Futuristic Dragonslayers

[welian]

A post from the depths of Tumblr that caught my eye:

everyone’s always like “dragons in the past/ robots in the future” but consider this
dragons in the future


selective breeding and novelty science of winged lizards goes a little too far and then when they escape they continue evolving


futuristic megacities trying to safeguard themselves against dragons which might come along hoping to find a snack


huge flocks of dragons flying south for the winter


dragonlings rooting through rubbish bins behind restaurants and being shooed away"

And I've always been a big fan of the Dragonriders of Pern series, especially the blend of fantasy and scifi seen in the later books (later as in taking place in the Ninth Pass, not publishing order).


I can't do anything right now, I'm in the middle of working on another RP, so if I did anything with this, it would be in the fall.


But yeah.


Scifi dragonslayers. Maybe dragons are resistant to laser weapons? Idk. Let me hear your opinions, broskis.

 

[Riddle78]

Lasers are light. That means in order to resist them,you need to be reflective. Not shiny,actually reflective. Like a mirror.

 

[welian]

Okay, you know what? The Looking Glass Knight was bad enough. I do NOT want any mirror dragons.


I suppose I'd also have to figure out if the dragons have hides or scales, or if they come in a variety. And would they breathe fire? Spit acid? Both?

 

[Bone2pick]

I love future settings with dragons. I'm imagining hulking, planetary-orbital, mechanical dragon lairs. Equipped of course, with cutting edge defenses. Fear the skies.

 

[welian]

Ha! As kickass as that would be, I think that's a little overkill. At that point, we'd be writing about alien dragon overlords.

 

[Bone2pick]

Ha! As kickass as that would be, I think that's a little overkill. At that point, we'd be writing about alien dragon overlords.

Absolutely. It would be perfectly horrifying.

 

[welian]

It would be, but I'm more interested in a story revolving around mankind trying to fix or come to terms with a past mistake than with mecha-lairs in orbit.


Both are cool there, there's no denying that.

 

[Bone2pick]

That's fair, I'll shelve the orbital dragon lairs for another time. So you're imagining man-made dragons, possibly Jurassic Parkish (created in a lab and eventually getting out of hand) in origin?

 

[welian]

Something along those lines, yes. Evolution takes a long time, though - so either dragons were purposely bred to an extent and then got out of hand, or were created such a long time ago that discovering their artificial nature would be a huge reveal in the story.

 

[Giyari]

Or... or... or... Magic. Future magic. A fantasy setting that has survived through an industrial revolution and a silicone revolution and just kept going. because.

 

[Blumenkranz]

Or... or... or... Magic. Future magic. A fantasy setting that has survived through an industrial revolution and a silicone revolution and just kept going. because.

The problem with magitech settings is that you either simulate the entirety of cultural and societal evolution or you provide a good explanation as to why suddenly magic, like Shadowrun did.


For example, if magic is a widespread thing that everyone can learn, why even bother inventing the flamethrower when you can just learn a fireball spell instead? We specifically invented all we have right now through technology because we didn't have magic to solve them.


In order to make a proper magitech setting, you have to put very clear limits to magic (ie. "only elves can cast spells", "competent wizards are very rare or expensive to hire", "magic is not that powerful and can't do that, that and that", etc) or explain why technology was able to develop before magic became widespread.


Another thing that should be taken into account for extra fun are interactions between technology and magic. This is where actual magitech comes into play and not just "well, there is magic and there is technology". Urban Arcana has good examples about this, like for example being able to send spells through fax or through e-mail with .hex archives.

 

[Giyari]

Well, I was only making a joke but okay

 

[Grey]

[Watches Thread]

 

[Bone2pick]

Something along those lines, yes. Evolution takes a long time, though - so either dragons were purposely bred to an extent and then got out of hand, or were created such a long time ago that discovering their artificial nature would be a huge reveal in the story.

