The dragons of this world are massive creatures dwarfing blue whales, amphibians that have evolved into a shape and ecological niche somewhat like sharks.
Dragon tadpoles hatch inside the mother by the millions. They incubate inside the mother for many years, generations of human lifetimes, winnowing away to merely thousands of human-sized young by the time of birth, and fewer still will survive through final metamorphosis, merely tens.
But before all of that, they live inside their mothers, initially as tadpoles, then first metamorphosis into humanoid forms with big brains and opposable thumbs. They develop rich lives full of community and culture, each generation of each womb isolated and therefore unique.
At some point, if they don't destroy themselves first for miscellaneous reasons, they come to understand where they are and what is to come, and usually this leads to apocalypse; and in fact this is almost a necessity of birth.
So violence ensues, and millions become thousands, and then they fight each other and the rest of the world, and thousands become tens, and they reach final metamorphosis and lose their humanoid forms but not their intelligence.
The remaining siblings would generally rather not ever see each other again, and even when they meet other dragons, they may as well be aliens from another planet, and so begrudgingly, dragons become selfish and individualistic creatures.
After final metamorphosis they become in appearance more like dragons as we generally conceive of them.
They have a "second stomach", really a lab, lined with countless "hands", and they pull apart anything not used for sustenance at the molecular level, doing all sorts of sophisticated chemistry and alchemy; the combustion that lets them soar the skies like jet engines or breath nuclear fire or the toxins and hallucinogens they cultivate for mating that give dragons such supernatural presence.
Dragon tadpoles hatch inside the mother by the millions. They incubate inside the mother for many years, generations of human lifetimes, winnowing away to merely thousands of human-sized young by the time of birth, and fewer still will survive through final metamorphosis, merely tens.
But before all of that, they live inside their mothers, initially as tadpoles, then first metamorphosis into humanoid forms with big brains and opposable thumbs. They develop rich lives full of community and culture, each generation of each womb isolated and therefore unique.
At some point, if they don't destroy themselves first for miscellaneous reasons, they come to understand where they are and what is to come, and usually this leads to apocalypse; and in fact this is almost a necessity of birth.
So violence ensues, and millions become thousands, and then they fight each other and the rest of the world, and thousands become tens, and they reach final metamorphosis and lose their humanoid forms but not their intelligence.
The remaining siblings would generally rather not ever see each other again, and even when they meet other dragons, they may as well be aliens from another planet, and so begrudgingly, dragons become selfish and individualistic creatures.
After final metamorphosis they become in appearance more like dragons as we generally conceive of them.
They have a "second stomach", really a lab, lined with countless "hands", and they pull apart anything not used for sustenance at the molecular level, doing all sorts of sophisticated chemistry and alchemy; the combustion that lets them soar the skies like jet engines or breath nuclear fire or the toxins and hallucinogens they cultivate for mating that give dragons such supernatural presence.
This is somewhat in contrast to Patrick Stuart's dragons (I believe it's this post...) which explores dragon intelligence and being, and the inhumanity of them. The dragons in this post are actually the result of a quite human experience.
The idea that the fetal (if that's the right word?) dragons being humanoid, and the metamorphoses, is partially inspired by the Carp and the Dragon Gate of Chinese mythology. Also, it's not uncommon for settings with magical and intelligent dragons to be able to take humanoid form, so from a game perspective, you can have young dragons or dragons that escaped the womb, who are still older and more powerful than most humans, secretly existing among humanity.
The idea of the "lab" in their stomach was meant to evoke a bio-tech or science fantasy sensibility, but it's all internal so it can be ignored in a more traditional fantasy setting. It was partially to allow them to do "hands-y" things even after they evolve into full dragons, but also inspired by the science fantasy vampires of Vampire Hunter D or the Castlevania anime. The hallucinogenic part was meant to explain what gives them a godly or supernatural presence, but again, they could just literally be gods or demigods or whatever.
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