Flight Rising Discussion

Undead dragons not from Earth? I know I already made a theory thread today, forgive me if this seems like too much.

Well. Light has Emperors, that's that. Maybe ghosts... spirits... tricks-of-the-light? Spirits that dance in and out of the field of vision? Ones that knock over scrolls, trail ink over paper, help scholars find books all while not existing because there is history to study and ghost dragons? Preposterous!

Shadow has tethered spirits. Dragons buried improperly and such that lives off of the moonlight. Not evil or inherently malevolent (depends on how the dragon was in real life), they dance in the moonlight, sing, and lure dragons into the woods to just dance with them. They don't realize the dragons that they lure are mortal, though, them themselves having been dead for a good while, and sometimes end up having their mortal counterparts join them.

Wind has kites that are altars for passed loved ones in the hopes that they come back to visit them on occasion and bring them luck. Except, that actually happens. The kites often trap the spirits of the passed wind dragons within them. Which, albeit, is sometimes an issue if they think that the dragon afterlife is more rockin' than the... life-life, but whatever, right? They're usually pretty chill and not-at-all malevolent.

Fire has some lava floes that are reported to have dragonlike creatures rise out of them, made of dripping, hardening magma. They usually harden into rocks, and are rarely seen. Many mountainsides are covered in weathered formations that vaguely resemble dragons. Legend says that they rise out of the lava and have one night to end their grudges or reconnect with their families. If they do, they can return satisfied to dragon afterlife. If not, they're doomed to be tethered to their stone form forever. Whether the spirits of loved ones or vengeful spirits coming back through the fire that gave them life is myth or not, it sure gets the hatchlings to bed early.

Ice dragons have... well, this seems really generic, and I know, but cold-embalmed ice-zombies brought back with magic. Not all of the horrible sort. They sometimes (if the reawakening happened fairly soon after death) blend in perfectly with living dragons. If it happened later, well, there's really no life force left in them, and often they could be fur and scraps of bone and feathers tethered together by ice magic, in no particular order, causing them to take many different shapes. Mass-graves of any sort like the ones after a battle have a higher chance of this happening, especially of many of those buried had strong magical influence while living.

Lightning has sprites. No, not the ones that you've been saving up for years to get. Good luck, by the way. They have... sprites like, the green sprites and red sprites. Flashes of lightning near the ground that occasionally take the shape of a dragon. It's said that if you see one take the shape of a dragon, it's a passed lover trying to reconnect with you. Or, on the opposite end of the warm-and-fuzzy spectrum, a rival trying to literally strike you down. Yikes.

Arcane dragons that were very magically powerful while living sometimes just... show up. Much like Ice's undead, these dragons usually aren't who they were in their living life, and are mostly made of magic, and can take on totally different personalities. Some people say that these dragons can speak to them.

Water has dragons that weren't necessarily brought back naturally, either. They were usually brought back by other dragons, by magic or sheer will in some cases. Restless, but not malevolent spirits that haunt the deep with their whispers, and in some case, song, which can be mistaken for the Tidelord's prophecies, leading inexperienced dragons astray.

I like to think that all the remains of the dragons who vanished into the Sea of a Thousand Currents find their way to the bottom of Leviathan Trench and just...pile up there.

Imagine dragons diving to the bottom of the Trench and seeing the bones of thousands of dragons. Perhaps their brother that disappeared a while back was among them.

Plague does not have any undead dragons, as it's against their philosophy of survival, and overall hard to pull off since many corpses are thoroughly scavenged and unusable. There are many diseases that give their host a rotting, zombie-like appearance, leading to the misconception that plague is the source of most undead dragons/necromancy.

Support for Shadow, Fire, and Water.

Heck, in my lore, once I get her, Daimyo will be a dark magma revived Ridgeback that failed. Both to stay alive and to actually leave the world of the living.

Oh, Daimyo... unfortunate enough to fail twice.

@V88

But wouldn't zombies be the ultimate survival because they undied? They did not die, or they did and woke back up and continued to survive? They are hard to kill, which is the entire thing with plague. A dragon that doesn't die or undies would be pretty plague-like in my mind, because they survived even death itself.

@Zuron

The point of being undead is that you died and got resurrected somehow. Plague wouldn't be too forgiving in my eyes. If you failed once, you don't deserve a second chance. Being immortal is a completely different story, though dragons can't really become immortal.

@V88

Differing opinions are everywhere. I like to think that there is a split in the Plague lands. Some might see it as okay, some might see it as cheating, and other don't like it at all.

I don't remember seeing anything ruling out the possibility of immortality I don't think. I remember one thing about dragons losing their magic as time goes on, but I figured that was an aging thing.

I love these, especially wind and water.

I do think plague and the undead lack harmony, as a plagueheart with a ton of undead dragons, because plague is my home but I can never not have undead. There's always a measure of struggle to reconcile the two.

Plague is survival, and a key part of survival is continuous adaptability. If one is dead, perhaps they lose the aspect of evolution, and thus would be considered defective, or lesser, and over time the undead would be increasingly easy to destroy or overcome as a natural consequence. If their destiny becomes entwined with physical stagnation and that stagnation makes them weak, it makes sense that native dragons would find them sad, unworthy, or distasteful. Unless heavy outside magic facilitates change after death.

If it's a spirit bound to an object, perhaps something fashioned from the bones, hide and personal effects of their former body is what binds them to the living world. A book, a totem, some kind of tribute. The ritual of binding plague spirit to earthly remains could be a deliberate act of disgrace, like their life's achievements are not worthy of an afterlife with their deity. Or it could be one of great honor, maybe they were highly influential and they are immortalized in the glory of their achievements. Maybe they become a shrine of good luck, or ambition, allowing those who aspire towards the same greatness to be touched by their spirit.

If the undead is a dragon whose physical form is variably intact, in a more traditional sense, I can imagine a few things:

A dragon that can no longer adapt, and will inevitably lose their ability to maintain their existence. May be seen as the disappointment.

A dragon that has become a catalyst for a much more powerful biological reason. Some kind of disease that extinguished their life and now utilizes their body as a means to spread infection. Mixed positive and negative feels from natives and their deity because they're kind of half way between doing what Plaguebringer wants, furthering corruption by incubating whatever killed it, but they themselves did not survive it? In this form perhaps their functional existence is very short but an extreme danger while they can move, animated by the infection.

Maybe some are run of the mill possession by another entity. Something inhabiting a dragon whose life ended completely independent of the entity and it just happened to find a body to inhabit, or it was deliberately placed by another's magic. Maybe the life of that dragon before was fulfilling and they achieved exaltation, and the existence in this postmortem circumstance has no impact on the host's social or divine standing.

And as Zuron said, there may be some plagues that are accepting or even in favor of this kind of existence among those who would not be. Cue undead hunting parties as sport, or training, and a mass exodus to other elemental territories if sanctuary for the undead is offered.

Sorry for the giant post!

I mean, he's a dragonsona for a fandom character, but there's my Plague dragon that creates deadly viruses and creates zombies and zombielike creatures... I'm still not sure how it'd work, but I like the Undead dragon idea.