#Dragonfable lore

[silence-of-autumn42]

Been thinking about how the elements work in Dragonfable, and what technically...counts as one. Be warned, this is long and rambly.

The eight basic elements, the ones represented by an Avatar, make perfect sense. They exist in nature, they make up the planet of Lore. Disease, Poison, Metal and Silver are what I'm calling "special" elements, in that they're natural things, but not naturally magical - their power comes from human, or humanoid perspectives. Good and Evil, based on what I've seen from the Engineer and the Exaltia Tower, are the elements used by the Celestials and Infernals, and seem to be combinations of the eight basic elements, just polarised. Void is the absence of elements, present in and from the Void. Fear, however, is the really interesting one. Fear is the element most commonly associated with Mana damage, and seems to represent the relationship between the mind and the ability to channel mana. However, we also know Mana is an actual substance, and both Mama Elementals and the Avatar of Order do Fear damage. This, to me, suggests that Fear is the closest thing we have to raw mana damage, which has some interesting implications when we look at it from the angle of Mana being vital to life. It's pure magical force, which connects us to reality. And it manifests as fear when we interact with it. Interacting with the natural source of energy in the world causes us to be afraid. Is it because we can subconsciously feel the animosity that Aequilibria has for life? Or is it just that the power of mana is so overwhelming that we can't comprehend it, as some eldritch force?

[vaalthus]

The Star-Eating Serpent, The Hyperhydra (speculation)

With the release of the most recent inn bosses this month, we now have confirmation that the Hyperhydra faced in the Forgotten Beasts challenge board is not the serpentine creature being referred to in the Empress' recounting of Atealan history and is instead a very ominous single-headed green snake entity.

If I'm being honest, I find this design of the creature to be rather appropriate as the color of its skin, along with the greenish gas flowing out of its nape, would seem to suggest the entity's scales are either coated or made of Trithril, the mineral that was present on the homeworld of the Atealan people.

The genius of this design is that it explains why and how such an otherworldly creature is capable of devouring stars to begin with.

As explained by Ra'Ta and Eirn, Trithril is capable of acting as a protective layer for things traveling through environments that produce magical radiation or harsh magical conditions such as the rifts, the Void, and the Mana Core.

Being either made of Trithril or coated in it would offer the protection this otherwordly beast would require to travel space and devour stars without having to worry about the danger those stars pose. I imagine it would also make traveling space easier as well.

My confusion in trying to piece the mystery of how this animal operates is that I can't begin to picture the reasoning behind its feeding. The Empress tells that the TSS was a devourer of her children, yet this seems to only have taken place after the beast took notice of them sometime after they established their people's culture, possibly meaning it hasn't been hunting and devouring them since their infancy as a species.

Furthermore, the serpent is known to be a devourer of not just stars but planets as well. Now admittedly, this designation of being a 'world eater' could just tie back to the fact that the snake was eating the life on worlds that the Atealan inhabited and therefore them as well. However, I would like to posit a theory that the Star-Eater wasn't eating the Atealans, as well as any other life that existed alongside them, specifically but rather the actual planets.

In the objective card for this otherwordly creature, it is outlined that it fed upon the power of both stars AND planets.

The implication here that the planets it consumed had a power worth devouring to begin with. The question here is what? I believe the answer to that is simple: it's Trithril. You see I believe that the serpent was seeking out worlds rich in minerals potent in Trithril so that it could devour stars safely afterword, as well as be protected by other forms of magical radiation. As a consequence, it's scales would be either coated in Trithril or eventually turn into Trithril as it continued to eat more planets that contained the mineral.

Now a terrifying theory here is that Trithril is a mineral only the Atealan's were capable of producing which leads back to the Empress' claim that the serpent devoured their children, the Ateala. Meaning the snake was specifically eating Atealans or at least seeking worlds where they were present.

How exactly Atealan do this I'm not sure, likely ties back to their connection to cosmic energy and the stars, but if so it kind of means they would have always been in danger of this serpent hunting them throughout the cosmos no matter how many worlds they fled in the past, until its recorded defeat by Unael Anohrin of course. Unless of course the death of Atealan can lead to formation of Trithril which if so, well that's kind of dark.

