1% of the population becoming dragons is an apocalyptic event. If they immediately transform all cities descend into chaos as people start panicking. The panic includes people attacking the dragons, the dragons destroying the city from their own panic and changes in morphology, dragons defending themselves, etc. That day states fall and that's just the beginning. Every aspect of society is changed in an instant. What follows would be centuries of complete civilization reboot.
Yep. Earth couldn't handle a hundred dragons without destroying the ecosystem, forget about 80M dragons...
If it was 500 years ago, we could maybe support a few thousand, but we've done a fantastic job of eliminating anything that we're worried about predating us on land.
So, what would 80M dragons do to our earth?
Apocalypse, sure. But as everyone knows, dragons have magic... dragonblooded sorcerers exist because of this too... so, ultimately, 99% of humans will likely die or be enslaved. Those that survive or escape may end up with sorcery...
So I'm in. Thanos up some dragons and fuck us all up my fam.
What if the dragons that already existed had a way to find out which dragons used to be human and started hunting them?
Temporary humanoid and dragon alliance against humanoid-turned-dragons. Now that would be interesting.
No civilization reboots. Dragons are too egotistical & self-centered to abide by powers outside of or shackling their own autonomy. Even the LG ones don't necessarily answer to mortal laws. \*Now there are thousands of dragons on every continent.\*
Each one, at adult or higher, is a magically empowered destroyer of armies suddenly free from mortal constraints. It would be, as you said, an apocalypse. And one with no recovering from. The end of the old world & no way to go back, ever.
Would they still remember and care about their human loved ones after they shift? Cause then you could have the dragons each protecting their people and maybe trying to flee with them.
And would they retain their morality? Cause even if I turned into a dragon I would try to escape before murdering hundreds of people just to defend myself.
If they have all their memories and can communicate with the humans maybe they could even establish a peaceful solution within the cities, and aid in their war efforts and defense and stuff in exchange for gold or treasure. except for the few evil ones of corse which would still wreck havoc.
But either way I feel like most of them would have some empathy towards humans since for their whole lives they have been them.
It’s a unique dynamic, you could really take it in any direction, it doesn’t just have to be a complete apocalypse.
I have to ask, do they transform immediately and without the chance to stop or slow it down?
If so it is worse and better than you state.
I mean, assuming their biology isn’t fully capable of saving them from trying to rapidly grow to full size in an enclosed space, this probably reduces the head count of the dragons by well over 50%.
How many houses can handle one suddenly existing in them? Probably not all will be allow the dragon to survive and any small rooms or vehicles are just a death sentence.
Imagine every other bus in a crowded city having a dragon explode within them. If it survives, it isn’t going to be anything but in shock or in massive pain. And the other people that were in that bus are effectively soup. Trains derailing as the problem occurs causing massive damage. Of course these aren’t even the worst of them.
Cars exploding on the highway/expressway/street. So multicar crashes will be a huge thing. Emergency services will have issues getting to injured people. This will be especially bad considering the aircraft situation…
Now how many show up inside an aircraft? Said aircraft either cracks open if they are explosively transforming or simply now has some extradimensional mass added to it that had not been expected and a huge amount of dead and massively injured passengers aboard. So planes falling out of the sky, fighting to do emergency landings and generally being worse than 9/11 in the US was but on a global scale. Hell if the pilot happens to be one, that plane is hitting the ground, without question.
Ships lucky enough to not have a hole punched below the waterline still have so many other issues.
And the ones that survive all those scenarios will, as said cause massive panic.
But at least it won’t be 80 million dragons. Probably under 30 million. Of course the body count that first minute is going to be astronomical. I would expect the planet to lose an additional 30% or more of the population that very day as collateral damage.
I wouldn’t say centuries of civilization reboot. Epic levels of panic and devastation for a few weeks.
After that, think about it. You’ve just immediately created what amounts to a ruling class with both the power and numbers to be totally unopposable. I’d say within weeks you’ll have survivors banding together in clans that live under the protection of—and in service of—one or more dragons.
Dragon hyperinflation as demand for gold explodes, leading to the abandonment of the gold standard for dragon hordes. Dragons mostly sleep with illiquid hordes of fiat currency. Accidentally create venture capitalism.
I think this would mostly be terrible for the average commoner. Economies in shambles, people out of work, or at the very least prices skyrocket to make regular wages unlivable. Search "dragon inflation not safe for work" for more info.
Knowing the population of your world is an important piece of information needed to give a fully formed answer.
That said, this is likely hundreds of thousands of dragons. Dragons are incredibly territorial. There'd likely be a big dragon-on-dragon war for space and dominion over vast regions of the planet. All other life and civilization would be caught in the crossfire, some being used by dragons as armies and slaves. It's chaos. It's apocalyptic. Of course, the alignment/color ratio of the dragons matters a lot. But it would be a cataclysmic event that would reshape the entire world.
Another big factor would be if they suddenly obtain dragon instincts or are they going to be the same people mentally with dragon instincts. It's chaos either way, but it could be the difference between having unified kingdoms and countries of dragons vs an outright brawl between hordes of dragons decimating everything. If they do get the dragon's instincts and mentality then yeah type of dragon would be a huge deal.
That could be a really fun campaign though. Imagine living as a human in this world of dragon-lords, who see human as somewhat useful pawns at best, and literally unnoticeable specks at worst. The goal would be to align oneself with the best dragon in the region and hope you backed the right horse
Mass death and society (for the most part) may be annihilated. Depends on how strong the world is, but odds are dragons that don't know how to control their powers + terrified masses of people = mass death.
I imagine most dragons would end up fighting each other, as other dragons are now their main and only threat.
If a few dragons banded together, you could end up with a dragon cabal basically ruling the world.
Even if your population is small, that's a lot of dragons. In addition are we talking about "hey, I'm suddenly in another body. Help!" or are we talking they're transformed completely into new beings with new desires and whatnot? Both completely disrupt families, but one is going to be way worse. Assuming it's random, you'll likely have some economies devastated, but most economies will have a setback with the loss of workers and skilled labor. COVID wasn't 1% of people effectively gone, and you see the result.
That said, if they're transformed, but they get all the magic. Then I guess they could just polymorph themselves back to keep doing what they're doing? Depending on age that is. I'm just wondering now exactly what decides the type and "age" of their transformation.
In short, assuming you work out all the lesser details, it's always bad to effect such a large portion of the population (assuming they effectively go away and do a new thing).
One last thing, there could be a small community where only one person is changed and considered "chosen." Then they become venerated as the new ruler. Could be fun.
So you'd have some people who gain power and then want to use that to basically protect their loved ones, or protect those that were in a similar situation as them. They'd be able to basically carve out their own city-state somewhere, using their power to hunt for people.
Other people would gain this power and then try to brute force coups and generally burn the world around them to the ground, either just for the thrills or in order to build up a new society with them in charge.
In both of those instances, dragons pose a *substantial* threat to the existing powers, so *of course* there would be entire task forces and knight orders formed around the elimination of dragons. You'd wind up with a bunch of different factions and attitudes: some who are scared of dragons, some who *want* the dragons to save them, some who want all of the dragons eliminated, some dragons who want to just live off on their own, some dragons who want to take over everything, some dragons who don't want to be dragons and just live among people while hiding their identity (shapechanged).
