How do you roleplay Dragonewts?

[Nevermet]

What it says on the tin.

 

From everything I've read, the Dragonewts are probably the most inhuman and alien of the major Elder Races.  They are inscrutable and utterly confusing.  Partly, this is because they do not fear death, as they are guaranteed to be reborn, and the act of rebirth is necessary for their spiritual development.  It is also because their relationship with reality is qualitatively different than humanity's, beginning with their rejection of all elemental magic.  Then there's the whole fact that they are a race of humanoid dragon-people, which probably makes one think differently about everything.

At the same time, we also know from the texts that there have been times that communities of Newts have been relatively stable allies of human communities and even trading partners.

 

So, I'm kind of at a loss: On the few times player characters deal with the Newts, how on earth should the GM run them?  Some things are obvious: Newts don't really have the same self-preservation instinct as other species, so things like combat and danger will invoke different stimuli in them than other species.  "They're weird and make no sense" isn't sufficient advice on how to actually RP them.

[Bill the barbarian]

1 minute ago, Nevermet said:

What it says on the tin.

 

Vewwy vewwy cawefuwwy!

[Nevermet]

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Vewwy vewwy cawefuwwy!

[Joerg]

Dragonewt NPCs feature both in The Smoking Ruins and Pegasus Plateau, so you might want to take a look at how they are presented there.

The dragonewt color plate in the Guide is taken from the potential dragonewt adventure outlined in Elder Secrets.

Griffin Mountain had the dragonewt armor plot with the newt Inoi Sessele (sp?) hunting the person owning its previous incarnation's hide as an armor.

 

When I wrote a scenario where dragonewts would confront the players (or vice versa), I presented them pretty much as a force of nature. (I think it was printed in an issue of Tradetalk, translated from the German Free INT first publication.)

[Sir_Godspeed]

I could swear there was a thread on this exact thing not too long ago, but I couldn't quite find it. Here's a couple of other ones:
 

 

EDIT: Actually, I think it was this one:
 

 

[svensson]

OK, taking my cue from all RQ sources [including some Mongoose RQ] my distilled impressions of dragonewts are these:

- 1.  All dragonewts seek to progress along the Way of Ourobouros, the Dragon Path.

- 2. The Dragon Path is more than a cult, more than religion, more than a philosophy, more than a credo. A dragonewt has three statuses upon the Path:

-- a] in accordance with its place on the Path [for it's Stage of development... the same 'newt will act very differently as a Beaked 'newt than it did as a Crested 'newt]

-- b] in heresy with the Path [with the possibility of redemption]

-- c] an apostate from the Path [exiled with no redemption possible]

- 3. The determiner of a given 'newt's status is how well it understand and acts with Right Action.

- 4. Right Action is impossible for Humans to understand fully. Any attempt by a Human to gain power through Right Action is Folly.

- 5. Right action depends on understanding and absorbing diametrical emotions, actions, knowledge and so on. Examples include Courage /Cowardice, Truth /Falsehood, Assertiveness /Passivity, Dominance /Submission, Courtesy /Rudeness, and so on. Some [but not all] of these dichotomies must be re-learned at each stage of the Path. A Crested 'newt's lesson on Courage /Cowardice will be very different than the one required of a Tailed 'newt, for example.

- 6. Emotions, friendships, attachments, and possessions in the mortal world are, by Draconic definition, Wrong Action. All 'newts seek to avoid these, save only when they are required to achieve Right Action.

- 7. Dragonewts seek to avoid entangling themselves in mortal affairs. Any debt incurred is repaid as soon as absolutely possible. This repayment may not seem to equal out. A Human might save a 'newt's life whereupon the 'newt immediately fetches a skinful of water, for one example.

There's more to this, but these lead to my point:

As a referee, you must decide what a given Dragonewt is pursuing as Right Action and have them act accordingly. This makes Dragonewts VERY unpredictable to humans. Even if a specific Dragonewt has been encountered before, the 'newt will treat a second encounter as either Right or Wrong Action based solely on the circumstances of that moment.

So Dragonewts can be helpful or hurtful, wise or foolish, communicate or ignore, or any other activity your story needs them to do. When in doubt, have them do something weird or hard to explain. Have a party of Dragonewts, led by a Tailed Priest, with Beaked Warriors in tow, wait for two days while 4 Crested 'newts dig up a rock, fill up the hole, place the rock in the center of disturbed dirt and dance around it for 15 minutes. Then leave. Without saying a word.

