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isn't this the plot of rain world

My PC is so big, I need kobolds to crawl in a do maintenance. They get a big gold coin the size of their heads for their reward .w.

BARK BARK BARK

Another DragonPost

one of my best dressed uwu

Since y'all like my handsome boy, here's this pretty lady

Hi💙 Just saw your latest post and I'm so excited now for the Balerion x Vhagar with their little ones😍 And I loved reading your thoughts about her bond with Caraxes as younger. Do you have more theories to share?👉🏻👈🏻

Yes!!! Dragons and trying to figure out how they work in GRRM’s universe has been my hyperfixation lately. Here are some, but I’m not going to ramble for tooooo long.

- Cannibal is described as older than Sheepstealer, and Sheepstealer was born as early as 35 AC, so I’m relatively confident that Cannibal was hatched from Balerion and a mate, most likely Vhagar but possibly Meraxes (the other explanation for his origin is that he’s an egg from a yet unmentioned dragon, but I doubt this as his description is very similar to Balerion’s). This makes him an old dragon during the Dance! My headcanon is that as a hatchling, he was actually extremely shy and flew away away due to fear of the other dragons. Later on, his fear manifested in violence instead and he became the dragon we know in the story. I don’t think this is meant to be canon, buuuut I like it.

- I think I touched on this a little with my Caraxes Vhagar post, but my theory on Caraxes’s neck is that it’s not that he’s from other long-necked dragons that aren’t mentioned in the story, but rather that it is a result of a mutation. Environmental factors can play a role in birth defects/mutations, so I feel as if perhaps being in Valyria impacted Balerion and he passed on defect.

- Admittedly, GRRM probably doesn’t take into account lore of dragons in other media, I do think he makes his own rules. That being said, he tends not to *share* these rules, so my only choice to make sense of things is to go off other lore. In most dragon lore, dragons mate for life. We know, or at least it’s heavily implied, that Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar were mates. However, the general consensus of this and that this was a special case to mirror the conquerors (and a theory that has been going around that dragons mate in accordance with their rider’s opinions of other riders), and people have been pairing dragons mainly in duos. There’s a lot of unanswered questions if the duos mating for life theory is true, so my longstanding theory has been that they mate for life in trios. The trios being the one mentioned above, Vermithor-Silverwing-Dreamfyre, Syrax-Caraxes-Seasmoke, then potentially a duo with Vermax and Moondancer (if you believe that Laena daughter of Baela’s is offspring of Moondancer). However, I did have to adjust this to any one dragon having two mates, so Syrax can mate with Caraxes and Seasmoke, but Seasmoke is allowed a separate mate of Tessarion as well. That being said, this also doesn’t give Meleys a mate so I am coming around more to the possibility that dragons mate freely.

-Same disclaimer that I feel like GRRM prefers his own lore instead of something like lizards, but I’ll drive myself crazy without having something like this to tether my theories to, and lizards are some of the closest animals to compare to dragons. More often than not, a clutch of lizard eggs will be fathered by two different male lizards (meaning some of the eggs are fathered by one lizard, and the other eggs another). This was a large inspiration for my dragon trio theory, but would also work for dragons mating indiscriminately. Keeping this in mind is how I supported my idea of Syrax continuously producing fertilized by both Caraxes and Seasmoke. That means that Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey could receive eggs fathered by Seasmoke, but that Aegon, Viserys, and Rhaena’s eggs, as well as Mysaria’s egg, were fathered by Caraxes.

-As for the idea that dragon mating is influenced by their riders’ feelings, I am of two minds about it. We have Silverwing and Vermithor, whose riders were obviously in love and they continue to mate even after Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s deaths. However, this can also be explained by the fact that the two dragons were often in close proximity and the two riders oft flew together. It very well could have been that by the time Jaehaerys and Alysanne died, Silverwing and Vermithor had formed their own bond so strong that they continued to mate (this would always be true if you believe that all dragons mate for life, but would be true for these two regardless). As for the conquerors’ dragons, I do believe they were a special case. The three dragons were symbolic and thus no matter how Aegon and Visenya felt about one another, Balerion and Vhagar remained mated until Balerion’s death, and it’s my headcanon that she continued to remain without a mate for the rest of her life. Because their bond was more than them, it was a symbol of House Targaryen and the Conquest as a whole. As for Rhaenyra and Daemon’s bond, or even something possible between Daeron and Addam, I don’t know. I don’t have any strong opinions on it.

-Drawing my opinions/headcanons from lizards yet again, I do believe dragons can reproduce asexually. Lots of species of lizards can do this. That being said, I am not sure the trigger for this, because then what is the motivation from them to reproduce with male dragons when they can do it by themselves? Either dragons feel some sort of sexual pleasure (which I’m not getting into bc I’m not into that!) or they can only reproduce asexually in certain circumstances. I do believe that female dragons can only produce other female dragons asexually, and that there’s no magic involved in this.

