CaptainPenguin/DragonKingsAllOverAgain

Introduction

One day, I went on down to my local Barnes and Noble, went to the game books section, looked at the Exalted books, and there it was, Ruins of Rathess, a brand-spanking-new book. I got it, of course, and skipped home gleefully. It was a cool book, of course; all Exalted books are so. But there was a problem. Let me skip back a while. When I got my very first Exalted book, here and there I read little blurbs about "the Dragon Kings", a mention once or twice of their "High Holy Speech", and it was implied that they were extinct. I got some other books, and in a few of these books, there were mentioned ancient Dragon King artifacts and even an old pyramid (the Mound of Forsaken Seeds, or whatever that one Deathlord lady's Manse is called). From these small hints, I constructed for myself an image of truly awesome Dragon Kings, ancient, forgotten beings who ruled long before the coming of man, Lovecraftian creatures who possessed ancient and eldritch secrets.

BUT NO! In fact, in the First Age, they were well known, if you believe Ruins of Rathess. They aren't alien, eldritch ancients at all! They were blase, old, tired, they were basically reptilian Exalted.

And that's not cool with me, man. That's not cool at all. And since I found them so boring and uncool, I've decided to re-create them. Pretty much totally, though I may keep some elements.

So, behold! I shall create something worthy... of me! :)

Primordial Dreams

Birth of God

In the beginning, there was only darkness, and the Wyld. Unformed ideas, storms of possibilities, might-have-beens and certainties, gibbering madnesses and iron wills, in a boiling chaos, sound-without-sound, maelstrom of eternity and endings.

But then, in that pale blackness, whispering theories formed swirling foci, screamed silently as their nebulous composite structures, complicated with contradictions, succumbed to an increasing gravity. Pulling in abandoned hypotheses and wild spears of intuition, they formed sentience, and that sentience was the first.

Then came others- sentience begat sentience, in a chain reaction of unreason which splintered endless dimensions into planes and angles of reason and thought.

What a terrible catastrophe for the eternal force of Change that day-week-month-year-decade-millenium-epoch, when the Primordials were born.

To Tame The World, That Proud Stallion

Work in progress!

Comments, Concerns, Words of Wisdom

good luck, and if you need help or ideas just ask ^_^ - Paladinltd

Hehe, the "so-and-so Exalted aren't good enough" syndrome. I've had that too. Maybe you could pull some ideas from http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?Qzujak49/DragonGraced. I remember reading somewhere that the Dragon-Kings were used to help tame creation for more civilized beings. Maybe they were first age constructs designed to seek out and grow from the essence of demesnes just so that the one's who made them could go "Ah, a giant dinosaur. There must be a demesne nearby." Of course, all that essence made them smarter than their creators intended. -Qzujak49

I was not terribly disappointed by them in Ruins of Rathess, though I went in with the mindset that would make cool antagonists. I could have the whole "Predator" feel of something stalking the PCs through the jungle without needing to make a Pack of Lunars or one juiced up Lunar. From the Player's Guide, the Dragon-Kings did seem like awesome, ancient creatures who possessed ancient and eldritch secrets. For a long time, humans were the step-n-fetch bitches of the Dragon-Kings . . . their knowledge is the basis for human thaumaturgy (and, perhaps all of the stuff that humans didn't get from the gods and Autochton via the Exalted). Sure . . . they suck -now- but there a bunch of the old ones. Sleeping Dragon-Kings from the First Age (well, pre-Great Contagion, anyway) in their cryogenic chambers (or whatever) just waiting to re-awaken and re-train all of the young Dragon-Kings and make a whole new Dinotopia where humans were back to being step-n-fetch houseboys.

The PG makes them pretty alien, too. They spend the first handful of decades of their lives as sub-intelligent, sub-sentient beings who live for the kill. Then they develop a mind, go learn a bunch of strange and esoteric Dragon-King values, and live out their lives. They never lose their memories, either, so they make an Exalt with Past Lives maxed out look like some senile bastard who can't remember what happened five minutes ago. It'd make your pretty darn alien if you remembered without break your every incarnation. The Ankloks, especially, seem damned weird. ~ Andrew02

True, true. Most of what I object to in the book was their presentation as sort of becoming the humans' happy little lizard buddies, and the fact that they have elemental types, which puts them too close to the Exalted themselves for my tastes. I haven't gotten my hands on the PG yet... Maybe I'll do that before I go of on this project, eh? Anyway, if anybody wants to help, they can. Just make suggestions. - CaptainPenguin

Yeah . . . that would suck pretty badly. Elemental types is something only the Dragon-Blooded have, and if it bothers you, you might not like the stuff in the PG. They get a path that makes them look human, and another that lets them turn into giant full dinosaurs . . . just like Lunars. The resemblance to Exalts, I think, is intentional. If memory serves, they are at least partially a precursor to Exalts. It might help to get the PG. It might change your mind. They probably aren't as powerful as you would like . . . they're somewhere between god-blooded and Dragon-Blooded, I think. ~Andrew02