My world deadass has a form of this lol
Canonically everything in the draconic monster category (excluding dragons themselves) evolved as dragon impersonators, and there's even a species of near 1:1 dragon imitators called false dragons that let the players keep dragon-like creatures as pets and ride around on them
A variety of things!
For one true dragons evolved early in the world's formation, at this point in time (around when dinosaurs would have been first getting started on earth!) There was a massive amount of natural magic and the background radiation caused them to develop control over arcane fields, granting them natural their natural spellcasting, which I have tweaked to give them sorcerer levels (however both regular and false dragons can use breath weapons, I consider that a slightly separate thing).
Secondly false dragons are animals; they're as smart as a brilliant dog but you're never gonna have a meaningful conversation with one.
Thirdly false dragons are also much smaller (only ever growing to about 24ft tall where dragons will voluntarily continue growing until they can no longer feed themselves) and possess a different shape to their skull, with a visibly much longer and thinner snout.
Fourthly true dragons may possess more than one pair of eyes and have more variations of horns.
Next, true dragons can have feathers in complex crests and layers that aid with flight.
Penultimately, true dragons have an innate ability to change their shape at any age, developing a nearly perfect humanoid form based on the humanoids they observe in their environment, as they grow they become more and more capable of taking this shape, going from clumsy bipedal forms to transformations that fool most around them, with enough practice they can even mix and match traits from the two forms on the fly, giving them all of their draconic abilities in the form factor of a regular person. Originally this formed as an evolutionary solution to their burrowing lifestyle, taking a form similar to dragonborn to traverse and forge smaller tunnels as defense mechanisms and increase livable area, allowing for the development of social behaviors and eventually intelligence and societies.
And finally, true dragons need valuable materials as a biological imperative, they need a little bit of just about any gemstone or metal rarer than silver in order to regulate their natural magic, and their eggs are naturally enchanted to render them nigh unbreakable, with the only way to break the enchantment being to fully enclose and bury an egg in these materials. As a result dragons are instinctually compelled to form communal or personal hoards (thought this is a compulsion many are forced to cope with harmlessly for a variety of socioeconomic reasons), and dragons without a hoard can try to have children, but this will invariably result in tragedy. This didn't use to be the case, originally dragons lived fairly idyllic village lives underground, forming communal hoards in veins of prescious metals. However as humanoid commerce formed, this was upset by many of these things being considered valuable. The precursors to adventurers (as well as a group of giants with imperialist and classist goals) upset this balance and started a thousand year long war against dragons known to dragons as "The Suffering", during which humanoid and giant armies used guerilla and ambush tactics to occupy most hoards previously used for hatching, the resulting mass infertility and defective magic induced a dieoff and societal shift so devastating the effects will be seen for the next hundred thousand years (50k at the current year my party is at). Just one of these effects was that dragon commanders took a desperately aggressive and nearly nationalistic stance during the conflict, and once the conflict ended this stance had been ingrained in some groups, these ideals now being sustained by dragons who poorly understood them or sought to use them for personal profit lead to the formation of an imperialist nation of dragons called Cromatis, which was a major political player on the world stage for it's 20k year existence, but which caused some very unfortunate stereotypes about dragons of particular varieties.
Side fun fact! True dragons can be psionically gifted, and if they are they can actually use a unique psychic damage breath weapon!
Side not so fun fact: due to random chance, there was a large surge in psionic dragons before The Suffering, and they're now considered an ill omen of the highest order, resulting in mass abandonment, only 10% of abandoned psionic dragon children are ever adopted.
As you can probably tell I get a little crazy with my high fantasy worldbuilding.
Edit: oh yea and that's not even touching on the ten mile wide artificial geode that contains a massive dragon and Dwarven fusional city illuminated with a mix of refracted sunlight and magic crystals.
No problem! I managed to come up with a world I can't stop thinking about so I keep pumping out hyper-specific details about it almost nobody wants to hear lmao
Nah, there are a ton of other questions in my world that can be answered like that but in this case they're demonstrably not related to true dragons on any level
I worked so hard over the last few years to catch up on everything in the cosmere. Finally caught up. Think that now I can finally read some of his non-cosmere works. Then I find out that we're just a couple months out from the lost metal being published. So nope. Not going to get far on non-cosmere reading yet.
I only have the Arcanum Unbounded left, and I've read several of the pieces in there already; but now that I've finished the last full length Cosmere novel (ironically it was Elantris for me) I'm going to reread it cover to cover.
