Dragon shapeshifters: confusing in the extreme

[psychotick]

Hi Teacup,

Actually the problem is the square versus the cube rule. Take a cube, 1cm on all sides and weighing 1 gm. Now make it two cm on all sides. Now the volume and mass of the cube has gone from one gram to eight. The same applies to dragons.

But the strength of a muscle isn't based on its cubic volume. Muscles work by sliding fibrils over one another, and the strength of a muscle is related to how many muscle fibres there are. The number depends on the cross sectional area of the muscle. So now say our muscle is one cm high and one wide and one long. It has strength x. Now increase the volume of the muscle again the same way so that it's two by two by two. The strength has only increased by the double of the height and the width. Therefore the muscle weighs eight times as much but only has four times the strength.

This is why small creatures are always proportionally stronger than large ones. It's why insects can't grow beyond a certain size - their muscles need to increase enormously in size to power them and an exoskeleton doesn't give them the room for that. It's why if you look at weight classes of weight lifters the smaller classes always can lift more in proportion to their weight than the larger classes.

If you want a dragon to fly, you need magic or a major redesign of its body to give it's muscles better purchase and gearing, and maybe deferent biochemistry as well.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Miskatonic]

Maybe they are surrounded by the excess matter but it cannot be seen by anyone. Like a vampire's mist but not detectable.

 

[Mindfire]

I once read a book where the type of beings you describe were called dragonlords. In the universe of the books, dragonlords are actually humans who are born with the soul of a dragon somehow linked to their own. The dragon half slumbers until they reach maturity and their powers awaken. So when they change, it's not really shapeshifting per se. It's more like the human and the dragon are alternately phasing into and out of existence, switching places with each other. Or at least that's how I see it. The book doesn't state it explicitly in those terms. Dragonlords are functionally immortal, but eventually the human soul grows weary of living. When that happens it telepathically communicates this to the dragon soul, which takes over completely while the human soul fades away. Likewise the human form phases out and the dragon form becomes permanent.

For your purposes, perhaps shapeshifters explicitly make use of dimensional phasing, posessing multiple forms linked transdimensionally by a single consciousness? Or maybe shapeshifters are 4-dimensional beings and what normal 3-d people perceive as shapeshifting is just them rotating in 4-d space.

 

[Tom]

Those are both really interesting ideas! What book or series are the dragonlords from? I'd like to check it out.

I don't know if dimensional phasing would work in the story I'm writing. I want to really go deep into the details of shapeshifting, describing the way the shifter's body and mind change as he moves between his two forms. Plus, neither of his forms is totally pure--pure as in the sense that one is totally dragon, and the other totally human. His human form has dragon characteristics, and his dragon form human. It's not a complete change, unlike dimensional phasing, which I think sounds sort of like switching from one form to another like an on-off switch.

 

[Mindfire]

Those are both really interesting ideas! What book or series are the dragonlords from? I'd like to check it out.

It's a series written by an author named Joanne Bertin, unofficially called the Dragonlord Series. The first book is called The Last Dragonlord, and it has two sequels: Dragon and Phoenix and Bard's Oath. I haven't read the third one yet but the first two are really good. I found them at a library by complete accident when I was in high school. Lol. They're pretty obscure. The first two were published in 1998 and 1999. The third part of the trilogy wasn't released until 2012.

I don't know if dimensional phasing would work in the story I'm writing. I want to really go deep into the details of shapeshifting, describing the way the shifter's body and mind change as he moves between his two forms. Plus, neither of his forms is totally pure--pure as in the sense that one is totally dragon, and the other totally human. His human form has dragon characteristics, and his dragon form human. It's not a complete change, unlike dimensional phasing, which I think sounds sort of like switching from one form to another like an on-off switch.

It is an on/off switch, more or less. Although something I didn't mention is that the human soul is the one "driving" in both forms. The dragon soul, being immortal, is usually content to just wait and sleep until the human is ready to die. But yeah if neither form is pure, the 4-D being approach might work better for you. Just bear in mind that when you get into higher-dimensions, it can get really mind-screwy. Lol

 

[The Stranger]

in my particular fantasy world, dragons are immortal, about the same strength as gods and demons. so basically, they just use their near-ultimate power to change shape as they please