# Dragon shapeshifters: confusing in the extreme



## Tom (Jul 31, 2015)

How do they friggin' _work?_

Dragon shapeshifters are a pretty popular element in fantasy--and I can see why. You can have the awesomeness of a dragon, as well as the versatility of a human, all wrapped up in one character. But they just bug the heck out of me--they make no sense! A fire-breathing winged reptile the size of a Greyhound bus that can transform into a bipedal primate? Implausible!

I'm not asking for a scientific explanation, but usually there's no explanation at all, just some handwaving about magic. How on earth do you explain this?


----------



## knight1298 (Jul 31, 2015)

Possibly using magic to convert the dragon's body mass compressing it to another form. Converting the dragons since and shrinking it with magic would be easier then changing would be looking at human biology we have a tail bone which a dragon's tail can convert too. Shoulder blades for the wings from there its looking at fact of allowing magic to affect its physical body so it would allow the transformation using a series of events to turn, starting with shrinking to proper size and adjust the body proportions to the counterparts of biology.


----------



## Trick (Jul 31, 2015)

I think, if I ever used this in a story, I would probably explain it with the human absorbing matter (and space, atoms containing lots of empty space) to turn into the dragon and then shedding it to turn back. It would be less technical in a story (or else, BORING!, right?) but that's my thought on it.


----------



## Reaver (Jul 31, 2015)

I'm not knocking your logic Tom. I get that it's hard for you to suspend disbelief in this instance. However I'd be remiss if I didn't ask: Since when does fantasy have to make sense? 

Am I the only one who sees the contradiction?


----------



## Tom (Jul 31, 2015)

Well, I don't mind other people not explaining it. That's your cup of tea. But I've always wanted solid explanations for the phenomena in my stories--that's just the way I am. I have a scientific mindset. 

I'm asking about dragon shapeshifters because I'm kicking off a story that features one as the main character. It's also a noir detective fantasy, with a technology level equivalent to the 1930s-1940s. So there needs to be at least some logical explanation for shapeshifters existing.


----------



## X Equestris (Jul 31, 2015)

Shapeshifting  in general is kind of hard to give a good explanation for.  Here's the explanation I've got for my world so far:

Mages in my world have an inborn connection to the Outerworld, a world of spirits from which the physical world was created.  They can use this connection to move energy from the Outerworld to the physical world, or vice versa.  Now, shapeshifting itself is something of a lost art, and knowledge of it is usually only available through deals with spirits or demons.  It requires the skin of the creature one wants to transform into.  Once you have the skin, a great deal of energy is required to reshape the mage's body and create something that, on the outside at least, looks like the creature one wants to be.  And a lot of energy will be needed to change back into one's original, human form.

There are going to be differences between a shapeshifter and the real deal, though.  A human turning into a dragon will be much less dense than a real dragon.  A human turning into a cat will be much more dense.  Ultimately, it's probably best for a shapeshifter to change into something similar in size to a human, as anything much bigger or smaller requires considerable skill that very few magic users have.

That's how I've worked it out.  It could use some more work, but that's the basic idea.


----------



## DMThaane (Jul 31, 2015)

In a world I'm working on magic is neither energy or matter but is a more esoteric substance capable of mimicking either. Although it can't be used for such 'physical' transformations a similar system certainly could. In this theoretical 'dragon' it would actually have a limited amount of true physical mass and would use magic as a sort of 'floating mass' absorbing it or shedding as required. This could offer other interesting effects such as allowing a 'dragon' to shed mass to generate lift or absorb it before crashing into something (like an armoured airship or a ravenous kraken) to increase the damage. Presumably I'd also explain the fire-breathing through similar mechanics and there'd be some address to how it accesses so much magical power and why others cannot. Perhaps it can tap into a magical field that a Tesla-like inventor could be attempting to access or perhaps it siphons it out of the planet or other objects and needs to remain close to a source to avoid potentially 'starving' itself. 

Anyway, that's one pseudoscientific explanation that could be used in an Victorian-esque or post-Victorian-esque tech level.


----------



## Saigonnus (Jul 31, 2015)

I agree with you Tom. I kind of bothered me too, at least from the "logic" standpoint. I still enjoyed reading them though because of the cool factor (not to mention I was in my early teens the last time I read something featuring them) I think if I were going to incorporate them into a story however, I would make the humanoids larger (10-12 feet tall) and the dragons considerably smaller, (15-18' long from nose to tail) so that the readers won't have to suspend their disbelief too far, and you could still have the coolness of transforming and flying away. Even a dragon that size, with razor sharp claws, teeth, armored hide and breath weapon would be very dangerous to humans... And if you have them live/hunt in packs, even more so.

