Flight Rising Discussion

I headcanon that dragons were made by the gods out of the parts/genes of many different organisms, with the organisms varying for each breed, and kinda were stuck together with/formed around magic, with that magical core being the thing that allows them to interbreed.

In the alternate universe that I have most of my clan lore in, dragons weren't created by the gods (as their existence, or at least ability to directly create living organisms, is debatable), but the situation is similar: Organisms on Sornieth can be turned into hybrids through ambient magic, and dragons are the descendants of a particularly adaptable species that stole genes from many other organisms.

So, basically, my headcanon answer is "most, if not all, dragon breeds are at least partially reptilian, but they're generally strange Frankensteinian entities assembled from multiple different clades, much like many other creatures on Sornieth (such as the beastclans and griffins)."


Edit: The first headcanon is somewhat supported by the Imperial Encyclopedia page: "Imperials were Light's first children, an amalgamation of bone, blood, and the shed essence of the Lightweaver--excavated from ancient battle sites of the First Age." (You could read that as being the flesh of the gods themselves, but it seems...unlikely that they were shedding their own bones all over the battlefield...could be horns or teeth or something, though? Could also be that the Lightweaver somehow made their bodies from nothing and "made from bone and blood" is just a fancy way of saying "they are meat organisms and not pure magic spirit beings.)

Edit 2: I also headcanon that Sornieth is an alternate Earth, since the life seems far too similar to Earth’s for it to be a full-on alien planet. No shade on anyone who has that headcanon, though.

[font=american gothic][size=4]@Eucyon [img]https://images.nintendolife.com/0506db507bc1f/a-snorlax.large.png[/img] YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME. Okay, so, ignoring the whole "dragons were made by the gods or are the product of spontaneous elemental generation" thing which guarantees dragons aren't related to anything but themselves (and, in the case of the Ancients, only related and capable of interbreeding with their own species), and, ignoring that Sornieth life is explicitly... well, Sornieth and isn't earth, throwing everything into question (just because it [i]looks[/i] like a rabbit doesn't mean it [i]is[/i] a rabbit. We could get into "featherless biped = BEHOLD A MAN" stuff if we aren't careful.) So, let's simplify this a bit and say we can equate Sornieth life to Earth life (ignoring obviously inequitable creatures like elementals), and that all dragons are derived from the same ancestor, more or less (depending on how you define Ancient dragons). One way of doing this, making dragons related to reptiles and tetrapods, is implicitly saying they're a mosaic group that has absorbed their own parasitic twins and made them functional, giving them an extra pair or more of limbs (hence why they are tetrapods but are hexapods). Which is rather impressive... but it [i]does[/i] lead to the problem of Guardians. (Without even getting into the worst- Aberrations) Problem is? Guardians have gills (look at their chests), and Undertides either have gills as well or do something like skin-breathing. While it's not entirely true [url=https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1994]evolution can't turn back the clock[/url] (skink re-evolves legs), it's still very hard! We can either say this is magic as a factor of evolution (itself a completely fair answer), or we can go Hard Mode and eliminate dragons from being reptiles [i]or[/i] mammals. (Note: I would probably move guardian gills to their necks, since we got jaws from gills so it'd make more sense to be near their jaws) So, in that case, dragons are something [i]else[/i]. Something [i]not[/i] a mammal, bird, amphibian (some amphibians have gills but not the way guardians have them), or even lobe-finned fish, since all of these have arms, legs, or their equivalent limb buds. So, what could we use instead from earth? [url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/brv.12118]Why hello there, sharks.[/url] As it turns out, we almost had a six-limbed placoderms (unlike sharks, where claspers are the extension of the fin), but instead we got reproductive organs instead. Funny how things turn out? But, what if things went differently? What if these little guys didn't use claspers for mating and instead for limbs? So, in this case, dragons are a very weird placoderm that eventually went the way of the Tiktaalik and crawled up on land, a pseudo-tetrapod if you will. In that case, I recommend combining placoderm anatomy with that of a tetrapod of your choice (personally, I recommend looking at "reptiles"- since it's [i]broken[/i] as @/Kaegro said, with a particular highlighting of protofeathered reptiles, aka dinosaurs for "fur"), but perhaps keeping things like the teeth and maybe the armored plates rather than skin in some areas? The other option we have, equally as bizarre, is that dragons are [i]invertebrates[/i] that have hastily grown skin and maybe muscle over their exoskeletons (which means they probably have an embryonic exoskeleton stage), making them pseudo-vertebrates. In that case, you can probably keep things like the chest gills since they definitely aren't fishlike gills, but you'll need to include invertebrate-like traits. If you make them a pseudo-arthropod, for example, I recommend checking things out like insect mouthparts that could be hidden behind fleshy lips. Fun! This still leaves the question of how Aberrations evolved, but since I think gastropods can have conjoined twins, that's a possibility. Though slowly evolving necessary conjoinedness would be pretty bizarre- but cool! Tl;dr: dragons probably aren't reptiles or mammals if you want to get super technical. Either evolve them from a fish or from an invertebrate if you want to try Hard Mode, but for drawing a skeleton I recommend combining traits of various species since I got lost on an evolution tangent. I can send some skeletons I've drawn before if you want ideas ^^