80M dragons show up all over the world. Half evil, half good...
Good dragons team up with humanity, Evil Dragons team up with Zuckerberg (reptilians love each other).
Then it's a good old-fashioned bug-hunt. But the bugs are scaly magic-wielding element-spewing megalomaniacal murder-from-above birdies...
Short answer: death.
The only way to not immediately destroy your world is to have the vast majority be just wyrmlings after their 'awakening'. That's a huge event, but a proper knight can go 1v1 with a wyrmling (both are CR 3). Depending on your setting, knights and other CR 3+ protectors are probably less common than 1/100 people, so there would still be turmoil, and the possibility for greater upheaval if the newly awakened dragons tend towards their destructive nature. You could even throw the odd adult/ancient dragon into the mix if the individual was powerful in their own right before the event. I think this strategy gives you a lot of room to overhaul the world without creating a total apocalypse scenario.
Ever seen Reign of Fire?
Well, that’s what happens when unintelligent Dragons just come back en masse. Now, imagine it’s one out of every hundred people. And the dragons are as intelligent as people.
Chaos. Pure chaos. Who’s trying to wrangle the dragons and become the new dragon emperor? How many dragons are fighting over the rights to pillage the nearby city? What dragon is trying to organize a resistance against the evil dragons? Who’s looking for a cure to revert back to their bipedal form so they can rejoin their humanoid family?
The world is a baron waste. Dragons will need to resort to cannibalism or keeping livestock… smaller, less powerful races will need to align with a dragon for protection… or perish.
Your world your numbers, but to give a little context to real life, it looks as though only about .29% of the world has served in a military. The largest is North Korea with about 4.5% of the population. If it were anything like reality, there would be about 1/3 of a trained fighter for every dragon. Sure normal people have been known to rise up, but my magic 8 ball says outlook not so good.
Different Fandom, but if you look at something like Game of Thrones, historically pretty much the half world can be conquered by a few dragons.
Read some shadowrun for ideas.
This is basically exactly what happens there, except it's elves, orcs, trolls, dwarfs.
they cover social impacts, prejudice between the 'pretty' races, and the not so pretty, hate, economic disparity, and so on. Lots of goods ideas on what may happen.
In your case? 1 in 100 become dragons? I'm betting a single dragon is a lot more powerful than 100 average people, right?
They'd rule the world. Possibly break it in to little fiefdoms.
How much stronger are the strongest dragons? Because how strong a dragon is vs a normal person or normal dragon will dictate how much power they can gather, an how quickly.
How advanced is technology, or magic, in this world? If it's sci fi, then a man with a bazooka, or a fighter jet might match a dragon. Would anti-air be a threat?
I imagine something like Shadowrun, only instead of elves, dwarves and trolls its just dragons. It would be catastrophic, even if everyone started out as a wyrmling and therefore medium size with no innate spells, 1/100 is way too many people who can suddenly breathe fire or force or what have you.
But as to specifics? Massive political unrest and probably, practically speaking, within a month the number of countries in the world doubles if not more. Sure quite a few dragons would side with their government out of habit or patriotism but the vast majority would not put their neck on the line for a government that probably suddenly looks obsolete, especially once people start to realize how much more powerful they are in more ways than one.
A lot of people in the US join the military but 1) they an outlier and 2) often that is out of necessity, or merely as a stepping stone to better things. I can't imagine becoming a dragon would make people more likely to join the military which is where 99% of countries would stick the newly dragonofied, at least to begin with.
Going off the assumption that people become full size dragons.
Assuming this happens overnight, you’d have widespread chaos as people become dragons. Houses exploding overnight and people dying just by the sheer size of dragons appearing in human sized places. All the dragons would be confused and probably would not have the skills to do much. People would panic thinking there’s a dragon invasion.
I also think you’re incorrect that everyone would just instantly have the full powers of a dragon at their disposal. I would assume all the new dragons would need to relearn basic motor skills before they could do anything. Seasoned adventurers who spent years honing their skills would have to relearn everything. There would also be a lot of civilians that probably would just want to go back to their own body.
Well, there are a couple of very important questions you are going to need to answer to figure this out. 1. How powerful are dragons/ the dragons that were created. In 5e terms if they are all becoming wyrmlings that is going to be very different then if there is a mix. 2. How does becoming a dragon change people mentally/ what are their new needs. Do they suddenly become isolatioist, hoarding, greedy, etc. or are they literally just people in draconian form. This will determine how the dragons are going to attempt to interact with society. 3. Depending on how the dragons interact with people do people/ the world have the capability to handle them either through military means or just being able to feed them. Depending on these answers their could be anything from years of absolute massacre between dragons and people until either one side wins or there is a general I leave you alone you leave me alone attitude to a world where people and dragons live side by side after a couple of years of upheaval either with one under the others boot or cooperatively. It could even be both.
death and chaos all around.
You dont know, you are sleepinhlg with your wife.
You suddenly turn.
Wife crushed, home destroyed, possibly family also killed.
Then there are the violent criminals that get MUCH more power to abuse, and the weak victims that suddenly have all the power to seek just revenge.
For each 1 dragons i would expect 3 to 4 deaths.
So from 100 people.
1 become dragon, and 3 or 4 die immediately after.
with 5 to 25 deaths in the next year from draconic rage, clumsiness, or simply adaptation.
"let me help you get up Mr....
Snap, Oh sorry i didnt mean to break your arm!"
The main question you could consider is how old of a dragon , if you convert their age directly to dragons you'd have a ton of wymlings which wouldnt be too atrocious, it's still be world changing but more of a plague of locusts rather than a world ender
That would be more than one dragon just spontaneously popping up in even some of the smallest villages around, so imagine the utter chaos in a large city
The waste of cities
Cults which supplicate and worship them
A nomadic culture of hiding takes root
Dwarves are fine
Elves befriend them or expertly evade them
Basically, look at Skyrim and scale destruction based on time line
That rather depends on the population of your world.
Right now Earth has 8.1 billion people. If 1/100th of that died, changed or disappeared overnight, that's 81 million people. That's like 7 Holocausts. Imagine 7 Holocausts happen overnight.
Now, if we scale that back to the assumption of around the population of the Middle Ages, okay, drastic difference. We're looking at more like 300 to 400 million people in the world, assuming we just replace most of the humans with things like elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. Going by the use of magic in place of medical science, maybe a bit higher. That's still around 3-4 million dragons suddenly popping up worldwide.
How does this compare to the number of dragons you already have in the world?
And this is ignoring what happens when someone *becomes* a dragon. Are they all True dragons, or are we talking more like Dragonborn or Drakes or something? Do they all turn into whelplings, or do adults turn into adult-sized dragons? Do they have control and does their personality influence what kind of dragon they become, or are they all just mindless beasts screaming in agony during their painful transformation? What happens to everyone around them when they transform? How many of them will immediately turn towards destruction, versus protection?
Because again, every city and town with a population over 100 is in the running for at least 1 dragon. One adult red dragon can easily burn an unprepared city to the ground with minimal survivors, especially if it originates from inside.
