What if our own Earth was beset by the Six Elder Dragons? How would we respond?
They would starve to death because we dont have magic here.
The only way we would be able to without any sort of magic on our side: nukes, atomic bombs, and all the other types of WoDs we can throw at them.
We basically beat Tyria on all fronts when it comes to war, but our weapons, especially the ones that we might need to take out a threat of such a scale, have numerous downsides and horrible after effects that might majorly threaten us in the long run.
They would starve to death because we dont have magic here.
Starvation doesn’t happen instantly. It could take years, decades, or possibly centuries for them to starve themselves to hibernation. Though, the fun side effect of such a thing is Earth gaining magic after that happens, if only to a small or limited degree.
(edited by Erukk.1408)
We would kick their kitten as our military capabilities and numbers are vastly superior to the races of tyria. Sure we don’t have magic, but neither do the elder dragons. As magic doesn’t exist in our world the Elder Dragons (and their minions) would be largely powerless.
They wouldnt have enuff new magic to make and maintain a dragon minion army (already implied mordy wouldnt been so tuff so soon if it wasnt for scarlett giving it a early snack )
i think we would get cought off guard at 1st (many prolly will die :s) but we would eventually win.(how livable earth would be after is a different story xD)
News programs would absolutely insist that this isn’t the result of human magic use. And if it is, it’s not a big deal. And we had Elder Dragons before in history. In fact, we’re going through a period of ANTI-Elder Dragons right now, why is anyone worried?
Don’t listen to those alarmists and their (numerous, unusually extensive and cross-confirming) Durmand Priory studies. The one Consortium scientist our network interviewed says it’s nothing to worry about.
Now, in Keg Brawl news…
(edited by midnight tea.3681)
Beautiful responses from everyone, thank you very much!
Magic as a fuel had not come to mind, was focused more on human attitudes to each other changing before a common enemy.
But, yes.
The dragons would have no source to fuel themselves nor build their minion armies, and the humans of Earth will probably scorch their planet in a bid to defend themselves.
The news response by midnight tea was fantastic.
I just cannot imagine going against any of them the way we do in Tyria.
I mean, facing a dragon.
On our tiny human feet.
(edited by Asumir.1978)
Well Zhaitan wouldn’t really be a threat. It doesn’t take much time or resources to get a few glitter cannons ready.
I actually would love the use of science against them.
That or Godzilla…
I’m into physics so…
SHOOT ACCELERATED PARTICLES AT THEM!
Sierra Club and PETA wouldn’t allow us to kill them so they would rule the world.
Sierra Club and PETA wouldn’t allow us to kill them so they would rule the world.
…and eat those good people, shoes and all.
Sierra Club and PETA wouldn’t allow us to kill them so they would rule the world.
I don`t think groups who are concerned about creatures and the enviroment of our planet would go against extraterrestial beings who are only further disturbing the fragile enviroment we already have.
Thus I think this argument is kinda obsolet.
On the other hand, there will be some cults created.
Where Tyrian-style magic is concerned: Are we completely magic-free?
Putting aside new-age stuff, we clearly don’t have magic to create effects that we would call ‘magic’. However, one of the properties of Tyrian magic is that it’s in all life – and higher intelligence requires more magic (that’s why a lot of dragon minions are automatons – the dragons only invest in just enough power in them to be useful). The dragons don’t have a magical field to feed on, but as long as they didn’t immediately go into hibernation, this might actually make them more dangerous – their most nutritious food would then be us. Where the Elder Dragons in Tyria seem content to claim a territory, harvest it for magic, and expand when they feel like it, an Elder Dragon on Earth might be driven to wipe out a city and then immediately move on to the next.
Military speaking, we’re stronger than Tyrians, even with the potential spoiler factors, so we’d probably do better at holding them off. On the other hand, however, we might not have the ability to actually kill them. Each of the dragons has a unique weakness, and Mordy’s required the use of magic (and I have a suspicion Zhaitan’s did as well, although you have to pay close attention to some of the more obscure parts of the personal story to see it). So we’d probably have to resort to battering them and denying them sustenance until they went into hibernation… and with Mordremoth in particular, that might not be possible without provoking a major ecological collapse. (The good news, though, is that once they do go into hibernation, the lack of a magical field would probably make it difficult for them to wake up, unless the magic they release when sleeping is enough to create a strong enough magical field to wake them back up again.)
