I’m sorry, sir, if you don’t renovate your summer keep and live in it at least one month out of the year, we’ll have to charge you with Negligent Dungeonization of Property. The old cellar laboratory might have belonged to your uncle, but if you aren’t going to use it, something will.
The players are a squad of government investigators, trying to prevent monsters from claiming new habitat. It’s mainly negotiation but sometimes people have an interest in attracting dangerous entities for their own purposes.
Evil accountants, hired by people who hate you surreptitiously adding gold to your treasure rooms, increasing your wealth incrementally, until the day the Dragon Event Horizon is passed and you’re ruined.
The group hired to stop the evil accountants are called Robin Hoods. They’re oftentimes nearly too late and end up having to pull some elaborate heist to distribute the gold over a wide enough geographical area that the dragon looses the scent
Let a building fall into ruin, but every year, go back there and add a bunch of gold
If you get it just right, the Dragon Event Horizon will be reached at the same time as the necromancer moves in, and then you get to sit back, eat popcorn, and take notes on what happens so you can write an article and get published in Mad Artificer Weekly
“ooh the shepherd’s daughter turning the lindworm prince into a human is so cowardly, monsterfuckery 2k20”
No, no, no. It’s actually not about monsterfucking this time. It’s about politics. She knew exactly what she was doing and it wasn’t about attraction. The royal family was obviously desperate if they were inviting peasant women to marry the crown prince, and with other people’s desperation comes the opportunity to push your own agenda.
My favorite thing ever is how Ron just sent Charlie a random letter like “hey yo there’s an illegal dragon at hogwarts, could you come and smuggle it out of here, please?” and Charlie was just like “yeah sure, I’ll trespass into the castle and steal a dangerous magical creature, of course, lemme just hit up my friends”
It’s better if you imagine Charlie and co as a group of Grad Students trying to avoid their other responsibilities.
Charlie is drunkenly revising the third draft of his thesis on proper care and feeding of greenhorns when his family owl slams into the window.
Three of his friends jump and look around. Glinda doesn’t raise her head from her folded arms; only groans, “Is that Baines coming to do me in?”
Charlie totters to the window and fetches Errol from the window pane. “No such luck,” he says. “You’re still going to have to take the exam.” After some consideration, Charlie lays him on a clear patch of floor to recover. “Do owls take firewhiskey?” he asks the room at large.
“It’s not fair,” Glinda wails into the tabletop. “I swear he didn’t say anything about Bridgewort’s handling practices when we did the review in class.”
“Oh, Merlin,” says Ali, freezing over their notes like a Medusa wyvern had bitten them. “Oh, Merlin’s sweet saggy socks. Is he covering Bridgewort?”
“That’s what he said when I went to his office hours.” Glinda sits up. “You know his lapdragon singed my new sweater?!”
Charlie decides not to give Errol a nip of whiskey. Flying under the influence is really not done. He unties the letter from Errol’s leg. Ron’s childish spiky handwriting spells out Charlie’s name on the front. Inside is a hastily scrawled message.
“Yes, we know it ruined your sweater,” snaps Ysabelle. “You told us twenty times. Why didn’t you tell us Baines told you we’re going to be tested on Bridgewort?”
“I meant to,” says Glinda. “Sorry.” She flicks her pile of notes. “I was lost in the miasma of gloom and desperation.”
Ali puts their head back and groans. “I’m gonna die. I’m gonna say ‘fuck it’ and just fucking walk into a dragon’s mouth so I don’t have to do this.”
“Hey,” says Charlie. They don’t hear him.
“How much is this worth again?” Glinda asks her bottle of butterbeer.
“Twenty-five percent,” Ali and Ysabelle chorus. Ysabelle adds, “and the thesis is fifty percent of our total grade.”
“Hey!” Charlie repeats. They look at him. He waves Ron’s letter. “My littlest brother at Hogwarts has an illegal dragon he needs to get off campus. Anybody up for a midnight flight?”
Ali slams their hands down on the table and stands up. “Fuck yes,” they say decisively. “Maybe I’ll fly into the Whomping Willow and die a quick death.”
