Dumb Thoughts : Dragon Characters and why they'd stay in visage form

Wyrmrest Accord
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Now something that’s been picking up on the RP scene is more and more people deciding they’d want to Role-Play as a Dragon.

And on one hand, that’s great. Its fun, its enjoyable and so long as you don’t make yourself stupidly OP (over-powered), its fun for the people around you too.

But on the other hand … you’re a Dragon. Why not just turn into a fully sized Dragon and squash people? Or use your breath weapon on them? Well, lets get a discussion and a debate going on the matter to get some ideas flowing and some characters rolled.

Why your Dragon might choose to fight in Visage form

  1. Big targets make for big prizes: Dragon scales make excellent armor, but they’re not quite as potent as the armor we make these days for the Mortals of Azeroth. Djaradin spears work exceptionally well against their hides, and most Dragons have smaller scales, perfectly good for making scale-mail for something the size of a Draenei, Worgen or Tauren, or anything smaller, but they’re not exactly the shield-sized scales we’re familiar with from other IPs in the fantasy genre. They’re more like the scales of a serpent, or padded armor, intended to take the brunt of a blow and prevent immediate penetration or laceration, but they’re not impervious armor to a dedicated weapon, or a sufficiently determined strike. And the bigger the Dragon, the larger the target. The bigger the Dragon gets, the less effective their scales become because of both surface area and surface tension, especially when we start getting into magical weapons and modern technology. Against the Black Empire, the Vrykul, the Djaradin and the Proto-Drakes, this worked relatively fine because the Dragons were of similar size to their counterparts and thus didn’t need to worry so much as the weapons were huge swings of claws, axes, spears or tentacles, with the occasional blast of magic which they were more than equipped to deal with. Modern weapons are a lot more advanced and due to Deathwing and his shenanigans, almost as good against Dragon-hide and -scale as the weapons of the Djaradin.
  1. Hiding amongst the Herd: This something Dragons have done for a very, very long time, predating the Sundering caused by Queen Azshara and her Kaldorei. For some, its spying on behalf of their Aspects, for others, its about enjoying the pleasures of a smaller, more sensitive form amongst people whom they’ll outlive by generations, even the Elves. And for some, it was because it was safer than being a Dragon out in the open, especially after Deathwing and the Black Dragons were all affected by the whispers of the Old Gods, and for both Blacks and the other Flights, hiding amongst Mortals became a survival strategy, and a damn important one. Zandalari Trolls and Elves might have known the difference between the Flights, but Dwarves, Humans, Gnomes, Gnolls and the rest mostly were ignorant, and the actions of a Black, or even just a rogue or feral Dragon from the other Flights, quickly painted all of Dragonkind as destructive and evil beasts until shortly after the 2nd Orc War and the plight of Alexstraza became widely known in the aftermath of the collapse of the Dark Portal. Playing at being a Mortal, or even just subsuming your identity into that of your Visage, works incredibly well for a Dragon, as its almost impossible to pierce a Visage, even Demon Hunters struggle to see the difference between a Dragon in visage form and a sorcerously powerful Mortal.
  1. Appeal to Vanity: Mortals tend to be short-sighted, goal-orientated and care only about their own, be it family, tribe, nation or people. Appearing as one of them is more likely to get them to listen to you than it is appearing as something both frightening and other. Pitching the form of your Visage as respect for their people, their culture or their way of life is going to get a lot more mileage than most other methods of getting them to listen to you and work towards a goal that might take much longer than their lifespan will allow them to focus on, and is going to make them much less likely to start beating on you as a monster or a threat.

