#dragon death

[prokopetz]

Low-level Dungeons & Dragons adventure where one of those big goofy skywhale things has died and crash-landed in the middle of town, and what initially appears to be a simple cleanup assignment abruptly takes a combat-heavy turn when the party gets to find out what feeds on skywhalefalls.

[ellstersmash]

all the ancient dragon age blogs on June 9 2024

[westerosiladies]

[sparkoflena]

Random Headcanon

Dick: Tim, we need to talk about your relationship with Damian.

Tim: ...why? We have a normal Sibling Bickering relationship.

Dick: You are the only member of this family that he still calls by your last name. I know things were rough at the start but you need to bond with him more and-

Tim, already laughing: This is about my name???

Dick: Yeah, your last name-

Tim: Dick, my last name is Drake!

Dick: ...I'm aware.

Tim: And Damian's 13.

Dick: I don't see the correlation.

Tim: Drake translates to 'dragon.' And he's a kid.

Dick: So this is about... your name meaning?

Tim: Would you rather call your brother by a stuffy name like Timothy or by DRAGON

[prideprejudce]

alicent realizing that viserys deathbed confession to make aegon king was a giant misunderstanding and now there's nothing she can do about it because her sons are out for blood and she has no power over them anymore. she's now doomed to be haunted by her own pre war decisions for the rest of her life

[egophiliac]

tsum events really are just the best, huh

[bunnis-monsters]

NSFW

Yandere!Dragon Hybrid that protects his pregnant mate with violence, ready to tear apart anyone that comes close to where they’re nesting.

He’s keeping you on his bulging cock to keep both of you warm as the snow rages on outside.

Soft purrs leave his throat, his claws running over your swollen belly as his scarlet eyes stare down at you with utter adoration. Cumming inside is the only option for him! You have to be claimed after all!

The decorations in the cave are a bit unsettling, but you get used to the human skulls and bones of unknown origin eventually.

Besides that, it’s quite beautiful, with jewels and gold glittering all around, he’s quite proud when you take notice of his hoard, and adores to ravish you when you’re wearing some of the treasure he’s collected!

Only the finest silk and softest blankets are used to build your nest, along with fabrics he’s cum all over! After all, his scent should soothe you, he’s your mate!

Defending you and keeping you safe are his top priorities. He’ll bring home his kills like a house cat bringing you a mouse, confused on why you cry and scream when he drops a mauled human in front of you.

He worked so hard to protect you, don’t you love him? Aren’t you proud? It hurts his feelings a little… but he once heard from a human that happy wife equals a happy life, so he spoils you to make up for it.

Pampering you comes at a close second on his list of priorities.

Your belly is so swollen with his child that eventually, walking becomes hard! He does everything for you. Hunting, cooking, bathing you, it’s all to show his love and utter devotion to you, his everything.

[ceo-of-sloppy-men]

Edit: people not getting that I made this to mock myself will never not be funny to me.

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Hot take

Night furies are actually perfectly evolved for hunting and killing other dragons and the only reason they aren't a dragon-hunting species like the death song or deathgrippers are is because DreamWorks couldn't have their adorable main character dragon be a "cannibal"

(below I'm gonna try to summarize what we've figured out in a convo with friends on discord)

(also tw animal death via predator)

First of all yes I'm aware that pretty much every decision made about their design was with consideration of the effect it would make on human audiences but hear me out

Night furies are most iconically known as dive-bombers. They are built for speed, high maneuverability, night-time camouflage and for striking targets from above. If we remove human settlements out of the equation (which would not have existed long enough to actually influence night fury evolution, come on), what does that leave us with?

They aren't built for catching fish for sure, they aren't very hydrodynamic and their head is round, wide, and their teeth are dull. Honestly, the monstrous nightmare is much better suited for catching fish, with its long neck, almost pelican-like jaw and rhamphorhynchus teeth

Compare to

Yeah the jaws look kinda like a porpoise of some sort but for that the whole body would have to be a lot more aquatic imo. The light fury looks a lot closer to an aquatic diver, it has a sleeker body, rounded fins instead of spikes, and a long neck.

I don't really see them hunting land animals either, they just don't look like they're adapted for that minus the resemblance with large felines and even then, they're too large to effectively hunt in forests.

The one thing I can kinda imagine them hunting is large mainland megafauna, but we're working with a setting that takes place pretty much exclusively on islands. And overall, dragons are the only abundant species there with the exception of fish and human-bred sheep and chickens.

In general, night furies have duller teeth, smaller claws and are smaller than most dragons. Disregarding the movies making Toothless weirdly OP, a night fury would be disadvantaged against most dragons in a 1v1 fight and besides, it has four huge weak spots that would highly discourage it from a direct physical fight - the primary and secondary tail fins. One unlucky rip in the membrane and the night fury is fucked.