Just drop some DDT on Mordy and watch him wilt.
You mean Agent Orange, right? DDT was for mosquitoes…
Interesting thought experiment there. The main point of consideration would be where the dragons wake up/go to though. Just from what we know from the actual dragons and some places on Earth…
Start with the easy one, the unnamed deep sea dragon. We can pretty much bet its going to be somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, maybe right in the depths of Mariana Trench.
Mordremoth or his equivalent would be either Africa or South America, in the rainforests. My guess is SA. Why?
Kralkatorrik seems to favor sandy environments, deserts. I know he just flew to the Crystal Desert to find Glint, but he still havent left, so I guess he likes it there. On Earth, that would probably be the Sahara Desert. So to stay as far away from Mordremoth as he did in Tyria, Mordremoth would be in SA instead of Africa.
Primordus is a hard one. He would probably stay underground as he does in Tyria. If I had to give him an area though, I would probably point at the Rocky Mountains or the Himalaya. Or somewhere in the Fire Ring (the volcanicly active ring around the Pacific Ocean)
Jormag would be either Antarctica, or just to have a more ready supply of people, North Europe, Canada, and/or Siberia.
Zhaitan, merely for the sake of keeping to what happened in Tyria and because hey, this is a thought experiment so a bit of mythology can go into it, might just raise the unfound remains of Atlantis. If not that though, I would point him somewhere right into the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, maybe a bit east to have some dominion over the middle east, where there were the ancient civilizations.
But what would be the immediate effects of their awakening, even with as little magic as they would get from Earth? Well earthquakes and floods are a given. Plus Primordus’s volcanic activity (mostly the dust going into the air from a single super-volcano he might rouse) coupled with Jormag’s blizzards would pretty much guarantee a pretty bad new Ice Age. Humanity would be forced to find warmer climates, and would be in a bad situation with Kralkatorrik, Zhaitan and Mordremoth all controlling the more southern/equator areas.
And only then, if we manage to answer with our most obvious solutions, the nukes, we would have another nasty nuclear winter to look forward to, with probably all the rainforests gone, the oceans unable to sustain life, and the dry grounds either sand, crystal, or ice.
Tl-dr: We would be kittened.
Hrrrmn. I was thinking southeast Asia for Mordremoth, rather than South America, although the Amazon basin would work.
For Kralkatorrik, the Sahara is probably the obvious choice, but I could see a few other deserts he could settle in – central/western Australia, for instance.
Primordus… the impression that I get is that he does like volcanically active regions. Being in the Shiverpeaks in GW1 (if the location of the Central Transfer Chamber on the map is accurate…) suggests that he might prefer continental boundaries rather than random hotspots (the Shiverpeaks seem to me to be a continental boundary, similar to the Himalayas). The Himalayas are relatively quiet when it comes to volcanoes, though. I’d be tempted to put him under Krakatoa, or possibly Sicily.
Jormag… one of the poles. Or the Himilayas.
For Zhaitan… if we maintain the flood mythology without thinking of Atlantis, possibilities could include the Black Sea, Doggerland, regions around the coast of Saudi Arabia – there’s evidence that many of these places were inhabited before they were flooded as the last Ice Age ended.
I think the main thing for Zhaitan, though, might be somewhere were a lot of people died in a short period of time. So I’d probably actually have him coming up in Eastern Europe and start raising the dead of the world wars.
Good thinking on Zhaitan. To be honest, he would feel pretty homely in most of Europe. Just because in Tyria he stayed in Orr and Arah doesnt mean he would stay in one spot on Earth. And even on Tyria he tried to expand his dominion around the time of the game.
Its a strange thing to consider both Jormag and Primordus on the same region, the Himalaya. Though in truth they are pretty close in Tyria as well (Shiverpeaks).
My main thought on putting Jormag on the north pole was to have a bigger influence over people. North America and Eurasia are the dominant powerplayers of this world, and he would be on the right place to make that Ice Age happen with little fuss. Granted, in the Himalaya he would be closer to another source of massive number of humans and another powerful nation, China.
On the other hand we can consider their times of arrival/awakening. Again going with how it went down on Tyria, Primordus would be first. That would be bad. On the one hand, if he manages to rouse a volcano or two in quick succession, or even just a single super-volcano (thinking of the Yellowstone park, Rocky Mountains) he not only would shake one of the most powerful nations in the world, the resulting dust and smoke would halt airline travel, and bring down the temperature significantly on the whole planet. We wouldnt even be able to retaliate either, because he would keep underground.
