Author: HoboPatch

Thanks to Dewo on discord for the question!

First of course I want to be cautious with “Civilization” as it’s a bit of a loaded term. If I can put on my arrogant little powdered wig and monocle, is a civilization just another way of saying a society? Or is it some sort of culturally relative xenith of complex social development? At least for me I tend to just lean on civilization meaning society with extra steps.
The Yamomami, Hadze, Taino, Lakota and Nganasans to me are just as much Civilizations as the Mycenaeans, Egyptians, Incans, Khmer and Songhai. So really I would see this more as societies I want to talk about.

There are of course maaaany I have talked about on the DragonScape discord over the course of 6 years oh my god I am getting too old. The Cydonians and Godeaux, as well as the Bufa, Chocadene Scrãeler and Yutlengit. The Cedunla protocity of Aguk and more of the Dorer, Javaso and Põga… like damn I really wish I could dedicate 24 hours a day to rambling about different societies and while I have over many years, it’s not exactly easy to just pick one.
Really my interests drift and my focuses drift month to month on what I want to show off and talk about. These days I often think more of the people of Logáu than Suyu (Americas) as a lot of the cultures in Suyu are cultures that have existed since the Original version of the setting back in 2018-2020! Many of which have showed up in The Long Hike.
Just on the comic alone
The Seattlens are as old as 2020, the Scorchers are about as old as 2020 as well, the Broncens were the Kunans of 2018, the Dakoner are a culture i wrote in 2019, The Fisherdrakes and Winnebagons are from 2018, The Cydonians and Godeaux are also from 2018 as well as the Caminantes and Guardiões da mina.
The Reality is I kinda wanna find excuses to show off all of them, as well as other cultures from other timelines! But the sad part of that reality is that I am just one person and I cannot cover each and every one of those societies. I can say that most of the cultures I’ve written and a few other folks have written will likely show up in The Long Hike at least at some point or another provided I can make it to them. But in the meantime I will have to work with as many as I can afford the time energy and health to depict.

It’s just kinda one of those sad realities, I wish I had infinite time and energy to draw every single society/civilization of the dragonscape and if I had to pick one I would always just pick all of them at the same time.
To some extent thats why I try my best to leave the lore open for other folks to establish their own planar provided they stick to the baseline foundational aspects and “rules” of the DragonScape. Even if things were still just confined to the post apocalyptic Americas I would not ever be able to fill it completely with detailed cultures and peoples, and so it can only make sense to me to allow other folks to offer their own concepts of peoples and places and planar to help fill out the setting should they desire, as well as hash out their own little drek place and their own little drek civilizations.

Perhaps not the most satisfying answer, but yeah I really can’t pick any individual one, I always wanna talk about all of them all the time. So for better or worse I hope that answers that!

Thanks once more to Dreamwood from Furaffinity for the Question

Well yes!.. But they tend to not last. In fact the DragonScapes long term timeline is filled with tales of fallen empires and large civilizations, almost always outlived by the tribes, bands and chiefdoms around them. But perhaps the closest that the éldimor as a whole get to a ‘human like civilization’ would be during the Draconic Golden Age.
The Draconic Golden Age is the xenith of manatechnological innovation on the plana of Suyu (Americas) between 10,000PA and 16,000PA, For perspective Imuas story in The Long Hike takes place in the late 30sPA! The Draconic Golden Age is a period of large urban societies of dragons, with high literacy rates and incredible and quite literally magical feats of technological innovation. It was also the most sustained period of dense urbanization seen in the entire timeline of The DragonScape…
though eventually it would rot, in fact the 4,000 years between the end of the Golden Age and the Human Thalmvaric War that would start the Thalmvaric Age and end time would be known as “The Long Rot”. Which was a millennias long period of gradual crumbling of these golden societies. Be it through corruption, fascism and totalitarianism, economic unsustainability, or environmental collapse. This long collapse eventually would crumble under the Human Thalmvaric War. After that war and the collapse of Suyu and its abandonment, the idea of large urban societies broadly dies out.
By the time of the Thalmvaric age, the endless era at the end of time, There aren’t that many nation states. Perhaps some city states but much of the endless expanse, at least where the éldimor live, is dominated by non state societies.