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, Nevermet said:

On the few times player characters deal with the Newts, how on earth should the GM run them?

They are weird and bizarre, do and say the unexpected.  Follow the paired traits for their current incarnation - randomly roll to see the paired trait invoked, then see which way they go.  Does it entangle them in mortal affairs, or keep them aloof?  The latter is best, but entanglements are oh so enticing.

 

 

[Ali the Helering]

A GM I used to know said he used a table on which he would roll a d20 to determine a dragonewt's reaction to any given stimulus, to ensure that it was unpredictable and irrational.  He felt that his underlying attitudes would bias it otherwise.  I never saw the table, so it is always possible he was unpredictable and irrational himself....

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, svensson said:

OK, taking my cue from all RQ sources [including some Mongoose RQ] my distilled impressions of dragonewts are these:

- 1.  All dragonewts seek to progress along the Way of Ourobouros, the Dragon Path.

- 2. The Dragon Path is more than a cult, more than religion, more than a philosophy, more than a credo. A dragonewt has three statuses upon the Path:

-- a] in accordance with its place on the Path [for it's Stage of development... the same 'newt will act very differently as a Beaked 'newt than it did as a Crested 'newt]

-- b] in heresy with the Path [with the possibility of redemption]

-- c] an apostate from the Path [exiled with no redemption possible]

- 3. The determiner of a given 'newt's status is how well it understand and acts with Right Action.

- 4. Right Action is impossible for Humans to understand fully. Any attempt by a Human to gain power through Right Action is Folly.

- 5. Right action depends on understanding and absorbing diametrical emotions, actions, knowledge and so on. Examples include Courage /Cowardice, Truth /Falsehood, Assertiveness /Passivity, Dominance /Submission, Courtesy /Rudeness, and so on. Some [but not all] of these dichotomies must be re-learned at each stage of the Path. A Crested 'newt's lesson on Courage /Cowardice will be very different than the one required of a Tailed 'newt, for example.

- 6. Emotions, friendships, attachments, and possessions in the mortal world are, by Draconic definition, Wrong Action. All 'newts seek to avoid these, save only when they are required to achieve Right Action.

- 7. Dragonewts seek to avoid entangling themselves in mortal affairs. Any debt incurred is repaid as soon as absolutely possible. This repayment may not seem to equal out. A Human might save a 'newt's life whereupon the 'newt immediately fetches a skinful of water, for one example.

All of these true, although point 6 might be overstated.

The chance of meeting a dragonewt in two different stages might be rather low. Dragonewt progress rates have slowed down, according to Sandy Petersen, as the fast ones all became dragons long ago, and what is left of the (original) dragonewt population are the slow-pokes, many of them still in the Scout stage.

Which is fine from an ecological point of view, since you cannot have all chieftains, you need a broad base of commoners or otherwise of external work force to maintain a civilization.

Dragonewt cities might be best understood as monasteries, places mainly dedicated to spiritual advancement while providing some basic creature comforts allowing the pursuit of that advancement.

 

7 hours ago, svensson said:

There's more to this, but these lead to my point:

As a referee, you must decide what a given Dragonewt is pursuing as Right Action and have them act accordingly. This makes Dragonewts VERY unpredictable to humans. Even if a specific Dragonewt has been encountered before, the 'newt will treat a second encounter as either Right or Wrong Action based solely on the circumstances of that moment.

A dragonewt is on a heroquest at all times. It will face moral challenges just like a human faces ritual challenges. And humans encountering a dragonewt will lack the context of the 'newt's questing to gauge its motivations.

If it is a balance an individual newt seeks, it may have to act in diametically opposite ways to achieve the sweet spot of Right Action.

Performing weird rites (like the one I cut) is another aspect of performing a heroquest.

[svensson]

33 minutes ago, Joerg said:

All of these true, although point 6 might be overstated.

The chance of meeting a dragonewt in two different stages might be rather low. Dragonewt progress rates have slowed down, according to Sandy Petersen, as the fast ones all became dragons long ago, and what is left of the (original) dragonewt population are the slow-pokes, many of them still in the Scout stage.

Which is fine from an ecological point of view, since you cannot have all chieftains, you need a broad base of commoners or otherwise of external work force to maintain a civilization.

Dragonewt cities might be best understood as monasteries, places mainly dedicated to spiritual advancement while providing some basic creature comforts allowing the pursuit of that advancement.

