Floating Islands Should Be Weird

Floating islands are a staple of fantasy fiction. It's easy to see why: floating islands are cool. Take an island and push it into the sky and it goes from mundane to extraordinary in moments. It is a shame then that most sky islands are kind of boring. It is strange that the underground (a thing that exists in real life) gets treated with a sense of wonder and mystery and uniqueness while sky islands (a thing that does not exist in real life) gets treated as "an island but sky".

Let's start with an example. There's this game called The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK), perhaps you've heard of it. TotK happens to have both deep dark caverns and sky islands and the difference between them is obvious and apparent. The underground is weird. It's dark and ominous and plays differently to much of the game. The things you find down there are alien; strange rock formations and trees long since petrified into rock. It's cool. The sky islands are just islands in the sky. They're autumnal, which is cool, but otherwise just some islands and some ruins. They're cool, but they're not interesting.

This is a common occurrence. All too often I have seen a setting that boils down to "sky islands!" as the beginning and end of its pitch. Sky islands are cool but why do we accept sky islands as the end of the concept? Sky islands would be weird. Like extremely weird.

Let's start with the obvious. Sky islands are in the sky. This, at the very minimum, means they're going to be colder and have less oxygen than most places on the surface. They're also an incredibly isolated environment, so whatever evolves on them is near guaranteed to be weird and hyper-specialized. Even beneath the island, where its presence creates a permanent dark spot on the surface will have a strange environment. A lack of sun will lead to a lack of plants. Perhaps a mushroom forest will grow there, or something weirder.

There's a reason that the Shattered Continent of Neurim (known as Zatrom), is a weird alien environment that lacks plant life, primarily being inhabited by living rocks and stone dissolving fungus. To me, part of the fun of fantasy is seeing a new weird world, and that's part of why it bothers me that sky islands are often treated as "an island but sky" rather than "what are the ramifications of having an island in the sky?"

Dragons: Personality Defines Color

 I think the way dragons are currently handled is weird. Dragons are defined by their color, with different colors of dragons have distinct personalities. Does this not strike anyone as weird? If all red dragons are evil and greedy, how in the world does the species of red dragons survive.

I have an alternate idea for how dragons and their colors work.

Dragons are one species.

Dragons, regardless of their color or physical form, are different forms of the same species. A dragon with red scales is as different to a dragon with white scales as a brown cow is to a black and white cow. This has a side effect: the color of a dragons scales does not impact their ability to reproduce with any other dragon. Dragons are immensely powerful and rare beings that need a large amount of territory to feed off of. Their interactions are rare. It is in the best interest of their species to allow any of those interactions to result in new dragons.

Dragon colors are defined by their personality.

Dragons are sapient long before they hatch. This gives them the time and ability to find themselves, to have a defined personality the second they come out of their egg, and when they do their scales and form will match their personality. A greedy dragon will have red scales. A vain and arrogant dragon will have blue scales.

This answers a question that I've always had with dragons: why are there so few good dragons? Simple, if a dragon hatches and its scales portray it as being kind, or generous, or benevolent, or any other trait that would betray their nature as good, it is in an evil dragon's best interest to kill it. Few things can stop a dragon. Another dragon is one of them. What few good dragons exist do so only by escaping the clutches of their hatching parent, or by being born to good dragons.

Dragons can change.

Given enough time and introspection, a dragon might change the way it thinks. Dragons are powerful beings. Their bodies warp around their minds. If a red dragon becomes cruel and sadistic over time, it's scales will turn black and it's breath will turn from fire to thick acid. Such changes are uncommon amongst evil dragons. There is no need for introspection when you have a mountain of gold and a nice warm place to rest for centuries at a time.

In contrast, good dragons shift form all the time. As their desires and goals change, so do they, and dragons that interact with mortals often have a greater need for introspection and changing their beliefs. A dozen unique shapes of one dragon might be construed as a dozen different dragons.

How do we use this?

One could argue that a use of this idea would be to break player expectation. Traveling to the lonely volcano, where a dragon is said to horde coins in the millions, players might expect a red dragon. They will prepare their potions of fire resistance, and their shields of flame protection, and they will be very confused and extremely worried when they find a black dragon upon a mountain of gold. You'd have to telegraph that heavily to make that work.

Instead, allow me to offer a location with a built in plot:

Cambor, the city of dragons, is a grand city state and merchant republic built along the coast, the only viable dock a hundred miles to the North or South. Cambor makes it's riches on the back of the sea trade, and the city is dense with exotic spices, dyes, beasts, and magical items. Naturally, this makes the city a key target for pirates and bordering nations.

In the past hundred years, Cambor has been put under siege 11 times. Each time, a dragon has come to the city's rescue. The first time the dragon had golden scales with short wings and breath of fire, the second the dragon was silver with long wings that extended to the tip of its tail and with breath of lightning, and so on each dragon was wholly different. Thus Cambor got it's name, the city of dragons, protected by at least 11 dragons.

The truth is that the dragon is but one. Her name is Symiris, and Cambor is her home. The confluence of cultures is something she has vowed to protect, though the reason shifts over time, same as her scales. Symiris lives in the city by posing as the purveyor of a fine art gallery (dragons may take up a mortal form at will!).

