Re: Dragons in Wildspace?

Steve "Drug cartel" Bartell wrote:
>1) Dragons carry their own air envelope with them.  Does this allow them
>to fly through wildspace?  I cannot find anything about that in the rules.

I don't believe the rules say anything about it (except that normal
physics applies - move an object away from you and you'll drift
the other way).  When the idea of training hippogriffs and such
for space combat came about, we all realized that since a creature
that big brings its own air, it can simply push against its own
air envelope and fly, while its gravity pulls along its air.

However, a creature as large as a dragon displaces a _lot_ of
air when it flies, so a flying dragon in wildspace should
not go above a certain speed, else he'll push a lot of air
out of his gravity plane with each wingbeat, and will soon
suffocate.  In any case, a creature flying this way is much
slower that the slowest Spelljamming ship.

Remember that such a big creature only brings along enough
air to breathe for 4-40 turns....

>2) One of the characters is a gold dragon, and has a fire breath weapon.
> I know that fireballs work in wildspace, since they are basically an
>implosion of fire, but what about a fire breath weapon?

I'd say that dragonfire is more along the lines of a superheated
flaming gas or plasma.  If the effect crosses outside an air
envelope, it may stop combusting, but the remnants are still
incredibly hot - perhaps give creatures outside the air envelope
a bonus to their saving throw?  Alternately, the dragonbreath
may be more like a highly combustible material like phosphorus
or magnesium, and entering air again will cause it to re-ignite
immediatly - so if the target is in an air envelope, they
still would take full damage, even if the breath had to pass through
true airless Wildspace to get there.

>3) What ships would you recommend that
>would not have a problem holding their mass?  They may be forced to
>customize one, but I wanted to see what is available now.

Looking at my ship database, the following would be large enough
to suit your purposes and would have enough room, as well (though
some of those listed below would have their own problems):

Space Leviathan
Stoneship
Citadel
Zoocraft
Deathspider
Armada
Mammoth
Barge of Ptah
Turtle

I listed the above because they were either incredibly large (like
the Space Leviathan) or had large open areas that a dragonform
could land or rest on, or at least could be easily modified for
the latter.
--
Sean K Reynolds   a.k.a. Veggie Boy  skreyn@??????.com  skreyn@???.com
"Later, alone, Belial will curl himself up undere the mountains and
remember Seraphiel, and archangel who fell by his side, who was one of
few Belial had considered a friend."