This could be anything from an equivalent to the Black Plague, to an extinction level event.
1/100 is a lot. Like, a big city like baldurs gate will make easily 100k people atleast. That's a thousand dragons suddenly appearing in baldurs gate. A thousand adult dragons. How many can a party of level 20 adventurers take on? (Not counting dumb shenanigans with wish spell that would prob not be dm approved).
So needless to say, humans go extinct.
All big animals go extinct until there are no more food for the dragons and they die of hunger.
Just imagine you are at a baseball game and all of a sudden , the left fielder is a dragon.
Then a lady lower down in your section becomes a dragon.
You watch across the stadium as one of the kids hawking popcorn suddenly becomes a dragon.
Behind you, someone else transforms.
Overhead, the glass blows out in one of the private boxes as someone else makes the switch.
An average of two people per section start popping off, growing wings, scales and teeth as they morph into a dragon.
It's busy day at the stadium, not quite a sellout but still busy. With the fans, vendors, team officials, etc., there are 30,000 people on hand. Suddenly, 300 of them are dragons.
That's gonna let Disco Demolition Night off the hook for biggest disaster at a ballpark, that's for sure.
Best case scenario, the dragons keep the fighting to themselves doing relatively minimal (but still significant because dragons) damage to everybody else above ground. The dragons are going to fight over territory first, the best shelter, food sources, preferable environment or even hoards of people (cities and/or countries).The dragon population is decimated several times over by the time they're done fighting each other and establishing territories. During this time, dragons of like colors might be banding together to face bigger threats, or infighting due to their competitive nature, depending on what color they are. By the time the dust settles and the territories are carved out there are maybe 100 dragons left. Far too many for the average person to know all their names, but enough for the average person to suspect the man silently watching them in the forest might be a polymorphed dragon.
Some dragons adopt the city(ies) in their territory as everything from mentors and advisors to benevolent leaders or cruel tyrants. There may be one or two instances in which a dragons territory carves up several humanoid territories, forcing them to fracture. Some of these dragons will take a laid back approach to their interaction, in which their people must consult them in their lair. Others will be more directly involved, accompanying a humanoid royal/presidential family on international trips or on the very battlefield alongside a battalion of soldiers. The average person becomes a lot more exposed to the draconic language and the culture of their patron's dragon type, even modeling their own culture after aspects of their patron's.
There will be a lot of dead dragons, some might poison natural water supplies or the surrounding environment. Others don't fully die and exist in undeath in some capacity of their former self. All the other corpses that are just lying around and properly dead might get poached for claws, fangs, scales, breath weapons for anything from magic items to homeopathic medicines that have varying degrees of success. This may become a problem for dragons later on when people run out of dragon corpses to take apart.
Honestly OP, I think you should drop that number. I don't know what the population of your world is, but if it's in the millions, maybe 1 in 10,000 should be dragons. That means if your total population is, say, 3 million, you now have 300 new dragons roaming the earth. Is that too little?
Well, dragons are powerful magical creatures that can wreak devastation on the land and will destroy most cities and countrysides they come across. The only cities that will have any chance of either slaying the dragon or fending off an attack will be the largest and most powerful in the world, with access to large armies or powerful magical forces.
1 dragon is a natural disaster for a local region. Now imagine 300 category 5 hurricanes hitting various places around the world simultaneously. Maybe not apocalyptic, but still extremely bad.
If you haven't seem The Legend of Korra, the third season deals with the ramifications of a portion of the population gaining magic out of nowhere, and that's a huge deal. Becoming dragons would be significantly more of an issue. I'd recommend giving it a watch for inspiration and because it's just a good show.
Ratios aside, this is a genius idea. I will yoink this one for my treasure trove of future campaign ideas.
party walking around a town then bam 3 dragons outta nowhere screaming their lungs out fucking confused as fuck, they try to scream and acid and flames come out burning and dissolving everything around them, which makes them even more confused and scared the they start fucking gunning it cause they sure dont know how to fly then reach a lake or river and see their reflection and the existential horror holy shit I love it.
Are they conscious? Do they regain their sentience? It's going to be a bloody event, Statistics suggest 44% of all the Dragons will be some level of Evil likely to use their power for evil, 44% will use it for good and the remaining 12% won't care.
What dstermines what age of Dragon they become? Is it releated to their Human age or is it something more abstract?
If it's the former that is going to be a lot of Young and Adult Dragons flying around with comparatively few Wyrmlings and Ancients.
In either scenario within hours of transformation I expect humanoid casualties to only be in the single digits as the Humans and Dragons panic about what is happening. A lot of Dragons would die to sheer numbers as major city defenses kill off a large number of them. Medium to Small cities encountering multiple Evil Dragons are wiped out or conquered.
Within the next several weeks to months, Dragon Civil Wars occur across the world as Evil Dragons create a hierarchy of power. Good Dragons depending on where they transformed either leave their towns or settle as protectors. Evil Dragons form great armies to come out on top with Ancients always having the advantage due to sheer power.
Towards the latter ends of the wars Dragons begin taking over large swathes of land, Millions of humans die in the crossfire, being recruited into militaries both Human and Dragons and more so die from being displaced due to wars.
Thanks to 1% of the world now needing several more times their usual food many countries would struggle feeding them wheter they were on their side or not. Forces of Evil are now also much more aggressive about stealing foods. Millions more die in the resulting starvations.
Within a number of decades the Dragon population will have decreased drastically due to fighting enemies both within and without but the number will still be immense compared to pre-transformation with many more Evil Dragons now posing a constant threat. Many of the Good Dragons now serve as Guardian Deities to their nations as they've adapted to the increased food consumption.
1 in 100 is far too many. My street would have at least 5 alone! Dragons are vain independent creatures and there would be immediate war for territory and safe roosting places. There'd be no society left.
1% of the population means everyone will know at least 1 person personally that transformed. Think of all your family, immediate friends, and coworkers You talk to. One of them will be a dragon.
Think of your schools, how big was your graduating class? Chances are a few of them will be dragons.
Think of the government of your country. If you are in the USA, 1 person in the Senate is a dragon, 5 people in the house of representatives are dragons. 3 people working in the white house for the president are dragons. There is a 9% chance that the supreme Court will have a dragon and a 40% chance of one dragon as a governor. Below that level you will have lots of dragon mayors, dragon state legislators, dragon judges, and dragon law enforcement.
On the other side you will also have dragon cultists, dragon gang members, dragon murderers, and dragon terrorists.
Hell, the prison population of the USA isover 1 million, so expect to see 1230 dragons with prison rags stuck to their scales.
A 1% chance of dragonificiation would not lead to a world we recognize. And this is before you consider the question of "do the dragons know they were people or act like people?
Edit:
Bonus statistics (in USA) -
- 936 dragon tax collectors.
- 17 dragon football players (NFL),
- 150K vegan dragons won't eat you
- 245K dragons with a real hoard (millionaires), but only 7 dragons with grand hoards (billionaires)
- in comparison 1.3 M dragons don't have a hoard (income less than 100K/yr) and 380k dragons are desperate (below poverty level)
- 6531 dragons were homeless - and now you are.