 

A dragonewt is on a heroquest at all times. It will face moral challenges just like a human faces ritual challenges. And humans encountering a dragonewt will lack the context of the 'newt's questing to gauge its motivations.

If it is a balance an individual newt seeks, it may have to act in diametically opposite ways to achieve the sweet spot of Right Action.

Performing weird rites (like the one I cut) is another aspect of performing a heroquest.

A couple of sources specifically state that dragonewts with too many worldly connections have fallen from the Dragon Path and are exiles. Using your monastery analogy, the 'newt should be concerned solely with their spiritual growth along the Dragon Path, with any outside interactions based on either Right Action or correcting Wrong Action. Newts are 'warrior monks' in that sense, and should not have many ties to the material world at all.

Yeah, I can accept the idea that the Dragonewt quest for Right Action and ascension to Dragon-hood is an extended Heroquest. In that context, I would tend to see each quest as a separate stage of the quest, each more difficult than the last. A human example would be an Orlanthi Rune level that has enough community support that they're willing to help him Heroquest each of Orlanth's great deeds on a path to becoming a Hero-with-a-capital-H in time for Argrath's and Jar-eel's showdown.

[Joerg]

2 minutes ago, svensson said:

A couple of sources specifically state that dragonewts with too many worldly connections have fallen from the Dragon Path and are exiles.

"Too many" is different from "none". The Dragon Pass dragonewts "survived in weakness" by joining forces with the humans and Elder Races of the Vingkotling region, as opposed to the dragonewts of Kralorela who "survived in strength" as subjects of the Kralori dragon emperors who kept being overcome by Sekever.

 

2 minutes ago, svensson said:

Using your monastery analogy, the 'newt should be concerned solely with their spiritual growth along the Dragon Path, with any outside interactions based on either Right Action or correcting Wrong Action. Newts are 'warrior monks' in that sense, and should not have many ties to the material world at all.

Yes. Shaolin monks might be an analogy, pilgrims leaving their monastic environments to interact with the world in general and martial artists in particular. The world still serves as a whetstone at least for the earlier stages of dragonewt-hood, probably all the way up to the (Tailed) Priest stage.

 

2 minutes ago, svensson said:

Yeah, I can accept the idea that the Dragonewt quest for Right Action and ascension to Dragon-hood is an extended Heroquest. In that context, I would tend to see each quest as a separate stage of the quest, each more difficult than the last. A human example would be an Orlanthi Rune level that has enough community support that they're willing to help him Heroquest each of Orlanth's great deeds on a path to becoming a Hero-with-a-capital-H in time for Argrath's and Jar-eel's showdown.

The closest description of what the path to true Dragonhood might look like would be looking at Ingolf Dragonfriend's almost successful path (taken twice) following the example of Obduran the Flyer, the most successful draconic mystic in the sources who not only became a True Dragon, but who even managed to ascend from True Dragonhood to the Absolute (in as little as three days).

Obduran may not have been the only EWF mystic to achieve True Dragonhood, although some sources suggest that he was. He certainly was the only EWF mystic combining worship of Orlanth and the draconic truth to succeed in achieving True Dragonhood, but there were plenty more early mystics pursuing the paths of the Long Mountain Dragon School, one of the schools that eschewed the Short Cut paths other disciples of Obduran (like Isgangdrang) took for themselves.

The total number of highly advanced draconic mystics over the development of the EWF is not known. Before Obduran "corrupts the Orlanth Ring with the Dragon Inside" in 725 ST, the dragonfriends were in opposition to the Ring of Orlanthland. That leaves the period since the first Hunting and Waltzing Bands of Vistikos Left-Eye in the late 1580ies to the conversion of the Kingdom of Orlanthland into the EWF by 775 - when Obduran retires from the Ring, and his disciples hold various posts on the ring) to the extermination of the last Old Day Traditionalists. After that, many of the EWF projects start to go wrong. (History of the Heortling Peoples p.41-51, Heortling Mythology p.137-139).

 

Godunya leaves Kralorela around the time Emperor Yanoor is confounded by Gilam D'Estau's New Dragon Ring (in 768), and Shang-Hsa starts interacting with EWF leaders, inviting them to his temples (which may be how the Path of Immanent Mastery is found in both EWF history and modern Kralorela). (Revealed Mythologies p.106)

Somehow, the Kralori dragonewts persist throughout Shang-Hsa's reign as False Dragon Emperor, which either means that Shang-Hsa did something not quite wrong, or that the role of the Kralori emperor in Kralori dragonewt society is overrated. The False Dragon Ring is finally deposed in 1054, twelve years after the Fall of the EWF dragonspeakers in the mass utuma.