Why your Dragon might choose to be a certain Class

  1. Selling the Snake-Oil: Dragons need to blend into Mortal society if they want to both fit in and avoid getting loot-crazed murder-hobos constantly showing up trying to part the Dragons from their livers, and other vital organs. An explanation for the abilities their individual Flights grant them works well if the Dragon pitches their Visage identity as an adventurer of some description:
  • Red Dragons work well as Paladins, Priests, Mages and, in a pinch, Warriors, Hunters and Rogues. Their healing abilities can be easily passed off to the uninformed as that of the Light, or just magical healing in general, and Dragons of all Flights are well suited to learn the Arcane magics. Their bond with the natural world also works well with befriending and taming animals, and nobody is going to look sideways these days at a Warrior with a flaming sword who can use magic, or a Rogue who can do the same.
  • Green Dragons work well as Druids, Shamans, Hunters and Rogues, although Warriors and Mages can also work well. Their healing abilities, ability to influence the plants and animals around them and ability to phase in and out of reality can easily be explained away as the abilities of a Druid, Shaman, Hunter or Mage, and again, just like the Reds, nobody’s going to blink at a Warrior or Rogue who can phase in and out of reality or has a Druidic bent to their abilities.
  • Bronze Dragons work exceptionally well as Mages, as well as Priests, Warriors and Rogues. They also do well as, of all things, Monks, given their ability to predict the immediate future and their ability to rapidly increase their speed, or slow or even freeze others around them in temporal magic. The average person isn’t going to be able to tell the difference between a healing spell and a Bronze Dragon ‘rewinding’ their injury back to its undamaged state, and adventurers are just happy to not have a crippling injury or expending a healing potion again, and considering how much magical knowledge is known to the average adventurer, excluding the Player Characters and Major NPCs, even that’s suspect.
  • Blue Dragons are born Mages, and do well as Warriors, Rogues and can, in a pinch, serve quite well as ‘pretend’ Death Knights and even as Warlocks, given that most Blue Dragons boast a unique near-immunity to Fel corruption, requiring shocking amounts of Fel-blood of highly potent Demons to transform their corpses, and never while they’re alive. With their natural command over Ice and their immense arcane power, Blues can quite easily pass as almost any flavor of arcane spellcaster, and many take up such roles in Mortal societies, both as an easy form of cover and to monitor Mortals who might be on the cusps of tapping into the Arcane and ensure they don’t cause another Sundering.
  • Black Dragons do exceptionally well as Warriors, Mages, Rogues and Shamans, while also being well suited to be Warlocks and Hunters. Proud, strong-willed and having recently found ways to overcome the whispers of the Old Gods and harden their minds and spirits against future corruption, Black Dragons possess the drive, the ambition and the hunger to work well as adventurers of all stripes, eager to prove both their dedication to the new Aspectral Council and the Mortal Races of Azeroth, and to snuff out any potential threats that might present the risk of corrupting their Flight once more.
  • Nether Drakes work well as Mages, Warlocks, Hunters, Rogues and Warriors, although they can also serve as just about any ‘Class’ barring Demon Hunters, Monks and Death Knights, given the lack of cultural bias and their isolation in Outland from the advancements on Azeroth. Capable of phasing partially in and out of the material plane, allowing them to slide through physical objects, and even the earth itself, most Netherdrakes still seem to possess the need to absorb magic to maintain their physical stability, although the Netherdrakes we meet in the Dragon Isles seem to have little issue with holding their forms together, although this may be due to the saturation of magic within the Dragon Isles serving to help ‘feed’ their appetites constantly. Given their rough-and-tumble lifestyle in Outland and needing to fight for every inch of ground every morsel of food and every iota of magic from the Demons, Fel Orcs, Ethereals and other threats of Outland makes them natural survivors, and anything that enables a Netherdrake to feed on the arcane and advance the cause of their people amongst the Aspectral Council, especially under the icy wings of the Aspect of Storms, is a good reason to take up the adventuring life.
  • Storm Drakes are an interesting take, recently freed from the yoke of Odyn, we’ve seen some of their kind can take Visage form but were mostly prohibited from doing so by Odyn, who seems to have Copy+Paste’d the creation of the Aspects and bastardized it to create them, denying them an Aspect directly as a result. Their abilities seem to be rather mundane compared to most Titan-shaped Dragons, granting them only control over lightning and storms, with heavier scales than most other Flights and proud, stoic natures. Warriors, Mages and Shamans seem to be a natural fit for these Dragons, although any class that is not overtly tied to the Fel seems to fit them as well.
  • Proto-Drakes are a new and endearing take on the concept of a Player-as-a-Dragon, especially with many Proto-Drakes being sentient but not sapient, not capable of higher reasoning and the prospect of an ‘intelligent’ Proto-Drake seeming to come at random, with the offspring of Sapient Proto-Drakes being significantly more likely to be Sapient themselves. We’ve seen with Vyrannoth, that she can assume a Visage but it is one based entirely upon her Elemental nature, but it stands to reason that other Proto-Drakes could likewise assume Visages, not as polished and perfect as that of a Titan-forged or -shaped Dragon, but sufficient to pass for Mortal at a glance. And depending upon the nature of their elemental attribute, could take on the role of a great variety of Classes. We’ve seen pure fire, cold, lightning, sonic, earth, magma and even diluted or warped versions of the Aspectral abilities, although not nearly so potent. Servants of the Aspect of Storms or simply Proto-Drakes eager to establish themselves as new powers in this brave new world, and to hammer into the Mortal races that Proto-Drakes are not merely ravenous monsters or stupid beasts that could serve as a prestigious mount for pompous champions.

