Thursday, December 22, 2011

Dragons

Dragons have fascinated me for a long time. I've especially enjoyed the dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey and also those by her son Todd McCaffrey. In the book I'm writing I've tried not to copy things I read in their books but of course there will be similarities.

Some of my dragons have telepathy. Others don't. My dragons were created magically and no natural equivalent existed before powerful magic users made them. Each color has distinct abilities and different breath weapons. I'll give some detail about many of them without giving away everything as I feel some of it is better left to discovery while reading the book.

Gold dragons breath fire and have no problem using this against people that get in their way. White dragons have a chill breath that freezes air and the water in the air as well as adding enough substance to encase someone in ice or at the very least give them hypothermia very fast. Silver dragons send out an ultra sonic blast when they open their mouth that can pulverize just about anything. Blue dragons breath out noxious fumes that is similar to tear gas. And then of course my dragons can cast spells and have other magical abilities.

For the above mentioned dragons, one of their main enemies is the red dragon, largest of all the dragons. They breath fire like the gold do, but the similarity ends there. Their abilities are mental and they are more intelligent than the gold and green dragons. They live on a different continent than the other dragons until the time they decide to move in and begin fighting against the others who are coming out of their long period of hiding.

I've been thinking about dragon flight speeds recently and trying to decide what they should be. I am thinking that the ride-able sized ones should have a normal flying speed of 50 miles per hour. When pursuing they can go as fast as 70 MPH and of course faster when diving or when flying with the wind. I mostly needed to figure this out so as to get flying times consistent in my novel as I have found a problem right now that seems like it took them too long to arrive somewhere. I feel it also makes sense to allow them to be able to fly two to four days straight without sleeping and without stopping but that is subject to change at this point.

With my dragons if they are out to get you and can see you, you are in trouble. They have things far more devastating and greater range than their breath weapons.

In my world these dragons want to live in peace along side human and elf nations and so don't go out of their way to hurt them. In fact their creators actually created plants and trees that give them a much better food supply than any living thing could and they tend to eat those things. So as my dragon's go about forming their nation, building defenses, and planning for the worst they try to avoid killing people. Then finally an alliance of enemy nations make them mad enough and the dragons unleash a massive assault the like of which has never before been seen in my world.

The main characters are humans that the dragons magically enhanced before they were born. One was raised by a silver dragon and the others were raised by humans with no knowledge of the dragons. When enemies launch a surprise attack and begin to track down their enhanced humans, now teenagers, the dragons are forced to recall them early. Humans who help the dragons care for the plants and animals in their forests are called foresters in my novel.