So everyone is on the same page, the conversation I had with Dead Cruiser.

[quote=Darkmatter and Dead Cruiser]

Darkmatter: Ok so basically I came up with what I thought is a pretty cool way of doing/explaining magic enduwin. 
So all the creatures were fashioned out of Trayig's, one of the gods, very body and essence. 
Therefore magic was passed into life like that. However, it would have only been the orignals of each species that were directly made from Trayig's sand and so with each generation that passes the magical ability wanes. Therefore in a creature like a human, who lives relatively short lifespans and therefore has had many generations, magic has waned significantly. For most races it would be like this but with some variation obviously, with many many people knowing a simple trick or too but real wizards/witches/warlocks being very few and far between. True magical ability would no longer come from the sand directly that would have waned significantly, but through a secondary connection to a god with the sand as a conduit if that makes sense? A rare occurrence. 

But dragons can live exceptionally long, hundreds if not thousands of years. meaning they've had less generations and are considerably more magically active than other species. 

Just the idea i was tossing around. They could still be innately magical themselves but then they would more likely be very few in number. 

Thoughts? 

Cruiser: That all sounds fine to me. Perhaps the waning magical essence within the mortal races leads them to require magical implements. Wands, staves, grimoires and all of that sort of thing. I would think that the actual magical difference between generations is not an especially noticeable one, but has none the less mounted to the populace being almost entirely mundane. It makes one think that history would be full of legendary heroes and monsters and whatnot, and such tales have declined only because magic no longer supports such grandiosity.

But it meshes fine with what I'm offering, since it's all just stories, after all.

And yes, I figure that dragons breed very slowly, and there are only a handful of them in the world for quite a few reasons. The foremost being that dragons simply don't like each other, in general, and getting a pair to couple is a rare event in and of itself. Then consider that every dragon considers every other dragon to be a major rival, and you'll have a lot of infanticide going on.

My character that I'm planning would actually be a relatively old dragon, though wiser than most, in possession of a rather fickle temper. After one too many times he took his aggravation out on the local populace, a band of wizards took it upon themselves to subdue him. Considering killing him to be out of the question, they instead polymorphed him into a human shape, sealing away most of his magical power. He has since spent the last couple of centuries wandering the lands under the guise of a powerful sorcerer in search of a means to return himself to his true form and power.

Darkmatter: Yeah wizards, those left, would definitely be looking for objects that have retained power. Yes it is a gradual process. You wouldn't notice much from grandfather to grandson but go back a few hundred years and the difference is apparent. Now of course not everyone knows that it is waning or that it once was so mighty or why it is waning etc. People know this but not everyone.

Well the kind of power to trap a dragon in a human body would only have existed nearly a thousand years ago by my reckoning but if you want it to be more recent than that, say a few hundred years I am good with that too.

Cruiser: I figured that it would be quite a feat to accomplish in the first place, much less have it so effective that the dragon is having such great trouble undoing it. Thus why I mentioned that it was the work of several wizards. All the more reason that he can't just track down the wizard to have it undone; they would need to be together again to do so.

Maybe I could write in some sort of artifact being used as a part of the ritual. I don't want to clash with your perception of the state of magic, but having him in human form for a thousand years makes you think that he's gotten used to it or something. As it is, I kind of picture him as Clint Eastwood cast in the role of Gandalf.

I do have other character ideas, though. Perhaps a very young dragon, practically a hatchling by their standards, living among humans after being orphaned.

Darkmatter: Tbh I really like this idea for a character and Eastwood as gandalf is a great image.
See I would say that even after a thousand years he wouldn't be used to it. It may be cliched but perhaps part of the spell kept him inactive for a few hundred years so he hasn't actually been toiling for a millenia. Just a thought.

Cruiser: Hm. I'm still thinking that a thousand years would be "too damn long" even by dragon standards. I figure that the very oldest dragons would be, what, maybe five thousand years old? Two hundred years is long enough to be "frustratingly long" by dragon standards. I think he'd just start to go crazy after the 700 mark, especially considering that he'd be forced to adapt to a mortal sense of time.

The sort of hibernation isn't a bad idea, but it reminds me a lot of another character concept I came up with for a different RP, which was a nightmare from beginning to end. Perhaps some "old magicks" are at work or something?

Darkmatter: Say he was youngish when it happened so we can stretch. Maybe 300 years at a push? Maybe it was more than a couple mages, maybe it was a large thing involving a lot of people pooling small amounts of magic together, Dozens of wizards, apprentices and even some gifted common folk from a large area that he was terrorizing.

Cruiser: That could work, but then if there's so many people involved, there develops a plot hole of "if you had this much manpower, why isn't you couldn't just kill him?"

Darkmatter: He's an evil magical dragon. Plus it could/would have become a myth in the area blurring some of the details as it is exaggerated. Maybe the entrapment was an on the spot call when they couldn't kill him.
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