It’s All a Conspiracy!

A dragon that makes flesh suits then squeezes itself into them to blend in instead of the usual Change Shape, and makes grand conspiracies, is not something I knew I needed in my Gamemaster arsenal, but something I will definitely be using.

Awesome.

Something of an OGL Blue Dragon feel but with weird aspects I like.

New is good.

You may stop now. I am complete. This is my dragon of choice. Love it!

Two conspirator dragons move into a moderate-sized city at more or less the same time and start flirting with one another in their own inimitable fashion. Over the course of the next few years, the local political scene becomes very baroque indeed.

A dragon that makes flesh suits then squeezes itself into them to blend in instead of the usual Change Shape, and makes grand conspiracies, is not something I knew I needed in my Gamemaster arsenal, but something I will definitely be using.

AND they have a "natural" way to do "ninja exit"! xD

Two conspirator dragons move into a moderate-sized city at more or less the same time and start flirting with one another in their own inimitable fashion. Over the course of the next few years, the local political scene becomes very baroque indeed.

Drop them into Korvosa and see how they get on with the Arkonas.

Wild, just wild. So glad the the OGL dragons have made way for these ... whatever these are, to arrive.

Also imagining a Flesh Suit Replica version of the Trout Mask Replica album cover.

I love every bit of this. These dragons seem a lot more dynamic and interesting to me than the OGL ones.

A green dragon is planning? Probably bad!
A conspirator dragon is planning? Who the hell knows!

Hannibal Smith lights his cigar and says, "I love it when a plan comes together!" right before he explodes into his true dragon form and flies off.

A conspirator dragon travelled to RL Earth and posed as a high-ranking Famous Games Company's executive and proposed to monetize the OGL.

Just so the debacle would happen and Paizo would create the conspirator dragons.

These art designs are awesome, but any chance of higher resolution versions? I can only read the design notes by leaning right forward and squinting.

So my immediate idea is a benevolent yet scheming Conspirator dragon whose schemes is matchmaking... She just loves getting people together. She is the cause of 99% of meet-cutes in the city she resides in.

Sugar... water... give me... Sugar.

These art designs are awesome, but any chance of higher resolution versions? I can only read the design notes by leaning right forward and squinting.

Seconding this.

This is a really cool dragon concept, one that is extremely flexible in its applications. It can be one that was a double agent for a warring nation. It can be one that wants to bring closure to lost loved ones by transforming into their image. Heck, it could even be a 'fashion' dragon that just wants to be the newest fad of Golarion!

I am appreciating the effort going into making these dragons significantly different both from themselves as well as the original source material. I'm drawing a much better connection to these dragons compared to the originals, and honestly, I might throw this at my GM based on the current homebrew going on at one of my tables, because this would be the perfect subterfuge/espionage.

Flesh suits??? Wow...

Sugar... water... give me... Sugar.

Kay: "I don't suppose you know what kind of draconic life form leaves a green spectral trail and craves sugar water, do you?"

Jay: "Aw, wait. That was on Final Jeopardy last night. D! Alex said..."

Kay: "Zed, we have a Conspirator."

As a stand alone creature this sounds awesome and like it will be really interesting to GM with and to play against? Around? With? Who knows...

But also, Occult as a tradition is really falling apart for me the deeper into second edition we get, and splitting dragons up as creatures across traditions feels very fraught for “dragon” as a cohesive concept. Is “dragon” now in pathfinder just a generic word like “humanoid?” Where it just vaguely tells you a little bit about its shape, but nothing about its history or place in the universe? I guess that works but it still feels pretty jarring for me.

And seriously, what is occult magic?

Unsettling with so many avenues to build stories around! Incredible work.

So my immediate idea is a benevolent yet scheming Conspirator dragon whose schemes is matchmaking... She just loves getting people together. She is the cause of 99% of meet-cutes in the city she resides in.

Giving my Herald of Naderi vibes...

And seriously, what is occult magic?

Magic that functions via the mind or the soul- sometimes both at once.

If you're having trouble pinning it down, that's because "minds" and "souls" are much more slippery than "life" and "matter."

Who would win? Multiple authors working with 50 years of mechanical evolution and lore, or Luis Loza on a deadline? These dragons whip, dude. Special thanks to you and Kent Hamilton for his banger illustrations.

Yeah, the dragon flesh suit thing rocks so hard.

Love it. It reminds me of the Psyche Serpent in 1e, who also lived solely for the thrill of hatching grand conspiracies, but was a Level 2 Tiny Beast.

Unicore wrote:

And seriously, what is occult magic?

Magic that functions via the mind or the soul- sometimes both at once.

If you're having trouble pinning it down, that's because "minds" and "souls" are much more slippery than "life" and "matter."

Ah yes, like force barrage, mending, and noise barrage.

