Dragon cult write ups.

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, JRE said:

[M]agic learnt from language is not draconic. As you codify the magic, you lose sight of the true objective

Per RQ3 Introduction to Glorantha Book (p. 25, but this is not a direct quote):

• Non-dragon magic is incompatible with spiritual development, fit only for scouts
• Dragon magic hinders spiritual development — use sparingly; death & reincarnation may be preferable
• Warrior dragonewt magical effects amount to “be more dragonish” in a crass Path of Immanent Mastery way (wings, fire, claws, …) — whether this is to ram the point home or just a failure of imagination, I cannot say

So magic is always a trap, whether written down — codified — in a spell book (inclusive) or true dragon magic employed by an illiterate dragonewt as a non-spell effect. Or that is the dragonewts’ point of view, anyway, and it would allow PIM & EWF magic to be true dragon magic and actually using it still to be folly. Just how one views the EWF and PIM may depend on whether you see the dragonewt resorting to magic as Kwai Chang Caine getting into yet another fight or as Bruce Banner becoming the Hulk.

3 hours ago, JRE said:

But the Dragonewt progression is failed, and that is why there are still so many dragonewts around, because the progression itself is a lie.

Is it the dragonewt path that is the problem, or were they dealt a shitty hand by biology? (Don’t worry: that is a question, not an answer.)

• “descendants of neotenic dragons from before the Dawn of Time” (Ibid, p. 23)
• “All dragonewts hatch from eggs laid by immature dragons” (Ibid, p. 24)

Now one might suppose that these two formulations are not equivalent, but let us be relaxed about it — either their parents were “broken” by some possibly unreasonable draconic standard or they were not yet ready to mate, consequently the offspring had “developmental difficulties” and without the path of reincarnation and renunciation (e.g. of dragon magic) would never become “properly mature” dragons. So the path was provided for them by some snotty “true” dragon or by Sidney Arthur, the first hippy dragonewt.

So where does that leave us?

• One way or another, dragonewt numbers are going down — “slowly dying through evolution” (RQ2 Classic, p. 83), whatever that means
• A path may be hard and slow without being ineffective — mean number of reincarnations to escape saṃsāra?
• The remaining dragonewts may be the ones dealt the cruellest hand at conception — and so we must patronise them, rather than mocking their affliction
• Some dragonewts say “screw this” and become magisaurs
• Some dragonewts are happy being dragonewts — they view the path to dragonhood as a “solution” without a problem — and so fake it and hope not to make it
• A truly enlightened dragonewt does not reincarnate but steps off the wheel and becomes one with the Void — dragonhood is for power trippers

Obviously, I favour the last two, but then — as a sickeningly romantic member of the bande sinistre — I have always seen the dragonewts as us.

[JRE]

This is of course my own take, as the bestiary specifies that Full Priests that become heroes will be reborn as dragons, but I see dragonewts as a progression that actually has nothing to do with actual dragonhood, as the difference between a Full priest and a dragon is much larger than the one between a crested dragonewt and a full priest. The progression shows that the dragonewt is both improving in dragon magic and also in self-control, and gaining power through it, but that is like a human becoming more powerful by emulating a god time archetype. It is not a change in nature. Only when they make the mental change from body bound in time, to mind outside of time will they become a dragon. From limited power to unlimited, the infinity rune.

Full priests probably are getting closer to this transition, so that is why most of those that switch are at that point. 

Taken further, that means that most of the Dragons that took action at the Dragonkill, are dragons that became dragons after the event, which is why, despite their supposed aloofness, the destruction of the nests would create a paradox, so they did not act sentimentally to protect their descendants, but that the nests survival was required for their own dragon nature, and the dragons were just the instruments of fate in guaranteeing the end result.

