Dragons Are Not Real ...
Dragons are not real, but also fascinating and super dangerous!
I was at a party this past weekend in the Oakland Hills when the question came up: how can you reliably convince a five-year-old that dragons are make-believe but giraffes are real?
Yes, I only go to the coolest parties. That’s why I didn’t write any Ambush Tactics posts this summer: too busy attending many, many hip parties.
Let me break the news to you: dragons, those magical creatures who appear in the folklore of numerous global cultures (and the pages of countless TTRPG bestiaries), are creatures of legend.
They are not real.
But are we sure they’re not real?
After all, my kid and I talk about dragons all the time. One of her first favorite songs was “Puff the Magic Dragon.” She’s got a dragon stuffy named Ignamafax aka Iggy who recently regained a place of honor in her bedside collection. Together we’ve consumed a multitude of dragons in kids’ books (did you know they love tacos?!) and movies and TV shows.
(Don’t worry, I haven’t yet subjected her to HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Although when we do finally watch it, I’m curious if she’ll remember the theme song from all the times she heard it in utero?)
And those fire-breathing winged lizards even show up in two of our current favorite family board games, where we’re learning about how dragons love amassing treasure hoards, and why breath weapons are treacherous, and how different types of dragons inhabit different terrains (green dragons in forests and swamps, black dragons in craggy mountains, red dragons near lava-spewing volcanoes, etc).
Swamps and mountaintops and volcanic caldera are spots we normie humans visit on a fairly infrequent basis. Who are we to say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty that your chances of crossing paths with a dragon in one of these locales is exactly zero?
Look, there are a lot of weird actual creatures on Earth: giraffes, platypus, spider crabs. And until we witness actual first-hand evidence of these creatures’ existence — like when my daughter sees a giraffe at the zoo — we have to take it on faith that they exist.
Same deal with dragons, and sphinx, and yeti: we take it on faith that they don’t exist. But isn’t it weird to inform humans of the fact that a horse with a horn on its forehead aka a unicorn is imaginary, and yet a goddamn whale with a horn on its forehead is real?
Yes, narwhals are pretty weird too.
One more point before I transition to actual Pathfinder-related content:
Just around the corner from the giraffe habitat at the SF Zoo, where my five-year-old obtained first-hand evidence that giraffes are real, is the komodo dragon habitat.
And yet, as her legal guardian, I have to keep telling her: dragons are not real.
Sorry, kiddo.
Anyways, a big bad evil white dragon named Venexus has recently been battling my Quest for the Frozen Flame players in our climactic play-by-post battle of Book 2. This is the first time I’ve gotten to run a legit, mature dragon antagonist in a PF2 combat from the GM side of the screen, so I am finally discovering a few of the unique abilities that this iconic monster family — which first appeared in Gygax and Arneson’s original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set in 1974 (it’s right there in the name!) — picked up in its latest Pathfinder incarnation.
My favorite new PF2 dragon ability is called Draconic Momentum: when a dragon scores a critical hit with a Strike, she recharges her Breath Weapon. Unfortunately, my ice-palace-cold dice (and our shield-wielding champion of Findeladlara with her ridiculous armor class) have prevented me from critting to this point in the combat.
On the topic of champions, please earn yourself a Hero Point by lancing that heart button up top. I have no idea what it accomplishes, but duty and honor call!
But here’s where the real world aka lawyers intrudes yet again into our fantasy realm: because of 2023’s OGL controversy whereby a big multinational gaming conglomerate threatened to extract costs from publishers for the use of D&D intellectual property — like the idea that red dragons are evil but gold dragons are good — Paizo recently launched a new Monster Core (Remastered) bestiary that sought to sidestep any future risk of IP infringement.
Cue the we-don’t-want-to-get-sued dragons!
Yes, Pathfinder now features eight original dragons unique to its campaign setting. Eschewing the classical categories of chromatic-vs-metallic, these magical dragons reference PF2’s four new schools of magic:
adamantine dragons (primal) are steadfast mountain-dwelling armorists forged from skymetal
conspirator dragons (occult) manipulate the populations of cities with deception and shapeshifting
diabolic dragons (divine) are aligned with the forces of Hell and love to hoard infernal contracts
empyreal dragons (divine) are empathic protectors and fiercely loyal servants of Heaven
fortune dragons (arcane) are great hoarders, collecting magic items and other items of novelty
horned dragons (primal) are powerful but also intellectually curious denizens of forests
mirage dragons (arcane) are vain, manipulative illusionists who dwell near mirror-surfaced lakes
omen dragons (occult) are agents of fate, charismatic disseminators of misty prophesy
I tip my hat to the writers at Paizo for managing to create a fresh new lineage of dragons some 50 years after these fantastical creatures first began appearing in tabletop adventures. It turns out copyright law is the mother of invention.
Now, where’s my new crew of magical giraffes at?!
THE MINI AND THE DICE
If the dragon mini up top is causing you twinges of nostalgia, you might recognize it from a 1959-era Disney animated feature: that’s the mistress of all evil, Maleficent, after she’s cast a heightened dragon form spell in the climactic battle of ”Sleeping Beauty” to defend Aurora’s castle from Prince Phillip and the good faeries. Thanks to my daughter for unknowingly lending me her action figure.
And those dice don’t belong to me either! Not anymore they don’t — they were gifted this past weekend at the aforementioned birthday celebration of one of my longest-standing Pathfinder pals Ian (aka Ronin aka Zor aka Jimbo), who turned 42. The set is by Black Oak Workshop out of Talking Rock, Georgia. Happy birthday, Ian — may you roll many more dragons!
LISTEN TO THIS
Like I said, it’s been a while since I rapped at ya — and a hot minute since I played an in-person session — so I haven’t had much use for gaming soundtracks lately. But I couldn’t help slapping together a dragon-themed playlist from my main man Trevor Morris, who composed the score for a few of the BioWare-produced Dragon Age console games. The playlist includes perhaps my favorite battle track of all time: “Qunari Mission,” from Dragon Age: Trespasser. Enjoy!
SCREENSHOT PRESENTED WITHOUT CONTEXT
That’s it for this month, oh you great and terrible wyrms of legend. And so, as I say at the end of every Pathfinder module I run: this has been Ambush Tactics. I’ve been your Game Master. I hope you had a fun time.
Adventure!