Ancient Rome and Dragons

[chrispenycate]

But the question is, why have they just now come onto the scene? If dragons have always been around and it's just domestication that is new there is the lag time while they adapt the forces and perfect tactics. In which period opposing forces will learn their own techniques to counter the new technology, just as has happened with chariots, cavalry, artillery - just about every advance in military technology since agriculturs rendered warfare practical. Same difference if it's an advance in sorcery that allows dragon summoning in quantity. About the only way this becomes an instant problem is if there is a fixed portal opens, in someone's territory, Roman or barbarian, just gives different problems, and dragon mounted invaders/refugees/mounted postal service flood through. And Europe or Asia Minor - further away there'd be time to learn, to adapt to the new situation. It's not that a dragon can't fly anywhere faster than the news of its arrival - you need to arrange bases, logistics, a breeding program for the future - years, probably.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

A suggestion. In the Sword and the Flame books by Joel Rosenberg, wizards almost never took part in open warfare. Why? Because if the other side had a wizard, and you didn't, the only way to level the playing field was to kill the wizard.

Wizards did not like this plan at all.

Put the word "Dragon" where I've put "Wizard". Intelligent dragons may be reluctant to fight wars where they are the priority target.

Rosenberg also had dragonbane, a poison that could kill dragons. Applied to an arrowhead, it also negated the power of the dragon's armoured scales.

 

[Venusian Broon]

It really depends on how powerful and magical you want to make your dragons, but if you want to make it 'edging towards realism' in some manner then I suggest you look into how the ancients used war Elephants. They were huge but unpredictable creatures (being intelligent), terrified horses and men, and very tough to kill (although if you fought against an army with them enough times you developed tactics to negate their strengths.) O.k. they can't fly or breath fire, if that's what you want, but they could go practically anywhere they felt like, even on a battlefield (and sometimes that was fleeing away in terror through their own army stamping it to bits...) So I think the comparison is apt.

It would be instructive to see how such a military 'asset' actually was reasonably difficult to maintain and make them do what you really wanted - they were sort of the bling of ancient armies as only a few regions actually had access to them (India being abundant with them were very pro-Elephant as a weapon!). And although many ancient generals would clamour to get hold of them, they were not always the super weapon that they could have been - being much harder to control at all times than other animals such as horses or camels.

Personally I'd do dragons the same way - actually a bit meek and timid, as they have to be partially domesticated; however intelligent and powerful, but not too much otherwise if they were extremely overpowered why are they doing the bidding of these ridiculous little ape-things?.

 

[Piousflea84]

Let's say Eragon size dragon, large enough to carry a rider but not so big that they become almost invincible. No special abilities, just the power to breath fire (depending on the race of dragon) bonding with a rider, able to understand languages, magical prowess possibly. But I don't want the story to be about dragon riders as such, they exist, but there in effect just soldiers.

Even an Eragon-class dragon would be totally overpowered in a Roman fantasy setting, if there weren't some kind of anti-air magic to counter them.

The introduction of flying into the Classical-era battlefield, even without any aerial firepower, would have changed everything. One of the major recurrent themes of ancient-era warfare is generals making amazing bluffs or terrible blunders based on the fact that no one really knows where the enemy is or how numerous they were. A couple of unarmed hot air balloons would have significantly changed Roman-era military tactics... even if a dragon's breath can only fry a small handful of soldiers, it is worth its weight in gold for reconnaissance value alone.

 

[Druico]

Yeah that's true.

I think I'm going to just create a Roman inspired setting, and work the dragons into the story from a fantasy element only. It's a lot of world building etc, but least then I can make the story more my own.

 

[mtzGr]

Hi Mtzgr,

Consider the effect though. If you have dragons, and even if every race has dragons, you may match societies up and have similar outcomes in wars, but what happens to everything else? The Romans were strong militarily through their organised infantry. What use are infantry when you have dragons? They'd be completely useless. So how did they conquor the city states of Greece? What about naval forces? One dragon with fire breath can set a ship or a fleet on fire out at sea, so there goes the whole Helen of Troy thing. City fortifications? Hell city improvements like aquaducts. What would be the point in even building them if a dragon could simply wipe them out? Naturally of course, wooden structures would be out. Everything, and I mean everything would have to be stone and probably extremely heavy stone at that.

Dragons are such a major power that they radically distort the rest of the ancient world. (Unless you want to turn them into mere winged lizards.)

Cheers, Greg.

Apologies for the late reply (and a bit of a necro), I post here sporadically and sometimes lose track.

