From:	Gurth <gurth@******.NL>
Subject:	Submission
Date:	Tue, 28 Mar 1995 10:59:07 +0200

Dragonlore
Where, When, and What Do They Come From?
G-01
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WHERE, WHEN, AND WHAT DO DRAGONS COME FROM?
By Dr. Mike F. diAngelo-Mosely

First of all, let me say that whatever I will write below is basically what
came into my mind while writing it. It may appear disorganized, lacking a
clear goal, or just a collection of loose thoughts, if so that is because I
don't know yet what I will write, and will refrain from going back and
changing the text I've already written as much as possible.

That out of the way, let's proceed to thinking about dragons. The first
recorded sighting of a dragon by humans was on December 24, 2011, near Mount
Fiji, Japan. The dragon in question was an individual later identified as
the great eastern dragon Ryumyo, who was spotted on two later occasions near
the cities of Ise and Kyoto, both in Japan, and has vanished since.
But was this the first time dragons were seen by humanity? I think not.
Evidence for this is easy to find but very difficult to make hard; many
civilizations --most, actually-- have tales, legends, and myths about
dragons, and the dragons of today resemble those in the ancient myths...
this leads me, as well as many others, to believe dragons lived on earth in
ancient times, too. Magic obviously plays a role in their appearance, since
it is commonly agreed that the Sixth World --where magic can be actively
used-- started on the very same day Ryumyo was seen at Mount Fiji, and this
is also the year dwarfs and elves were first born. Couple that to the
current theory that magic moves in cycles similar to sine-waves, and we get
the distinct impression that dragons, like metahumans, can only exist in
magic-rich times.
Which in turn means they can have existed in times far in the past, but were
forced to somehow disappear when the mana level dropped, only to re-appear
when it rose again. I don't think I'm saying anything new or revolutionary
here, which I didn't intend to anyway. I'm just stating the commonly
accepted theories.

But where did the dragons go during the Fifth World? Before I go into that
question, I'd like to go even further back in time, not to the Fourth World,
but even beyond that. 70 million years --give or take a few million-- to be
more or less exact. We all know dinosaurs "roamed the Earth" in those days,
so you might be wondering why I bring them up. The fact is, dragons resemble
dinosaurs in many respects. Though no skeletons of dragons have been found
to my knowledge, and the living dragons have not allowed x-ray pictures to
be taken of them, we cannot be certain what a dragon's skeleton looks like,
but we can make assumptions. Those assumptions make it clear that a dragon's
skeleton most likely resembles some of the skeletons of dinosaurs we possess
in various museums.
I'm not saying dragons are dinosaurs, but my point is that dragons can very
well have evolved from dinosaurs. 65 million years is a long time--long
enough for a species to evolve into a creature that only vaguely resembles
its ancestor.
I have noticed a particularly close resemblance between the eastern dragon
of today, and the mosasaur of the dinosaur age. The mosasaur was a
waterborne creature that must have been the ultimate predator of its time,
highly agile, and ranging in size from 5 to 12 meters long, depending on the
sub-species in question. It had a streamlined body, and used both its front
and rear limbs (all of which had evolved into flipper-like appendages) to
propel itself through the water.
The eastern dragon also has a streamlined body, though with wing-like
membranes between rows of spinal extensions, and "swims" through the air in
a similar manner to which mosasaurs must have swam in water, using both its
front and rear legs. This does not automatically mean the two are related,
they might in fact have evolved completely separately, but the resemblance
is striking if you ask me.

But that brings up another interesting point: what if mosasaurs weren't
waterborne predators at all? Most of our knowledge about dinosaurs stems
from 20th-century research, mainly because after 2011 so many new species
have appeared that most scientists have concentrated on them instead of on
the long-dead dinosaurs. In the 20th century, nobody could predict that 11
years after it ended, we would have magic, so it hadn't occured to anybody
that magic could have existed in the past. So when the scientists of, say,
75 years ago dig up a fossil of a large dinosaur whose limbs look like
flippers, they assume it used them to paddle through water. It was the
logical conclusion -- turtles use the same trick.
Since eastern dragons swim through the air, maybe mosasaurs (whose name
would then be totally incorrect) did the same. Magic moves in cycles,
according to the Mayan calender of more or less 5200 years per cycle.
Because the Mayans call our time the Sixth World, this implies there also
were First through Fifth Worlds, with the mana level being positive in the
even Worlds and negative in the odd ones. From the top of my head, five
times 5200 equals 26,000 years. Geological records, however, put Earth at a
little over 4 billion years --4,000,000,000 years-- which is just slightly
longer than the 26,000 years of the Mayans... Mana levels would probably
have risen and fallen throughout a major part of the remaining 3,999,974,000
years as well, but I do not believe each and every one of these cycles
lasted 5200 years precisely. Rather, I propose that the length of the cycles
varies, getting shorter every time. Nature is not like clockwork, and I
don't claim I have the answer to everything, but I do have an interesting
theory to the reason why dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago:

The mana level dropped.

