As old as all surviving records of ancient history, dragons are creatures borne of deep, nameless magics that are yet unknown to humanity. They are massive reptilian beasts with four powerful legs, gargantuan wings, and scaled hide tough enough to repel arrows. They are known and feared for their bladelike claws, razor-sharp teeth, and devastating fire breath capable of reducing entire towns to cinders. Compounded with their terrible tempers, dragons are not creatures to be dealt with lightly.
Thousands of years ago, there was a great magical calamity that released the dragons upon the world, also setting the blood moon phenomenon into motion and causing the creation of the night-dwelling monsters that continue to plague the world to this day. Though after so many centuries, many of these dangers have diminished, and the dragons are no exception to this.
Those that still live mostly consist of older individuals, dragons that wrought destruction and hoarded wealth in their youth, only to retreat with their hoards into caverns deep underground, where no human dare tread. The dragons seen ravaging towns and being brought down by slayers are usually the younger ones, those that have not had years to build their treasure hoards, and that are still inexperienced in fighting. It is for this reason that many will choose to flee, rather than fight.
Regardless, as dragons slowly vanish from the world, humanity will continue forward. Whether they manage to cause another calamity that brings them back, or they forget the terrible beasts entirely, that’s an entirely different matter.
In a hybrid (modded) Minecraft/Fantasy world, Dream is a recognized dragon slayer that, unknown to the masses, can transform into a dragon. In reality, he’s never actually slain a dragon – he’s just really good at illusionary spells. Since the day he ran away from home, he has never seen another person like him. That is, until he runs into a fellow named George…
FULL STORY CONTENT WARNINGS (Spoilers!): SOFT/SAFE VORE, Vore Mentions, Mouthplay, Implied Past Child Abuse, Villain Character Death, Temporary Character Death, Implied Character Death, Blood and Injury, Major Character Injury, Peril, Near Death Experiences, Mild Gore, Zombies, Zombification, Giant Spiders, Fear, Mild Language (this list will likely be updated)
Everything will be marked accordingly, so feel free to block tags or skip over chapters whose contents you might not enjoy. Don’t like, don’t read – it’s as simple as that! Here be dragons!
Disclaimer: I’m a female and I don’t know how to write male characters. This whole thing is kinda just writing practice / self-indulgence for me. Also, this isn’t DreamNotFound (or any kind of ship-fic for that matter) but do expect some purely platonic bromance here and there. Interpret it however you will, but it will not be overtly shippy.
One-Shots:
The Pilot and the False-God
A Prank of Draconic Proportions
Totem of the Seas
Main Story:
Added a read-more to keep things neat - click to see the full chapter list
A race of beings that live in a state of duality, able to shift between two forms – that of a human, and of a dragon. In human form, they possess patches of bright scales on their face to set them apart from humanity, while in dragon form, they are physically smaller and more brightly-colored than true dragons.
For their own survival, they tend to live in isolation, getting by in human society by hiding their scales with whatever face covering is most convenient. This isn’t a foolproof method, however, as this can cause a Dragonshifter to stick out in a crowd depending on where they live.
Dragonshifters’ transformative abilities lean heavily on magic rather than being an entirely physical change. When they shift, all of their clothing and other apparel are magically ‘stored’ with their human form. While in dragon form, some are even able to consciously transfer additional inanimate objects into or out of this space.
Due to the magical properties of their draconic counterparts, each Dragonshifter is born with one of three different ‘gifts’.
Sense of Magic; the inherent draw towards magic, complete with minor instinctual knowledge of how it works
Sense of Gold; the inherent draw towards gold, including the ability to sense the presence of ore through stone
Sense of Shifters; the ability to sense when someone is a Dragonshifter, even without any outward sign
Just like with true dragons, it is unknown where Dragonshifters came from, seeming to have simply appeared one day.
Originally formed over five hundred years ago, near the end of the Era of Anarchy, the Dragon Slayers’ Guild is an organization created to unite those few individuals that were capable of killing dragons. As dragons were historically a major threat to humanity, anyone that could not only survive their attacks, but also effectively dispatch of them became a legend in their own right. The Guild would allow for slayers to come together, uniting around their shared experiences as they told stories and exchanged battle strategies with one another.
The Guild added an element of legitimacy to many slayers’ reputations. At first, the number of slayers was so few that most dragon kills were recorded by the honor system. Nowadays, before kills are added to the public record, they are confirmed with each unique dragon scale a slayer brings in. There is hardly ever a reason to suspect most slayers of cheating or scamming, though it has happened on occasion with lesser-known ones. Anyone found to be acting in bad faith is permanently excommunicated from the Guild.