 

The EWF and Kralori approaches to dragonhood are somewhat relevant to dragonewts as they do not require regular intermediate utuma to achieve a higher stage of draconic insight. This might appeal to "barbarian dragonewt" populations like those in Ormsland or on Teleos without an Inhuman King of their own (unlike Dragon Pass and Ryzel) or a Dragon Emperor to fulfil a similar role. But it also offers a way to dragonhood for lesser draconic races/species like the wyrms, who appear to be a result of Dawn Age experimentation after the Unity Council moved to Dorastor, presumably with the dragonewts still involved or at the very least not actively opposed to that kind of magical experimentation. The original form of the wyrms remains unknown, but there aren't that many Unity Council members to choose from, and other than dragonewts or humans I don't see many other candidates curious enough to undergo such a radical transformation. There was a contemporary experiment which resulted in Seri-Phy-Ranor, a mixed descendant of Sun Wheel Dancers, Heortling Humans, and possibly other Elder Races, so we know that weird experimentation like this wasn't invented in Remakerela, but only picked up again.

 

The Unity Battle and Council, whatever created the wyrms during the Second Council, the EWF and the entire draconic history of Kralorela point towards something like a fruitful interaction between dragonewts and humans, at least to some degree of success. The loss of all Pelorian dragonewt eggs (!) outside of the Elder Wilds and Dragon Pass appears to have been an acceptable exchange for the Dragonkill and the opportunity of subsequent human-free development in the Pass. Entanglement with Ironhoof, Arim and Sartar must have been acceptable, too. Whether something like the Dragonrise was intended by the dragonewts is unknown (though suspected).

 

This leads me to ask how much of the dragonewt behavior is driven by the individual eggs and their emanations, and how much is driven by the collective emanation of the 'newts that also manifests their cities and their actions at large (like the Dragonewts Dream event).

[Darius West]

14 hours ago, Nevermet said:

So, I'm kind of at a loss: On the few times player characters deal with the Newts, how on earth should the GM run them?  Some things are obvious: Newts don't really have the same self-preservation instinct as other species, so things like combat and danger will invoke different stimuli in them than other species.  "They're weird and make no sense" isn't sufficient advice on how to actually RP them.

As a fellow GM I commiserate, and here are some suggestions.  To say that Dragonewts make no sense is merely down to human ignorance. 

(1) The Draconic Path is pretty alien to every form of human worship, but that is because it is mysticism, and that mysticism is central to everything Dragonewts do, and informs their lives.  Dragonewts are essentially the hot-house flowers of mysticism.  They have been set on a path of near instant reincarnation, where other souls would have to wander into the underworld (with or without a psychopomp), then be judged, then live in their allotted afterlife, then be reborn into the world.  This means that Dragonewts somewhat behave like humans in an MMORPG.  They die and respawn (but did they learn anything).  They also hate being "corpse camped", and will call on their "guild" for help if that happens, and they are OP.

(2) All Dragonewts are failures and fuck-ups.  Permanent noobs.  They have been following the Dragon Path for centuries, and the best among them have become dragons already, long ago.  Those who remain are the remedial class.  How do we know this (apart from basic logic?)?  Well, when the EWF came along, plenty of humans were able to make rapid progress on the Dragon path, far in excess of what the dragonewts were able to achieve in the whole of the God's Age and the centuries after.  Some dragonewts are so stupid that they haven't even figured out what eating is, and literally die of starvation every few weeks or so, and are so dumb that they assume this is a normal state of affairs, because they have never thought to question why they feel an incapacitating pain in their bellies, then gradually begin to weaken, and eventually die and reincarnate.  Their whole society is a mess as a result, and something of an exercise in cat herding, as any society of mystics not based on monastic discipline would be.  Crested dragonewts sent on hunting, scouting expeditions frequently run away, and those set to farming frequently get bored and wander off, and have to be tortured to get them to work, as if you kill them they don't feel enough pain to learn the lesson.