What are your thoughts? I’d post more but I think I’ve already been blathering on for far too long again.

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You could also be a younger dragon like a whelp or younger drake sized type dragon. There was a dragon in Booty Bay this expansion that was just a businessman and stayed in visage form. He didn’t want to use violence himself. So there is definitely a spectrum of reasons. Perhaps a dragon prefers to fight as a mortal, perhaps it’s an honor thing,etc.

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As a red dragon RP’er, Lorastrasz doesn’t actually want to kill anyone. That’s part of why he prefers to fight in visage form: it’s easier to hold back and aim for Restraining, not Killing. If he turns into his big fat dragon form, he’ll accidentally crush someone with a paw, and then he’ll be sad. He swore after the black dragonflight was liberated that he would never fight in another war, and thus far, even with the threat of the primalists, he’s kept to that.

My netherwing fights in visage form because simply put, her gun and stealth are more reliable than her drake form. She’s not exceptionally young, but due to Netherwing aging being Weird, she’s unusually small and underdeveloped for a dragon of her age. She was only big enough to carry a gnome in flight. It’s a notable feature that she’s not sure how old her body really is, and she’s not sure when she’s going to fall over of old age due to now netherwings work. Is she baby forever? Or is she just going to be baby until a week happens where she ages thousands of years over the course of a few days?

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We need more Dragon DKs…!

#frostwyrmsftw
#justice4dracolichs

Edit: Nm. You mentioned them in the Blue section.

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I think this is something that’s vastly overlooked. While a Dragon, be they Drake or Wyrm, is an incredibly dangerous adversary, all of their natural weapons are attached to them. Ranged combat is entirely reliant on their breath weapon, which has a short range to begin with, or magic, which can be countered or dodged for the most part. Mortal weapons and armor, especially modern ones, are extremely lethal and reliable, and if one gets damaged or you have to use a risky maneuver, you’re not about to lose a limb, claw or wing in return.

Wrathion, in his smug, handsome, extremely punchable way, is the prime example of this. Whelps who’ve been born naturally tend to grow up faster than their bodies can keep up with, and a Visage allows them a semblance of autonomy and self-determination that showing up as a pot-bellied whelp wouldn’t allow them. Furthermore, whelps are shockingly fragile despite their draconic nature, and their natural weaponry is, at best, pitiful, only truly dangerous in swarms.

Kick the baby.