This might be a bold statement, since most scientists agree that it was a
meteorite or other natural disaster that spelled doom for the dinosaurs, but
I think it was magic that allowed these formidable creatures to exist in the
first place. When the magic level became negative, possibly coupled to some
other natural distaster, the large dinosaurs could not survive and died out
over a very short period of time. In the world's history, there have been
three times when such large-scale deaths occured, and I attribute each and
every one of them to mana level reductions. It is obvious that creatures
that can survive in negative-mana times can survive just as easily in
positive-mana times, but it appears that it doesn't work the other way
around. For this reason, life in general survived, but specific groups of
creatures died out--dinosaurs, the last time.
"Now, where does all this rambling fit in with dragons?" you will probably
be wondering, "She keeps on talking about dinosaurs and mana level rises and
drops, when does the dragon talk start?" Just hang on and it will hopefully
become clear. My next point takes us one step closer. It has been determined
that several species of dinosaurs had very large brains, some approaching
1.5 kg and more (for comparison, a human brain weighs approximately 1.6 kg),
which lead them to believe that sentient dinosaurs might have appeared, had
they not died out. At this point, I again diverge from commonly accepted
theories, and say that I think sentient dinosaurs already existed: the
ancestors of the current-day dragons.
These "pre-dragons" must have somehow noticed the mana level dropping, and
taken their precautions to survive it, possibly by going into hibernation
until the magic level reached a high enough peak for them to awaken and once
again take possession of the Earth. My guess is that, when doing so, they
found it inhabited by mammals instead of the dinosaurs that were "in
control" when they went into hibernation. Over time, these dragon-ancestors
evolved into the dragons of today.

Then we have the dragons of the Fifth World, such as the 3-meter-long Komodo
dragon, living on an island in the Pacific. 20th-century zoologists called
these lizards "dragons" because of their size and their resemblance to the
dragons of legends. From modern research, it appears these animals,
beautiful though they are, are not related to what we tend to call dragons.
They could be related, but I will not delve into this subject here. Suffice
to say that, provided they are related to dragons, they are a species that
can survive in low-mana times while their larger relatives cannot. Entering
the 21st century, wyverns appeared, but these also seem to be unrelated to
true dragons, which is one of the reasons why I will leave them out of this
text.

Currently, we divide dragons into a number of different kinds, the most
important and numerous being: eastern dragons, western dragons, and
feathered serpents, though not necessarily in that order. The western dragon
Dunkelzahn granted media interviews soon after his first appearance, and
from these it appears that Dunkelzahn (and therefore probably most other
dragons as well) knows much more about the truth behind dragons (and all
other Awakened species, for that matter) than he is willing to share with
the rest of the world. The question that troubles me most at the moment is
where did dragons go when the mana level dropped last time. I firmly believe
they hibernated, a belief I defend by pointing to Dunkelzahn's references to
an "awakening" of dragons and other species. The word itself suggests that
they had been asleep before 2011, but where?
The immense size of a dragon means that it cannot have many places where it
can lay itself to rest without being detected. Caves are a possibility, but
those caves would have to have been large enough for the dragon to enter
them. Then the dragon would simply have to hope that no one accidentally
entered the cave during its hibernation--the lack of historical reports of
"giant sleeping lizards" seems to indicate that this was, indeed, the case.
The dragons could simply have sealed the cave off behind themselves, causing
for instance a landslide that blocked the cave's entrance. The only problem
would be getting out, but a dragon's great strength would not pose many
problems in moving large rocks to clear the exit of a cave.
This is just one theory. I have some others, though. There are many rumors
of immortal elves floating about the datanets (for an example, read the file
on Tir Tairngire currently floating around Shadowland. Yes, I spend some of
my time there--I find the insights of the various participants there
immensely valuable to conducting my research), and since no young dragons
have been observed, I draw the conclusion that dragons are effectively
immortal, too. Since no reports of elf-like humans have reached us from the
Fifth World, I conclude that they have disguised themselves as humans,
perhaps with the aid of magics powerful enough to last throughout the 5000
years of the Fifth World. A great many dragons are active magicians, which
means they can have used magics similar to a Shapechange spell to give
themselves a human form, and mingle among humanity in much the same way as I
imagine immortal elves would have.
A third theory of mine is that they somehow withdrew to a metaplane. If the
world's mana level is positive, astral space comes close enough to the
physical plane for magically-active individuals to make a bridge between the
two worlds. Astral perception or projection, in other words. Once in astral
space, an initiate magician can move on to the metaplanes. Currently, we
have identified eight metaplanes (Air, Earth, Fire, Land, Man, Sky, hermetic
Water, and shamanic Water) but more are suspected to be in existance, though
they haven't actually been "found" yet. For one, the insect-like creatures
that currently infest Chicago must come from somewhere, and that somewhere
is most likely an as-yet undiscovered metaplane.
When projecting to a metaplane, a magician's physical body remains behind in
the physical world while her conciousness moves to the metaplane of her
choice. However, the magic level is still rising, so I think it very well
possible that a magician can take her physical body to a metaplane once the
mana level crosses a certain threshold. In this way, a dragon could have
gone to a metaplane (which presumably remains intact even while the magic
level in our world becomes negative), and be "trapped" there until the mana
level in our world reaches the positive again. Dragons might even be native
to a metaplane and only visit our world when they feel like doing so, in
much the same way a magician astrally projects.
Still another theory is that dragons are an alien life form which arrived in
2011, but I find this hard to believe. Dragons need air to breathe just like
(meta)humans do, so they would have needed a spaceship to reach Earth in the
first place. Even though UFOs have been sighted over the past two centuries,
and some records of them might have been lost in the Crash of '29, a
spaceship large enough to carry all the dragons that live on Earth today all
at once would have to have been so large that we couldn't have avoided
noticing it even if we wanted to. The number of UFO sightings over the past
50 years has also not been extraordinarily high (or low, for that matter),
so a large number of smaller spaceships, arriving over a longer period of
time, to carry the dragons is equally unlikely. Still, this theory allows
for dragons to exist in mana-less times, because aliens need not be bound to
Earth's magic cycle.