-I do not believe dragons can change their biological sex. In real life, as far as my research has taken me, you cannot determine outwardly if a lizard is male or female. I would think the same would go for dragons. What I believe happened is that people were assuming if a dragon was male or female based on external features being more masculine or feminine, and that when they were proven wrong they took this to mean the dragon had changed sex. However, it has been confirmed that most of what Septon Barth wrote in his book about dragons was, in fact, true. Septon Barth wrote that dragons could change sex. This means that my headcanon very well is not meant to be the case. I simply believe this because it makes it far easier for me to nail down a family tree, which I’ve been attempting to do.

That’s all for now, I do have more dragon thoughts but this is just what I thought of off the top of my head. If you’re interested in more dragon content, I’m posting Balerion, Vhagar, and their hatchlings next Friday and I am currently working with the artist moonwyvern (the lovely artist that did the art of Vhagar and Caraxes for me) on a long form project to create a dragon family tree art.

Illustration from Septon Barth’s novel ‘Dragon, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History.’ The image depicts Vhagar proudly presenting her hatchlings to her mate Balerion, circa 35 AC. The hatchlings are identified by Barth as Sheepstealer, Cannibal, Vermithor, and two she-dragons that remained nameless, as they died before bonding and being named by any Targaryen. ‘The Black Dread’, as he was called, invoked fear in the hearts of not only people, but other dragons as well, and his hatchlings are depicted cowering from him, though he meant them no harm. All except Vermithor, who easily became familiar with his father, which greatly pleased Vhagar. This depiction was later called into question for being propaganda for Jaehaerys’s rule and exceptionalism, but the truth remains unknown.

art by: @ra-horakhty-art

Recently, I promised a sweet Balerion, Vhagar, and family artwork and I (and the artist ofc) have delivered! You might have seen the artist post this already, but I wanted to post it on my blog as well because I’m so proud of the piece. My vision going in was for it not to be depicted just as an artwork for us in the real world, but also presented with a storybook feel, with the added lore that it’s supposed to be an illustration from one of the histories in A Song of Ice And Fire. I tried to take into account not just popular depictions of the dragons, nor House of the Dragon, but specifically from the text and from art that GRRM himself has commissioned. Because of this, Vhagar is bronze-greenish instead of her standard green. After hearing @francy-sketches theory that Vhagar, for lack of a better term, oxidized with age and became green as she got older, I decided I liked that interpretation and have depicted her as green in artwork of her once she gets older, and this color when she’s relatively young. I‘m a bit biased but I do think it looks beautiful and exactly how I wanted it, book accurate and something you could imagine actually seeing in a Westerosi history book.

My main motivator in these dragon arts, as I’ve stated before, is to explore the nature of dragons, not as weapons of war or in context of the Targaryens, but as mythical animals. They’re not quite like lizards, but also can’t be held to the same standards as people. In most dragon lore, they often act like mammals but are physically reptiles. Most stories involving dragons have the creatures caring for their young and maintaining a bond with their mate, so for lack of anything on the subject from GRRM, I take it upon myself to feed my headcanons. I find it sweet to depict times where Vhagar was not lonely, nor being used in war. It adds another element of tragedy, that these dragons did not have to fight each other but were made to anyway. On a happier note, is it not so so sweet how the hatchlings here are so comfortable with their mom to protect them, they’re cowering under her and climbing on her wings because they trust her. My favorite is Sheepstealer on her wing, that’s adorable to me. And Vermithor, I did mean for that to be true instead of just propaganda, but I couldn’t help adding a little Jaehaerys slander. But Vermithor is still a very brave boy and wants to be just like his father when he grows big and strong! Cannibal, on the other hand, is scared out of his mind, all these anxieties and being forced around other dragons caused him to fly away and isolate himself (in my mind).

It was such a pleasure to work with @ra-horakhty-art, they were super accommodating and worked easily with my ideas. The process was super fast and easy on my end, he works hard and quickly so I was absolutely impressed.

Oh, wyrm?

So you want to fight a dragon?

Do you think you could fistfight an f-16 and win? That's about the level of what you're proposing.

B-but muh lance! Muh bow and arrow! Muh weak spot!

Shut. Any dragon old enough to have a den is gonna start spinning and jinking like a motherfucker the second they see your weird specialty ammo heavy crossbow. Good luck hitting that three inch gap that only some dragons have when it's moving in all three dimensions at over 150 mph.

Now let's talk about what the dragon can do to you. Most dragons have a ranged attack in the from of a breath weapon, absolutely deafening wingbeats, or both. The ones that don't have some other neat trick, or are simply going to toss you around until you're too tired to pull that stab the brain through the roof of the mouth bullshit. Then they eat you and you die. The end.

Don't even get me started on ancient dragons. Regardless of body type, most of them fall somewhere on a spectrum, with the two ends being:

Ghidora with 20 levels in evocation wizard

Or Literal Actual World Serpent

If you've got the magical acumen to deal with the former while also dealing with the physical dragon of the former, or a sword long enough to do more than just chip the scales of the latter, plus the strength to use it, be my guest. I'll save a spot for you in the next issue of Idiot Adventurers.