The DragonScape as a setting is very much an anarchic place. It is not a place where vast nation states and urbanized civilizations dominate the skylines with vast multiplanarial trade, vast factories and fleets, and massive armies. Rather the DragonScape is a setting where non state civilizations find ways to thrive in an endlessly unstable universe. Where bands, tribes and chiefdoms find meaning in smaller (for better and worse) existences and lifestyles.
The setting very much is built like that, its hard for dragons to sustain large urban populations due to drekir being mesocarnivores and ormer needing such extreme amounts of calories. the universe itself is unstable and has a tendency to punish complacent, complex states where smaller far more reactive communities can respond and adapt effectively.

Maybe a bit of a side tangent to close out, I can’t remember where I read or heard this, as it’s been floating in my mind for a long time and I know I am not nearly clever enough to think of such a phrase. But I’ve often had a phrase in my head that is something like: “We live in a graveyard of nations who once though themselves immortal” and I tend to think of that of nation states. Granted don’t get me wrong, I quite like living in a nation state with modern amenities like the internet I am currently scribbling onto with my files and website. But I think there is something powerful in accepting that all large complex civilizations will inevitably crumble for one reason or another, there hasn’t been one yet that has withstood the weight of time after all. Even those like china that have a lot of ancient cultural throughlines have collapsed and reformed under different political orders countless times, so not really immortal.
Of course just like any other state, mine too here in the United States will collapse at some point. Maybe sooner than later, but eventually regardless. In the same way the societies of the DragonScape inevitably rise and fall, with the distinction being in the DragonScape the nation states rise up and sink back down into a sea of tribal peoples who are more able to absorb the shocks of an unstable universe.

Hope that answers that!

Thanks again to Dreamwood for the Question!

I chatted with Dreamwood a bit on the specifics of the question and I wanted to answer it from a few angles, though the short answer is yes! Drekir can and sometimes do live alone in the woods.
First there is the angle of “feral kids”
Which was my first interpretation of the question. Of course drekir are not exactly fantastic parents and so I could definitely see a drek laying an egg in the wilderness, just to walk away and assume it may freeze or overheat and die before it could ever hatch, rather than just breaking it or carrying it with them. Though if that egg does wind up hatching in the middle of nowhere, what happens?
Of course as discussed on this site, Drekir offspring are quite self sufficient, an understandable adaptation for having naturally lax parents. So while that drek kid may very well die from predators, or exposure, there is a reasonable chance that they survive in the long term. Though the result would be a feral drek child or even a feral adult with some rather extreme psychological trauma.
Drekir grow up in dense social groups and so if deprived of that, in addition to presumably dealing from trauma from a usually harrowing constant state of lonely survival, they would likely also have problems with learning language and social norms effectively and may have a lot of psychological issues of depression and anxiety. I imagine most feral kids, if they do have contact with other communities would likely find aid from those communities (parents aren’t that neglectful).

And there is the angle of Hermits and Loners
Or adult drekir who just choose as adults to live alone! Which isn’t impossible!.. But it is rather rare. Drekir are highly social as a species and so for most, even the highly introverted, they would part of a social web that they can actively or passively be around. But inevitably there will be drekir who choose to live completely alone, either as hermits in quiet hovels and shelters out alone, or those who see no reason to integrate into a new den.

Their stories may surely vary, they may be the last survivor of a den that was massacred and just can’t bring themselves to integrate into another den. They could be a drek that was exiled from their hatch den, but instead of joining into a bandit den, they chose instead to just live a solitary life. Usually speaking the reason a drek has chosen to live as a hermit or loner is not usually tied to a happy story. In terms of subsistence a lone drek could surely make it work. If they know the local plants and insects they could feed themselves day to day, and perhaps the craftier of them may live rather well off of things like fish, small game hunting, or even small insecultural practices. Psychologically I imagine there may be some baggage, aside from the (usually) sad stories that resulted in their lonely existence, that lack of steady social interaction may be taxing on them. Not that they would be always alone, I am sure they may get some social interaction from various travelers making their way by their hut for whatever reason, though those social interactions would likely be rather infrequent and irregular.