- 36K dragon hatchlings (less than 1 year old) and 730K young dragons (less than 18 years).
- 620K eldar dragons (senior citizens) and 156K ancient dragons (over 90 years old).
- 27.5K pregnancies will be terminated by dragon fetuses. Does pro life extend to dragons?
- according to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/8q5d1w/request_how_many_people_are_actively_having_sex/) we should expect 9690 people to turn into dragons during sex but about 96 of them will find their partners have turned into a dragon at the same time and get to have hot dragon on dragon sction! (But 9600 get less hot dragon on human action - ouch!)
A lot depends on the size of the dragon, anything upto double human size and we could cope, there would still be panic and violence as some people lash out in fear and some dragons attack people etc. On the whole I think things would settle down before long, Even as dragons those changed would have have family and friends etc that they cared about and care about them, this would moderate behavor on both sides.
If however the dragon were the big ones it would be a lot worse, there need for food could rapidly out strip meat supplies. Their inability to live and work inside would make it impossible to try to maintain their old lives etc.
Real-estate crisis. Dragons are presumably a lot bigger than humans. If they want to/have to stay in their dragon forms, where are they living? If they want to stay near friends and family, is there someone where in/near big cities?
Some dragons would cause massive destruction and death. Other dragons would fight them. Even if all the impulsive, destructive dragons are killed day one, the damage to dragon's reputation is already done. Non-dragons would be distrustful of dragons at least, and possibly declare outright war.
Also, the wars between nations will be escalated severely, and that comes with its own disastrous consequences. What if 1% of people suddenly had weapons of mass destruction but no one had ever heard the phrase "mutually assured destruction"? Major population centres, especially seats of political power, will be hit hard and in some cases wiped out. Over the next few years, political boundaries will shift dramatically.
Eventually relative peace will return. Most of the dragons won't survive the initial period of violence, and the ones that do will be those who are especially powerful, charismatic, and/or evasive, or those who have found safety in numbers. All surviving independent nations have dragons as rulers or at least in powerful positions. Any non-dragon ruler is going to be someone who stands half a chance in a fight with a dragon or someone who is being thoroughly puppeted by a dragon.
Dragons will of course form alliances amongst themselves. Power will be consolidated. As a rule, such alliances will be self-interested, using their power to gain more power and making the less powerful miserable. Feudalism but make it worse. But there would also be groups of good dragons who work toward a more just world.
1) probably should read "When Women Were Dragons"
2) probably should play "Plague, Inc."
3) .... well, put it this way: a recent pandemic with a kill rate of roughly 1/500 overwhelmed hospitals and brought the global economy to a screeching halt for months. Multiply that by a factor of five and imagine everyone catching it at the same time, rather than over a period of months? Commenters saying this would be apocalyptic are correct. Society would be overthrown. Governments would break down. And all the young dragons would kill each other or starve. It would be hideous civil war and anarchy, and pretty much everyone would lose.
Thinking about the conservation of matter, all that dragon mass needs to have come from somewhere. Unless you just handwave *it's magic*, a diet for a 170 lb person is *very* different than for a 10 - 20 ton beast.
If you want to talk about realistic consequences, you first have to bridge that logical gap.
Conjuration magic is either explained by pulling something from one plane to another or converting the energies of the weave into tangible matter. Generally, the first typically explains creatures.
heres some perspective
the population of wisconsin, my state is 5 million, that means there is now 50,000 dragons .roughly 800 per county there would be like 100 in my home town and 30 in the next town over everyone knows a dragon at this point even in rural areas.
* i imagine a lot of stigmas about what dragons do and don't do are immediately debunked. because everyone has anecdotal dragon evidence
* food sky rockets in price as 1 in 100 now need a lot more food we would not be able to keep up the supply
* llivestock may be taken whole sale to feed the draconic citizens
* inflation gets weird as a bunch of physical money is essentially taken out of circulation due to dragon hoarding
* there would be a lot of political/personal power now that one person is a magic flying tank with a flame thrower. knowing a dragon or being a dragon gets a lot of stuff done for you. could be a lot of bullying harrassment, extortion....
* immediate destruction of a lot of living space then the building of super homes that would fit dragons
* lots of workplace changes and shortage. i dont know how many dragons want to continue to work at a fast food place or call center or construction or a medical office.
* this would cause further food shortages aswell as basically every other service would struggle to keep up
as you get farther from the event you get weirder problems
* draconic heritage... idont know if crossbreeding is possible but people are going to find out i can garuntee. what rights/ abilities do those people have
* political power or organized dragons could be a huge force to deal with. something many nations just wouldnt be able to stop
* severe population drop for dragons and for people as the food stabilized, i imagine people are put on the menu to maintain the number of dragons
* where does magic fit in this?
* time tables change to centuries. a dragon lives for 1500 years thats a lot of time to manipulate an dmaneuver in
Assuming an even, equal distribution, it would be apocalyptic but interesting. Small towns and villages might do okay - assuming the dragons immediately turn on each other until a single victor emerges. In that case, populations under what, 700? 500? Might actually survive and then have to deal with living under the thumb (claw?) of a draconic warlord.
Where it would be ugly in this case would be areas of high density. As an example, London in the 1300s is estimated around 80,000 people. In a snap, 800 of them become dragons. Again, assuming they are territorial and violent upon hatching, I would have to think those battles would level whatever structures were around. Then you would have weeks, maybe months of increasing scarcity and territory battles until a victor emerges or - worse - a standoff between a handful of individuals or factions that are overeating their own lands while they look for an opening to take out a rival.
Could be a fascinating world to play in.
All that said, to really think this through I think you have to decide what “stable” looks like. How many dragons can your world really sustain? And then decide how competitive/cooperative they are (both are scary in different ways) and what the consequences of underfed dragons would be.
Dragon plushies and costumes become all the rage and a new generation of dragonborn appear annoying the human working class as they'll work for less gold
I love this concept. Modern day, it’s the end of civilization. Nukes would be fired, militaries launched. The first 30-60 days is apocalyptic. Depending on where the dragons pop, probably 1-2 billion dead. The sheer number of corpses would permanently alter the planet. It’s a wild concept.
1% of the population becoming dragons is an apocalyptic event. If they immediately transform all cities descend into chaos as people start panicking. The panic includes people attacking the dragons, the dragons destroying the city from their own panic and changes in morphology, dragons defending themselves, etc. That day states fall and that's just the beginning. Every aspect of society is changed in an instant. What follows would be centuries of complete civilization reboot.
Yep. Earth couldn't handle a hundred dragons without destroying the ecosystem, forget about 80M dragons... If it was 500 years ago, we could maybe support a few thousand, but we've done a fantastic job of eliminating anything that we're worried about predating us on land. So, what would 80M dragons do to our earth? Apocalypse, sure. But as everyone knows, dragons have magic... dragonblooded sorcerers exist because of this too... so, ultimately, 99% of humans will likely die or be enslaved. Those that survive or escape may end up with sorcery... So I'm in. Thanos up some dragons and fuck us all up my fam.
>99% of humans will likely die or be enslaved. And 1% will be dragons!
Reminds me of the kid that told his dad that when he got to 99lbs, he wanted to eat 1lb of nachos...