Welcome to grad school
Charlie’s friends: I want to die
Charlie:
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#Harry Potter #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death mention #suicide mention #dragon
The eyes-in-the-front thing (usually) only applies to mammals. Crocodiles, arguably the inspiration for dragons, have eyes that look to the sides despite being a predator.
This isn’t a mammalian thing. When people talk about ‘eyes on the front’ or ‘eyes on the side,’ they’re really talking about binocular vision vs monocular vision. Binocular vision is more advantageous for predators because it’s what gives you depth perception; i.e, the distance you need to leap, lunge, or swipe to take out the fast-moving thing in front of you. Any animal that can position its eyes in a way that it has overlapping fields of vision has binocular vision. That includes a lot of predatory reptiles, including komodo dragons, monitor lizards, and chameleons.
(The eyes-in-front = predator / eyes-on-sides = prey thing holds true far more regularly for birds than it does for mammals. Consider owls, hawks, and falcons vs parrots, sparrows, and doves.)
But it’s not like binocular vision is inherently “better” than monocular vision. It’s a trade-off: you get better at leap-strike-kill, but your field of vision is commensurately restricted, meaning you see less stuff. Sometimes, the evolutionary benefit of binocular vision just doesn’t outweigh the benefit of seeing the other guy coming. Very few forms of aquatic life have binocular vision unless they have eye stalks, predator or not, because if you live underwater, the threat could be coming from literally any direction, so you want as wide a field of view as you can get. If you see a predator working monocular vision, it’s a pretty safe assumption that there is something else out there dangerous enough that their survival is aided more by knowing where it is than reliably getting food inside their mouths.
For example, if you are a crocodile, there is a decent chance that a hippo will cruise up your shit and bite you in half. I’d say that makes monocular vision worthwhile.
Which brings us back to OP’s point. Why would dragon evolution favor field of view over depth perception?
A lot of the stories I’ve read painted the biggest threats to dragons (until knights with little shiny sticks came along) as other dragons. Dragons fight each other, dragons have wars. And like fish, a dragon would need to worry about another dragon coming in from any angle. That’s a major point in favor of monocular vision. Moreover, you don’t need depth perception in order to hunt if you can breathe fucking fire. A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.
Really, why would dragons have eyes on the front of their heads? Seems like they’ve got the right idea to me.
this is some good dragon discourse right here, 10/10, and i dont mean to derail the whole thing away from the eyes, but i feel obligated to mention that in many stories and accurate to some reptiles, dragons have an extremely acute sense of smell/taste which would definitely help narrow down the depth perception issue. things smell stronger the closer they are. and i feel like i read somewhere that a blind snake can flick the air with its tongue and track its target mouse with no trouble at all. gotta imagine the “great serpents of the sky” had some pretty advanced biology. enough to make field of view win out against depth perception.
anywho. cool stuff. fear the dragons even if they are the prey cause they still beat us on the food chain.
“A flamethrower is not a precision weapon. If you can torch everything in front of you, who cares if your prey is 5 feet away or 20? Burn it all and sift among the rubble for meat once everything stops moving.”
A) As was stated previously, this rule doesn’t hold for life underwater where binocular vision isn’t worth the limited field of view.
B) Hammerhead sharks hacked the fucking system and spread their eyes so far apart that they have 360 degree field of vision and binocular vision of whatever’s in front of them and behind them.
the biggest lie, i think, the internet perpetuates about D&D is that a skinny little twink of a bard just needs to roll a nat 20 to seduce a dragon
like a dragon…a creature with more wealth and power than any other creature on the planet…a creature who is easily an 11/10 when they deign to take humanoid form…would look at your skinny little 8 STR half-elf Bard whose own father doesn’t even love them and go…yeah I’d like to fuck that
Dragons fuck, clearly, but not just any joe blow schmoe with a big Charisma stat. If I’m Joseph J Dragon sitting on a small hill of gold and jewels I’m not gonna waste my time boning every monsterfucking tiefling twink with a lyre. I would have standards.
Counter-counter-counterpoint: even if dragons are SUPERhorny they’ve got better prospects than spindly little bards!!!! They could be off fucking cloud giants or beholders or planetars!!!! They could be having sex with kraken in the middle of the ocean or fire giants in the mouth of an erupting volcano!
