@shadowsblades asked: give me random dragon form headcanons. (how) does wrathion like to sleep in that form? how does he feel about flying with and without people riding him? how does he fight in that form? does a dragon wear pants on all their legs or only the lower two? etc.
U speak to my heart on a deep level with this question. Obviously the most important part is the last part, and obviously dragon’s wear pants on all their legs they’re not fucking heathens like Valeera who wears no pants at all :^/
He actually prefers sleeping in his dragon form over his mortal one, primarily because it’s just... safer? Less things are going to be able to do anything to a relatively big armoured lizard than they are a soft and squishy mortal. If he’s sleeping in his mortal form it’s because he has to for some reason or he feels safe, but by on large his preference is going to be his dragon form. Especially given he travels so much, that form allowing him to sleep comfortably anywhere for obvious reasons.
He doesn’t like being ridden. He doesn’t like being climbed. He doesn’t like being leant on. He’s not a mount and he just... wouldn’t appreciate being treated like one, especially given mortals sorta have a history of using dragons as mounts in pretty unpleasant ways. He will not let people on his back unless they are literally going to die if he doesn’t, and even then it’s not really, you know, guaranteed. He’s fine with Anduin riding him obviously, but Anduin is the exception to this rule as he is many others. What Wrathion accepts from him isn’t usually something he’d accept from anyone else, and this is an example of that.
Flying is something he enjoys in general, though his preference is actually to keep his feet on the ground since. You know. Earth dragon. It is generally a pretty liberating thing for him though and again he does really enjoy it.
The way he fights in his dragon form now is different from how he will when he’s older, so I’ll start with how he does now. As we saw in the cinematic he’s really quite nimble for a dragon being that he’s still a drake and so relatively small. He tends to be very hit and run, ducking and diving, shifting between his mortal and dragon forms seamlessly to make him exceptionally hard to hit. It’s worth remember he’s a rogue as well as a dragon, so can cloak himself in invisibility and create multiple illusions of himself. He’ll do all of these things even as a dragon to instill a sense of chaos if he’s fighting in earnest. Wrathion is, for all his previous dumbassery, very, very intelligent and the way he fights reflects it. He obviously also has fire and lava breath attacks, along with earth manipulation, and as previously mentioned he has the powers of Lei Shen so there’s that too though he doesn’t tend to prefer any of this beyond fire.
When he gets older and larger he loses quite a lot of his nimbleness due to his sheer size. At this point he’s capable of just bodying most things with size alone, fighting similarly to Nergigante from MHW I guess? He still makes use of his rogue capabilities, still shifts between dragon and mortal, though now also makes more use of his elemental powers than he did when younger. Wrathion is literally a force of nature when he wants to be. He just... prefers not to be.
When eating in his dragon form he prefers things raw. At most he’ll burn off fur and feathers, but he makes no effort to ‘cook’ whatever it is he’s about to eat. He’ll eat organs, meat, bone-- he really... doesn’t care? (though I do HC dragons eat bone by choice anyway so that’s not just Wrathion being weird and gross). The only things he won’t touch are the intestines and the stomach. His lifestyle isn’t a luxurious one for all he dresses the part, he’s a vagabond with no home, and whilst he has money the travelling he does and the way he lives his life hiding means he’s just not as fussy as you might initially expect. He won’t turn his nose up at a most things.
I’ve said it before but I don’t give him the stupid tail club Blizz gave him. It looks silly. Ruins my aesthetic.
He really likes to take lava baths! If he’s near anything volcanic and he has access to an open source of lava he’ll lounge around in it as a dragon for a while until he’s pressed to leave to attend something. This is one of the very, very few things he does simply because he enjoys it and for no other reason than because of that.
His blood is hot. Like. His body temp in his mortal form runs significantly warmer than any mortal, but as a dragon if you get his blood on you it’s uncomfortably hot. It’s not going to burn you or anything, more it just feels like having your hands under water that’s a tad too hot to be pleasant.