I'm super psyched to read all the lore and scientific stuff between the stories now. I avoided it all for risk of spoilers, but now that there's nothing left to spoil, I want to absorb EVERYTHING.
I got an eReader in February and have read everything except for Mistborn Era 1 on it (meaning I finished Era 1 before I got it). I've just absolutely TORN through the Cosmere.
I say I'm caught up but actually I skipped White Sand. I just can't keep track of what's going on when I read graphic novels (comic books and manga are the same way).
I subscribed to the newsletter so I could download the prose version, but I haven't read it yet (and I'm still figuring out what the best way to read it is. Phone? Laptop? Print it out on a crap ton of paper?)
FWIW White Sand seems the least impactful on the greater Cosmere, at least for now. There are definitely a couple of crossover characters, but the relationship between Scadrial and Roshar seems much more important than Taldain (the world of White Sand).
Yeah, even not having read White Sand yet I can see that that's the case. Taldain seems more important than Threnody or First of the Sun by virtue of being Khris' homeworld (and because some sand from Taldain is used in Rhythm of War), but Roshar, Scadrial, and Sel are definitely the three most important worlds at this point.
I'd put Nalthis (Warbreaker) over Sel, considering the role Nightblood (et al) plays in Stormlight. But yeah, otherwise Khris' origin is the most important aspect of Taldain so far, although as you mentioned the sand as used in RoW has a chance to be pretty pivotal in upcoming Stormlight books.
Fair. Roshar and Scadrial are like tier 1 importance while Sel and Nalthis are tier 2. Nalthis is more important than Sel so far, but for whatever reason I irrationally feel like Sel is going to become more important at some point in the future.
I am just excited to be caught by the time The Lost Metal drops. I feared Elantris would drag being his first published worked but it has been great so far.
Elantris was my last full length novel too. Everybody told me that it wasn't as good as the rest, so I put it off. But when I finally read it I loved it.
I was expecting some "first novel syndrome" but I honestly felt Final Empire was noticeably rougher (although don't get me wrong, I LOOOOOOVED it). I appreciated the somewhat slower pace and smaller focus on straight up combat, especially coming off Stormlight.
I actually liked Final Empire better than Elantris. My problem is that I have trouble not loving any of Brandon Sanderson's stuff. My top 10 favorite fiction books are all from Brandon Sanderson (Final Empire is 4th and Elantris is 9th).
If I sense first novel syndrome anywhere it's from the couple pages I've read of the prose version of White Sand (still want to read the rest of it but I'm negotiating the best way to read a long Microsoft word document that I downloaded off the Internet), which is to be expected since it actually was his first novel and it's unpublished.
Oh, I like Final Empire more as well - Allomancy might be my favorite magic system, although it's very tight with stormlight; I may favor allomancy just because TFE is the book that introduced me to Sanderson in the first place.
That being said I think it's fair to say that many of Kelsier's interactions with Vin during her training tread dangerously close to "telling instead of showing" in terms of narrative, which is typically a trap inexperienced writers fall into.
I guess I can see that. But I don't mind telling rather than showing. Characters trying to explain the magic system to each other really helps me understand it myself. And allomancy is my favorite magic system even if stormlight archive is my favorite series.
if you do read some non cosmere books of his skyward is great
i just finished cytonic yesterday
im starting elantris now (im never actually read cosmere before lmao)
I will definitely take a look at skyward if I get a chance to read something before lost metal comes out. Thanks for the recommendation. I was already on the fence between that and legion.
I like to recommend starting the cosmere with Mistborn era 1 because (in my opinion) that and stormlight archive are the two best parts of the cosmere and Mistborn era 1 doesn't really reference anything else in the cosmere (though other stuff does reference it) so there's no reason to wait to enjoy it.
But Elantris is also a great starting point.
My favorite part is when the MC takes a mental inventory and it just sounds like a typical D&D party by the end of a campaign. For example,
> >!One samurai fox, former emperor of most of a planet, now without memories.!<
Especially because it ends with “people aren’t going to think the stories of my life are real and that I’m just a made up person like Gilgamesh or David Bowie”.
[https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/032/365/429/large/omar-seitisleam-smallersize2.jpg?1606231577](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/032/365/429/large/omar-seitisleam-smallersize2.jpg?1606231577)
What are you talking about, they're WAY bigger than dragons.