On a side note, I find it curious that the serpent has the same exact golden ornament attached to its head as the Atealan Standard helm:

Not sure if it means anything but it is an interesting detail.

Speculation on what the Star-Eating Serpent was consuming exactly and why, it's existence does bring up one important question:

WHAT THE HECK IS THE STORY BEHIND THE HYPERHYDRA!?!?!?

No seriously for the longest time this three-headed monstrosity was like the only candidate to point to when guessing what serpent was being referred to in the Empress' song, but now that thought-process is dead in the water.

At the time, I could see why it made sense to make the connection to the Ateala, what with the title of being an Eater of Stars alongside that all too familiar blueish starry theme its got going on but now I'd like to make a new guess.

I now believe that this forgotten beast may have been a creature that was or is present in the overall Elemental Plains. Now that seems like an odd guess to make until you look at the background behind it.

I can think of only one other place where we saw two celestial bodies, one black and the other white, orbiting one another.

The very top of the Exaltia Tower where we face off against the Engineer and see the Exalted Artillery cannon. A place that was very much present in the Elemental Plains.

However, if this true, what then are the small stars being referred to that the Hyperhydra apparently consumes?

Normally, I like to not be so presumptuous that gameplay completely translates to lore, at least as far as the inn is concerned anyway, but I do wonder if the hydra's ability to cycle through all eight prime elements to attack could or does answer that question given that the prime elements have been referred to as "stars" before and have even been given that imagery, at least symbolically anyway, in the Engineer fight. But again rough speculation at best.

Ah but I believe that concludes my thoughts on these serpentine beasties.

[high-voltage-rat]

I often wonder what the actual state of medicine as a field is in dragonfable. We see that Magus Neron has a microscope, petri dishes, and hypodermic syringes. We know that the existence of cells is a known thing. Clearly we're not living in a pre-germ theory equivalent. But we also don't really see doctors around- alchemists like Alina seem to be the pick. Sir Junn is the only example I can really think of, and he also seems to be oriented towards alchemical solutions like the royal honey and corruption-cleansing potions, though we do have mentions of him using IVs in an ICU in his field hospital.

Healing potions would certainly be good for physical injuries, but I wonder at how well they treat illnesses and diseases. Are they a cure-all that's become so heavily relied on that, in the rare cases they don't work, nobody knows what else to do? Riadne's arachnomancy healing, delivering potions directly into the bloodstream, is treated as revolutionary, so I assume that pills or IV drips and infusions have not been popularized enough to be commonly used. Is that because potions as they currently exist are good enough for most applications, or because most people don't know how to use them, or because they're difficult to create or get ahold of? There are incredible technologies out there, as evidenced by the magisterium's drones and the gnomes'... everything. But whether or not these advances have ever been applied to medical applications has also never really been shown.

We've seen many examples of healing magic in lore, but the capabilities and limitations of it, as well as the actual process, are never really explored. Is it an actual active process of changing the body, or is it just empowering the natural healing process? We know that fleshweaving is a thing, but forbidden as an art due to its potential for abuse (and the fact that it apparently requires consuming elemental spirits), and Jaania's soulweaving-based healing of Brittany was a method she apparently invented through experimentation. So we can conclude that soul/fleshweaving are not being employed as a tool for medicine, and any commonly used healing magic probably doesn't modify the body in such a way.

There's lots of potential for medical technology and practice to improve, so one has to wonder what factors are at play to ensure they don't. Is it just reliance on the magic that already exists, leaving the people with rare cases to be untreated? I wonder if, to a degree, there's a perception of standard alchemy being "good enough" that medicine doesn't need to be improved. Perhaps that's compounded with some cultural taboos around "messing with" or manipulating the body, which may extend beyond magical practice into the scientific sphere. It could even be an acceptance of a flawed paradigm surrounding healing magic, just like how most mages accepted the leyline model of mana as absolute, when soulthreads demonstrate that it's flawed?

Or maybe the devs intended it all to remain in the mcguffin realm, where healing magic does everything you want when it's convenient and is limited only when necessary. But that's less fun to think about.

[tmae3114]

WELL THAT'S NOT A CONCERNING QUEST NAME AT ALL

[mapas-fantasticos]

Map of Lore from the videogame DragonFable.

