The Blimp Dragons, or Meat Blimps as they are colloquially called, are large, buoyant, jelly fish-like creatures, able to lift and carry large loads over great distances.

These gentle, stupid creatures have been harnessed by the people of Locastus to function as gigantic, living airships.

Ancient Acitan legends, speaking of ferocious, fire-breathing creatures of the sky, has given these (not very dragon-like dragons) their unlikely name.

Physiology

The body of a Blimp Dragon usually takes the form of an irregular teardrop shape, looking nothing as much as a gigantic, slate-grey and warty potato, studded with numerous jagged spurs, fins and tumor-like growths.

An adult Blimp Dragon can grow up to 200 feet in length and approximatively 75 feet in diameter. The body is quite stiff and inflexible, rigid like an airship, while the various appendages can be articulated, although at a slow pace.

The tissue which makes up the majority of the Dragon´s body is of a balsa wood-like consistency, tough but flexible, forming numerous cavities (ranging from the size of a human head to room-sized compartments).

Through some unknown mechanism, the Dragon scavenges helium from the atmosphere to fill these compartments, giving it a natural buoyancy in air. Through bizarre alchemical processes, it can reabsorb and chemically bind its buoyancy helium, giving it control over altitude and lift.

In a compact cylinder running down the centre of the body lays the Dragon´s internal organs rudimentary nervous, digestion and cardiovascular systems.

Since some 75 percent of the Dragon´s mass consists of hard, buoyant tissue, wrapped protectively around the vulnerable inner core of essential organs, a Dragon is extremely hard to injure. It´s helium content also protects it against fire (lightning strikes are common at the Dragon´s preferred altitudes), by depriving any fire from necessary oxygen.
Along the length of the Dragon, it sports three sets of three sail-like fins, spaced equidistantly around its circumference. The Dragon usually uses these fins to catch the wind, sailing along wherever the winds may take it. On rare occasions, the Dragon can flap its fins in a slow, peristaltic motion to steer against the wind.

Spaced over the Blimp Dragon´s body are aerial-like chitinous spurs, baroquely jagged and flanged and each one tipped with a single, opalescent eyeball. Besides acting as the Dragon´s sensory organs, these spurs are also part of the defense mechanism of these docile creatures, collecting electrothaumaturgic charge from low-hanging clouds and storing it in bioaccumulators at the root of the spur. To protect itself from airborne predators and parasites, the Dragon can release its stored charge in a series of violent, thaumaturgically boosted and aimed thunderbolts, hence the folk-tales of fire-breathing dragons.

At the front end, ringed by eye-spurs, is a large air-scoop structure through which the Dragon feeds, taking in pollen, insects and floating organic matter. It´s potent stomach acids allow it to digest anything organic up to the size of a large bird. The dragon, due to its immensely slow metabolism, requires surprisingly little sustenance, but is dependent on certain compounds only present in tree-pollen from its natural habitat.

Due to its slow metabolism and near-impregnable defense, Blimp Dragons can live for a very long time. The most common cause of death is losing buoyancy due to injury, either from physical trauma (lightning strike, cannon fire etc) or infection by a certain type of yeast spore, which rapidly eats away at the buoyant tissues. A stranded Dragon has very low chances of survival, unless rapidly healed.

Habitat

Blimp Dragons are naturally occurring in the Thunderhead Range, thriving in the ferocious, arcanely charged thunderstorms common to these towering, inhospitable mountains. In this region, due to the dense forests covering the slopes of the great peaks and foothills, the air is filled with pollen and insect swarms which constitute the Dragon´s primary sustenance.
 
Blimp Dragons could be domesticated only after scientists had cracked the problem of synthesizing the essential compounds in the various types of pollen that the Dragons need.

Psychology

Blimp Dragons are near-mindless, with an intelligence level somewhere in the range of a jellyfish. However, they have a high affinity and sensitivity to psionics, which enables human crews to steer the creature quite easily. If the controlling psionist should break off contact with the creature in-flight, it will fall back on its natural instincts and become a very dangerous creature indeed, lashing out with thunderbolts on its crew and surrounding structures.

Reproduction

The Blimp Dragons, a weird hybrid of plant and jellyfish, reproduce by sporulation. During mating time, drawn by pheromone release, great flocks congregate high in the atmosphere above the Thunderheads to release clouds of walnut-sized, buoyant spores.

These seed-spores, covered in a Velcro-like coating, then congregate into larger clumps, exchange and homogenize genetic material and drift gently to the ground where they will spend several years growing, scavenging helium and putting forth roots to draw nutrients from the ground.

When the young Dragon, after five to seven years, has grown large and buoyant enough, it will break its tethers and drift skywards to become a fully fledged Dragon.

Domesticated use

The people of Locastus, City of Mirrors, have domesticated the slow, docile Dragons for use in aerial transport, serving as airships for transportation, warfare and leisure.