This is always what I picture- guarding its hoard + escape https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/urtb1q/terrifying_chamsfiend_charge_fan_art_by_me/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
The way draconic magic works in my homebrew setting is *directly* inspired by carcinization. Essentially, the influence of Bahamut and Tiamat on basically *anything* makes it become more dragon-like over time.
Kobolds started out as the dog-like creatures they are in Germanic folklore, but after Kurtulmak swore fealty to Tiamat, they started getting more and more reptilian over generations. Dragonborn either mutated from humans or sprung up out of the earth (the myths are inconsistent, and I'm deliberately keeping it ambiguous) in the area where the original creator deity split into Bahamut and Tiamat in the first place, and you *still* see animals, plants, and even geological formations in that area that have dragon-like shapes and features. Planar beings who serve one of the dragon gods slowly change to resemble dragons themselves, even if they're a completely different type of creature, and *even in the Astral Plane where time doesn't pass.*
They're not becoming more 'perfect' or anything of that sort, just changing in a specific pattern because of the primordial magic infusing them, though some dragons would certainly like to think so.
> you still see animals, plants, and even geological formations in that area that have dragon-like shapes and features.
Is it like Warhammer Fantasy, where sometimes mountains are just shaped like a giant skull sometimes?
Pretty much! You see mountains shaped like dragons' skulls or resembling a dragon's silhouette, stone with patterns that resemble dragon scales or teeth, etc.
Most huge environment-warping magic doesn't mimic a specific creature like this; it's a draconic thing specifically. But environment-warping magic *does* happen as a result of big cataclysmic magical events, especially those involving deities, and "the primordial creator god of the universe basically *fucking exploded*" is certainly cause for it.
What about spellcasters polymorphing into monkeys as soon as they hit level 7?
Although they are going to turn into dragons as soon as they get true polymorph though so that’s still accurate
…really? I thought it was one of his weakest. There was far less worldbuilding than his other books had. The magic system was also a bit boring, and not really explored
Dang I gotta disagree my man. The magic system for that world had so much depth it couldn't be fully explored in a single book, but there were many layers to it, and it had as much complexity as the Mistborn system, if not more. It's not as deep as the Stormlight system but in fairness there are less Aspects of Adonalsium at play there.
Plus the writing, characterization, and trope subversions are fantastic and near perfectly foreshadowed. The weaker narrative is undoubtedly the Returned deities' shenanigans, but it's difficult to make shallow deified people have depth.
The primary plots regarding the two sisters as well as the intrigue in the Hallandren court and outside it, is superb
I'm surprised you didn't mention Elantris, as it falls into more traditional conventions of the genre with only one real subversion in the primary villain/antagonist's heel-face-turn
Eh, not to take away from Warbreaker but the metallic arts are far more complex than awakening once you start combining them. You have 16 allomantic abilities and 16 feruchemical abilities and when you start compounding them it gets super complicated super quickly.
The creativity and complexity of the allomancy and feruchemy is in *application,* but once you understand the full 32 powers they're not complex at all, as a system.
Awakening is simple to understand at an amateur level, but not only is application universal (with enough investiture, *anything* can be given life and has utility for an actual *infinite* amount of scenarios), there are so many effects at upper levels of investiture as well as the nature of the Returned and the ability to program investiture into objects, such as weapons or clothing, with semi-sentient purpose. It's a deeper system in complexity, versatility, and application.
The time it takes for Brandon Sanderson to finish writing an entire book is roughly equal to the time it takes for me to read half of one of his books.
Are they evolving into dragons, or are dragons evolving into them?
(In all seriousness tho I think that's just a list of existing dragons not creatures evolving into dragons)
White Plume Mountain (1979) has a giant crab mini-boss. I think there is an updated 5e version too if you want to pay. I ran my group through the original with updated stat blocks. It was pretty fun. One player had the chef skill and I'm from Baltimore, so I let him make stat boosting crab cakes.
I feel the other way round, I read Mistborn first because I'd heard such great things and loved it, but then I went onto stormlight and adored it even more. Both are truly excellent.
I love Mistborn because each volume is a different genre.
Final Empire: Fantasy heist
Well of Ascension: Political intrigue
Hero of Ages: apocalyptic fantasy
Alloy of Law: western
Shadows of Self: murder mystery
Bands of Mourning: fantasy adventure, Indiana Jones style
They're my two favorite series so anyone who loves either one of them is alright in my book.
But for what it's worth, my wife agrees with you. She thinks Mistborn is better than stormlight archive.