I mean if you reallly want to get reallly nittty grittty with it, this is an entirely diffferent planet with its own treees of life, and considering the fact that dragons were created through elemental energy and didn't evolve into existence like creatures on earth did, they're probably not even truely eukaryotes lol

[quote name="@Requacy" date="2024-03-24 23:15:38" ] [font=american gothic][size=4]@/Eucyon [img]https://images.nintendolife.com/0506db507bc1f/a-snorlax.large.png[/img] YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME. Okay, so, ignoring the whole "dragons were made by the gods or are the product of spontaneous elemental generation" thing which guarantees dragons aren't related to anything but themselves (and, in the case of the Ancients, only related and capable of interbreeding with their own species), and, ignoring that Sornieth life is explicitly... well, Sornieth and isn't earth, throwing everything into question (just because it [i]looks[/i] like a rabbit doesn't mean it [i]is[/i] a rabbit. We could get into "featherless biped = BEHOLD A MAN" stuff if we aren't careful.) So, let's simplify this a bit and say we can equate Sornieth life to Earth life (ignoring obviously inequitable creatures like elementals), and that all dragons are derived from the same ancestor, more or less (depending on how you define Ancient dragons). One way of doing this, making dragons related to reptiles and tetrapods, is implicitly saying they're a mosaic group that has absorbed their own parasitic twins and made them functional, giving them an extra pair or more of limbs (hence why they are tetrapods but are hexapods). Which is rather impressive... but it [i]does[/i] lead to the problem of Guardians. (Without even getting into the worst- Aberrations) Problem is? Guardians have gills (look at their chests), and Undertides either have gills as well or do something like skin-breathing. While it's not entirely true [url=https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1994]evolution can't turn back the clock[/url] (skink re-evolves legs), it's still very hard! We can either say this is magic as a factor of evolution (itself a completely fair answer), or we can go Hard Mode and eliminate dragons from being reptiles [i]or[/i] mammals. (Note: I would probably move guardian gills to their necks, since we got jaws from gills so it'd make more sense to be near their jaws) So, in that case, dragons are something [i]else[/i]. Something [i]not[/i] a mammal, bird, amphibian (some amphibians have gills but not the way guardians have them), or even lobe-finned fish, since all of these have arms, legs, or their equivalent limb buds. So, what could we use instead from earth? [url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/brv.12118]Why hello there, sharks.[/url] As it turns out, we almost had a six-limbed placoderms (unlike sharks, where claspers are the extension of the fin), but instead we got reproductive organs instead. Funny how things turn out? But, what if things went differently? What if these little guys didn't use claspers for mating and instead for limbs? So, in this case, dragons are a very weird placoderm that eventually went the way of the Tiktaalik and crawled up on land, a pseudo-tetrapod if you will. In that case, I recommend combining placoderm anatomy with that of a tetrapod of your choice (personally, I recommend looking at "reptiles"- since it's [i]broken[/i] as @/Kaegro said, with a particular highlighting of protofeathered reptiles, aka dinosaurs for "fur"), but perhaps keeping things like the teeth and maybe the armored plates rather than skin in some areas? The other option we have, equally as bizarre, is that dragons are [i]invertebrates[/i] that have hastily grown skin and maybe muscle over their exoskeletons (which means they probably have an embryonic exoskeleton stage), making them pseudo-vertebrates. In that case, you can probably keep things like the chest gills since they definitely aren't fishlike gills, but you'll need to include invertebrate-like traits. If you make them a pseudo-arthropod, for example, I recommend checking things out like insect mouthparts that could be hidden behind fleshy lips. Fun! This still leaves the question of how Aberrations evolved, but since I think gastropods can have conjoined twins, that's a possibility. Though slowly evolving necessary conjoinedness would be pretty bizarre- but cool! Tl;dr: dragons probably aren't reptiles or mammals if you want to get super technical. Either evolve them from a fish or from an invertebrate if you want to try Hard Mode, but for drawing a skeleton I recommend combining traits of various species since I got lost on an evolution tangent. I can send some skeletons I've drawn before if you want ideas ^^ [/quote] https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/110833/creating-a-scientifically-semi-valid-pseudo-arthropod-primate-part-2-exoskeleto Highly recommend reading a bit of this if you're joking the insect route and poking around the internet to see if you can find some better guides! Also, yes, gastropods can in fact have conjoined twins. edit: I would be very interested in seeing your drawing of the skeletons! Edit 2: highly recommend looking into scorpions and their anatomy if you're going the insect route edit 3: wouldn't all dragon breeds that have spines have to be vertebre? So at least all the moderns Edit 4: Exoskeletons have to shed soooooooo IDK

