Dracnari Reproduction

Qistrel

Because it seems I am still fascinated by these discussions: Do Dracnari lay eggs?

What we know:
Dragons lay eggs, as show in the Zoaka quest. The Book of Dracnoris shows that both dragons and dracnari are shards of the primal god Dracnoris. However, dracnari have breasts as seen in this Official Artwork:



Finks have both breasts and eggs, kephera lay eggs, but I'm no longer sure if the have breasts, trills do not lay eggs (it would seem). It has been suggested to me that dracnari breasts are purely decorative, but that seems a little odd to me.

Synkarin

is golden dragon milk 'decorative'?

Daraius

Pureblooded dracnari don't have breasts and lay eggs. Some dracnari with human in their ancestry might have boobs and might even have live babies. These individuals are gross aberrations and should be purged.

(I don't actually have a dog in this race. I tend to think "human ancestry" can account for just about any path a player wants to take with their character's physiology. Hair trill and boob dracnari are still gross though.)

Donato

If I recall correctly, do not put much stock in the 'official' artwork of the races as they were obviously drawn by a sexually frustrated artist trying to draw in prebuscent children.

Everything female in his art has cleavage and all the men are shirtless.

Daraius

Well that's not terribly fair to the guy. He was commissioned either by Estarra or IRE, and likely followed their guidelines. Granted, he has certain tendancies that aren't for everyone (myself included), but he has some versatility.Ultimately, Estarra/IRE who chose the artist, knowing his style, and decided how the races would be represented on their websites.

(Suddenly wondering if I got the right artist here... He did other IRE art but I don't see any Lusternia stuff on his page. Oops)

Donato

Well I'm not saying copious amounts of fan service is bad. If it draws in people, it does. But… yeah. Also, the trill artwork is so like 'totally an angel like race perfect for celestines'. Maybe update them?

Daraius

It's totally an Institute Harmonics user, perfect for Hallifax. :P

Qistrel

@Synkarin, you are dissapoint. I refrained from making the golden joke, and then you went and did it.

I'm pretty sure that the Lusternia artist wasn't the one that did the new Achaea/Imperian stuff?

Donato

I think the theory I put forward, basically we are not birds, or lizards, or fish. We just LOOK like them. Honestly, this hardly ever comes up. All sharded races give birth to live young as normal, because all the Gods who sharded were star shaped. Keph and Illith are special cases, but since they appeared as two arms, two legs, chest and head, they probably go to the same standard.

I'm guessing about the last two, but… yeah. All the adventurers around are bipedal humanoids.

Saran

By that logic @Donato, I would suggest that all elders should be neutral gendered as they did not require reproductive organs and the first wave of mortals would have been the last as, again, reproduction is apparently not something that the elders really ever dealt with... directly.

However, we do also know that they encountered such things through nature and that for some their sharded races were influenced by the creatures of the world. 

Trillilial might have sharded into a race that has live birth due to her connection to Xyl and some romantic idea of being together or something. However, for the other Elders I feel like it would depend on their personality, some would have taken on the traits of certain animals over others. 

Like... I feel live birth is probably more related to the fae potentially, that Elders such as Meridian and Xyl probably (subconciously) found it more "appropriate", while Dracnoris and Keph might have been closer to their relative creature inspiration and as such lay eggs.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some really aussie elder who created a bunch of marsupials and their shards carry their young around in pouches. 

Donato

Dracnari weren't inspired by lizards, they just appear like that because Dracnoris was a dragon-shaped primal God. If you're saying Dracnoris, when splintering himself, went 'I will make my races give birth via eggs because of how the great Dragons are born' then… yeah, I can sort of see that. But Dracnoris came first, then probably lizards were made… and so on.

As for gender, well, you get into quite a metaphysical thought process about that because you have to ask yourself, why did Dynara decide on only two genders. Why not three, or four? Pairing perhaps? And maybe we are thinking too much on this heh.

Saran

Donato said:

Dracnari weren't inspired by lizards, they just appear like that because Dracnoris was a dragon-shaped primal God. If you're saying Dracnoris, when splintering himself, went 'I will make my races give birth via eggs because of how the great Dragons are born' then… yeah, I can sort of see that. But Dracnoris came first, then probably lizards were made… and so on.