I agree that you will have to rewrite some history, but what's wrong with that? For ease I'll borrow from Novik's series since it's out there (SPOILERS). In her books there are many different breeds of dragons. Some very small used as couriers, and some giant used for battle, and many more in between of varying intelligence. Dragons with breath weapons are somewhat of a rarity and prized for obvious reasons. There are a couple breeds with flames, some poison, but on the whole most are "giant lizards". They're more animals than they are magical creatures in this sense, but if this is wholly unacceptable than we'll just have to disagree on this point. I don't think they're cheapened, and I think it works well in her books.

Now certainly a band of men going up against a large dragon is liable to sustain casualties, but there's no reason to think that every dragon is invincible; attacking anything opens you up to vulnerabilities elsewhere. I agree that if you were to drop a dragon out of nowhere onto an ancient Roman battlefield that is would overpower any army, but we're not (or need not be) talking about dragons suddenly materializing. If dragons have been around since the dawn of man, then our culture would have grown along with them and out of necessity adapted. New technology, new strategies, etc. Aside from conquering them by sheer force, Novik has a pretty clever device in that the "domesticated" dragons are fiercely possessive and devoted to their riders whom they have grown with since being hatched. So if you capture their rider, you will have the dragon’s obedience for fear that they'll be killed.

I think she handles dragons well, and I'd wager there are other interesting ways to insert them into history without everything falling apart.

 

[Overread]

Few thoughts:
1) I forget where I read it but Naomi did a short story of dragons in Rome- from what I recall it was where she established the first taming of dragons by people; or at least the first human-dragon formal alliance.

2) Consider not just the military but the free people as well as the wild-stock. Many people get hooked on the idea of military changes; but don't think to consider other aspects:
a) Depending on how common/rare and how big/powerful the dragons are you could have a very dangerous wild population which results in huge changes in how humanity lives and operates. You could also have regions of high dragon populations that render it inhospitable to normal human habitation. The Rise of Rome could be more the rise of Rome against dragons rather than against the peoples of the age.

b) If the military has dragons chances are merchants have them too - how would that change public transport, commerce. Heck do the military have any dragons of their own at all or are they bought in/hired from the merchants.

c) Are dragons high class goods or low - is the ownership of one socially going to improve or lower your standing even if they bring great power. Lots of room to work with here as you design a social structure for the people to work within. Temeraire gives a good angle of this - making dragons of high importance but also one tied to social shame at the same time - at least within some circles.

3) If dragons are around another important consideration is what keeps them in check. Naturally you'd have to have;
a) Another top predator to compete with
b) A high level of rarity (in natural stock) to support such large top tier predators (because higher up the food chain you go the less you get).
c) Larger or different prey species.

In short consider what other mythological or invented creatures might exist within your world. Most natural prey today have utterly no defence for a large winged air predator beyond hiding in woodland/dense undergrowth. So it would stand to reason that if there were dragons there might be other species around - this could be anything from large land mammals through to simple changes in coat colour as prey animals seek to use camouflage that hides them from sky as well as land based attacks -- raid the books on megafauna as there are loads of extinct land mammals and animals which could provide ample resource for adding species (interestingly the only thing that appears to have wiped out many of the megafauna in this inter-glacial period that we currently live in is the existence of people with technology - spears and bows and whathaveyou).



A huge part of what changes depends really on what you want to change. You have to make choices on how you want things to line up and put some good thought into how various changes might have knock-on-effects in other areas. Try to be as wide thinking as you can in this; even if the story itself involves little to do with merchants or fishermen try to think how they would be affected by such changes. Even if just in general terms it will help to have a wider world view since then it gives you ample resources to dip into for parts of your story. It also means that you can knit together as much as you can early on; rather than trying to fit in changes later on which don't really line up well with things you've established in the book. It's basically trying to help you avoid writing yourself into a corner later on and at best having to re-write bits of the book and at worst having a nightmare to sort out (because the first book(s) are published and out there*)


Also don't forget that whilst we associate periods like the Roman era with exploration and the discovery of new lands it is in fact only the surviving documentation that we really find. In reality humanity spread to many corners of the world a LOT earlier and there is good evidence that even in very primitive times there was a lot of travel and trade going on - so consider that aspect too especially if you want your dragons found in some isolated corner of the world (ergo new to the mainland of Europe)


* you can make some changes. Robin Hobb ended her first trilogy with a description of one area of her world which in a latter series that came right after changed fairly significantly. Because the reference in the original was at the very end and because it was very general most readers overlooked it; and she did tidy it up somewhat in a 3rd trilogy with an off-hand reference at the start (this was all in reference to the Acid River - which originally wasn't an Acid River - or rather was one which was traversed without special mention - which one would think a river of acid would require).