Might be good for a villain or enemy cult to be so "formidable".


----------



## psychotick (Jul 31, 2015)

Hi,

Short answer - it's magic!

Long answer - it's friggin magic! You don't need to give an explanation. You just need to establish that it happens and make it convincing enough that a reader will believe it. If you have to wrap things up in some sort of pseudo scientific explanation are you really writing fantasy at all?

And have you read Gordon R Dicksons dragon knight books? They're brilliant.

Cheers, Greg.


----------



## teacup (Jul 31, 2015)

> Well, I don't mind other people not explaining it. That's your cup of tea. But I've always wanted solid explanations for the phenomena in my stories--that's just the way I am. I have a scientific mindset.



Well since you mentioned cups of tea and scientific mindsets I'll have to hit you with the problem of the dragons being able to fly at all.



(correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, anyone, as this is mostly just my own reasoning.) 
How could a dragon fly if it's so large, unless somehow not very heavy? It has to overcome the downward force due to gravity, but the more mass the dragon has, the stronger this force will be. So, larger wingspan and very good muscles to exert a larger overall force downwards to overcome the force due to gravity should work, but then you're adding even more mass.

I've not looked much into just how realistic dragonflight actually is (just going off my own reasoning here) yet but I think unless the dragon has very little mass compared to its large size, it would not be able to overcome the force due to gravity well enough to effectively fly.

I think (could be wrong) the real life case is that we don't have huge flying birds because increasing wingspan large enough to make such large creatures fly makes the downward force of gravity always more than the forces pushing upward after a certain mass is reached - beyond that, the creature will be too heavy and only be getting heavier the more you increase wingspan, at which point the forces up can never overcome the force due to gravity down. (Not good at explaining stuff, so hope that made sense.)

I don't know how much sense a strong, living creature of very little density makes, though, so you might have to limit the size of your dragons to a realistic size or figure out some magical reason for their flight aside from flying like a bird does if you want this to be accurate.

I think Avatar (not the Last Airbender) did it with their large flying birds by having moon _very _close to the planet (or something like that?) which meant the resultant force down due to gravity was lessened due to an upward force due to the moon's gravitational field, allowing large creatures to overcome (the much smaller than Earth's) downward gravitational force.




Now, to actually answer your question...Sorry, got carried away there lol.
It depends on your magic system. If it is a big mysterious thing and that's how it stays, you could just keep it at that if you wanted as long as energy isn't being created out of nowhere I guess.
There have been some good suggestions here. I can't think of another one off the top of my head right now, though


----------



## Feo Takahari (Jul 31, 2015)

How wedded are you to the specifics? If you can't imagine them shapeshifting, then maybe they shouldn't shapeshift, at least not in a literal sense. (I wrote a character once who could give off an aura of being a dragon, making other people enter a semi-hallucinatory state where they saw him as a powerful reptilian.)


----------



## X Equestris (Jul 31, 2015)

There once were some pretty huge flying birds, the teratorns, of which Argentavis Magnificens was the largest.  Pterosaurs got even bigger because they didn't have feathers, which limit maximum size. Quetzalcoatlus was about as tall as a giraffe when it was on the ground.  The real issue is that these huge flyers were mostly wing.  Having your dragons be mostly wing sort of reduces how imposing they are.

Personally, I got around the size issue by
1) them having very light, hollow bones that are also very strong
2) them having two legs and two wings instead of four legs and two wings, which makes them a little more aerodynamic
3) having only the really old ones being of a size that we really think of as "dragon sized".  The younger ones are smaller, though they are still a decent threat to most people.
4) having them use a bit of innate force magic to reduce their weight while flying.  I already explained the breath attacks with innate, instinctive magic, so why not this?  Human mages can't make themselves fly because there are lots of factors to control, but dragons just use a bit of magic to supplement their existing biology.


----------



## teacup (Jul 31, 2015)

> There once were some pretty huge flying birds, the teratorns, of which Argentavis Magnificens was the largest. Pterosaurs got even bigger because they didn't have feathers, which limit maximum size.



Again, I could be way off with this as I'm just going from my reasoning without actually reading into this stuff, but would the atmosphere not have had an effect on this, too? Were these able to be huge and able to fly because of the different atmosphere at the time, so if here today wouldn't be able to fly well? (These are all from way back, right? If not then never mind, I'm wrong )


----------



## Tom (Jul 31, 2015)

Feo Takahari said:


> How wedded are you to the specifics? If you can't imagine them shapeshifting, then maybe they shouldn't shapeshift, at least not in a literal sense. (I wrote a character once who could give off an aura of being a dragon, making other people enter a semi-hallucinatory state where they saw him as a powerful reptilian.)