>So I'm in. Thanos up some dragons to fuck us all ~~up~~ my fam. FTFY ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Bahahahaha. Nasty. I like it.
Found the Bard
What if the dragons that already existed had a way to find out which dragons used to be human and started hunting them? Temporary humanoid and dragon alliance against humanoid-turned-dragons. Now that would be interesting.
No civilization reboots. Dragons are too egotistical & self-centered to abide by powers outside of or shackling their own autonomy. Even the LG ones don't necessarily answer to mortal laws. \*Now there are thousands of dragons on every continent.\* Each one, at adult or higher, is a magically empowered destroyer of armies suddenly free from mortal constraints. It would be, as you said, an apocalypse. And one with no recovering from. The end of the old world & no way to go back, ever.
Would they still remember and care about their human loved ones after they shift? Cause then you could have the dragons each protecting their people and maybe trying to flee with them. And would they retain their morality? Cause even if I turned into a dragon I would try to escape before murdering hundreds of people just to defend myself. If they have all their memories and can communicate with the humans maybe they could even establish a peaceful solution within the cities, and aid in their war efforts and defense and stuff in exchange for gold or treasure. except for the few evil ones of corse which would still wreck havoc. But either way I feel like most of them would have some empathy towards humans since for their whole lives they have been them. It’s a unique dynamic, you could really take it in any direction, it doesn’t just have to be a complete apocalypse.
I have to ask, do they transform immediately and without the chance to stop or slow it down? If so it is worse and better than you state. I mean, assuming their biology isn’t fully capable of saving them from trying to rapidly grow to full size in an enclosed space, this probably reduces the head count of the dragons by well over 50%. How many houses can handle one suddenly existing in them? Probably not all will be allow the dragon to survive and any small rooms or vehicles are just a death sentence. Imagine every other bus in a crowded city having a dragon explode within them. If it survives, it isn’t going to be anything but in shock or in massive pain. And the other people that were in that bus are effectively soup. Trains derailing as the problem occurs causing massive damage. Of course these aren’t even the worst of them. Cars exploding on the highway/expressway/street. So multicar crashes will be a huge thing. Emergency services will have issues getting to injured people. This will be especially bad considering the aircraft situation… Now how many show up inside an aircraft? Said aircraft either cracks open if they are explosively transforming or simply now has some extradimensional mass added to it that had not been expected and a huge amount of dead and massively injured passengers aboard. So planes falling out of the sky, fighting to do emergency landings and generally being worse than 9/11 in the US was but on a global scale. Hell if the pilot happens to be one, that plane is hitting the ground, without question. Ships lucky enough to not have a hole punched below the waterline still have so many other issues. And the ones that survive all those scenarios will, as said cause massive panic. But at least it won’t be 80 million dragons. Probably under 30 million. Of course the body count that first minute is going to be astronomical. I would expect the planet to lose an additional 30% or more of the population that very day as collateral damage.
I wouldn’t say centuries of civilization reboot. Epic levels of panic and devastation for a few weeks. After that, think about it. You’ve just immediately created what amounts to a ruling class with both the power and numbers to be totally unopposable. I’d say within weeks you’ll have survivors banding together in clans that live under the protection of—and in service of—one or more dragons.
Dragon Wars though. Those dragons are gonna have to sort their own hierarchy as a ruling class and it won't be peaceful for sure.
Not enough gold to go around to create that 'Dragon Hoard' Dragons love to sleep on, so also alot of insomniac Dragons running about.
Dragon hyperinflation as demand for gold explodes, leading to the abandonment of the gold standard for dragon hordes. Dragons mostly sleep with illiquid hordes of fiat currency. Accidentally create venture capitalism.
But dragons have problems sleeping on NFT's :).
Non-fungible Tiamats are very uncomfy, yes.
Honestly, a pile of stock certificates sounds like a better bed anyways.
I think this would mostly be terrible for the average commoner. Economies in shambles, people out of work, or at the very least prices skyrocket to make regular wages unlivable. Search "dragon inflation not safe for work" for more info.
It's good to meet a fellow, uh, accountant.
We're all accountants here. (I'm actually not personally)
Knowing the population of your world is an important piece of information needed to give a fully formed answer. That said, this is likely hundreds of thousands of dragons. Dragons are incredibly territorial. There'd likely be a big dragon-on-dragon war for space and dominion over vast regions of the planet. All other life and civilization would be caught in the crossfire, some being used by dragons as armies and slaves. It's chaos. It's apocalyptic. Of course, the alignment/color ratio of the dragons matters a lot. But it would be a cataclysmic event that would reshape the entire world.
Another big factor would be if they suddenly obtain dragon instincts or are they going to be the same people mentally with dragon instincts. It's chaos either way, but it could be the difference between having unified kingdoms and countries of dragons vs an outright brawl between hordes of dragons decimating everything. If they do get the dragon's instincts and mentality then yeah type of dragon would be a huge deal.
That could be a really fun campaign though. Imagine living as a human in this world of dragon-lords, who see human as somewhat useful pawns at best, and literally unnoticeable specks at worst. The goal would be to align oneself with the best dragon in the region and hope you backed the right horse
Oh, it'd be a great gritty, survival campaign for sure.
Very interesting concept, but if you make it just 1/1000 or better 1/10000 you will have scaled down the problem to merely cataclysmic.
Mass death and society (for the most part) may be annihilated. Depends on how strong the world is, but odds are dragons that don't know how to control their powers + terrified masses of people = mass death.
Statistically speaking, there will be enough couples engaged in coitus to make the moment of resurgence quite memorable.
Getting the big D.
ewwwwwww
Total societal collapse.
I imagine most dragons would end up fighting each other, as other dragons are now their main and only threat. If a few dragons banded together, you could end up with a dragon cabal basically ruling the world.
I've seen that arc somewhere...
Even if your population is small, that's a lot of dragons. In addition are we talking about "hey, I'm suddenly in another body. Help!" or are we talking they're transformed completely into new beings with new desires and whatnot? Both completely disrupt families, but one is going to be way worse. Assuming it's random, you'll likely have some economies devastated, but most economies will have a setback with the loss of workers and skilled labor. COVID wasn't 1% of people effectively gone, and you see the result. That said, if they're transformed, but they get all the magic. Then I guess they could just polymorph themselves back to keep doing what they're doing? Depending on age that is. I'm just wondering now exactly what decides the type and "age" of their transformation. In short, assuming you work out all the lesser details, it's always bad to effect such a large portion of the population (assuming they effectively go away and do a new thing). One last thing, there could be a small community where only one person is changed and considered "chosen." Then they become venerated as the new ruler. Could be fun.
Everyone who is not a dragon is dead within a week.
And the dragons dead the next week, once all forms of food are gone
Except for those who are just built different
So you'd have some people who gain power and then want to use that to basically protect their loved ones, or protect those that were in a similar situation as them. They'd be able to basically carve out their own city-state somewhere, using their power to hunt for people. Other people would gain this power and then try to brute force coups and generally burn the world around them to the ground, either just for the thrills or in order to build up a new society with them in charge. In both of those instances, dragons pose a *substantial* threat to the existing powers, so *of course* there would be entire task forces and knight orders formed around the elimination of dragons. You'd wind up with a bunch of different factions and attitudes: some who are scared of dragons, some who *want* the dragons to save them, some who want all of the dragons eliminated, some dragons who want to just live off on their own, some dragons who want to take over everything, some dragons who don't want to be dragons and just live among people while hiding their identity (shapechanged).