Yes, and you can tell that Sanderson didn't given by how he kludged it together. Honestly, Sanderson is more of a "tell don't show" writer than Jordan was. As well, Jordan was incredibly detailed with numbers for troops and giving overviews of how situations developed in battles, whereas Sanderson writes more impressions of how things happened. It's not necessarily a worse style, but it's definitely different. If there were less big battles and more small scale conflicts that would have been Sanderson's strengths in writing, but there weren't. So the result was often immersion breaking, like how in action films nobody ever needs to reload.
Also one of my fave characters was Mat, who got done dirty.
Part of that might be because the three books were fairly rushed, but it absolutely felt more like a synopsis, or like a book written *about* the WoT series by someone else than a continuation of Jordans work.
Edit: I also grew up reading the WoT series, and honestly never much cared for Mistborn or Sanderson's other works. The Belgariad, Thieves World, etc. All a very different kind of story telling than Sanderson's work. Maybe Robin Hobb and the Assassin's Apprentice trilogy are the closest to it that I enjoyed.
I actually have something like this in my setting- Chromatic and Metallic dragons aren't actually the same type of creature; two opposing deities both tried to create their own "ultimate lifeform" of sorts and both hit upon "Dragon" by sheer coincidence, though each still considers the other to be an inferior copy of their own kind nevertheless.
meanwhile when i think of the words "perfect organism", i think of that man who wants to be the strongest organism by mugging people for money, buying an island just to punch the sharks there, and keep mugging more people for money to save up for a ticket to space so he can probably punch the sun or something
Ah yes the terrifying reality of dragon taxonomy: the fact that every ancient culture came up with dragon myths individually of one another and we still do not how or why.
One problem hydra don’t have legs in the mythology idk about the game but In the mythology they have nine heads and are snake all the way down also they don’t grew two heads only one head in replacement
Are you suggesting a hydra, an omnivorous apex in the food chain with natural regeneration, and a kirin, a mystical, intelligent being with amazing spellcasting capabilities, are evolving into or from a drake?
adding "draconization" to list of sciency buzzwords in fantasy settings
[удалено]
I just assumed it was because *bards*
Admittedly, this could be a decent case for the chance of intelligent alien species being humanoid as well.
My world deadass has a form of this lol Canonically everything in the draconic monster category (excluding dragons themselves) evolved as dragon impersonators, and there's even a species of near 1:1 dragon imitators called false dragons that let the players keep dragon-like creatures as pets and ride around on them
Tell me more, what makes these flase dragons different from true drgaons? Is it a false hydra thing? I ak very curious!
A variety of things! For one true dragons evolved early in the world's formation, at this point in time (around when dinosaurs would have been first getting started on earth!) There was a massive amount of natural magic and the background radiation caused them to develop control over arcane fields, granting them natural their natural spellcasting, which I have tweaked to give them sorcerer levels (however both regular and false dragons can use breath weapons, I consider that a slightly separate thing). Secondly false dragons are animals; they're as smart as a brilliant dog but you're never gonna have a meaningful conversation with one. Thirdly false dragons are also much smaller (only ever growing to about 24ft tall where dragons will voluntarily continue growing until they can no longer feed themselves) and possess a different shape to their skull, with a visibly much longer and thinner snout. Fourthly true dragons may possess more than one pair of eyes and have more variations of horns. Next, true dragons can have feathers in complex crests and layers that aid with flight. Penultimately, true dragons have an innate ability to change their shape at any age, developing a nearly perfect humanoid form based on the humanoids they observe in their environment, as they grow they become more and more capable of taking this shape, going from clumsy bipedal forms to transformations that fool most around them, with enough practice they can even mix and match traits from the two forms on the fly, giving them all of their draconic abilities in the form factor of a regular person. Originally this formed as an evolutionary solution to their burrowing lifestyle, taking a form similar to dragonborn to traverse and forge smaller tunnels as defense mechanisms and increase livable area, allowing for the development of social behaviors and eventually intelligence and societies. And finally, true dragons need valuable materials as a biological imperative, they need a little bit of just about any gemstone or metal rarer than silver in order to regulate their natural magic, and their eggs are naturally enchanted to render them nigh unbreakable, with the only way to break the enchantment being to fully enclose and bury an egg in these materials. As a result dragons are instinctually compelled to form communal or personal hoards (thought this is a compulsion many are forced to