Dragon mating rituals

[the David]

I just had an idea for an adventure involving two dragons vying with each other for the chance to mate with the third dragon. Now this idea raised all sorts of questions, so I once again come to these boards for help.

As I dislike true dragons, I'm assuming homemade dragons with unique appearances and powers. Their offspring would be a weird mix of both parents, with some unique traits.

- What would a dragon want from a potential mate? Is being the strongest important to guarantee strong offspring, or is having a big hoard the deciding factor? This is important as it affects the behaviour of the dragons during mating season. (Displays of violence or displays of wealth.)
- I'd expect a combination of 2 males for 1 female mate, as 1 male could simply impregnate multiple females. (Depending on a dragon's sex drive, ofcourse.) The problem with this is that it's a sexist stereotype. (Both are actually, but I'm considering the first example.) Now I could make the dragons less intelligent and describe it as instinctive, take love out of the equation so it's an informed decision or I could invert the trope by letting the male dragon raise the wyrmlings. If all else fails I could say one of the dragons is gay, but that would take more consideration.
- I'm imagining 3 dragons, but would it be plausible to substitute an outsider? I like the idea of half-fiend wyrmlings/half-dragon fiends.
- How big should a dragons territory be if a dragon would be large?
- Is there something else I'm missings? Articles on dragon mating rituals, or mating rituals/gender roles in general?

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Monogamous marriages arranged by the parents while the children are still hatchlings. ;)

More seriously, roll three d6 for the dragons' genders; even is female, odd is male. There, now no matter what the outcome you haven't been sexist.

Alternatively, steal the Gubru trifold mating scheme from The Uplift War. Families have three parents---each of the dragons will have a place. But to begin with they're all neuter. They vie for supremacy via a number of methods. The winner becomes the queen (fertile female), the runner-up becomes the prince (fertile male), the loser becomes the, uh, I forget (sterile male IIRC, or maybe just neuter). Oh, just read the novel, it's fantastic :-)

[Lathiira]

Don't worry about the sexist stereotype; nature's been having males fight for females longer than humans have been around. And you don't hear the animals crying that it's sexist :)

As for what they'd want: the dragon is going to want the best mate. The one that will make the best progeny. A dragon can be a powerhouse, but if its hoard is pitiful because it was dumb enough to settle down at the North Pole, who cares? A big hoard shows the potential mate has power, whether the power to claim the hoard through fang, breath, and claw, or the power of wits and cunning, to gain tribute from lesser creatures. Mind, this all applies to more selfish dragons. But if you take it like this, you could have that outsider win the fair dragon's claw, if it can show it's better at hoarding than the dragon it competes with.

Dragon territories should be quite big. They're generally known to be territorial, and quite large. Sure, they may sleep a lot, but they need food to keep themselves running. Not to mention it's part of their prestige; better dragons not only have bigger hoards, but better territories (bigger ones; there's a correlation there).

With less selfish dragons, like the classic metallics, the hoard may not be as important as the potential renown of the mates. You want your wyrmlings to grow up to be great champions of goodness and light, you find the dragon for a mate that's done the most for that. Or if you're a prankster like coppers have been in the past, which mate has done the best pranks?

It boils down to the culture. Dragons aren't stupid. They do have a culture, each species has certain priorities, those would feed into the family values the females would want.

[dharkus]

I doubt there's anything in the pathfinder material about dragons mating - you'd have to go pre-PF for that I think

[the David]

Lathiira wrote:

Don't worry about the sexist stereotype; nature's been having males fight for females longer than humans have been around. And you don't hear the animals crying that it's sexist :)

As for what they'd want: the dragon is going to want the best mate. The one that will make the best progeny. A dragon can be a powerhouse, but if its hoard is pitiful because it was dumb enough to settle down at the North Pole, who cares? A big hoard shows the potential mate has power, whether the power to claim the hoard through fang, breath, and claw, or the power of wits and cunning, to gain tribute from lesser creatures. Mind, this all applies to more selfish dragons. But if you take it like this, you could have that outsider win the fair dragon's claw, if it can show it's better at hoarding than the dragon it competes with.

Dragon territories should be quite big. They're generally known to be territorial, and quite large. Sure, they may sleep a lot, but they need food to keep themselves running. Not to mention it's part of their prestige; better dragons not only have bigger hoards, but better territories (bigger ones; there's a correlation there).

With less selfish dragons, like the classic metallics, the hoard may not be as important as the potential renown of the mates. You want your wyrmlings to grow up to be great champions of goodness and light, you find the dragon for a mate that's done the most for that. Or if you're a prankster like coppers have been in the past, which mate has done the best pranks?

It boils down to the culture. Dragons aren't stupid. They do have a culture, each species has certain priorities, those would feed into the family values the females would want.

Fair enough. I guess I'm overthinking it.