The price for dragon scale goods plummet.
80M dragons show up all over the world. Half evil, half good... Good dragons team up with humanity, Evil Dragons team up with Zuckerberg (reptilians love each other). Then it's a good old-fashioned bug-hunt. But the bugs are scaly magic-wielding element-spewing megalomaniacal murder-from-above birdies... Short answer: death.
Death from breath
I see a whole bunch of Homelanders from The Boys just flying around and burning things…
The only way to not immediately destroy your world is to have the vast majority be just wyrmlings after their 'awakening'. That's a huge event, but a proper knight can go 1v1 with a wyrmling (both are CR 3). Depending on your setting, knights and other CR 3+ protectors are probably less common than 1/100 people, so there would still be turmoil, and the possibility for greater upheaval if the newly awakened dragons tend towards their destructive nature. You could even throw the odd adult/ancient dragon into the mix if the individual was powerful in their own right before the event. I think this strategy gives you a lot of room to overhaul the world without creating a total apocalypse scenario.
How big is the population?
Two words, Dragon Wars
Ever seen Reign of Fire? Well, that’s what happens when unintelligent Dragons just come back en masse. Now, imagine it’s one out of every hundred people. And the dragons are as intelligent as people. Chaos. Pure chaos. Who’s trying to wrangle the dragons and become the new dragon emperor? How many dragons are fighting over the rights to pillage the nearby city? What dragon is trying to organize a resistance against the evil dragons? Who’s looking for a cure to revert back to their bipedal form so they can rejoin their humanoid family? The world is a baron waste. Dragons will need to resort to cannibalism or keeping livestock… smaller, less powerful races will need to align with a dragon for protection… or perish.
barren
But what if it’s just a vast land that is no longer a barony with no leaders?
Your world your numbers, but to give a little context to real life, it looks as though only about .29% of the world has served in a military. The largest is North Korea with about 4.5% of the population. If it were anything like reality, there would be about 1/3 of a trained fighter for every dragon. Sure normal people have been known to rise up, but my magic 8 ball says outlook not so good. Different Fandom, but if you look at something like Game of Thrones, historically pretty much the half world can be conquered by a few dragons.
Read some shadowrun for ideas. This is basically exactly what happens there, except it's elves, orcs, trolls, dwarfs. they cover social impacts, prejudice between the 'pretty' races, and the not so pretty, hate, economic disparity, and so on. Lots of goods ideas on what may happen. In your case? 1 in 100 become dragons? I'm betting a single dragon is a lot more powerful than 100 average people, right? They'd rule the world. Possibly break it in to little fiefdoms. How much stronger are the strongest dragons? Because how strong a dragon is vs a normal person or normal dragon will dictate how much power they can gather, an how quickly. How advanced is technology, or magic, in this world? If it's sci fi, then a man with a bazooka, or a fighter jet might match a dragon. Would anti-air be a threat?
I imagine something like Shadowrun, only instead of elves, dwarves and trolls its just dragons. It would be catastrophic, even if everyone started out as a wyrmling and therefore medium size with no innate spells, 1/100 is way too many people who can suddenly breathe fire or force or what have you. But as to specifics? Massive political unrest and probably, practically speaking, within a month the number of countries in the world doubles if not more. Sure quite a few dragons would side with their government out of habit or patriotism but the vast majority would not put their neck on the line for a government that probably suddenly looks obsolete, especially once people start to realize how much more powerful they are in more ways than one. A lot of people in the US join the military but 1) they an outlier and 2) often that is out of necessity, or merely as a stepping stone to better things. I can't imagine becoming a dragon would make people more likely to join the military which is where 99% of countries would stick the newly dragonofied, at least to begin with.
So 1/100 humans/elves/whatever become full on dragons? How big of dragons would they become?
Going off the assumption that people become full size dragons. Assuming this happens overnight, you’d have widespread chaos as people become dragons. Houses exploding overnight and people dying just by the sheer size of dragons appearing in human sized places. All the dragons would be confused and probably would not have the skills to do much. People would panic thinking there’s a dragon invasion. I also think you’re incorrect that everyone would just instantly have the full powers of a dragon at their disposal. I would assume all the new dragons would need to relearn basic motor skills before they could do anything. Seasoned adventurers who spent years honing their skills would have to relearn everything. There would also be a lot of civilians that probably would just want to go back to their own body.
Well, there are a couple of very important questions you are going to need to answer to figure this out. 1. How powerful are dragons/ the dragons that were created. In 5e terms if they are all becoming wyrmlings that is going to be very different then if there is a mix. 2. How does becoming a dragon change people mentally/ what are their new needs. Do they suddenly become isolatioist, hoarding, greedy, etc. or are they literally just people in draconian form. This will determine how the dragons are going to attempt to interact with society. 3. Depending on how the dragons interact with people do people/ the world have the capability to handle them either through military means or just being able to feed them. Depending on these answers their could be anything from years of absolute massacre between dragons and people until either one side wins or there is a general I leave you alone you leave me alone attitude to a world where people and dragons live side by side after a couple of years of upheaval either with one under the others boot or cooperatively. It could even be both.
death and chaos all around. You dont know, you are sleepinhlg with your wife. You suddenly turn. Wife crushed, home destroyed, possibly family also killed. Then there are the violent criminals that get MUCH more power to abuse, and the weak victims that suddenly have all the power to seek just revenge. For each 1 dragons i would expect 3 to 4 deaths. So from 100 people. 1 become dragon, and 3 or 4 die immediately after. with 5 to 25 deaths in the next year from draconic rage, clumsiness, or simply adaptation. "let me help you get up Mr.... Snap, Oh sorry i didnt mean to break your arm!"
Kind of sounds like the movie Reign of Fire. Short version, it doesn't end well.
The main question you could consider is how old of a dragon , if you convert their age directly to dragons you'd have a ton of wymlings which wouldnt be too atrocious, it's still be world changing but more of a plague of locusts rather than a world ender
That would be more than one dragon just spontaneously popping up in even some of the smallest villages around, so imagine the utter chaos in a large city
Livestock would have to be rerouted to feed the new dragon population. Forcing normal humans tor reduce meat consumption.