The approximate 45 years between Primordus and Jormag would not be enough for temperature to return to normal, even more so if Primordus remains at large. Either on the North Pole or in the Himalayas, Jormag would devastate either region’s leading civilizations, and while it might be easier to pinpoint a nuclear strike on him than on Primordus, the fallout could cause as much trouble as the dragon itself.
Sometime the Deep Sea Dragon would wake as well, and though we might not see it or know of it, if it’s intelligent enough it would probably cut down some trans-ocean communication cables as well as making sea travel impossible. Mass extinctions in the waters can occur, devastating the oceanic ecology.
With underwater lines cut, we would be forced to rely on satellite communication, but that too would be problematic with the dust and smoke from the other dragons.
Temperature drop would force mass migration toward the equators. About that time Zhaitan would arrive, most probably evacuating what little population remains in Europe. If we want an ultimate apocalypse scenario, we can be pretty certain that a zombie virus would be spreading rapidly. Thankfully with air and sea travel pretty much destroyed at that point, it would be mostly contained in Europe and the Middle East.
Zhaitan is another dragon that might be pinpointed for a strike, but at this point its unpredictable how much we would be able to do. International communications cut, the most powerful nations eradicated, locating through satellite scans made impossible (either because of the clouds of smoke and dust or because of the satellites falling to disrepair at this point), pinpointing nukes might not be possible. Only blanket-bombing the infected regions in hopes of it hitting the dragon. Again, the resulting fallout would make things similarly worse.
That pretty much guarantees that whatever humanity has left would migrate down south. About a hundred years after Zhaitan, Kralkatorrik would come. Unfortunately we cant really expect Primordus to be as quiet here through all that time as he is in Tyria, because we dont have a nation of immortal stone dwarves holding the line underground. Thus we must expect more volcanic activity, and thus more dust, and a more stable Ice Age. Im unsure how that would change the Sahara, but it might still be the best bet for Kralkatorrik’s place. Or Australia, since the southern hemisphere is mostly untouched by dragons as of yet.
Then in quick succession Mordremoth, though the quickness might be off. If we assume we dont have stone dwarves to keep Primordus occupied, we must also assume that we dont have a Scarlet to wake Mordremoth early. In any case, the regions most survivors migrated to would be shaken by these last two dragons. Ironically, maybe Mordremoth would be the least powerful dragon at that point, with the Ice Age weakening the jungles, and the remains of humanity starting massive processing of the rainforests.
Makes me wonder if that is usually the plan for Tyria. The first dragons making the planet uninhabitable, then seeding it with new life through Mordremoth.
While it’s a fascinating read, I think you may be overestimating the power of the dragons here. While they certainly have formidable regional impact, none of them has reached the point of global catastrophe yet, with the partial exception of the tidal wave Zhaitan set off. Jormag in particular- while it’s not a stretch to see Primordus acting as catalyst to a disaster we’re already concerned might be overdue, Jormag triggering an entire Ice Age is… well, he hasn’t done it in Tyria, not even close, and in our world he’d have substantially smaller magical resources to expend. And wiping out the US and Europe? From the very edge of the arctic circle, it’d be about 1900 miles just to get to DC, and don’t get me started on Texas. While we don’t have any firm scale on the size of Tyria, that strikes me as far larger than the sense we’ve gotten for the domain of any ED. Important bits of Europe might be closer, but even so, there’s no way ice monsters are going to devour all of Canada and Scandinavia while the other world powers sit on their hands. Game of Thrones is far too popular for that.
Of course I did overdo the scaling quite a bit. What we see and know of the Elder dragon’s influence and power comes from what they can do to Tyria, the continent, not Tyria the planet. We have no real clue of their influence on the rest of the planet.
The thread title was about Elder dragons on Earth. I projected the relative magnitude of the threat and the effects that we get to know from a small continent ingame, onto our entire planet. It was part of the fun of the thought experiment, because “military will shoot them down in a week” isn’t that interesting (though probably more true considering the actual scales and limitations of magic use).
Have to say.
The more you guys look into the prospect and thought-experiment.
The more I wouldn’t mind a non-canon fictional novel of the Elder Dragons attacking Modern-Day Earth.
Do it.
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