Stupidly, a lot of Undead were released from bondage when the Lich King was ‘slain’ and Bolvar was able to get most of them back under control, and he was a lot less ‘crush your will into paste beneath my mental boot-heel’ and more ‘stay here, don’t attack the living, stop whining about the cold, I’m in a damn ice-block.’.

A Dracolich or similar Undead Dragon might have had a significant degree of autonomy returned to them. After the Helm of Domination was shattered, how many ancient Dragons were freed and immediately scattered because they knew, if not the Lich King, then any of the petty Undead Warlords that were cropping up amongst the now-freed Scourge would see them and only perceive a terrifying siege weapon on wings, and not a fellow Undead, or worse yet, these Warlords might see them as the most dangerous rivals a Death Knight, Lich or San’layn could have in this new era of the Scourge.

Actually, coming back to this, a Netherdrake who had become a Paladin, Priest or Warlock would be a fascinating character because, unlike the Arcane, they don’t depend on these power-sources to survive.

The Light and the Void are external forces, independent of the Netherdrake’s internal energies, and the Fel can be created in nearly endless amounts, assuming you have enough life-forms and/or demons to drain to create Fel from their essence.

A Netherdrake who twigged to the fact that you can substitute eternal forces for each other, or the Primal Powers, its just harder to do with certain Powers, and started trying to drain these external powers to preserve the amount of Arcane for the rest of their kin, and then found there was a will behind their new food-source and it had conditions, and demands, for being used, could be an interesting wrinkle to deal with.

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Now I’m just imagining a dragon who had a Dragon Sized Gun made for them, which is a glorious mental image. Imagine having at it with an opponent who’s going to get bigger and easier to hit, then they go “BEHOLD, the result of thousands of years of cultivation of power! Feel the wrath of dragonkind!” and they just pull out a pistol bigger than the cannons on a ship.

Anyway, heck yeah I love netherdrake stuff - I actually play two netherdrakes, one who is kind of typical (a mage) and the other…not. The second tapped into the void, and it’s been interesting mulling over how, exactly, a netherdrake would deal with void corruption. Especially since netherdrakes have a sorta weird interaction with magic vulnerability - one was ‘absorbed’ by Malygos, their energy was used to create the Twilights in experimentation, and in older lore I believe they had a vulnerability to magic damage depending on what source you’re looking at. That said, netherdrakes don’t seem to be suffering from the usual symptoms of excessive arcane use/consumption, if basically their entire flight is doing it and they’re still…Well, purple and un-arcane-crystal’d and whatever other symptoms there might be.

Would they be more or less susceptible to void or other types of corruption? It’s interesting to mull over how that would actually work considering how they function. And how would it impact their lifespan and stability?

I do wonder if that’s also a reason a netherwing might adopt a visage form more often - maybe it’s more stable than their draconic form?

:eyes: You wouldn’t happen to have any lore or thoughts about the whole netherdrake monk thing, would you? For obvious reasons they probably can’t be demon hunters and death knights, though dragons as a whole seem perfectly viable subjects for raising into undeath. I wonder if there’s any lore on netherdrakes’ instability making them non-viable candidates, or simply requiring too much power to restore their body that it just isn’t feasible?

Anyway, I have mulled over the monk thing, and it’s something one of my netherwing characters has actually researched because they think it might have a few additional ways to stabilize their existence. You mention that they’re isolated in Outland in conjunction with the class limitations, but then acknowledge that they can take up the adventuring life. Outland is also still accessible via individual mage portals, if I recall correctly, so I don’t think it’s impossible for a netherdrake to find a monk trainer and give it a whirl. This may also be headcanony of me, but I like to imagine netherdrakes would make particularly good portals, since they were quite literally Bane voice born in the portal energy…moooolded by it…wheeze. Anyway, I always found the idea of some sort of cultivation of an ‘internal force’ interesting, be it chi like the monks use orrr…I think blademasters and their ‘spirit’ whatsit kind of fit that bill too? I’m not sure they’re the same, though, or if it’s just something that’s so far apart in the lore the writers never bothered to clarify.