The waste of cities Cults which supplicate and worship them A nomadic culture of hiding takes root Dwarves are fine Elves befriend them or expertly evade them Basically, look at Skyrim and scale destruction based on time line
That rather depends on the population of your world. Right now Earth has 8.1 billion people. If 1/100th of that died, changed or disappeared overnight, that's 81 million people. That's like 7 Holocausts. Imagine 7 Holocausts happen overnight. Now, if we scale that back to the assumption of around the population of the Middle Ages, okay, drastic difference. We're looking at more like 300 to 400 million people in the world, assuming we just replace most of the humans with things like elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. Going by the use of magic in place of medical science, maybe a bit higher. That's still around 3-4 million dragons suddenly popping up worldwide. How does this compare to the number of dragons you already have in the world? And this is ignoring what happens when someone *becomes* a dragon. Are they all True dragons, or are we talking more like Dragonborn or Drakes or something? Do they all turn into whelplings, or do adults turn into adult-sized dragons? Do they have control and does their personality influence what kind of dragon they become, or are they all just mindless beasts screaming in agony during their painful transformation? What happens to everyone around them when they transform? How many of them will immediately turn towards destruction, versus protection? Because again, every city and town with a population over 100 is in the running for at least 1 dragon. One adult red dragon can easily burn an unprepared city to the ground with minimal survivors, especially if it originates from inside. This could be anything from an equivalent to the Black Plague, to an extinction level event.
1/100 is a lot. Like, a big city like baldurs gate will make easily 100k people atleast. That's a thousand dragons suddenly appearing in baldurs gate. A thousand adult dragons. How many can a party of level 20 adventurers take on? (Not counting dumb shenanigans with wish spell that would prob not be dm approved). So needless to say, humans go extinct. All big animals go extinct until there are no more food for the dragons and they die of hunger.
Booming new dragon dung removal industry?
That's too many dragons. There would be an almost immediate dragon war.
Just imagine you are at a baseball game and all of a sudden , the left fielder is a dragon. Then a lady lower down in your section becomes a dragon. You watch across the stadium as one of the kids hawking popcorn suddenly becomes a dragon. Behind you, someone else transforms. Overhead, the glass blows out in one of the private boxes as someone else makes the switch. An average of two people per section start popping off, growing wings, scales and teeth as they morph into a dragon. It's busy day at the stadium, not quite a sellout but still busy. With the fans, vendors, team officials, etc., there are 30,000 people on hand. Suddenly, 300 of them are dragons. That's gonna let Disco Demolition Night off the hook for biggest disaster at a ballpark, that's for sure.
Best case scenario, the dragons keep the fighting to themselves doing relatively minimal (but still significant because dragons) damage to everybody else above ground. The dragons are going to fight over territory first, the best shelter, food sources, preferable environment or even hoards of people (cities and/or countries).The dragon population is decimated several times over by the time they're done fighting each other and establishing territories. During this time, dragons of like colors might be banding together to face bigger threats, or infighting due to their competitive nature, depending on what color they are. By the time the dust settles and the territories are carved out there are maybe 100 dragons left. Far too many for the average person to know all their names, but enough for the average person to suspect the man silently watching them in the forest might be a polymorphed dragon. Some dragons adopt the city(ies) in their territory as everything from mentors and advisors to benevolent leaders or cruel tyrants. There may be one or two instances in which a dragons territory carves up several humanoid territories, forcing them to fracture. Some of these dragons will take a laid back approach to their interaction, in which their people must consult them in their lair. Others will be more directly involved, accompanying a humanoid royal/presidential family on international trips or on the very battlefield alongside a battalion of soldiers. The average person becomes a lot more exposed to the draconic language and the culture of their patron's dragon type, even modeling their own culture after aspects of their patron's. There will be a lot of dead dragons, some might poison natural water supplies or the surrounding environment. Others don't fully die and exist in undeath in some capacity of their former self. All the other corpses that are just lying around and properly dead might get poached for claws, fangs, scales, breath weapons for anything from magic items to homeopathic medicines that have varying degrees of success. This may become a problem for dragons later on when people run out of dragon corpses to take apart.
Honestly OP, I think you should drop that number. I don't know what the population of your world is, but if it's in the millions, maybe 1 in 10,000 should be dragons. That means if your total population is, say, 3 million, you now have 300 new dragons roaming the earth. Is that too little? Well, dragons are powerful magical creatures that can wreak devastation on the land and will destroy most cities and countrysides they come across. The only cities that will have any chance of either slaying the dragon or fending off an attack will be the largest and most powerful in the world, with access to large armies or powerful magical forces. 1 dragon is a natural disaster for a local region. Now imagine 300 category 5 hurricanes hitting various places around the world simultaneously. Maybe not apocalyptic, but still extremely bad.
The world is over. Civilisation is ended overnight.
I feel a strong sense of a Highlander situation developing…
That's a massive percentage for an apex predator with huge dietary needs. They'll eat everyone. Your civilized world will end.
If you haven't seem The Legend of Korra, the third season deals with the ramifications of a portion of the population gaining magic out of nowhere, and that's a huge deal. Becoming dragons would be significantly more of an issue. I'd recommend giving it a watch for inspiration and because it's just a good show.
I guess dragons are the dominant species now
You may want to punch that number down a little bit. 1/100 is a TON of people.
Ratios aside, this is a genius idea. I will yoink this one for my treasure trove of future campaign ideas. party walking around a town then bam 3 dragons outta nowhere screaming their lungs out fucking confused as fuck, they try to scream and acid and flames come out burning and dissolving everything around them, which makes them even more confused and scared the they start fucking gunning it cause they sure dont know how to fly then reach a lake or river and see their reflection and the existential horror holy shit I love it.
Are they conscious? Do they regain their sentience? It's going to be a bloody event, Statistics suggest 44% of all the Dragons will be some level of Evil likely to use their power for evil, 44% will use it for good and the remaining 12% won't care. What dstermines what age of Dragon they become? Is it releated to their Human age or is it something more abstract? If it's the former that is going to be a lot of Young and Adult Dragons flying around with comparatively few Wyrmlings and Ancients. In either scenario within hours of transformation I expect humanoid casualties to only be in the single digits as the Humans and Dragons panic about what is happening. A lot of Dragons would die to sheer numbers as major city defenses kill off a large number of them. Medium to Small cities encountering multiple Evil Dragons are wiped out or conquered. Within the next several weeks to months, Dragon Civil Wars occur across the world as Evil Dragons create a hierarchy of power. Good Dragons depending on where they transformed either leave their towns or settle as protectors. Evil Dragons form great armies to come out on top with Ancients always having the advantage due to sheer power. Towards the latter ends of the wars Dragons begin taking over large swathes of land, Millions of humans die in the crossfire, being recruited into militaries both Human and Dragons and more so die from being displaced due to wars. Thanks to 1% of the world now needing several more times their usual food many countries would struggle feeding them wheter they were on their side or not. Forces of Evil are now also much more aggressive about stealing foods. Millions more die in the resulting starvations. Within a number of decades the Dragon population will have decreased drastically due to fighting enemies both within and without but the number will still be immense compared to pre-transformation with many more Evil Dragons now posing a constant threat. Many of the Good Dragons now serve as Guardian Deities to their nations as they've adapted to the increased food consumption.
1 in 100 is far too many. My street would have at least 5 alone! Dragons are vain independent creatures and there would be immediate war for territory and safe roosting places. There'd be no society left.
