What did dragons horde before the younger races existed

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:13 pm

Dragons like to horde gold coins and gold goblets and magic swords and stuff, but it's not dragon sized coins, it's puny human coins and goblets, and those magic swords they probably got from squishing puny humans along the years.

so all that shit requires puny humans to exist for them to horde it.

Dragons in almost every setting are always "super ancient, older than everything" guys. So... what did they horde then? Did they horde at all?

Did they pick on cave men and horded ivory and hides?
Did they... just wait for people to gain a tech level to mint coins, then started taking it?

Or was there like some horrible day that a dragon discovered the tiny dudes made little shiny things, and then all the dragons just started wrecking castles to get at it to sit on, and the ancient civilization of the First Men perished?

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 6:28 pm

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:20 pm

Dragons are a lot like bowerbirds:

Dragons, however, are pretty destructive. Flowers just don't last too long in your cave when you're always breathing fire. So dragons collect other shiny things, like naturally occurring precious stones & metals. Humanoid activity creates their equivalent of chocolate, wine, and roses: a shit ton of sparkly jewelry and coins. Dragons that steal from humanoids are more able to attract mates, and so you have this whole horde inflation thing going on.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:23 pm

what if shadowrun dragons hoarded positive credit ratings

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 1:09 am

Don't be silly, you can't sleep on a bank acco-

>Shadowrun

Never mind, I'm sure there are dragons who do the hacking thing just so they can do precisely that.

8headeddragon · Post by **8headeddragon** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 2:58 am

Is this a setting where celestials and fiends existed before human civilization built up?

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:05 am

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Dragons are a lot like bowerbirds:

Dragons, however, are pretty destructive. Flowers just don't last too long in your cave when you're always breathing fire. So dragons collect other shiny things, like naturally occurring precious stones & metals. Humanoid activity creates their equivalent of chocolate, wine, and roses: a shit ton of sparkly jewelry and coins. Dragons that steal from humanoids are more able to attract mates, and so you have this whole horde inflation thing going on.

This is actually a great explanation in a game where Dragons aren't intelligent.

But Dragons as we know them in D&D, Shadowrun, and other games are supergeniuses, them going "ooh shiny!" just doesn't jive.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:19 am

Well, there are a couple possibilities:
1) Before the rise of sapient, art creating life, dragons didn't horde, and it's behaviour that emerged after people started making money, jewelry, art, etc. for whatever reason.
2) Before the rise of humanoids, dragons horded dragon made items. Why dragon coins and magically created statues and paintings from the reign of dragons are never seen anymore could have it's own number of reasons.
3) Before humanoids started making money, art, etc. dragons horded more functional things, like food or other survival resources.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:58 am

Seerow wrote:This is actually a great explanation in a game where Dragons aren't intelligent.

But Dragons as we know them in D&D, Shadowrun, and other games are supergeniuses, them going "ooh shiny!" just doesn't jive.

You are confusing compulsion with intelligence. You can have compulsive behavior without being otherwise stupid.

And why the hell are dragons super geniuses in the first place? Why is that a meme? In stories usually they were vain beasts or bullies against whom trickery was sometimes a viable option. Dragons are supposed to have all sorts of behavioral flaws which can be exploited- vanity, greed, anger, gluttony and sloth to name a few.

Is it just because they need leet stats? They can be an ancient source of knowledge without heaping a genius intellect on top of it all.

Dr_Noface · Post by **Dr_Noface** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 4:35 am

Why can only the greatest of spells create gold that doesn't fade from existence over the course of a few hours? Gold is MAGIC. Magic is POWER.

The low-level magical radiation that precious metals give off has hardly any effect on the body of a relatively short-lived human. But a dragon.... a dragon readily absorbs it in order to grow bigger. Stronger. A wyrmling needs more than time to become a wyrm. It needs 1000 years sitting atop a pile of gold, and gems, and well, you get the idea.

Aeons ago, when the world was more magical, dragons drew their power from the primal energies that abounded in the land and air. But now, the world is old, and only the gold remembers the magic that wrought it.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 4:36 am

Dr_Noface wrote:Why can only the greatest of spells create gold that doesn't fade from existence over the course of a few hours? Gold is MAGIC. Magic is POWER.

The low-level magical radiation that precious metals give off has hardly any effect on the body of a relatively short-lived human. But a dragon.... a dragon readily absorbs it in order to grow bigger. Stronger. A wyrmling needs more than time to become a wyrm. It needs 1000 years sitting atop a pile of gold, and gems, and well, you get the idea.

Where have I heard that idea before?

EDIT: Also, I know I've spent too long on the den when I'm getting the idea of having a campaign where the patron of the party is an elder gold dragon that uses his wealth to invest in infrastructure, improve agriculture, and promote innovation and investment, while the villains are all dragons that believe wealth is for sitting on and nothing else. I think giving the evil dragons names like Lerril-mynch, Norne, and Choty would probably come off as TOO preachy...

Dr_Noface · Post by **Dr_Noface** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 4:42 am

Man, I got totally scooped.