Commonly, the Dragon is tethered to some form of free-hanging gondola, attached by chains to large eyeloops embedded in its resilient flesh. Variations include human quarters bolted directly onto the Dragon´s back and, even, warren-like caverns dug into its very flesh.
The standard cargo Dragon usually includes a large wood-and-metal gondola with room for crew, command and cargo (usually streamlined and not unlike the hull of a seagoing vessel), tethered to up to four different Dragons for sufficient lift capability.

This many Dragons require a skilled psionist to control them a slip will mean the Dragons revert to instinctual behavior and will fight each other with thunderbolts. To boost the maximum speed of the set-up, the gondola will usually have one to three large, steam-powered propellers, impelling the gondola forwards, while the Dragons only provide lift and steering.

Military versions, used for air-to-ground cannon fire and bombing, sport compact, heavily armored crew bunkers bolted directly onto the Dragon´s body and bristling with machine gun nests, cannon turrets and bomb canisters.

The fact that the Dragon´s buoyancy is not dependent on one large gas bag, but rather many, small and separate ones, means that small-calibre fire has almost no effect on the creature - to damage a War-Dragon, large-calibre cannon fire, incendiary shells or explosives are needed.

Even if badly damaged, a Dragon has remarkable regeneration capability, which means that even if it is incapacitated, it can become operational again in a matter of months, which gives it an advantage over purely mechanical weapon systems.

Author´s Notes

This was sparked by Scrasamax´s Green Dragon Challenge, to create a plausible herbivore dragon. It´s an idea I´ve been kicking around for a while and now (finally) got it out. It might not entirely be what Scras had in mind, but I´ll add it to his codex anyway.

Peace,

David

Full Description
Born on the frigid methane / ammonia world of Sogth VII, the crystal dragons strike a strange chord within the hearts of men, one of both awe, fear, and love, ringing in the soul with ancient legends.

Newly hatched, a young crystal dragon is greatly similar to the wyverns of human lore, bearing the winged lizard frame of the ancient legend, save for its brilliantly colored scales, a rainbow of a thousand different colors of crystal. While not capable of true flight, the young dragonet is able to glide for short distances upon its wings, helping it to capture the light prey that it feeds upon instinctually in its youth.

As it ages, however, the crystal dragon rapidly increases in volume, its wings quickly becoming useless as gliding things, instead metamorphosing over time into crude grasping appendages, their supporting shoulder bone actually rolling over to allow for the easiest use grasping from the ground, while its body becomes longer, and more sinuous with every day, reaching its full growth around five years of age, nearly four meters tall at the second shoulder, where it stands upon its front ‘feet’, a full three meters around and nearly twenty long, from mouth to the tip of tail. In this form, now, it greatly resembles the wyrm from legends related to the wyvern, or perhaps the eastern dragon, yet its dracoform is none the less undeniable, despite the absence of wings.

Additional Information

While the crystal dragon is a nearly obligate carnivore as an infant, as it grows, its appetite becomes far more immense than it can possibly find from the smaller creatures that dominate Sogth VII. Instead, as it grows, new and more versatile teeth grow in, along with a more multipurpose digestive tract. At its fifth year of life, the crystal dragon is fully grown, and has associated itself with a loose pack structure that roams the lands, eating animal, vegetable, and mineral almost indiscriminately. Although a preference for meat is preferred, mostly because of its high energy density, refined, light metals are a special treat to them, and it can be used as part of the process of training them.

The local tribesmen, with their half-evolved intelligence, have learned to separate the youths from the loose packs, and with some care, are able to bond the dragon to the tribe as if they were its pack members. While it is possible to train them to attack, this is rare, for the dragon is preferably used as a beast of burden - Their relatively tremendous size means that little is able to threaten them, but when they do, their rudimentary pack tactics and bulk coupled with teeth and claws able to rend stone find little challenge in most meat. When used to hunt, they are generally used to drive other creatures towards the seemingly less threatening tribesmen, for few creatures will volunteer to cross the path of the dragon.

Unfortunately for them, from time to time, an offworlder with more money than sense will try to rise to the challenge of domesticating one of the crystal dragons themselves, lured by their exotic beauty and their raw potential as a fighting beast. With size, a slew of natural weapons, and thick scales laced with corundum, it is tempting indeed, especially for the gambling man.

Rarely does this go well - the refrigeration alone required to sustain the creature is difficult to sustain, especially when it shows a certain knack for eating its way out of confinement. While the methane it breathes in is not particularly poisonous to humans, the ammonia it drinks and the byproducts of its breath most certainly are - more than one hopeful dragon rider has been slain by the potent blend of formaldehyde and cyanide that the beast exhales. Smuggler and buyer beware!

Full Description:

A Melaran Drakeling is an impressive sight, twenty feet in length, the wingspan slightly longer, many confuse them for genuine dragons. But it is a mere lapdog to a dire wolf, an idiot child to a warlord. If you meet a dragon and survive, you will know the difference. This is an animal, smart, but not much more. It lives in small herds of up to twenty, but loners are not unheard of.