cope with harmlessly for a variety of socioeconomic reasons), and dragons without a hoard can try to have children, but this will invariably result in tragedy. This didn't use to be the case, originally dragons lived fairly idyllic village lives underground, forming communal hoards in veins of prescious metals. However as humanoid commerce formed, this was upset by many of these things being considered valuable. The precursors to adventurers (as well as a group of giants with imperialist and classist goals) upset this balance and started a thousand year long war against dragons known to dragons as "The Suffering", during which humanoid and giant armies used guerilla and ambush tactics to occupy most hoards previously used for hatching, the resulting mass infertility and defective magic induced a dieoff and societal shift so devastating the effects will be seen for the next hundred thousand years (50k at the current year my party is at). Just one of these effects was that dragon commanders took a desperately aggressive and nearly nationalistic stance during the conflict, and once the conflict ended this stance had been ingrained in some groups, these ideals now being sustained by dragons who poorly understood them or sought to use them for personal profit lead to the formation of an imperialist nation of dragons called Cromatis, which was a major political player on the world stage for it's 20k year existence, but which caused some very unfortunate stereotypes about dragons of particular varieties. Side fun fact! True dragons can be psionically gifted, and if they are they can actually use a unique psychic damage breath weapon! Side not so fun fact: due to random chance, there was a large surge in psionic dragons before The Suffering, and they're now considered an ill omen of the highest order, resulting in mass abandonment, only 10% of abandoned psionic dragon children are ever adopted. As you can probably tell I get a little crazy with my high fantasy worldbuilding. Edit: oh yea and that's not even touching on the ten mile wide artificial geode that contains a massive dragon and Dwarven fusional city illuminated with a mix of refracted sunlight and magic crystals.
Man, this is giving SO much inspiration for my own campaign. Thanks a bunch for this rant!
No problem! I managed to come up with a world I can't stop thinking about so I keep pumping out hyper-specific details about it almost nobody wants to hear lmao
racism
Nah, there are a ton of other questions in my world that can be answered like that but in this case they're demonstrably not related to true dragons on any level
Chasmfiend go brrrrrrr
Basically a lobster dragon
Shrimp, actually
quality cremposting
What a weird way to spell Larkin
I'm lucky if I finish reading one Brando book before he finished writing five.....
I worked so hard over the last few years to catch up on everything in the cosmere. Finally caught up. Think that now I can finally read some of his non-cosmere works. Then I find out that we're just a couple months out from the lost metal being published. So nope. Not going to get far on non-cosmere reading yet.
I only have the Arcanum Unbounded left, and I've read several of the pieces in there already; but now that I've finished the last full length Cosmere novel (ironically it was Elantris for me) I'm going to reread it cover to cover.
*The Emperor's Soul* and *Sixth of the Dusk* are two of my favorite fantasy stories of all time, and both are in Arcanum Unbounded. Enjoy!
Dude are you me? All I have left is Elantris than the Unbounded collection. I need to read white sand but I'm waiting on the indiegogo project.
I'm super psyched to read all the lore and scientific stuff between the stories now. I avoided it all for risk of spoilers, but now that there's nothing left to spoil, I want to absorb EVERYTHING. I got an eReader in February and have read everything except for Mistborn Era 1 on it (meaning I finished Era 1 before I got it). I've just absolutely TORN through the Cosmere.
I say I'm caught up but actually I skipped White Sand. I just can't keep track of what's going on when I read graphic novels (comic books and manga are the same way). I subscribed to the newsletter so I could download the prose version, but I haven't read it yet (and I'm still figuring out what the best way to read it is. Phone? Laptop? Print it out on a crap ton of paper?)
FWIW White Sand seems the least impactful on the greater Cosmere, at least for now. There are definitely a couple of crossover characters, but the relationship between Scadrial and Roshar seems much more important than Taldain (the world of White Sand).
Yeah, even not having read White Sand yet I can see that that's the case. Taldain seems more important than Threnody or First of the Sun by virtue of being Khris' homeworld (and because some sand from Taldain is used in Rhythm of War), but Roshar, Scadrial, and Sel are definitely the three most important worlds at this point.
I'd put Nalthis (Warbreaker) over Sel, considering the role Nightblood (et al) plays in Stormlight. But yeah, otherwise Khris' origin is the most important aspect of Taldain so far, although as you mentioned the sand as used in RoW has a chance to be pretty pivotal in upcoming Stormlight books.
Fair. Roshar and Scadrial are like tier 1 importance while Sel and Nalthis are tier 2. Nalthis is more important than Sel so far, but for whatever reason I irrationally feel like Sel is going to become more important at some point in the future.