[number-crimes-wizard]

Does anyone ship Cysero and Warlic? I feel like there's major disaster gay couple here that Tumblr is missing out on.

For your consideration:

They share a wizard tower

They split the wizard tower down the middle with red yarn

One is a mad weaponsmith, the other is the most powerful wizard in the world

They vex eachother equally

They have an adopted dragon daughter.

[little-demy]

AE OCs Log

1-2: The Michel Parents (Johanna's/Joanne's biological parents, Jeannette's adoptive parent in some way)

3-4: Little Joanne and Papa Wyatt

5: Jeannette + 13th Chaos Lors rkgk

6: Space Jeannette

7: "Soluna sent a 22 yr old chronically ill and sleep deprived college student with no specialized lenses, eye cover or ear protection and got the silver medal"

8: Atropa being Atropa

9-10: Arc Coquette

[wisp-of-the-willow]

That would imply that you don't.

Did you have anyone at all, besides Ostromir?

[chromodorid]

this is kind of embarrassing tbh but does anyone have any advice for getting more into mechquest? i know i'm missing a lot of context for dragonfable without playing it but i don't really know where to start there in terms of which quests to do first, what level to be for what stuff, that sort of thing

[thatvampireenthusiast]

honestly the best part of watching my partner fall deeper and deeper into dragonfable is the reactions. and their priorities.

[tve-creates]

me: how can i set up a powerpoint night fic for dragonfable without making it a modern au

me: !!!

me: *cysero ex machina*

[jhonatheshiny]

I'll admit that when it comes to Hero x Seppy ships, I'm pretty indifferent.

That said, I find it extremely sweet how good of a dad he is.

[vaalthus]

The Golden Luck Dragon

I just wanted to show appreciation for the Luck Dragon, before its release month is over, that the devs created for the Inn, namely because it's an eastern themed dragon and we don't really see this type in the game.

Curiously, it proves that Zorbak's story, of there being a dragon associated with real powers of luck, was indeed not just a fairy tale.

Which almost makes me curious as to how the dragon died? Old age? Or did its fortune just run out?

According to Zorbak it was buried somewhere in Braughlmurk, a place mind you we know used to be home to a stronghold of the paladin order yet was eventually destroyed by a war with darkness necromancers that resulted in both the lands and seas of the region being poisoned for a time before nature began to slowly reclaim it. Could the dragon have been an unfortunate casualty or victim in this war?

Even more curious though is the dragon's tree of fortune that it presided over. The fortunes of the tree would imply this is what made the dragon well "lucky" in the first place though interestingly there is the implication anyone who tried to take too many fortunes from the tree were punished.

Although there is no mention of tree in Zorbak's story and there's nothing resembling it at the dragon's burial site, so perhaps it too died a long time ago.

A part of me does wonder if we'll tackle more of this dragon's past in the future, as unlikely as that is, given that Lock and Key seemed especially interested in the powers of luck being something you can actually influence in this setting.

[shimishtar]

drakath sluggy wrath

[tmae3114]

On the one hand, when the Aequilibria said "reset", it was with a lowercase r, and they seem to pretty clearly be talking about just. destroying the world as it currently exists and setting their cycle in motion again from scratch. which is a fundamentally different thing to the retrocausal rewriting of the nature of reality which was The Reset

On the other hand, they said the word "reset" and this is a setting where that is a very loaded word for the aforementioned retrocausal rewrite of reality reasons

[eternal-dragon-of-time]

Some of my headcanon curses for Lore:

Avatar's Above - super light kind of invocation, the "oh my god" of lore. You aren't serious.

Avatar's Below - more spicy! Sort of implies that you think the Avatar's are in hell. Considered incredibly coarse language.

Celeritas/Kyanos/Fiamme/Voidstar etc on Lore - depending on which you're invoking this can vary from "I really hope things get better for you" to "I hope this god descends to this plane to break it in half and smite YOU SPECIFICALLY"

Anything with the term Mother - darkblood specific but also anyone particularly involved with Chaos, super taboo and would get you kicked out of "finer places".

Fuck the eternal dragon of time - Hero specific. Said with the weight of having the worlds worst predecessor when stepping into a manager position you didn't want.