[quote name="Fishlung" date="2024-03-25 05:41:16" ] I mean if you reallly want to get reallly nittty grittty with it, this is an entirely diffferent planet with its own treees of life, and considering the fact that dragons were created through elemental energy and didn't evolve into existence like creatures on earth did, they're probably not even truely eukaryotes lol [/quote] Imagine accidentally scratching a dragon and their mitochondria falling out (I know that's not what it means but hear me out) Funky lil bacteria-like lizards

heeeheeee thank you for the ping @/eucyon

Taxonomically speaking, since Dragonkind exists on another planet, they are completely detached from our organic life. That means that they are not mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, arachnids, echinoderms, plants, fungi - any of that. Reptilia, Aves, Actinopterygii, Mammalia, etc are all taxonomic groupings, and dragons do not belong to any part of the entire tree of life of Earth as they are not from Earth. Dragonkind are dragons, a group of beings from a completely different planet.

Alternatively, you are probably asking about whether Dragonkind are reptilian, mammalian or similar. Dragons are pseudoreptilian, which means that they have some reptilian traits (scales, big teeth, lizard-like, crocodile-like or snake-like, feathers, claws, long tails, spines, etc) but are not true reptiles due to what I mentioned above. This also can encompass any mythological creature like dragons from folklore, as they are all also pseudoreptilian.

Additionally, in Flight Rising lore, Dragonkind was created by the Eleven which means they're totes messed up and don't have to follow any laws of evolution because they're quite literally artificially created, semi-organic, magical golems of the gods.

And lastly, if you want some animals from Earth who have traits similar to Dragonkind, looking at reptiles (including birds) and mammals is the best way to go. In some species/breeds, Dragonkind has complex skin like that of mammals which allows them to have dense fur (Tundra, Gaoler). In other cases, they have less dense fur and it's more coarse (Wildclaw, Skydancer, Obelisk; presumably), but they also sport pennaceous feathers, like those of modern dinosaurs. Some likely have filamentous feathers like those of emu, ostriches, cassowaries and many extinct dinosaurs. Some are covered in scales akin to those of crocodilians and other archosaurs (Ridgeback, Guardian, Snapper, Nocturne).

Tl;dr - Dragonkind are taxonomically neither mammal or reptile, but they have traits of reptiles (birds included) and mammals.

I find it funny how all 11 deities took reptilian-like forms, despite eight of them are probably older than single-celled life itself. [emoji=tundra laughing size=2]