A dragon fragment fixed in time, whether it is a dragonewt instructor or a fragment of a dragon soul, cannot communicate what it is to be out of time, so to manifest the powers inside time you need to use magic in the way humans always do, by sacrificing power, either permanently or temporarily. So unless you manage to become a dragon, the magic powers will be manifested through permanent POW (learning new abilities), geasa or shamanic abilities  (exchanging freedom of action for abilities) or temporary effects through MP expenditure.

Different schools will offer draconic abilities in different ways, but I would like to think that those that follow them are no closer than anyone else to becoming a dragon, though they may well be able to communicate with one, or even get one to wake up and do what comes naturally...

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, JRE said:

Taken further, that means that most of the Dragons that took action at the Dragonkill, are dragons that became dragons after the event, which is why, despite their supposed aloofness, the destruction of the nests would create a paradox, so they did not act sentimentally to protect their descendants, but that the nests survival was required for their own dragon nature, and the dragons were just the instruments of fate in guaranteeing the end result.

Or go the full ouroboros and make each neotenic dragon her own parent (and hence her own descendant): each hatches from the very same dragonewt egg she herself laid — after who knows how many goes around as a ’newt. You can have the dragons of the Dragonkill retentive of somatic, psychological, and spiritual features of immature dragons.

And so we understand why magic which makes you sprout dragon features is called real dragon magic, fake dragon magic, and spiritually regressive — it is all about turning into a neotenic dragon (the kind that dreams dream dragons while pretending to be a mountain range and sometimes gets it head chopped off by Orlanth). Dragon as power tripper, as scary monster from the edgelands, as Wakboth eating “his” own tail having run out of gods to munch on. The dragon who appears from her own cloaca is as likely to disappear up it?

Now if you want to see a real grown-up dragon, I am afraid you will be disappointed. Everyone expects bigger and scarier, but that misses the point — we have already written off wings, claws, vastness, and fiery breath as spiritual missteps. Some say the Void is vast and frightening, the source of all nightmares, but I say that it is quiet and empty … and nothing … nothing, at all.

[Joerg]

Use of dragon magic under the right circumstances furthers draconic development - it helps the dragonhood candidate (whether EWF mystic or dragonewt) to encompass being a dragon by taking on more and more draconid traits.

Looking at Ingolf Dragonfriend's development, the wings aren't just a means of flying but also an adaptation to some of the Draconic Otherworlds (msleadingly named Draconic Hells) on the mystical path towards achieving unity with the Source.

IMG, dragonewts don't hatch from their eggs. They emanate, much like Dream Dragons, as the egg extrapoilates the dragonhood characteristics that its immature parent could not contribute to its racial memory.

It is said that the dragonewts in Dragon Pass survived in weakness, whereas the dragonewts in Kralorela survived in strength. To me, one expression of this weakness are the dinosaurs, physical beings hatching from mis-developed dragon eggs destroying the egg in the process (unlike the emanation of another body for the dragonewt ego to inhabit).

The (arche-) typical dragonewt egg seems to have been hatched in Godtime, making all time travel theories moot. The question is how did the number of dragonewts multiply from the roughly 5000 at Dragon's Eye at the Dawn to the tens of thousands in Genertela west of the Shan Shan if no new eggs were added? Or was there such a huge number of dormant eggs (without any current body for their egos) that dragonewt activity managed to activate more?

In late 2nd Age Peloria, thousands of dragonewt eggs were destroyed: ending those potential dragons, or possibly sending them off into a Dragonewts Dream that manifested in Glorantha about 90 years before the date of the setting?

IMO that's one of the fates of the barbarian dragonewts - when they die, their eggs fall dormant for quite a while before a new body for the ego is manifested. A dormant egg might even give up much of the substance it loaned from its environment, retreating into a much smaller physical reality leaving behind a small feature of geology or similar.

To come back to dragon magic, the "adult" stage of it is to integrate the material world around a True Dragon into its self, assimilating surrounding hills etc. into its ego.

 

[The Lonely Khan]

There is a great adventure and write up in the pegasus plateau book in the chapter The Ruin on the Stream you might want to check out.