Sages agree now, that it shouldn’t be able to carry itself, in air or even on earth. It shouldn’t have an armor plating with such a slender body, the majestic speed or great flight control. It is obvious that magic is in play.

Drakelings are plant eaters, they consume a lot of green matter. They must move through vast distances or the place where a group stays will be devastated. At some point, it is thought, they started to help themselves out with magic. Some claim they had wings before, some claim it is a new mutation. The great Calvinus said all the world’s objects and creatures are but reflections of ideas, it stands to reason that drakelings came to resemble the superior idea of a dragon. Lastly, there have been some speculations that dragons are their advanced offspring, living on magic alone. They don’t seem to like their lesser cousins, that much is certain. They like theories about their similarity even less, as a few sages could attest. But let us return to the feeding.

Plants you can find almost anywhere, for magic you must search like a hunter. Drakelings do it in the best way: they fly through magical currents, absorbing it through their wings. They do not need magic very often, but they have to keep a balance, they cannot subsist on only one of their staples. Even more is required for reproduction, they gather around spirit wells*, with the males dueling in air for the females, displaying fine acrobatics and fighting for their attention. The winners get to bathe in the empowered waters, soaking up the energies needed to spawn another generation with all the females they can handle.

This may be the reason why there are so few drakelings outside of the plains - there are too few reliable sources of magical emanations.

The drakelings have a breath weapon. Like some birds and animals, they can spit out the content of their stomach, a smelly, disgusting substance, that acts like a weak acid. It shouldn’t do any harm if you have thick clothes, but don’t let it get on your face or eyes.

A threatened drakeling can easily hit a human on twenty yards, most instinctively aim for the head. Don’t get too close to that herd.

* can be replaced with any suitable supernatural location

Living with humans

When the tribes entered the plains, they learned to hunt the drakelings, which was risky, but worth the treasure in meat, hide and bone. They also learned of their mating grounds, that made excellent bases of power for any magic user. Around them grew most of the settlements of today.

During the mating season though, the skittish drakelings would become much more aggressive and descend in large groups upon their favorite places. Roaming tribes could move out for the season, but settled folk had to build massive fortifications and risk concentrated attacks, or simply leave enough place for them. Legends describe, how the first arrangement was formed, usually between a child and a talking drakeling.

Today, small herds of drakelings roam the plains as they ever did. They let themselves ‘adopt’ by nearby humans, in exchange for food they gain mutual protection, When there is no more food, they travel on, usually to another tribe or settlement they have visited before. If they know a person for a long time, they can allow him to ride them.

Custom says it is bad luck to harm one, killing requires cleansing rituals and should be only limited to the few drakelings with a nasty temper. This has bred out the discontents and supported the friendly trait. There is also a taboo against attacking other plainsmen with them. Today you have a drakeling, tomorrow they will. What if the creature likes the person you attack more and decides to throw you down instead?

Falling from the sky, by the way, is an extreme form of death on the plains, requiring special funeral rites to placate the drakeling spirit. Falling and surviving is a bad and good omen at once, a mark of higher fate.

The drakelings stay around while there is enough food. If you are careful and lucky, you may befriend one, as you could befriend any semi-wild animal. A bonded drakeling will allow you to fly it. But he won’t leave his group permanently and won’t enter unnecessary risk (see below).

Drakelings at war

Drakelings are fairly docile creatures most of the time, letting people fly on their backs. They make natural scouts, extremely useful for any army. While their carrying ability is not large, they can be used to drop bombs, flammables, and so on.

Actual aerial combat is difficult. Their natural aggresivity rises around their mating period, which is precisely when they are hard to control. This is when the most pilots are lost, due to the breakneck moves they make (or as some say, when they really want to shake off the pilot). But if you can control one in this time, it will be quite a ride.

With their size and strength, they do not posses large claws or sharp teeth and are actually a bit fragile. Many cities put on them a harness, that doubles as armor for the more vulnerable spots. Claws and other ‘upgrades’ are continually tested, but do not seem to fare well. The villagers in turn claim flying bareback is more heroic.

Summary and other details:
- a small settlement may or many not have a herd of drakelings nearby at a given moment
- most cities keep a permanent group of well-trained drakelings
- the skill to befriend and fly one is highly valued, most settlements and clans will have such people
- with enough food and sympathy, a drakeling will gladly allow you to fly it. They prefer to avoid combat most of the time.
- during their mating season, they are more willing to fight… and much harder to control
- They can take one person going light, two passengers or heavy load tires them quickly. They are good for bursts of energy (say pulling out a stump from earth), but don’t have the power for sustained effort.
- the plainsfolk know, that the unreliable drakelings have saved them from several invasions. They are to be treasured, their spirit is one all seek to have as an ally.
- those who inquire too much about these animals are probably spies
- while conflicts are many on the plains, these beasts are rarely used for direct warfare against own kin