Flight Rising Discussion

[quote]Plague healers are an interesting bunch because rather than administer treatments that counter illness, they use a mixture of magic and contagion that stress the affected dragon further, allowing them to reach a stronger, healed, and resistant state faster than other elements. Plague healers will treat physical injuries with sutures, bandages, and braces, but they won't clean the wounds or apply ointments.[/quote] This is from the most recent [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/ann/2946934/1]Ask the Team update[/url] and so I've been thinking about it because... to me, it doesn't make sense. Be aware, there's a rambling wall of text coming. Purposefully infecting (or reinfecting) a wound does not make an organism stronger (unless, as mentioned elsewhere in that thread, we don't actually know what "contagion" is). Still, a Plague dragon is the most logical place to go to for what I assume is the Sornieth equivalent of a vaccine, which is what this sounds like. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is when the doctor-dragon gives the vaccine. Having a cold when you get a flu vaccine does [i]not[/i] make the vaccine more effective. Best case scenario, it doesn't do anything at all. That's the assumption of Plague doctors, but it seems like they'd find out pretty quickly that's not how it works. And having a cold certainly wouldn't make the vaccine more effective if the flu virus in the vaccine were alive. In fact (leaving out some magical explanation that's been left out of every description of Plague that I know of to date), co-morbid illnesses almost always make an organism [i]weaker[/i] in the long run. In the short run, it just kills more sick organisms. So unless Plague whole-heartedly believes something will make you stronger despite all evidence to the contrary, it doesn't make sense to do this. On the other hand, getting an illness when an organism is strong, that does make an organism stronger. If getting stronger, more resistant dragons is the goal, then that would make them stronger. According to answers to other questions, dragons' magic is kind of like "element bending" with Earth dragons being able to "rip up chunks of granite and stone and hurl them with magical force at their foes." That means that dragons (while they may be able to produce their element internally, like a Fire dragon breathing fire) are able to manipulate their element in the world around them. For balance, I imagined all dragons would be able to manipulate their element outside themselves, but other dragons would need to produce it because there are simply some places that, say, fire doesn't exist. Whereas, earth or wind is everywhere. If the answer given really is the philosophy of Plague, then any Plague dragon that rejected that philosophy and also used their magic in the manner described, their patients would almost uniformly become stronger and live longer than those of a "traditional" Plague healer. I'm not sure, but Plague seems to be the least beholden to tradition since I thought their only goal is to get strong and outlast everything and everyone. Biological innovation always seemed, to me, to be their end goal. If their traditional healing method doesn't make stronger dragons, then what's the point of using it? Unless the Plague philosophy is actually just to make things as sick as possible with no purpose. But at that point why wait until the dragon is sick or wounded? Using that reasoning, I always assumed that Plague healers (a misnomer in my mind) were always primarily for the well, not for the sick. Because I assumed a Plague dragon has control of plague, whenever a Plague dragon happened across a new bacteria or virus, the dragon would infect himself with it because, Hey! New bug! So all Plague dragons might be suffering from different versions of a minor cold at all times. A Plague doctor would keep a whole catalog of bacteria and viruses that they use as sort of vaccines for dragons that want to become immune (and, I guess, non-Plague dragons could even be interested in this method of disease prevention, especially if it works). Of course, this means that a Plague healers would not actually help already-sick dragons if their goal was stronger dragons. They'd need to fight that off themselves. Not cleaning wounds and stuff, that's whatever. But, again, doesn't really make for a stronger organism to leave pebbles to be healed inside the body to interfere with future movement and whatnot. A dragon that might otherwise have healed to full capacity might be reduced to eternal limping if a clod of mud is sutured in in the vicinity of the dragon's knee joint. And to what level do we take "cleaning the wound"? Do they leave broken claws and teeth in there, too? tl:dr; these practices on average lead to weaker organisms, not stronger ones, so this is not a piece of canon lore I'll be regarding. But, I don't know. What do you think? Is there something about "contagion" that we don't know? What might it be? Do you think it makes sense? What is the Plague philosophy anyway?

How I interpreted it is Plague dragons infecting the target even more, to make their body fight back harder, and as such make them get better faster. While this might not work in real life, these are magic fantasy creatures, and things created specifically by a giant manifestation of disease, so for Plague dragons, who I see as creatures that are very prone to just mutating all over as well, like some sort of Warhammer Chaos spawn, it might just work that way. For other elements, it would likely just make them way worse.

Of course for the duration of the increased infection, life is quite horrible, and there is no real guarantee that you will actually survive this. But that's the risk of trying to overcome it faster than what you would naturally, with the potential bonus of being even more resilient.

plaguemomma, if we can squirt some liquid into our arms and obliterate your diseases then they're not doing their job. i get that they're meant to harden us up and stuff, but if all that challenge can be avoided via a pokey thingy with weird juice, then you need to make your diseases a bit better. besides, making your plagues too deadly can permanently cripple even the most robust and healthy of creatures. and isn't figuring out how to eradicate disease rather than making everyone tough it out simply another method of survival and proving your worth and power (though through intelligence rather than just raw strength)? i think that plaguemomma probably appreciates vaccines and finding cures for her diseases, though, because that way she knows how to make them better and how to make the next challenge more difficult, as well as fully eradicating old plagues that have worn out their welcome so she can test out new ones. and at the very least, we know these diseases well enough that we could sell the cures to weaker flights for a bit of money for our mom.