The night fury however noticeably resembles falcons, given their dive-bombing ability and high maneuverability.

Falcons too have smaller beaks and weaker claws compared to most birds of prey, and for that they compensate by simply picking up speed, balling up their talons and Punching. Really. Hard.

And they use that ability to kill other birds, even much larger ones, by knocking them right from the sky.

Here, the night fury's plasma blast works the same way as a falcon's punch. Dragons are fire-resistant, so what the plasma blast does is really just a densely packed bolt of energy that has the effect of either stunning or outright killing prey by damaging its spine. And what the plasma bolt doesn't do, rapid contact with the ground would finish. And if even that doesn't do it, the night fury's wide jaws and dull teeth are just fine for simply clamping around the unlucky dragon's neck and strangling it, like a lion or a pitbull.

The night-time camouflage allows the night fury to soar for extended periods of time perfectly unnoticed in the night sky, and by the time it strikes, the dragon wouldn't even know what's coming.

Unless

Say the hunting night fury is aware of other dragons sleeping under the trees, as most dragons probably would at night (village raids aside, most dragons seem to be diurnal), so how does the night fury get them in position where it can use its signature attack? Well, there's That Iconic Screech Of Death. Since in the movies it tends to appear not just during dive-bombings but also when charging up a blast, I imagine it's something the night fury is able to control to some degree. So by simply fake-diving in close proximity to sleeping dragons, it can effectively terrify them into leaving their hideout and fly out into the open where it can easily take them out.

I dunno, the possibility of night furies as predators to other dragons just makes so much sense to me, I really don't know what other reasons there would be for them to evolve these particular adaptations.

And one more little headcanon to add to this whole rant - since night furies are significantly smaller and less equipped for dragon vs dragon fights and are primarily speed-based predators, I imagine there is this very likely scenario:

There is one dragon who resembles a hyena, a lil bit

Ok, rant over

[soul-siren]

"You're a Failure, and your family died knowing it."

I finally finished it!

I got majorly distracted with only 2 sections of this left, and it gathered dust for a bit. But here it is! All the angst!

My Emmit Hawke, purple and unromanced. He's just very tired and never given a break, so might as well strand him in the Fade, right? (I love my Hawke, promise)

There was originally a part 2 that has a bit more of a hopeful tune to leaving him behind, but I dunno if I'll get to that. We'll see.

[proxycrit]

(I point. Gently, in the voice of somebody who’s mind touched by the outer gods, i whisper truth in your ears:

Your honor the horses are now lesbians

(Anyways here’s the designs)

[itseghost]

the captured! quest was so funny that i actually drew multiple things at once

[inquissien]

The first batch of requests by @drunkenfangschrecke, @summoningraziel and @jellymish-art.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[prideprejudce]

people will always blame alicent and rhaenyra or even daemon for sparking the start of the civil war but at the end of the day it will always come back to viserys and his cowardly decisions. as soon as he allowed himself to be bullied to remarry and to have more kids again, he officially sewed the seeds together for future conflict after his death no matter who he married. like if he had married laena instead of alicent and had sons with her, would the outcome have been so different? do you think rhaenys and corlys would have stood on the sidelines and watched their grandson get passed over? especially after rhaenyra had illegitimate sons that weren't even laenors? that they wouldn't have petitioned their own dance? the snake will always eat its own tail for power, and viserys doomed rhaenyra to her death with his own

[felassan]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard info compilation Post 1

Post is under a cut due to length.

There is a lot of information coming out right now about DA:TV from many different sources. This post is just an effort to compile as much as I can in one place, in case that helps anyone. Sources for where the information came from have been included. Where I am linking to a social media user's post, the person is either a dev, a Dragon Age community council member or other person who has had a sneak peek at and played the game. nb, this post is more of a 'info that came out in snippets from articles and social media posts' collection rather than a 'regurgitating the information on the official website or writing out what happened in the trailer/gameplay reveal' post. The post is broken down into headings on various topics. A few points are repeated under multiple headings where relevant. Where I am speculating without a source, I have clearly demarcated this. if you notice any mistakes in this post, please tell me.

as this post hit a kind of character limit, there will probably be at least 1 more post. :)

Character Creation

CC is vast [source] and immensely detailed [source]

We will enter CC straight after Varric's opening narration [source]

You are given 5 categories to work your way through in CC: Lineage, Appearance, Class, Faction, Playstyle. Each of these has a range of subcategories within them. There are 8 subcategories within the "head" subcategory" in "Appearance" alone [source]