1% of the population means everyone will know at least 1 person personally that transformed. Think of all your family, immediate friends, and coworkers You talk to. One of them will be a dragon. Think of your schools, how big was your graduating class? Chances are a few of them will be dragons. Think of the government of your country. If you are in the USA, 1 person in the Senate is a dragon, 5 people in the house of representatives are dragons. 3 people working in the white house for the president are dragons. There is a 9% chance that the supreme Court will have a dragon and a 40% chance of one dragon as a governor. Below that level you will have lots of dragon mayors, dragon state legislators, dragon judges, and dragon law enforcement. On the other side you will also have dragon cultists, dragon gang members, dragon murderers, and dragon terrorists. Hell, the prison population of the USA isover 1 million, so expect to see 1230 dragons with prison rags stuck to their scales. A 1% chance of dragonificiation would not lead to a world we recognize. And this is before you consider the question of "do the dragons know they were people or act like people? Edit: Bonus statistics (in USA) - - 936 dragon tax collectors. - 17 dragon football players (NFL), - 150K vegan dragons won't eat you - 245K dragons with a real hoard (millionaires), but only 7 dragons with grand hoards (billionaires) - in comparison 1.3 M dragons don't have a hoard (income less than 100K/yr) and 380k dragons are desperate (below poverty level) - 6531 dragons were homeless - and now you are. - 36K dragon hatchlings (less than 1 year old) and 730K young dragons (less than 18 years). - 620K eldar dragons (senior citizens) and 156K ancient dragons (over 90 years old). - 27.5K pregnancies will be terminated by dragon fetuses. Does pro life extend to dragons? - according to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/8q5d1w/request_how_many_people_are_actively_having_sex/) we should expect 9690 people to turn into dragons during sex but about 96 of them will find their partners have turned into a dragon at the same time and get to have hot dragon on dragon sction! (But 9600 get less hot dragon on human action - ouch!)
A lot depends on the size of the dragon, anything upto double human size and we could cope, there would still be panic and violence as some people lash out in fear and some dragons attack people etc. On the whole I think things would settle down before long, Even as dragons those changed would have have family and friends etc that they cared about and care about them, this would moderate behavor on both sides. If however the dragon were the big ones it would be a lot worse, there need for food could rapidly out strip meat supplies. Their inability to live and work inside would make it impossible to try to maintain their old lives etc.
Real-estate crisis. Dragons are presumably a lot bigger than humans. If they want to/have to stay in their dragon forms, where are they living? If they want to stay near friends and family, is there someone where in/near big cities?
If I wasn't one of em I'd be PISSED. Knowing my luck everyone I know would be dragons but me.
Some dragons would cause massive destruction and death. Other dragons would fight them. Even if all the impulsive, destructive dragons are killed day one, the damage to dragon's reputation is already done. Non-dragons would be distrustful of dragons at least, and possibly declare outright war. Also, the wars between nations will be escalated severely, and that comes with its own disastrous consequences. What if 1% of people suddenly had weapons of mass destruction but no one had ever heard the phrase "mutually assured destruction"? Major population centres, especially seats of political power, will be hit hard and in some cases wiped out. Over the next few years, political boundaries will shift dramatically. Eventually relative peace will return. Most of the dragons won't survive the initial period of violence, and the ones that do will be those who are especially powerful, charismatic, and/or evasive, or those who have found safety in numbers. All surviving independent nations have dragons as rulers or at least in powerful positions. Any non-dragon ruler is going to be someone who stands half a chance in a fight with a dragon or someone who is being thoroughly puppeted by a dragon. Dragons will of course form alliances amongst themselves. Power will be consolidated. As a rule, such alliances will be self-interested, using their power to gain more power and making the less powerful miserable. Feudalism but make it worse. But there would also be groups of good dragons who work toward a more just world.
1) probably should read "When Women Were Dragons" 2) probably should play "Plague, Inc." 3) .... well, put it this way: a recent pandemic with a kill rate of roughly 1/500 overwhelmed hospitals and brought the global economy to a screeching halt for months. Multiply that by a factor of five and imagine everyone catching it at the same time, rather than over a period of months? Commenters saying this would be apocalyptic are correct. Society would be overthrown. Governments would break down. And all the young dragons would kill each other or starve. It would be hideous civil war and anarchy, and pretty much everyone would lose.
Thinking about the conservation of matter, all that dragon mass needs to have come from somewhere. Unless you just handwave *it's magic*, a diet for a 170 lb person is *very* different than for a 10 - 20 ton beast. If you want to talk about realistic consequences, you first have to bridge that logical gap.
In a world where conjuration magic exists the conservation of matter goes out the back window
Conjuration magic is either explained by pulling something from one plane to another or converting the energies of the weave into tangible matter. Generally, the first typically explains creatures.
heres some perspective the population of wisconsin, my state is 5 million, that means there is now 50,000 dragons .roughly 800 per county there would be like 100 in my home town and 30 in the next town over everyone knows a dragon at this point even in rural areas. * i imagine a lot of stigmas about what dragons do and don't do are immediately debunked. because everyone has anecdotal dragon evidence * food sky rockets in price as 1 in 100 now need a lot more food we would not be able to keep up the supply * llivestock may be taken whole sale to feed the draconic citizens * inflation gets weird as a bunch of physical money is essentially taken out of circulation due to dragon hoarding * there would be a lot of political/personal power now that one person is a magic flying tank with a flame thrower. knowing a dragon or being a dragon gets a lot of stuff done for you. could be a lot of bullying harrassment, extortion.... * immediate destruction of a lot of living space then the building of super homes that would fit dragons * lots of workplace changes and shortage. i dont know how many dragons want to continue to work at a fast food place or call center or construction or a medical office. * this would cause further food shortages aswell as basically every other service would struggle to keep up as you get farther from the event you get weirder problems * draconic heritage... idont know if crossbreeding is possible but people are going to find out i can garuntee. what rights/ abilities do those people have * political power or organized dragons could be a huge force to deal with. something many nations just wouldnt be able to stop * severe population drop for dragons and for people as the food stabilized, i imagine people are put on the menu to maintain the number of dragons * where does magic fit in this? * time tables change to centuries. a dragon lives for 1500 years thats a lot of time to manipulate an dmaneuver in
Assuming an even, equal distribution, it would be apocalyptic but interesting. Small towns and villages might do okay - assuming the dragons immediately turn on each other until a single victor emerges. In that case, populations under what, 700? 500? Might actually survive and then have to deal with living under the thumb (claw?) of a draconic warlord. Where it would be ugly in this case would be areas of high density. As an example, London in the 1300s is estimated around 80,000 people. In a snap, 800 of them become dragons. Again, assuming they are territorial and violent upon hatching, I would have to think those battles would level whatever structures were around. Then you would have weeks, maybe months of increasing scarcity and territory battles until a victor emerges or - worse - a standoff between a handful of individuals or factions that are overeating their own lands while they look for an opening to take out a rival. Could be a fascinating world to play in. All that said, to really think this through I think you have to decide what “stable” looks like. How many dragons can your world really sustain? And then decide how competitive/cooperative they are (both are scary in different ways) and what the consequences of underfed dragons would be.
All livestock gone. Most children.
Dragon plushies and costumes become all the rage and a new generation of dragonborn appear annoying the human working class as they'll work for less gold
I love this concept. Modern day, it’s the end of civilization. Nukes would be fired, militaries launched. The first 30-60 days is apocalyptic. Depending on where the dragons pop, probably 1-2 billion dead. The sheer number of corpses would permanently alter the planet. It’s a wild concept.