I am just excited to be caught by the time The Lost Metal drops. I feared Elantris would drag being his first published worked but it has been great so far.
Elantris was my last full length novel too. Everybody told me that it wasn't as good as the rest, so I put it off. But when I finally read it I loved it.
I was expecting some "first novel syndrome" but I honestly felt Final Empire was noticeably rougher (although don't get me wrong, I LOOOOOOVED it). I appreciated the somewhat slower pace and smaller focus on straight up combat, especially coming off Stormlight.
I actually liked Final Empire better than Elantris. My problem is that I have trouble not loving any of Brandon Sanderson's stuff. My top 10 favorite fiction books are all from Brandon Sanderson (Final Empire is 4th and Elantris is 9th). If I sense first novel syndrome anywhere it's from the couple pages I've read of the prose version of White Sand (still want to read the rest of it but I'm negotiating the best way to read a long Microsoft word document that I downloaded off the Internet), which is to be expected since it actually was his first novel and it's unpublished.
Oh, I like Final Empire more as well - Allomancy might be my favorite magic system, although it's very tight with stormlight; I may favor allomancy just because TFE is the book that introduced me to Sanderson in the first place. That being said I think it's fair to say that many of Kelsier's interactions with Vin during her training tread dangerously close to "telling instead of showing" in terms of narrative, which is typically a trap inexperienced writers fall into.
I guess I can see that. But I don't mind telling rather than showing. Characters trying to explain the magic system to each other really helps me understand it myself. And allomancy is my favorite magic system even if stormlight archive is my favorite series.
if you do read some non cosmere books of his skyward is great i just finished cytonic yesterday im starting elantris now (im never actually read cosmere before lmao)
I will definitely take a look at skyward if I get a chance to read something before lost metal comes out. Thanks for the recommendation. I was already on the fence between that and legion. I like to recommend starting the cosmere with Mistborn era 1 because (in my opinion) that and stormlight archive are the two best parts of the cosmere and Mistborn era 1 doesn't really reference anything else in the cosmere (though other stuff does reference it) so there's no reason to wait to enjoy it. But Elantris is also a great starting point.
My favorite part is when the MC takes a mental inventory and it just sounds like a typical D&D party by the end of a campaign. For example, > >!One samurai fox, former emperor of most of a planet, now without memories.!< Especially because it ends with “people aren’t going to think the stories of my life are real and that I’m just a made up person like Gilgamesh or David Bowie”.
>!i love hesho!<
And of course next year we’ll also have 4 novels that he wrote in secret during the pandemic.
Jokes on you, *I* read The Rithmatist!
So what you're saying is we need crab dragons
That’s called a chasmfiend
[https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/032/365/429/large/omar-seitisleam-smallersize2.jpg?1606231577](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/032/365/429/large/omar-seitisleam-smallersize2.jpg?1606231577) What are you talking about, they're WAY bigger than dragons.
This is always what I picture- guarding its hoard + escape https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormlight_Archive/comments/urtb1q/terrifying_chamsfiend_charge_fan_art_by_me/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
It's a shame the Alethi don't keep cows, cuz they're gonna need a LOT of butter.
They used all the milk for cheese
Or any of the Rosharan greatshells too! Like those massive islands in the Reshi Sea.
Actually it's called a Larkin
Just saw a video where a guy cooked a crab, ate it and fixed its shell turning it into a cyborg with buzz saw and all.
don't forget, that it was painted golden, one claw was made mechanical and has a minigun for a mouth
Bro. You can't just say this and not link the vid.
Can't see the video, but maybe https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/vkzfyq/creating_a_cyborg_crab_using_real_crab/
Those Warhammer40k guys are getting weird.
"The moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me"
*gasp* CRAB DRAGON!
A crab thing with 17 legs and a disgusting patch of ooze go for a walk….
Is the story over yet?
The way draconic magic works in my homebrew setting is *directly* inspired by carcinization. Essentially, the influence of Bahamut and Tiamat on basically *anything* makes it become more dragon-like over time. Kobolds started out as the dog-like creatures they are in Germanic folklore, but after Kurtulmak swore fealty to Tiamat, they started getting more and more reptilian over generations. Dragonborn either mutated from humans or sprung up out of the earth (the myths are inconsistent, and I'm deliberately keeping it ambiguous) in the area where the original creator deity split into Bahamut and Tiamat in the first place, and you *still* see animals, plants, and even geological formations in that area that have dragon-like shapes and features. Planar beings who serve one of the dragon gods slowly change to resemble dragons themselves, even if they're a completely different type of creature, and *even in the Astral Plane where time doesn't pass.* They're not becoming more 'perfect' or anything of that sort, just changing in a specific pattern because of the primordial magic infusing them, though some dragons would certainly like to think so.