The way surrounding communities may treat the loners and hermits of their regions I am sure it would vary just as much by personal circumstances as cultural norms and expectations. Perhaps a specific hermit, like Rick from The Long Hike, is treated well by the people that live around them and given supplies. Others in other contexts may be seen as cursed individuals or there may be bad blood between that specific hermit and the society around them. In any case it can vary a lot, it’s definitely possible to live alone in the DragonScape! Though usually the reasons for being a loner often spur from rather tragic or dark pasts for those who live that life.

Hope that answers that!

Thanks to Dreamwood from Furaffinity for the Question!

I think this is an interesting question as much as it is one of those things that you can’t really answer. The DragonScape is full of thousands of cultures of éldimor dragons and so frankly there isn’t really any one perspective on where the role of people (or any group of people) fit into the whole cosmic universe.
That isn’t to say a sort of anthropocentric viewpoint can’t be found in various places in the lore. The Cydonians of the Cydon peninsula, a new landmass sticking off of eastern Texas in Suyu (america) is a fine enough example. The Chiefdom of Cydonia is one such example, in which there is a Denarch that forms in the mid awakening that directly rules over a handful of distinct tribes within the peninsula as a concrete aristocracy. Their view of the world is very much an anthropocentric idea of the éldimor being what the world was made for, that the trees are for them to build homes and the fish of the sea or for them to eat. Particularly, they view themselves as the aspiring rulers of the world under the name of the Drowned god of the world that was as the inheritors of the new world.
Likewise the Sivilão could be be a culture that argues themselves, their species and most of all their system of society as the dominant force of the world. Fim Éodin itself believes that the society of the éldimor (Sivilão) is what keeps reality itself churning, and a failure of the majority of éldimor to abide by their specific interpretation of fim éodin puts in danger the stability of reality itself. The very event that destroyed the golden sivilào age, The Pulse (which they know as Jãrsta) is associated with a failure of enough dragons to abide their role in the dominant system of reality itself. It’s also why they are so hostile to almost anyone that is not of their õfuth in the post awakening, not just against non sivilào drekir, ormer and mavõtur but other õfuthar.
But that said…
I would go as far as to say that isn’t terrifically common a perspective amongst the éldimor as a diaspora. Of course to again emphasize their cultural perspectives will vary wildly amongst different peoples, places, and times. But I would imagine a lot more wouldn’t view their place in the cosmos as a binary “we dominate” or “we are fucked over by fate”. Rather I imagine much like how a lot of indigenous peoples would come to view the cosmos in our world, I would figure their picture of the world and their place in it would be more systemic.
Especially considering the potential of éldimor to exhaust an environments ability to sustain them, and the dangerous consequences there in as well as the lack of technology to hold such exhaustion back, I feel that dragons would generally understand their lives as a part of the complex web of food, water, mineral resources, and other aspects that sustain them. I don’t imagine seeing themselves as a part of nature would be entirely true, but they definitely would see themselves as people that could have a large impact on it and that an overly avaricious and domineering attitude towards the world that sustains them would backfire entirely. Some cultures may see that type of situation as a sort of naturalism or agroforestry in which they are either a part of that web of systems, or stewards of it. Others may view it more pragmatically, understanding that if they hunt too much, farm too much, or herd too much then they can damage the environment to the point in which it can no longer sustain them.
So, in a managerie of different cultural interpretations across a universe of distinct peoples, I imagine many would reckon their place in the world in the systems both of nature and of their own making and subsistence, rather than as a directly domineering or submissive perspective. Of course those aspects can still exist in their perspectives and are probably common! They just aren’t the simple binary perspectives.

Hope that answers that!

Thanks to Hexaract from the DragonScape Discord for the question!

