The Draconic Empire and Draconic Magic


Authors
Eti
Cast
Xan Show More
Published
1 year, 8 months ago
Stats
569

This serves as a brief informative piece rather than as a story.

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The Draconic Empire is the key backing for characters like Xan. 

It is heavily inspired by that of WildStar's Dominion and mimics some of its main attributes, namely, it has a set of extremely high standards and its citizens are rather posh. Unlike The Dominion however, dragon culture makes it so that they are not interested in constant expansion and conquest. 

The Capital City is built within a massive magma bubble under the surface, a bit like an underwater lake but with lava instead of water. The city is constructed in rocks hanging from the ceiling, its buildings dangling down to the lava like stalactites. The shapes are very sharp and pointy, with curved accents on buildings (buildings are often shaped like pyramids or like a claw). Windows in these buildings are often very tall and narrow, any given window spanning from top to bottom in most cases. The construction of these hanging buildings involves tiled panels, the shapes often regular (repeating), with emphasis on quadrilaterals. The stone they use is somewhat interesting in texture, like unpolished black granite. Long metal pipes run into the magma to harvest geothermal energy and power the city, which operates on a lot of steam-based technology due to the abundance of heat. Industries that require the heat, such as smithies, are often placed closer to the pools of lava for more direct access, while general living quarters are higher up. Political locations have a range of locations, the Emperor's palace being very deep under the lava, walled off with glass so that the bright glowing rock illuminates its interior, the entire complex surrounded by lava with one way in and out. Locations designed for diplomacy are closer to the surface, as to not discomfort or hurt delegates from nearby cities and kingdoms due to the heat. Naturally, few outsiders actually enter the city. They are welcome to, if they can withstand doing so. The colors of the city are a mix of dark and light, with heavy emphasis on blacks, browns, crimsons, golds, silvers, and whites. Gold and silver adornments are very commonplace and will usually be seen as forms of trim and studs. Occasionally bright red crystals are used decoratively.  Buildings and districts within the city are joined with long metallic bridges, the bridges' tops covered in stone pavement. The cables used to join some structures together are made out of metal braided wires, usually black in appearance. Flora are quite rare due to the heat, decorations instead relying on sculptures, metal statues, and vast murals. The civilization is very keen of the arts, and the citizens decorate the city well.

Draconic magic is based on sigils. Dragons come up with a symbol that they associate with the magic spell they wish to cast, and inscribe it on any material. They hold this material with them, and to cast the spell, simply express the genuine desire to do so. The strength of the magic always has a baseline value associated with how well written the spell is. The power is then boosted (or reduced) based on the value of the material the sigil is inscribed on. A material's value is effectively the average of some arbitrary measure of "how valuable does the average dragon think [material] is". Inscribing your sigil on a river rock would make it pathetically weak, but inscribing it on a gold ingot would make it considerably more powerful.

Author's Notes

The Capital City used to be above ground, made of tall buildings that could only be entered via flight. This ended up not working out so well with new lore since I work on lore with a very close friend, and I quite literally turned the city upside down when remaking it.