[quote]But that's the risk of trying to overcome it faster than what you would naturally, with the potential bonus of being even more resilient.[/quote] That's why I'm trying to say there's something we don't know about contagion, because if not, this approach doesn't work. Having a cold when you get a flu vaccine (in this example, the vaccine is treatment from a Plague healer) doesn't make the vaccine work better and it doesn't make you more resistant to the cold when you get over it. Unless there's something we don't know about Plague dragons, even giving the dragon a virus it knows how to fight (perhaps stimulating immune response?) will divide the dragon's defenses and lead to decreased ability to fight both illnesses. That means that the dragon will suffer more of the disease's ill effects, some of which might be long-term (for example, some bacteria damage organs irreparably if left untreated), which might have been avoided if the dragon had been able to fight it off on its own faster. The potential of being even more resilient with this method is negligible and the potential of becoming weaker because of an illness's long-term effects is greater.

This new lore... Does not make sense. I do not like it. Not cleaning wounds is not natural behavior. Animals lick their wounds to soothe pain, and lots often purposely hide symptoms of weakness while they heal as to not become targets. If Plague dragons don't clean or disinfect wounds, would they also not use maggots to eat necrotic flesh, because maggots can kill some bacteria and would prevent the dragon from becoming more necrotic... Even though you're essentially decomposing while you're alive by using maggots, and that sounds Plague as hell. If you got poisoned on accident, would Plague dragons not want you to drink water so that your body "fought it harder?" Would amputations not be done, because you should just wait until the limb falls off or something? If trying to heal someone so quickly always works, that's just healing somebody, and if it barely ever works, why bother doing it? Do Plague dragons not believe in taking baths or hygiene in general? [s]What about Plaguebringer telling us to wash our hands?[/s] That could potentially eliminate viruses or bacteria that, apparently, are supposed to make you stronger. Can you purify water, or do you just have to deal with dysentery? If you get dysentery, should you just deal with being dehydrated instead of drinking water? And, yeah, the dirt in the wound thing- it's not your body's fault if you die because it couldn't get rid of a foreign object. Can you get blood infusions or organ transplants? Are you supposed to adjust to living without something, or is your body supposed to adjust to foreign body parts? If you lose a ton of blood, is it on your body to just make more or die? If the point is to build up immunities, these are not applicable scenarios. You can't built up an immunity to knives. It can be argued that Plague dragons are all about vaccines because those help you build up an immunity rather than countering illnesses (which is something I like), but... You can't build up an immunity to necrosis. You can say mutations or something, but that wasn't explicitly stated, and it seems like a pretty big thing to skip when talking about how Plague dragons heal. Disinfecting wounds and using medicine is not antithetical to surviving and adapting to become stronger- we've made these sorts of tools and methods for a reason. TLDR: [center][img]https://64.media.tumblr.com/f831d2d92573e6eeb5e33cae75123344/20a800ab2dac32bb-a0/s1280x1920/61ebbb780194cc4c5f68cea4bc68955952f4d270.png[/img][/center]

I am in Plague and to be honest I'm just going to ignore this part of the lore.

I think this is more of trying to put real world logic and science to a fantasy creature, and this is just how it works for a Plague dragon. [quote name="Drakessis" date="2020-12-16 17:10:07" ] TLDR: [/quote] Seems more like people just not liking actual canon Plague lore vs their own interpretations of it. Plague pretty much seem like Warhammer Chaos barbarians crossed with Zerg from most of the lore bits I've dug up.

The thing is
If they can survive sick
HOW ABOUT DOUBLE SICK???

[quote name="Reilata" date="2020-12-16 17:14:29" ] I think this is more of trying to put real world logic and science to a fantasy creature, and this is just how it works for a Plague dragon. [/quote] Trying to apply real world logic is like... When people try to classify dragons as reptiles or birds or something. Having a flight dedicated to illness and decay and then trying to introduce philosophies or ideas which don't actually reflect how illness or decay work is... Disappointing. Like, no one is arguing that it shouldn't eternally be night in Shadow, or that there shouldn't be magical tornados in Wind, or that dragons in Water shouldn't be able to breathe both underwater and above water because those aren't scientifically feasible things. [s]also the tldr was a joke, it's just funny because it keeps happening[/s]

ya i read that and its like okay plague magic is doing a lot of heavy lifting here because the rest of it does not make sense. why would you bandage a wound but not clean it??? to trap infection inside the wound?? why not expose the wound to the elements if the goal is to make them nastier?? why treat anything at all?? ????