This legitimizing of dragon slaying as a whole also provides a fallback position to slayers who can’t get the towns they rescued to pay them for their work, and if the guild leaders can’t get them compensated, then those towns are added to a blacklist – meaning there’s decent incentive for town leaders to pay slayers for their services, else the next dragon to attack would be allowed to wipe them off the map.
The Guild, as expected, has experienced a gradual decline as dragons become scarcer. Independent slayers who had made a career of killing dragons are slowly going bankrupt and being forced to seek more stable employment, while whole teams of slayers are struggling to get by. It won’t be long before the dragons in the world are all gone, and the industry dries up completely.
I always wanted to ask but in your AU what is the difference between a full dragon and a Dragonshifter.
(I mean duh the shitfing orc) But what else?
-Anon🌸
This is an excellent question, and one which hasn't really been touched on in the story thus far aside from passing mentions.
Obviously, if we're going by Dream's basic explanation to George in Chapter 5, the difference is that Dragonshifters are slightly smaller, more brightly-colored, and possess thumbs, but those differences are admittedly only surface-level.
If we’re talking intellectually, true dragons are highly intelligent and self-aware, much like humans. That being said, they are often insidious, temperamental, and steal away whatever they want - usually food, gold, magical items, or some other kind of treasure. They don’t see humans as equals, more like worker bees, at best, or downright pests, at worst. While they can learn speech, most don’t nowadays due to their decreasing population, and very few elder dragons to learn from.
However, the core difference between the two is mainly the fact that Dragonshifters aren’t dragons at all - they’re technically human, just cursed by their bloodline. They possess a few basic dragon instincts, but they remain human, at their most fundamental.
I’m gonna pull back the curtain and talk about some world lore, so brace for a Lot of Words (TL;DR at the bottom):
While not covered in the story itself in any substantial way, canonically, dragons only come into existence during moments of gross misuse of Ancient and Nameless Magics. In the entire history of this AU, there have only been three of those moments in total, and never by the same people/means. The first instance summoned Ender Dragons to the End dimension, the second summoned true dragons to the Overworld, and the third was slightly different, a curse.
There once was an eternal being, an Immortal, who sought godhood through his own magical abilities. He reached out towards so many different magics, light and dark, good and evil, even life and death itself, to the point that he truly believed himself to be a god. He then managed to accidentally curse a small town’s worth of humans with the ability to transform into dragons at will. It was never his intention, but in his eyes, he’d given them all a great blessing.
Initially, there were few-to-no aesthetic differences between true dragons and a Dragonshifter's dragon form, just like how Dragonshifters used to appear perfectly human whilst in human form. This change is visited in a one-shot that was posted between Part I and Part II, The Pilot and The False-God (link), which saw the main character, a Dragonshifter, having his curse altered by the aforementioned False-God. After that confrontation, the Dragonshifter’s scales and slit-pupiled eyes were always visible in his human form, and his dragon form was made brighter and therefore easier to spot.
The alteration of the curse didn't stop there, and would go on to affect all the world’s Dragonshifters. As this occurred during the Era of Anarchy, many Dragonshifters inevitably lost their lives when they were outed.
In sharp contrast, true dragons came into the world during a time of prosperity, long before the Dragonshifters were cursed. An ancient civilization, technologically and magically advanced beyond any that would come after, tapped into a deep magic that humanity was never meant to touch. Calamity struck, and creatures born of magic were set loose upon the world, destroying everything in their wake.
Among those, were dragons, probably the most insidious of them all. While many other creatures were fought off or dealt with in one way or another, the dragons’ reign of terror lasted far longer. They were the most terrible threat humanity had ever had to deal with, and while many of the beasts were slain, the largest of all human civilizations had been reduced to cinders in the process, and would soon be entirely swallowed up by the ocean.
Being able to fly, dragons soon spread across the entire mainland continent, and even to those beyond.
Although dragons were once a powerful enemy of humanity, the rise of dragon slayers has seen the dragons’ numbers severely decreasing from what they once were. This would ultimately limit the opportunities of the younger dragons, while the very old dragons lie dormant, deep underground, surrounded by mounds of wealth. Thus, most true dragons slain in modern times are those that have recently fledged, since they lack the experience to fight off highly-experienced slayers.
Heaven help if one of those same slayers ever found an ancient dragon sleeping in its underground lair, haha.