Like these dragons are seriously cool. I love them as creatures. But making actual flesh suits to wear as disguises is not mind or soul. That is matter or life. But it is alien and weird, which is a narrative space given over to occultism as an area of knowledge and magic because that fits some of the themes of other occult creatures. So psychics are inherently going to be better at identifying these dragons and their abilities than most wizards or Magi because? There are just a lot of lines getting blurred with tradition-based dragons that feel like need more narrative support to make newly clear, and I hope we get there. But the creature is super cool, so I am glad it exists. I just don’t really understand what connects this creature to an infernal dragon or an adamantine dragon, or how that is going to be explained in world.

Secrets of Magic has good writeups on how the different traditions of magic are viewed in-world.

Also, it probably helps if you remember that traditions are how denizens of Golarion approach magic (both in terms of understanding it and where they draw power). They're not neat boxes and there's bleed over between them... because magic is magic (at least, according to Jatembe)

I guess what I am hoping to see in the monster core, or perhaps a dragon centric follow up book is something like:

Dragons are ancient creatures with stories about their origins shrouded in mystery and some even lost to time. For eons, dragons’s deep connection to the fundamental forces of magic were misunderstood as being rooted in the same magics we define now as “arcane” magic, but the truth is that dragons are creatures so deeply tied to the foundational essences of magic as a whole that from hatching through their entire lives, dragons are shaped and reshaped by their proximity to different magical sources. Because they are so long lived, these changes happen at a pace that is nearly incomprehensible to most humanoids, but the effects of magical influence on a dragon’s life are so foundational that a true dragon’s emersion in a magical tradition overrides most factors of their being that we would normally describe as innate or biological. Dragons tend to have wings, scales, and a powerful breath attack, but even these features are tied more closely to the dragon’s connection to a specific tradition of magic than heredity or nature. For a dragon, magic defines their existence more so than any other factor other creatures can understand, and to be a dragon is to be an essence of magic unleashed into the world.

There is 1 impostor among us

So my immediate idea is a benevolent yet scheming Conspirator dragon whose schemes is matchmaking... She just loves getting people together. She is the cause of 99% of meet-cutes in the city she resides in.

I just saw Fiddler on the Roof for the first time this past Wednesday night. If you've seen it, you know exactly what song is in my head right now.

There is 1 impostor among us

Only 1 ?

As a stand alone creature this sounds awesome and like it will be really interesting to GM with and to play against? Around? With? Who knows...

But also, Occult as a tradition is really falling apart for me the deeper into second edition we get, and splitting dragons up as creatures across traditions feels very fraught for “dragon” as a cohesive concept. Is “dragon” now in pathfinder just a generic word like “humanoid?” Where it just vaguely tells you a little bit about its shape, but nothing about its history or place in the universe? I guess that works but it still feels pretty jarring for me.

And seriously, what is occult magic?

It is, though maybe inadvertently, in the post right below yours.

Unsettling with so many avenues to build stories around! Incredible work.

In other words, Occult is the magic of stories.

For a dragon, magic defines their existence more so than any other factor other creatures can understand.

I think this is both fitting for the Remastered dragons and true to the traditional image of dragons in TTRPGs : magic given shape.

Note though that dragons are a species. It is my understanding that the child of Conspirator dragons will also be a Conspirator dragon thus with a link to Occult whatever the events in their life.

Which though doesn't prevent, at least I hope so, a Conspirator dragon from studying Arcane or Divine magic.

I admit, I too was wondering what might the conspirator dragon say about the nature of Occult magic in the world, but also bear in mind that Spirit, too, is a tangible essence. Angels and demons and the very soil of Heaven are all made of spirit, and one thing that's been explicit from the beginning is that sometimes different traditions arrive at the same basic effect using different techniques. I'll grant this has terrible potential to drag any tradition off track into trying to justify any spell, but at the very least I can imagine how a dragon dedicated to schemes might develop a unique magic trick to conjure a skin suit made of spirit essence alongside its laundry list of more conventionally occult spells. Occult doesn't lack for Summon spells, nor does Divine.

Even so, I have been most curious to see how the Arcane and Occult dragons form a theme amongst themselves. So far I feel conspiracy fits the themes of occult pretty well, given that occult involve cunning study of unknown and unknowable subjects (such as the web of intrigue and lies, as much as the nuance and narrative shades of grey in storytelling). I wouldn't mind to see that there's a coherent underlying logic to these things, but nmi think the underlying logic necessarily plays second fiddle to what things 'feel' like they belong in each tradition... which given the millennia of magic research, even outside of Arcane, it shouldn't surprise me very much if the traditions have a long history of developing workarounds to achieve thematically appropriate tricks.

But I should sleep before I start getting in over my head theorizing about things with half knowledge.