Doesn't need to be too specific. Just a general overview that makes sense. 

The explanation I have in-story is that, when a dragon shapeshifts into human form, all its extra mass is burned off as the magical energy needed to fuel the transformation. A dragon in human form can't shift into its original form right away; it has to wait until has enough magical energy built up to convert into its lost mass. Pretty simple, but it works with the magic of the setting--that is, magic as a massive energy source that can be tapped into and is constantly renewing itself.


----------



## X Equestris (Jul 31, 2015)

teacup said:


> Again, I could be way off with this as I'm just going from my reasoning without actually reading into this stuff, but would the atmosphere not have had an effect on this, too? Were these able to be huge and able to fly because of the different atmosphere at the time, so if here today wouldn't be able to fly well? (These are all from way back, right? If not then never mind, I'm wrong )



Nah, these(the teratorns, that is) were pretty recent.  As in "humans and human precursors were around in the same time period as them" recent.  The atmosphere has been mostly the same since the Carboniferous period, when there was much more oxygen in the air.  Bugs back then were huge.  The largest flying insect lived in the Carboniferous period.  It was a dragonfly like creature with a wingspan about a foot across, if I remember right.


----------



## teacup (Jul 31, 2015)

> Nah, these were pretty recent. As in "humans lived alongside them" recent. The atmosphere has been mostly the same since the Carboniferous period, when there was much more oxygen in the air. Bugs back then were huge. The largest flying insect lived in the Carboniferous period. It was a dragonfly like creature with a wingspan about a foot across, if I remember right.


Coool 
So am I right aside from it's possible if they're mostly wing?


----------



## Trick (Jul 31, 2015)

Looking at these might help in understanding the impracticality of actual dragons:














Of course, that's why dragons are fantasy creatures


----------



## X Equestris (Jul 31, 2015)

teacup said:


> Coool
> So am I right aside from it's possible if they're mostly wing?



Pretty much.  Big flying creatures still don't weigh very much at all, so that's something you have to work around if you want your dragons to have large bodies.


----------



## Trick (Jul 31, 2015)

X Equestris said:


> Pretty much.  Big flying creatures still don't weigh very much at all, so that's something you have to work around if you want your dragons to have large bodies.



I may not have read as many dragon stories as many others but I have no recollection of dragons being described as light. They would be far less formidable if they weighed significantly less than land animals of similar size. 

Plus, wouldn't hollow bones become a real issue in battle? I know they can be strong but it seems unlikely they would hold up against an elephant charging into them to protect their young or something. Plus, if their weight is so important for flight, they wouldn't be able to carry off very heavy prey... that would result in almost constant hunting.


----------



## X Equestris (Jul 31, 2015)

Trick said:


> I may not have read as many dragon stories as many others but I have no recollection of dragons being described as light. They would be far less formidable if they weighed significantly less than land animals of similar size.
> 
> Plus, wouldn't hollow bones become a real issue in battle? I know they can be strong but it seems unlikely they would hold up against an elephant charging into them to protect their young or something. Plus, if their weight is so important for flight, they wouldn't be able to carry off very heavy prey... that would result in almost constant hunting.



That's my point: if you want big, heavy dragons, you have to work around it somehow.  Otherwise they'll end up looking like pterosaurs or something. I have my dragons use magic to lower their weight while in flight.  You can have lighter gravity on your world. Or you can throw any effort at biological realism out the window.  Whatever works for you.

On the second point, maybe, maybe not.  I had my dragon bones be almost supernaturally strong.  In-universe scholars don't know how it's possible.  And they live in areas that are very difficult to reach.  Otherwise, they only land when they want to, or when they're forced to the ground by weather or injuries.  So there's relatively little risk to them.  That's probably an issue dependent on world building.  For point three, Quetzalcoatlus managed to live and scavenge just fine, so I'm sure it's possible.  They ate at the site of the kill and if they fed their young, they could have carried food back to their nests in their beaks or stomach, like birds do today.


----------



## psychotick (Aug 1, 2015)

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 (Aug 1, 2015)

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


----------



## Mindfire (Aug 1, 2015)

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 (Aug 1, 2015)

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 (Aug 1, 2015)

Tom Nimenai said:


> 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.



Tom Nimenai said:


> 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 (Aug 21, 2015)

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


----------