TL;DR - Dragonshifters are fundamentally human, true dragons are born of magic, and the respective incidents that brought them to be are entirely unrelated
I noticed that a few of you guys were really intrigued by the inclusion of Punz in Part II. Dunno why I’m surprised, he’s been friends with Dream for a long time, he was one of the first people added to the Dream SMP in the early days, and he’s been around the MCYT scene ever since. But since some of you were curious about Punz as he appears in Dragonshifter, I figured I’d go ahead and address it.
To catch you guys up, I talked a bit about him in a comment on AO3 a little while back (click for better quality):
As previously stated, I don’t watch Punz, and I never really planned for him to play an integral part in the story. My intent was for him to simply be a good friend of Sapnap (and Dream, if you squint) and nothing more.
Also, here’s a great theory from @beansthough that I didn’t want to dismiss entirely (and if I didn’t have a solid idea as to where this story was going, I probably would’ve taken this and ran with it, because I do really like it):
Now, here’s some background I didn’t get into in the main story –
Punz didn’t know much about Dream before deciding to help Sapnap at the market. Before that, Sapnap had told him only a little about Dream, which didn’t include anything about him being a Dragonshifter:
Dream fixed Sapnap with a wary look.
“You didn’t tell him…”
“No, he doesn’t know,” the dark-haired man assured quickly, “I just need the extra help, and I’ve known him for a while. That’s not like… gonna be an issue, is it?”
That said, Punz did know that Sap had a pocket dimension that he visited on occasion – which had been where he spent the majority of this time during the Knightport lockdown – but he hadn’t known that Dream was its primary resident.
After starting to help with selling scales, Punz would have the chance to speak with Dream a little more often, and while at that point they might’ve considered one another friends, it’s unlikely that Dream would reveal him being a Dragonshifter to Punz, at least for a while.
While that’s all well and good, I personally find their first meeting hilarious, and I’m kinda bummed I couldn’t find a good place to slot it in to Part II. Because of how things worked out, the flashbacks effectively stopped at the best end-point I could think of, but since Punz’s introduction to Dream happened afterwards, it ended up being glossed over entirely.
Dream alludes to this prior interaction with Punz in the same exchange cited earlier:
“Oh, that reminds me! My friend, Punz,” Sapnap began, only to add swiftly, “you remember Punz…”
“The one guy that tried to steal from your stand,” the slayer answered wryly, “how could I forget?”
“Hey, he was just messing around,” the human retorted.
Essentially, how Dream met Punz was right when Sapnap first set up his scale stand, originally in Bronzechill rather than Knightport (Sapnap would later make enough coin to be able to move to Knightport and sell scales there instead). Dream was quietly overseeing its setup, helping Sap where he could, but mostly standing back and keeping himself cloaked by his invisibility spell because he didn’t want to attract any more attention than he already had.
Punz had just been passing through when he spotted his friend Sapnap setting something up, clearly looking like he was about to sell stuff. And to be funny, he decided to try stealing something. He managed to swipe a simple bangle before attempting to run away.
‘Attempting’ being the keyword, there.
Cue Punz being startled and very confused when he was tackled out of nowhere by an invisible dragon slayer.
Despite the inherent duality of Dragonshifters, their human form is their default state. Thus, when they are born, they start out as helpless human infants. They are born with scales however, which allows them to be identified as a Dragonshifter, as well as displaying what color the scales of their dragon form will be.
At around a year old, baby Dragonshifters gain the ability to shift between forms. Their dragon forms reflect their age, and are likewise very small, usually only two feet tall at the shoulder. They obviously start out uncoordinated in this form, but just as with their human one, they will continue to work on their mobility as they develop. Their own wings and tails are very confusing to them, at this stage.
Starting at about three or four years, Dragonshifter kids grow to be extremely energetic, shifting between forms just for fun. They have a lot of energy, and love to run, jump, and climb on things as they feel out the limits of their own body. Their wings are still pretty useless at this stage, but that doesn't stop little Dragonshifters from flapping them in the hope of achieving flight.
Proper control of the wings comes at the ages of six to eight, depending on the individual. It's at this point that their wings are developed enough to glide, but self-sustained flight is still a ways off.
Somewhere between the ages of nine to eleven, the wings become fledged enough to allow for flight, though this is usually very taxing on a young Dragonshifter's body. It is still very important for them to practice flight at this stage, as they are still building muscle in their wings, while the consequences of falling are much less lethal than they would be later on.
It’s also at around this stage that the natural growth of their dragon form begins to increase at a dramatic rate.
At ages twelve to fourteen, a Dragonshifter reaches sexual maturity, and finally become capable of breathing fire.
Finally, it’s at around the ages of sixteen to eighteen that a Dragonshifter reaches their full size.
Silhouettes sourced from Google Images; I own nothing