Lineage dictates things like race (i.e. human, elf, dwarf, qunari) and backstory [source]

Backstories include things like factions. Factions offer 3 distinct buffs each [source]

There are dozens and dozens of hairstyles [source]

There are separate options for binary and non-binary pronouns and gender [source]

"BioWare's work behind the scenes, meanwhile, goes as deep as not only skin tones but skin undertones, melanin levels, and the way skin reacts differently to light" [source]

CC has a range of lighting options within it so that you can check how the character looks in them [source]

There are a range of full-body customization options such as a triangular slider between body types and individual settings down to everything from shoulder width to glute volume [source]. There are "all the sliders [we] could possibly want". The body morpher option allows us to choose different body sizes [source]

All body options are non-gendered [source]

They/them pronouns are an option [source]

Rook can be played as non-binary [source]

Individual strands of hair were rendered separately and react remarkably to in-game physics [source]

Special, focused attention was paid to ensuring that hairstyles "come across as well-representative, that everyone can see hairstyles that feel authentic to them, even the way they render" [source]

The game uses strand hair technology borrowed in part from the EA Sports games. The hair is "fully-controlled by physics," so it "looks even better in motion than it does here in a standstill" [source]

The ability to import our choices from previous games is fully integrated into CC. This will take the form of tarot cards - "you can go into your past adventures" and this mechanic tells you what the context was and what decision you want to make [source]

In CC we will also be able to customize/remake our Inquisitor [source]

A core tenet of the game is "be who you want to be" [source]

There are presets for all 4 of the game's races (human, elf, dwarf, qunari), in case detailed CCs overwhelm you [source]

Story

The story is set 9 years since Inquisition [source]

The Inquisitor will appear [source]

Other characters refer to the PC as Rook [source]. This article says they are "the Rook" [source]

The ability to import our choices from previous games is fully integrated into CC. This will take the form of tarot cards - "you can go into your past adventures" and this mechanic tells you what the context was and what decision you want to make [source]

The prologue is quite lengthy. A narrated intro from Varric lays the groundwork with some lore and explains about Solas [source]. In this Varric-narrated opening section, the dwarf recaps the events of previous games and explains the motivations of Solas [source] (Fel note/speculation: this sounds like this cinematic that we saw on DA Day 2023)

What happens first off is that Rook, who is working with Varric, is interrogating a bartender about the whereabouts of a contact in Minrathous who can help them stop Solas. The bartender does not play nice and we are presented with our first choice: talk the bartender down or intimidate them aggressively [source]

The first hour of the game is "a luxurious nighttime romp through a crumbling city under a mix of twinkling starlight and lavish midnight blue" (Minrathous) [source]. The game begins with a tavern brawl (depending on dialogue options) and a stroll through Minrathous in search of Neve Gallus, who has a lead on Solas [source]. Minrathous then comes under attack [source] by demons [source] (Fel note/speculation: it sounds like the demo the press played is what we saw in the Gameplay Reveal). Off in the distance is a vibrant, colorful storm where Solas is performing his ritual. [source] Eventually we come upon Harding. [source] and Neve. Rook and co enter a crumbling castle, where ancient elf secrets pop up, "seemingly just for the lore nerds". [source] Then we teleport to Arlathan Forest, have a mini boss fight with a Pride Demon, and there is the climactic confrontation with Solas. After a closing sequence, at this point it is the end of the game's opening mission. [source] (Fel note/speculation: So the Gameplay Reveal showed the game's opening mission)

The action in the story's opening parts starts off quite quick from the sounds of things: the devs wanted to get the player right in to the story. because, “Especially with an RPG where they can be quite lore-heavy, a lot of exposition at the front and remembering proper nouns, it can be very overwhelming.” [source]

BioWare wanted to make the beginning of Dragon Age: The Veilguard feel like the finale of one of their other games [source]

Rook's Faction will be referenced in dialogue [source]

Minrathous is beautiful, with giant statues, floating palaces, orange lantern glow and magical runes which glow green neon. These act "like electricity" as occasional signs above pubs and stores [source]

The story has a lot of darkness tonally. These dark parts of the game contain the biggest spoilers [source]. However, the team really wanted to build in contrast between the dark and light moments in the game, as if everything is dark, nothing really feels dark [source]

Our hub (like the Normandy in ME or Skyhold in DA:I) is a place called The Lighthouse [source] (Fel note/speculation: I guess this screenshot shows the crew in The Lighthouse? ^^)

Each companion has a very complex backstory, their own problems, and deep motivations. These play out through well-fleshed out character arcs and missions that are unique to them but which are ultimately tied into the larger story [source]