If I were building this then my next step would be to figure out who created the dragons and for what purpose were they created. Those questions, for me at least, would need to be answered in order to visualize what kind of dragons my future world could support.

 

[welian]

Excellent! Now we're getting critical!

1. Who made the dragons?
   
2. And why?
   

If the dragons were genetically engineered as per the original post's suggestion, then they were created by scientists - someone with a thorough understanding gene sequencing, and the appropriate laboratory setting and equipment to perform such experiments. However, that costs a lot of money - so we're probably looking at scientists who were hired out by a corporation or a government to go through with their designs.


That still leaves us with why the dragons were created, though. In the Pern series, they were bred to fight Thread, which is a space fungus of sorts that needs to be lit on fire to be destroyed. In Jurassic Park (dragons are basically magical dinosaurs after all), some idiots decided to make a theme park of of giant ancient scary animals. So, perhaps dragons were created as pets or for sport. Perhaps, like the Pernese dragons, they were developed as a weapon. A weapon against what? Well, I don't know. Something that bullets couldn't fix.


 
Double posting to say, the threat doesn't have to be violent. The Earth has a very fragile ecosystem - it could be that dragons, and perhaps some other mythological-esque creatures, were created to fill in gaps in the food chain as other species became extinct. It could be that we needed to create a new series of predators after large carnivores such as tigers, lions, and wolves went extinct. Perhaps repilian DNA was just the easiest and most cost-effective to handle.

 

[Bone2pick]

That still leaves us with why the dragons were created, though.

Does dragon biotech need to have only one who and why? Once unlocked, I think it could be interesting to have multiple cooks in the kitchen. A militaristic government may want dragons for drone defense, but a multi-national tech company may want to develop dragons that can fly out of the atmosphere for space exploration. Different designers could also explain different breeds and species of dragons.

 

[Blumenkranz]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter had genetically engineered dragons, now that I remember. They were made as giant mass destruction bioweapons, but ended up contaminating the atmosphere so much humanity had to build gigantic underground cities (I guess, as cheaper or easier alternative to the classical crystal dome).


But that game included some other biopunk themes. For example, Nina, one of the party members, is actually a experiment made to purify the already contaminated air of the underground and perhaps of the atmosphere, if she ever gets there.


So, what about using dragons as biological tools? I don't know, maybe they were made to purify the atmosphere, or maybe they were made as giant biological computers.

 

[Draconus297]

Alright, I wrote a story with this premise once (didn't sell well, I had a terrible publicist, who dropped me- now I have no publicist), and believe you me, it's difficult, but workable.


Notably, like all greater reptiles, a realistic dragon (the ones you would see in a sci-fi setting) would have a voracious and almost careless appetite, so that solves the "why"- they're effectively massive flying biomass control. If you want to get into flight for something so massive, you'd either need wingspans approaching half a mile or internal sacs of lighter-than-air gases (like bees), possibly methane to have flammable material tied into its reason for flight, and to give an inherent weakness (they can't sustain flight and fire attacks simultaneously for long). In sci-fi settings, however, there's the space flight issue, which dragons can notably solve- some smaller species of gecko have scale density that allows them to survive in space absurdly long periods of time, provided oxygen, and mixes of genetics from certain deepsea species could be used to make your sci-fi dragons anaerobic (lacking a need for air), or, alternatively, plant genetics making them capable of producing their own oxygen. In regards to the "who", given my explanations above, probably a major government, a multinational corporation, or one of those few labs that essentially work only for SCIENCE (ie without any real reason, just to prove they could).


As to why they'd need to be "slayed", think of the invasive species problem- something with no natural predators can consume and reproduce astonishingly quickly. A manmade species capable of flight with an intentionally hypervoracious appetite would wreak havoc on the ecosystem, and if they were space-capable they'd be a massive problem for developing Earth colonies, as well.


Of course, that's just my suggestion.

 

[Absurdisan]

I don't know if this is completely off the mark, but if you haven't watched the concept trailer Leviathan it might be worth it for inspiration:


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