One of the strangest, and most difficult to explain, features of some
dragons is that some have six limbs. While this is also true for some
non-dragons, such as the griffin and pegasus, it is strange that not all
dragons have six limbs. In fact, out of four common dragon species, only the
western dragon has six limbs; the eastern dragon and feathered serpent have
four limbs, and the aitvaras has none at all. I presume aitvaras have lost
their limbs in an evolutionary process similar to that of snakes--while most
snakes have no limbs whatsoever, boa constrictors have a pair of vestigal
hind legs, not much more than a large nail protruding from the skin. Eastern
dragons' and feathered serpents' limbs are similar to lizards and birds,
respectively. But western dragons have two pairs of legs and a set of wings,
all of them fully developed. This can also be explained in a number of ways,
none of which is completely satisfying:
If dragons are alien life forms, six-limbed creatures could be very normal
on the planet they originate from. For this theory to work, dragons have to
be aliens, which I frankly don't believe for the reasons I stated earlier.
Next, six-limbed dragons might be the result of a mutation. If some or
another factor caused young dragons to be born with six limbs, while their
parents had only four limbs, and if those young were fertile, it would
perhaps be possible for the young to breed and produce six-limbed offspring.
Not all members of a species need to have been affected by such a mutation
-- in fact, this could be the reason for the difference between feathered
serpents and western dragons. Both could have the same ancestors, with
western dragons starting out as mutated feathered serpents, that somehow
were born with a set of fore limbs. A slight variatin of this theory is that
western dragons are cross-breed between eastern dragons and feathered
serpents that somehow were born with four legs and two wings.
Or, perhaps a magic-activated gene causes creatures to have six limbs. In
low-mana times, the species only produces four-limbed individuals, but when
the mana level gets high enough, the magic-gene kicks in and allows for the
growth of a third pair of limbs, of a type encoded in the gene.
Fourth, it is possible, though highly unlikely, that all life on Earth
originally had six limbs, but that most higher life forms lost the middle
pair. Lower life forms have varying numbers of limbs, from limbless species,
such as earthworms, to creatures with extremely many pairs of limbs, like
millipedes. Higher life forms evolved from the four-limbed variety, but it
would not be unreasonable to think that a six-limbed species evolved, in a
case of parallel evolution, into a higher life form as well. Hm, that's two
theories rolled into one...

Where do baby dragons come from? This sounds like a question a young dragon
might ask its mother, but my point is that we have no idea how dragons are
born, whether there are male and female dragons, how they mate, when the
mate, and so on. Most people refer to a dragon with "he" or "she,"
mostly
based on how the dragon behaves, I think.
To produce offspring, most higher life forms need both males and females.
The reason, as I don't think I need to make clear, is that in this way the
young inherits characteristics from both parents, thereby increasing its
survival chances. Some creatures can reproduce a-sexually, but I do not
think dragons fall into this small group. Dragons resemble reptiles, and
most reptiles lay eggs. Again, this does not mean dragons do so as well, but
it seems likely. This begs the question: "why haven't any nests been found?"
Reptiles normally lay a large number of eggs, because their young are very
small and easy prey for predators. Such nests are of reasonable size, for a
crocodile it can be a meter or so across. Dragons, being much larger than
crocodiles, would lay larger eggs, and so also need larger nests, which
would be easier to discover. Of course, there aren't many creatures that
hunt adult dragons, but I bet a hatchling dragon would look like a walking
supper to some animals.
Somehow all known dragons are adults. Some seem to be older than others, but
all are still adults. If dragons are immortal, it would be possible that no
young have been produced in hundreds of thousands of years, but attrition
would take a toll on the adult ones; even if no (meta)human would seek them
out and kill them, they can die in accidents; ergo, they would need to breed
in order to keep the species alive. I can't find any satisfying theory why
we have no knowledge of such instances, save for attributing this (too) to
the Earth's mana level: maybe that should rise before dragons are able to breed.

Well, that's what I had to say about dragons. I don't know if I was close or
totally off course with any or all of my theories, I think the only ones who
can tell us are the dragons themselves. And they don't seem to be telling.


Gurth@******.nl - Gurth@***.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
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