We will make consequential decisions for each character, sometimes affecting who they are in heart-wrenching ways and other times joyously [source]

Decisions from previous DA games will be able to be carried over, it will just work a bit differently this time [source]. The game will not read our previous saves. For stuff pertaining to previous games/choices, players will not have to link their accounts [source]

Characters, companions, romance

Varric is a major character [source]

Every companion is romanceable [source]

BioWare tried to make each character's friendship just as meaningful, regardless of romance [source]

If you don't romance a character, they may end up romancing each other [source]

There will be some great cameos [source]. Some previous characters are woven into the game [source]

Companion sidequests/optional content relating to companions is highly curated when it involves their motivations and experiences [source]

We could permanently lose some companions depending on our choices [source]

Our choices can influence if characters get injured and what they think about us [source]

The bonds Rook forges with companions determine how party members grow and what abilities become available [source]

Each companion has a very complex backstory, their own problems, and deep motivations. These play out through well-fleshed out character arcs and missions that are unique to them but which are ultimately tied into the larger story [source]

We will make consequential decisions for each character, sometimes affecting who they are in heart-wrenching ways and other times joyously [source]

Gameplay, presentation, performance etc

Each class (warrior, rogue, mage) has 3 specializations. The ones for Rogue are duelist, saboteur and Veil ranger [source]. (Fel note/speculation: Veil ranger reminds me of Bellara. Maybe this is her 'spec' too?)

Duelist gameplay involves a sharp combination of dashes, parries, leaps, rapid slashes and combos [source]

Faction-related buffs include being able to hold an extra potion or do extra damage against certain enemies [source]

Individual strands of hair were rendered separately and react remarkably to in-game physics [source]

Playstyle settings include custom, distinct difficulty settings for options as granular as parry windows, meaning "players who might fancy that playstyle but typically struggle with the finer points of combat can give it a go" [source]

Combat mechanics is a mix of real-time action and pause and play. Pausing brings up a radial menu split into 3 sections: companions to the left and right, Rook's skills at the bottom, and a targeting system at the top which helps get in focus on certain enemies. [source]. In the pause system you can queue up your whole party's attacks [source]

Tapping or holding the shoulder button pauses the game, allowing us to stop the action and issue orders to companions [source]

There is a system of specific enemy resistances and weaknesses [source]. Weaknesses and resistances plays a big role in combat and abilities are designed to exploit these accordingly [source]. An example is that "one character might be able to plant a weakening debuff on an enemy, and another enemy might be able to detonate them" [source]

There is a vast skill tree of unlockable options [source]

You can set up specific companions with certain kits, e.g. to tackle specific enemy types, to being more of a support, or as flexible all-rounders [source]

Healing magic returns [source]

Abilities can change together with elaborate results, e.g. one companion using a gravity well attack that sucked enemies together, another using a slowing move to keep them in place, and Rook using a big AOE to catch them all at once [source]

A shortcut system lets you map a few abilities to a smaller pinned menu at the bottom of the screen [source]

There are class-specific resource systems. For example, Rogue has "momentum", which builds up as Rook lands consecutive hits [source]

Each class will always have a ranged option [source]

Rogue Rook can do a sort of 'hip fire' option with a bow, letting you pop off arrows from the waist [source]

Warriors can throw their shield at enemies, and can build an entire playstyle around that using the skill tree [source]

There is light platforming gameplay [source]

The game runs on the latest iteration of the Frostbite engine [source]

The game targets 60 fps

On consoles it will feature performance and quality modes so we can choose our preferred visual fidelity [source]

The game is mission based [source]. Some levels that we go to do open up, some with more exploration than others. "Alternate branching paths, mysteries, secrets, optional content you're going to find and solve." [source]

Everything is hand-touched, hand-crafted and highly curated [source]

Some sidequests and optional content is highly curated, especially when it involves the motivations and experiences of the companions. In others we may be investigating for example a missing family, with an entire open bog environment to search for clues and a way to solve the disappearance [source]

Gameplay, presentation, performance etc continued, after the above bullet list hit a character limit

There is sophisticated animation cancelling and branching. Gameplay is action-like, and the design centers around dodging, countering, and using risk-reward charge attacks designed to break enemy armor layers [source]

The dialogue wheel returns [source]. It gives truncated summaries of the dialogue options rather than the full line that the character is going to say [source]

The bonds Rook forges with companions determine how party members grow and what abilities become available [source]

For stuff pertaining to previous games/choices, players will not have to link their accounts [source]

We can play the game fully offline [source]

There are no microtransactions [source]

The game itself is not as cell-shaded in look as the first trailer looked [source]

[☕ found this post or blog interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

[welightthewaysource]

House of the Dragon| 2x01