Largest community of dragons in the world

[Tor]

I noticed on WB2p30 that Dragcona, next to a dice roll (due to transcience) maxing out at 6000, is a note of this being the largest dragon community.

Although the number of dragons in Dragcona could be larger than this (dragons are also noted as being a portion of 'visitors' though it is not clear how much) this note is only specific to the transcient dragon population, not the visitor population, so it must stand on those numbers alone.

WB6 falls in line with this, page 71 saying Lagarto is the second-largest known concentration of dragons with 800. So even if you rolled minimum for Dragcona (1000 dragons) it would still be on top.

The weirdness is... later world books appear to have larger numbers of dragons that contradict these standings.

WB12p29 has over 1500 living in Psyscape. I figure this can be ignored as an exception because Psyscape isn't technically 100% on earth.

WB16p17 has a total of roughly 1000 dragons living in Dweomer, which would make them the #2 guys, bumping Lagarto down to third place. Unlike Psyscape, it can't really be excluded for being off-planet, but I guess we could exclude it because it isn't "known", being a secretive community.

While there are (or were) significant dragon populations in Freehold and City of Brass, neither were large enough to compete for these top 3 spots.

I guess I wonder, with the effect of the Coalition Wars (Freehold dispersing, power re-balancing within the Federation of Magic) I am wondering how we might see dragon population rankings change. Would Dweomer lose dragons? Would Brass gain them? Who would get most of the ex-Freeholders? Could Psyscape have drama similar to the Cyber-Knights seeing some tired of peace leaving neutral ground to go join aggressors? Could more dragon residents of Atlantis come to live in the FoM as Dunscon gains power?

[say652]

I think those numbers are the amount of adult dragons in those places. Hatchling aren't counted.

[Tor]

I don't see why unless it specifies this. Dweomer happens to specify the number of hatchlings and adults (I just added them up) while others don't specify so I figure it's the sum.

[say652]

I would count all listed numbers as adult dragons, because why not.

[glitterboy2098]

i have to wonder.. given that dragons can teleport, how many of these dragons in the different cities are the same ones, just with multiple lairs/homes? the same dragon could well have a lair in Tolkeen, Dweomer, and Psycape all at the same time, and end up counted as an inhabitant of all three at the same time.

[say652]

Dragons buffering the census!!

Never trust a Dragon...

[Tor]

Dragon teleportation has range limits, could create some risk to stop at midpoints between lairs, I might prefer to mix it up with a port circle and only save the porting for the last steps (security).

Can't recall if there's limits on how frequently you can do the ports or recharge time in between.

[FatherMorpheus]

Books written over almost 20 years = numbers/facts getting squishy as time goes by. I think even the Tolkeen Wars books talk about a large population of dragons in their sister city

To get a more accurate census you would need a more recent book listing out larger dragon populations. Or you just set it for your own version of the Rifts world you want to run int.

[Brayon]

This is something I really never understood. How could there be Large Communities of Dragons, when in the description of dragons, it says they are solitary creatures, who don't get along with other Dragons? I could see 2, 5, 10 in a small City, or someplace like Psyscape. But Thousands? Shouldn't happen if by their very nature, they should be going after each others throats because they're in the same geographical area.

[Glistam]

Which is why the majority of them being hatchlings instead of adults makes the most sense. Hatchlings are more tolerant that way.

[Blue_Lion]

This is something I really never understood. How could there be Large Communities of Dragons, when in the description of dragons, it says they are solitary creatures, who don't get along with other Dragons? I could see 2, 5, 10 in a small City, or someplace like Psyscape. But Thousands? Shouldn't happen if by their very nature, they should be going after each others throats because they're in the same geographical area.

It would require something important to get the dragons to act as such.

The way I see it the city is really a dominance proving ground that they use to gain prestige or power. It is a place they manipulate the people around them to try to foil each others plans. Meaning every thing in the city are pawns to a giant dragon game.

[Tor]

Which is why the majority of them being hatchlings instead of adults makes the most sense. Hatchlings are more tolerant that way.

1 in 200 citizens in Dweomer is an adult dragon, that's 248 (no idea why it said 'roughly 200').

They may be exceptional 'good guy' type dragons who get along with each other, but I'm not so sure, place accepts demons...

I figure what greases the wheels of places like Dragcona or Lagarto is there is so much plentitude and Splugorth diplomacy that they are less combatative. All the mortals serve them collectively, most supernaturals bow to them, that their ego is boosted so there's less need to battle other dragons for it.

Another way to look at it: even a big place like Dragcona is actually the exception... there's way more dragons just spread out all over Rifts Earth... and only a minority of weirdos who flock together in these cities.

IE why it's scary to live out there in the wilderness and why the CS is necessary. There's at least 500 000 creatures of magic in Europe and I wonder how many are dragons.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Dragon teleportation has range limits, could create some risk to stop at midpoints between lairs, I might prefer to mix it up with a port circle and only save the porting for the last steps (security).

Can't recall if there's limits on how frequently you can do the ports or recharge time in between.

Hatchling teleportation has range limits. as near as I can tell, adult dragon teleporting, with the sole exception of the teleport dodge (which has it's special limit for being done "hasty"), can be done from one end of the galaxy to the other as far as I can tell. same with generic greater demons who have a "Teleport" power but no range listed.

[Tor]

Originally in the conversion book there was grounds to assume the range limits from RMB remained intact.

CBp121 under the Fire Dragon says "see Rifts, page 100" I believe implying that it operates the same (including 5 mile limit) but at the stated percentile. This appeared under the other breeds capable of it too.

Although these notes do not appear in Dragons and Gods, page 12 (describing the dimensional powers of adult dragons) has a bullet for teleport that says "up to 5 miles away". With a fixed range, the advantage adults have (other than higher percentage) is that they can bring other things along (a stated weight) while hatchlings can only bring themself (so long gear).

One trick could be to use 2 dimensional teleports to get to any place within your originating dimension, but that's balanced by dimensional teleports being usable very few times a day, while non-dimensional teleports can be used frequently.