What Is Up with Dragons?

[Henny Penny Benny 936]

What exactly is going on with dragons in the FIM universe?

 

First, how do dragons age and grow? Are their aging and growing even concurrent with each other? As we saw in Secret of My Excess, dragons can grow significantly in size simply by amassing hoards of stuff, so growth doesn't seem to necessarily have anything to do with age. Dragons do seem to live for a long time, though, as the dragon from Dragonshy was about to take a hundred-year nap.

 

I suppose it would make some sense if dragons grow exclusively by hoarding. Spike grew so quickly because he's surrounded only by ponies, who can't do a whole lot to stop him, but in the Dragon Lands, it would be much, much harder for dragons to amass sizable hoards, what with all the other dragons stealing from them to grow their own hoards.

 

But does that mean that dragons don't grow in size due to age whatsoever? Do they even age at all?

 

 

Second, where the balls were all the dragons during Gauntlet of Fire???? There appeared to be dozens, if not hundreds, of full-grown, enormous dragons taking part in the dragon migration, but the only dragons who answered the Dragon Lord's summons were "teenage" dragons, and not even all that many of them. So what happened to all the dragons? Do they live somewhere other than Equestria? After all, the Dragon Lord did address the "dragons of Equestria," not all dragons necessarily. Does the Dragon Lord only have authority over Equestrian dragons? Was there some catastrophic event that wiped out most of the dragons? Did Tirek, perhaps, destroy them in the brief time he held all the magical power? Are the full-grown dragons simply too lazy to answer the summons? Were they napping? Did they just not want to leave their hoards? What's going on??

[Unlikeable Pony 2,700]

What exactly is going on with dragons in the FIM universe?

 

First, how do dragons age and grow? Are their aging and growing even concurrent with each other? As we saw in Secret of My Excess, dragons can grow significantly in size simply by amassing hoards of stuff, so growth doesn't seem to necessarily have anything to do with age. Dragons do seem to live for a long time, though, as the dragon from Dragonshy was about to take a hundred-year nap.

 

I suppose it would make some sense if dragons grow exclusively by hoarding. Spike grew so quickly because he's surrounded only by ponies, who can't do a whole lot to stop him, but in the Dragon Lands, it would be much, much harder for dragons to amass sizable hoards, what with all the other dragons stealing from them to grow their own hoards.

 

But does that mean that dragons don't grow in size due to age whatsoever? Do they even age at all?

 

 

Second, where the balls were all the dragons during Gauntlet of Fire???? There appeared to be dozens, if not hundreds, of full-grown, enormous dragons taking part in the dragon migration, but the only dragons who answered the Dragon Lord's summons were "teenage" dragons, and not even all that many of them. So what happened to all the dragons? Do they live somewhere other than Equestria? After all, the Dragon Lord did address the "dragons of Equestria," not all dragons necessarily. Does the Dragon Lord only have authority over Equestrian dragons? Was there some catastrophic event that wiped out most of the dragons? Did Tirek, perhaps, destroy them in the brief time he held all the magical power? Are the full-grown dragons simply too lazy to answer the summons? Were they napping? Did they just not want to leave their hoards? What's going on??

 

 

I like to think that the Dragon lord title isn't as important as Torch made it out to be, like how the "general of the minutement" title in Fallout actually meant precious little.

 

Basically, Dragons with hoards hole themselves up in their lairs and rarely (if ever) come out except for mating (During the migration) and don't give a crap about the "authority" of any dragon lord: the dragon lord himself mainly therefore only has authority over dragons that aren't old enough yet to have established Hoards to sleep on and guard, I.E. younger dragons.

This is why the scepter is so small and why the title is generally passed on to another adolescent dragon-- torch was getting too old for that kind of crap and it was about time for him to get himself his own lair and settle down in it for a few hundred years of sleep like the other adult dragons, hence why he was passing on the torch.

 

The dragon lord is therefore very important in keeping watch over the younger adolescent dragons to keep them in line since the other adults are busy sleeping, as if the younger dragons start messing crap up, you're going to have the Non-dragon races start getting pissed off at ALL dragons in general and then the Dragons with hoards are going to find their naps being constantly interupted by ponies or gryphons or whatnot trying to attack them in their sleep when all they want to do is be left alone.

[Truffles 2,033]

 

 

where the balls were all the dragons during Gauntlet of Fire???? There appeared to be dozens, if not hundreds, of full-grown, enormous dragons taking part in the dragon migration, but the only dragons who answered the Dragon Lord's summons were "teenage" dragons, and not even all that many of them.

 

 

If you look closely at the scene of Spike crossing the water, there are several silhouettes of the adult dragons we saw in earlier seasons; so they were there, even if there weren't that many. I agree with @@Unlikeable Pony - most of the adults are busy sleeping off the migration event, likely picking that time to begin their 100 year naps.

 

Why weren't the adults seen in the background in "Gauntlet of Fire" present for the keynote speech by Torch? I think the adults really don't like young dragons very much. They stayed far away from them up on the ridges of the crater in "Dragon Quest" and generally didn't want anything to do with them. They probably think the young ones are too compulsive and brutish to socialize with (not that MLP dragons socialize all that much, anyway) and getting near a young dragon is more likely to get your hoard stolen than make an ally. So in "GoF" any adults that were taking part were probably doing the same thing and sitting far enough away that they would be out-of-view.

 

Of course, the real reason is likely adding all those dragons we saw in "Dragon Quest" doing more than just repetitive flying animations probably would have blown the episode's budget...