A bit unrelated, since I’m rambling at this point, but I also like to ponder how a dragon’s original form, preferences, and ideals might impact how they treat their visage form. One of my characters is pretty much almost seen in plate armor because they feel a kind of dysphoria in her visage form. The weight is both comforting and protective, as there is a distinct lack of trust as well.

Also, OP: Fitting through doorways is important! If they’re big 'nuff, it’s kinda rude to try and shove a whole dragon face through a doorway and probably break it if you need to talk to someone inside.

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Very well thought out OP. Worth the read!

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“I cast Gun, prepare to meet God.”

This came from the Chronicles mangas, and it was dozens of Netherdrakes, absorbed by Malygos and ‘cured’ him of his insanity (but not really), implying that Netherdrakes are closer to condensed magical energy when they ‘phase’ rather than organic matter, which has some rather terrifying implications for their power. They aren’t using magic to turn intangible, they literally turn into arcane or magical energy to do so. That’s a hell of a vulnerability, but we also have to factor in that this was the then-Aspect of Magic who had tens of thousands of years of arcane knowledge that dwarfs everything we currently know, and could only possibly be matched by Pre-Sargeras Eredar on Argus.

This comes from the Burning Crusade, so Blizzard likely forgot because, unlike me, they don’t fixate on the Lore, but Netherdrakes require continuous amounts of Arcane Energy to feed off of, or they’d literally lose cohesion and dissipate into the Twisting Nether. We don’t know if this is because of their origin as mutated Black Dragon eggs, if it was a quirk of their mutations interacting with the unmitigated chaos of the Twisting Nether, if they literally do need to feed off of arcane energies to maintain their form or if it was the Twisting Nether leeching off of them, and they had no other experience given their entire history was on a shattered world half-fused into the realm of Demons and Fel or if there were ways to stabilize themselves and they just hadn’t found it by that point.

I’d personally hope they found a way to stabilize themselves in the egg or shortly after hatching, because otherwise that’s a very tragic story for the Netherdrakes.

I mean, this is why in the Burning Crusade, most Netherdrakes took the forms of Sin’dorei and Goblins. Nobody at the time would think twice about seeing a Sin’dorei desperately leeching the magic out of an item, and Goblins were always doing destructive experiments and needing strange reagents and items to fuel their crazed feats of engineering, so a Goblin buying barrels of enchanting materials or magically-infused objects wouldn’t seem out of place.

The only reason I’d side-eye a Netherdrake Monk would be when, and how, would they have learned the art, but at the same point, the Dark Portal was still open right when the Pandaria expansion happened, and neutral Pandaren fleeing the fight, Lorewalkers obsessed with learning and recording more about the outside world might have gone to Outland, and to Shattrath, to learn more about both Outland and the Naaru, mercenaries end up in the damndest places, there’s basically no in-game or Lore-breaking reason a Netherdrake, or any individual from Outland, might not have been able to pick up the class with a solid enough reason to interact with the Pandaren in some form or fashion.

Hell, that might be the very reason for a Netherdrake to come to Azeroth. They were fascinated with the Pandaren Monk they met, but more than the fighting style, it was the mental discipline and energy control of the Monk that truly inspired them. Control over your inner energies when your people are plagued with an unending hunger for the arcane and need to maintain constant control to avoid dissipating, and there’s people who have mastered the amount of emotional and mental control to do this literally blindfolded? Hell yeah, I’d make a pilgrimage, and there’s a ton of leylines and other magical phenomena to feed off of along the way and its so plentiful that I’d never need to scavenge or scrounge again? Kismet.

You’re going to make me blush, thank you.