(PS, a thing that has been an occasional brainteasers for me for a little while now, has been the limits of Spirit. Logically, there must be some deficiency with Spirit essence that the gods chose to craft the universe out of Matter (I mean, ignoring the meta reading that our universe is made from matter), rather than simply use the single, quintessential element that seems to have the capacity to become anything, but it's not immediately apparent what. I have a couple ideas, but none that satisfy me as anything more than a half-answer. Leading idea right now is that the malleability of spirit also makes it less metaphydically stable and so not as ideal for a project that they wanted to create and send off ticking under its own internal logic that they wouldnt have to maintain and reshape constantly)

I admit, I too was wondering what might the conspirator dragon say about the nature of Occult magic in the world, but also bear in mind that Spirit, too, is a tangible essence. Angels and demons and the very soil of Heaven are all made of spirit, and one thing that's been explicit from the beginning is that sometimes different traditions arrive at the same basic effect using different techniques. I'll grant this has terrible potential to drag any tradition off track into trying to justify any spell, but at the very least I can imagine how a dragon dedicated to schemes might develop a unique magic trick to conjure a skin suit made of spirit essence alongside its laundry list of more conventionally occult spells. Occult doesn't lack for Summon spells, nor does Divine.

Even so, I have been most curious to see how the Arcane and Occult dragons form a theme amongst themselves. So far I feel conspiracy fits the themes of occult pretty well, given that occult involve cunning study of unknown and unknowable subjects (such as the web of intrigue and lies, as much as the nuance and narrative shades of grey in storytelling). I wouldn't mind to see that there's a coherent underlying logic to these things, but nmi think the underlying logic necessarily plays second fiddle to what things 'feel' like they belong in each tradition... which given the millennia of magic research, even outside of Arcane, it shouldn't surprise me very much if the traditions have a long history of developing workarounds to achieve thematically appropriate tricks.

But I should sleep before I start getting in over my head theorizing about things with half knowledge.

(PS, a thing that has been an occasional brainteasers for me for a little while now, has been the limits of Spirit. Logically, there must be some deficiency with Spirit essence that the gods chose to craft the universe out of Matter (I mean, ignoring the meta reading that our universe is made from matter), rather than simply use the single, quintessential element that...

I feel the main difference is that Spirit tends to polarize according to the Alignment poles of the setting, whereas they just do not affect Matter.

So Matter was likely needed to bring a stable environment where the souls had time to evolve and settle in their proper Alignment before being sent back to the outer planes.

A conspirator dragon travelled to RL Earth and posed as a high-ranking Famous Games Company's executive and proposed to monetize the OGL.

Just so the debacle would happen and Paizo would create the conspirator dragons.

Quite the interesting take on a grandfather paradox! I like it!

God the imagery of calling someone an imposter and the person just...erupts but the thing within just keeps expanding and unraveling.

Horrifying.

Am I the only one that sees a grumpy old neckbeard in the top-down of the dragon's head?

Just me? Okay.

nice

Er, uh, that's pretty unique.

Wait, if it's just a flesh suit then does this mean the PCs can literally do the Scooby Doo thing and rip their face off at the end to reveal that it was Old Wyrm Jynxinz trying to scare everyone away from the old keep so he could sell it to the Lumber Consortium?

Wait, if it's just a flesh suit then does this mean the PCs can literally do the Scooby Doo thing and rip their face off at the end to reveal that it was Old Wyrm Jynxinz trying to scare everyone away from the old keep so he could sell it to the Lumber Consortium?

ZOINKS!

Garrett Guillotte wrote:

Wait, if it's just a flesh suit then does this mean the PCs can literally do the Scooby Doo thing and rip their face off at the end to reveal that it was Old Wyrm Jynxinz trying to scare everyone away from the old keep so he could sell it to the Lumber Consortium?

ZOINKS!

JINKIES!

My glasses! I can't find my glasses!

Am I the only one that sees a grumpy old neckbeard in the top-down of the dragon's head?

Just me? Okay.

The one described as a "false human face"?

Am I the only one that sees a grumpy old neckbeard in the top-down of the dragon's head?

Just me? Okay.

It is intentional - the parts are elabelled "false forehead", "false nose", "false eyes and cheek", "false lips and chin"; the front on pic of the head also talks of the false face. Looks awesome from that view...

My first question is if the flesh suit is always conjured, or if it can be. Ahem. Prepared with proper materials.

Since these Conspirator Dragons use flesh suits for disguise, I can foresee problems if one prepares a disguise and then develops an excessive love for ice cream . . . .

Awesome.

Something of an OGL Blue Dragon feel but with weird aspects I like.

New is good.

I'm using the multiple blue dragons that live in Thuvia as some big bads in my current game, so I'm glad we have a new version to utilize.

The Raven Black wrote:

Awesome.

Something of an OGL Blue Dragon feel but with weird aspects I like.

New is good.

I'm using the multiple blue dragons that live in Thuvia as some big bads in my current game, so I'm glad we have a new version to utilize.

If conspirator dragons were an option when I came up with Deyrubrujan I would have totally made her one rather than the blue I had available at the time.