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 8:50 am

In Earthdawn the hoarding is explained (as are most of the usual fantasy tropes). Dragons don't really do much hoarding. They just like to keep a few souvenirs, as members of other races do. And when you've got a loooonnnng life, you get a lot of these.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 6:48 pm

One idea I really like for hoarding is the idea of abiogenesis. This is a classical/medieval theory that life orginates spontaneously. For example, a log left floating in a swamp will magically transform into a crocodile. Meat will magically turn into maggots.

Now, we've clearly abandoned that theory of the creation of life, but I think for dragons, it has some merit. Dragons hoard wealth of a particular type to make babies.

It'd be relatively easy to figure out that gold dragons need gold coins to make baby gold dragons, but that at least gives a plausible explanation for a good-aligned creature to exhibit hoarding behavior.

Prior to man-made sources of wealth, the dragons would have had to acquire the precious metals themselves. If dragons are capable of living off of rock (rather than eating other creatures), they'd have been able to get them, but not in a pure form (uless their breath weapon can smelt ore?).

If dragons are the first creatures, it makes sense that they don't HAVE to eat meat; and if they're the first creatures, it could make sense that they had a way of reproducing before humanoids. But humanoids could certainly make reproduction easier.

Regarding evil dragons - if a gold dragon needs gold coins to produce young, hoarding the gold also prevents your competition from reproducing. Denying your competition the resources needed to reproduce is a viable reproduction strategy...

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Mon Aug 13, 2012 9:27 pm

Seerow wrote: But Dragons as we know them in D&D, Shadowrun, and other games are supergeniuses, them going "ooh shiny!" just doesn't jive.

I've know a few super smart people who had their own "ooh shiny!" problem...

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:19 am

They hoarded your mom.

No! I was so wrong.

Before the birth of humanity, they shared your mom.

Dragons are like magpies, they gather valuable items to make nests. It doesn't matter how smart they are - Einstein loved him a nice fleshy pair of tits. Let me be clear about this (and let me be clear that it involves your mom) - dragons very clearly have big piles of treasure so that they can have nasty dragon sex on them. A good dragon will sometimes give away or loan components of the horde, because they're good and they can suppress their gratification for the benefit of others. But that doesn't mean they're happy about it - let's assume you're a nice guy, does that mean you're happy about all those dragons lined up around the corner to service your mom? Didn't think so.

Before human beings started making gold coins - which are simply a hyper-stimulus to the dragon's existing desire to have heaps of cool stuff - they would find especially nice looking rocks, or cool trees, and they'd dig them up and put them in piles in order to shag on top of them. They cold very well have dug up gold and gemstones too, why not? It is the perception that you own a big pile of pretty stuff that makes another dragons cloaca get all frothy (again I emphasize - for your Mom).

Vebyast · Post by **Vebyast** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 3:01 am

DrPraetor wrote:which are simply a hyper-stimulus to the dragon's existing desire to have heaps of cool stuff

Superstimulus is actually a viable option all on its own. Basically, Dragons evolved some urge to get shiny things. Maybe several urges; little bit of a secondary sexual characteristic, little bit of a status symbol, little bit of a reproductive aid. They usually only hoarded a few shiny things because those shiny things were hard to find and not particularly shiny. Breath-produced fulgurites, smooth rocks, uncut gems, etc. However, when humans came along, they produced way shinier stuff and in much greater quantity, producing a superstimulus that completely unbalanced the dragons' hoarding instinct. In the same way that a third of America is massively obese because junk food makes our nutrition-seeking instincts go nuts, the dragons are sitting on piles of gold because human coinage made their shiny-seeking instincts go nuts. And that's it.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 3:09 am

Similar to how if you show a bird a beach ball that's the same general colour and pattern as their eggs they'll go "Wow, this will be the biggest, healthiest (duck/swan/whatever) EVER!" and sit on that.

That works. This way if someone PAOs a castle into gold, all the dragons will show up to fight over who gets THE MASSIVE SHINY THING, rational or not.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 4:05 pm

LOL. Dragon traps of teh shiny. Dragon chasing you? Drop gold! Glance casually at Bahamut's horde? ARGH, THE FIRE, IT BURNS! Must ... incorporate ... into .. campaign history.

violence in the media · Tue Aug 14, 2012 4:20 pm

DrPraetor wrote:It is the perception that you own a big pile of pretty stuff that makes another dragons cloaca get all frothy (again I emphasize - for your Mom).

This is the best/worst thing I've read all day. I almost spit up my coffee. Hats off to you sir!

K · Post by K » Tue Aug 14, 2012 4:51 pm

Magic item creation materials. They are sorcerers after all.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 5:16 pm

Hoarding: A Biography
What dragons did before the rise of human nations is difficult to decode, as only the dragons were around to know what happened, and dragons are currently infamous for being about as vague as the gods. The truth is out there, and it's up to the little known Time Lord Pony, Vector!
His adventures will be detailed, in any system desired, as he travels into the past to discover the hoarding habits of pre-humanoid draconic culture.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 5:18 pm

virgil wrote:His adventures will be detailed, in any system desired

Rifts.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 6:48 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:
virgil wrote:His adventures will be detailed, in any system desired
Rifts.

Yesss!

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Tue Aug 14, 2012 7:39 pm

I feel like that pony should have a scarf.