While at first the greatest threat to the sky islands were the loosely organized Siren assaults that generally resulted in light skirmishes before they retreated, actual dragons posed a threat, especially on the rare ocassion an Atlantean attached itself to one and flew up.
Most Atlantean dragons are too decomposed or mutated to fly, but the few that can are terrifying. Rarely, some allow Atlanteans to ride and armor them, only a handful of examples of these exist and only a handful of those can fly. However, when the invasion began some of dragons that could not fly, learned to swim.
To say the least, the War Seas were cooked. A dragon or two could turn the tide of a battle or siege, the arrival of one spelled the end for many forts. Survivors were forced to blackout all lights in order to not draw attention to one, but the Bronze Sea Sky Islands were swarmed by the flying dragons due to the amount of survivors condensed on to them.
Legends tell of an Armored Legendary Beast Dragon, carrying Atlanteans of equal strength, but no soul has lived to see it directly. The only evidence of it’s existence is a trail of rubble resembling a dragon’s nest in the ruins of many kingdoms and a massive shadow spotted flying across the War Seas.
Many researchers suggest that it’s possible the legendary Martin himself tamed the beast and rides it across the War Seas.
Dragons! Yay! Fantasy worlds just aren’t complete without those.
Willing to bet that, in AO canon, it’ll be another example of mutation going so far that the original creature and the end result are incomparable. It might’ve once been human, but no part of it can be recognized as such anymore.
Also, I’m willing to bet it’s less the flying western depiction of dragons, and more of a sort of Sea Serpent, like Jörmungandr, Scylla, or Leviathan. Scylla in particular would be fitting, as her whole schtick in Greek mythos is that she was once just a nymph, but was turned into a monster.
Im on the fence interpreting the dragons as straight up independent creatures or a mass mutation of hundreds of atlanteans merged together to form a truly horrific entity
Also, I would think theyd be in the water w/o wings, but would PROBABLY be large enough to not even need to fly. Sky islands are still cooked.
We gotta go four the triple-pronged approach here.
Masses of atlanteans smashed together create some grotesque drakes (flightless dragons, for those unaware) that become exceedingly hard to kill because they’re multiple organisms, like a Man O’ War.
We can then talk about atlantean-corrupted dragons… But the first idea I had was corrupted sea serpents that would fire sprays of tainted seawater from their mouths? Could be interesting to essentially have an active threat that poisons people and makes actual sea travel more dangerous.
but instead of that its water poisoning
hear me out
water poisoning is poison, as in; it breaks down your body
so too much water poisoning could mean you get melted into a blob