There is a wealth of sexual excess and opportunity available to dragons; so much that they do not need to be slumming it with an adventurer who hasn’t washed his ass in a month and a half and is probably covered in kobold blood by the time they get to the dragon’s lair!
Seriously!!!
I don’t care how many times you cast Charm Monster, the Elder Dragon who has probably slept with more princesses than there are princedoms is not going to bite! When you have bedded the most beautiful mortals on the Prime Material Plane on a pile of gold and jewelry you are not gonna be looking twice at any MOTHERFUCKEr who can’t at least True Polymorph to make things interesting
As we can see from this most excellent chart, dragons can and will fuck anything. Even humans do not compare. The only species that can match dragons for horny-ness is, in fact, nymphs.
Therefore your twinky-ass lil bard has as good a chance as anyone. Go forth and thot your way through your DM’s carefully planned Big Bad encounter and
Also, look- a dragon can go fuck whatever it wants, right?
But how many of those planetars or giants or whatever are then gonna head off and compose a majestic and memorable canticle about how great that dragon was in the sack?
I love how casually knowledgeable Ronald Weasley is, talking facts, including the year and the venue
like that.
Charlie studied dragons. Ron isn’t just casually knowledgeable, he takes an interest in his brothers’ hobbies
I’ll bet it wasn’t just an interest. In fact, I’ll bet those exact words were repeated in the Weasley household on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
“But Mum, my mate’s cousin’s sister’s uncle has the egg just ready to go and honestly, who better to take care of things than us, because after all—?”
“Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks’ Convention of 1709, Charlie!”
“Dad, seriously, the guy in the alleyway was practically begging me to take the egg and I mean—”
“Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks’ Convention of 1709, Charlie!”
“Good morning, family, let’s say I managed to convert my bedroom into a habitat suitable for a Chinese Fireball, wouldn’t that show that I’m respons—”
“Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks’ Convention of 1709, Charlie!”
It’s just on a gigantic af poster in the middle of the Burrow’s kitchen. Hanging right there above the tea kettle: 𝔻𝕣𝕒𝕘𝕠𝕟 𝕓𝕣𝕖𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕠𝕦𝕥𝕝𝕒𝕨𝕖𝕕 𝕓𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕠𝕔𝕜𝕤’ ℂ𝕠𝕟𝕧𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕠𝕗 𝟙𝟟𝟘𝟡, ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕚𝕖!
It just wasn’t mentioned because it wasn’t relevant to Harry’s journey.
Not a poster. A sampler, spite-embroidered by Percy one very surly winter.
Tags:
#Harry Potter #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #dragon
The world’s tiniest dragon must defend his hoard, a single gold coin, from those who would steal it.
Suggestion: The dragon’s definition of “steal” is somewhat loose. It still allows the coin to be used and bartered and change hands–but on one condition: the dragon must be with it at all times.
They become a familiar sight in the marketplace.
“Here’s your change, ma’am. One gold piece.” The merchant holds out a palm, on top of which rests a tiny, brilliantly colored creature clutching a single gold coin.
“That’s a dragon,” you say dumbly. “One piece… and a dragon.”
“Yes.”
You cautiously reach out and attempt to take your change. You tug. It holds. You tug harder. The dragon lets loose a tiny, protective growl.
“Ma’am–no, ma’am, you have to take the dragon, too.”
“Sorry?”
The seller notes your dubious expression. “Not from around here, are ya?” They shrug. “Them’s the rules. Take the coin, take the dragon.”
They wait expectantly. Wondering how the world has so suddenly gone mad, you slowly, slowly hold out your hand.
The dragon perks right up. It scampers from their palm to yours with the coin clamped in its jaws and scales your sleeve with sharp little claws.
“Have a nice day, ma’am,” the merchant says. “Spend him soon, now, you hear? At another booth, if you can. He likes to travel.”
From its perch upon your shoulder, the dragon lets out a happy trill.
Bonus: the coin eventually passes to the rogue in a group of travelling adventurers. The dragon becomes the mascot of the entire group, and they lay out a small pile of coins for him to sleep on every night, clutching his coin like a teddy bear.
Brinens and Things 