(3) Dragonewt Castes are very important as an indicator of competence and progress on the Dragon path.  This is however individual competence.  Dragonewts are not a collective society, but individualists.  Individual dragonewts can actually forget their skills and regress on their path, especially if they use dragon magic.   It is also worth pointing out that apart from prime nests such as the Dragon's Eye, minor dragonewt cities represent heretical diversions from the main path.  If these diversions become  too pronounced, the dragonewts fall from the path to become dinosaurs.  Does this involve having sex with Maran Gor?  Who knows?  Probably not, but it's worth a thought considering that she is the Goddess of Dinosaurs.  Is it possible that there are a group of particularly bad crested dragonewts who get sent to Maran Gor for sacrifice to be expelled from the dragon path and become dinosaurs?  We just don't know.

(4) A goodly portion of the weird behavior of dragonewts is down to their odd rituals.  This includes such things as performing a graceful eliding dance while wearing a wasp nest on their heads, or failing and being stung to death, thus ruining the ritual.  Obvious things will seem bewilderingly odd to dragonewts, and they will hiss and flare their frills at you.  This is because dragonewts are mystics, and not overly earthly creatures.  When an Orlanthi comes inside and removes his cloak, a crested dragonewt will freak out because the orlanthi has "removed his frill WTF!".  Dragonewts don't do clothes, or sexual reproduction.  Many, if not most human technologies are completely superfluous to them, and thus alien.  The point being, human life and cultures are weird to dragonewts too.

(5) Have fun.  Dragonewts are "the other".  They are supposed to be weird.  Their attitudes are bizarre.  Their minds seem to be trapped in a waking dream state akin to madness.  They will speak human languages badly, and allude to concepts that humans don't understand.  How much of their incoherence is due to poor language skills?  How much to their unusual spiritual beliefs?  How much to their alien physiology?  Some things remain constant.  Crested dragonewts are cowardly and stealthy.  Beaked dragonewts are warlike.  Priests are solemn, ritualistic, and commanding.  If a dragonewt starts using magic, they are up to something very important to dragonewts, as normally they'd usually prefer to die than use their magic.  

Edited May 9, 2021 by Darius West

[Sir_Godspeed]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

"Too many" is different from "none". The Dragon Pass dragonewts "survived in weakness" by joining forces with the humans and Elder Races of the Vingkotling region, as opposed to the dragonewts of Kralorela who "survived in strength" as subjects of the Kralori dragon emperors who kept being overcome by Sekever.

 

 

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Somehow, the Kralori dragonewts persist throughout Shang-Hsa's reign as False Dragon Emperor, which either means that Shang-Hsa did something not quite wrong, or that the role of the Kralori emperor in Kralori dragonewt society is overrated. The False Dragon Ring is finally deposed in 1054, twelve years after the Fall of the EWF dragonspeakers in the mass utuma.

 

My take on this is basically that the dragonewts set up (draconic) Kralorela as a protective buffer state for their nests (through Godunya, who is also effectively a dragon.). As long as the nests remain safe, there's no real reason to intervene.

[svensson]

While all of the deep lore is interesting [and it really is, no sarcasm intended], my somewhat long winded post wasn't meant as a exposition on Dragons, Dragonewts, and Dragon Pass. It was intended to explain to the OP that a] dragonewts are unpredictable and b] why they're unpredictable. It's easy to just say 'have them do what your story requires and if it makes no sense to the players you've succeeded', but I thought to put effort into giving the OP some ideas on what makes 'newts so dangerous.

Something I think that all of us grognards need to remember is that when a poster asks a question, they don't have 40 years of reading every single word of the 'Codex Gloranthacon' and parsing its meanings. And they certainly don't have access to many of the out of print items or the not-canon-anymore-but-kinda-interesting' material as well. We're trying to make RuneQuest and Glorantha more accessible for new players, not smack them with the Wall of Text. I think that we old timers should be available to offer deep lore, but we need to answer their questions with the short answer first.

I admit that my answer was probably too long by those standards, so I'll probably have to work on that one too.

Edited May 14, 2021 by svensson

[Nevermet]

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

Dragonewt cities might be best understood as monasteries, places mainly dedicated to spiritual advancement while providing some basic creature comforts allowing the pursuit of that advancement.

This is very helpful to me.  Thank you!

[Nevermet]

3 hours ago, svensson said:

I admit that my answer was probably too long by those standards, so I'll probably have to work on that one too.

Eh, while I'm not a Grognard, I'm fine with long answers.  I spent far too much time in grad school, but a positive effect of that is that I can follow Gloranthan Deep Dive posts pretty well 🤪

 

So, please, for me, pontificate away!

[Nevermet]

In general, this is a good thread for me because it's very easy for "inexplicably random" to end up being bad comedy.  So, thanks.