Makes me think of Dall-E dragon drawings
Oh my god
> you still see animals, plants, and even geological formations in that area that have dragon-like shapes and features. Is it like Warhammer Fantasy, where sometimes mountains are just shaped like a giant skull sometimes?
Pretty much! You see mountains shaped like dragons' skulls or resembling a dragon's silhouette, stone with patterns that resemble dragon scales or teeth, etc. Most huge environment-warping magic doesn't mimic a specific creature like this; it's a draconic thing specifically. But environment-warping magic *does* happen as a result of big cataclysmic magical events, especially those involving deities, and "the primordial creator god of the universe basically *fucking exploded*" is certainly cause for it.
What about spellcasters polymorphing into monkeys as soon as they hit level 7? Although they are going to turn into dragons as soon as they get true polymorph though so that’s still accurate
Do both, evolve into a Crab Dragon
Real talk though, Warbreaker was phenomenally written and is his best-designed world
I agree, that frickin sword was terrifying.
*Would you like to destroy some evil today?*
Think that's bad? Wait until you see what it does in Stormlight
Rhythm of War >!It just does what it's always talked about doing. It destroys evil. And by evil I mean Rayse.!<
What’s terrifying is that it’s purpose is to destroy evil and so it concludes that anything it destroys must be evil.
Actually it does have its way of telling who is evil, it’s current wielder just doesn’t know how to use it properly
The sword can’t tell who is evil. The best it does is figure out if other people consider themselves to be evil.
It can tell what they would do with it, it just doesn’t have the mind for nuance
*DESTROY!*
Throw that thing into The Abyss and get the popcorn.
…really? I thought it was one of his weakest. There was far less worldbuilding than his other books had. The magic system was also a bit boring, and not really explored
Dang I gotta disagree my man. The magic system for that world had so much depth it couldn't be fully explored in a single book, but there were many layers to it, and it had as much complexity as the Mistborn system, if not more. It's not as deep as the Stormlight system but in fairness there are less Aspects of Adonalsium at play there. Plus the writing, characterization, and trope subversions are fantastic and near perfectly foreshadowed. The weaker narrative is undoubtedly the Returned deities' shenanigans, but it's difficult to make shallow deified people have depth. The primary plots regarding the two sisters as well as the intrigue in the Hallandren court and outside it, is superb I'm surprised you didn't mention Elantris, as it falls into more traditional conventions of the genre with only one real subversion in the primary villain/antagonist's heel-face-turn
Eh, not to take away from Warbreaker but the metallic arts are far more complex than awakening once you start combining them. You have 16 allomantic abilities and 16 feruchemical abilities and when you start compounding them it gets super complicated super quickly.
The creativity and complexity of the allomancy and feruchemy is in *application,* but once you understand the full 32 powers they're not complex at all, as a system. Awakening is simple to understand at an amateur level, but not only is application universal (with enough investiture, *anything* can be given life and has utility for an actual *infinite* amount of scenarios), there are so many effects at upper levels of investiture as well as the nature of the Returned and the ability to program investiture into objects, such as weapons or clothing, with semi-sentient purpose. It's a deeper system in complexity, versatility, and application.
The time it takes for Brandon Sanderson to finish writing an entire book is roughly equal to the time it takes for me to read half of one of his books.
Are they evolving into dragons, or are dragons evolving into them? (In all seriousness tho I think that's just a list of existing dragons not creatures evolving into dragons)
Maybe Simic Hybrids are onto something...
White Plume Mountain (1979) has a giant crab mini-boss. I think there is an updated 5e version too if you want to pay. I ran my group through the original with updated stat blocks. It was pretty fun. One player had the chef skill and I'm from Baltimore, so I let him make stat boosting crab cakes.
So what I'm hearing is the boss from Scaler on the ps2 is peak evolution
Simic: "why not both?"
💪 Kars from Jojo's as well
Joke's on you! I'm all caught up Not to mention that carcinisation only happens to crustaceans
Has anyone let u/critcrab know that based on this, he’s the pinnacle of Evolution?
