Imagine: Dragons (Radioactive)

 So it's been a few years since I've played Warmachine (the Privateer Press game, not the Marvel guy), but there's a part of their Iron Kingdoms lore that always seemed really cool.  They've got dragons that fit the usual description: big, winged, fire-breathing reptiles that each come with a godlike superiority complex.  But if you manage to kill a dragon in the IK world, there is a large crystal at its heart that contains the <i>actual dragon</i>.  The athanc crystal holds their true identity, and any biomass they accumulate for a body is just a fun means for hauling that big rock around. 

"Aha!" you may think, "so to kill the dragon completely you have to break the magic rock! That's a neat complication to your usual dragon fight." And then you'd find some way to break the athanc and learn a very important lesson.  Breaking the crystal doesn't destroy the one dragon. It just makes MORE dragons.

This lesson was first painfully learned by Toruk the Dragonfather.  Nobody knows where he came from or how long he's been around, but at some point he felt a need for draconic companionship.  So he took his own athanc and cracked off some pieces to see what loyal servants he could make.  Unfortunately, even the smallest of his offspring had the aforementioned draconic god-complex on board, so they all hated each other and Toruk most of all.  (To think, a being that would dare try to issue orders to <i>moi!</i>)

So Toruk decided to try that most Cronian of remedies: devour them lil' shits before they got strong enough to depose him.  This worked pretty well, as his stronger athanc could absorb those of the younger dragons, so the ones that remained fled into hiding.  Each began scheming against its brethren, because devouring each other seemed to be the only way to someday overthrow their progenitor.

But wait, I'm forgetting my title.  Not only is the athanc the seat of a dragons mind/soul/self, it's also extremely radioactive.  Dragon-blight is an aura that corrupts the life and land around them.  Plants wither, animals grow spiky protrusions of bone, and in places where a dragon's blood spills it can even create mindless dragonspawn, mutant things of teeth and claw and wing and scale.  


So we have a few interesting facts about dragons in the Iron Kingdoms, which add up to an interesting fan theory: what if the athanc is a terraforming device?

-it's largely indestructible, and any breaking essentially spawns a new version of itself.

-it exudes a radiation that corrupts biomass and converts it to a specific form/purpose.

-nobody knows where the original came from, so falling from space is a legitimate possibility.


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