 

I also appreciate the idea that Newts are both "the slow ones" and also the idea that Newts are on a sort of forever-Heroquest.  The latter point helps me understand how their behaviour can be inexplicable, but also sometimes stable.  For example, Ryzel in Maniria currently has a long-standing trade relationship with the city of Jubal, where the city rulers do random, undignified things as outlined by the Newts, and then in return the Newts give them a rare dye.

 

Also, while I don't have an immediate plan to use him in my Maniria HQG game, it's interesting to see how New Wymish is a "Bad Dragonewt" precisely because they are explicable to humans:

Quote

New Wyrmish sees himself as the new link between humans and dragonewts. He was a tailed priest, but died in terribly dishonorable circumstances. Reborn, he glories in his rebellion. He is self-important and magically powerful, although not the great leader which he pretends to be. He is known to have extremely powerful magic, however. New Wyrmish sports a great, flowing robe and had his tongue altered to speak most local human languages with a sibilant accent. (Guide, p. 355)

 

Edited May 9, 2021 by Nevermet

[Hijabg]

As a GM I like to use allegories to help me understand and explain alien concepts - for example I use the Internet as a kind of metaphor for the Spirit World.

The allegory I've been using for understanding and roleplaying Dragonewts behavior is that for them Time is flowing backwards.

They were born in the future, and in that future, beyond the cycle of reincarnations, they used to be perfect dragons. They are not evolving through dragonewt stages but devolving toward nothingness, trying to reach beyond the O (zero ?) of the Ouroboros. When their current life is over, they go to sleep into their eggs, and there they dream of a new life, and that life happens ! Some are suddenly born at the end of a sword, blood reaching up from the earth, up into their veins as they take their first breath, again. Seconds later they might be giving birth to some alien human life at the end of their Klanth, and then follow that human specimen for some time. Maybe they would remember their old hide, and how the human who gave them birth actually liberated them from this obstacle on the path to Nirvana. 

Basically, by turning around the flow of time you can give an alien perspective to anything you want . As a GM you do not have to reveal that perspective change to your players, you can keep it for you so that things can make sense for you, but remain beyond the understanding of your players - that's what magic is all about !

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, Hijabg said:

The allegory I've been using for understanding and roleplaying Dragonewts behavior is that for them Time is flowing backwards.

There's also a certain "Groundhog Day" aspect to the dragonewts' lives (if you've seen that movie). 

During each stage, they experience life like a single day in which they are trying to resolve a particular problem or achieve a particular ritual practice which they believe will liberate them further.  Then they die, and wake back up as if the day was starting all over again, and they may enact each step through the day all over again until they get to the point where they feel they failed, and then try to do something different (along the same paired traits though).  And then they die once more, and so it goes. 

And all the while, they don't understand the alien things like humans, trolls, elves, etc. which they are interacting with.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Similarly to the the two above posts, I've also suggested an allegory for dragonewt lives.

In the linked thread in my first post, I compared dragonewt lives to procedurally ("randomly") generated roguelike games. Those are games where you are EXPECTED to fail and die, but every time you do so, you advance a little in terms of personal power and skill. However, the game map is recreated completely differently each time, so you have to figure out everything again. I added the caveat that in the Dragonewt version, it might not just be the game map that's different, but the very victory conditions and game mechanics that change as well, and they're unknown. 

So a dragonewt has lived many lives, sought many mysteries, and even if they gained some great knowledge in a past life, that knowledge or insight or skill might be completely redundant or irrelevant now. In fact, it might be a hindrance, and they might try to unlearn it. 

This is all fine, of course, the challenge lies in actualizing it into tabletop gameplay. Suggestions for rolling up goals or limitations or whatever at regular intervals, as someone suggested above, might be good. 

But still, a PC has to have some core of stability, I think? Otherwise it sounds like a pain to play with.

[Joerg]

I said so before, but IMO the dragonewt individual is the unborn dragon inside the egg. The dragonewt manifested by the egg is a material projection of the entity inside the egg rather than the individual itself, an analogon to a dream dragon. A remote sensing and sensating platform.

[Hijabg]

21 minutes ago, Joerg said:

the dragonewt individual is the unborn dragon inside the egg. The dragonewt manifested by the egg is a material projection of the entity inside the egg

Do you think it's the same for dragons ? Or is that a distinctive features of "newts" ?

Maybe all True Dragons are material projections of the Cosmic Egg ?