[Roregg]

If you want a biological basis for the mating system then you have a couple of choices. If you want the males to be the determining force (male-male competition) there is typicaly some type of a harem structure where one male controls access to many females. The control is achieved by control of a resource (resource polygyny) which is typically territory. This territory can be large and be the territory contorlled by the male, or it can be small and something that the female needs for reproduction (think elephant seals and the beach masters). This will typically result in males fighting extensively for the best territory leaving the females little choice regarding their mates. There is also harem polygyny, where the males coerce females into their harems (sometimes quite forcefully) and defend their harems from all other males.

The more common aspect of mating is female choice where females chose the males with whom they will mate. The focus of the choice is generally associated with the extended phenotype, healthy males, or good genes. The extended phenotype would be the quality of the resources that the male can provide (an extension of his phenotype that the female finds enticing - in this case treasure, territory quality, etc) determines if a female will mate with the specific male. Look up bower birds (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MZFzH3dWsbA ) for a great example of this or the nuptial gifts of crane flies. In the healthy male example females judge the parasite or disease load of a male based on either morphological features or behaviors, and chooses the males least likely to infect her during courtship and mating. a classic example of this is the snood (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snood_(anatomy)) on the turkey. The length of the snood is highly correlated to the parasite burden found in the male. Choose the male with the longest snood and you choose the male least impacted by parasites. Parasites are an energy drain, so it is difficult to produce a large snood with a heavy parasite burden. Lastly females can chose males based on good genes. Under this model, females evaluate the quality of the male based on morphological or behavioral (less often behavioral) characteristics of the males. An example of this is the eye spots found on the tails feathers of male peacocks. Females prefer males with a greater area of eyespots, and the survival of chicks to adulthood are significantly greater for chicks born to fathers who have greater eyespot area. The pigments of the eyespots are very expensive to make biochemically, so a male that can make lots of eyespots must be a high quality male and likely to pass on those traits to your babies.

Last suggestion in my long-winded exposition is that the best territories are rarely the largest. The most dominant individuals will take the highest qualtity territories. Territory quality its typically related to the density of needed resources. The higher the density of the resources, the higher the quality of the territory. It takes significant time and energy to patrol territories. Thus, the dominant individual will first choose the area with the highest density of resources, which will often result in it being the smallest. They now spend the minimal amount of time patrolling their territory while gaining the maximum amount of resources.

Just some suggestions for how dragons are likely to behave based on what we see in the real world. Sorry for the lenght of the post, but behavioral ecology in particularly fascinating!

[Lathiira]

It's okay. Happens to us all. If you realize you're overthinking it, that's good, you can fix it. Happens a lot in RPGs :)

[Lathiira]

Roregg wrote:

Lot of stuff!

I did a bit of work on satin bower-birds in college, it was good to see that come up. I was trying to avoid a review of my General Bio II class for this discussion, so I kept mine shorter. Liked that though!

[Roregg]

Lathiira wrote:

Roregg wrote:

Lot of stuff!

I did a bit of work on satin bower-birds in college, it was good to see that come up. I was trying to avoid a review of my General Bio II class for this discussion, so I kept mine shorter. Liked that though!

Wow! If you covered that in BIO II that was pretty good! I don't typically cover the details of these concepts until upper division evolution or behavior courses. Very cool that you were able to work on bower birds!!!

[Roregg]

The David, one cool scenario that you could use is the nuptial gift concept. The males would be continuously trying to bring more impressive gifts to the female inroder to curry her favor with respect to mating. This would lead to the males continuously raiding to find better and better gifts.

[Kileanna]

If you don't mind going to pre PF stuff for inspiration, I remember that The Draconomicon from D&D 3.5 had something about that, IIRC.

[Lathiira]

Kileanna wrote:

If you don't mind going to pre PF stuff for inspiration, I remember that The Draconomicon from D&D 3.5 had something about that, IIRC.

If that version doesn't, I'm sure the 2E version does.

[MrCharisma]

Personally I like the idea that Dragons are Matriarchal. Actually Meerkat family groups are a good fit for this:

Every dragon has a territory, but if you looked at where they are you'd find a bunch of smaller/younger dragons surrounding the matriarch of the "tribe" (and by "surrounding" I mean they could be 100 miles apart from each other, but within flying distance if they're called).

The "tribe" would have a dominant female at it's centre, and although there could be males and females in the "tribe" only the Matriarch would be allowed to breed. If another female has children she can expect to be expelled from the "tribe" or worse. If a male wants to breed he has to prove himself better than all the others (and potentially convince the Matriarch that breeding is a good idea as well - Dragons need a LOT of food and live virtually forever, so there are times when breeding is probably not in their best interests).

Now the second part of this is that dragons are sentient, highly-intelligent creatures (more intelligent than humanoids by a fair stretch) so it's really up to the female to decide what constitutes the "best" male. You might find one who likes bigger hoards, one who likes physical strength, one who likes magical prowess, one who likes poetry, one who simply goes for the hottest guy ... really it'd be as varied as it is for humanity in the real world.