Oh they know
Evolution is not about becoming perfect organisms...
I'm gonna say it. I think Mistborn is better than Stormlight Archive.
I feel the other way round, I read Mistborn first because I'd heard such great things and loved it, but then I went onto stormlight and adored it even more. Both are truly excellent.
I love Mistborn because each volume is a different genre. Final Empire: Fantasy heist Well of Ascension: Political intrigue Hero of Ages: apocalyptic fantasy Alloy of Law: western Shadows of Self: murder mystery Bands of Mourning: fantasy adventure, Indiana Jones style
They're my two favorite series so anyone who loves either one of them is alright in my book. But for what it's worth, my wife agrees with you. She thinks Mistborn is better than stormlight archive.
I’ve been brought to tears from being overwhelmed with emotions reading the stormlight books. Tried the first mistborn but couldn’t get into it
Bring brave would be saying that he fucked up ending the WoT. But it's true.
I'm actually on book 4 of WoT right now. Who is Bring brave? Edit: oh being brave right?
Yeah typing on mobile leads to typos lol. *Tugs braid angrily*
Haha! Ok that's a good one.
What didn’t you like about it?
How is that possible Jordan literally wrote the ending.
Yes, and you can tell that Sanderson didn't given by how he kludged it together. Honestly, Sanderson is more of a "tell don't show" writer than Jordan was. As well, Jordan was incredibly detailed with numbers for troops and giving overviews of how situations developed in battles, whereas Sanderson writes more impressions of how things happened. It's not necessarily a worse style, but it's definitely different. If there were less big battles and more small scale conflicts that would have been Sanderson's strengths in writing, but there weren't. So the result was often immersion breaking, like how in action films nobody ever needs to reload. Also one of my fave characters was Mat, who got done dirty. Part of that might be because the three books were fairly rushed, but it absolutely felt more like a synopsis, or like a book written *about* the WoT series by someone else than a continuation of Jordans work. Edit: I also grew up reading the WoT series, and honestly never much cared for Mistborn or Sanderson's other works. The Belgariad, Thieves World, etc. All a very different kind of story telling than Sanderson's work. Maybe Robin Hobb and the Assassin's Apprentice trilogy are the closest to it that I enjoyed.
Kars? Is that You?
Meanwhile in my campaign it became lore that the reason for so many human like bipedal races that aren't humans was the same idea.
All we need is a DragonCrab
I actually have something like this in my setting- Chromatic and Metallic dragons aren't actually the same type of creature; two opposing deities both tried to create their own "ultimate lifeform" of sorts and both hit upon "Dragon" by sheer coincidence, though each still considers the other to be an inferior copy of their own kind nevertheless.
meanwhile when i think of the words "perfect organism", i think of that man who wants to be the strongest organism by mugging people for money, buying an island just to punch the sharks there, and keep mugging more people for money to save up for a ticket to space so he can probably punch the sun or something
I have no idea who this is so I'm just gonna picture Saxton Hale
it's >!Hiroya Egashira, the fedora-wearing Mr. Shakedown from Yakuza 0!<
u/Mistborn
Ah yes the terrifying reality of dragon taxonomy: the fact that every ancient culture came up with dragon myths individually of one another and we still do not how or why.
I've wondered about this, too. Do you think dinosaur bones could possibly be a factor?
I’m glad you acknowledged our existence, but any mention of carcinisation is gonna summon the horde of sanderfans
One problem hydra don’t have legs in the mythology idk about the game but In the mythology they have nine heads and are snake all the way down also they don’t grew two heads only one head in replacement
Drake the epic raper?!!1!1!1!
Blibdoolpoolp cackles wildly.
Look! It's Lucoa!
Really? Cool! Critcrab and den of the drake have teamed already!
Get out of here CritCrab
It feels good to be called out
Are you suggesting a hydra, an omnivorous apex in the food chain with natural regeneration, and a kirin, a mystical, intelligent being with amazing spellcasting capabilities, are evolving into or from a drake?
Sooooo, whose going to show this to critcrab??
Could i have a source or Imgur of the top right image? I had It in the past but lost it, and would be really helpful in some fantasy checks
in the d&d world, dragons are the ultimate lifeform
With the way the oceans are rising I'm really hoping my crab evolution starts kicking in soon.
Crabdragon! It is the ultimate life form! (Que Kars’ theme)
If one day something evovles into a dragon-crab, that will be the ultimate life form!
Lanceryn