Well, you know honestly I have no clue. The Awakening as a specific event is intentionally hard to pin down. I don’t think I can say that there was any drek that woke up first across the whole of the DragonScape, let alone who they were or what they said. The Awakening is not something that happened with everyone waking up exactly at the same time, nor something in which there was one individual who woke up first. Rather it was rapid “batches” of drekir awakening over the course of a day, millions awoke in the dark, others at the dawn, and some in the afternoon. Meanwhile drekir appeared with the souls of prepulse americans all over, from the familiar Americas to the strange but understandable Logáu, to potentially thousands of other planar. So chances are there were millions of drekir waking up around the same time.

I imagine whoever was the first person to wake up, no doubt it would have been something to the effect of “Oh what the fuck is this!?”

As for where? Again there is no way to know for sure. But I suppose if someone wants to write that “first drek to awake ever”, even if by a margin of a second or two, then that someone can have fun with it! Not a perspective I think even technically exists, but it could be a fun concept.

Regardless my apologies for not giving a better answer,

Thanks to agentsandstorm for the question from Furaffinity!

While it is covered in the comic in a way that I think is well enough, I think explaining a bit more about Oliver/Imua or just simply “The Hiker” is a fun topic. as the human world is one in which I tend to not focus on so much in favor of the DragonScape. Or at least of the detail I have put into it, not much is actually on this site. Of course by this point Imua has had to move on from her own origins, as frankly she can’t recall anything of them. So at the current state of canon, don’t take this as a thing she understands, just the origins that did eventually result in her.

Oliver Ikaika, nowadays known as the Hiker Imua, is Hawaiian, coming specifically from the town of Wailua. As Imua is somewhere around her early 30s, chances are Oliver was born sometime around 2126AD, or at least in the timeline of the DragonScape, 6PA and mostly grew up in Wailua.

The context around Wailua of course is one of economic collapse, abandonment, and eventual imperialism and is a rather sad tail. In the aftermath of the Pulse in late 2020, Hawaii was the spared from the surge of raddir, though only barely. The Chiming Haze only sits a few hundred kilometers from the island chain. At least in the early years the Hawaiian archipelago would try to reform a new “US government”, though eventually would declare a very uncontested independence from the US, becoming the country of Hawai’iloa. Though it wouldn’t even be a decade before economic collapse would rip apart the new Hawaiian government.
Frankly in the 2020s and 2030s, economic collapse, nuclear conflict, and radical social upheaval were already ripping apart Europe, central Asia, and Southeast Asia which would already have severely impacted Hawaii. But moreover Hawaii is the last landmass before hitting the borders of broken reality that make up The Chiming Haze. So Hawaii, along with most Pacific Islands would become some of the most geographically, socially and politically isolated areas on the planet second only to Russia, which fell to the nuclear rage of the Otgoloks in the early 2030s.
This apocalyptic social and economic isolation led to a long mass exodus from the Islands westward towards Japan, Malaysia, Australia, and other increasingly shaky nation states throughout the 2030s which only served to plummet the quality of life of the Hawaiian islands even further. By the 2050s, Hawaii would be a sparsely populated island chain of only 2500 or so people who had long since transitioned into subsistence lives, made difficult not just by the Chiming Haze, but also the impacts and throes of global warming and climate change.

And for the next 70 years or so, that’s how Hawaii would continue to exist, an isolated backwater known not as it’s own nation state but as the demeaning “Last Slice of America”.

Though eventually, the imperialistic and fascistic Southeast Asian Confederation (SEAC) would gaze eastwards in the early 22nd century, scooping up much of the Pacific Islands and their various peoples quickly and easily, either promising wealth and prosperity unseen since the early 21st century, or threatening them with drones and warships. Hawaii was particularly a jewel to SEAC thanks to the larger forests in the island chain when compared to Oceania and Southeast Asia. As for the past several Decades SEAC had committed to extreme and excessive deforestation in order to work on a variety of economy boosting megaprojects to announce their presence on the new global stage and order. That aggressive decades long bout of deforestation along with climate change, radiation, and general environmental collapse would quickly make once bountiful forests across Oceania and Southeast Asia just shadows of their former selves.
SEACs occupation of Hawaii was broadly focused on resource extraction and infrastructure for observing the Chiming Haze that lay just beyond Hawaiian shores. This did bring jobs and infrastructure that would remodernize Hawaii, albeit under a strictly exploitative fashion. Though regardless it would be argued that the loss of some rights and nature would be worth it in exchange for a new start within SEAC.