A new threat sits upon the horizon. Perhaps a great fleet of pirates, or a neighboring kingdom, or hordes of undead, or anything sufficiently scary. Whatever it is, it's too much for Symris alone, and she knows this. The issue lies in that the senate of Cambor refuses to do anything. Cambor has a small navy, nowhere near enough to deal with an opposing army, but where they to act fast they might be able to muster the forces to survive, even if just with mercenaries. But they refuse to act, for they believe that Cambor's 11 dragons will rise to protect it.

Cambor could easily be the location of faction play, dealing with the senate, local merchant interests, mercenary groups, and of course Symiris herself. There's no right or wrong answers here, hell the players could simply let the city burn, but I would recommend that whatever you do, make it so that Symiris does not want to let the city know she's a dragon. She enjoys her peaceful life, and would greatly dislike having that disrupted.

The Sixth Head of Tiamat

Many know the story of the five headed goddess of the dragons. Of the primordial well from which all dragons were birthed, a being forged in hate and cast in malice: Tiamat. They say her cruelty is unmatched anywhere except the deepest pits of the Hells, though some would say it was in those pits she was birthed.

Fewer know of her greatest enemy, Bahamut, a silver beacon that stands alone against the tyranny of the Dragon Queen. Were it not for him, Tiamat would've destroyed our world a half thousand times over. While Tiamat is anger, malice, hatred, Bahamut is compassion, generosity, love.

Only two know their truth of their origins. Tiamat once had six heads.

The white head was the dullest, for her head was filled with bestial rage and a chill streak ran in her blood. She was vicious like a starving beast.

The green head was a natural liar. That every word that left her lips was a lie was the only guaranteed truth about her was her venomous tongue.

The black head was cruel and sadistic. She took great joy in torture, playing with her prey like half-interested cat. Even her mere presence would sting like bitter acid.

The blue head was vain and arrogant, her scales little more than mirrors for her to gaze upon herself with, a conduit for her electrifying self-importance.

The red head had a fiery temper and a greed that could not be sated by all of the gold in the universe. They say she swallows clouds and exhales smoke.

And finally, the gray head was the wisest and most powerful of them all. She had a contingency for every outcome and layers of plans within plans. But strangest of all, while the other heads were at best ambivalent about mortals, the gray head took great interest in them. She would demand worship. She needed their love.

When Tiamat was young, the heads were in agreement. The young world was her toy. Seas were frozen solid, swamps choked with toxic miasma, plains drenched in acid, deserts scarred by lightning-glass, and entire forests reduced to little more than ash. The mortals of that time, barely able to work stone and flint, looked upon the six headed dragon with utter fear. She looked back at them with unending contempt.

The gods, both high and low, feared Tiamat. An accord was struck, a deal unlike any before or after it. They whispered to the gray head in its sleep. Taught her love and empathy. Taught her that she could make the mortals love her, truly love her, not just fear her.

The gray head would begin to bicker and argue with the other five. Wanton destruction was fun, yes, but it was unnecessary. A needless waste of energy. The other heads listened at first, but hatred was Tiamat's blood. For her, destruction was inevitable.

The gray head eventually tried to stop the other five. The insult was so personal, so grave, such an affront to their very nature that their rage boiled the earth. At once, the five bit down upon the gray head's neck, severing it from the body.

The head, now free from she who's hate was ancient when the world was young, would take up the name Bahamat, growing a new body and wings, and his scales shifting from lifeless gray to glorious platinum. He vowed to stand as the world's guardian against Tiamat.

The blood that dripped from the fresh wound would form eggs upon the surface of the world. From these eggs the first dragons would hatch, and these dragons, each a fraction of Tiamat's endless rage, would torment the world much like their mother, but they were lesser than her even with their number. And at times, a dragon would hatch with the same compassion and love as Bahamut.

Bahamut would lock Tiamat in a prison of his own making. He was weaker than the Dragon Queen, but he was smarter, and the Dragon Queen's rage was easy to manipulate. Her cults, formed by the gray head in Tiamat's youth, still seek to free her, to return the world to the days when her primordial fire would bathe the world in fear. Their efforts were in vain. Tiamat, even freed, would never be the terror she once was.

The five headed dragon was a mere fraction of the six headed dragon. The wound never stopped bleeding, a permanent reminder of the rift between the heads. Each day the red head cauterizes it, but it does not change that the heads now rarely agree, only bound by their common hatred of the Platinum Dragon.

They say if you are unlucky enough to bear witness to the Dragon Queen, you can see the heads shuffling, as if hiding an embarrassing secret. They also say that Bahamut never shows the end of his tail, for the one time he did it was as if a blade had freshly severed the tip, a flat end slick with fresh blood.

The truth is now known only to the Dragon Queen and the Platinum Dragon.

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This alternate dragon creation myth was born of an idea I want to talk about soon relating to dragon colors being defined by their personality, rather than the other way around. Tiamat and Bahamut don't exist in my worlds, so I wrote this more for fun and practice than anything, but I do think it's an interesting idea and I think it has a proper mythological feel to it.