As for gender, well, you get into quite a metaphysical thought process about that because you have to ask yourself, why did Dynara decide on only two genders. Why not three, or four? Pairing perhaps? And maybe we are thinking too much on this heh.

I'm not actually suggesting it's a conscious process that the gods went through, more a very subconscious part of the splintering. I feel that the concept of having to reproduce to continue existing in some fashion would be a foreign thought to most Elders and at most something that they attribute to other creations and not themselves.

For gender... simply... on a functional level I've been lead to understand that gender is a matter of "is this female?" everything that is not is considered male unless it is an object. So on a functional level the system reinforces this. 

In terms of story, it's entirely possible that this is just a consideration that probably didn't come up until recently, such as with the gender thread. However, concepts such as pairing are completely out as we have long had Elders in queer relationships so the concept of making males and females to pair together is just wrong and that's before we move into the whole "you can actually love more than one person" discussion.

Maligorn

Nature in the real world will always simplify down to two genders for sexual reproduction, and neuter for asexual reproducers. Dynara probably understood this premise as soon as Zvoltz and Mysrai were born (and all the other Gods in Their creche), presumably soon or right after Primal Gods were.

Akyaevin

Obviously they're all monotremes.

Qistrel

I've been treating finks as monotremes! Because they're the only race the is definitely both mammalian, and egg-laying.

Part of my interest in this is a theory that the primal/soulless shards (kephera, illithoid, dragons, dracnari) lay eggs, and the normal elders bear live young, and that Malmydia attempted to turn Fininkora into a more primal god, and partly succeeded.

Alaksanteri

 Fallout geckos/ dracnaris 

Pectus

There was a player who used to RP pheromones.. But I think that was just someone taking dracnari on a weird path.

As fair as I know, unless the dracnari has some of another race tossed in, they breed like reptiles. Since there has never been a dracnari described by the Divine as having mammary glands or working breasts (I've seen some show boobs, but not baby feeding boobs). The only times I've seen dracnari give milk were people who either had human or mix-raced parents, reincarnated into dracnari after RPing as another race for ages, or just plain didn't know how dracnari worked (Golden dragon milk being the case and point. Wasn't her mother also a moon priestess? And had metal wings? Unno). Cloacae and fat storage mounds aren't as sexy as humanoid sex organs, don'tcha know.

Trill: Have humanoid systems according to the Divine-written descriptions, so I don't believe they breed like birds.  No eggs for those flyers, that'd be too messy. Just good old painful childbirth until the Hallifaxians can figure out epidurals.

Kephera: Going off of the few dissection RPs I've seen, they have egg sacs, and other..bug..things? Stuff? But I've never been able to place exactly what kind of insect reproduction they use. Here's hoping they aren't the impaling reproduction sort of bugs.

Merian: A lot of merians I've seen, both player and admin-controlled, use the term 'clutchmate'. So either their refer to their birthed families as a clutch, or they have actual fish-like clutches of eggs. I imagine if reproduction were a more publically-discussed science, people would look into Merian RPs where the children are grown to fry-esque stages in little pedestals in their parents homes. Or even just in the inner sea itself.

And Lucidian: ...I have no idea. Some people say they seed like crystals, some say they have squishy humanoid reproductive systems inside, and the crystal is just covering a womb and milk-giving boobs, but the lucidians have very little go to off of when it comes to their reproduction. Maybe Hallifax is just made from the dead corpses of old Lucidians, re-purposed to help forward the collective as new life is brought into the world? Or they are just effing with us.


I learned awhile ago to take the stock race pictures with a grain of salt.. Instead, look at the NPCs around the basin to figure out what each race is up to. Most of the racial NPCs have at least one where it's mentioned in subtle tones.

Pectus

But then I wonder about viscanti! Does the taint change how it works? Or do they just go off of whatever the person's previous race was? Darn you Qistrel

Aerotan

My 2 gold: Dracnari and Kephera seem to be the most likely to me to have non-human systems, as Dracnoris and Keph were the only Elder to splinter who weren't Star Gods. For Dracnari, I imagine this means ventral slits and cloacae, but I can see how that might end up awkward.
Centaubi's (and the centaurs, by extension) kind of up in the air, but would likely have the usual equine arrangement. Likewise for the other 'furry' races,  Furrikin, Tae'Dae, Loboshigaru, and Aslaran with their respective equipment, but could easily go either way with any of those.