And it was this environment in which Oliver Ikaika was born. Born into general poverty in Wailua, surrounded by the long since chopped down forests that once defined the region, growing up under the propaganda and pipelines built by SEAC somewhat before his birth. As an adult Oliver Ikaika would get a job observing the Chiming Haze and, once the Chiming Haze anomalies that would allow their entry into the Americas were noted, Oliver would be sent out for training. After their training and after becoming an E.R.E.M. Forward Observation Specialist, they were sent on a one way trip (without their knowing of them being a sacrificial lamb).

So while Imua may not remember exactly where she is from by the current point of the comic, she is Hawaiian. It was thanks to them growing up with the indigenous Hawaiian language, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi that their current name was able to come out of the black hole where her memories once were anywho.

Imua means “To go onwards”!

Hope that answers that!

Thanks to Miguel the Divine Dragon, who asked me this question on Furaffinity in Spanish, here is the original question!

“Pregunta como fuero las primera interasiones entre los drekir de primera generacion y los Ormer tribales (es decir lo que abadonaro a los sivilão).
Mas especificame los Ormer le creyeros a los drekir de que anteriomente era humano. O el Temas no salio.”

Mientras sí, yo hablo el español y lo he estudiado por más que 7 años. Para que la mayoria de los lectores de este sitio puedan leer bien este articulo, responderé en inglés, ¡Perdóname gente!

Really this is a question that needs to be given a big caviat before anything else. Namely that there are a lot of Non sivilào (éldimor) ormer in the DragonScape and for many of them, they are going to have unique and distinct cultural perspectives on both drekir and general and how they may respond to the drekir of the Awakening. So consider this answer to be a lot more broad and speculative than concrete and precise. Even if non sivilão ormer are a minority of the Draconic population, there are still many hundreds of millions of them scattered across the countless planar of the DragonScape.

Now as covered on the Orm lore page, ormer and drekir can exist separately from one another, though often they find themselves in a sort of cooperative social union. Ormer are usually agricultural by sheer caloric need and don’t have as easy a time moving to far flung locations for natural resources or even just the time to hunt for meat. Drekir tend to be more mobile, more carnivoric, but still both want and sometimes need vegetables, fruits and starches. So often economic unity for mutual benefit pops up and builds into tribal and social unity between an orm community and the many drekir that surround them. So very often you will see variations of a settlement pattern in which a village of several orm dens live in an arable region, surrounded by more mobile drek dens, with both being part of the same clan or tribe.

But of course that’s in the context of ormer that know the drekir of their tribal network! What happens when a bunch of drekir just kinda “pop up” out of nowhere?

Of course, inevitably, the specific responses will vary between groups of éldimor drekir and ormer and may vary dramatically. Some ormer on one plana may grant the awakening drekir plenty of shelter and support while they try and figure out who just manifested in the middle of their prickly pear gardens (very unfortunate wakeup spot). But another group of ormer that subjugates their neighbors may see the newcomers as new slaves. Or there may just be a far more middleground and perhaps, realistic distrust and lack of understanding of the newcomers.

I tend to lean on the belief that people try to be as good as they can in the social cultural and environmental context they find themselves in, be they man, drek, or orm. Though that doesn’t mean their wouldn’t be tensions or anxieties either on the side of the ormer, who would have to figure out what to do with several, if not dozens, of drekir who don’t even speak their language, and the awakening drekir who have now found themselves stuck in an unknown environment and bodies. I imagine a lot of tension may come from cultural misunderstandings just as much as the occasional misunderstandings between species.

