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RuneQuest has Dragons

Posted on January 31, 2024

As we know, RuneQuest has dragons. And True Dragons are huge entities so powerful their thoughts and emotions can manifest and develop lives of their own.

But at the same time, they do not provide Rune magic, spirit magic, or teach sorcery. Dragon Magic (as practiced by the dragonewts and in Kralorela) is its own thing – another magic system. And using it impedes one’s spiritual progress. The great irony is that the more powerful you are with Dragon Magic, the less you want to use it.

The Inhuman King and the Kralorelan Dragon Emperor are both draconic boddhisattvas. They are or have achieved True Dragonhood, but remain in this limited mundane world to help other sentient beings.

Sometimes dragons show up in the Gods Realm. Aroka, Sshorg, Sh’harkazeel, Oslira, etc. But for the most part, they enter into mythology and then leave, often revealed to be something else. Shhorg is revealed to be Oslira, Aroka is revealed to contain Heler, and so on. And some dragons are revealed to be aspects of other dragons.

But a few remain dragons. Sh’harkazeel remains a dragon even as his head becomes part of the regalia of Orlanth. Yelm’s Throne is the Dark Dragon, which is released whenever there is nobody sitting there. This stuff drove the God Learners nuts, and like many academics, their solution was to just ignore it or at least downplay it.

However, others built an empire from this. The Wyrms Friends spoke to the dragons and the dragons spoke back. They were Lightbringers, but they also saw the draconic connections to Orlanth, to Yelm, to Heler-Lorion, to Stella Draconis, and more. These myths were doors to draconic consciousness and to the Great Project.

After the Dragonkill War, this stuff became strictly taboo. For the Orlanthi as well as the Solars. The Lunars too. Dragons don’t experience the Lunar Way and cannot be illuminated. Perhaps they already are. But one thing that is happening right now is that the Orlanthi, driven to desperation by the Lunar Empire, are talking to dragons again.

True Dragon by Jed Dougherty from the Sartar Companion (2010)

Will Dragon Magic and/or Kralori magic ever be written up officially and, if so, will they look anything like how the former did in MRQ? To the extent it does, it will be entirely by accident, as Greg and I never read those MRQ books. None of the MRQ materials are a reference or source for the RQ team, and I tell any writer working with us to not read them. Which maybe gives you an idea how not-canonical they are.

Jeff Richard

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Burburstus, Dragon Emperor, Dragon Magic, Dragons, Inhuman King, Jed Dougherty (artist), True Dragons

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