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I always assumed that this was because the Netherdrakes were kinda raised wild, and that ‘protecc self from getting magic nomfed’ was something taught to all dragons and it just hadn’t really gotten properly passed down to the Netherwing. Although this kinda falls apart what with the black dragons who remained in Outland, although I suppose it’s possible Sab and his brood just never bothered teaching them this. Jerk(?).

Personally, I think it’d be an amazing story…if Blizz actually got around to writing it and doing it well. Which, to be fair, maybe they would get around to writing it, but I have my doubts about the second bit. You wouldn’t happen to have a source for this? Not that I’m doubting, I’ve seen it mentioned enough times, but I’ve never been able to find anything solid. Netherdrakes have been retconned enough times (and flatout ignored other times) that it’s difficult, especially with how the nature of the Twisting Nether has also changed.

I like this. Also, it may be just a game mechanic in some ways but I believe there was a…quest? Reputation reward? That said ‘this netherdrake has decided to join you on your adventures!’. Which, personally, I found kinda meh because it makes no sense a Wing recently escaping enslavement would deign to carry someone on their back - possibly out of gratitude, I guess. It would’ve been cool if Netherwing were the only dragon mounts in the game who carried the rider in their claws instead of on their back, then deposited them on the ground before flying off. But I digress. I don’t doubt that there were some Netherdrakes who’d passed through the Dark Portal onto Azeroth who might have accompanied adventurers to Pandaria. Which…also makes me wonder if dragons ever developed any sort of formal martial art in recent times. Hm. Anyway. I’ve also seen the Blademaster’s ‘Spirit’ thing kinda compared to Chi, and even if different they’re both 1) Internal-y and 2) Requiring a certain level of discipline and control. Ultimately though, I don’t think it’d be terribly difficult for any Netherdrake - even those not specifically focusing on Arcane casting - to learn how to portal somehow. I believe the Kara fight has a Twisting Nether portal through which the drake pulled in several different buffs, although that’s a bit weak grasp on my end, I’ll admit.

Chi control does have some interesting implications for the Netherwing. For my characters, I’ve treated the mutation as kind of a fracture, offshoot, or fork (like Netherwing are Open Source Dragons, lol) of the black flight and the titan’s gift. The process for the mutation isn’t super well detailed, but I don’t think it’d be far fetched to say that there’s also probably some alchemy that could be done using a black dragon scale to help stabilize (albeit, probably only temporarily) a Netherdrake. That’s just me headcanoning again, though.

It’s also interesting that Netherwing can wield the arcane, but also seem to have some innate…stuff? I coulda sworn I read something about them having a particular breath attack that also consumed some of their life, but that may have been fanon and I cannot for the life of me remember where I read it. They did have some unique abilities in the RPG, though, plus there’s the Karazhan fight.

Overall great OP :smiley: It’s nice to see folks posting more about how to RP different kinds of dragons. I can’t say I’m 100% pleased with the attention the DF expansion brought, but it’s nice to see the thinking and general acceptance sinking into the community more.

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You can divert all of your mass into dat butt.

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In wrestling terms, that’s referred to as either the Booty Bop, or in the case of more … meaty wrestlers, the Assageddon.

Honestly tho, this does make me want to make either a Netherdrake with a non-magical class that’s adventuring to create a hoard of magical items it can sleep on and drain to sustain itself while its unconscious, and a Proto-Drake who followed Vyrannoth and her surviving Claws, and can’t bring themselves to stay in the Dragon Isles after the conflict and has set out to find a new home for itself.

The problem is, which of my toons do I race-change to make it happen, and into what classes? Shaman would work well for a Proto-Drake, but I am stupidly attached to Gen, so that would mean an Alliance Shaman, probably a Draenei or Dwarf, and the Netherdrake would have to be either a Ren’dorei, Sin’dorei, Human or Goblin to fit the concept of a mana-draining warrior or rogue that’s fixated on magical items, especially considering a Netherdrake would have only had access to Sin’dorei, Humans and Goblins as the kind of individuals who’d scavenge and fixate on magic in that way.

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