interstellar destroyers. I am taking a page from Arthur C. Clarke, and postulating that the dragons can fly through interstellar space without the use of spaceships. (Perhaps, though, such excursions can only be attempted by dragons of a suitable age.)

Dragons are no strangers to humans. They have been aware of the human race since the beginning, having originally come from the planet Earth. They have long been raising humans on their own planets

What kept the dragons and the rising star empire separate is the way that interstellar travel works in this setting. Great distances are traversed through wormholes, and so the "draconic empire" and the "Star Empire" arose around different wormholes. The boundaries of the Star Empire have been expanding, however, so that it is now starting to bump against the Draconic Empire without going through the wormhole (although the wormhole still makes a handy shortcut from the core of one empire to the core of the other).

These are just some ramblings I've been getting on my commute to and from work. I thought I'd post it up here and see what sort of feedback I get.

One thing I need to figure out is why the dragons are out there and not here on Earth. Perhaps I can pull a page from the Bible and postulate that there were "angels" who came from space and for some reason drove the dragons away. That kind of thing is hard to pull off without being cheesy, however, and then I introduce yet another set of players who need to have motivations defined.

Simply assume they need a different set of conditions to breed or something, i.e. the temperature and atmosphere of primal earth were condusive to part of their lifecycle. As the earth cooled and changed it became more unfavourable so eventually they moved on and gradually lost interest in Earth.

The Dragons still occassionally visited earth to use it's inhabitants as slave labour (stargate anyone?), but over time had enough slave races and found the distance and effort of travelling to Earth not worth the gains anymore. In time they became mere legends to us, we evolved, invented and eventually learnt to travel through space only to find that our old myths had a basis in reality.

The dragons could be very territorial because as the galaxy ages the number of worlds suitable for their breeding become fewer and fewer so they guard them more jealously. They would see mankind as a threat if we were mining or even terraforming such worlds, especially as it would be insulting to them to be challenged by a race they consider their slaves.

Hope this helps or sparks some ideas.


Vadrus

 

[soltakss]

Some ideas:

1. A War between Dragons, the treaty that ended the war declared Earth as being too Holy/too evil to be lived on and is a neutral ground/banned place.

2. Something happened to poison them and they left. What they don't know is that it is OK to come back now.

3. Driven out by an opposing force (could be the "angels" or another species or even another type of dragon).

4. They need some kind of mineral/crystal to survive, Earth ran out, so they left. Someone has found a new supply, though.

5. The wormhole near Earth became unstable, so they had to leave through it. Then it disappeared so they couldn't return. Then it recently reappeared.

You could have them jump about space, in the same way as the living ships from Farscape.

They could even have dragonlings/dragonkind, allowing you to use Dragonewt/Lizardman stats. Dragonewts could even progress spiritually until they became dragons, capable of interstellar travel.

 

[Mage]

One thing I need to figure out is why the dragons are out there and not here on Earth. Perhaps I can pull a page from the Bible and postulate that there were "angels" who came from space and for some reason drove the dragons away. That kind of thing is hard to pull off without being cheesy, however, and then I introduce yet another set of players who need to have motivations defined.

Why the dragons are out there:
The bible thing is a bit cheesey, and the genre kind of get messed up if you do that. There are a lot of great ideas above, but I think it is too much detail, and you are agonising yourself over something small when you should be expanding your universe.
What I recommend is that every record on them points to some suggestion as to why they left, but never ever confirm why, only point at it vaguely. That way you do not have to set it in stone and screw yourself over if you come up with a better idea down the line.
Something tells me that these dragons of yours should stay mysterious, to fit with the lovecraftian atmosphere.
If we knew all the mysteries out there, things wouldn't be fun.

 

[Utgardloki]

I think I like the idea of the dragons having been here and driven away -- I can work more mythology into this, such as the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, and the battle between Jehovah and Leviathan.

A long time ago I got the ideas of dragons having been created by an extraterrestial race that visited the earth during the Mezozoic. So perhaps the dragons were created out there somewhere, eventually found where their genetic ancestors came from, but did not colonize that sector because of a conflict with another set of aliens who regarded them as intruders.

A lot of this transpired millenia or even millions of years ago, so only enigmatic traces of ancient conflicts are left behind. (Hmmm, I could also implement a very old idea of mine of having traces of an ancient interstellar war left in Earth's solar system.)

As a DM, I like to know what is behind the scenes, even if the players have no idea.

As for wormholes, I've decided to make them few, large, and far between. The purpose of the wormhole idea was to organize the galaxy into "clusters" so that I could develope an interstellar civilization without having to worry about Earth's neighborhood -- the colonist jumped through a wormhole into some other distant neighborhood with very few common references to Earth.