I imagine eventually, if ormer are helping the new awakening drekir in any sort of context, they would like them to leave and establish their own space. Like with any éldimor drekir I am sure there would be communications amongst the local dens and clans of the tribal network of any given region, either to help direct the newcomers to an area where they can try and settle and survive, or to send the newcomers off into various drek dens to integrate and learn how to survive.
But of course it could be that instead those new awakening drekir are chased from the region if the local ormer (or drekir) feel they are causing more problems than they’re worth, or the fate could be equally cruel. But I imagine for most awakening drekir, their interactions with ormer in the early awakening would generally be peaceful.

It’s a bit of a broad answer for a broad question, but I hope that helps!

Thanks to Nosys from Furaffinity for the question!

There are a ton of proper nouns in the DragonScape lore, Õndem, Mavõtur, Éldimor, and not all of them, but a lot of them have some sort of tilde or accent (~ or ‘) and the comics never have really gotten much into the phonetic rules of these words or pronunciations.
So where do these all come from?
These words all come from an in lore language that is known as Éla which is the language of the Sivilão (the teal steels in the comics) who are, much like humanity, a vast diaspora scattered across the endless skies of the Celeste and the myriad planar within. At the time of Imuas arrival into the DragonScape Éla could be more usefully thought of as a language family more than any one language, with a myriad of dialects and even descent languages of éla appearing all over. All of the proper words of the DragonScape are derived from éla. Words like Drekir, Ormer, Skrimír, Õfuthar, amongst many other words are all éla words (hence why Imua wouldn’t be familiar with the fact that her species is known as the Drekir).

Time for a phonetics lesson!

At least for answering the question! So gonna focus on a few select things that may not sound like how we may expect!
So Ã, É, Í, Õ, Ú, as well as L, and your Rs! That said, its important to point out that a lot of Éla utilizes vocalizations such as rattles, yaps, clicks and whirs that we cannot really replicate as humans! So things like Ls and Rs are less literal phonemes and more representative of draconic vocalizations. But lets start with the ‘Yohn’ vowels! Unfortuneately WordPress will not let me post audiofiles. if I could i would record these things but in the mean time I do as best I can with writing.

Whenever you see something drifting over a vowel, such as õleduradir (Blessed voices unheard) or a simple word like ãel (yes, greetings, etc.), you simply say it with a “yuh”, a Y.

So for example, ãel is said simply as a Yuaelkch or Yaelkch
whereas õleduradir is said as Yuolkch-eh-doo-r-adi-r

This also applies equally to vowels with accent marks, as it’s more just a weakness of the international keyboard that cannot type an I with a Tilde.

So for example, Skrimír is said as Sk-r-eem-yueer
likewise, a word like Gulémgão is said as Gukch-yuem-giyuao

For dragons this is created by a flex deep in their throat, making a very deep “yuh”, perhaps in a sound not too far separated from the deep throaty “yump” sounds of ostriches… though for drekir certainly slightly higher pitched, and for ormer absolutely far deeper a tone. But for us large monkeys, a “yuh” is about the best I feel we can do.
Now while that was the question I do want to also elaborate on the “L” and “R” as those are also not necessarily said how they are written, just more as representative placeholders for vocalizations.

L’s are representative of a throaty, phlegmy huff common in Éla, usually done through the mouth (as opposed to most natural huffs done through the nostrils). an L is used as the general mouth shape is similar to an L.

So a word like Sivilão is said as a See-Veel-kchiyao with an L that is less said and more shaped.

And lastly Rs, which are more just representative of rattles. Rattles are important in draconic speech in general as it helps imply emotional and contextual tone and intonation for dragons and is something you see even amongst dragons speaking human languages. For Éla it is considered so important that many words will allow for rattling, particularly to imply plurality, though is also employed for a variety of other contexts.

Taking a good word like Radir (voices), it is really said a lot more as (rattle) adi (rattle) with those rattles helping establish tone. If you want to say them as a human I would recommend rolling your r, like a spanish erre though with the tongue further back into the throat. Takes a bit of practice, may sound weird, but as far as I know humans cannot emit a crocodilian rattle.

Hope that helps! Thanks for Asking